In the 1880s, 25 trains a daycame in the summer from Chicago alone. They brought tourists to Waukesha for water, taken from the city’s famed springs, which had won prizes at world’s fairs in Paris, St. Louis and San Francisco. The Bethesda Spring’s water was considered a curative for “kidney diseases, Bright’s disease, diabetes, torpid liver, dyspepsia, insomnia, calculi and nervous prostration,” or so its label claimed.
For half a century, from 1868 to 1918, Waukesha was known as Spring City, a tourist attraction celebrated for its naturally occurring, sweet-tasting spring water. Entrepreneurs developed more than a dozen major spring sites and 30 hotels to cater to the tourists. Mary Todd Lincoln was among the thousands who rested in Waukesha, drinking its curative waters while recovering from President Lincoln’s assassination.
Today, the city’s springs have all but disappeared, victims of development and growth. Only one, Hobo Spring, is still open to the public. Found in Waukesha’s Frame Park, Hobo Spring looks desolate, a litter-filled pool of water. “Water is unsafe for consumption,” a sign warns.
That’s all that’s left of Waukesha’s glorious past as a wonderland of water. “If you had spoken to the owners of those spas 100 years ago and told them they would be out of business because the water was going to be sucked dry, they would have laughed,” notes George Meyer, former head of the state’s Department of Natural Resources and currently head of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation. “Those that say the Great Lakes don’t face that same kind of threat have their heads in the sand.”
How could the massive Great Lakes, the source of most of North America’s fresh surface water, go the way of Waukesha’s springs? Experts point to the Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest lake and now shrunk to 75 percent of its original size.
Drought-stricken states from Arizona to Georgia covet the water of the Midwest. There have been proposals to carry Great Lakes water to the Northeast, to carry coal slurry from Wyoming, and to recharge the parched states of the West and Southwest. Closer to home, Waukesha is desperately seeking new sources of water, with its eyes primarily on Lake Michigan, and New Berlin wants in as well. State legislators and local officials are dueling over these issues.
Water, experts predict, could become the new oil, fought for nationally and internationally, and fraught with environmental and political concerns. Federal law regulating the use of the Great Lakes lacks detail. A proposed Great Lakes Compact, to be signed by states abutting the lakes and then approved by Congress, has yet to be passed, and Wisconsin is dragging its feet.
Who has access to Great Lakes water and under what conditions could be the biggest economic and environmental issue facing Wisconsin. If it’s not addressed, if the Great Lakes are left unprotected, history suggests they could become the Lesser Lakes.
Disaster Scenario
Three words strike fear into environmentalists and scientists concerned with water: the Aral Sea.
Once part of the Soviet Union, and now overlapping Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the Aral Sea was the world’s fourth-largest lake, midway in size between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Today, three-quarters of its volume is gone. Once known for sturgeon, carp, perch and barbell, the Aral Sea no longer supports a vibrant fishing industry. Fishing villages that once dotted the lake are now miles away from water.
One of the world’s oldest lakes took less than 50 years to shrink away. What sounded like a good idea – diverting the Aral Sea’s tributary rivers in order to grow cotton in the desert – turned into a massive ecological disaster.
Peter Annin, a former Newsweekcorrespondent and author of the 2006 book The Great Lakes Water Wars, visited the Aral Sea to capture the immensity of the loss. “Standing in the middle of this great salt flat, it challenges the boundaries of the mind to imagine that a mere generation ago fish-filled waters were 45 feet deep at this spot and fishing boats and other vessels sailed overhead,” he writes. “The Aral Sea’s desiccation shows that large bodies of water like the Great Lakes are not indomitable.”
Rim Abdulovich Giniyatullin of the International Agency for the Aral Sea Program summed up the lessons of the Aral Sea for the BBC. “Don’t allow the misuse of water,” he said. “Be careful about how much you use, and stop before the source starts to shrink.”
There are signs of this misuse for the Great Lakes. In September of 2007, water levels in Lake Superior reached a new low, breaking a record set in 1926, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Lakes Huron and Michigan, which are actually one body of water, are near record lows and likely to drop even more. At the end of 2007, Lake Michigan was only 9 inches above sea level, a record one-day low.
Parallels to the Aral Sea aren’t hard to find. “The Aral Sea dried up because they diverted the water in order to develop, in a way that screwed up the ecosystem,” notes Peter McAvoy, an attorney with the Sixteenth Street Community Health Center who has been involved in Great Lakes water issues since 1982, when he headed a multistate taskforce. “People don’t believe we can irrevocably harm the Great Lakes, but we can.”
