Also, not to sound like sour grapes, but HANDS OFF! So much of the water shortage can be traced to unprecedented growth is the drought locations that are mainly comprised of transplants for the water-rich north…can’t have it all folks! Learn to conserve in your sunny, hot locales…I myslef live in the valley between two fresh water, brimming fill finger lakes (NY) and with the water shortages becoming the next natural resource battlefront, I’ll stay put right here, visit the warm areas when needed and enjoy my water-rich location!

Lake Michigan has hydrologic replacement time of over 100 years. That means the cumulative inflow- is very close to outflow-rate, which is why water levels fluctuate so with small changes in cloud and ice cover. Replacement time is even larger for Superior. Exporting significant water volumes from the Great Lakes would have very significant adverse consequences. It may not even be physically sustainable, depending on how big the “pipes” would be.

A pipeline over a thousand miles long, as this GL pipe would be, would require frequent pumping stations to be installed and consumer large amounts of energy to operate. The construction of such a line across multiple state and county boundaries would require extensive use of eminent domain to take property and run power lines. Consider the time that it would take to design, gain legal authorizations (think Supreme Court appeals) budget for, acquire materials, and build such a pipeline and to provide for power supplies? My guess would be on the order of 6 to 15 years for completion. This will not help in a drought emergency over the next three years.

The USA has an historical example of people responding to severe regional drought: The Dust Bowl. Listen to the music of Woody Guthrie if you want to get some idea of how it would feel to be forced to migrate to, say, Buffalo NY, with hat in hand, leaving a worthless home and saddened community behind.

There will be no GL pipeline magic bullet. Part of the answer lies in life style changes that are going to be painful to accept. Another part lies in water conservation technology and better planning.

Guess what happened once the ACOE slowed their releases and a little rain fell? Answer: The lakes began to slowly rise, although they are still quite low. Allatoona is actually at what is termed “full winter pool”.

So demand isn’t the real problem when supply is managed well and is seen at normal levels.

Pretty much the only things that could be done are taking up arms, economic sanctions or U.N sanction (which the U.S. would of course veto). Other than international uproar, there isn’t much that could happen. Hypothetical of course - at least in Georgia’s case. If we were going to pipe water in, there would be closer places to get it from.

Leave the water in the Great Lakes and find REAL solutions. Someone in Phoenix once told me that the water would be used SOMEWHERE, so why does it matter if they choose to pipe it to the desert and use it there? Watching a golf course in Phoenix a few months ago watering its greens in the middle of the day, imagining how much evaporates into the air in the desert vs. providing for the grass, his argument seemed really… dumb… to me. Using the water near it’s source, your effluent goes back into the local system, making it more sustainable. Piping it for use far away hurts both locations in different ways.