Leave it to the Westerners to come up with solutions to their problems by causing problems for others.
Las Vegas resident Bill Nichols’ June 22 suggestion of diverting Mississippi River water to the Southwest to help solve the Southwest’s drought problem is nothing more than a plan to steal, under federal-government oversight at taxpayers’ expense, water that belongs to the Midwest.
Bill doesn’t say what the Midwesterners who are deprived of this diverted water will do for their water needs. If Bill wants Mississippi River water, let him move to somewhere along the Mississippi. Or install desalinators along the 1,360 miles of Pacific Ocean mainland coastline. There are desalinators that use sun-distillation instead of electricity to produce fresh water, only needing external power for the pumps. Regarding the letter by Bill Nichols. Don’t you feel any obligation to educate your readers about how things work? Why was this letter even published? Water rights are a contentious and highly defined area of lawThere is no way the states bordering the Mississippi River would allow for the diversion of water to the Colorado River.
Were I Californian, I’d be looking into desalination a lot more, especially in the face of rising sea levels.The forest fires in the West continue to burn out of control and increase in scale each year. The water supply situation has dramatically decreased in the western region, increasing the difficulty of fighting the fires as well as supplying water to farms, municipalities, and industry. Nature alone cannot fix this situation. California and other western states are experiencing more and more droughts and reduced winter snows further reducing the needed water.One possible solution would be to build a pipeline from the Missouri River somewhere between Chamberlain and Yankton, South Dakota, to Poudre Pass Lake in Colorado. Sending water from the Missouri River westward to the beginning of the Colorado River would help parts of the Southwest region meet their increased water needs. The pipeline could also reduce the flooding both along the Missouri and the Mississippi Rver basins that occur quite frequently. Regulations for when the water could be sent would need to be set up to ensure the plains states are not deprived of their water needs. Every drop sent westward would benefit the regional needs for this precious commodity. The project would also add jobs to the economy.
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