McAvoy cites the impact of global warming, which has increased water temperatures and decreased the winter ice cover, causing higher evaporation rates. “The oceans are rising and the Great Lakes falling. That’s highly troubling,” he says.
Adding to such concerns, many have floated plans to divert Great Lakes water to far-away states or other countries. In 1965, Congress requested a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study of using Great Lakes water to relieve drought in the Northeast. In 1981, permission was sought for a $2.2 billion pipeline to carry coal slurry from Wyoming to the Great Lakes. A year later, the Army Corps of Engineers studied – but ultimately decided against – diverting Great Lakes water to recharge the Ogallala Aquifer, which is drawn on by eight states stretching from South Dakota to Texas. In 1998, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment approved the export of water to Asia in bulk containers, rescinding permission only after public uproar.
And all that was before the current spate of droughts across the country, leading to water shortages that once again have others coveting the Great Lakes. Concerns about the Southwest led former presidential candidate Bill Richardson to court controversy by calling upon water-rich states to help out: “Western states and Eastern states have not been talking to each other when it comes to proper use of our water resources,” he said in remarks he later retracted. “States like Wisconsin are awash in water.”
In the Southeast, which is suffering from its worst drought ever, there have been mandates that limit water use and even public prayer services by Georgia’s governor to “pray up a storm.” James Slack, a political science professor in Birmingham, Ala., took a more earthly approach, suggesting the answer to the South’s water woes might be the Great Lakes. “They are the largest water source in the Western Hemisphere,” he wrote in an opinion in the Birmingham Newsin June. “So let’s build a consortium of Sunbelt states, ante up some money and design an Alaska-like water pipeline system.”
Meanwhile, global water shortages are growing. Some 1.2 billion people, about one-sixth of the world’s population, lack access to potable water. Entrepreneurs may someday trade water under a futures contract, not unlike those for potatoes or pork bellies. “On international markets, water may fetch a hefty price, and eventually justify the cost of water pipelines [from the Great Lakes] to the coast and water ships,” Diane Francis, a Canadian financial writer, warned this fall.
Such proposals have put more pressure on Wisconsin to pass the Great Lakes Compact, a multistate agreement that sets up standards for use of the water. “If Richardson had made his comment 20 years ago, most folks would have said, ‘Yeah, we are awash in water,” says Todd Ambs, head of the DNR’s Division of Water. “But that’s not the case anymore.”
But some worry that a compact protecting the Great Lakes from exploitation from outsiders would also prevent some Wisconsin communities from diverting its water.
Divided Waters
To understand the controversies swirling around the Great Lakes Compact, travel to Sunny Slope Road as it passes over I-94, about two miles east of Moorland Road. You are now at the subcontinental divide. Look to the east and you can see downtown Milwaukee and, on a clear day, perhaps Lake Michigan. You’re looking at the Great Lakes basin, and the water you use there is easily taken from and returned to Lake Michigan.
Look to the west toward the Brookfield water tower and the ground slopes toward the Fox River, which flows to the Illinois River, then the Mississippi and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. You’re looking at land outside the Great Lakes basin.
As every schoolchild is taught, such geographical divides are acts of God and cannot be changed by humankind. Raindrops fall and rivers flow in either one direction or the other; they can’t go two places at once.
This law of nature might seem brutally unfair as you consider the path of the subcontinental divide. In Adams County in central Wisconsin, the divide is almost 100 miles from Lake Michigan. In Southeastern Wisconsin, it is surprisingly close to the lake, cutting through Menomonee Falls, Brookfield and New Berlin, leaving the city of Waukesha outside the basin. Toward the Illinois border, the divide is less than two miles from Lake Michigan. The far northwestern part of the state, meanwhile, is within Lake Superior’s basin.
This divide dictated settlement of the state: The Great Lakes basin encompasses one-third of Wisconsin’s land, but two-thirds of its population. Economically, it is the state’s lifeblood.
The advent of urban sprawl has created demands that interfere with these natural boundaries. Under the Great Lakes Compact, water diversions outside the Great Lakes basin are largely banned. But the city of Waukesha, once awash in spring water that flowed to the Mississippi, now wants water from the other side of the divide.
The city has an articulate general in the battle, Dan Duchniak, who manages Waukesha’s water utility. Having worked at Oak Creek for nine years and Racine before that, Duchniak knows municipal water utility issues. A personable advocate with a Clinton-like ability to enjoy the minutia of policy debates, he has his eyes on the prize: “My goal always has been to get a new water supply for the city of Waukesha.”
