3 ms·
> Two hundred miles north of New Orleans At that point, calling the fluid in the Mississippi River "water" is stretching the definition. It is rich and chunky
by h2odragon 4y ago
> Two hundred miles north of New Orleans
At that point, calling the fluid in the Mississippi River "water" is stretching the definition. It is rich and chunky with the flavor of all the land it fell on as rain. It'll put hair on your chest and crayfish in your pockets. Drink enough of it and you'll start to call them crawdaddies.
Sure its not hard to filter, but what will you do with all the silt? Look at how much effort we spend now dealing with all the silt right there. Without trying to handle it as part of water extraction.
I think there's gonna be better luck looking elsewhere, desalinization looks like about as much effort and less distance to move the results.
- bombcar 4y agoReminds me of the running jokes in Don Rosa’s Life of Scrooge - Uncle Porthole is always finding new ways of describing how muddy the Mississippi is (I believe many taken from Twain).
- selimthegrim 4y agoThis reminds me of the time Wikipedia kept reverting edits to the article for “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” comparing fecal coliform levels above Vicksburg as a proportion of that of the Ganges.
- selimthegrim 4y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Louisiana_Woman,_Mississippi_Man_(song)&oldid=953330487 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Louisiana_Woman...
- verdverm 4y agoWhat if it's used for farmland only? Isn't that the main contributor to aquifer depletion in the midwest? Would the silt be helpful in that case?
- saalweachter 4y agoIn the farmland, but I'm guessing it'd be hell on the canals/aquaducts.
- h2odragon 4y agoI like the idea of moving it as a slurry to upland farms. Erosion remediation: put the dirt back. Still going to be expensive and difficult; it's heavy and its gritty and corrosive and erosive. Pumping river water eats pumps.
- verdverm 4y agoHow does this compare to pumping crude?
- mannykannot 4y agoCorrosive abrasive versus lubricant.
- verdverm 4y agoCrude is not without corrosion, but I can imagine silty water would be much worse https://www.corrosionpedia.com/internal-corrosion-of-pipelines-carrying-crude-oil/2/7282 https://www.corrosionpedia.com/internal-corrosion-of-pipelin...
- verdverm 4y agoIt occurs to me that your username could imply some expertise in this :]
- h2odragon 4y agoIt could, but doesn't; I've been in the river south of Memphis once long ago and had some relevant experience but not expertise. All hail the Army Corps of Engineers guys who actually design and are responsible for understanding our efforts to modulate that river. I've just helped scratch at the dirt in accordance with their directions a couple times.
- treis 4y agoRivers tend to carve their own channel. The Mississippi is an exception because of how little elevation change there is. But a properly engineered channel should remain clear. The silt ultimately would end up on farmers fields which is generally a good thing.