# Rivers Actually Diverted **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 27, 2008, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380 "2008-08-27T03:00:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![KRSOradio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/0ea827/32.png) [@KRSOradio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRSOradio)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/1 "2008-08-27T03:00:53Z")
I was reading some Wikipedia articles about Lake Chad and how they have a plan to divert the Ubangi River into Lake Chad cause it’s shrinking. I’ve also read about a plan to divert some rivers that flow north into the artic into the Aral Sea or the Caspian Sea to help with pollution and shrinking. I also see where they want to divert the a river or make a new canal into the Salton Sea (this would make it less Salty for some reason). My question is have they ever actually diverted a river. I see the Salton Sea was actually created by a man made accident, that diverted the Colorado River from the Gulf of California, into a dry desert sink. I don’t mean “accidental” river diversions caused by floods or earthquakes or hurricanes or other natural phenomenons. I mean actually changed the course of the river other than just build a damn to make a lake behind it. ---
**Author:** ![K364](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k364/32/5_2.png) [@K364](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/K364)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/2 "2008-08-27T03:15:51Z")
The Chicago River originally flowed into Lake Michigan. Because of the huge amount of sanitary pollution from the city of Chicago, the river and lower Lake Michigan had become a cesspool. The solution was to reverse the flow and draw clean water out of Lake Michigan and flush it through the city and down to the Gulf of Mexico. Read all about it [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_river#Reversing_the_flow) ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/3 "2008-08-27T03:20:56Z")
[James Bay Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bay_Project#Rupert_River_diversion) > [@](#): > > The James Bay Project diverted the waters of the Caniapiscau and Eastmain rivers into the La Grande River watershed, submerged about 11,000 km² of boreal forest and substantially modified the water flow of the La Grande River. The water flow was reduced by 90% at the mouth of the Eastmain River, near the Cree village of Eastmain, by 45% where the Caniapiscau River flows into the Koksoak River, and by 35% at the mouth of the Koksoak River, near the northern village of Kuujjuaq. The water flow of the La Grande River, on the other hand, was doubled, increasing from 1,700 m³/s to 3,400 m³/s (and from 500 m³/s to 5,000 m³/s in winter) near the Cree village of Chisasibi at the mouth of the La Grande River. The planned diversion of the Rupert River into the La Grande Complexe will further increase the flow of the La Grande River by about 420 m³/s; the flow of the Rupert River will, on the other hand, be reduced from 840 m³/s to about 420 m³/s at its mouth, near the Cree village of Waskaganish. ---
**Author:** ![NinetyWt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@NinetyWt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinetyWt)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/4 "2008-08-27T03:36:41Z")
[QUOTE=KRSOradio] I mean actually changed the course of the river other than just build a damn to make a lake behind it. [/QUOTE] Dam. No ‘n’. 🙂 Also, building a dam across a river isn’t a ‘diversion’. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/5 "2008-08-27T03:36:49Z")
> [@](#): > > Russian scientists are reviving an old Soviet plan to divert some of Siberia’s mightiest rivers to the parched former Soviet republics of central Asia. > > Its backers say it will solve a growing water crisis in the region and replenish the now desiccated Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest inland sea. The $40 billion scheme could also gain international support. > > Recent increases in the flows of Siberia’s rivers, probably due to global warming, have raised fears that a less salty Arctic Ocean could shut down the Gulf Stream and trigger icy winters across Europe. Diverting part of the flow of the rivers could prevent that. > > But some experts say that the hugely ambitious scheme will cause social, economic and environmental disaster. Source: [http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4637](http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4637) > [@](#): > > Each time rain comes to Los Angeles County, it washes away the urban grime of dozens of cities, flushing out the trash, pollutants and all forms of refuse. > > But that trash has to go somewhere. Much of it ends up in the Los Angeles River, where it travels miles downstream and into the coastal waters of Long Beach, often forcing beach closures and some say hurting the city’s tourism economy. > > To fight this, city leaders have been batting around a singular solution: Remove the river entirely from near downtown Long Beach and the city beaches. Source: [http://www.presstelegram.com/ci\_8220375](http://www.presstelegram.com/ci_8220375) > [@](#): > > Landlocked Beijing has begun tapping a lattice of reservoirs, rivers, and canals across eastern China to provide plentiful water for this summer’s Olympic Games. > > As part of the initiative, more than 150 million cubic meters (39.6 billion gallons) of water are being diverted from the Yellow River through a network of canals stretching across three provinces to refill a lake south of the historically drought-stricken Chinese capital. Source: [National Geographic | National Geographic](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080228-china-water.html) And let’s not forget the mighty [Colorado River](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River) is really a diverted river. > [@](#): > > The Colorado River is a river in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, approximately 1,450 mi (2,330 km) long, draining a part of the arid regions on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. The natural course of the river flows into the Gulf of California, but the heavy use of the river as an irrigation source for the Imperial Valley has desiccated the lower course of the river in Mexico such that it no longer consistently reaches the sea. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/6 "2008-08-27T06:42:31Z")
