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>Sea-to-Sea plans would augment the declining volume of water flowing into the Salton Sea by importing water from either the Gulf of California or the Pacific O
by aww_dang 5y ago
>Sea-to-Sea plans would augment the declining volume of water flowing into the Salton Sea by importing water from either the Gulf of California or the Pacific Ocean. Because such ocean water will bring tens of millions of tons of new salts into the Salton Sea, such plans also need to either pump a lot of water out of the Salton Sea to export the millions of tons of salt, desalinate the water before it enters the Salton Sea, or run multiple desalination plants at the Salton Sea itself.
https://pacinst.org/salton-sea-import-export-plans/ https://pacinst.org/salton-sea-import-export-plans/
- scythe 5y agoYeah, you're not going to do that without a ton of pumps. I ran the numbers once for a pipeline to the Salton Sea and it looks bad. However, if you built a canal (about ten meters wide and the same deep) and flooded the whole Imperial Valley (this isn't popular!), tidal variation would exchange all of the water on average about three times per year. There's an equation for pipe flow rate given a diameter and a pressure difference; the pipe you would need for the Salton is either unrealistically huge or has a really big pump. Hence, canal. I doubt it ever happens, of course, due to all the lost farmland/towns (and the "why bother?" factor). What I was referring to is entirely different: the desalination occurs in Mexico and fresh water is piped around.
- aww_dang 5y agoThe canal has economic advantages as well. There are some proposals suggesting (I don't how practical this is) to use geothermal plants in the Salton area to power the desalination. As to the pumps, isn't the valley below sea level? Therefore power could be generated from the flow?