Much-needed water has improved conditions in the dry West, but experts warn against claiming victory. About 60% of the region is still experiencing some form of drought, continuing a decades-long spiral of water scarcity.

“The drought is so severe, the recent rainfall is like finding a $20 bill when you’ve lost your job and been evicted from your home,” said Rhett Larson, a professor of water law at Arizona State University. said.

Over the years, a number of proposed solutions of large-scale diversion of the river, including pumping the waters of the Mississippi into the dried-up West, came up.

Just this summer, the idea sparked a flurry of letters to the editors of California newspapers. But the interest goes deeper than that. Most recently, the Arizona legislature passed a bill in 2021 urging the legislature to investigate pumping floodwaters from the Mississippi River into the Colorado River to enhance its flow.

Research and modern engineering have proven that such a project is possible, but construction will require decades and billions of dollars. An even bigger obstacle. But their fixation on public spaces shows that the West is desperate to emerge from the drought.

“We can move water and have proven our desire to do so,” said Richard Roode, professor of climate, space science and engineering at the University of Michigan. We need to know more than we do now.”

What is proposed and who is proposing it?

Formal large-scale water import proposals have existed in the United States since at least the 1960s. At this time, US companies devised the North American Water and Power Alliance to redistribute Alaskan water across the continent using reservoirs and canals. Widespread interest in the project eventually died down.

Stories of similar projects, from proposals in Iowa and Minnesota to proposals between Canada and the United States, often share the same ending. However, some smaller projects are becoming a reality.

For example, the Kansas Groundwater Management Authority last year obtained a permit to transport 6,000 gallons of Missouri River water to Kansas and Colorado for the purpose of recharging aquifers. In northwestern Iowa, rivers are repeatedly dried up by local water utilities that sell at least a quarter of their water out of state. There are also several licensed branch streams that pump water from the Great Lakes.

Following Arizona’s push for a pipeline feasibility study in 2021, former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey this July funded a project that would save water and bring more water to the state. signed a bill investing $1.2 billion to provide Among its provisions, the law empowers state water infrastructure finance authorities to “investigate the feasibility” of potential out-of-state water import contracts.

A detailed feasibility study, specifically to pump the Mississippi River westward, has not yet been conducted, to Larson’s knowledge. He said he’s open to it—but doesn’t think it’s necessary.

“I think a feasibility study will likely tell us what we already know,” he said.

Physically feasible, but politically?

In 2012, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation analyzed solutions to water supply problems that included importing water from the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, making it the “most comprehensive analysis ever done within the Colorado River Basin.” ” has been completed.

In the scenarios analyzed, water is channeled to the Front Mountains of Colorado and areas of New Mexico to help meet water demand. An acre-foot of water will cost him at least $1,700, and by 2060 he could have 600,000 acre-feet of water a year, and it will take him 30 years to build.

A decade later, additional analysis came to light when Roger Viadero, an environmental scientist and engineer at Western Illinois University, and his graduate students evaluated a proposal put forward in a viral editorial last summer.

Their non-peer-reviewed technical report calculated that a pipe for moving water of this scale would need to be 88 feet in diameter (about twice the length of a semi-trailer) or 100 feet wide. . A channel 61 feet deep.

The experts we spoke to agreed the feat would be astronomical. Still, it’s physically possible.

“As an engineer, I can assure you that it is doable,” said Viadero. “But there are so many things we can do that we haven’t done yet.”

Viadero’s team estimates that selling the water needed to fill Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoirs, on the Colorado River will cost more than $134 billion at one penny per gallon. . Construction costs add to this hefty bill, along with the cost of powering the equipment needed to pump water into the Western Continental Divide.

An even greater obstacle to such proposals is the large amount of cash required to purchase land to secure water rights. It’s a legal and political issue.

Regional hurdles include endangered species protection, wetland protection, drinking water supply considerations, and interstate transportation protection. Chloe Wardropper, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who studies environmental governance, says that the precedents set by other water flow endeavors, such as those that created the Great Lakes Compact, are also similar to those of the large Mississippi River water flow. It calls into question the political viability of the attempt.

Cross-border pipelines also affect ecosystem resources. Less flow on the Mississippi means less sediment is carried into Louisiana and used for coastal restoration. Diverting that water also means spreading problems such as pollutants, excess nutrients and invasive species.

Most notably, there is not always enough water in the Mississippi River Basin. For example, drought plagued the region through 2022, raising concerns about river navigation.

“No one wants to leave a western state without water,” says Melissa Scanlan, professor of freshwater sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Moving water is not the solution.”

The idea of ​​transcontinental pipelines is not a new idea. But this hurdle may one day be overcome as water shortages in the West worsen.

“There could be a sum of money out there that could make the situation so dire that it could overcome all these obstacles,” Larson said. ”

In the meantime, researchers are encouraging more feasible and sustainable options such as water conservation, water reuse and reducing our dependence on agriculture. Other forms of augmentation, such as desalination, are also gaining popularity on the national scene as possible options.

They definitely require sacrifices, but not as many as needed to build a huge pipeline, experts say.

“To talk about fantasies for decades when it’s not even feasible…it’s a disservice,” Scanlan said. “People need to focus on real solutions.”

This story Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Deska university-based editorially independent reporting network Missouri School of Journalism in collaboration with Reporting to America and the Environmental Journalists Association, funded by the Walton Family Foundation. The Associated Press Climate team provided the images and page design.

The Associated Press is supported by The Walton Family Foundation for its coverage of water and environmental policy. AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental protection coverage, please visit: https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment