Lake Hefner at record low water levels, when will city buy Canton water?

[Roger S]

In western Kansas, the Arkansas River is dry 90 % of the time. Lakin Lake is fed by the Arkansas River via the Amazon Ditch. The lake is used for irrigation in western Ks. At Garden City, the river is nothing but sand.

And for a time reference... I was born in 68... There was water in that river when I was a kid. My grandfather would go down with a pitchfork and spear a fish from it for dinner occasionally.

I don't remember which year it went dry and stayed dry but in a 53 year time span the river went dry.

[Plutonic Panda]

Oklahoma would not even let Texas draw water out of the tributaries to the Red River, this is something that once it hits there Texas already is due a portion of. There is no way they are going to support diverting massive quantities of water in Oklahoma to the west coast, and there are multiple of states downstream that have water rights once it leaves Oklahoma which probably would fight it just as much as Oklahoma would. In general there are not many states that seem open to having water in their territory shifted out, and if you go to areas like the end of the Mississippi that have the volumes to not care and deal with enough flooding they might even help promote it, probably has some of the worst quality water to serve as a feed stock in the country.

As much as a hassle as it would be to deal with mountains in northern California and Oregon, they already divert a lot from norther California to southern California, so there likely would be far less infrastructure to build there than across the Rockies and hundreds of miles of arid land on either side.

Which is exactly why this project would have to be on the level akin to the interstate system construction across the entire mainland. It will have to be a federal project that will take decades at minimum just to form a plan after a decade of just getting to the point where discussions need to start. I wouldn’t expect something like to even start construction until the 2030s or 2040s at the earliest.

[gopokes88]

Which is exactly why this project would have to be on the level akin to the interstate system construction across the entire mainland. It will have to be a federal project that will take decades at minimum just to form a plan after a decade of just getting to the point where discussions need to start. I wouldn’t expect something like to even start construction until the 2030s or 2040s at the earliest.

100% agreed.

The west will literally have to run out of water before it get momentum. Too politically risky otherwise.

[scottk]

Related to water levels and where water goes after rainfall, a good chunk of the 10 plus inches of rain that fell in Dallas on Monday will eventually work its way to Houston. Dallas and the Metroplex are not the beneficiary of the significant rainfall.

https://twitter.com/NWSFortWorth/sta...224067/photo/1

[Zorba]

flow of Arkansas leaving Colorado may be low compared to the river leaving Oklahoma, but consider that most major tributaries of the Arkansas River also start in Colorado; add those up and it's significant to create a 'big' river leaving Oklahoma. Not saying water ONLY comes from Colorado, but water does begin there and is due to the Rockies direct from snowpack melt and indirect from weather/Thunderstorms created from the interaction of the Colorado Rockies (lift and cooling) and Gulf of Mexico (warm, moisture).

The amount of water entering Oklahoma from Colorado is a tiny tiny fraction of the water in Oklahoma. I've posted the numbers that make that very clear. All major tributaries from Colorado have already merged with the Arkansas prior to getting to Kansas. The drainage basins outside of Colorado are just vastly larger and wetter. Yes, the Rocky's influence the weather, but that isn't Colorado providing Oklahoma with water.

[Bits_Of_Real_Panther]

In the UK it's apparently called a hosepipe ban

A.k.a. we ran low on water; don't even think of turning on your "hosepipe" to give your backyard tomato garden even a SIP of water!

Thames Water hosepipe ban comes into force in England

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-62643961

[gjl]

The OKC water department routinely comes by about once a month and open up the hydrant about 500 ft from my house. The water just runs down the street. Last week they had it open for 2 hours. It's too bad there is not some way to put that water on my yard. An open hydrant puts out a lot of water.

[Plutonic Panda]

Here’s another article to explain how dire the situation is: https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastr...crisis/376392/

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR THE COUNTRY’S FOOD SUPPLY?
This is the big question. I don’t want to be flippant, but people don’t understand the food-water nexus. Do we try to bring more water to the southern high plains, to Arizona, to California, because if the food system’s optimized, maybe that’s the cheapest thing to do? Or does agriculture move to where the water is? Does it migrate north and east? It’s not just food production. What about the workers? Transportation? If we were to move all of our agriculture to northern California, into Idaho, into North Dakota over the next decade, that’s a major upheaval for millions and millions of people who work in the ag industry.

[catch22]

How many actual gallons does a large farm use per day?

Is there not an easier and cheaper way to supply water just for irrigation?

A train with 100 tanker cars can transport 3 million gallons at a time…. Power plants and export facilities run trains daily in some areas from coal mines. Would 3 million gallons a day make a dent in areas with a lot farms?

It would be expensive day to day, but much cheaper than a transcontinental pipeline with pump stations to lift water over 5,000 feet?

