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

California agriculture is the single biggest user of water from the Colorado River and Lake Mead. A solar-powered desalination plant should be built in Live Oak Springs, California, at the high elevation point between San Diego and the farms of the Imperial Valley. This desalinated water would largely, if not entirely, replace the huge amount of water the Imperial Valley takes from the Colorado River.

This would result in that amount of water remaining in Lake Mead for the benefit of the other Southwestern states. They should, therefore, proportionately share in the cost of building this plant.

The cost to operate this plant would be low, as it would be solar-powered. The brine returned to the sea can easily be diluted to greatly reduce the concentrated salinity level by feeding a pipeline of ocean water into the brine pipe just before it flows into the sea. The cost of electricity to pump sea water uphill to the plant is a small price to pay, and the brine returned to the ocean and the desalinated water to the Imperial Valley would run downhill by gravity.

Or we can wait and watch as Lake Mead evaporates into a dead pool.