Mississippi River Flood Pipeline into Arkansas River and OK Cimmarron River

Even if it was feasible to build a pipeline and pump the water into a different watershed, I doubt anyone would want it.

The Mississippi is heavily laden with silt, fecal coliform, zinc, mercury, lead, organic solvents, and various agricultural pollutants (in fact, I understand that remnants of the long ago banned DDT can still be found in the water).

In the news about the recent flooding in Memphis, they warned not to into the water due to the heavy amount of contaminants!

According to this report done in cooperation with the LSU Agricultural Department the river quality is much cleaner than it was a couple decades a go. The DDT is found only in river sediments and is below EPA limits, as are most other contaminants. Not that it is pristine by any means, and the quality of the lower portion of the river remains a huge concern, but it is improving.

http://www.seagrantfish.lsu.edu/pdfs/missriver_waterquality.pdf

Considering that billions of dollars of damage occur when the river overflows its banks, and that billions of dollars are being spent on various techniques now to divert the river one way or another, the idea of diverting some of the water into other rivers seems like a project worth some consideration. The diversion could begin far upstream where the water quality is reasonably good and where a diversion could minimize flooding downstream. It would be a long-term project that would be expensive. But it might alleviate flooding in one part of the country and aid in drought relief in another part.

Thanks for the schooling... My knowledge is apparently outdated and I stand corrected.

The higher speed in the river when levels are high does "clean" the bottom.

So the water which is now flowing in the Mississipi is higher contaminated.

This is a known fenomenon and after all it is OK as the total contamination of the sediments will go down due these incidents.

Well I looked in Farming magazines for their favorite Natural way of absorbing contaminants in dirty water a long time ago.There is a plant that they grow in ponds , a water filtering water garden variety.The Rivers run through these grasses as well .If wildlife uses it ....Filtering traps might be able to stop it from going unchecked.I believe silt could be cleaned using earth worms and turned soil techniques.Once its scooped up and placed away from the waters.

Tunnel digging using ancient stacked up rock wall techniques instead of aqua ducts seemed to be working in Africa as the African man mentioned., they flood every year .

First of all, I'm not in the pipeline business. However I do know how much water is flowing down the Mississippi River.

My reaction to this is it would be like trying to empty your swimming pool with a garden hose.

[Edit] And I agree with CI in post #1.

That explains why it took opening so many floodgates downstream to alleviate some (only some) of the flooding.

With five 120" pipelines you would only capture about 2,500 cfs, the flow above avergae during the 3 day 100 year event is about 300,000 cfs. So a pipeline would only capture about less than 1%, and deliver only about 15,000 af of water over a 3 day period. Probably not much of an impact on the flooding problem. Given the water quality issues and NEPA mitigations (Treatment) required for discharging into natural waterways that have less polluted water (sediemnts and temperature are pollution also) with different water qualities. This would accrue significant cost for someone to pay.

Maybe it would be better (more cost effective) if cities and counties just didn't allow building in a flood zone. Maybe the federal government could do like California or the USEPA does, restrict federal funding to those communities that do not comply. California law restricts State water funds to agencies that do not maintain management plans that demonstrate certain requirements are met, or to agencies that do not monitor groundwater in their basins, etc.. Don't pay any form of disaster relief to any agencies/communities that allow development below the 100 year flood stage (or take precautions such as all structure being at least 1 foot above 100 year flood stage and accessible, definitely not levees as protection or other temporary solutions).

Anything is possible, but there are a couple of constraints that impede feasibility of what you suggest.

Firstly, "Who is going to pay?" The water has already determined the watersheds and the system would need to use significant energy (cost) to move the water "up" and over the intervening terrain and related distance to the other watershed. Yes, irrigators around the world do move water significant distances.

Secondly, who is going to hold the necessary infrastructure "just in case" such an event happens, like once in a decade. The idea would require multiple pipelines, each VERY large to have any significant impact.

Next, the regulatory expectations before such a process could be mobilised (with correct concerns) would take MONTHS, considering the environmental impact of the sudden increase of flow in the receiving system and potential transfer of "pest" organisms from one system to another.

There are far more urgent social and societal issues than temporary inconvenience caused by flooding of land that is within the watershed.

When communities build on a flood plain, it should be realised the water network is what caused that feature of the landscape. Water has been there before, it will (occasionally) expect to be back there again.

As for the drought, in Aus there has been a saying (I'll Americanise it for the readers.) "We really have 53 states, the land is so large that there is always somewhere in a "state of drought"."

pssst.... America actually has 50 states, so I think your Americanized Aussie-ism would say 51 states

I haven't a clue of how many states you have. 8??

