The US Army Corps of Engineers is planning to barge 36 million gallons of freshwater daily into the lower Mississippi River near New Orleans as saltwater intrusion from the Gulf of Mexico continues to threaten drinking water supply, officials said Friday.
The move comes as water levels are plummeting for the second consecutive year after this summer’s blistering heat and low rainfall triggered extreme drought over parts of the central US.
Typically, enough rainfall upstream helps ease drought conditions and keeps the saltwater at bay. However, during the news conference Friday, the governor said officials “don’t believe that there is sufficient precipitation in the near term anywhere along the Mississippi River to materially change the conditions for the better.”
It has always amazed me that we have oil pipelines crossing entire continents. But we can’t do the same for freshwater. Somewhere is always flooding and somewhere else always needs water, seems like a big ole pipe or three could solve this.
People do build water control megaprojects to route (canals, aqueducts) and store freshwater (dams and reservoirs) and to prevent flooding (levees, dikes, etc). Cross-country aqueducts are just hugely expensive and generally don’t move enough water to be worthwhile.
Continents is a bit of a stretch, but we can and have done this in the past just like with oil. Look up the Great Man-Made River project in Libya, which supplies freshwater from deep in the desert aquifers to cities along the coast, or the LA’s multiple aqueducts which supply water from various sources hundreds of miles away. There’s also the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, which supplies water from the coast of Australia inland.