Has anyone ever given any thought to trying to capture all the floodwaters that seem to be increasing lately, and moving them to the more drought affected areas?
How would you move all that water? A fleet of water trucks carrying thousands of gallons (barely a dent)? A series of pipes across hundreds/thousands of miles? Who’s going to pay for it? And then you get into the problem of not actually knowing when/where a flood is going to hit. Yes, there’s flood zones, but a pipe route is going to be very specific, I doubt you could just pick it up and move it wherever. Maybe something would be done for a long-term problem to alleviate an already permanently flooded area, but it seems like such a massively expensive undertaking, I’m not sure anyone would be willing to do it.
Here’s my half baked response.
They can pipeline oil over thousands of miles.
Why can’t they pipeline water?
Oh shit. I think Nestlé heard me and all of our money goes to blowing up Palestinians, not giving drinkable water to Flint.
Disregard please.
You can, they are called canals. Look at the Nile delta and the network of irrigation trenches used to spread water from the river to the wider areas. There are a number of dam projects in Africa which are all about managing water flows.
The principle problem is when your divert water it’s usually at a cost to another area that was using it.
Why can’t they pipeline water?
Physically there’s no issue. But oil goes from one specific spot (where it’s located) to another specific spot (where it’s refined). Floods and droughts are a little more random. So you’re setting up massive infrastructure for sporadic use going from one random point to another. And all this doesn’t generate money. Maybe it could save money, but bean counters don’t care about that.
And there is my tidbit about blowing up Palestinians instead of ensuring Americans have potable water.
Yeah logistics would be a tall hill to climb, but onsite storage could maybe simplify it a bit. Like an under ground tank fed by things like storm drains?