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djmilf You asked a question "The reason why I brought up the situation in western Michigan is because it seemed to parallel exactly what you were proposing: to take contaminated water and introduce it into the Ogallala Aquifier to recharge it. You even mentioned using the sandy soils of the local areas to filter the water; that's exactly what Coca Cola and Birdseye Foods were attempting to accomplish. If it didn't work on a small scale in western Michigan, why would it work on a much more immense scale on the Great Plains? "
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There is a HUGE difference in the geology in Western Michigan and the areas over the Ogallala Aquifer. In some parts of the Ogallala Aquifer in Western Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado and the panhandle of Texas it is at least 100 feet to underground water tables and often times 200 to 600 feet. Plus a lot of the soils are sandy and act as a natural filter. The water tables anywhere in Michigan are a lot closer to the surface plus the soils are a lot different.
I assumed when you said the Michigan Farmers were spraying waste water onto their fields that they were using something like a pivot system and mixing the waste water with underground water and spraying it on the fields. Hence I assumed they did not have proper back flush valves in place. In the climate of Western Michigan this method of disposing of waste water should be obvious to anyone with common sense that it is a bad idea. What is the annual precipitation in Western Michigan, maybe 30+ inches or more? Western Kansas, and Nebraska it is more like 15 inches a year.
What would work in the area I mentioned would not work in Michigan. But then Michigan does not need any more water right? Parts of the states I mentioned do need it.
One solution is to oh....stop living and building stupidly?
Really, I'm tired of being asked to subsidize people that built houses on sandbars in Florida or that don't have enough water to keep their pools full and lawns watered in arid places like Arizona etc....or that live 10 feet below sea level in New Orleans which has flooded only about 28 times since the city was founded. Ugh.
You may be right Harry but I'll bet nobody has even attempted to figure it out.
Actually the idea of a pipeline or canal to take water from the flooded midsection of the US and distribute it out to the parched West has been around for a while. There are several obstacles to doing that, including:
Riparian water rights (a very complicated set of laws, which vary wildly between East, Midwest, and Western states)
Initial project costs - these could be enormous, costing billions of dollars over several decades.
Maintenance costs over time. You'd have to have a great deal of pump stations to pump that water 3,000 feet vertically over the Divide.
Loss of water taken from Midwestern systems would cause severe ecological problems in those rivers, not to mention the economy related to barge shipping.
In other words, it's a great idea but it's doomed by logistics.
In GL2's defense, he's not asking to stick a pipe in Lake Michigan and drain it; he's just asking for the unwanted floodwaters. And I'd wager that he's not asking for the water to support suburban sprawl, refill swimming pools or grow grass for golf courses in the desert; he's seeking to save the agri-businesses from western Nebraska down to the Texas Panhandle from the day that it becomes too expensive to use the little remaining water in the Ogallala aquifier.
I do wonder whether it might be cheaper to simply desalinate sea water from the Texas Gulf coast and pipe it directly to the farms in the affected areas rather than build a large and complex piping system throughout the Midwest and the Southern states to collect the flood waters, clean the pollutants from the water and then inject it into the aquafier.
In GL2's defense, he's not asking to stick a pipe in Lake Michigan and drain it; he's just asking for the unwanted floodwaters. And I'd wager that he's not asking for the water to support suburban sprawl, refill swimming pools or grow grass for golf courses in the desert; he's seeking to save the agri-businesses from western Nebraska down to the Texas Panhandle from the day that it becomes too expensive to use the little remaining water in the Ogallala aquifier.
I do wonder whether it might be cheaper to simply desalinate sea water from the Texas Gulf coast and pipe it directly to the farms in the affected areas rather than build a large and complex piping system throughout the Midwest and the Southern states to collect the flood waters, clean the pollutants from the water and then inject it into the aquafier.
Another solution is to stop growing water intensive crops that require irrigation (or less so). Basically, I think we can leave this land use issue to the owners of said land without taking on an expensive public works project.
The golf courses and swimming pools are ENTIRELY germane to this argument as it speaks to water usage. It's logical to me that the problem can be addressed locally on the demand side than resorting to an expensive supply side solution.
