WaterWired

Noah Hall: Protecting Freshwater Resources in the Era of Global Markets - Lessons From Bottled Water

Noah Hall, who runs the excellent Great Lakes Law blog, recently posted an item, Protecting Freshwater Resources in the Era of Global Water Markets: Lessons Learned from Bottled Water. The post is based on an article of the same name that will be published in the University of Denver Water Law Review. You can download a prepublication copy.

I like the points he makes, especially about how disputes involving bottled water have led to meaningful reforms in our water laws, especially regarding groundwater.

Here are the abstract and conclusion.

Abstract:

Throughout human history, water has defined our sense of place.  American water law reflects the connections between water and local people, communities, and the environment.  Against this backdrop, global water markets have developed to sell and export this increasingly precious resource.  Water markets are recognized in international trade law and take many forms, from tankers of freshwater crossing the Mediterranean to bottles of spring water coming to America from distant pacific islands.  While the scale of water sales and exports is still relatively small, this emerging market represents a new challenge for management of water resources.

This article examines the challenge of protecting freshwater resources in the era of global water markets by looking at the most mature and developed example – bottled water.  Bottled water in America dates back to colonial times, but over the past decade it has become a massive global industry.  As bottled water has grown, so has the backlash against it.  The resulting lawsuits and legislation offer a glimpse of the future of domestic water law in the global water market era.  Bottled water fights provide important lessons for how the law should (and should not) respond to globalization of water use.  By learning from these lessons, we can meet the challenge of global trade in water by developing effective legal protections for our freshwater resources.

Conclusion:

Along with climate change, globalization may be the most significant challenge for state water law in the twenty first century.  The pressures on water resources are no longer limited to local users and property owners, but now include supply for a global water market.  Bottled water is the oldest and most mature water market that transcends state lines.  Bottled water disputes have forced state courts and political leaders to reevaluate old doctrines and water management regulations.  In most cases, bottled water disputes have lead to meaningful and useful legal reforms, especially in the area of groundwater management.  However, in some cases bottled water disputes have exposed problematic flaws in state water law and protectionist knee-jerk reactions by state political leaders that would do nothing to better protect water resources.

Unsatisfied by modest reforms in the courts and legislatures, bottled water opponents have turned their hopes to the public trust doctrine and taxing water bottlers, strategies with significant legal and political weaknesses.  Instead, bottled water opponents and state leaders should take the challenge of bottled water as an opportunity to further reform water management law with an emphasis on resource protection, science-based decision making, and water conservation.  These approaches will help protect water resources from the pressures of globalization while respecting property rights and international trade law rules.

Good stuff!

“O Lord, help me not to despise or oppose what I do not understand.” --William Penn

Got Ballast Water? Michigan Says 'Clean It Or Keep It!"

Shaun McKinnon of The Arizona Republic in the Valley of the Sun posted this item on Waterblogged about Michigan's attempt to regulate ballast water.

A federal appeals court says Michigan is within its rights to regulate ballast from seagoing ships entering the Great Lakes.

So why should we care, more than a thousand mostly dry miles to the southwest?

Two words, folks: quagga mussels.

Actually, we should care about this regardless of where we live. Why?

Two more words, folks: invasive species.

Read more.

Great Lakes Compact Moves Forward; Bill Richardson: "What? No Wisconsin water?"

The Great Lakes Compact is one step closer to reality. All eight US Great Lakes Basin states have approved the measure; Congress now has to give its blessing.

The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec have signed on. Although Quebec does not border any of the lakes and is outside the basin, it is a signatory because of its position along the St. Lawrence River, which emanates from the lakes and dictates that Quebec make water management decisions with Ontario and the GLB states.

NPR had a piece on the compact the other day, which featured an interview with Wayne State University law professor Noah Hall, who runs the Great Lakes Law blog. Noah's an expert and was involved in the compact process, so you should consult his blog for stories and links. Here's a 4 July post on the success story and a post from 8 July on what's next for the compact.

In terms of how much water the lakes hold, NPR got it right:

The five Great Lakes — Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie and Ontario — contain about 90 percent of the fresh surface water in the U.S. and about one-fifth of the entire world's supply. The Great Lakes Water Compact aims to protect the lakes from large-scale water diversions.

I got the map from the Michigan DEQ, which had the amount wrong (20% of the world's fresh water) on its map page but correct (20% of the world's fresh surface water) on its Great Lakes home page. I won't ding them for omitting "unfrozen".

