May 4: Reading the Holy Bible in a year.

Luke 7:24-50, Luke 7.  Jesus stated about John the Baptist: “Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” Jesus was later anointed by a sinful woman, and Jesus forgave her with these words: “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”

2 Samuel 9. Saul’s remaining son, Mephibosheth was paralyzed in both feet. David showed kindness and invited him to be part of David’s household.

2 Samuel 10. David defeated the Ammonites and when they fled David defeated the Arameans (Syrians).

2 Samuel 11 is very important, it tells of the adultery of David with Bathsheba, and how he had her husband Uriah killed in battle to cover it up. This displeased God.

May 3: Reading the Holy Bible in a year.

Luke 7:1-23. Jesus praised the Centurion’s faith and  raised a widow’s son back to life in the town of Nain. Meanwhile John the Baptist sent two of his disciples to Jesus to ask if Jesus was “the one”. After all, John the Baptist was put in prison and his future looked bleak.

in 2 Samuel 7 God established the covenant with David. The writer also recorded David’s Prayer of Thanksgiving.

In Samuel 8 is recorded of how David’s Kingdom expanded. The chapter also lists David’s Officials.

May 2: Reading the Holy Bible in a year.

Luke 6:17-49. Luke recorded a shorter version of the Beatitudes than is found in the gospel of Matthew. Jesus added: Love your enemies, do not judge, a tree is known by its fruit, and finally he told the parable of the foolish and the wise builder.

2 Samuel 4 records how Saul’s son Ish-Bosheth was murdered.

2 Samuel 5. David consolidated power and reigned over all Israel and captured Jerusalem. After Jerusalem was established as the City of David the Philistines were defeated.

In 2 Samuel 6 the Ark was brought to Jerusalem.

The ballad of Ira Hayes and the Transcontinental aqueduct.

165 years ago Mark Twain coined the phrase: Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over. So it was for the Pima Indians in the Phoenix valley in Arizona.

They had built a very intricate but functioning set of canals, unequaled in the Southwest America. Around the Salt River and the Gila river.

Then the white men came and took the water rights. Let Johnny Cash tell about one of the Pima Indians in the form of a ballad:

It was soo good. Listen to it again without the distraction of all the text and let it sink in.

Yes, the land is just as dry, even drier as Maricopa County was the fastest growing county in U.S. in the last decade. Even the aquifers are starting to run dry. And Lake Mead can no longer supply enough water for the Central Arizona Project aqueduct. More than anything the Indians need to have their water rights restored, so they can again be a functional society. These are the reparations they need.

To this end may I propose: The TransContinental Aqueduct. A realistic way to save Lake Mead and reverse the desertification of the American SouthWest.

May 1: Reading the Holy Bible in a year.

Luke

6:1-16. Jesus showed he is the Lord of the Sabbath and showed it by healing a man with a shriveled hand on the Sabbath. Then Jesus called the twelve Apostles.

2 Samuel 1. After David got the report of Saul’s death he lamented of the death of Saul and his son, known as the Song of the Bow.

In 2 Samuel 2 David was anointed King of Judah, and Ishboseth, son of Saul was made King of Israel, which led to Israel and Judah waging war against each other.

2 Samuel 3 starts out with a genealogy of David’s sons. Abner joined forces with David, Joab murdered Abner, and finally is recorded how David mourned Abner.

And now it begins. Southern California denies thousands of farmers their water rights or access to water.

The western half of United States is experiencing a multi-year drought with no end in sight. Has the desertification of the American southwest started? Will farmers have to abandon their farms and orchards for lack of water? Will this and the shortage of fertilizer be the trigger point for a worldwide hunger, since now Ukraine is no longer the food basket of Europe?

These are worrying questions? The situation in the American South is dire:

The only saving grace is that thanks to increasing CO2, the vegetation needs less water to do the photosynthesis, so the harvests will not decrease as much even though fertilizer will be rationed.

Southern California was first to cut off water to thousands pf farmers:

The next step is to forbid watering of lawns and plants and fine people for violating HOA regulations that state that that lawns must be well fertilized and watered and free from weeds. The native weeds (I call them wildflowers) are the only thing that will survive the drought.

But back to the drought situation.

