# Moving freshwater around on continents **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 28, 2021, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528 "2021-09-28T17:20:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/21 "2021-09-28T20:23:46Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Liquid fuel pipelines don’t “send fuel…around the country”; they are used to transfer crude oil to specific refinery facilities, or from refineries to nearby oil depots for storage and OTR distribution. The gasoline here in Phoenix and Tucson comes in a 6-inch pipeline from Texas. When somebody poked a hole in it between here and Tucson it had to be trucked in. Supplies were very short and the delivered _cost_ was more than $5 per gallon when the retail price was around $3.20. The prices rose to about $4.50 and people screamed but the retailers were losing money on every sale, making it up in cigarette and jerky sales. A couple weeks later the repairs were done and the prices slowly declined back to normal over a month as they tried to recoup their losses. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/22 "2021-09-28T20:32:28Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > Since there are many pipelines moving fuels around the country, water could also do the same: Oh yeah? And what happens when those pipelines bust and hundreds of thousands of gallons of [dihydrogen monoxide](https://www.dhmo.org/facts.html) poison the land? ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/23 "2021-09-28T22:02:39Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Of course, except for having to pump water uphill through the the Grapevine section near Castaic and Sylmar, all of these essentially ship water downhill at little cost other than maintaining aqueducts and dams. The Central Arizona Project is a canal system that runs from Lake Havasu (elevation a hair over 700’) through the Phoenix area to Tucson (1100’) to Tucson (2400’). From end to end the water passes through 14 pumping stations that lift the water a total of 2900’: > The 456 billion gallons (1.4 million acre feet) of water is lifted by up to 2,900 feet by 14 pumps using 2.5 million MWh of electricity each year, making CAP the largest power user in Arizona. Admittedly only a fraction of the water goes the whole distance (most of it is used along the way), there are still five pumping stations before the water gets to Phoenix. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/24 "2021-09-28T22:48:36Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > Wouldn’t it be easier to just have people (and farms) move to where the water is? Stone him! Heretic! ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/25 "2021-09-28T22:51:18Z")
Yes, very much yes. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/26 "2021-09-28T23:06:14Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > Wouldn’t it be easier to just have people (and farms) move to where the water is? Sam Kinison did a bit on moving people to where the food is (with Uhauls). If it were just that easy. You could also say just have people move to where the floods aren’t, and to where the hurricanes aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![Oredigger77](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oredigger77/32/3181_2.png) [@Oredigger77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oredigger77)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/27 "2021-09-28T23:07:41Z")
I doubt it. If we used eminent domain to seize all the farm land in the central valley of California that would be about 7,000,000 acres it would have to be paid for at today’s cost which seems to be [$10k/acre](https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/land0820.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjjiKj54KLzAhVDwZ4KHWKjDu8QFnoECCIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0bZ7OrrX4WqqiVC5FuvMcf) or about $70b. Then we’d have to convince all of those millionaires to spend their millions to buy land on the Mississippi area or in Northern Idaho based on where that map had water sustainable farming. We’d also have to have all of the labor and associated business to move too. The million people in California picking up and moving would mess with the California economy and wherever they settled would see a huge population influx and cause huge problems in their economy. In the long term your solution is the best one but it would be massively damaging in the short term and probably destroy the political party that carried out the idea. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/28 "2021-09-28T23:19:54Z")
Why are you positing some sort of forced paid removal? People moved out there for reasons: they wanted lots of sunshine, and assumed that all the water they wanted would be provided for cheap. If what they assumed were the facts behind those reasons change, they will then find reason to move elsewhere. It’s true that it’s better if this happens gradually instead of all at once; but nobody said otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![Oredigger77](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oredigger77/32/3181_2.png) [@Oredigger77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oredigger77)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/29 "2021-09-28T23:28:46Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > People moved out there for reasons: they wanted lots of sunshine, and assumed that all the water they wanted would be provided for cheap. If what they assumed were the facts behind those reasons change, they will then find reason to move elsewhere. People moved there during the dustbowl. Aside from the government intervening they will stay there until the next dust bowl and will expect their politicians to keep them farming long past the viability point. Water will be warred over and stolen long before those farmers pack up and move voluntarily. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/30 "2021-09-28T23:48:56Z")
What about splitting the water at the source then piping hydrogen. You could regain some of the energy by burning it at the destination, perhaps to make electricity. The output would be pure water. You could even use some of it to power the pumps along the pipeline. Would this be more or less energy efficient? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/31 "2021-09-28T23:56:44Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > What about splitting the water at the source then piping hydrogen. Piping masses of hydrogen across the country? What could possibly go wrong? [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/iucbA0FOYu0/maxresdefault.jpg "Explosion at hydrogen fuel plant damages homes, felt miles away") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iucbA0FOYu0) Stranger ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2021, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/32 "2021-09-29T00:23:50Z")
We pipe natural gas. Nothing is 100% safe. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2021, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/33 "2021-09-29T00:52:57Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > Would this be more or less energy efficient? I’ll leave the question of energy efficiency to someone else, but you can be damn sure it will be less water efficient. You’d be cannibalizing your water supply at Point A to move it to Point B, and then consuming even more water from Point A to turn it into fuel to move it to Point B. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2021, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/34 "2021-09-29T01:10:00Z")
I was thinking primarily tunneling and digging canals over a period of a hundred years or even more something that would last forever ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2021, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/35 "2021-09-29T01:28:52Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > We pipe natural gas. Nothing is 100% safe. Natural gas tends to stay readily confined in normal pressurized systems, and if dry and oxygen-free doesn’t really tend to cause corrosion internal to pipes and tankage. Hydrogen gas leaks from the tiniest crack or misfit joint, causes hydrogen embrittlement, and is also extremely low density unless compressed to cryogenic liquid temperatures. Having worked with hydrogen as a fuel and dealt with the multitude of safety issues, I feel pretty confident in saying that a nationwide network of hydrogen pipelines would be a catastrophe in the making. > [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > I’ll leave the question of energy efficiency to someone else, but you can be damn sure it will be less water efficient. It would be spectacularly inefficient; the energy cost of a theoretically 100% efficient electrolyser would be almost 40 kilowatt-hours per kilogram of hydrogen, which would be 8.94 kg of water. Even if you are assuming you could recover all of this energy at the other end through combustion with complete thermodynamic recovery (impossible, of course, says Carnot), you are still having to produce this energy at the source and with sufficient power to deliver large volumes of water to the end user, so the source gets no benefit or recovery. Desalination of sea water, while also enormously energy-intensive, would still be more feasible than piping hydrogen cross-country. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2021, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/36 "2021-09-29T01:44:59Z")
You could use solar, wind, or nuclear to split the water. Regarding desalination, you’d still have to somehow deliver that water to non-coastal regions. There’d be no net energy gain but the point isn’t an energy gain. The point is transporting water as energy efficiently as possible. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2021, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/37 "2021-09-29T04:57:04Z")
Uh, how about using _clouds_. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2021, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/38 "2021-09-29T05:21:16Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Uh, how about using _clouds_ . “Sometimes the old ways are the best…” Stranger ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2021, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/39 "2021-09-29T05:23:07Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > What type of sciences or technology … for the purpose of moving water around on continents for irrigation? For moving volumes of water there are two sciences/technologies: gravity and evaporation. Anything else is uneconomic, unless it’s Perrier. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2021, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528/40 "2021-09-29T09:01:00Z")
The places that have the water don’t have the weather to grow the crops. The kind of Mediterranean cash crops they grow in California - almonds, grapes - aren’t going to grow nearly as well around the Great Lakes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-freshwater-around-on-continents/951528.md?page=3)