4 ms·
I live in Oregon and AFAIK the idea of shipping (diverting?) water from the Columbia to California has been a recurring theme that is, so to speak, "dead in the
by jrapdx3 4y ago
I live in Oregon and AFAIK the idea of shipping (diverting?) water from the Columbia to California has been a recurring theme that is, so to speak, "dead in the water" before the ink dries on the planning documents. (Yeah I know, paperless, etc., but the really big plans seem to never escape printouts.)
FWIW in Portland water isn't at all a cheap resource which speaks to the costs of even fairly local transport and delivery. (Portland's water source is ~60 miles east at Mt. Hood.) To me it suggests attempting to share water with very distant areas would be an extremely expensive/complex engineering feat that would dwarf construction of the new Panama canal. Even a project of such scale is by comparison merely a backyard ditch.
- i_am_proteus 4y agoFolks in Rome figured it out thousands of years ago. Still works, last I checked. Los Angeles and San Diego both get water from the Colorado River, hundreds of miles away.
- jjtheblunt 4y agobut aquaducts flow downhill, and folks are discussing sending water to Arizona and New Mexico, both at much higher elevation than where the water being discussed originates
- i_am_proteus 4y agoIt is possible to move water to a higher elevation by means of a pump. The water can then flow down hill. This is the same technology that is used to raise groundwater to the surface, and to distribute water from many reservoirs. It is in economic use today. The aqueduct I mentioned, that which brings water from the Colorado river to Southern California, uses several pumps to raise the elevation of theaqueduct along its course.
- rayiner 4y agoMy wife’s family was among the first American settlers in Oregon. She would take up arms to prevent Californians from getting any of Oregon’s water.