I think it's a little mean-spirited to be singling out southern farmers for needing water, especially when the rest of the nation benefits from the things farmers grow. Don't confuse Alabama with the southwest, where they've destroyed the Colorado and its ecosystem so that the millions of Americans who insist on populating a DESERT can have water. In my home state of Florida, the problem is even more dire than loss of lakes and rivers because the state's major fresh water source is from the aquifer. As water levels in the aquifer get lower, seawater contamination becomes a problem, and without rain water to seep down and refill the aquifer, the cycle continues. Natural springs are drying up. Lake Okeechobee (a huge freshwater lake in southern FL) is nearly gone thanks to the sustained drought down there.
The fact is, people everywhere need water, and people living in a sustained drought are less likely to waste it than you might think. Their lives and livelihoods depend on that water!

There already is a pipeline from the Great Lakes to Alabama. It's called the Mississippi River.

==== author's response follows ===
One of the greatest pleasures of writing for TreeHugger is encountering insightful comments like Rob made here.

Compare the costs of shipping Missus Miller river water from Louisiana to Alabama and treating it to potable standards vs piping it thousands of miles more and expending a bit less to meet drinking water standards. It's a no brainer.

If we're going to get out of this alive and leave some for the next generations we need more critical thinkers like Rob.

Note #1: The Mississippi watershed does not take in any Great Lakes water, but the point remains the same.

Note#2: it just dawned on me that a pipeline from Lake MI would require heating during the winter months until at least the southern border of Indiana, to prevent line freeze-up and pump blockage. Water has a tremendous heat capacity near the freezing point and that would be a very expensive and absolute requirement for operation at least 2 months of the year.

Wouldn't it be cheaper/more energy efficient to just install a de-salination plant on the gulf coast that pipe (and maybe heat) water for thousands of miles?

I hear solar de-salination technology has been coming along as well.

you get water from lake michigan through the ship channel from chicago (as well as all of Chicago's sewage) and you can't have any more.

and it would't freeze in the pipe any more than my water distribution in toronto does, you bury it and it is fine. But you still can't have it. It belongs in the Great Lakes.

=== author's response follows ===
Ha! I appreciate your response, being from the Great Lakes region myself.

The Chicago river flow westward and into the Mississippi drainage is a small volume and, as you say, mostly storm water and cooling water dscharges. Its' diversion out of Lake MI was established specifically to keep wastewater carried disease organisms out of Lake MI drinking water intakes, in response to nearly a quarter of the City dying from waterborne disease in a single outbreak. I believe this came about in the late 1800's and is still regarded as one of the largest civil engineering feats in the world.

The point about responding to a drought emergency is that there is not time to develop a thousand mile right of way, build highway and river crossings, trench it, back-fill it with gravel, lay pipe, cover, and install power supplied pump stations (where grid access may not be present) in concrete bunkers.

Ask any civil or chemical engineer and he/she will explain that above ground pipe racks are cheaper and faster to put in but generally more objectionable to all concerned and not helpful at highway crossings for example.

I have ZERO sympathy for arizona and florida. Both those states have squandered themselves for cheap strip malls and golf courses... souless crap. Alabama, I don't know much about. How efficiently are they using what they've got?

==== author's response follows ====
Northern Alabama farmers are miserable and losing their livelihood. It is very sad. However, a glance at the USGS map makes obvious that farmers in many states are vulnerable and/or are approaching a similar condition. The larger point about drought and agriculture is that cropping practices like irrigating corn or soy may no longer be sustainable in certain areas due in part to climate change.

The entire Great Lakes system is steadily losing volume and has been for several years now. The reality NOW is that inflows are insufficient to offset evaporation, natural outflows and man-made withdrawals.

Large additional withdrawals to support unsustainable agricultural practices in states a thousand miles away are just not going to happen. It would destroy commercial navigation, ruin riparian values, and possibly expose drinking water intakes of big cities to contamination by sediment. That is why in my post I describe it as a mirage.

