[magellan]

What a joke. Saw this article posted in the little more interesting UrbanPlanet forum. OK, maybe not the whole city of Birmingham, but one professor/writer does:

al.com: Everything Alabama

Here's some keeper quotes:

So let's build a consortium of Sunbelt states, ante up some money and design an Alaska-like water pipeline system. We then secure federal financing for its implementation, extract that precious Midwest resource, and pump it to regions desperately in need. Sounds wonderful, but wait a minute. There are a few political snags....


...Midwesterners hate Sunbelt states and those who dwell within them. Like middle-class Mexicans who politely despise their cousins for migrating north for better jobs, those remaining in the Midwest quietly frown upon their expatriates who moved south: they just couldn't "cut it" back home. They also hate the rest of us.

Hate? I think that's a bit strong.

Don't forget to send your kindly worded sentiments to:

jslack@uab.edu.

I've got an idea. Instead of building a multi-billion dollar pipeline, wouldn't it be cheaper to buy everyone who lives in Alabama a taxi-ride up to Michigan, where water is aplenty?

This reminds me of people who continue to build homes along the Southeastern coastlines, and then when their home has been destroyed yet again by a hurricane storm surge, they want the rest of us (through the Federal Government's FEMA program) to bail them out.

[Driller1]

There is not plenty of potable water in Michigan. The groundwater level drops a little more each year. The water from the Great Lakes is being treated with a high quantity of chlorine. The DEQ has new rules on the amount of groundwater that can be with withdrawn without a special permit. We do need to protect the lakes.

[LiptonGuy]

I found the statistics in the 4th paragraph to be a bit unbelievable.

It says that if we built a 9 foot wall around the continental United States and emptied all the Great Lakes, the water would cover the entire United States and reach the 9 foot brim.

Is there really that much water in the Great Lakes ? How deep are the lakes anyway ?

[Driller1]

Lake Superior is down a record low. The big ships are hauling half of what they were built for. Saginaw Bay is out on the average about 1/2 mile. I do not believe the 4th paragraph either.

[sweetclimber]

I agree with needing to protect the great lakes. Those people moved to the south and west on some kind of glory mission and now water issues are cropping up due to the mass migration to these places. Once again man is trying hard to destroy beautiful nature!

[jetjockey75]

Originally Posted by sweetclimber

Those people moved to the south and west on some kind of glory mission and now water issues are cropping up due to the mass migration to these places.

Not necessarily true in every instance. Yeah, in places like SoCal and Colorado, people keep moving there in droves expecting to be able to use all the water they want. As far as the South goes, however, in most of the region we are experiencing record drought for the second year in a row. Even in less populated regions, wells are running dry, rivers and lakes are becoming almost unusable. We don't want water from Michigan or anyplace else, we would just like our weather pattern to get back to some sense of normalcy (50+ inches of rain per year instead of 20).

[Driller1]

Let us face some hard facts, as a society we waste water. All of us. We pollute what we have. There is a mistaken idea that water is free, it is not. We can not live without it, but we dump sewage and chemicals in our rivers and lakes daily. Sadly, we will not stop.

[magellan]

edit: oops, double post. Please delete.

[magellan]

I'm glad so far everyone agrees this is a horrible idea. If we start diverting water from the Great Lakes, it will not "replenish every 99 years" as the writer claims. It will drastically decrease the amount of water that is drawn up into the atmosphere and then deposited back into the Great Lakes basin to replenish the lakes. It will start a slide that will be unstoppable, and we will end up with Great Lakes that resemble the Aral Sea in Russia:

http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/...2_77-89-06.jpg



aral sea - Google Image Search

I don't think anyone in the U.S. would like a planet where something as cataclysmic as this were to happen (although I'm beginning to wonder if anyone would care). Look at New Orleans.

[Looking237]

magellan,
Those are some cool pics. I had a friend that grew up in Tucson, when the great Cali migration started. Of course they all had to have pools, lawns, ect. They did every thing they could, but finally had to start raising water prices....didn't matter. In no time they had to have the water bill so high it was unreal. That was a loooong time ago..no telling what they are doing now. Water is and always has been a tough issue.

Water pipeline.... Can you imagine what the right of way costs would be alone lol. It would be cheaper to build a desalination plant right there.