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As someone who moved to LA in the early 70s, and left LA in the late 80s, and spent some time to visit Palm Springs, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, I can say with full
by oblib 4y ago
As someone who moved to LA in the early 70s, and left LA in the late 80s, and spent some time to visit Palm Springs, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, I can say with full confidence that anyone with a lick of sense knew there was not enough water to sustain that growth that started back then, but that didn't stop anyone from building or buying those homes. They all knew it, but didn't care.
It was, and still is, plain old stupid to build those giant cities in those barren deserts. The idea that we'd all have to pay for pipelines to push that water all those miles feels a bit painful to me now, and the complete lack of any discussion about the environmental impact of doing this very bothersome too.
There are many other issues to consider, like the quality of that Mississippi water. They don't call that river "The Big Muddy" for nothing. And there is still a lot of industry that use and dumped used water into it, and farms that have runoff of pesticides all along it and it's tributaries.
The total driving distance from New Orleans to Las Vegas is 1,722 miles. I doubt you can route a pipeline in a way that reduces that much. The cost and environmental impact of building one would be enormous.
This plan feels like it was concocted by someone who's never driven from Las Vegas to New Orleans, or spent anytime on or around the Mississippi River. It gets low on water too. There are droughts in the mid-west too.
Truth is there is no good sustainable solution to this problem as it exist. The only reasonable solution is to stop building new homes right now, and look into how to reduce the number that exists because it's obvious they've already overbuilt.
It's hard for me to imagine anyone with a lick of sense taking this seriously, but that's a shortcoming of mine I am well aware of nowadays.
- moistly 4y ago> And there is still a lot of industry that use and dumped used water into it, and farms that have runoff of pesticides all along it and it's tributaries. Sounds like an opportunity to clean the water and bill the polluters for the cost. If only…
- oblib 4y agoIt's not near as polluted as it was in the `40s-`70s but it's still polluted and will always be muddy. I get the feeling the person who wrote that has never actually seen the Mississippi River. It's far from a clear mountain stream you'd walk up to and sip water from. It's not something you'd even want to swim in on a hot day.
- benj111 4y agoFor agriculture this seems like a good thing? I don't know what the state of soil is in California but adding more can only be a good thing.
- TedShiller 4y ago> The only reasonable solution is to stop building new homes right now, and look into how to reduce the number that exists because it's obvious they've already overbuilt. Yep, reduce housing, don’t build more. Nobody wants to admit it because it doesn’t sound nice.
- mjevans 4y agoA planning issue that would be better addressed with goals at the large scale and fine implementation details generally left to the local scale unless issues arose.
- ianai 4y ago“TedShiller” is calling for depopulating large parts of America (California specifically in another comment). Edit-depopulation is the scalpel of war, world war in this case. It’s this kind of content that screams propaganda of the worst kind.
- edmcnulty101 4y agoDon't build more in deserts. It sounds crazy that we're even talking about this.
- TedShiller 4y agoAgreed. California is a desert.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoDon't build on coasts susceptible to hurricanes and sea level rise, don't build in the north susceptible to mega blizzards, and don't build in the Midwest susceptible to tornados. Problem solved/s
- edmcnulty101 4y agohurricanes are temporary. a desert is forever. those are not comparable. You might as well compare Chernobyl to a place that has bad restaurants. they're exactly the same.thing!
- akiselev 4y agoYou've lived and traveled in Califoria and the west but have you tried to grow anything here? There's a reason we've built vast megaprojects to pump water around the West: our deserts have been the terminus for the biological nutrient cycle for millions of years through multiple climate cycles resulting in an incredibly fertile ecosystem, despite its desolate appearance. Combined with the heat, it creates the perfect conditions for an industry that has dominated the nation's agricultural production in foods that humans want to eat. It's a lot easier to move water than to increase the carrying capacity of an ecosystem. At this scale, regional sustainability is an illusion. Even the Amazon rainforest is not sustainable without _transcontinental_ winds that carry massive amounts of nutrients from African dry lake beds to South America [1]. Make no mistake, we're not just talking about the sustainibility of cities in the western US but food security and quality of life for the entire United States. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-...
- vidanay 4y agoI don't think California is more fertile than the Midwest on a soil-analysis basis. The nearly double growing season is what is the game changer.
- edmcnulty101 4y agoI think the Southeast will happily take over this nearly double growing season, with their climate. Let the desert return to being a desert.
- oblib 4y agoFrom what I gathered this is not about the San Joaquin Valley farms, it's about Vegas, Phoenix, Palm Springs & Desert Hot Springs (Riverside County) and water for people living there. Vegas went from 230,000 in 1970 to over 2.5 million residents in those years. Phoenix from 870,000 to 4,652,000. Riverside County from 44,579 to 2,544,820 So now we've got over 10 Million people living in the desert in just 3 those areas. Aside from that, I lived in Sylmar, Ca in the `70s on the last parcel of ag zoned land there, so yeah, we did grow there. When we bought our place there was a small 2 bedroon home on it, an orchard of fruit trees, a large garden, and we raised chickens and rabbits and a few cows (one at a time) there. Our home was the oldest house in Sylmar at the time and it was akin to an oasis compared to most of the homes there. Because of the ag zoning we had two water lines, one for the home and one for the orchard & garden and we got a huge discount on the ag water line.
- golergka 4y ago> As someone who moved to LA in the early 70s, and left LA in the late 80s, and spent some time to visit Palm Springs, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, I can say with full confidence that anyone with a lick of sense knew there was not enough water to sustain that growth that started back then, but that didn't stop anyone from building or buying those homes. They all knew it, but didn't care. But Las Vegas is treating almost all of the water it uses and ends up being very close to water neutral.
- vidanay 4y agoIf they were close to water neutral, I don't think they'd be declaring a water emergency with less than two months water supply remaining. https://abcnews.go.com/US/las-vegas-declares-emergency-50-days-clean-water/story?id=87623219 https://abcnews.go.com/US/las-vegas-declares-emergency-50-da...
- ianai 4y agoActually, building people structures where the world doesn’t support something else disrupts the world less than clearing otherwise usable land. LV is approximately cleared gravel because it is so dry. Opportunity costs, etc etc. This is clearly an area to think at a larger, national level like the thinking which led to the Hoover Dam and national highway systems. Anything less is shrinking away from the problem.