Pipe dreams

Phoenix is thinking about building a $5 billion desalination plant and pipeline to bring water from the Sea of Cortez to the Sonoran Desert.

Maybe it’s a good idea, but from what I’ve heard, it’s shitty execution.

A pipeline through Organ Pipe National forest — fucking stupid. 

I solved this problem 5 years ago in my draft to produce clean energy, desalinate water and save the Salton Sea. Of course, no one listened to me. Now they are not likely to get Mexico to agree to desalinate sea water because the leftover super salty seawater just gets dumped back into their beaches.

Extra hot and salty water is no way to protect a tourist location.

But my idea was to carry that crappy water to the middle of the desert in California and dump it in the same hole that flooded in 1905 — that’s right — fill the Salton Sea with oversalted sea water. If the Mexicans want to raise the level of Laguna Salada, they can do that too.

Instead of reverse osmosis to turn the ocean into drinking water, use solar power to heat salt to hundreds of degrees. Evaporate the sea and use the steam to generate electricity. Capture the steam into freshwater and pump not to Phoenix but to the canals off the Colorado river that feed the imperial valley in California. Trade the farmers for Colorado river water that is flowing through the CAP canal that starts at Lake Havasu. 

That water already travels to Phoenix and eventually trickles on down to Tucson. But the next winter it doesn’t snow in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming (that’s right — that’s how far Phoenix has to go to get water) they may cut off the tap.

The other problem with the “Phoenix plan” for reverse osmosis and pipeline… where are you going to get the power to run the plant and pump up the pipeline?

My plan — produces cheap, clean electricity – even at night (it takes salt a long time to cool down). Notice there are no town names along my route. There are few towns. El Centro would be thrilled to see the water or solar panels to bring more power. I’m sure Mexico would appreciate cheap water and power if we could make a fair deal.

The other thing you don’t see on my black lines for future canals… hills. That area is a flat river valley and through the rift valley gets lower and lower than the Sea of Cortez. The Laguna Salada is 30 meters below sea level. The Salton Sea is 70 meters below sea level. For most of those miles, this extra salty sea water is flowing downhill. You may not even need to pump it — a few locks can lift the water over the 60-foot hill that splits the Sea of Cortez from the US/Mexican border.

A pipeline to Phoenix would have to climb more than 1200 feet (probably more to get over the few hills in-between). Take if from this fat biker — it’s much easier to go downhill than up.

Bonus, my plan would use more sea water and make a small (small, very small) dent in rising sea level — but create a blueprint for filling more unpopulated rift valleys with sea water (I’m looking at you Sahara desert in Western Africa and the below sea level lands in Western Australia).

Will my better, cheaper plan ever be put to use. Hell no.

It requires cooperation. You have to trust California to share. You have to get the Mexicans to trust Americans (they have little reason to do so). You have to trust that solar-powered plants heating salt will work on a large scale (hasn’t been done at utility level yet). But nobody thought oil could be pumped and refined at an industrial scale until the Civil War made them do it.

You have to see building up the Laguna Salada and saving the Salton Sea as worthy goals (but nobody gives a shit about poor places — even if we could make them immeasurably better). You have to see that clean cheap energy is worth the effort of trying something new. 

And worst of all. You have to try a solve the water problem before it starts killing the economy and poor people. 

But no one will really try to solve this problem until they can control all the water and power for themselves. So nothing will be done until it’s a crisis — meaning rich folks have to give up their pools or golf courses. Then they will spend $50 billion on a pipeline (and probably a natural gas electrical plant) with one billionaire controlling the tap and the price the way Elon Musk controls satellite communication through StarLink.

It will make freshwater crazy expensive, but it will probably still be relatively cheap for farmers and golf courses due to their historic water rights. It will make the Sea of Cortez a hot salty mess as they dump the refuse back into the sea. It will (once again) exploit the people’s and land of a poorer nation for the benefit of the insulated and wealthy hundreds of miles away.

So go on Phoenix with your pipe dreams. You will probably once again prove everybody wrong by doing the “impossible” and fucking up everything around you. (See Colorado River, Salt River and dried up rural towns as examples).

But it would be better if y’all just listened to me.