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Mississippi may help ease West drought, Mulroy tells chamber
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Gary Thompson/Las Vegas Review-Journal
Southern Nevada Water Authority chief Pat Mulroy speaks at the national conference of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday at Mandalay Bay. » Buy this photo
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LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Updated: Jul. 22, 2011 | 12:09 a.m.
The swollen Mississippi River and its tributaries have inundated towns and farmland from Montana to Louisiana, and experts predict the flood of 2011 could rage for the rest of the summer.
What if that unwanted water could be channeled west to ease drought conditions along the overburdened Colorado River?
Southern Nevada Water Authority chief Pat Mulroy has suggested the idea before.
On Wednesday, however, she made her case to a group she hopes might be able to rally support for such an enormous undertaking: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Mulroy was one of the featured speakers during the organization's conference at Mandalay Bay.
She told attendees that the nation will need to pursue large, cooperative solutions to the problems posed by population growth and climate change.
It's hard to imagine a solution larger than a link between the Mississippi and Colorado rivers.
Under Mulroy's vision, floodwaters from the Mississippi and its western tributaries would be captured and diverted to irrigate crops as far away as Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.
Those agricultural areas could then be taken off the Colorado River system, leaving enough water for Las Vegas and other growing Western cities well into the future.
About 350 million acre-feet of water a year runs down the main stem of the Mississippi River when it isn't flooding. That's roughly 25 times more water than the Colorado River carries in an average year.
Mississippi floodwater also could be diverted to the Central Plains to recharge the massive Ogallala Aquifer, which covers about 174,000 square miles from Texas to South Dakota.
Such a project would almost certainly take decades to complete and cost tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars.
It will never happen until people agree to stop fighting over water and start working together to secure it for future generations, Mulroy said.
"Doesn't this all fall under security? It's security for communities that are continually experiencing flooding, and it's security for communities that are continually experiencing drought," she said.
Mulroy wasn't the only one trumpeting the idea, either.
Las Vegas-based consultant Tom Skancke said water is a national issue that requires a national solution.
"We've got to start breaking down these walls that are keeping us from protecting our country and our children's future," he said.
As it stands now, the United States has no cohesive water policy. Water issues are managed by a patchwork of disparate federal agencies and fought over by state and local entities in disputes as old as the Wild West, Mulroy said.
If the nation's interstate highway system were built the same way as its water infrastructure, "you couldn't leave one state and travel to another state. It would stop at the border," she said.
Wednesday's panel discussion was held as part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's "Invest in Water" initiative.
The event and others like it will be used to help the organization develop a policy position on water and urge lawmakers to act on it.
Mulroy said she is glad to see the chamber take an interest in breaking down regional barriers in favor of a systematic, national approach to the issue. The organization certainly has the clout and the connections for the job, she said.
Best of all, water is something that transcends partisan politics because it impacts everyone.
"The time has never been more right than right now to bring forward an issue that doesn't have a red or blue coat on it. This is that issue," Mulroy said.
"Yes, it makes great folklore to fight about water, but the future is not a battleground."
Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal .com or 702-383-0350.
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Yes, hell yes. Build desalinization plants, too. Put people to work: administrators, engineers, technicians, equipment operators, laborers, office help, etc., etc. Get this country off its ass.
@ Sonny1: sneer all you want. Go right ahead, but it isn't going to make this proposal any more cost effective, or any less of a boondoggle. The only difference between this project and the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" is that Vegas residents such as yourself, presumably, would benefit from this one. Why not propose building desalination plants in Nevada, to clean up unusable saline groundwater? Or desalination plants in California, to clean up sea water? The space race and WWII spirits aren't dead, Sonny1. They're just waiting for the right project.
Bunch of wimps saying, "Ohh, Ahhh, we can't afford this. It's a boondogle, etc., etc." That's what's wrong with this country. No one has a vision, a grand vision, like back during the New Deal & WWII. You bet winning WWII was a grand vision, and it was massive government spending that put money in the pockets of average Americans, who went out & spent it & drove down the debt to GDP ratio in a year's time.
No one has any balls, any more. Business is too damned afraid to do anything, sitting on its $trillions of cash, just like in the Depression. So, we all sit around, worrying about more debt rather than worrying about GETTING PEOPLE BACK TO WORK.
If these milquetoasts had the power then that they do now, there would have been no Erie Canal and no Panama Canal. Hell, there wouldn't have been an Interstate Highway System. The only reason the Interstate was sold was for defense, and the only reason for massive government spendiing for WWII was Pearl Harbor. What the hell.
@ pmmart and gehrig: I don't believe anyone is saying that this type of pipeline is not technically feasible. Of course it is. What people are saying is that the cost in money and time that it would take to build it is ridiculously underestimated in this article. The article also says nothing about how we should go about getting Mississippi locals to give up THEIR water to help Las Vegas, or what the cost of all this construction will do to Vegas utility bills. Why are people who usually violently oppose wasteful government spending, suddenly supporting this obvious boondoggle? Personally, I would much rather see us spend the money to build desalination plants off the California coast, and exchange their output for California's share of Colorado river water. And yes, gehrig, I am a scientist. And I have worked on projects like this before.
I wonder how those posters who have nothing but gloom and doom to post get their messages on this site?
Don't tell me you have modern day things like electricity and computers in your caves?
Every day that you put gasoline in you car you are benefiting from a pipeline that brought that to you and the Alaska pipeline is 1,500 mile long through some of the harshest climate in the world...who built it?
Americans did and those Americans weren't the whiners sitting around and b#tching about anything that is over their heads ..which is just about everything.
great that the message board has yet another scientist. certainly there are many completed tasks believed impossible when begun. again, put a pencil to the concept. all methods of water, food, and energy production must be examined. those who offhandedly ridicule any suggestion merely indicate the depth of their intellect.
The flooding by the MISSOURI river[flowing into the MISSISSIPPI] was caused by the Corps Of Engineers blatant mis-management of 6 dams designed to PREVENT flooding.
How did someone who thinks (giving her the benefit of the doubt) as irrationally as this person regularly does, get into the position of authority she holds? To whom is she connected?
Good concept, wrong body of water. Due to farm, factory, and municipal run-off, it would be prohibitively-expensive, if even doable, to treat Mississippi River water (they don't call part of Louisiana "Cancer Alley" for nothing). Why not the Great Lakes? That might work.
I say we bomb Canada and take Williston Lake.