Monday, January 7,
2002
Great Lakes water
battle looms large on horizon
By Joan Lowy
Scripps Howard News Service
Beginning 10,000
years ago, retreating North American glaciers carved out a marvel
of nature so vast that it is easily identifiable from outer space.
Together, the Great Lakes contain one-fifth of all the drinkable
water on the surface of the planet - an estimated 6 quadrillion
gallons.
With all that water on their doorstep, you wouldn't think Americans
and Canadians who live in the Great Lakes basin would miss a few
billion gallons.
Guess again.
Protecting Great Lakes water from business and multinational corporations
that would load supertankers with water and ship it to parched
regions of the world at a profit has become a cause celebre on
both sides of the border.
In the mid-1980s, thirsty municipalities in Arizona and California
explored the possibility of acquiring vast quantities of water
from the lakes through a system of pipelines and canals. The project
proved uneconomical.
In 1998, The Nova Group of Ontario proposed bottling and shipping
156 million gallons a year from Lake Superior to water-short regions
of Asia. The proposal didn't get much attention in the United
States, but it prompted a massive outcry in Canada, killing the
deal.
There are other water deals that wouldn't involve the Great Lakes
but could set a precedent were they to succeed.
In Texas, which has only one natural lake, people in the Panhandle
are more worried about underground water. Businessman T. Boone
Pickens has drawn criticism for a plan to pump water from the
Ogallala Aquifer in Northwest Texas and ship it to the state's
major metropolitan areas.
The proposal, which is being scrutinized in the courts, worried
farmers and some of the towns that use the underground ocean as
their primary water supply.
Global Water Corp., a Canadian company, has had a permit from
Sitka, Alaska, since 1993 to ship up to 5 billion gallons a year
of glacier water by tanker to China and the Middle East. The transportation
costs have proved prohibitive so far, and no shipments have happened
Another company, Sun Belt Water Inc. of Santa Barbara, Calif.,
wants to ship water from British Columbia to Southern California
in supertankers capable of holding up to 75 million gallons each.
Sun Belt has filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against British
Columbia, arguing that the province violated the North American
Free Trade Agreement by backing out of the deal after it had issued
a permit.
Canadian concerns
With freshwater shortages becoming commonplace in large portions
of the world, the future of the Great Lakes has become a sensitive
diplomatic issue between the United States and Canada.
Canadians clearly fear the United States will muscle in on their
vast water supplies. But telling U.S. and Canadian entrepreneurs
not to sell Great Lakes water is akin to telling the Saudis not
to sell oil.
"There is a demand outside the region for significant quantities
of water," said Reg Gilbert of Great Lakes United, an umbrella
group of 170 environmental, labor and other interest groups in
the region. "Lest anyone think the fact that it's not feasible
now means it won't happen, all you have to do is to look back
in history at all the 'unfeasible' water projects that have been
constructed all over the West."
Some experts believe that free trade agreements could make blocking
water exports difficult for the region. In June, the governors
of eight states bordering the Great Lakes as well as the premiers
of the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec signed an agreement
pledging to work together to limit water withdrawals from the
region.
A month later, President Bush, in response to a question from
a Canadian reporter, appeared to vaguely suggest the United States
might want to tap Great Lakes water to help arid southwestern
states.
"Water will forever be an issue in the U.S., particularly
the western part," Bush noted, adding: "I look forward
to discussing this with (Canadian) Prime Minister Jean Chretien."
That was enough to set off alarms in Ottawa, prompting Canadian
Environment Minister David Anderson to snap that any Bush-Chretien
discussion on water will be "brief." The prime minister,
Anderson said, "will tell the president that we have a policy
of not exporting water, and that, I guess, will be it."
"George W. Bush is at the door, and he wants Canada's water"
was the headline in Toronto's Globe and Mail, one of Canada's
largest national newspapers.
"Everybody now has become very cautious about even talking
about doing that because the governors of the Great Lakes and
the people of the Great Lakes states have become very sensitive
about diversion of water from the lakes," said Thomas Baldini,
the U.S. chairman of the International Joint Commission, which
advises the United States and Canada on shared water resources.
"I think the Canadians are concerned for good reason,"
global water expert Sandra Postel said. "The way NAFTA is
written, if you open Canadian water resources for bulk water sales,
then you are basically opening Pandora's box. Virtually any company
in the United States could decide to go into Canada and tap their
water resources for export and for profit."
Facts about the
Great Lakes
-- Lakes Superior,
Huron, Michigan, Erie and Ontario are the single largest collection
of liquid freshwater. Only the polar icecaps have more.
-- They include 9,500 miles of shoreline, of which 4,500 miles
is in the United States - more than the U.S. East and Gulf coasts
combined.
-- They contain 35,000 islands.
-- They are linked by a continuous drainage basin comprising the
greatest freshwater system on Earth.
-- They cover a total surface area of 94,000 square miles - about
the size of Oregon.
-- If all the water in the Great Lakes were spread evenly over
the continental United States, the 48 states would be flooded
under more than 9 feet of water.
-- Officially dubbed "the nation's fourth seacoast."
Source: University
of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute
Reporter-News resources
writer Samuel Segrist contributed to this report.
Contact Washington
bureau writer Joan Lowy at lowyj@hns.com
On the Net: Great
Lakes United: www.glu.org
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