Is Any Idea Too Crazy Notes

• <ul> <P>ideas: Tow icebergs from Alaska, tap a Yellowstone tributary river in Wyoming, 6-mile tunnel from near Jackson Hole to Green River


• pipeline from Memphis/Mississippi River 1040 miles to Castle Rock, 6k ft rive in enevation, 800MW of electricity per day (a little more than the Comanche 3 power plant in Pueblo produce)


• 450k-600k-ac ft annually from Mississippi river to Las Vegas, would replace diversions from Grand Lake/Aspen, $2400 per ac-ft,


• S. Nevada is desperate, they paid citizens $183 million to replace lawns with native vegetation, gravel; boring tunnel to Lake Mead incase reservoir goes dry, costing $817 million,


• Colorado has not reached the Pacific since late 1990s, water from CO goes to much of the agriculture/40 mil people,


• CO basin provides for Cheyenne, Alburquerque, Salt Lake, Los Angeles, San Diego,


• Artificial insemination of clouds is identified by the Colorado River study as one of the cheapest, best-proven techniques for augmenting water supplies. Seeding of cold, wet clouds with silver iodide and other agents has been shown by repeated studies to augment snowfall.


• Ski areas, cities, and water districts in Colorado are already betting nearly $1 million a year that the cloud-seeding process works


• Los Angeles estimates it costs $10 to $40 per acre-foot to produce water by seeding clouds. The Colorado River study calculates $30 to $60.


• desalination, where costs range from $600 for groundwater near Yuma, Ariz., to $2,100 for water from the Gulf of California.


• Across the Colorado River Basin, 70 percent of all water goes to farms and ranches. In Colorado, it's around 90 percent. Efforts have been underway for decades to transfer water from farms to cities, and the results have sometimes been painful. Ed Smith, a farmer from Blythe, Calif., admitted he was nervous about changes identified in the Colorado River study when he spoke on a panel at a water conference in Las Vegas in December. "The low-hanging fruit (of efficiency) has been picked already," he said.


• Right now, most of our water is used to grow grass or corn, basically to create concentrated protein in the form of cattle


• can we afford such strong meat-based diets in the next 50 years? Even frontier cowboys ate plenty of beans.


• That $2,400 per acre-foot to divert the Mississippi River to Colorado sounds outlandish, but consider what my local Costco sells. Through Kirkland, the house brand for water, and Arrowhead, we currently import water from California - and at a cost of $344,895 per acre-foot for the cheaper of the two brands. If California can get that much for its water, maybe towing icebergs isn't so crazy after all. [yup, money can solve all the problems...]