With coal traffic declining over the next 10 years the railroads probably wouldn’t mind replacing those unit coal trains with unit water trains?

Just an idea. I have no idea how much water a farm uses per day.

[gjl]

Google says Lake Mead at max capacity can hold 9.3 trillion gallons. Lake Hefner for comparison can hold 23.9 billion gallons.

[catch22]

Yes. But does a large farm use 300,000 gallons a day? 20 million?

If they use 300,000 gallons a day and 10 are close to each other you could supply them for 8 cents a gallon and remove them from the equation. 10 farms in another valley could do the same. Etc.

I am not talking about filling a dam, but just supplying water for irrigation in areas where it could allow more water to go downstream to the next community. Wouldn’t solve every problem.

[gjl]

Where are you going to off load that water? At every farm? Wouldn't all the farms have to be next to the tracks?

[catch22]

It’s not a turnkey solution. Would take infrastructure investment. Just less than a transcontinental pipeline.

[Plutonic Panda]

Where are you going to off load that water? At every farm? Wouldn't all the farms have to be next to the tracks?

Not to mention the inevitable leakage but catch is right we need ideas and solutions. People aren’t going to change. At some point it may literally get to the point where water won’t come out of the faucet and then people will take drastic measures. This situation is not a joke.

[jn1780]

I don't belive trains are a very practical longterm idea. Just the logistics of oil transport by rail and freight are a pain without pipelines and were talking about a whole lot more volume. Not to mention the carbon footprint of trains.

The west needs desalination plants and pipelines which would require a lot of energy and resources.

[Bellaboo]

I think I read somewhere that desalination is horrible on the environment ?

[ChrisHayes]

I think I read somewhere that desalination is horrible on the environment ?

The only problems with desal is it requires a lot of electricity and you need to do something with the brine. You can't simply dump the brine in the ocean as it would kill off life in the immediate area. However, I did see where scientists have come up with a possible solution to the brine issue.

[Mott]

From several Anglo blogs I read from France, a similar hose pipe ban in effect across a lot of France. Can’t speak for the rest of the continent, but it seems to be a 500 year drought.

[Teo9969]

Between CO, AZ, NV there is about $4 Trillion GDP. They should probably tax 0.25% of that for the next 20 years at the production level and utilize those $10B+/year to start solving this problem now. You can probably cover most of the infrastructure needed in the first 5 years and utilize the remainder to create an endowment that helps fund the states that are helping supply the water.

[bombermwc]

So some of what i heard is being discussed is large scale desalinization and then piping it in to the lakes. We all know our food relies on this system working properly. This isn't just a regional issue, it's national for all of us. If this dries up, our food dries up. And we do not have good alternatives to move the agriculture. We will have to pay for it by means of price increases. The cost of growing the food goes up because the cost of the water for irrigation goes up, which went up because of the price of desalinization (which is expensive).

I know that some communities near the Pacific coast in CA are actually spinning up desalination plants but for a different reason. I heard a story on NPR the other day about a town that uses only partially desalinated water for the non-potable needs like toilets, fire hydrants, etc. If I remember, it was also used for sprinklers (for the places that used them....and dont ask me about how that worked with any sort of salt content in the water, i guess it is low enough to not kill plants, but not low enough for human consumption). So yes, the city and residents had to create an infrastructure to support it, but it was far less expensive to only partially desalinate than fully for drinking water. The residents in this town, i believe, only saw an increase of $40 annually for their water bill. But went from a water reserve that had gotten down to 23%, up to 63% in one year. I believe they expect to have a surplus next year. That also took commitments from residents to rip out water eating yards and replace with native elements. The people really were all doing their part because they all had a direct part in the process.

I also saw an article about CA installing solar panels over a huge irrigation channel to help stave off evaporation and also contribute to their solar generation goals. That seems like an awesome idea to me.

[Plutonic Panda]

I’ve always wondered if piping in “foreign” water into a lake or river could harm/shock the local aquatic ecosystem. Not sure if I worded that right but I am not an expert on this topic. Would the water have to be conditioned apart from any desalination?

[OkiePoke]

Did that community run a second water line to each house?

[gopokes88]

Some desal info

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...n-era-is-here/

[gopokes88]

What to do with brine
https://news.mit.edu/2019/brine-desa...hydroxide-0213

[bombermwc]

Did that community run a second water line to each house?

Yes they did, so each home has two meters. One for the regular water and one for desalinated water. Like i said, a pretty big investment setting up an entire second system on infrastructure. The story did not say how that infra was paid for. I'm guessing a bond issue or something and they somehow convinced the small community members to all agree that it was needed. I'm thinking it would have been much more difficult to get done if it was a 40k person town. But when you're as short of water as they are, maybe this is something the residents are already sold on? Or maybe these folks will be the example for more cities that are not on the beach?