Some methods are as outlandish as they sound. Actors and political candidates alike have proposed piping water from wetter locations, just like the Mississippi River. Some have talked for many years about tapping into the Nice Lakes.
California has an extended, storied historical past of transferring water — some say stealing — from one place to a different throughout the state. It’s even impressed a minimum of one film.
“If historical past has taught us something,” Idaho state Sen. Brian Donesley, a former Angeleno, instructed the Los Angeles Instances,“it’s that when Californians get thirsty, they may use money, the regulation, uncooked political energy and, if mandatory, the purpose of a gun barrel to fulfill their thirst.”
However these days there are lots of authorized and logistical roadblocks that might cease California from taking water from Alaska, the Midwest or Canada. For one, different areas can be unlikely to permit it. Diverting massive volumes of water from the Nice Lakes, as an illustration, is prohibited with out the approval of all eight states and two provinces in Canada below a compact signed into regulation by President George W. Bush.
Pipe desires of pipelines have been floated typically sufficient that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation evaluated them, reporting {that a} pipeline to the Mississippi River, as an illustration, would price billions, expend numerous power to pump the water, require a long time of building and face a quagmire of authorized and coverage points.
Even California lawmakers have eyed icier reaches of the world for brand new water provides: In 1978, the Legislature handed a decision calling for federal help of a pilot program to tow icebergs from Antarctica.
Towing icebergs and filling up tankers with freshwater from Alaska drew mentions from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, in addition to this diplomatic verdict: These concepts “have both vital technical feasibility challenges or vital questions relating to their reliability.”
A small iceberg, as an illustration, would include solely 250 to 850 acre-feet of water and would require new port terminals, pipelines and pumps to move the melted ice to a reservoir. The method would take “a minimum of 20 years.”
As for tankers, even the biggest would maintain solely about 80 million gallons — barely a drop within the bucket for California.
Nonetheless, the concepts endure. At a press convention in summer time 2022, Newsom fielded a query about whether or not pipelines and tankers taking water from faraway locations is likely to be the quickest methods to get extra water to California.
“What you are speaking about are break-the-glass situations,” Newsom answered. ”And I guarantee you, now we have some extra novel ones than the one you even approached and which can be extra attention-grabbing. However that is for later.”
We’re nonetheless ready.
