Where do you think water comes from. You know that the entire southwest is either arid or semi arid? Where do you think the desert gets water?
Since diversions first gained traction in the early 1980s, when a coal company
attempted to divert Great Lakes water to Wyoming, interest in the Great Lakes Basin’s water has grown from a trickle to a gush. Straddling communities — areas like the Village of Somers that sit just outside the Great Lakes basin boundary — are the most likely candidates for diversion permits.
The Great Lakes Compact — signed into law in 2008 by President George W. Bush — largely prohibits taking large quantities of water from the Great Lakes and basin’s groundwater, smaller lakes, and rivers without the approval of all eight states and the input of Ontario and Quebec, which are both in the watershed.
The “water bottle” loophole, as it’s come to be called, was at the center of the
Nestle permit at the Ice Mountain facility in Mecosta County, Michigan. Between
2005 and 2015, the company withdrew 3.4 billion gallons of groundwater from the state in bottled water. Most of the product is sold within the Great Lakes states,
according to Nestle, with 10 percent shipped and sold outside the basin.
Other companies, such as the Pfizer pharmaceutical manufacturing plant near Kalamazoo, draw out billions of gallons of water a year in products.
Olson, who has been working with the compact for years, sees a threat in the loophole. “So just imagine,” he said. “You could basically truck water in containers with a total of 10,000 gallons sitting in the back, stamp the word product on it, and ship it to Louisville to a bottled water plant. You can use the water for anything you want as long as a consumer buys it.”
Other
exceptions include communities located partially in the Great Lakes basin or a community located within a county partially in the Great Lakes basin. Any of these diversions must be approved by all eight states and input from the two Canadian provinces, with each state able to veto a diversion application.
Diversions have been approved in
New Berlin and
Waukesha, WI, whose counties lie partially in the Great Lakes basin, and for the
Foxconn Technology Group in
Racine, WI, which diverts up to 7 million gallons a day from Lake Michigan. The Foxconn approval was met with criticism from environmental groups who argued the diversion violated the terms of the compact because it wasn’t for “public water supply purposes.”
In effect, said Evans and other diversion opponents, the impediments to diverting Great Lakes water that were established in an eight-state compact 13 years ago are steadily being breached.
“On one hand it’s terrible, because I know the climate will make the world’s clean water problem even worse. You can’t deny that,” said Evans. “But where do you draw the line and who gets to decide what happens?”
“You see [diversion proposals] crop up one at a time,” added James Clift, the deputy director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. “We usually see them in Wisconsin because the line of the basin is closest to the lake itself. Some of it is growth within the community and they have limited places to get water. Other times, it’s commercial or residential growth in areas that were formally agriculture.”
In all these cases, communities are required to return all water back to the Great Lakes that isn’t used. Clift is not that concerned.
“The farther these [diversion requests] are away from the lakes, the more unrealistic it is,” says Clift. “You’d never see Great Lakes water being taken over the Rocky Mountains. Anything over the Rocky Mountains, we’re safe.”
But on this side of the Rockies, there has also been some talk for a while about the communities around the Ogallala Aquifer. Beneath the Great Plains and stretched from the southern end of South Dakota to the northwestern corner of Texas, the Ogallala Aquifer is declining rapidly. Recoverable water has dropped
9 percent overall since extensive groundwater pumping began, and the future does not look good.
“I think the major trip [for Great Lakes water] in the next in the next 50 years is the lowering of the Ogallala Aquifer and the impact that is going to have on farm commodities and food supply,” says Dave Dempsey, a Great Lakes policy expert and author of Great Lakes for Sale. “The transferring of Great Lakes water that distance is more economically viable.”
The Ogallala Aquifer produces almost
one-fifth of the corn, wheat, cotton, and cattle in the United States today.
In theory, it’s possible those areas in the Great Plains could make a play for the Great Lakes at some point, according to Clift. But in order for that to happen, the communities would have to change the federal law and amend the compact before applying for a diversion.
“That pressure could build over time,” says Clift. “Which is why it’s important to start recognizing the limitations of water and where we expect water to be in the future.”
While long-distance water diversions seem like a far off scenario, it’s not all conjecture. In Oregon,
a company is actively planning to train water across the country to regions where water supplies are low. Whether this means this could eventually mean the Great Lakes is unclear, but it’s evident that bulk water transport is looking to be a more serious consideration.
The future of water diversions largely depends on the severity of climate change and what that will look like across the country, said Dempsey. Desalination plants
have increased in the Southwest United States and across the world, but while the prices for converting salt water to fresh water have dropped, the process is expensive and comes with its own set of issues such as brine disposal.
There is also the possibility of
mass migration to the Great Lakes. People may come to the basin, a place
that experts say will be the least affected by climate change, and use the water here instead of diverting it. But Dempsey says both could happen, too.
“The question for me is not if the compact will change, but how long it’s going to take,” said Dempsey. “It may take 10, 20, or 100 years. But severe drought in the Southwest will increase pressure at the federal level and they’ll have to decide the most economically viable solution.”
As the global climate warms and water scarcity mounts, Great Lakes water is more valuable than ever before.
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