Waukesha faces two problems, both related to the city’s growth, or as critics view it, unmanaged sprawl. Not only are the water levels in the city’s wells dropping, but the amount of radium has increased. What’s more, further growth and demands on the supply are on the horizon. Waukesha’s population, which was about 50,000 in 1980, is expected to jump to 85,000 by 2030.
Much attention has focused on the city’s radium problem, which has been associated with cancer. Waukesha initially balked at meeting federal radium standards, spending millions to unsuccessfully challenge them in court, only to finally begin upgrading its deep aquifer wells to reduce the radium. A new well has just gone online, and a second will be in use by the end of 2008, according to Duchniak. Both wells use technology that chemically treats and filters out radium, at a cost of about $13.5 million.
“I am confident that the radium issue will be fully resolved,” Duchniak says. “It’s the quantity issue that worries me most,” he says. “The water utility commission set a goal to have a new long-term water supply by 2010.”
There are two possible sources: wells to the west and Lake Michigan water to the east. Waukesha’s focus is on Lake Michigan. Because eastern Waukesha County is part of the Great Lakes basin, the city of Waukesha is considered “a community in a straddling county” under the Great Lakes Compact. Such a community could be eligible for a diversion of water, but there are prerequisites, including approval by the other Great Lakes states and a return of all the water to Lake Michigan.
But Waukesha officials have for years argued it would be prohibitively expensive to return the water. Based on its decades-old practice, it wanted to treat the water and flush it into the Fox River, where it eventually would flow to the Mississippi and be lost forever to the Great Lakes. “The city regularly appeared pugnacious, irascible, and unreasonable – particularly in the early years of the debate,” Annin writes in The Great Lakes Water Wars.
The issue has become a flash point in the always-contentious relationship between Waukesha and Milwaukee. The 2006 mayoral election of Larry Nelson, a Democrat who has refrained from Milwaukee-bashing, has helped. Waukesha has now implemented conservation measures and publicly committed to researching ways to return any Lake Michigan water it might receive.
“When these debates started, no question, Waukesha was the villain,” Nelson admits. “My goal is that we will be the hero because we will set standards for return flow and conservation.”
One way to return the water would be via a pipeline all the way to Lake Michigan’s shore. But Waukesha says that costs too much. It prefers to return water to a river that flows into Lake Michigan, most likely either the Root or Menomonee rivers. But specifics on how that would work are scarce. Nelson, who notes he’s focused on the “big picture” of returning water to Lake Michigan and not the technical aspects, says he’s not sure what would work best: perhaps a pipeline to the river or, he actually speculates, transporting water in trucks.
“I don’t know the answer,” he says.
Say Waukesha chooses the Root River. One of Southeast Wisconsin’s major waterways, the Root River begins in eastern Waukesha County. From there it winds for more than 40 miles through the Root River Parkway near Whitnall Park, through Hales Corners and Franklin, and ultimately east to downtown Racine and into Lake Michigan.
Beyond the daunting engineering question of getting the used water to the Root River, what would be the impact of adding millions of gallons a day to the river, especially wastewater of different quality and temperature? How might that affect recreational uses such as fishing – especially the DNR’s state-of-the-art fish hatchery in Racine’s Lincoln Park that helps manage Lake Michigan trout and salmon?
“My beef isn’t Waukesha getting the water,” says state Rep. Cory Mason (D-Racine). “But as somebody who has the Root River running through their district, the idea of becoming Waukesha’s toilet is not something I am excited about.”
The other major diversion request in the metro area involves New Berlin. Unlike Waukesha, which is outside the basin and merely part of a straddling county, parts of New Berlin are within the basin, making it a “straddling community.” New Berlin already buys Milwaukee water in that portion of the city within the basin. Under the compact, by virtue of being a straddling community, New Berlin only needs approval at the state level to get Lake Michigan water if there is return flow. Equally important, it already has pipes in place to return water via the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.
“We will certainly be willing to sit down with New Berlin as soon as the compact is approved by the state,” Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett says.
But negotiations with Waukesha are
far more complicated because of questions regarding how to return the water. “We have to be extremely careful because each decision may set a new precedent,” Barrett cautions.
But Nelson is ever the optimist. “My endgame is Milwaukee agrees to sell us the water and you will have a picture of Tom Barrett and me, arm and arm, with a new relationship, not only on water, but issues such as transportation, which will be good for the region and the Great Lakes.”
