How does the United States solve the problem of drought and water shortage in the west?

There is a water diversion project. In California, the most famous is probably the California Aqueduct, a state water conservancy project built in the 1950s and 1960s.

This canal is California's "South-to-North Water Diversion Project", which started in the San Francisco Bay Area and sent water from northern Canada to southern Canada. The most striking feature of the spatial distribution of water resources in California is that there are more in the north and less in the south.

Maybe you don't know about the water shortage in southern California. Take Los Angeles as an example. In the past ten years, the average annual precipitation in urban areas was only 257mm. This level is only half that of Beijing and equivalent to Baotou City in Inner Mongolia. This kind of precipitation simply can't support the population of10 million in greater los angeles area. In fact, the natural rivers in central and southern California have basically disappeared as early as the middle of last century. After World War II, in order to cope with the economic prosperity and the surge of immigrants, the California government launched the state water resources project. The canal in California is 640 kilometers long (compared with the eastern route of South-to-North Water Transfer Project, the length is 1 150 kilometers). It has two main functions: one is to supply water to farms in the central valley; The second is to supply water to greater los angeles area. It is worth mentioning that although the climate is dry, the land in the central valley of California is extremely fertile. It uses 65,438+0% of the agricultural land in the United States to produce 65,438+04% of the crop value, directly putting California on the top of the agricultural state in the United States. If you see a canal similar to the one below or a huge gray-white pipeline when expressway crosses California on the 5th, it is part of the California Canal Project.

However, California is not Ma Pingchuan. For example, if you enter downtown Los Angeles from the Central Valley, you will be blocked by Tehachabi Mountain at an altitude of 1000 meters. When it is necessary to climb a mountain, the California government will use a very violent giant water pump project. At Edmonton Pumped Power Station, the entire canal was raised by 665,438+00 meters, which is the highest record in the world.

They are called pump power plants because, on the one hand, they use motors to pump water to the mountains, and on the other hand, they use the water below the mountains to generate electricity and recover energy. For Los Angeles, it is not enough to rely solely on this water source. In addition to the California Canal, the main water sources in the Los Angeles Basin are the Los Angeles Canal and the Colorado River Canal.

Los Angeles Canal is a water conservancy project built by the city of Los Angeles. Its water source mainly comes from Owens Canyon in the eastern Sierra Nevada. The Colorado River Canal leads from the Colorado River in the neighboring state. It is worth mentioning that the Colorado River Canal provides almost all the water sources in San Diego, which can be said to have bred the internationally renowned San Diego Agricultural Company and their star product-Jin Kela Fertilizer.