pump the water over the Mtns into Calif's inland valley, Ariz. New Mexico, and Colorado via giant covered canals/aquaducts--charge people the going rate---what's not to like?
lol, Vinter--first, pumping water over mountains is a huge task that takes enormous amounts of energy. Second--"charge people the going rate"???!!! No one in the southwest US has ever been charged "the going rate" for water--there wouldn't be millions of people living there if they were, and there would only be subsistence agriculture at best. Farmers get their water for huge discounts courtesy of the government (federal and state), even as they lambaste welfare, "high" taxes and government giveaways to nearly everyone else.
It is a desert. People in the 19th century were clear about that. It isn't even a desert like Libya, which has a huge aquifer under it. We are in the process of using up our own huge aquifer in the midwest--the Ogallala--right now. The feuds between the states that draw on the aquifer have been simmering for years, and will be heating up (so to speak) in coming decades. Disputes between Texas and Oklahoma aren't well known beyond the borders of those two states, but they have been going on for over a century now, and have been once again getting stronger in recent years (see, for some very brief history, trailsandtales.org and usgovinfo.about.com --there is much much more). And that dispute is tame compared to the disputes between the Colorado Compact states.
Last, there is no way that people in the US southwest will trust Mexico to deliver their water. The US has been treaty bound to reserve some of the Colorado River for Mexico for years, and has in the past many times reneged on that treaty, either not delivering enough or delivering water that was polluted with salts, the byproduct of heavy irrigation farming. What you are proposing is simply another fantasy. |