It’s a beautiful image. But as Barrett continuously stresses, Milwaukee won’t give Waukesha the time of day on water negotiations until Wisconsin passes the Great Lakes Compact. What’s more, the Great Lakes governors wouldn’t either. Waukesha’s only chance of getting a Lake Michigan diversion is if the hotly contested Great Lakes Compact is passed.
Universal Solvent?
About 15,000 years ago, glaciers covered the United States as far south as Kansas. As the ice retreated and melted, it created the Great Lakes – a fresh water wonder of the world.
About 97 percent of the earth’s water is found in the oceans. But most of the world’s fresh water is locked up in glaciers and icecaps. About a third is in ground waters deep beneath our feet, and only a small percentage is in lakes and rivers. The Great Lakes are a rare and precious resource, containing almost 20 percent of the world’s and 90 percent of North America’s fresh surface water. If the fight over the compact is so intense, it’s because the stakes are so high.
The Great Lakes are the economic engine for the region, essential for agriculture, industry, shipping and tourism. Great Lakes states account for 30 percent of U.S. agricultural sales, 70 percent of the steel produced in North America and half of U.S. heavy manufacturing. The lakes also generate $55 billion in tourism revenue.
Wisconsin is blessed in that it borders both Lake Superior, the world’s largest freshwater lake, and Lake Michigan, the fifth-largest and the only Great Lake completely within U .S. boundaries. (The Great Lakes basin borders eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.)
Historically, only 1 percent of the Great Lakes’ water is replenished every year by rainfall and snowmelt. If water is used at a higher rate than it can be replenished, the lake levels will fall. It’s as simple as that.
The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River basin Water Resources Compact was formed to protect the Great Lakes from being drained of its precious waters, to promote conservation and improve the ecosystem. The compact was signed by Great Lakes governors in Milwaukee in 2005, and at this point is more a barometer of good faith than a binding document. Legally, it takes effect when approved by the Great Lakes legislatures and the U.S. Congress.
During the years of negotiations leading to the compact, both Republican and Democratic governors worked together, realizing the region couldn’t necessarily depend on the federal government for protection. “One of their overriding concerns was not ceding control to Congress, which is more and more looking to the South and Southwest, not just in terms of congressional representation, but overall political clout,” notes Peter Johnson, program director of the Council of Great Lakes Governors. “The last president elected from anywhere outside the South or West was Kennedy.”
At this point, the only defense against water-diversion schemes is a 1986 federal law, the Water Resources Development Act. On the plus side, the law requires approval by all Great Lakes governors for exports or diversions of Great Lakes water. On the negative side, that’s about all it says. Only two pages long – a brevity most uncommon in federal legislation – it establishes few guidelines or definitions, is subject to multiple interpretations, and leaves the door open to unpredictable decisions. A 1990 diversion request by Pleasant Prairie, Wis., was approved, but two years later the governor of Michigan vetoed a request for a smaller diversion by Lowell, Ind.
In contrast, the compact is 27 pages, almost 12,000 words, and sets out detailed guidelines and decision-making processes. No one argues it is perfect, but it’s widely seen as the best we are likely to get.
“The compact is a once-in-a-generation chance to get something that has a long-term vision,” says Jodi Habush Sinykin, a lawyer who was involved in compact negotiations through her work with Midwest Environmental Advocates. “Obviously, there may be short-term economic benefits to not having any regulations, just as there was resistance to the Clean Water Act. But at what cost for the long-term?”
While media attention centers on the issue of diversions, the compact also provides a mechanism for management and conservation of the lakes. As unbelievable as it may seem, there currently is no comprehensive system to collect data and manage the waters of the Great Lakes.
“We really have no idea how much water we are using across the Great Lakes basin, or how much water agriculture is using, industry is using, municipalities are using, and how much is lost,” according to the DNR’s Ambs. “I think that is pretty critical, not only to the environmental, but the economic health of the region.”
And maybe just as critical to the political health of the region. “We have to get our house in order within the Great Lakes basin if we are going to have any right to tell folks outside, ‘Keep your hands off,’ ” Ambs adds.
Wisconsin was the only Great Lakes state that hadn’t even introduced legislation on the compact – but a bipartisan group of lawmakers planned to introduce a bill in early 2008. The clock is ticking. If the compact is not approved before the legislature ends its current session this month, it could be 2009 before a bill could be passed.
