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Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot | Well, his heart is in the right place. He's going to be better off sticking to the big screen than trying to play engineer though.
For one, you aren't going to go just stick a straw in any one else's river. Water rights, increasingly even in wetter area's of the west, are paramount to religion. Honestly, at this point in time I don't know where you could find enough water to make building a new aqueduct worthwhile. Sure, we can all look at the Columbia, with the massive amounts of water it pours out to the sea everyday. I seem to remember reading only 3% of its annual flow gets diverted for irrigation. But even at that, look at all of the hell the guys in Hermiston have gone through trying to secure 100,000 acre feet, from that river that pours 160,000,000 acre feet into the Pacific every year. And those guys live right on the banks of the river, in a state that contributes to the flow of the river. Imagine the response Californian's would get if they wanted to latch onto 5 or 10 million acre feet...
A 4' pipe isn't going to move a whole lot of water. It would be a lot of water to me, but when you start looking at cities of millions and millions of acres of farm land, it is a drop in the bucket. I've got a canal that we piped, into a 36" line. We don't use it steady, but at capacity you can maybe get 20 feet through it. The capacity of the California Aqueduct is 13,000 cfs. And it is only one of two large canals that serve part, of the San Joaquin Valley, and one of four that carry water to LA and SD.
The reality of the situation is politics have a lot more to due with water supply anymore than water supply. The situation is going to have to get solved in state. Unfortunately, the days of building new trans-basin diversions are gone, at least for now. Maybe in the future, but people worry way to much about the birds and the bees than they do where their next meal is going to come from right now. It is going to take a huge shift in the public's opinion before anything like this can be considered, and honestly I don't think it is going to be a pleasant experience that does cause a shift back to a public that worries about food supply, and national security, etc.
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Solve California drought with Seattle pipeline
