Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
^ the problem in Chicago is that the land here is so unrelentingly flat, that there's no good place to put it. The city was built on a former marsh, and that's still kinda what it wants to be.
Hence TARP, the multi-decade, multi-billion dollar tunnel and reservoir program to channel and store excess rainwater underground and into old rock quarries, where it can be treated and slowly released back into area water ways.
And we have no need to do anything "useful" with the water as there's no elevation change to do any kind of power generation, and 20% of the world's surface freshwater is already in our front yard.
|
You’re definitely right. Chicago may not have anything “useful” to do with the water, but the country sure as hell needs it (I’m sure you’ve noticed the amount of news stories the last few years relating to federal water management policy) and the world could do with sequestration of excess rainfall and glacial melt other than letting it cause rising seas. An entire national water management network
could be constructed on the extant foundations of the WPA era water works projects consisting of:
• new and improved reservoirs to detain and redistribute stormwater for the purpose of preventing it from even reaching the sea;
• national system of pipelines on the scale of the original interstate system to transfer water from one area to another for agricultural, industrial, municipal, and other use;
• national system of desalination plants to pump water out of a rising sea and into the national pipeline system for our use.
For Democrats: a real solution to a major problem inherent in global warming;
For Republicans: endless ways to monetize the system via agricultural and industrial client use;
For All: jobs … and an endless water supply for our entire geography.
Leverage sea level rise for our national and collective gain.
Threaded Mode