"To irrigate we should pump our rivers over again, not pump them dry" — a column by Steve Baer in the Corrales Comment, July 8, 2000. Rather than conserving water by doing without, Baer proposes pumping rivers from their mouths back to arid regions through pipelines and canals.
The core idea: let rivers flow to the sea, then "at their mouths, before they mix with the ocean, take water and pump it back through huge canals or pipelines to regions that flourish with irrigation." The Colorado could reach the sea again, because the Mississippi, Columbia, or Saint Lawrence would irrigate the Southwest.
Baer runs the numbers: pumping the Colorado's flow from New Orleans up a mile to New Mexico would require about 24 million horsepower (lift plus friction), costing roughly $200 per acre-foot of electricity. "Such enormous power and capital costs could add $1,000 to your yearly food bill, but save $10,000 on the earth's doctor bills."
He suggests starting small: "a modest 24-inch pipeline following Interstate 10 from New Orleans to Tucson. Terribly expensive, terribly valuable; yet if the idea appeals, large lines would follow." Future highway signs might read: "This mile of aqueduct Courtesy of Company X."
The engineering is secondary to the worldview. Baer attacks conservation-as-abstinence: "None cut back. Some swap one extravagance for another." People who plant drought-resistant natives "create ever larger streambed habitats on hillsides. The water flows on." His alternative: "Extravagant habits are fine so long as boldness, industry, generosity and daring come with them. Fix the world while the bulldozers roar."
He ends with a contrarian environmental note: "Stop fretting about the CO₂ we add to our atmosphere. It is the only good thing we have done for the rest of nature. It helps photosynthesis. Worry about the rivers that no longer reach the sea." Engineering, he argues, can be "polite or rude. Dams are rude. We can afford good manners towards Nature. Our motto about her water could be, 'After you.'"
The archive includes a same-date handwritten note from Baer to Bruce W. Davis: "Not a peep from anyone in response. I suppose most regard it as offensive." The postscript adds that Baer has "more on H₂O… getting it straight out of our air" — an early signal toward the desiccation satire that became Sunny days ahead the following month.
The essay shares the anti-abstinence, pro-engineering worldview of Tax, shine, and sunshine and Sunmen: don't conserve by doing without — build something bold instead.