{"id":2070,"date":"2021-01-02T22:47:53","date_gmt":"2021-01-02T22:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2070"},"modified":"2021-01-02T22:49:48","modified_gmt":"2021-01-02T22:49:48","slug":"ftv-water-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2070","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Water Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0In the fall of 2020, my buddy John Fischer asked me to Google \u201cGreat Lakes water diversions” and let him know what I thought of the first article that popped up.\u00a0 It told the tale of a project (started in Ontario, Canada in 1925) to dam rivers just north of the Lake Superior \/ Hudson Bay divide.\u00a0 A \u2018divide\u2019 is the boundary that marks the high points between watersheds.\u00a0 The town of Watersmeet, for example, lies near the divide separating water that flows north toward Lake Superior and south to the Mississippi River.\u00a0 As for the 1925 Ontario project, some of the water that would normally flow north to Hudson Bay was diverted south to Lake Superior in an effort to stabilize water levels in the big lake.\u00a0 By adding this reverse flow to the lake (amounting to about 3 percent above Superior\u2019s natural yearly input), one aim was to avoid lost shipping revenue in times when the water levels tended to be lower.\u00a0 Historically, the level of the Great Lakes cycle through high and low periods every thirty years or so.\u00a0 This difference between the high and low periods is, on average, around six feet.\u00a0 The long term average surface elevation for Lake Superior is calculated at 602 feet above sea level, meaning the big lake can naturally cycle between 596 feet to 608 feet above sea level.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first diversion was done at Long Lac, just north of Terrace Bay, Ontario.\u00a0 It was designed to bring timber from inaccessible areas to the north of the lake using the redirected flow of the Kenogami River.\u00a0 The promise of jobs and economic stimulation north of Lake Superior were the chief goals, adding water to the big lake was a secondary benefit.\u00a0 The Ogoki River diversion was even more ingenious.\u00a0 Canada needed to up hydro-generation to aid World War II production.\u00a0 Rather than building the infrastructure to carry power generated in the far north, they decided that dumping more water into Lake Superior would allow them to increase hydro-generation at Niagara Falls!\u00a0 I had to admit to John that I had never heard of these project nor had it come up in any of the endless debates about managing Great Lakes water resources I have followed over the years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I was born in L\u2019Anse, Michigan on the shores of Lake Superior\u2019s Keweenaw Bay.\u00a0 Minus a short interval when my family lived in Manistique (on the shore of Lake Michigan, but I was too young to remember this detour), I have never lived more than a mile from the shore of the big lake.\u00a0 I have spent enough time boating to not be a total land lubber, but I am one of those folks who would rather enjoy the lake from the shoreline.\u00a0 Not being a natural born sailor has not prevented me from being enthralled with tales of those who are.\u00a0 My degrees in Geography\/Earth Science provided me with enough information about the Great Lakes (both the physical and sociological histories) to deepen my appreciation for what we call the Crown Jewel freshwater system of North America, if not of the whole planet.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The most authentic sailor I have had the pleasure of knowing would be former Ontonagon Area Schools math teacher and principal Tom Hartzell.\u00a0 When my son was quite young, we ventured down to the marina to look at the boats and Captain Tom invited us to join him aboard his sailboat for a cup of coffee and a pop.\u00a0 When Daniel asked him if he had ever been sailing in a storm on the lake, Tom smiled and said, \u201cNot on purpose.\u201d\u00a0 He related a time when he was leaning back watching the clouds roll by, oblivious to anything but the sun, wind, and water.\u00a0 Tom said he was caught totally by surprise when his boat was overtaken by a violent squall that snuck up on him from behind.\u00a0 \u201cIt was a little scary until I got the sails winched down,\u201d Tom told us, \u201cbut I really didn\u2019t get \u2018scared\u2019 until I had made port and began thinking about all the bad things that didn\u2019t happen.\u00a0 Maybe I should have installed a rearview mirror.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Tom\u2019s love of the lake wasn\u2019t confined to the sailing season.\u00a0 The snow generated by the cold Canadian winds picking up moisture and dumping it on the highlands of Upper Michigan provide the natural resource for another one of Tom\u2019s great pleasures:\u00a0 skiing.\u00a0 It was Tom\u2019s idea to start taking our Ontonagon Area Schools JH students on a yearly ski trip to the Porkies (an event that carries on to this day).\u00a0 Another story he told me concerned one of his adventures cross country skiing out on icy Lake Superior.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was one of those brutally cold winters when Lake Superior managed to freeze over completely.