We have several problems in the United States when it comes to water issues. We have flooding problems in the river valleys like the Mississippi and Ohio; we overuse the water in the aquifers, such as the Ogallala Aquifer, in the Great Plains, causing the water table to continue to drop; and we have water shortage issues in the American Southwest and California. In the proposal that I present below, we can solve several of these problems, while increasing our agricultural yield and reducing our oil dependency.
The Problems
Here are the problems dealing with water issues in the United States, as I see it:
1. There are many areas of the country that are prone to flooding when there is large amounts of rain. These include the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys in the Midwest and the Great Plains, as well as other river valleys.
2. Our Great Plains, which is considered the breadbasket of the United States, relies heavily on underground aquifers, most noticeably the Ogallala Aquifer, for its water needs for irrigation purposes. Because so much water is used, the water tables on these underground aquifers has been dropping. If something is not done soon, the Great Plains may get to the point where they don’t have enough water for their needs.
3. We have growing populations in the Intermontane West, particularly in the southwestern United States, on arid desert land, including New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and some parts of Southern California. This presents a problem because the more the population grows, the higher their water needs are. Their water needs are higher than the amount that is immediately available nearby.
4. There are large amounts of land in the Intermontane West that sits vacant, not being used for anything productive, because it is either semi-arid or arid, and doesn’t get much rain. This is land that, if it had more water, could be irrigated and be useful for agricultural purposes, producing food products for our growing needs, and producing bio-diesel and ethanol to use in motor vehicles and reducing our oil dependency on other nations.
5. California presents a problem unto itself – it has a high population with large water needs, and its Central Valley, which produces a large amount of vegetables and other produce, relies heavily on irrigation for its water needs.
Solutions
Here are the solutions to the problems that I just presented:
1. We need to create a water re-routing network from the Midwestern river valleys, and other locations prone to flooding. This would be in the form of canals or underground pipelines. These networks would quickly pull excess water away from these areas at times of flooding during heavy rains, etc., and by doing so would help to protect those river towns and farmland in those river valleys from flooding. This would greatly reduce the amount of damage and devastation that would result from flooding since it would be eliminated. It would also reduce the amount of crop losses that happen from flooding, helping to increase our agricultural yield and reducing the amount of money our government spends paying farmers for losses and people for loss and destruction of their property by flooding.
Besides this, drainage would be improved, and marshlands created, in our farmland, to allow excess water to drain off of crops during heavy rains, and run into these marshlands. This would improve agricultural yield on each individual farm field by reducing crop destruction during heavy rainfalls, while at the same time improve the environment by creating habitats for birds and animals.
2. This water re-routing network would take excess water from areas farther east, through the canals and underground pipelines previously discussed, and move it over to the Great Plains, to be used for agricultural consumption. By doing this, the Great Plains can rely less heavily on water from the aquifers, and more heavily on water brought in from elsewhere, for their irrigation needs. By doing this, we can allow those aquifers, such as the Ogallala Aquifer, to replenish itself, so that its level rises over time to its maximum.
From this standpoint, in years where there is lots of rain farther east, that excess water can be pumped out to the Great Plains, be used out there, and the underground aquifers can be replenished, and in years where there is not a lot of rain, the farmers of the Great Plains can rely more heavily on the water from those aquifers because they have been allowed to rise. By using this approach, the farmers of the Great Plains will be able to better handle the years of little rain because those aquifers were saved for the drier years. This will help to ensure that the United States always has food supplies to take care of its citizens.
There is another element that we can also add to the mix to help us better handle water issues in the Great Plains and ensure that we always have food supply available for consumption. We can create some kind of incentives, perhaps some kind of tax incentives, to motivate some farmers in the Great Plains to convert their land from cropland, which uses irrigation, to ranch land, which relies less on irrigation, but still allows farmers to use their land in some fashion to produce food for the masses, except in this case from grass-fed cattle instead of actual plant food (my opinion – steak from grass-fed cows tastes better than steak from feedstock-fed cows). By doing this, we can reduce the need for irrigation water in the Great Plains even more, thus reducing water needs there while at the same time still allowing the land to be useful.
3. Some of the water in that water re-routing network can go past the Great Plains to the Intermontane West region, to be used out there. Of course, some of the water will go to such areas as Albuquerque and Phoenix to be used for the water needs of people living out there, but much of it would be used for agricultural purposes. If you’ve driven out west on, say I-10 or I-40, you’ll notice that there are large amounts of land that is relatively flat in between different mountain ranges. In my opinion, this is land that is just yearning to be harnessed for something useful, such as growing crops, except there isn’t enough water to irrigate this land. If we brought in excess water from the east, we could utilize it for irrigation purposes in the Intermontane West, and greatly increase our agricultural yield.
Keep in mind that we could, with this program, increase our agricultural yield so significantly that we have excess food stock. If we allow our excess corn and soybean to be converted into ethanol and bio-diesel, we could use that to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, thus allowing our nation to be more independent.
Not only that, but if we start utilizing new approaches to farming that eliminate the need for using fertilizers, run our farm equipment on natural gas or some other energy source the eliminates new carbon dioxide being introduced into the atmosphere, and change our farming practices to utilize what is known as soil carbon sequestration, adding hundreds of millions of new acres of farmland out west can actually be used to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that is in our atmosphere. This is in addition to increasing our agricultural yield.
4. On the coast of California can be built several desalination plants that allow places such as the San Francisco Bay area and Southern California to have their water needs met entirely from the ocean. This would eliminate their need for water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Colorado River, and allow that water to be used more in other areas of the Intermontane West for more agricultural irrigation, thus allowing more farmland development and even more agricultural yield. In fact, these desalination plants can have their excess cleaned-up water moved through canals and pipelines farther east to be connected to the water re-routing network. That way, the Intermontane West and the Great Plains could have their water sources come from either the east or the west.
One argument against this point is the high cost of operation of these desalination plants. If we continue to develop technology for this purpose, we could, in time, greatly reduce the cost of creating freshwater out of seawater. In fact, if we did so, the human race would never have to worry about water shortages ever again on the planet Earth – two-thirds of the earth’s surface is covered with water, and finding an economical way of cleaning it up and making it useful would be a blessing to all societies everywhere.
As long as we are building desalination plants on the California coast, we could also build them along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, particularly in Texas. There are large amounts of ranch lands in Texas that, if they had water for irrigation purposes, could grow more plant-based food stock, or corn or soybean for bio-fuel purposes, thus increasing their agricultural yield as well.
In Conclusion
I want you to think about something – think about the tens of billions of dollars that are spent each year by federal and state governments to help people recover from damages and destruction caused by flooding. Also, think about the dollar value of all the new agricultural yield that could be gained from using the plan proposed above. Also, think about the increase in the economy, and the new tax revenues that could be gained from using this plan. Now add up that monetary amount over a period of, say, 20 years. Now, compare that to the amount of money it would cost to construct such an infrastructure for our national benefit, especially if we built it to last 100 years or more. From this standpoint, the cost of construction would more than pay for itself over time in terms of reduced government expenditures, increased government tax revenue, and increased value of agricultural yields and farm incomes – there would actually be a return on investment (ROI).
There could also be other benefits – environmental benefits, reduced dependency on foreign oil, increased ability to properly feed a growing population – that would be in our best interest as a nation.
All we need to do now in convince those in charge of our coffers to go forward with such a project.
