# Submarine pipeline from \[the\] Columbia \[River\] to California **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 16, 2015, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650 "2015-06-16T03:47:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/21 "2015-06-17T04:00:25Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > Seriously, California needs to come to grips with the fact that nobody, but nobody, is interested in giving up their water so people can grow almonds in the desert. Or maybe its the fact that the government let millions of people immigrate to an area that has water for maybe 500000 people. You let em in you gotta give em water. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/22 "2015-06-17T04:07:35Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Or maybe its the fact that the government let millions of people immigrate to an area that has water for maybe 500000 people. You let em in you gotta give em water. Neither the state nor federal government lets people immigrate to specific regions. The state has no control over foreigners. The Feds have no control over citizens, and the Feds only control the immigration of foreigners into the US. Once there in, no one sys where they may move or settle. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/23 "2015-06-17T04:12:37Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > Neither the state nor federal government lets people immigrate to specific regions. The state has no control over foreigners. The Feds have no control over citizens, and the Feds only control the immigration of foreigners into the US. Once there in, no one sys where they may move or settle. The government does have control over illegal immigration. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/24 "2015-06-17T05:45:29Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > The government does have control over illegal immigration. Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown. OK, seriously, the main problem with water in California is agriculture. Eighty percent or more of all the water goes to irrigation. If they didn’t have that, there would be plenty of water for human use. Illegal immigrants included. ---
**Author:** ![Alley\_Dweller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alley_dweller/32/430_2.png) [@Alley\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alley_Dweller)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/25 "2015-06-17T06:19:46Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown. > > OK, seriously, the main problem with water in California is agriculture. Eighty percent or more of all the water goes to irrigation. If they didn’t have that, there would be plenty of water for human use. Illegal immigrants included. And, of course, if California outlawed agriculture, it wouldn’t need all those illegal immigrants who come over to pick fruits and vegetables. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/26 "2015-06-17T06:49:04Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > … > > That being said it ain’t going to happen, not until California builds a pipeline around the Delta to ship Sacramento River water to SoCal. I’m in Sacramento (confluence of Sacramento and American rivers). These are now little more than trickles, and the delta irrigation system is drying up. This is not a normal drought - out here, water rights are fought over and some rights are better than others (Senior Water Rights). Those are now either being curtailed or under serious threat of curtailment. THAT just does not happen. p.s. - the first story I saw on Shatner’s proposal saw fit to mention that he owned Senior rights. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/27 "2015-06-17T12:04:50Z")
> [@Alley\_Dweller](#): > > And, of course, if California outlawed agriculture, it wouldn’t need all those illegal immigrants who come over to pick fruits and vegetables. They’d still need some ranch hands for the cattle drives, but yeah. They’re growing fruit & vegetables in the desert and refusing to let the land go back to what it used to be, which was a bajillion acres of cattle land. On the other hand, if they did that, then we wouldn’t need to grow all that corn in the midwest because the cattle would all be free-range, and they could grow the fruits & vegetables in the midwest. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/28 "2015-06-17T16:43:41Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > I’m in Sacramento (confluence of Sacramento and American rivers). > > These are now little more than trickles, and the delta irrigation system is drying up. > > This is not a normal drought - out here, water rights are fought over and some rights are better than others (Senior Water Rights). > Those are now either being curtailed or under serious threat of curtailment. > > THAT just does not happen. > > p.s. - the first story I saw on Shatner’s proposal saw fit to mention that he owned Senior rights. Worst than 1977? Just one observation, on I-5 between Bakersfield and Stockton was mostly open grassland back in 1977. I just drove that run this winter and there were orchards and farmland and feed lots all over the place. C’mon, those farmers who planted their orchards these knew for a fact someday the trees would dry up and die. They took that risk and they made tons of money. Junior water rights, last orchard planted is the first to die. ---
**Author:** ![Jamicat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c67d28/32.png) [@Jamicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamicat)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/29 "2015-06-17T17:02:09Z")
Run a pipeline from the Pacific Ocean to Death Valley and fill it in, then let the sun evaporate it, collect it into a lake, then run another pipe back to LA. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/30 "2015-06-17T17:06:29Z")
Am I the only one who read the thread title and pictured a submarine (yellow or otherwise) traveling to California through a really big water pipe? ---
**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:** [June 17, 2015, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/31 "2015-06-17T17:06:30Z")
> [@Jamicat](#): > > Run a pipeline from the Pacific Ocean to Death Valley and fill it in, then let the sun evaporate it, collect it into a lake, then run another pipe back to LA. 😃 Collect salt? :smack: ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/32 "2015-06-17T18:36:38Z")
