What President Trump Can Do With The American System 2.0 - Flipbook - Page 24
The largest challenges NAWAPA faces are the ing and improving the water cycle. It’s taking
need for an agreement with Canada and the fresh water that is already running o昀昀 into the
intense environmentalist opposition. At this ocean, and redirecting a portion of it throughpoint in time, the original 1960s NAWAPA de- out the Southwest, where it can generate useful
sign should be taken as
biological and economic
a reference point, and
activity before returning
The rate of groundwater depletion
the possible variations
to the ocean to begin the
should be investigated, to
cycle again. This could
throughout the Great Plains and the
either expand the overall
potentially increase the
West is nearly comparable to having
project or streamline it
biospheric productivity
a second Colorado River flowing out
to focus solely on United
of the entire continent by
of the ground—meaning this region is up to 10 percent.3
States territories (perhaps
using piping through
The second initiative
already in need of a second Colorado
Canadian
territories).
to address the western
River just to break even in terms of
Radical environmentalwater crisis is large-scale
water use (not accounting for growth).
ist regulations blocking
desalination to produce
or impeding large-scale
fresh water from ocean
water projects simply need to be eliminated. water. This is already being done elsewhere in
Whatever form it would take, a project to bal- the world, with the largest desalination plants
ance northwestern water abundance with being in Saudi Arabia and Israel. In Califorsouthwestern water de昀椀cits isn’t stealing from nia, the greater San Francisco Bay Area and the
a 昀椀nite supply of water, it’s merely augment- greater Los Angeles area account for two thirds
of total urban water use in the state. To
provide the entirety of these coastal
urban water needs from ocean water
would require less than two dozen desalination plants the size of Israel’s largest plant, the Sorek (for comparison,
California has more than 1,500 electric
power plants). Being close to California’s allocation of the Colorado River,
this alone would be a signi昀椀cant step to
reducing the demand on inland water
supplies from the Colorado, San Joaquin, Sacramento, and other rivers.
That’s just an initial example of what
can be done. Desalination plants could
be built with systems to pump the water further inland providing the freshwater requirements for non-coastal
states. Again using Israel’s Sorek desalination plant as a reference, 16 plants
would match Arizona’s allocation of the
Colorado River, 10 would match Utah’s
El Prat reverse osmosis desalination plant near Barcelona,
Catalonia. Image credit: James Grellier (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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3. This is assuming the new water is used at the
same biospheric productivity level as the existing water supplies in the Southwest. See Deniston, Benjamin, “Solve the World Water Crisis,”
Executive Intelligence Review, Volume 42, Number
5, January 30, 2015.
What President Trump Can Do With the American System 2.0