I'd prefer a pipeline not be built, but on a technical note, would you need to heat a pipeline if the flow was high enough? Liquid does not move through a pipe frictionless. Look at the Alaska pipeline. The fluid friction is enough that they need to put heat exchangers (heat pipes) on the legs to avoid melting the permafrost and sagging (breaking) the line.

-Lego

Wassconno, you should have sympathy for Florida and Arizona, or at least for their native residents. The percentage of people who live there who are actually FROM those states is minuscule compared to the number of people there from other states (including those privledged enough to exist near the Great Lakes) and even Canada in the winter. Especially when you consider the migratory "snowbird" population that DRIVES all the way down for the winter and all the way back to their northern homes in the spring, usually in a Winnebago. Yes, there are strip malls and golf courses (among other things like wetlands). Why? Because the snowbirds and retirees demand them. Who else has time to play golf? Do you think native Arizonans and Floridians like this?
So if you want a more long-term solution to conserving water in these areas, put a stop to snowbirds and people retiring south!!!! The exponential increase in the demand for water is coming from those populations, not the natives. They're moving away from places like Detroit and Buffalo, which have ample water supplies, to put demand in places that don't. What else can we do? It's already difficult and expensive to put a well in, and water restrictions have been in place in my part of Florida for at least 15-20 years I'd say. Yet people continue to retire here, and with the baby boomers approaching retirement now, it's downright scary what's going to happen to natural resources in these places.
Bottom line: the population patterns that drive water demand need to change.

====== Heather G says ======
Wassconno, you should have sympathy for Florida and Arizona, or at least for their native residents. The percentage of people who live there who are actually FROM those states is minuscule compared to the number of people there from other states
================

What does "from" mean? My wife's ancestors were here before the white man but the rest of us are from somewhere else. Of course her ancestors were from somewhere else too but that was a long, long time ago.

I don't think it's helpful to characterize whole states or whole populations creating some sort of we're OK you're not OK dichotomy. How about we sort this out together?

-- Born in Montana but living in California

I apologize, Jon K. By drawing distinction between the native-born Floridian population and the transplanted/migratory populations of Florida, I'm trying to highlight the fact that the demand for natural resources is more greatly impacted by the latter group. I meant nothing insulting or derisive about it. I'm sincerely sorry if I implied that one group is implicitly superior to the other.

I think I was primarily reacting to the image of bulldozing fields and scrub pine forests and orange groves to build subdivisions, strip-malls, and golf courses. And to build more homes for the thousands of people moving to these areas every week, exponentially straining the resources there. I know these images because I have lived in Florida my whole life, and that is what Florida looks like now- it's nearly completely covered in stucco and concrete and green sod that requires lots of fertilizer and water. It hurts to watch that happen to the place you live.

I also was reacting to the concept of this article, which was basically mocking the fact that Alabama is in a drought and desperately trying to come up with solutions for it (some obviously more plausible than the pipeline idea, but at least it started a discussion about long-term solutions). People living in areas of drought (and their lucky counterparts not living there) should be trying to come up with long-term solutions, like how much water will be available there in 100+ years. The solution I put forth is that the mobile populations of retirees and snowbirds should go where the water is, not just where the warmth is. Or better yet, stay where they are so as not to create demand for more houses or cities to be built somewhere else. Removing the effect of this transplanted population, and all the golf courses that come with it, would greatly help preserve the little water available in these areas.

People shouldn't move to arid, desert-like areas like Arizona or drought-stricken areas like the South if there's not enough water there to support even the current population. That was my point- that demand at a population level needs to change in order to decrease the demand for a finite resource. Whether it's water, oil, or anything else.

Basically the entire northern tier of the United States, (with the possible exception of some western areas) has been, for many years, on a headlong rush to economic irrelevance-read Rust Belt. They (meaning the now-ever-more-populous-south) will come for our water and get it, with the blessing and assistance of the feds. This WILL happen, it is inevtitable and I am not happy about it. However, I ain't happy about any number of things. Due to the south becoming economically viable thru intense energy usage (read A/C) in the last 60 years, we cannot escape it. The people have voted....