Prairie National park and Wind Farm, Wetland National Park and pumped hydro storage for the national power grid.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/6/4/16758/96095/#comment9

50 square miles of extra resovoir would be no problem at all.  Especially distributed around the nation.

It also restores aquifers to have that much water around.  Some scheme to recover and store flood waters is sorely needed.  This could be integrated with the pumped hydro energy storage.

I favor shunting flood waters into wetlands myself.  The pumped hydro storage water could be taken from those wetlands and returned.

This could be a huge benefit in terms of GHG, by replacing fossil generation with renewables backed by pumped hydro storage.  And in terms of water conservation.  

We are at crisis stage already on drought problems from GHG disaster, water shortage is already threatening economic growth.  Australia's more extreme problems are a warning.

Many of these various energy solutions seem to fit symbiotically with other environmental solutions.  Such as prairie restoration, wind power, carbon sequestration by prairie soil, and biomass energy sources to supplement renewables.

Maybe our representaticves will start listening to us more closely if we come up with better coordinated solutions like this.  It's worth a try.

Just this additional point.  Direct wind powered water pumps that pump into storage whenever the wind blows, eliminates a whole host of problems with variability and power grid stability too.

Something to consider where high wind areas would coincide with large wetland resevoir areas like on the great plains.  The plains some have huge lakes.  And a lot of wetlands on the edges.

This stuff is a conservationist's dream.  Teddy Roosevelt is probably smiling down from a national park in heaven at efforts like this right now.  That's gotta be a positive karmic effect, hehey.