The Atchafalaya River has been mostly diverted into the Mississippi. Left to its own devices, the Atchafalaya would now be the main channel of the river, but the Old River Control Structure diverts most (70%) of the water into the Mississippi and only (30%) gets into the Atchafalaya. Without it, the proportions of river flow would likely be reversed. [Here’s an fascinating site](http://www.americaswetlandresources.com/background_facts/detailedstory/LouisianaRiverControl.html) about it. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/7 "2008-08-27T11:17:54Z")
At least one small tributary of the Kennebec River in Maine was reversed in the 19th century to flow into the Penobscot, to facilitate log-driving. I don’t remember the name of the river. That was possible because it was close to the divide between the two basins. All they had to do was to build a dam high enough to make the water spill over into the Penobscot drainage basin. ---
**Author:** ![Rayne\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/8 "2008-08-27T12:16:27Z")
The Turia River which used to run through the centre of Valencia in Spain was diverted in the 1950’s. This was because of flooding and damage to the city that used to occur on a regular basis. The Turia now runs to the west of the city and its original river-bed is now a 4 mile-long park bisecting the city. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/9 "2008-08-27T12:37:22Z")
[QUOTE=NinetyWt] Dam. No ‘n’. 🙂 [/QUOTE] At least _somebody_ gives one. 🙂 Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/10 "2008-08-27T13:01:17Z")
They diverted the Niagara River to perform work on the area of the Falls. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/11 "2008-08-27T13:03:33Z")
I seem to recall reading of rivers being diverted - at least temporarily, during seiges in the times of the ancient Greeks. ---
**Author:** ![3acresandatruck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/e79b87/32.png) [@3acresandatruck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3acresandatruck)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/12 "2008-08-27T13:11:38Z")
Drat! \*\*dtilque \*\*beat me to the Atchafalaya/Mississippi River one. I have a real fondness for that, as I used it once to win a ‘what would you do if you were a terrorist’ game some friends and I played back in the 80’s. After I explained what the river control structure was, and the likely outcome of blowing it to Kingdom Come, I won by acclaim. By the way, **dtilque** , that’s a totally cool website, thanks for the link. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/13 "2008-08-27T13:19:13Z")
[QUOTE=dtilque] The Atchafalaya River has been mostly diverted into the Mississippi. [/QUOTE] Thanks for the good link and, as you’re probably aware, John McPhee devotes one third of his most excellent book, _The Control of Nature_, to this very subject. ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/14 "2008-08-27T13:28:23Z")
So do you want diverted, but make it to the original destination, or only diverted and now end up exiting into a different body of water? The United States is full of channel diversions for stretches of river that join to the old bed a bit further down. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/15 "2008-08-27T15:21:27Z")
[QUOTE=NinetyWt] Dam. No ‘n’. 🙂 Also, building a dam across a river isn’t a ‘diversion’. [/QUOTE] Absolutely right. It’s more of an undertaking. Croquet is a diversion. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/16 "2008-08-27T16:32:47Z")
There’s been enough water diverted from the California Delta [by aqueduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct) that the San Joaquin River will occasionally flow backwards. It’s also dry for stretches. The website of the Department maintaining the diversion is [here](http://www.publicaffairs.water.ca.gov/swp/) There were plans to build a peripheral canal to bring water from the Sacramento River around the Delta to the pumps, but that was voted down. The Sac still flows into the delta relatively unmolested. So, yeah, engineers have been diverting water for ages and got up to diverting whole rivers worth of it quite some time ago. ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/17 "2008-08-27T16:40:41Z")
Huge areas of the Western Slope of Colorado have been diverted through tunnels to bring water to the cities of the Front Range. The ‘Continental Divide’ has been moved west by as much as fifty miles. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/18 "2008-08-27T18:19:17Z")
A note about what can happen when rivers are diverted. We flew over a river in Botswana - or rather where a river HAD been - that had been diverted by nature through seismic activity. I can’t recall the name of it, but someone will pop in with it, I’m sure. Anyhoo, even though the riverbed is now just a place where grasses grow, and has been that way for a very long time, the migrating herds still show up there every year expecting it to be a watering source. Mucking around with nature, even when nature does it, is a bad idea and has been proven so since…well…forever. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/19 "2008-08-27T18:35:01Z")
The Okavango? They’ve recently seen that some of the faint arm extensions of the African rift periodically produce small seismic events that can cause a few meters of uplift or subsidence but that in such a naturally flat area that can have profound effects on the natural drainage patterns of the delta. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rivers-actually-diverted/461380/20 "2008-08-27T20:33:33Z")
[QUOTE=lieu] The Okavango? They’ve recently seen that some of the faint arm extensions of the African rift periodically produce small seismic events that can cause a few meters of uplift or subsidence but that in such a naturally flat area that can have profound effects on the natural drainage patterns of the delta. [/QUOTE] It certainly could be, and that’s what came to mind right away, as we were heading to a camp on the Okavango; but somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, I’m thinking it may be a different river. No matter.