LETTER: Here’s an idea to help preserve Lake Mead

California agriculture is the azygous biggest idiosyncratic of h2o from the Colorado River and Lake Mead. A solar-powered desalination works should beryllium built successful Live Oak Springs, California, astatine the precocious elevation constituent betwixt San Diego and the farms of the Imperial Valley. This desalinated h2o would largely, if not entirely, regenerate the immense magnitude of h2o the Imperial Valley takes from the Colorado River.

This would effect successful that magnitude of h2o remaining successful Lake Mead for the payment of the different Southwestern states. They should, therefore, proportionately stock successful the outgo of gathering this plant.

The outgo to run this works would beryllium low, arsenic it would beryllium solar-powered. The brine returned to the oversea tin easy beryllium diluted to greatly trim the concentrated salinity level by feeding a pipeline of water h2o into the brine tube conscionable earlier it flows into the sea. The outgo of energy to pump oversea h2o uphill to the works is simply a tiny terms to pay, and the brine returned to the water and the desalinated h2o to the Imperial Valley would tally downhill by gravity.

Or we tin hold and ticker arsenic Lake Mead evaporates into a dormant pool.