Despite recent rains, the water pull down inward Lake George Herbert Mead – which supplies Las Vegas with 90% of its H2O – was 1,046.94 feet above sea take down on Feb. 2. That’s only when 28% of its full capacity. And cutting H2O use, still drastically, may not solve the problem.

Because of mood change, some estimates prognosticate that the CO River may redeem only half its current amount of H2O past the twelvemonth 2100.

Pumping Mississippi River irrigate into Lake Mead has been suggested before. But as water levels drib – threatening to eventually prune turned California, Arizona, and Mexico from their Colorado River water allotments – and as engine room technology advances, large-scale river deflection doesn’t seem as much of a tube daydream as it one time did.

In 2021, the genus Arizona land general assembly actually passed a amount urging Congress to look into pumping torrent H2O from the MS to the Colorado River to supercharge its flow. Studies demo that a externalize same this would follow possible, though it would take decades of mental synthesis and billions of dollars. Maybe yet trillions.

“I conceive it would follow foolhardy to brush off it as not feasible,” Richard Rood, professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan, told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “But we demand to cognize a lot to a greater extent nigh it than we currently do.”

Large-scale river recreation projects experience been proposed inwards the US since the 1960s when an American fellowship sought-after(a) to redistribute Alaskan irrigate crossways the continent using canals and reservoirs. That be after ne'er generated plenty back up – a fate shared past similar proposals inward Gopher State and Iowa.

Still Too Pricey … For Now

In 2012, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation performed a Colorado River Basin analytic thinking considering several solutions to the current drought – including importation H2O from the MO and Mississippi River Rivers.

Under the analyzed scenario, water would live diverted to Colorado’s Front Range and areas of New Mexico. That would cost at to the lowest degree $1,700 per acre-feet of water, potentially give 600,000 acre-feet of water per yr past 2060, and get hold of 30 years to construct.

A decade later, Roger Viadero, an environmental scientist and technologist at horse opera Illinois University, calculated that moving this weighing machine of water would require a pipage 88 feet inward diam – twice as long as a semi-trailer – or a 100-foot-wide transmission channel that’s 61 feet deep.

“As an engineer, I put up guarantee you that it is doable,” Viadero told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “But thither are wads of things that put up live through with(p) but aren’t ever done.”

Viadero’s team estimated the cost of buying plenty irrigate to take upwardly the Colorado River’s Lake Mead and Lake Powell at more than $134 billion, assuming a penny per gallon. Add to that sound construction costs and the costs of powering the equipment required to pump the water o'er the Western Continental Divide. Buying the land to unafraid H2O rights would follow very costly, too.

Politics: The Other Problem

The political hurdle race are also considerable. They include wetlands protections, endangered species protections, imbibing water provide considerations, and interstate highway shipping protections. Precedents lot past other recreation attempts – such as the ones that created the Great Lakes Compact, also cast of characters question over the political viability of any large-scale Mississippi River River deviation attempt.

And transnational pipelines would also impact bionomic resources. Lower MS River flow rate way less sediment carried land to Louisiana, where it’s needful for coastal restoration. Diverting that H2O also agency spreading problems, like pollutants, overweening nutrients, and invasive species such as Asian carp.

None of this still considers the to the highest degree of import question: Is there even out sufficiency irrigate to spare? The Mississippi River River basinful may no longer be a reliable answer to the Colorado River River basin’s job since the MS is drying up, too. Water levels are at or to a lower place the low-water limen on a nearly 400-mile stretch of the river. This yesteryear year, sunken boats, such as the Diamond peeress riverboat casino, are surfacing the likes of bodies are inward Lake Mead.

“No ane wants to lead the western states without water,” Melissa Scanlan, a freshwater sciences professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “But moving H2O from I drought-impacted expanse to another is non a solution.”

Growing Precedent

Still, thither is hope. Last year, a Kaw River groundwater direction office received a allow to motortruck 6,000 gallons of MO River H2O into KS and Colorado to recharge an aquifer. Several approved diversions already drain water from the Great Lakes. And in northwestern Iowa, a river has repeatedly been pumped wry past a rural water public utility that sells at to the lowest degree a canton of the irrigate out of doors the state. And there

In July 2022, former Grand Canyon State Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation investing $1.2 1000000000000 into projects that economize irrigate and take to a greater extent into the state. Among its provisions, the practice of law granted Arizona’s H2O infrastructure finance say-so to “investigate the feasibility” of possible out-of-state H2O importation agreements.

And, as the tired adage goes, dire times phone call for desperate measures. According to a two-year sound projection past the federal Bureau of Reclamation, by the last of July 2024, Lake Mead’s H2O stratum could pass to as depression as 992 feet to a higher place sea level. That’s perilously tight to a drained pocket billiards (895 feet), the tip when a artificial lake is so low-toned gravitational attraction will no yearner reserve it to button irrigate downstream. If and when Lake George Herbert Mead hits this point, that testament live dire news for downstream regions, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, Tucson, and Mexico.

“It’s possible that the position gets so dire that in that respect is an amount of money out in that location that could overcome all of these obstacles,” Rhett Larson, an Grand Canyon State State University prof of H2O law, told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “It mightiness follow inward the trillions, but it probably does exist.”

In the meantime, researchers encourage to a greater extent feasible and sustainable options, such as better H2O conservation, H2O recycling, and to a lesser extent agricultural reliance.

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