The solution:

Build a transcontinental aqueduct from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River capable of transporting 12 million acre-ft of water yearly through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. It will be built similar to the Central Arizona Project aqueduct, supplying water from the Colorado river to the Phoenix and Tucson area, but this aqueduct will be carrying four times more water over four times the distance and raise the water nearly twice as high before returning to near sea level. The original Central Arizona Project cost $4.7 billion in 1980’s money, the Transcontinental Aqueduct will in Phase 1 cost around $200 Billion in 2022 money applying simple scaling up principles.

The Mississippi River has a bad reputation for having polluted water, but since the clean water act the water quality has improved drastically. Fecal coli-form bacteria is down by a factor of more than 100, the water is now used all the way down to New Orleans for drinking water after treatment. The lead levels are down by a factor of 1000 or more since 1979. Plastic pollution and pharmaceutical pollution is still a problem, as is the case with most rivers. The Ph is back to around 8 and salt content is negligible. Mississippi water is good for irrigation, and usable for drinking water after treatment. The Arkansas River is used as a drinking water source.

But the aqueduct will do more than provide sweet Mississippi water to the thirsty South-west, it will make possible to provide peak power to Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. In fact, it is so big it will nearly triple the pumped Hydro-power storage for the nation, from 23 GW for 5 hours a day to up to 66 GW when fully built out.

The extra pumped hydro-power storage will come from a number of dams built as part of the aqueduct or adjacent to it. The water will be pumped from surplus wind and solar power generators when available. This will provide up to 50 GW of power for 5 hours a day. If not enough extra power has been generated during the 19 pumping hours, sometimes power will be purchased from the regular grid. The other source of pumped hydro-power storage is virtual. There will be up to 23 GW of LFTR (Liquid Fluoride salt Thorium Rector) power stations strategically stationed along the waterway providing pumping of water for 19 hours and providing virtual hydro-power output for the remaining 5, when the aqueduct is fully built. Read more about it here.

April 30: Reading the Holy Bible in a year.

Luke 5, Jesus called his first Disciples, cleansed a leper, healed and forgave a Paralytic his sins and called Levi (Matthew). At the end of the chapter Jesus was questioned about fasting. My discourse about old and new wineskins is very interesting. Rea it and see if you agree.

Proverbs 3 continues to tell of the benefits of wisdom. The verses most often quoted are ”Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will direct your paths.”

April 29: Reading the Holy Bible in a year.

Luke 4:22-44. Jesus was rejected as a prophet in his own hometown. Going forward, Jesus cast out an Unclean Spirit and healed many.

1 Samuel 30. David defeated the Amalekites but his two wives were taken hostage and had to be rescued.

1 Samuel 31 tells of the death of Saul’s sons, and how Saul himself fell on his own sword.

Psalm 40, of David. It speaks of the servant that comes to do God’s will. David attributed this to himself, but it is spiritually a messianic Psalm.

April 28: Reading the Holy Bible in a year.

Luke 4:1-21, Jesus ministry started with his Temptation in the wilderness, from which we get the 40 days of Lent. At every temptation initiated by Satan Jesus quoted scripture to show his total reliance on God and His word. Satan also used scripture, so watch out! Going to his hometown of Nazareth Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 61. We are still in the acceptable year of the Lord but before the day of the Lord’s vengeance.

In 1 Samuel 28 David was among the Philistines and Saul consulted a woman with a familiar spirit, the witch at En Dor. The medium did bring up Samuel!

1 Samuel 29. The Philistine rulers rejected David.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell are emptying fast. The solution: The Trans-Rocky-Mountain Aqueduct. Expensive, but very doable.

(Quoted partly from Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic.) The seven Colorado River basin states have a plan to temporarily stabilize Lake Powell. The states are: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and California.

It is a temporary delay of a very painful decision, it doesn’t rain enough in the Colorado River basin to provide enough water for the ever increasing population, now exceeding 40 million, five times more as when the Hoover dam was built.

Yet no one balked. And that’s a win.

That should signal how dire the circumstances have become.

The U.S. Department of the Interior noted in an April 8 letter to the basin states that Lake Powell is dangerously close to hitting 3,490 feet of elevation, a level so low that power could no longer be generated at Glen Canyon Dam and water could no longer flow to the nearby city of Page and an adjacent Navajo Nation community.

Because water could no longer flow through the power turbines, millions of acre-feet of water would flow downstream through smaller backup pipes at the base of Glen Canyon Dam – a risky prospect that could spell calamity for Lake Mead, which relies on Powell’s releases, if any one of those four pipes were damaged by the heavy flows and had to shut down.

nterior proposed taking the unprecedented action of withholding 480,000 acre-feet (that’s more than 156 billion gallons) in Lake Powell that otherwise should have flowed to Lake Mead, among other measures.

