Water Here!  Get Your Ice Cold Water Here!

Exactly.

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?