\u00a0 Tom began wondering if it would be possible to ski across the entire lake, but he rightly reasoned that the big lake would not remain completely frozen over very long once the next big snowstorm hit.\u00a0 He decided to venture out from the shore across the road from his home just to see how thick the ice was.\u00a0 Tom related the following story:\u00a0 \u201cI started out cautiously because I couldn\u2019t really tell how thick the ice was.\u00a0 I would test it here and there with the tip of my ski pole, but\u00a0 it was obviously very solid near the shore.\u00a0 As I ventured farther out, I began testing less frequently and pretty soon, I got lost in the joy of skimming along the ice.\u00a0 After a long interval of sliding along the icy surface, I stopped and prodded the ice again.\u00a0 Too my surprize, the tip of the\u00a0 ski pole made a hole and a little fountain of water spurted out when it was removed.\u00a0 Slowly looking over my shoulder, I realized how far out I was;\u00a0 I could barely see the shoreline behind me.\u00a0 After carefully turning around to face back the way I had come, I started back slowly.\u00a0 I shuffled my feet with a skating motion to get moving because I really didn\u2019t want to make any more holes.\u00a0 It took a long time before I was brave enough to test the ice again and it was a great relief to not see my pole make another hole.\u00a0 The phrase, \u2018Tom, what were you thinking?\u2019 kept running through my head until I was back on shore.\u201d Let me just say this episode never damped Tom\u2019s enthusiasm for skiing (on land) or sailing on the lake.\u00a0 He never mentioned if he ventured out on to the lake ice on skis again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the article that John Fischer had told me to read, I found reference to a book by Peter Annin entitled <\/span>The Great Lake Water Wars<\/span><\/i> (Island Press – 2006).\u00a0 Having found a copy in the Ontonagon Township Library, reading the Prologue stimulated my own memory files about living in the Great Lakes region.\u00a0 How many of us living in the Great Lakes Basin stop to think about the vast water resources contained in our corner of the world?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Peter Annin\u2019s summary in the Prologue is a good place to start:\u00a0 \u201cToday, I stand on the shores of Lake Superior and I see a unique, fragile, cold-water ecosystem.\u00a0 I see the largest surface area of delicious freshwater in the world.\u00a0 I see a lake so deep (more than 1,300 feet) that her steepest underwater canyon is the lowest spot on the North American continent.\u00a0 I see a lake so large that she could swallow all four of the other Great Lakes and still have room to spare,\u00a0 I see the mother of all lakes, the headwaters of a great basin that holds one-fifth of all the fresh surface water on the planet,\u00a0 I see a five-lake ecosystem that contains enough water to cover the Lower 48 – every American acre south of the Canadian border – with 9.5 feet of crystal clear Great Lakes water.\u00a0 I see an ecosystem that quenches the thirst of billions of creatures and some forty million people in eight U.S. states and two Candian Provinces.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Annin goes on to frame his reasons for writing <\/span>Water Wars<\/span><\/i>:\u00a0 \u201cToday I stand on the shores of Lake Superior and I see a naive innocent, a voluptuous bounty on the verge of violation.\u00a0 I see millions of angry, parched people from far-flung venues who view \u2018undeveloped water\u2019 as a wasted opportunity.\u00a0 I see dryland farmers clamoring with sharp spigots, claiming they can\u2019t feed the world without more irrigation.\u00a0 I see thousands of massive supertankers lining up on behalf of millions of thirsty Asians.\u00a0 I see endless Romanesque canals carrying water to manicured lawns in a burgeoning, unsustainable Sunbelt.\u00a0 I see anxious scientists who worry about the transformations that climate change could bring,\u00a0 I see Great Lakes Politicians destructively bickering among themselves, ultimately threatening the lakes they hope to save.\u00a0 I see urban voters – with no connection to land, water, or wildlife – who elect their dilettante peers to public office, affecting water policy everywhere…I see millions upon millions of Great Lakes residents who underestimate the struggle that awaits them.\u00a0 Today, when I stand on the shores of Lake Superior, I don\u2019t see a lake.\u00a0 I see a sprawling deep blue battleground that stretches from Duluth, Minnesota, to Trois Rivieres, Quebec – and I wonder, who will win the war?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The fluctuating levels of the Great Lakes have been documented back to the end of the last Ice Age.\u00a0 Since the first edition of <\/span>Water Wars<\/span><\/i> was released in 2006, we have seen both historic low and high water levels on Lake Superior in less than a decade.\u00a0 With the lake consuming more and more of the shoreline in 2020, it may be a little hard to envision any human intervention that could permanently harm such a massive body of water.\u00a0 That is what people living around the Aral Sea thought seventy years ago and if one hasn\u2019t tossed all of their old atlases, take a moment to look at the Aral Sea we learned about in Geography class.