Two weeks later, the seven states responded with a singular voice: We get how dire this is, and we’re on board.

“We recognize the urgency created by current conditions in the Basin; in fact, hydrologic conditions in the Basin have continued to decline since your April 8, 2022, letter to the Governors’ representatives,” they wrote in an April 22 response. “It is our collective judgment that additional cooperative actions should be taken this spring to reduce the risk of Lake Powell declining below critical elevations.”

That means the upper basin states will agree to release 500,000 acre-feet from the upstream Flaming Gorge Reservoir, as part of a newly cemented 2022 Drought Response Operations Plan. (That’s a lot more than the 161,000 acre-feet that was released from upstream reservoirs last year to prop up Lake Powell.)

Meanwhile, the lower basin states, including Arizona, will agree to keep 480,000 acre-feet in Powell, though the states have asked for that amount not to count against shortage determinations.

What does that mean for shortages at Lake Mead?

The idea, however ill-conceived, is not to use Mead’s actual elevation to determine which shortage tier we’d be in, but rather as if that 480,000 acre-feet were in Mead and not Powell.

It’s not clear how the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the reservoirs, would make that calculation, but the outcome could have real consequences.

The most recent forecast projects elevations as if that 480,000 acre-feet had flowed from Powell to Mead. It puts Mead a few inches above the trigger elevation of 1,045 feet in August, when the following year’s shortage determination is made.

That would put us in a deeper Tier 2 shortage, regardless.

But depending on which side of 1,045 feet we land, we could either fall in a Tier 2a or Tier 2b shortage – which for Arizona is the difference between making previously agreed cuts of 592,000 acre-feet or 640,000 acre-feet.

A Tier 2b shortage also would trigger more stringent water conservation actions in Scottsdale and Tucson. That could mean the imposition of drought surcharges in both cities and, in Scottsdale, the potential for mandatory restrictions.

I know. If we base shortage decisions off where the lake should be, but not really is, we’re making conditions look better than they are. Which doesn’t help us in the long run, even if we could temporarily avoid the pain of Tier 2b.

We extinguished a fire to focus on other work

But, importantly, the states also have agreed that “water year 2023 releases should be carefully monitored and be the subject of consultation with the Basin States to preserve the benefits to Glen Canyon Dam … .”

Translation: Whatever actions we take and shortage levels we set for 2023 will get another look, likely in late winter or early spring, when we have a better idea of the year’s runoff picture, to determine whether we need to do more.

It’s a level of flexibility that we haven’t traditionally had – but will likely need – when lake levels are so low and volatile.

None of this solves anything, of course. Even a combined million acre-feet from the states will likely just prolong the inevitable, hopefully long enough to better assess the strength of Powell’s backup pipes.

And to resume the tough work of storing an extra 500,000 acre-feet each year for the next five years in Lake Mead as part of the 500-plus plan. Without that extra water each year, the lake mostly likely will sink below 1,020 feet of elevation – Mead’s version of the dangerously low level that Powell has already reached.

And – most importantly – to finally sit down and talk about longer-term solutions for the Colorado River, most notably how much water we can reliably expect it to produce. It sure as heck isn’t the 15 million acre-feet that we’ve been apportioned.

Imperfect as this response may be, it’s significant that all seven states agreed to it quickly, so we can get back to the many other pressing tasks at hand.

Reach Allhands at joanna.allhands@arizonarepublic.com. On Twitter: @joannaallhands.

There is a solution:

The Trans-Rocky-Mountain Aqueduct will save Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and rejuvenate the American South-west. This solution is expensive, but when all costs are included, it can deliver 3.6 to 6 Million acre-feet / year at a cost of $2,290 per af, high, check the calculations here. This is the solution that can be done in the shortest time.

The other solution is The TransContinental Aqueduct. A realistic way to save Lake Mead and reverse the desertification of the American SouthWest. It will really do the job at a lower price per Acre-ft but require much more capital investment. Check out the cost estimates here. This estimate is on the high side. but was a earnest stab at the costs.

Is it worth it to save the American Southwest from being desertified? In my opinion, if we are serious about saving the earth, this is one of the most urgent projects that deserves consideration.