Water Here! Get Your Ice Cold Water Here!
Yet as millions of new residents flock to the Sun Belt, settling in the suburbs rather than the wilderness, the debate over who gets Mother Nature’s lifeblood is only intensifying. Water issues are a political hot potato, pitting community against community and state against state.
And as those pressures mount, more attention is turning toward the Great Lakes.
Running from Minnesota east to New York, the Great Lakes are the largest body of fresh water in the world. They hold about 90 percent of the fresh water in North America and fully 20 percent of the world’s entire fresh water supply.
The idea that Great Lakes water could somehow be pumped out of the basin and piped to Phoenix or Las Vegas may seem like something out of a 1950s edition of Popular Science. In fact, during the 1960s the North American Water and Power Alliance Plan even set out maps for massive movements of water throughout the continent.
But as the Midwest continues to lose population and political influence to the Sun Belt, the Great Lakes are being increasingly viewed by some as one possible solution to looming water shortages elsewhere.
“Frankly, with the Midwest economy struggling, I’m surprised somebody hasn’t come in with the idea that we can sell off just a little bit,” says Noah Hall, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.
Great Lakes states are sitting on an incredibly valuable natural resource. It’s even one that renews. Here’s a few factoids:
6 quadrillion gallons of fresh water; one-fifth of the world’s fresh surface water (only the polar ice caps and Lake Baikal in Siberia contain more); 95 percent of the U.S. supply. Spread evenly across the continental U.S., the Great Lakes would submerge the country under about 9.5 feet of water.
We could easily pump out some of the lakes every year to arid areas of the country and charge top dollar for it. Heck, perhaps if we’re selling that water, it might even have the added side-effect of encouraging people to keep it clean. Everybody wins!
Yes, I know that the environmental goofs will never let this happen. They are happy to import natural resources from other states like crops, oil, silver, copper, coal, etc., but that water is off limits, right? Wouldn’t it be better to start selling it now when we can exercise some control over the flow instead of waiting for the Feds to overrule the states and pump it out?
We’ll take some for Las Vegas.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2007 at 1441 hrs
Maybe I’ll fill up a truck and head down there. All I need is a committed buyer (and a truck and some time off of work)
Posted by Owen on December 29, 2007 at 1447 hrs
Why would we want to sell off the best asset we have to make Wisconsin an industrial/business giant?
Why not have people and companies come here and locate their business near plentiful water supplies?
Our only chance to turnaround the Wisconsin economy is to find a way to make Wis. attractive to start or move their business here. If energy costs soar, and water costs soar, we at least have a 50% chance to attract businesss in spite of our tax-hell status.
Besides, would you trust ANY government agency to do this effectively? Our present and past governors would drive a hard bargain- just like Indian Gaming…
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2007 at 1459 hrs
Besides, would you trust ANY government agency to do this effectively? Our present and past governors would drive a hard bargain- just like Indian Gaming…
Absolutely not. I’m talking about the government allowing a private company to export the water.
But your larger point is completely valid. The problem is that although Wisconsin could mimic the tax incentives that states like Nevada use to attract people, it could never replicate the weather. That being said, a more favorable tax and business climate would sure help.
Posted by Owen on December 29, 2007 at 1502 hrs
The Great Lakes cannot be piped out or sold off for legal and practical reasons, first among them that Canada owns half, and there is a federal law that says you can’t remove water from the basin without the approval of all eight US Grat Lakes governors.
So it’s not that easy, or wise. How would you feel if the Canadians began to push to sell Great Lakes water, which nearly happened in the 80’s when a Thai shipping company proposed taking out water by container ship, for Asian markets.
“Environmental goofs?” Come on, Owen. You know better than that.
These lakes anchor the economices of eight states, and are falling, so the goal for fishing season anglers, to shipping companies to commercial fishing captains to resort owners to municipal water supply and electrical generating managers is preservation, conservation, and quality improvement.Government and private sector officials are working to manage the water in the basin better so that jobs and development are attracted, and stay here - - in a region that is already losing employment.
Why would you want to accelerate that, let along to parts of the US west that have completely failed to manage the water resources they have?
Posted by James Rowen on December 29, 2007 at 1550 hrs
Great Lakes states are sitting on an incredibly valuable natural resource. It’s even one that renews.
I am not a hydrologist, but are the Great Lakes really a renewable natural resource? 1st of all, I think I recently read that the Great Lakes were created from glacial meltwater, that rainfall would never be enough to replace what evaporates away or eventually flows into the Atlantic Ocean. 2ndly, I saw a great show on PBS about Niagara Falls - mankind has taken control of the water flow (at night the flowage is diverted to provide hydro power), so the Falls have not “eroded” further inland as fast as they used to, but looking over a long geological span, the Falls would eventually reach Minnesota.
Mankind could also accelerate declining Great Lakes water levels if communities on rivers that drain into the lake would return their treated sewage water to their underground aquifiers (for example, put it into large man-made lakes that hold the water until it eventually filters down). As it now stands, communities such as mine (West Bend) pump water out of the underground aquifier, treat it, and put in the Milwaukee River, and it ultimately flows into Lake Michigan. I only mention this because Milwaukeens sometimes express a certain “smugness” about their availability of Lake Michigan water, but don’t realize that there is a some ambiguity about how “certain” that supply will be. Who knows, maybe someday Lake Michigan will like be a muck-filled pond. Not in our lifetimes, I’m sure.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2007 at 1625 hrs
Or by not exporting our water, it will force people and companies to return to the Midwest. Here’s an example MillerCoors the strong argument against moving to Denver is water for the brewery. Can’t make beer without water and out west they are having water problems which will only get worse in the future.
