I'm assuming that some Sci-Fi writer has already written a book about the upcoming fresh water shortage, and that several stories have been optioned by Hollywood, but if not, I really ought to throw together a treatment and a few pages of script ideas. Seems like such an obvious story, and one that everyone already understands, consciously, or not.
Growth Stirs a Battle to Draw More Water From the Great Lakes: The authorities who control the water fear that without strict rules, water-starved western cities will knock at the door. Waukesha (WI) has sucked so much water from its deep aquifer that it is now looking to the vast blue expanse of Lake Michigan, just as Chicagoans once eyed its water.But the authorities who control some of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world are not sure that any of it should go to communities like Waukesha, which is 15 miles from the lake's shore but outside of its watershed.
Their fear is that without strict rules on who gets Great Lakes water and who does not, water-starved western cities will eventually knock at the door.“Today the economics are not there to say we're going to take all the water in the Great Lakes and ship it to Phoenix and Vegas,” said Todd Ambs, the water division director of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “But water's not getting cheaper. Twenty-five, 30, 40 years from now, the economics are going to be different. We've got to have a system in place to deal with that.”
and especially as other metropolitan area exhaust their water supplies, the Great Lakes is going to be an epicenter of political and business intrigue....
And Michigan has told a Nestlé subsidiary that if it wants to increase production of its Ice Mountain bottled water in Mecosta Township, Mich., all of the additional water pumped out of the ground must be “delivered and sold within the Great Lakes basin.” The company is fighting the requirement in federal court.In the last 25 years, ideas have been suggested to build a slurry pipe that would send Great Lakes water to help Wyoming mines and to build a 400-mile canal between the Missouri River in South Dakota and Lake Superior. New York City has raised the possibility of using Lake Erie water to ease droughts.
The Great Lakes basin has “more and more demands for water and certainly more and more development,” Mr. Ambs said. “One of the reasons we're looking to have a water management strategy is preparation for the future.”
In 2001, the eight states that border the Great Lakes, along with Ontario and Quebec, two provinces within the lakes' watershed, pledged to develop a plan to manage access to the lakes' water.
