1983 was our wettest year for a long time; water was so high that they built a temporary wooden structure four feet tall at the top of Glen Canyon Dam to keep it from overflowing. As the water neared the top of the reservoir, engineers had to open the dam’s massive spillway tunnels. However, the rushing water caused a phenomenon known as cavitation—where micro-bubbles imploded with enough force to punch massive, house-sized holes into the concrete and surrounding sandstone. This is how we know we’re in trouble when we reach a Deadpool: we can’t even open these pipes at the bottom of the dam because I think there’s too much silt in front of the dam and that’s why it’s cavitating the pipes (along with air bubbles).
It’s going to cost billions to drill a bypass on both dams just to keep the Colorado River flowing. I like eating fresh food and we need to make sure California gets this water. It’s a holy **** moment. I read that they miscalculated the flow of the Colorado River in 1910 and 1920 and they apportioned something like 16 billion acre-feet when really the river only flows 12 billion acre-feet in a good year. Everyone keeps saying, “Well, Vegas is toast”, but I read they added the straw deep enough to pull water when both dams are no longer functioning and we just have a river flowing through instead. Vegas also blows away every other city as far as how little water they really use in comparison to other similar-sized cities in the West.
I know it sounds like pure insanity, but I am in favor of using a straw to suck water from the Mississippi River and pump it over the Continental Divide. If China can do such massive-scale projects, so can we. I’m sure it has huge consequences but I don’t understand what to do with the West right now.