Water Sharing

In the United States and surely other countries, there is a problem with the balance of the element water that is making the news fairly often. In the states, the northeast is flooding, the south and west is dry, and even Texas is overcome with fire. Does this make sense, or is the obvious connection lost on the public?

If there is an imbalance of resources, then the solution rests on creating an exchange that leads to a balance. Currently the situation has people living a completely reactive life to the changes. Water overflows and destroys parts of regions with an overabundance of the liquid, while other areas could use the excess quantities to counter natural instances of drought and heat. Rather than wishing or praying for rain to save each by moving to the other areas, a more permanent solution would be water exchange.

Imagine a pipeline that connections the rain saturated areas with other regions. Oil and gas are piped to other locations, so pipelines are already something that people are used to seeing. Rather than national aqueducts that would be very visible and lose the water through evaporation, water pipelines would carry excess water siphoned through natural flow and swollen streams and rivers and carry it with gravity to areas of storage or pumping stations. Water can be moved from these locations further south or to the west, though it would be more logical to go with the flow of natural geography in order to eliminate unneeded energy use. Water in these pipelines is untreated and hardly filtered until it reaches a treatment facility or transport station.

When water arrives at its destination, it can be filtered for residential use, or allowed to flow naturally into irrigation lines or stored directly in aquifer recharge stations for future use. Since all of these pipelines are only flowing in cases of high water in source areas, no water will be stolen from normal situations and directed from the regions without consideration for natural balance. However, taking excess from one region and giving it to higher need areas would be immensely helpful. Just imagine this year of 2011. In the heavy floods of the spring with the Mississippi, and summer floods with hurricane Irene and tropical storm Lee, Texas would not be as dry for fires. The troublesome quantities of water could be lessened to an extent in the flood prone areas as well, and there would be less to worry about since flood correction happens naturally.

There is no need to suffer over nature, just a need to be smart enough to use it to the best advantage.