Surely you also have "The state of depression" (Currently larger than any time previous in your history) and "State of the art" (Being the world leaders in innovation).

Ah. Okay, you got me. 53 it is!

Bear in mind that to get to the Arkansas, Cimmarron and Canadian Rivers, you'll need to move water uphill from the Mississippi. Also, if my recollection is correct, all the above rivers drain into the Mississippi.

Reminds me of a city near where I grew up that had the idea of digging a playa lake deeper and using the dirt as fill to allow development of land created on what was previously part of the lake. Then, they decided to handle storm water by pumping water from the newly deeper lake into a ditch - which just happened to drain back into the lake they were pumping it out of..........

Yep, everything that everyone above said. But probably the single biggest obstacle, of all those mentioned, would be the environmental impact of contaminating one ecosystem with critters and cooties from another ecosystem. Especially on such a massive scale. There are environmentalists that would lay down their life before they allowed that to happen.

I think you may be on to something, but rather than thinking big, maybe thinking smaller................way smaller.

How about this. Rather than trying to deal with the excess water once it gets into the river, start way upstream and dig holding ponds to hold excess rainwater before it reaches the river. This would include along tributaries, and each state along the length of the river would dig some.

Just a thought........................seems like digging a couple of hundred big holding ponds would be a lot cheaper and easier than trying to deal with the water once it's in the river. Maybe.

Just impose rain water collection and usage on private properties.

It's how it is solved over here: we need to have a rain water collector of a certain size depending the size of your roof. Recent houses are imposed to use it to flush toilets.

This way the rain water is stored in reasonable quantities locally (thousands of "ponds") and released slowly in the environment.

Another benefit is that you don't need to use potable water to flush toilets, taking down the stress on the distribution system.

Another action taken the last decade is to give the small rivers back their natural trajectory and shape, swirling through the fields, having the ability to flood the fields before pushing all this water in the main river. This even implicated the creation of marshland where needed.

This is of coarse only possible in rural areas where there is space.

But even in cities well designed sewers don't bring the water as fast as possible to the treatment plants but do take their time, having the ability and size to collect.

Sounds like good thinking over there.

Even going with the ponds would be a massive task. The Mississippi is a very large river. But, you're right, the more water collected, the less goes into the river. When the big rains come through, I suspect, but not positive, that much of the water that ends up in the river comes from roads and parking lots that are allowed to feed into ever smaller tributaries to the main river.

Here in NC many places don't have drainage, so shopping centers, etc., are required to have their own storage ponds. Parking lots are built to drain into them.

The continent used to be covered by forest and marsh that acted as sponges and regulated the flow of water. The water peaks were absorbed much more than today and were slowly released to minimize droughts.

We have cut the forest and dried the march to build cities and farms. Now we cry when they get flooded and ask all the others to pay for it. Even the ones who built in the mountains to avoid being flooded are forced to pay.

The ants have to feed the grass hoppers once again... Google "Fables de LaFontaine" if you don't understand.

A pipeline would be a drop in the ocean. Over here we drilled a 45 km by about 5 to 6 m diameter tunnel to divert the water from one catchment to the next. Then used about 200km of natural channels to get the water where it was needed.

The tunnel boring machine(s) was left there because it is impossible to revers it back after the lining was placed. (it might be available provided that you dig it out yourselves - (almost new because much of the rock is sandstone)

If we're talking about pipelines to redistribute waters, let's talk about redistributing the Mississippi into the south west, from Texas to California, where they experience the worst dry areas in the US and the largest growing populations and agriculture areas.

Interesting, but totally impractical and it would have nothing to do with flood control.

You should know that.

I also wanted to add that the Death Valley CA. could be pipelined to hold sea water. It might bring the cool air back to the ski areas,That could not get their water from snow this year.yet might be able to clean the salt water for fresher great lake water in a drought emergency.ds

Similar was tried a number of years ago. It is called the Salton Sea and is now utterly devoid of life as the water is so saline that little or nothing can survive there. Add highly-polluted water, and it is just an open cesspool.

Why would anyone wish to spoil a pristine desert? It is illustrative of the idea that many have that deserts are wastelands due to their ignorance of the wonders a desert really holds.

It demonstrates to me that once the water is in there it must be stirred and i want to find out if adding gelly fish would put energy into the water.Id like to see how that wave machine invention would. apply to Dead Sea water and find out if. New tides control the spheres.and to grow Rainforests where deserts once were removing ever growing landfill waste from populated cities to make mountain ranges on one strip of desert .Its an upgrade project for the area ,Pristine desert???.What happened to the original vegetation.drought resistant vegetation only.

What have you been smoking?