LETTER: How to solve the Southwest’s water problem
In his Feb. 21 letter, Russell Boyd pointed out Nevada’s serious water predicament. Because we can’t eliminate the population to make more water available to each of us, we have ony one solution: Bring more water to the population.
In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower saw a need to connect states with a nationwide public transportation system, leading to the interstate highway system. I propose we use all these trillions of dollars that government currently spends on pork projects and form an interstate water system to transfer water via piping from regions with abundant groundwater, vast amounts of rainfall or flooding. The Mississippi River usually floods its banks every year, inundating millions of acres in Iowa, Illinois and other states.
So far, we’ve tried to solve water issues through myriad restrictions. But the severe drought is overpowering these attempts. We already transport gasoline via interstate piping. We can do the same with water. All we need is the resolve of our government to undertake such a project.