When it comes to water in the West, is any idea too crazy? by
Allen Best Let’s go to the fun stuff first about augmenting
water supplies in the Colorado River Basin. The U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation seemingly blew the dust off of every bar-napkin idea
on the shelf late last year in assessing options for matching
supply and demand in the next 50 years. Tow icebergs from
Alaska? Pilfer from a tributary of the Yellowstone River in
Wyoming? Or, even sneak water from the Snake, boring a 6-mile
tunnel from a reservoir near Jackson Hole to the Green River?
While it’s sure to make Idaho’s spud farmers cranky, it would
help Tucson, Los Angeles and that parched paradigm of calculated
risk, Las Vegas. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and everybody
else with a megaphone has carefully branded these ideas as
improbable or worse. Only slightly more credible is the idea of
a pipeline from the Mississippi River. It could originate near
Memphis, traverse 1,040 miles and, if reaching Castle Rock, rise
6,000 feet in elevation. Pumpi