“We will know the value of water when the well runs dry,” the incomparable Benjamin Franklin once observed. This historical gem has never had such literal implications as it does today in the United States, where residents are quickly discovering that the most essential natural resources are not as limitless as we had assumed. This is bad news for the Great Lakes basin, which is surrounded by thirsty neighbors yearning to quench their thirst with fresh, abundant water from our surprisingly fragile water supply, ecosystem, and natural wonder.
To the west of the watershed, Minnesota farmers have fought for water rights to the Milk and St. Mary rivers for hundreds of years. If you look further west, you’ll see thirsty farmers in southern Oregon fighting the federal government for rights to the Klamath River watershed after an endangered species cut off their water supply and threatened their livelihoods. Similar battles were fought in the South, where federal government officials were forced to seize impoverished Colorado from regional farmers so that its water could be dispersed throughout the sprawling metropolises of Los Angeles and San Diego. In the arid deserts of Tucson, Arizona, huge sinkholes have emerged as a result of huge drops in the water table. To the southeast, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have been suing each other for decades for water rights to the Apalachicola River Basin while steadily sucking it up. Even in the East, where water shortages seem to be less frequent, the Ipswich River outside Boston has occasionally dried up; over-extraction of the groundwater that feeds the Ipswich robbed it of its integral baseflow.
Because the population in all of these areas is increasing, the growing water crisis will only worsen and the current water shortage will be exacerbated by the cycle of drought. “America is headed toward a water scarcity crisis,” warns Robert Glennon, a law professor at the University of Arizona and author of Water Follies, an influential book detailing the disastrous effects of excessive groundwater pumping in the United States. . “Our current water use practices are unsustainable and environmental factors threaten a water supply greatly affected by increased demand.”
So it’s natural for people in the Great Lakes Basin to ask: we have all this water; They don’t have much, so when will the thirsty knock? Well, whether we realize it or not, much has already been tried and, in some cases, done to deplete our precious lakes of their natural blessing in one of the most geographically stable places on earth.
Consider the infamous Ogallala Aquifer: a huge groundwater resource that supplies virtually all of the water to the high plains. Contrary to popular belief, the resource is not a vast underwater cavernous ocean, but rather water that has filled cracks and crevices in the arid Great Plains for thousands of years. Nature finds it difficult to replenish even small extractions of this integral resource in this region, let alone today’s mass consumption. “Continuation of existing use patterns is expected to result in the depletion, or near depletion, of this single major source of water in a large portion of the High Plains,” a federal report said in 1982.
Although the day’s gridlock was untenable, local farmers were counting on their government officials to keep them afloat. In 1976, the Great Plains came together to push through controversial legislation that called for the US Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a $6 million study to investigate the feasibility of transporting water from neighboring states to the region.
Naturally, the response of neighboring states to the proposal (much less to the results) of this study was nothing short of alarming and drew the ire of the governors of the Great Lakes states, as one member, Minnesota, fell into the category of ‘neighbor’. State legislatures had long feared the possibility of Great Lakes water being sucked into the dry American Southwest, but the Ogallala Aquifer states suddenly seemed like a much more immediate threat. Not only was demand higher here; they were also closer.
Although the study interpreted ‘adjacent’ in a relatively rational way that would not allow Great Lakes water to be diverted, the scare was the closest the Great Lakes basin came to suffering from a massive parasitic faucet draining millions of gallons daily. region of. The study results were significant for two important reasons: they served as an ominous warning that the future would hold more water shortages and more runs on Great Lakes water, and they showed the impossibility of transporting water from the basin to other areas of the country. . In a study by University of Michigan professor Jonathan Bulkley investigating the added cost of transferring water from Lake Superior to the Missouri River, where Lake Superior could theoretically connect with 2 of the Corps’ Ogallala diversion schemes. The purpose of the study was to show how outrageous the price would be to transport water out of the Great Lakes basin.
The proposed 611-mile canal included in the proposal was capable of transporting 10,000 cubic feet of clean, fresh Lake Superior water every second from Lake Superior to Yankton, South Dakota. In addition to the cost, transporting the water would require 18 pumping stations, since most of the water’s journey is uphill. Add an additional $7 million for the energy used to simply operate these stations, and the project faced a mountain of $27 billion (in 1982 dollars). The mass transportation of water from the Great Lakes began to seem more like fact than fiction.
Despite the enormous price that has been placed on transporting water, Great Lakes Basin residents still called on governors and legislators to take action to prevent any future attempts to steal the basin’s water. These pleas were quelled with a Supreme Court ruling in 1982.
The case played out in remote sections of rural Nebraska, but it resonated strongly across the United States, particularly in the Great Lakes Basin region. It posed the question: could a state prevent water from being diverted outside its borders? The Sporhase case began with a small Nebraska farmer who owned property on both sides of the Nebraska-Colorado border. Under state law, Sporhase was not allowed to transport pumped water from his Nebraska property to his Colorado side; he challenged the law as a violation of the interstate commerce clause in the United States Constitution. That summer, in July 1982, the water was declared an object of commerce. As such, the states were prohibited from monopolizing the water supply and were prohibited from interfering with the water in terms of interstate commerce. Sporhase effectively eliminated any tactics that the basin states might have used to prohibit the diversion of water outside the basin.
So what can we do to prevent the redirection of water out of our delicate watershed? The sad reality at this point is: not much. But that doesn’t mean the basin states haven’t taken any action since the Supreme Court’s decision on Sporhase. Indeed, it could be argued that the decision charged some sleepy governors and tipped them off to start taking more aggressive approaches.
The action began in January 1982, when the governors of the 8 states of the Great Lakes basin formed the “Great Lakes Council of Governors”. The purpose of the assembly was to help organize regional responses to a wide range of Great Lakes problems, highlighting the threat of diversion. Later that year, during a meeting on Mackinac Island, a declaration was made that no Great Lakes water would be diverted without authorization from all Great Lakes governors, prime ministers, and federal governments in the United States and Canada. . Despite lacking the power of law, the message sent a clear message that the Great Lakes States were not interested in allowing their precious water to leave their watershed.
The Great Lakes are a precious natural resource, as well as a defining feature of the geographic area. Just as Arizona has the Grand Canyon, the west has picturesque sunsets, and the east is blessed with economic advantages associated with the Atlantic Ocean, the Great Lakes basin is blessed with water. It is important to remember that less than 1% of the volume of the basin enters the lakes each year, so endless withdrawals are impossible, and their drainage will manifest itself both in lowering lake levels and in the disappearance of streams and rivers. . Excessive water export has reduced much smaller water resources (such as the Ipswich watershed) to dusty reminders of our neglect of water management, and eyes will always be on the largest and richest water supply of all. : our beautiful natural wonder on the Great Lakes. .