Mathguy,
I agree that we need to reduce the use of irrigation water. However with a current US population of 300 million and more every year cutting out a lot of irrigation is going to make it very difficult to support that number of people. Here is a link to a GOOGLE satellite picture just five miles or less from the farm where I grew up. In 1960 one of the neighbors four miles to the North and three East of where this google pictures was taken put down an irrigation well so he could raise sugar beets. Google Maps
See all those circles? The smaller ones are pivot systems irrigating a quarter section (160 acres). The larger circles are four quarters or one whole section (640 acres). Corn, soybeans and alfalfa are the crops they usually irrigate with these pivots. The predominate crop before irrigation was dry land winter wheat. Irrigation of wheat as a rule doesn't increase yields enough to justify the extra expenses. If these pivot irrigation systems were NOT ALLOWED to irrigate of if they run out of water that would result in losing several million bushels of production. In 1960 just a W.A.G on the bushels of corn production in Yuma County Colorado would probably have been about 100,000 bushels. You can GOOGLE "corn production for Yuma County Colorado 2005" to get a current number. Another WAG on my part would estimate the current corn production in Yuma County to be about 75 to 125 million bushels. I will google it later and post the numbers here. If someone beats me to it feel free to enlighten me.
Mathguy,
I agree that we need to reduce the use of irrigation water. However with a current US population of 300 million and more every year cutting out a lot of irrigation is going to make it very difficult to support that number of people. Here is a link to a GOOGLE satellite picture just five miles or less from the farm where I grew up. In 1960 one of the neighbors four miles to the North and three East of where this google pictures was taken put down an irrigation well so he could raise sugar beets. Google Maps
See all those circles? The smaller ones are pivot systems irrigating a quarter section (160 acres). The larger circles are four quarters or one whole section (640 acres). Corn, soybeans and alfalfa are the crops they usually irrigate with these pivots. The predominate crop before irrigation was dry land winter wheat. Irrigation of wheat as a rule doesn't increase yields enough to justify the extra expenses. If these pivot irrigation systems were NOT ALLOWED to irrigate of if they run out of water that would result in losing several million bushels of production. In 1960 just a W.A.G on the bushels of corn production in Yuma County Colorado would probably have been about 100,000 bushels. You can GOOGLE "corn production for Yuma County Colorado 2005" to get a current number. Another WAG on my part would estimate the current corn production in Yuma County to be about 75 to 125 million bushels. I will google it later and post the numbers here. If someone beats me to it feel free to enlighten me.
2005 corn production in Yuma County Colorado was 40 million bushels instead of the 75 to 125 million I guessed at. However I am not sure if that 40 million bushel figure for the County was ALL corn production or just that used for producing Ethanol. If that is the case my WAG might be right after all.
Whatever that is a LOT of underground water that is irreplaceable going into irrigation.
I see the exact location didn't show up in the links to Google maps. Go to Google.maps and type in Beecher Island, Colorado as a search term. The area I am talking about is about six miles North and three West of Beecher Island.
In GL2's defense, he's not asking to stick a pipe in Lake Michigan and drain it; he's just asking for the unwanted floodwaters. And I'd wager that he's not asking for the water to support suburban sprawl, refill swimming pools or grow grass for golf courses in the desert; he's seeking to save the agri-businesses from western Nebraska down to the Texas Panhandle from the day that it becomes too expensive to use the little remaining water in the Ogallala aquifier.
I do wonder whether it might be cheaper to simply desalinate sea water from the Texas Gulf coast and pipe it directly to the farms in the affected areas rather than build a large and complex piping system throughout the Midwest and the Southern states to collect the flood waters, clean the pollutants from the water and then inject it into the aquafier.
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DJMILF,
Here is a link to a related topic about contaminated groundwater similar to what you described in one of your earlier posts. Yuma aims to be alternative-fuel capital - The Denver Post
I believe that problem was in Washington State a few years back. The company, NanoLogix, that is mentioned in that link is doing some interesting things in the field of MicroBiology.
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DJMILF,
Here is a link to a related topic about contaminated groundwater similar to what you described in one of your earlier posts.
http://www.nscss.org/node/211 (broken link)
Sorry about posting the wrong link. It is close to supper time and my fingers and my brain are getting conflicting signals from my stomach. Hopefully I got it right on the fourth try.
GL2
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