|
Mineral ore, wood products, food, all that stuff is purchased and shipping costs are incorporated into the cost. The resource at issue on the other thread is necessary not just for local drinking water and agriculture, but also for international shipping and some valuable fisheries, and which also supports higher property values along it's shores, not to mention the ecological value the resource represents. There is no distribution network in place to move this resource, and to build one, maintain it, and operate it would be quite expensive. I'm guessing the southwest isn't eager to pay for all this.
It might be more cost effective for those states to try some local alternatives first. Step one would be a recalculation of discharge rates with a broader historical data set, because the water rights guaranteed under older laws do not reflect recent climatic conditions. How about ranking residential uses above agricultural uses? Perhaps ordinances or laws to reduce waste, waste like lawns, golf courses, swimming pools, public fountains, and the like in the desert? Has all that been done? No? Then how could current conditions be considered a water shortage? If an arid region has enough water to waste it on evaporative loss, lawns, and golf courses, then it isn't really suffering from a shortage.
If you want a reason why this is a bad idea, beyond the financial outlay, energy cost, and all that, how about some consideration for what happens when a physically limiting factor is augmented by a fragile resource shipped in from elsewhere? More people settle in the area right up to the next physical limit until that limit is artificially breached, and then up to the next physical limit until it is breached, and so on. What happens when that augmentation of a fragile resource suddenly goes away? Disaster, if the shortage can't be filled from an alternate source. The settlement pattern in the desert is not sustainable now, we shouldn't be encouraging an increase in the settlement rate. We should be encouraging a reversal of the recent settlement rates and redistribution of the population into locales where the resource they crave is not limiting.
If you can't see how this differs from a true victim situation, I'm not sure I can help you. Arid regions are known for water shortages, they are known for droughts, and these things can be planned for in ways that an assault, an earthquake, a rape, a hurricane with subsequent abandonment by the Federal government, cannot. If the desert states and cities expect that this water will be given to them, whatever the costs to the source locales, whatever the cost to landowners who will lose property to pipelines, whatever the cost to taxpayers nationwide to construct and operate the delivery system, with the resource all flowing one way for their singular benefit, they will be disappointed, and-AND-their disappointment will make them victims of nothing more than unrealistic expectations.
|