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WATER POLITICS

As reported by The Buffalo News, pressure from parched areas who are beginning to eye the Great Lakes water supply is increasing as sources of fresh water dry up and demand rises.  As the article notes:

“…A growing population and a warmer world are pressuring the country’s water supply.

And that pressure raises a question: In the eyes of arid Las Vegas, Atlanta and Los Angeles, are the Great Lakes less a distant mirage on the map and more a miracle salvation?

It’s a question the 40 million people who live around the lakes have reason to ask as their representatives work to ratify a landmark agreement — called the Great Lakes Compact — aimed largely at insuring the water isn’t siphoned off by an increasingly parched world.

The Great Lakes, which hold about 20 percent of the surface fresh water in the world, continue to quench thirsts, produce food, influence weather, provide power, enhance recreation and inspire artists in two countries. Their bounty has nurtured generations.

But sources of fresh water are drying up across the country — and the world — while demand rises. Analysts believe demand will get more urgent as higher temperatures forecast by climate-change models make it more coveted.

While Western officials insist they aren’t eyeing Great Lakes water, some say that inevitably there will be pressure to transport the water elsewhere.

“There is a long-term threat to the Great Lakes with respect to large-scale diversion,” said Kevin Martin, assistant deputy minister for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.

“We are fearful that at some point in the future, someone is going to look at the lakes and think that they are an opportunity to foster irrigation projects . . . or urban growth in the Southwestern U. S.,” he said.

…The Colorado River — which supplies water to six Southwestern states and Mexico — is already under stress because of the worst drought conditions in its recorded history.

The politics Hall refers to reflect the country’s population shift from the North and East to the South and West.

“When you look at these [water diversion] projects rationally, none of them make sense,” Hall said. “But that doesn’t mean that politicians won’t try to do them.”

The near-unanimous view of experts today is that the creation of any massive system to move water from the Great Lakes would run up against formidable economic, environmental and legal obstacles.

The cost of two massive projects to move water from Alaska and James Bay of Canada to the American West were estimated at anywhere from $100 billion to $300 billion each in the 1960s, when they were under discussion.

…A bigger proposal, still in the planning stage, involves building a 250-mile pipeline to move water from aquifers in the northern part of the state. Huntley estimated the cost at $3.5 billion.

That’s in addition to a study completed last year by the Colorado River basin states that outlined 12 potential alternative water sources, including towing icebergs.

While none involves Great Lakes water, one of the alternatives is tapping the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest, a suggestion that hasn’t been well received along that river.

…Sending water from Lake Erie to Las Vegas may be unrealistic, but governments around the Great Lakes aren’t taking any chances.

A proposal 10 years ago to ship Lake Superior water to Asia in the hulls of ships prompted years of negotiations among the governors of the eight states and two Canadian provinces along the lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway.

The result is the compact, which is “meant to be the bulletproof water fence to fend off long-range, large-scale diversions and manage smaller diversions,” said former Newsweek writer Peter Annin, author of the book “The Great Lakes Water Wars.”

New York ratified the compact earlier this year, joining four other Great Lakes states. Ontario and Quebec also have approved the compact.

Three other states are in various stages of ratification, and Annin and Hall both believe the odds of those states signing on are good.

The compact also is subject to approval by Congress. Annin and Hall agree the odds of that happening are good in the short term but drop as time goes on.

They point to the 2010 census, which will doubtless add congressional seats in the South and West while taking away seats in the Great Lakes states.

“The signals that the governors have been getting from the Great Lakes congressional delegation has been, ‘If you’re going to get it to us, get it to us before 2010,’ ” Annin said.