American Spring- I've been thinking about this for years. We have huge problems right now with economic stagnation in America, a decaying infrastructure, a disappearing workforce and global climate change, just to cover a few of the ills. I've got this big idea. There's a valley in N. California that was drained by the first aqueduct that runs North to South, delivering water to L.A. It was the source of terrible dust problems for many years, until L.A. County was forced to keep it covered in a thin layer of water. That costs millions of dollars every year, and produces nothing. When the bottom was exposed, an interesting thing to be found there was large salt crystals. I'm not an engineer of any kind, but this implies to me that the lake was not connected to any other ground water source, else the salt content would be much lower, and would remain diluted enough to prevent the formation of the crystals. With that in mind, my big idea is this: We should build a pipeline from the coast that uses solar and wind energy to move sea water up to that evacuated basin. Fill it up, to create an inland sea. Once there, the idea would be to desalinate the water, through the use of a system that uses Sterling engines to control the flow and level of water. This type of desal process actually produces slightly more energy than it uses. It requires a lot of land, but there is a lot of land up there that is otherwise not being used. This project would enable the establishment of all kinds of incidental operations. Along the route, between the sea and the lake, there could be fish farms for the inland production of sea food, as well as all around the lake, and in the lake itself. The solids that result from the desal process could be refined to extract the useful minerals and other stuff. Part of the water use could be dedicated to perfecting the production of algae as a fuel source. This public works project would have the same effect on American employment as the things that were done to help end our last depression. That time, it resulted in the building of the Hoover Dam, and much of our road system. This time, it would result in the creation of a new economic resource all along the route of the pipeline, with permanent and sustainable jobs throughout the whole system. It would establish a new kind of exploration and exploitation system for the existing energy companies who are currently vested in fossil fuels. They could search out other places where it would be viable to establish inland seas, like Australia and Africa, and make an industry of doing this. The net result would be a gradual increase of arable land all over the world, with new town sites and jobs in industries that wean us away from destructive energy sources. So there's my big idea. With the brains we have on this board, we should be able to hash it out, and present it as the plan that saves mankind....
