CONCLUSION - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 299

These dueling visions have pitted some of the nation's leading water experts against
one another, especially in the West, where hydro-politics has been described as “ a blood
sport . ” But the debate is more complex than headlines about “cities versus farms” or
“concrete versus fish” would lead you to believe.
Today's water arguments reflect a growing unease about how to proceed when old
certainties are being pushed aside and new options seem limited or unappealing. But
the stark warnings implicit in Wisconsin's poisoned wells, the intersex and dying fish of
Chesapeake Bay, Lake Mead's record-low waterline, the decay of levees across the coun-
try, and the resource war in Alaska's Bristol Bay, cannot be ignored.
THE HARD PATH, AND THE SOFT
In January 2010, Pat Mulroy , the celebrated water manager of Las Vegas, suggested that
President Obama consider a plan that would solve the riddle of water supply for the en-
tire nation with one deft move. In 2008, she had tried the idea out on me: “We need to
look at the really big picture. The West is growing drier. The Midwest is growing wetter.
We've ignored our infrastructure for decades. But why can't floodwaters in one part of
the country be used as a water supply in another part of the country, through a series of
exchanges?”
Water mavens have been asking this kind of question for years. If we can move oil
from northern Alaska to Southern California, then why not move water from the Mis-
sissippi to the desert West?
Mulroy proposed dusting off a decades-old plan to collect surplus flood-water from
the Mississippi River and export it to dry regions in the West. “If the West is growing
drier and the Midwest is growing wetter, I see that as an opportunity,” she said. One
scenario envisions piping excess Mississippi water to recharge the Ogallala Aquifer.
Another plan is to use the relatively plentiful water from the East to sate Denver and
farmers on the Front Range, which would free them from pumping water across the
Continental Divide, allowing more water to remain in the Colorado River for use by the
basin states, Indian tribes, and Mexico. Mulroy believes that such massive water trans-
fers would launch a cascade of smaller water projects across the country, creating jobs,
stimulating the economy, providing water security for millions, and “making an invest-
ment in the future”—just as the building of the interstate highway system did in the
1950s.
Known as Flipping the Mississippi, the project would be the largest water diversion
in American history. Like a twenty-first-century version of the national effort to send
men to the moon, it would take thousands of workers at least a decade to build; it would