Very well. If private industry and government can find a route, financing, permits and political will to move petroleum across deserts and state lines, why can’t the United States apply the same seriousness to water?
California’s new gasoline pipeline ought to reopen an old national question
By the Editors of PillartoPost.org
California has just supplied the nation with a wonderfully inconvenient comparison. Phillips 66, Kinder Morgan and HF Sinclair are proceeding with the $5 billion Western Gateway Pipeline, a 1,300-mile system intended to bring gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from Midwestern and Gulf Coast refining centers to Arizona and California.
About 900 miles of new pipe will run from Borger, Texas, to Phoenix. An existing line from Phoenix to Colton will be reversed so fuel can flow west into California.
The projected capacity is 230,000 barrels a day, with service planned for 2029.
Very well. If private industry and government can find a route, financing, permits and political will to move petroleum across deserts and state lines, why can’t the United States apply the same seriousness to water?
Why must communities dependent on the Colorado River continue arguing over a diminishing supply while floodwater elsewhere pours toward the sea?
The short answer is that we can build a water pipeline. The longer and more honest answer is that water is not gasoline. Gasoline can be bought from a willing refinery and sold into a national market.
Water is governed by state law, interstate compacts, federal treaties, tribal rights, court decrees and environmental rules.
The phrase “plenty of water” also requires care. A river that looks abundant during spring floods may already be committed to farms, cities, navigation, hydropower, fisheries and downstream ecosystems.
The Great Lakes states, for example, generally prohibit new diversions outside their basin. Northern states are unlikely to surrender water merely because the Southwest asks politely—and they should not be expected to.
Then comes physics. A gallon of gasoline and a gallon of water weigh roughly the same, but a thirsty region needs water in volumes that dwarf its fuel shipments. Western Gateway’s 230,000 barrels a day equals about 9.7 million gallons. That sounds enormous until one remembers that a single acre-foot of water contains about 326,000 gallons.
The pipeline’s entire daily liquid volume would amount to only about 30 acre-feet of water—roughly 11,000 acre-feet a year.
The Colorado River system is measured in millions of acre-feet. A useful water line would therefore need to be far larger, and pumping water uphill toward the Continental Divide or over other high terrain would consume a formidable amount of electricity.
None of that makes the idea foolish. It makes the idea a national infrastructure question instead of a barroom sketch on a cocktail napkin.
California’s existing 705-mile State Water Project is not an answer to this proposal. It moves water within California; it does not bring a new supply into the state or the Colorado River Basin.
Worse, its Northern California source rises and falls with the same western climate that produces the shortage. In dry years there is less water available to send south, and water rights, endangered species protections, Delta conditions and reservoir levels restrict what can be moved.
The aqueduct works. The source is finite. A longer straw in the same half-empty glass does not fill the glass.
The question, therefore, is specifically about an interstate, interbasin transfer: new water brought from outside the drought-stricken Colorado River watershed. The Missouri or Mississippi river systems and carefully limited Pacific Northwest flood flows have all been proposed at various times.
The Great Lakes are effectively foreclosed because their interstate compact generally prohibits diversions outside that basin. No source should be declared “plentiful” until the donor states, tribes, downstream users and ecosystems have been fully accounted for. This is not an engineering fantasy. The Bureau of Reclamation examined a Missouri River import option in its Colorado River Basin study.
One concept envisioned more than 700 miles of conveyance, delivery of roughly 600,000 acre-feet a year and more than 700 megawatts of pumping power. It scored poorly because of cost, energy, permitting and legal risk—not because water cannot physically be moved. That federal work is now more than a decade old while the Colorado River’s condition has become markedly worse.
Congress should authorize an updated Interstate Water Import Commission, jointly led by the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Its assignment should not be another general discussion of western conservation. It should determine whether genuinely available water—not politically invented “surplus”—can be imported from the Missouri, Mississippi, Columbia or another out-of-basin source.
Every route should publish the same facts: acre-feet delivered, energy required, construction cost, environmental damage, tribal and interstate consent, effect on donor communities, and the price of water at the receiving end. The commission must include the seven Colorado River Basin states, potential donor states, Mexico, affected tribes, farming districts, cities and environmental representatives. Tribal nations cannot be invited after engineers have drawn the route; their rights and knowledge belong at the first meeting. Nor can the project become an excuse for the Southwest to avoid conservation.
No donor state will support a transfer if the receiving states appear determined to preserve every wasteful practice indefinitely.
A pipeline also cannot be the only answer.
The quickest new “source” of Colorado River water is water no longer wasted. Federal and state policy should pay farmers to install more efficient irrigation where it produces real savings; help cities repair leaking systems; accelerate advanced wastewater purification; expand groundwater recharge during wet years; and build desalination where the economics and marine impacts make sense.
The Bureau of Reclamation is already investing in recycling, storage, conveyance and desalination. Those programs should be treated as parts of one water-security plan, not scattered demonstrations.
Agriculture will necessarily be at the table because it uses most of the Colorado River’s consumed water, but “take it from the farmers” is not a policy. Farm communities feed the country and cannot simply be erased. The workable approach is compensation for verified conservation, changes in the thirstiest crops where feasible, improved canals and irrigation systems, and voluntary transfers protected by rules that do not leave rural towns behind. The gasoline project offers one last lesson: it advanced when companies secured customers willing to sign long-term contracts.
A water project will also require committed buyers.
Metropolitan agencies, irrigation districts, states and the federal government must decide how much dependable water is worth and guarantee enough revenue to finance construction.
The federal role should cover national benefits and protect the public interest; beneficiaries should pay a fair share. There should be no blank check.
So, yes: ask the pipeline question.
Ask it loudly.
If America can spend $5 billion to move refined petroleum 1,300 miles because California’s fuel market is isolated, it can spend a serious fraction of that intellectual and political energy determining whether water can be moved to a river system serving 40 million people.
But begin with truth.
There is no magic northern faucet waiting to be opened, and a steel pipe cannot manufacture water. A national study may conclude that one continental megaproject is inferior to several regional connections, recycling plants, reservoirs and conservation agreements. That would still be valuable.
The scandal is not that America has failed to approve a particular water pipeline.
The scandal is that, after watching the Colorado River decline for decades, we still have no fully priced, openly debated national plan comparing every credible way to add water and reduce demand.
Western Gateway proves that long distance, high cost and multiple jurisdictions do not automatically kill an infrastructure idea. They merely demand a customer, a contract and a decision.
Water deserves at least that much urgency.
RESEARCH SOURCES
• Phillips 66, Kinder Morgan and HF Sinclair, Western Gateway final investment decision, Aug. 11, 2026
• California Department of Water Resources, State Water Project reliability
• U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Missouri River import option
• U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Colorado River Post-2026 Operations
• U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, water recycling, storage and conveyance investments • Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Council, Compact overview
Illustration: Concept: PillartoPost.org; Execution: Chatgpt
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