PS We already export water it is called Dasani which everyone in New Berlin and Waukesha are welcome to buy:)
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2007 at 1719 hrs
Should such a pipeline ever come to pass I pledge to play the role of saboteur to any diversion west of Highway 164.
Posted by james wigderson on December 29, 2007 at 1727 hrs
There is a much larger body of water that is much closer to the desert southwest than the Great Lakes… Its called the Pacific Ocean. Desalination anyone?
If they want our water, they can locate their hineys here and suffer the snow and the taxes like the rest of us. jeesh!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2007 at 2112 hrs
You don’t just put it in a pipe and watch it flow to its destination.
Between the Great Lakes and the most parched regions, soonest to need water, loom a few mountain ranges; but even a 2% grade is a major challenge to the task of pushing water. The pumping facilities would involve astonishing amounts of machinery, enormous amounts of energy, constant maintenance and security.
Wiggy may joke about sabotage, but don’t doubt for a minute that maintaining security on the pipe and the big engines/pumps needed to keep the water flowing would need an army of highly mobile security guards. Hasn’t anyone in this conversation ever read the ultimate uber-goof of environmentalism, Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang?
Forget about mountains between here and Nevada, even the energy to push Lake Michigan water twenty miles up and over Sunnyslope Road, and then back, is something that Waukesha Water Utility guy Duchniak is loath to talk about out loud.
Run down to Waukesha Engines and price the kind of Diesel/Natural Gas (two of them would be a tight fit in the typical 2-car garage) engine used for pumping. Then multiply that by thousands and thousands. Bring your checkbook.
When places like the lower Rio Grande Valley and the Colorado River basin go dry, nobody down there is going to tax themselves into the poorhouse and then wait twelve years to turn on a faucet. Oh yes, the little matter of who buys the easements or the land outright to accommodate thousands of miles of pipe? Are all you right wingers going to gang up and threaten eminent domain on somebody who won’t sell.
Far better to attract people with vision, tools, education, financial ability to invest in land, houses, farms, businesses—people with the sense to know that the good life is where the water is.
When things turn ugly, as fossil fuels become scarcer and more costly, the tradition of midwestern education, innovation, industrial excellence will prevail. Unenvironmental goofs who chose to live in places that have become uninhabitable will spend their time holed up in their fortified/foreclosed tract homes, trying to protect three cases of canned beans and the last of their ammo.
Lower the lakes another foot or two and the Mesabi Range iron ore (plenty of that still left, with the cheapest imaginable way to transport it being the Great Lakes ore fleet) no longer gets to the ore docks and steel mills in Gary and Cleveland, and from there to the metal-bending industries of the upper midwest.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2007 at 2131 hrs
“Why not have people and companies come here and locate their business near plentiful water supplies”
Because every other reason is sucks agains Wisconsin- high taxes, meddlesome government, over regulation and high unionization.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2007 at 2135 hrs
2/3 of all Wisconsin corporations pay ZERO income taxes. (you can lookup the research youself) Yea sounds like tax hell to me.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2007 at 2149 hrs
The Great Lakes do renew: slowly, under so-called normal rain and snowfall, and tributary flow. Lake Michigan, one percent a year. Lake Superior, one-tenth of one percent a year. So outflows are not in the lakes’ interest. Warmer temperatures also lead to more evaporation: Superior and Michingan are down drastically these last few years, raising havoc with shippers.
The drought in the Superior region has led to less precipitation, shorter winters, less ice cover, and so forth. People can sneer at global warming, but even a slight rise in the air temperatures around Lake Superior is having a bad effect on the lake level, shippers, property owners, etc.
The smart goals for the region are solid, if not sexy: conservation, preservation, cleanup, and utilization within the Great Lakes basin - - making it easier for conservation, preservation and cleanup to be a logical part of the in-basin use cycle.
Douglas Cherkauer, UW-M world-class hydrologist, often says that transferring water from one watershed to another just transfers the management problem of one basin to the another.
The southwest—- and some nearby communities - - need to better manage the water they have.
Same for the Great Lakes region, too.
Posted by James Rowen on December 29, 2007 at 2227 hrs
Wouldn’t it be better to start selling it now when we can exercise some control over the flow instead of waiting for the Feds to overrule the states and pump it out?
No.
Posted by dad29 on December 30, 2007 at 0939 hrs
daver, most corportions in the state are very small. Heck you can start a corportion yourself and you won’t have to pay taxes.
For those larger corportations that actually employ people, those employees and bosses are burdened by one of the highest tax rate. Plus, how much regulation does the state have to do?
How many $100,000,000 projects are going up in Wisconsin now. 1, maybe 2 or 3, if that. We have billion dollar properties going up all over the place- why, it’s not just because of the good weather. Our good weather=WI natural resources, and WI probably has the advantage. We have much lower taxes, less government interventions, a right to work state, no income tax, much lower property taxes, pretty good traffic infrastructure, good schools and plenty of skilled and unskilled employess.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 30, 2007 at 1451 hrs
Dan- The Wisconsin corporate tax rate is one of the smallest in the country. The problem is that property taxes offset that tax and the large amounts of business property tax exemptions, many of which have been in effect for a very long time so it is not a new problem.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 30, 2007 at 1547 hrs
Superior and Michingan are down drastically these last few years, raising havoc with shippers
Jim, perhaps you can look up the word “cycle” in the dictionary.
Not that long ago, Dave Schulz’s County Gummint was trying to find ways to keep Lake Michigan water off of Lincoln Memorial Drive north of the Art Center.
And guess what: that was AFTER “global cooling” was long dead…
Posted by dad29 on December 30, 2007 at 2035 hrs
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