Why the foot-dragging? The compact’s most vocal legislative opponent is state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), whose district includes Mukwonago, a community that straddles Waukesha and Walworth counties. Under the compact, the portion of Mukwonago in Walworth County would never be eligible to get Great Lakes water. Lazich wants the compact rewritten, a proposal that is almost surely a death sentence, as there’s little chance the Great Lakes governors would reopen the years of negotiations that led to their 2005 agreement.
Lazich’s stance is at odds with many local officials in New Berlin and Waukesha County, who are also part of her district. Her main complaint is the compact’s stipulation that the governor of any Great Lakes state can veto any diversion outside the basin. “There is the problem there of majority rule, and everything in our country is based on majority rule,” she says.
But the veto power cuts both ways, others note, allowing Wisconsin the same ability to prevent diversions in other states. The veto also recognizes that no one state owns the Great Lakes. Finally, the compact guidelines require any veto to be based on merit, not political machinations.
The Waukesha Chamber of Commerce also opposes the compact, but the most powerful opponent is the heavyweight lobbying group, the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, with nearly 4,000 members, including many businesses, local chambers of commerce and trade associations. “WMC believes Wisconsin should control its own destiny in terms of permitting water withdrawals and uses, without having to seek the blessing of other states,” the group declares.
George Meyer, the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation leader, cautions that the WMC doesn’t represent all business interests. “The WMC hasn’t supported an environmental regulatory bill in 15 years. None. Zero,” he says. “I have a lot of businessmen in my group and they just shake their heads when they see the WMC position.”
The compact is sometimes portrayed as a fight of Milwaukee versus Waukesha or environmentalists versus business. Meyer disputes this. “Our members voted for George Bush in 2000 by two-to-one,” he says. “You won’t find any of them, even from Waukesha County, that don’t want a strong compact.”
In fact, a recent statewide poll found that more Republicans (83 percent) than Democrats (76 percent) supported the compact.
“The compact is not a Republican or Democrat issue,” says state Sen. Robert Cowles (R-Green Bay). “It’s an issue of long-term common sense if we want to maintain the resource.”
Cowles was on a legislative committee chaired by state Sen. Neal Kedzie (R-Elkhorn) that worked for a year to come up with compact legislation. In September, Kedzie disbanded the stalemated committee. Cowles charges that Waukesha-area interests had too much influence, given the compact’s statewide importance.
“The committee was stacked heavily,” he says. “Too many people that wanted either a weak or no compact, looking at it from a very parochial point of view of ‘Let’s get ours,’ and not looking at the long-term situation in the Great Lakes.”
Observers say there’s widespread support for the compact, but disagreement over what additional legal language is passed to guide its implementation in Wisconsin. Waukesha officials Nelson and Duchniak, for instance, support the compact, but will work to defeat implementation language viewed as too restrictive. By contrast, environmental groups want language that requires increased conservation measures and a requirement that any water taken from the Great Lakes be returned “in the most environmentally responsible way.”
Others, meanwhile, are looking beyond the compact to consider the longer-term issue of how to maintain and conserve water in an era of intensifying drought and falling lake levels.
Fighting Over the Future
“Whiskey is for drinking,” as Mark Twain once put it. “Water is worth fighting over.”
Ever since the first Native Americans settled in what is now Wisconsin, lakes and rivers have been a coveted resource. It’s no mistake that Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, developed at the confluence of three rivers and along Lake Michigan. Or that some of our most prominent industries – from breweries to paper mills – developed near waterways such as the Fox and Mississippi rivers or Lake Winnebago. Or that the capital of Madison is situated alongside lakes Mendota and Monona.
But after millennia of humans locating next to water, the emphasis began to get reversed, says Doug Cherkauer, a scientist with the UW-Milwaukee Great Lakes WATER Institute. “In the 18th and 19th and 20th centuries, we learned we could move water around the globe and take it from where it occurred naturally to where we wanted it to be,” he says. “But in virtually every instance, it had disastrous side effects.”
In California, nature is using wildfires, mudslides and earthquakes to reassert its dominance. “We’ve set ourselves up for this,” Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA, says of the devastating effect of California’s fires last fall. “We’ve been handing out building permits without considering the requirements for water.”
An October cover story in TheNew York Times Magazine, “The Future is Drying Up,” warned that global warming affects not just ocean levels, but the supply of drinking water: “Diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas.”
