Why can’t the West just pipe in water from the Mississippi or Missouri rivers to save the Colorado River?
Engineers and water experts knew for decades that growth in the Colorado River Basin would eventually hit a tipping point. That is, unless the states depending on the river found a new source of water. One way to do that, civil engineer Royce J. Tipton wrote in 1965, would be to pipe water in from somewhere else, also referred to as “importing” water. One scheme considered in the 50s and 60s (but never developed), the North American Water and Power Alliance, proposed to pipe water from rivers in Alaska and Canada south into the Colorado River’s headwaters, among other places. … These canals and pipelines are expensive to build, though, and take years.
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