Posted on 08/12/2002 1:08:14 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
CADIZ, Calif. -- This is one big, dry state, and Keith Brackpool wants to slake its thirst.
The politically connected British wheeler-dealer is pressing ahead with an ingenious plan to sell billions of gallons of drinking water to Southern California from his company's aquifer, buried here beneath the broiling badlands of the Mojave Desert.
Contentious? They don't call them "water wars" for nothing.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Cool Water
All day I've faced the barren waste
without the taste of water..... cool water
Ole Dan and I with throats burned dry
and souls that cry for water.... cool, clear water
The nights are cool and I'm a fool
Each star's a pool of water.... cool, clear water
And with the dawn I'll wake and yawn
and carry on to water.... cool, clear water
The shadows sway and seem to say
tonight we pray for water.... cool, clear water
And way up there He'll hear our prayer
and show us where there's water.... cool, clear water
Keep a movin' Dan don't you listen to him Dan
He's the devil, not a man he spreads the burnin' sand with water
Say Dan can't you see that big green tree
where the water's runnin' free, it's waiting there for you and me
And water.... cool, clear water
Dan's feet are sore he's yearnin' for
Just one thing more than water.... cool, clear water
Like me I guess he'd like to rest
Where there's no quest for water.... cool, clear water
Dig a sea-level canal from Brownsville, Texas, to Chula Vista, California, following the US-Mexican border. Deep enough for ocean-going vessels, and half a mile wide.
Divide this ditch with some barrier, and draw water from one side to be desalinated, discharging the concentrated brine on the other side, and allowing ocean currents (driven by tides and using a series of locks) to flush away the highly saline discharge water.
Drainage into the course of the canal, from various western rivers (Colorado and Rio Grande, among others) would tend to keep the side that would be desalinated of rather low salinity to begin with, making the process somewhat easier.
This may read like science fiction, but what the heck, we once went to the Moon, didn't we? Jules Verne told us how decades before we managed to comb through the necessary calculations and actually do it. By 2102, this suggestion may be a perfectly acceptable solution.
No. The more concentrated salt-brine is usually returned to the sea.
All you need is to build more dams and reservoirs, but we all know that the environmentalists hate dams and reservoirs.
Maybe the water company should refuse service to these groups and individuals that support them.
The fallaciousness of your water war analysis is rivaled only by the fallaciousness of your drug war analysis. Urban users actually consume very little of California's water, the vast majority of which is used for agriculture. The problem as usual is government interference, which makes it difficult for farmers (eg. subsidized, high volume water consuming rice growers) to sell and deliver their water to urban users.
Thank-you, Agnes.
There are 3 areas of infrastructure technology that I strongly advocate that we should be pursuing: desalination, electric mass-transportation, and nuclear power. IMHO, Kalifornia would especially benefit from all three.
I suppose I should make that 4 items that I advocate: our nation's system of locks & dams that make our inland rivers navigible are in need of repair/upgrade. But I seldom come across articles to post that address that issue.
That would require a canal about a mile deep through most of New Mexico and Arizona.
And the dirt - the means of removing it would be a large anti-gravity "sled" that would glide over water to a point where the ocean is quite deep, and it would be used as landfill to reduce the depth of the ocean there. May be a little turbidity and some disruption at first, but this would soon clear up....
No, I favor allowing the cost of any good to be set at market levels. Why do you want to subsidize rice growers in a semi-arid land where rice paddies make no sense economically?
Go back to your drug-induced fog.
Actually, the conditions are bright and sunny here, but it appears that there is a dark cloud perpetually hanging over your head.
For the same reason I support government "subsidized" water supplies to semi-arid communities such as Los Angeles. It would make no "economic" sense to live in Los Angeles if Government hadn't intervened with massive water diversion.
Water supply, be it for farm irrigation or urban family use is legitimate infrastructure supplied by government. Same with roads, highways, bridges, airports, mass-transportation systems, etc. etc. etc.
You "let-the-market-do-it" extremists are irrational.
There are a few examples of agreements reached to facilitate a change in beneficial use and as time goes by, there will be more.
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