The issue of how we can best maintain and preserve water has gotten considerable attention from the Great Lakes WATER Institute, the only major aquatic research institution on Lake Michigan and the largest U.S. institution of its kind in the Great Lakes region. The Institute has done research on issues ranging from pollution to fish sensitivity to toxins. It is also involved with fish farming, with an extensive system of large tanks “to keep yellow perch a favorite of the Friday night fish fry,” as the Institute’s Web site puts it.
In a wide-ranging interview, Val Klump, the Institute’s director, and Tim Grundl and Cherkauer, two of the Institute’s leading scientists, focused on the overarching principles that should guide all water policies, not just diversions. Phrases such as “sustainable,” “living within your means,” and “don’t choose short-term savings over long-term costs” kept cropping up, as though this were a financial seminar for people who’ve maxed out their credit cards. In a sense, we are maxing out our water reserves.
“There is no place left in the world where you can steal the water for your use without impacting someone else,” Klump says. Inevitably, the lake water that goes to New Berlin, Waukesha or other places will impact the Great Lakes. “So it’s really a question of what are the options and what makes the most sense,” he adds.
Diversion of Lake Michigan and a return of treated water is one option. Another is what Klump calls overutilization of local water resources and further depleting the deep aquifer. A third is switching to shallow aquifers, but these feed lakes, rivers and wetlands in the region. All three options come with significant environmental costs.
“There is a fourth option,” Klump says, “which is to truly live within your natural system. Take the water, use it, treat it, and put it back in the same spot where you got it and use it again. Then there is no long-term shortage. You just use the water again.”
Such recycling of water is possible with the right technology – and drought-stricken areas in the West and South are beginning to embrace it. In November, California’s Orange County started operating what is billed as the world’s largest plant to purify sewer water to the level of drinking water. Proposals to use less-treated “gray water” for agriculture, golf courses, or manufacturing purposes are being implemented in California and South Florida.
But the price tag for the new plant in Orange County is $481 million. Water is relatively cheap in Wisconsin – tap water is a penny for four gallons in Milwaukee, a penny for three gallons in Waukesha. Local officials prefer to keep it that way.
“We’re willing to look at gray water use and recycling our storm water,” Waukesha’s Duchniak says. “The problem is, it’s just not economically feasible to go back and retrofit existing areas.”
Waukesha officials had also argued solving the radium problem was unfeasible, but it was really just an issue of cost. After decades of cheap water, people were outraged at the idea of paying more money for it.
If cheap water is the goal, it would make far more sense to stop encouraging sprawl in areas outside the subcontinental divide and promote development in Sheboygan, Port Washington, Milwaukee, Racine and other cities along the lake.
“Over the last century, we have invested billions of dollars for water systems in these areas,” says McAvoy. “We have huge capacity that is not being used. New people and businesses could easily tap into these existing infrastructures rather than developing new ones in the hinterlands.”
But in a country whose entire history has been about moving – to the West, to the next horizon, to the next suburb or exurb – any limitations on where people choose to live seems un-American. People want to buy that new home in the next new subdevelopment, and expect that somehow water will be there for their use. Yet the unrestricted use of fresh water, as the Aral Sea has proven, could quickly drain even the world’s largest lakes.
As water becomes scarcer, it could indeed be as fiercely fought over as oil – with one essential difference. It is possible to develop alternative energy supplies. Not so with water. Without it, we die.
Bottle Battle
Could bottled water imperil the lakes?
Beer lovers take heart. Under the Great Lakes Compact, beer is considered a product and is exempt from prohibitions against diversions of lake water. The clause is pretty important to Beer City, where Miller Brewing alone can produce 11 million barrels of suds a year using Lake Michigan water.
The real battle over bottles involves water. The compact regulates only water transferred in containers of 5.7 gallons or more. But most water is sold in small bottles, which are exempt from regulation. According to Beverage Digest, per capita consumption of bottled water in the U.S. was 21 gallons in 2006, almost double that of a decade earlier.
Environmentalists are concerned that international conglomerates will set up business in the Great Lakes region and drain away our water. Already, Nestle Waters North America bottles 270 million gallons annually in Michigan under the Ice Mountain label.
While the compact does not prohibit this, individual states can set their own regulations. Those advocating a strong compact in Wisconsin are asking for just that.
This, they note, would also save consumers money. Sold for up to $2.50 a quart ($10 a gallon), bottled water costs far more than tap water, which costs just a penny for four gallons in Milwaukee.
Barbara Miner is a frequent contributor to Milwaukee Magazine.
