On was on vacation, driving through Louisiana when I looked around me and thought: this is what the West needs: water. The ground was so saturated water was standing in farm fields. Out my rental car window a sign caught my eye: Roubion Inc. Elevation and Shoring. Behind the sign was a house built on stilts.
In fact, I saw several houses elevated above the marshy swampland.
In the distance was a levee that looked like a long, low moraine. I stopped for gas and asked the convenience store clerk about the elevated homes. She was a small middle-aged woman with a tight perm in her hair. Her Cajun accent was so strong I hardly understood her.
“No cher, after Katrina we don’t take chances. We don’t want da houses to flood.”
“You get tornadoes here too, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, dey bad.”
“I suppose people don’t build basements. I mean, to shelter in when tornadoes strike.”
“Dah wha-der levels too high for dah basement ting.”
Fortunately, in Idaho we don't get hurricanes and only on a rare occasion, a little dust buster might come along that could be termed a tornado. Southern Idaho is dry climate-wise. Lately, too dry. Years ago I read about a computer model that predicted climate change would dry out the West, but flood the eastern part of the United States. So far that prediction looks true. The Department of Agriculture’s water map for Idaho this spring shows we’re only 70-89% of normal. Which wouldn’t be so bad except we’re already experiencing an historic, multi-year drought.
The New York Times reported that the last twenty-two years have been the driest recorded in the West for a millennia.
My husband got a bird's-eye view of just how droughty our state has become a few years ago. He took a private plane trip over the Gospel Hump area of central Idaho. He asked his pilot about all the barren hilltops and bald, jutting mountains. The pilot had flown people in and out of the Frank Church Wilderness for nearly forty years. He told Dale “the Frank” wasn’t what it used to be. The terrain below the plane used to be covered with lush, green pine and fir trees. Forest fires brought on by drought and lightning strikes had ravaged the area.
Yes, it’s too dry in Idaho and too wet here along the Gulf Coast. Driving past Biloxi, Mississippi and Mobile Alabama I spotted the silhouettes of oil riggings far out in the water. Apparently, there are 1900 off-shore drilling platforms in the Gulf. How ironic. Part of the reason for the Gulf States climate problem is standing within sight of their coastline: the petroleum being pumped from the ocean floor. I sighed considering my own carbon footprint on this road trip. And gas prices are through the roof. Whether I like to admit it or not, I’m as oil-dependent as the next person. But could there be a solution for the drowning East and arid West?
Actually, I heard an idea from a friend of mine. His big suggestion was that we build a pipeline to ferry water from the East to the West. “It’s perfect! It would help both sides of the country!” he said.
Though the idea has appeal, one Arizona Republic columnist cautioned that creating an interstate water pipeline was probably only a “pipe dream.” He cited the cost and time it would take to build the pipeline, not to mention the politics of such an undertaking. Others, like the writers for FastCompany.com, agreed with my friend that a water pipeline would be a challenge.
FastCompany said America doesn’t have a water problem, but a distribution problem.
Yet, repurposing old oil pipelines and turning them into water pipelines might help mitigate some of the worst effects of climate change for both halves of the country.
Abruptly, my rental car’s GPS announced “Welcome to Florida!” and as if in response, a white crane rose from the swampy landscape. Technology and nature: maybe there is a way they can both work together.
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