In his May 13 letter to the editor, Denis Delvin proposes transporting water from the Columbia River to the Colorado. Referencing a Google search, he states it is simple.
But any article about such a pipeline would state the multiple issues in building it, none of which are technological. Mr. Delvin references the Chinese expertise with the Grand Canal, parts of which are 2,500 years old, as a resource in building the system. The Grand Canal is essentially a long ditch for barges with a passive gravity powered water system. The highest elevation is 138 feet above sea level, not the multiple 1,000-plus feet elevation changes that the imagined water system would need to cross the many mountain ranges that lie in its path.
It is not the expertise we need but the massive money to build such a system that is just the starting point with guesstimates starting at $100 billion. Moving water is expensive, and the operating costs might themselves be prohibitive. It costs $2 per acre foot to pump water once 1,200 feet up from Lake Mead. The lowest elevation on the Northern Nevada border is 4,000 feet.
There are also environmental impacts on both the source and target river systems as well as along the proposed route, as it will need to traverse private lands and both protected state and federal lands, including ecologically sensitive areas impacting local flora and fauna. It was a big fight just to get a short water tunnel under the Sloan preserve and there are major issues siting a powerline across the northern part of the state.
All this is assuming that the parties along the Columbia will release the water and that California will not fight us for it. And lastly, there is the problem of building a pressurized water delivery system over seismically active lands. Nothing would be simple or cheap about this project, and the last thing we need is China’s help.
