This will start a fight. The Twin Cities envirowacko lobby is pretty powerful…
I believe the simple answer here is yes but; at what cost?
And the even larger question is would either UP or BNSF have any interest in business like this. Seems almost safe to say UP would say no but; BNSF - maybe???
The economics of the transaction would drive the reality of it coming to reality or not.
The water can be transported without any significant technological issues. How much profit is there for the Shipper, how much profit is in it for the carrier(s). How much can the Consignee afford to pay to come into possession of the water. Like anything else in the world it comes down to simple economics. Water costs money, how much do you want (or afford) to pay.
I think the impact would affect homeowners with wells and local farmers who irrigate, not just the OP’s target of hostility.
There’s no reason to… Besides we have plenty of surface water available on the Great Lakes if something like this were to happen… Don’t hold your breath…
Isn’t there a pact between all parties having a shore on the Great lakes, that stipulates the maximum amount of water each state or province may pull or divert from the Great Lakes basin?
The next question is where are you going to get the cars?
Very few are set up to haul straight water - so whatever cars you do use will have to be thoroughly cleaned, and will also then not be available for whatever they were built for.
Thirty-three cars (at 30,000 gallons per) will hold a million gallons.
There is as mutch water on this planet as there ever was, it’s not always where the demand is because we, the human race, have made decisions to locate and develope where the water supply is not able to support the life styles we desire.
Therefore those who have chosen to locate where there is not sufficient water must pay to have it made available. In California there is the solution of desalin isation from the Pacific Ocean. For Arizona the solution is more complicated.
Four out of five Great Lakes prefer Michigan. [:)]
We were discussing a company with a loop-track facility in the Southwest a few months ago, which had developed a proposal for this sort of water-train service. Is this the ‘origin end’ for that proposed service?
You would probably need fresh equipment, no matter what. Consider that water is much heavier than ethanol, diesel, crude, or even vegetable oil. So that knocks the load limit per car down to 25,000 gallons or less.
Why don’t they just fill rotary gondolas with snow and dump 'em at their destination at shut-down power plants? I know the gons have cleanout holes in the bottom, but those could be plugged or lined shut easily enough.
You’d think people thinking about railroad tech would at least remember there was an age when water was routinely carried around in carload lots with high priority … behind steam locomotives.
You’d use elastomer bladders to introduce a maintainable ‘clean surface’ lining in whatever prior-service tank cars were used. I’d probably use one of those antibiotic scams like Microban in the liner even if the water were initially intended in some proportion for industrial use (e.g. fracking). The bladders could rather easily be configured to minimize slosh even in ‘single-compartment’ tanks.
This is ingenious in its adaptive reuse. You’d use nanoinsulation in the liners for the inside of the adapted gons, and probably in reflective shielded blankets over the tops of the loads, to keep enough of the ‘cold in’ for the trip. The catch is that even in Minnesota water is in the liquid phase much of the year, so you’d need some low-cost ‘cold storage’ at the origin point, similar in principle to icehouses, where snow could be dumped in winter and then cost-effectively transferred to the trains as demand warranted.
Remember the first law of consulting, however. And its corollaries…
Apparently Minnesota owns the water and they are not going to allow it to be removed as proposed. I think that was rather predictable in the “State where nothing is allowed.” And if it were allowed to leave Minnesota, I would expect it to face a mountain of regulatory hurdles to enter California, for example.
California is cracking down on peole who need to haul water in order to live on their rual land.
https://pacificlegal.org/banning-water-hauling-is-banning-development/
Yes there is a strict agreement with Canada about diversion of Great Lakes water from the Great Lakes watershed. In my opinion parts of it are stupid such as the part where water cannot be diverted if the Great Lakes water level rises far above normal, where it is at for Lake Michigan now leading to massive shoreline erosion.
Anyways the County to the West of Milwaukee County wanted to draw lake water from Lake Michigan and it was outside of the Lake Michigan watershed. It wanted to replace it’s own city well water with Lake Michigan water (no real reason why other than they are cheap bastards). The reason given was that their city well was contaminated with Radon (which can be treated out of the water).
They went through a very lengthly application and exemption process and the Canadians insisted that the water be recycled back. So they can draw water out but they have to pump treated water (from sewage) back into the Lake to replace what they pulled out. The project of course is going to run well into the millions or tens of millions with pipelines, pump stations and treatment plants but it is apparently cheaper than treating for radon. Which this county could easily afford as an alternative to taking Lake Michigan water. They went for the cheaper method first and won approval from the Canadians.
I also think we should charge Canada a per bird tax on Canadian Geese flying into the United States and pooping everywhere. That is hardly something we should tolerate environmentally as a neighbor but we do.
They tried something like that after the Blizzard of '77 in Buffalo. Of course, the object was to get rid of the snow, not transport water for later re-use.
Unfortunately, the cold snap followed the snow-loaded cars south, so they arrived at their destinations - full of snow. People were not happy…
Speaking of water, central New York has a few billion gallons they’d rather do without.
Most creeks and rivers rapidly reached flood stage after over four inches of rain fell on already saturated ground.
Utica, NY, was particularly hard hit - to the extent that the CSX main at CP235 (east side of Utica) was completely washed out - the tracks were hanging in thin air. I heard that one locomotive set was stranded in water up to the traction motors.
Crews were running out of time, but the cab drivers couldn’t figure out how to get to them.
Many streets were closed in the surrounding area, and I heard a report on a local fire dispatch channel that there was a small house floating down a creek.
There’s a big logic hole involved in this plan. They can dig wells in Minnesota and pump the water into train cars. The train then heads for its dry destination. At some point, the trains would have to cross the Missouri River, where they could just throw in a hose and pump out all the needed water.
In the early 80’s a company called Energy Transportation Systems Incorporated was trying to build a coal slurry pipeline. The plan was to use water from the Missouri River in South Dakota to mix with pulverized coal dust to pump through a pipeline to power plants in Arkansas. Boy, did that cause some legal and political battles.
Great Lakes levels are subject to cyclical change. High now, some years ago they were very low. And surprisingly the Great Lakes’ states are a net importer of water. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it’s wise to do it. We’re slowly getting smarter in our use of natural resources.
And I’m not a tree hugger.
I’ve have read amateur proposals in local papers suggesting that the amount of water drawn from Lake Michigan by the Chicago River be increased drastically in order to lower the level of the lake. Two points are usually made to shoot down these proposals: The sheer volume of water involved to lower the lake level even only one or two inches; and what happens to levels of the Illinois and lower Mississippi Rivers when all of this extra lake water turns up.
A very reasonable proposal – provided the price be exactly what we pay at the gas pump. Someone explain the difference between pumping water out of the ground and putting it in tank cars and doing the same for oil!