> [@Duckster](#): > > Collect salt? > > :smack: A small technical glitch is all. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/33 "2015-06-17T19:11:50Z")
> [@Jamicat](#): > > Run a pipeline from the Pacific Ocean to Death Valley and fill it in, then let the sun evaporate it, collect it into a lake, then run another pipe back to LA. 😃 They’d have enough salt to last forever. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/34 "2015-06-17T19:27:21Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown. > > OK, seriously, the main problem with water in California is agriculture. Eighty percent or more of all the water goes to irrigation. If they didn’t have that, there would be plenty of water for human use. Illegal immigrants included. And what do you expect us, and the rest of America, to eat? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/35 "2015-06-17T19:29:31Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Or maybe its the fact that the government let millions of people immigrate to an area that has water for maybe 500000 people. You let em in you gotta give em water. There is plenty of water for people to drink, and take showers, and do the dishes, and flush the toilets. And if we need more water for that, we can build desalinization plants to provide water. If people need drinking water you can provide as much as you want, it’s just going to cost more. Agriculture uses 80% of the water in California. But you can’t build desalinization plants to provide water for agriculture, it’s too expensive. Cheap California produce requires cheap water, and there is no more cheap water. Agriculture is a business. It costs various amounts to plant, water, tend, harvest, ship, and market different products in different places and different times. If the cost of growing the crops is higher than what you can sell them for, then it doesn’t make sense to keep growing them. Water intensive crops in California require millions of acre-feet of water every year, and that water doesn’t exist during a drought. And so what happens next? The farms dry up until the drought is over, which might be years or decades. But the farms drying up doesn’t mean the end of agriculture in California, there are plenty of crops that don’t require much water. You can switch to those. What’s getting attention now are tree crops such as almonds that require a certain amount of water to keep alive, if the trees die it will represent a substantial capital loss to the farms that planted them. You can let a field of annuals dry up for a year or two, and when the drought is over you can replant. It takes a lot longer to replant tree crops. We’re going to have to get used to the idea of paying higher prices for certain products that used to be produced cheaply in California with cheap water. And so what? Spending billions of dollars to pour more water on to California farmland doesn’t magically make the crops produced by that water cheap. It’s still expensive, it’s just that the producers and consumers don’t pay the cost, the taxpayers do, like chumps. Notice that no farmers in California are building private desal plants to provide water, that’s because the economics don’t work. Desal plants to provide drinking water can charge whatever the cost is, or be subsidized by the city or state, because human beings don’t need that much water every day. Nobody is going to be dying of thirst. Nobody is going to have to go to work dirty because there wasn’t enough water to take a shower. Some farms are going to go bust, others are going to switch from water-intensive farming to water-conserving farming, and life will go on. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/36 "2015-06-17T19:36:52Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > They’d still need some ranch hands for the cattle drives, but yeah. They’re growing fruit & vegetables in the desert and refusing to let the land go back to what it used to be, which was a bajillion acres of cattle land. On the other hand, if they did that, then we wouldn’t need to grow all that corn in the midwest because the cattle would all be free-range, and they could grow the fruits & vegetables in the midwest. No one is growing many fruits and vegetables in the desert. Its the valley areas that grow much of our food. > **[What areas in the US have the most fertile land?](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=247266)** > > I don’t mean for large agricultural farming, I just mean places that would work best for subsistance farming with minimal technology. What areas in the U.S. have the most fertile soil for this kind of farming? If California really cut back on agriculture the result would be devastating and the price of food would skyrocket. California has some of the best farming land in the world. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/37 "2015-06-17T23:17:40Z")
[El Nino](http://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/may-2015-enso-forecast-will-el-ni%C3%B1o-be-overachiever-or-peaked-high-school) should break the drought. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/38 "2015-06-17T23:28:01Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > And what do you expect us, and the rest of America, to eat? Illegal Immigrants? That might solve several issues. (patent pending) ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/39 "2015-06-17T23:44:44Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > Illegal Immigrants? That might solve several issues. (patent pending) Ive just trademarked Soylent Green. ---
**Author:** ![KCB615](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ea666f/32.png) [@KCB615](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KCB615)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650/40 "2015-06-18T00:54:58Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > Illegal Immigrants? That might solve several issues. (patent pending) That’s a very modest proposal you have there… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submarine-pipeline-from-the-columbia-river-to-california/722650.md?page=3)