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Pumping Mississippi River water west: solution or dream?

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Waves of torrential rainfall drenched California into the new year. Snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada Mountains have swelled to more than 200% their normal size, and snowfall across the rest of the Colorado River Basin is trending above average, too.

While the much-needed water has improved conditions in the parched West, experts warn against claiming victory. About 60% of the region remains in some form of drought, continuing a decades-long spiral into water scarcity.

“The drought is so critical that this recent rainfall is a little like finding a $20 bill when you’ve lost your job and you’re being evicted from your house,” said Rhett Larson, an Arizona State University professor of water law.

Over the years, a proposed solution has come up again and again: large-scale river diversions, including pumping Mississippi River water to the parched west.

Just this past summer, the idea caused a firestorm of letters to the editor at a California newspaper. But interest spans deeper than that. Most recently, the Arizona state legislature passed a measure in 2021 urging Congress to investigate pumping flood water from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River to bolster its flow.

Studies and modern-day engineering have proven that such projects are possible but would require decades of construction and billions of dollars. Politics are an even bigger obstacle for making multi-state pipelines a reality. Yet their persistence in the public sphere illustrates the growing desperation of Western states to dig themselves out of droughts.

“We can move water, and we’ve proven our desire to do it. I think it would be foolhardy to dismiss it as not feasible,” said Richard Rood, professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan. “But we need to know a lot more about it than we currently do.”

Formal large-scale water importation proposals have existed in the United States since at least the 1960s, when an American company devised the North American Water and Power Alliance to redistribute Alaskan water across the continent using reservoirs and canals. Widespread interest in the plan eventually fizzled.

Stories of similar projects often share the same ending, from proposals in Iowa and Minnesota to those between Canada and the United States. Yet some smaller-scale projects have become reality.

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