\u00a0 Then do a search about conditions there today.\u00a0 The diversion of water from the two major rivers that used to fill the Aral Sea turned the surrounding land into valuable cropland.\u00a0 This diversion caused the first dominoes to fall in a cascade of environmental decline that decimated the Aral Sea and is quickly poisoning the new croplands with salts deposited by irrigation.\u00a0 Like Superior, the Aral Sea was once seen as a resource to be exploited and too large to harm by simply using the river water that flowed into it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Annin points out that many see the Great Lakes as an endless resource.\u00a0 No doubt some would advocate using this vast reservoir of freshwater to cure the water ills plaguing areas of the Great Plains and Southwest.\u00a0 This is the same kind of thinking that destroyed the Aral Sea.\u00a0 The Great Lakes are NOT a vast reservoir waiting to be \u2018used\u2019.\u00a0 Annin calculates that only about 1 percent of the Great Lakes can be considered as \u2018available\u2019.\u00a0 The Great Lakes as a whole comprise a vast ecological system that supports the biological and industrial needs of the states and provinces that surround them.\u00a0 Any future attempts to divert Great Lakes water to other areas could be the first steps toward negatively altering this ecological system.\u00a0 Annin also doubts the amount of money needed to fund large scale diversions could be found at this point, but what about a future point when the western water woes become even more dire?\u00a0 There was a time when no one thought it would be economical to import water from the Colorado River system to Los Angeles.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When he published <\/span>Water Wars<\/span><\/i> in 2006, Annin hoped a comprehensive water management plan would become the guiding light.\u00a0 Like any political football, the discussion drags on as the various groups with a dog in the fight weigh in.\u00a0 Though I have not seen the updated version, I\u00a0 read he added new information about efforts to tweak the International Commission\u2019s rules to accommodate areas just outside of the Lake Michigan watershed boundary.\u00a0 The idea goes like this:\u00a0 If Suburb A can take water out of Lake Michigan because it is within the watershed boundary, why can\u2019t Suburb B which is right next to A, though just outside the divide?\u00a0 Why couldn\u2019t Suburb A sell water it pumps from Lake Michigan to Suburb B?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Decisions like this could become the first dominos to fall and everyone knows what happens next . . . they will all fall.\u00a0 Tweaking one of the Commission\u2019s rules would open the door for more diversion of Great Lake water.\u00a0 Consider the \u2018dark store tax\u2019 fight:\u00a0 the crazy idea big box stores use to lower their taxes.\u00a0 They claim their taxable value should be based on the value of the empty building and not the value of the business they are doing while in operation.\u00a0 The unintended consequences of implementing the \u2018dark store tax\u2019 has been loss of local revenue that supports libraries, animal shelters, fire departments, and other valuable community assets. The \u2018we are next door to the water boundary\u2019 arguments make me say, \u201dWHAAAT?\u00a0 It is the water equivalent of the \u2018dark store tax\u2019!\u201d\u00a0 The rules drafted by the Commission are based on science and any legal mumbo jumbo used to find loopholes in these regulations put the Great Lakes on a slippery slope.\u00a0 Again, there would be dire consequences for many if diversions are allowed for the benefit of a few.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As I have quoted Peter Annin a great deal in this article, I will give him the last word, taken from the Epilog of <\/span>Water Wars<\/span><\/i>:\u00a0 \u201cThe time has come for the Great Lakes region to become a global leader in water conservation.\u00a0 In that regard it has a lot to learn from the more arid regions of the continent that were forced to embark on serious water restrictions decades ago.\u00a0 It\u2019s time for the people of the Basin to lead by example and stop taking the region\u2019s most important economic and ecological resource for granted.\u00a0 Conserving water because they want to – not because they have to – is the only way that the Great Lakes states and provinces can credibly claim their mantle as stewards of one of the most abundant freshwater ecosystems on the face of the earth.\u201d\u00a0 To this, I can only add a hearty \u2018Amen\u2019!<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Ah yes, a song about Troubled Waters!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0In the fall of 2020, my buddy John Fischer asked me to Google \u201cGreat Lakes water diversions” and let him know what I thought of the first article that popped up.\u00a0 It told the tale of a project (started in Ontario, Canada in 1925) to dam rivers just north of the Lake Superior \/ Hudson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2070"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2073,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2070\/revisions\/2073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}