Will The Great Lakes Be Another Aral Sea?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05.13.08
We have droned on about the Great Lakes Compact, about how petty politics, stupidity and self-interest could kill this international coalition to protect one of the world's great resources. Others say it better; Robert Oullette writes:
"It is hard to imagine the Great Lakes being great no more—but it is possible. Just take a look at the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for an example of what havoc exploitative policies can cause on a seemingly robust ecosystem. We tend to think such savage exploitation will never happen here, but we also thought the Cod Fishery would go on forever, and Passenger pigeons were so plentiful that we could kill them at our pleasure."
Oullette notes that inevitably the pressures to take Great Lakes water will become too great.
"You can hear the trumpeting now. "This is a national emergency." "We must have the water for short-term relief." "The have states must share with the have nots." I have no doubt that's what the bureaucrats managing the Aral Sea once said. But since they are all dead now, who is to know—or care? It is history, just like the Cod. ::Reading Toronto
More in TreeHugger on the Great Lakes Compact
Great Lakes Compact : Selfishness and Self-Interest in Wisconsin ...
The Great Lakes Are Under Threat and Wisconsin Fiddles
Bill Richardson On Great Lakes Water
Vegan Strip Clubs, Dinosaurs in Ohio, Houses for a Buck : TreeHugger
Don't You Dare Touch Our Water
Who is John Galt?
Um, we don't live in a communist dictatorship, so such things are unlikely to happen (or even a capitalist dictatorship - 3 Gorges Damn). Bad though Bush is, we still have public review and can vote for actual political opponents. A few decade ago, the Great lakes were overflowing, threatening flooding...
I live five minutes from Lake Michigan and thought of this just really scares me - great book to read on the subject: Great Lakes Water Wars.
Although this scenario is possible, North Americans do not suffer from Soviet economic planners or political dictatorship -- so it's unlikely to happen.
That said, there are plenty of people who will TRY to make it happen -- using just the same stupid rhetoric (emergency!) you mention. Much better to allocate water in markets -- that way, we can get the limited supplies we have to the people and uses that are most valuable. Read more here: http://aguanomics.com/2008/05/raise-price.html
david! such faith in the free market!
may i give one more u.s.a. example of what happens when a 'common good' becomes a commodity?
the dust bowl.
remember; 'the market makes a a good servant, but a bad master (and a worse religion)''
The Great Lakes are at risk from a variety of things, but they will not become an aral sea. For one thing, the Aral is MUCH shallower and in a desert. The biggest risks facing the great lakes are:
1 - Sewerage and other crap that cities let get into them
2 - Invasive speciees
3 - slight alteration of the rules to allow suburbs west of Chicago and Milwaukee have the water
4 - Massive (and very unlikely) alteration to suck water to golf courses in Arizona
The last one will happen over many people's dead bodies.
Let's assume the worst for a second: In the coming years there will be a great economic collapse leading to the dissolution of government. Roving bands of militiamen will take up arms to protect their homelands -- lakes, animals, trees, and people included.
With that thought, the Great Lakes are something I would definitely fight to protect.
That said, that probably won't happen. I'm no fortune teller and I can't predict the future, so I don't know how bad the situation will get and when; I don't have any idea if we risk drying up the Great Lakes like so many other vast bodies of water in the past. What I do know is that the water level has lowered noticeably in the last decade and shipping water to New Mexico or Arizona is simply not an answer with any sustainability to it.
You guys forget whiting Indiana and Chicago Illinois oil refineries plans to expand and suck more water out and pollute more fo the great lakes too.
If your not staying on top of it you need to!
it takes 10 gallons fo fresh water to product 1 gallon of oil, it takes one drop of oil to pollute 10 gallons of fresh water.
D~W
"4 - Massive (and very unlikely) alteration to suck water to golf courses in Arizona"
I would think it likely that Arizona would divert the water being sent to California. It would probably be cheaper to send it to Arizona than to pump it over a mountain to California.
This is a practical impossibility. Interstate Commerce act and other laws would regulate the transfer across state lines by pipeline, allowing many avenues for opposition.
By the time a legal settlement was reached and Federal funds appropriated for a project of sufficient scale, and then the pipeline actually built, at least 5 years would have passed: far too long a time to mitigate a drought disaster. Industry and the wealthy would have left long before the first gallon flowed out of a pipeline in Nevada. And that water would not be connected to any but a single city's water system. It would take decades more time and billions of State money to reach outlying areas
In other words, this is a pretty dumb thing to be afraid of.
Our concern needs to be addressed, instead, to what we will do with the internal refugees from a protracted Western drought as potentially millions of US citizens, many of whom will be very poor and most of whom will be jobless. How many new roulette wheel operators are needed in the Chicago job market?
The displaced will be moving to where the water is. Not the other way around. Why is this so hard for politicians and pundits to grasp?. I just can't fathom the mental block, given that internal displacement happened during the dust bowl/depression on a wide scale: a clear precedent.
I have to think that this is all about the overall climate of fear and alienation from rational risk management principles that has been espoused by our Federal Government.
I'd like to say let the economy take care of itself - let water get so expensive that people will choose to spread out rather than live in crowded cities but then people (sheeple) just aren't that smart.
I'm from Chattanooga (live in Cookeville) and there is a water debate going on in Atlanta. Giving them the water will just enable them to continue being wasteful. Let them learn to be more frugal with their resources.
Same goes for oil. I hate the high prices but if it makes America more frugal then I guess all is not lost.
Whatever the case there will always be people who waste their resources. 16 mpg trucks for daily commutes of one person. 4K sq foot houses for families of three. etcetera, etcertera. Got to protect this world from the resource hogs.
Here is the problem ...
The underground aquifer supply irrigation water to the American Midwest grain farms is being depleted much faster than it is filling. now most wells need to be over 200 feet rather than the original Once emptied, this aquifer will take thousands of years to refill. This leaves the farms, and America's breadbasket in a serious problem. Have a look at the Ogallala aquifer, it's being depleted 14 times faster than Nature fills it. It's last half water volume is being pumped.
Now that corn is diverted to ethanol, the failure of these farms will have the potential to cripple the American economy and lifestyle.
The obvious solution of pumping water from Lake Michigan will become a great idea.
"You can hear the trumpeting now. "This is a national emergency."
Trouble is, Lake Michigan will supply only about 5 years worth of water at current usage rates, then the other four Lakes will be demanded.
Will the future hold a war with Canada over water?