I agree with Noah (I'm going to disagree with a Great Lakes expert who helped draft the compact?) - I think this will pass Congress. Even though some Westerners (and perhaps some Southeasterners) lust after "all that water" I think Congress will respect the wishes of the eight GLB states (who still have a lot of clout). Congress likes to see the states resolve their own "water differences" by negotiating compacts. One of my colleagues believes that the compact may violate the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.

Do you recall New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's "Wisconsin is awash in water" comment last year? Didn't go over real well with the folks in the Great Lakes Basin and elsewhere. At the time, Richardson was a presidential candidate. I suspect that his comment may have had something to do with getting the last states on board.  

So what happens when Canada dumps all that NARA project fresh water from James Bay into Lake Superior? Won't we be able to ship it to the US West or Southeast?

"A lake is  the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature." -- Henry David Thoreau

Noah Hall's Great Lakes Law Blog

Professor Noah D. Hall of the Wayne State University Law School recently started the Great Lakes Law blog. Wayne State is home to the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, of which Hall is the Executive Director.

If the first posts are any indication, then this will be a significant addition to the waterblogosphere. There are posts about bottled water issues, the Great Lakes Compact (hey, Gov. Bill Richardson: check these out) and a nifty little post about 'Groundwater and the Public Trust Doctrine', replete with a short document about GW and the PTD in Michigan:

Download Hall_PTD_and_groundwater_memo.pdf

He provides some Congressional testimony about Federal and State laws regarding bottled water industry, providing an overview and recommendations:

Download Noah_Hall_Bottled_Water_Testimony.pdf

And view this article by Coral Davenport from Congressional Quarterly's weekly magazine, CQ Weekly:

Download CQ_Weekly_Creating_New_Water_Ways.pdf

This is going to be an important source - not just a rehash of material from elsewhere, but some serious analysis by Hall, and not necessarily Great Lakes-specific.

Welcome to the waterblogosphere, Noah!

A Blog on All Things Wet and Legal in the Great Lakes Region by Professor Noah Hall

"But never underestimate the ability of the federal government to waste billions of dollars of taxpayer money on a dumb water project." -- Noah D. Hall, 1 April 2008

Paying Water's True Price

Last summer I posted an item about a Toronto Star article (22 July 2007) on the depopulation of the American Southwest. Very provocative.

Now, the same paper has an article by Chris Wood (6 April 2008), "Time to start paying water's real price". The article is based upon Wood's forthcoming book, Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America, to be published at the end of this month (see my previous post about Wood's book, which I have not read).

From the Toronto Star article:

The Great Lakes, and those who work or live around them, are witnessing profound changes in climate. No one knows that better than Linda Mortsch.

Her childhood was spent near the banks of the St. Lawrence River, at Cornwall, in a house built in 1958 from lumber salvaged from an historic inn that was due to be submerged, along with half a dozen riverside villages, to make way for the St. Lawrence Seaway. Today, she teaches geography at the University of Waterloo, investigating how the changing weather will affect the Great Lakes.

Mortsch walked me through the Lakes' historic water calendar. Typically, the year begins with most smaller lakes and rivers – and large expanses of the great ones – locked in ice. Snow covers the land. As spring comes, the snow and upland ice melt, releasing a vast pulse of fresh water to the Lakes.

Superior, the largest lake, receives the biggest pulse. As the winter's snow-melt flows in, the Lakes' levels rise, with Superior reaching its peak earliest and the lower lakes peaking progressively through the summer until the annual pulse of winter runoff reaches Lake Ontario, usually around Labour Day. The Lakes are at their lowest in December and January, when the cycle begins again.

Now this timeless rhythm is changing. Average air temperatures in the Great Lakes region rose by nearly a degree Celsius over the last 100 years, faster than the world average. Winter and spring have warmed even more, with highs as much as 4 degrees Celsius above those of the last century.

By 2003 places like Sault Ste. Marie and the Kawartha Lakes were getting a month fewer days below freezing and nearly two months fewer of cold nights each winter than in 1950, but 30 more very hot days and nights each summer.

With less snow hanging around anywhere in the Lakes' basin, the yearly pulse of melting snow and ice starts earlier and carries less water into the Lakes.

By far the greatest threat to the Lakes, however, comes from the insidious amplification of evapotranspiration (ET). Evaporation already extracts more water from the Great Lakes than all our human diversions combined.

Across Ontario, calculated losses to evaporation claim two-thirds of every centimetre of rain or snow the province receives. Scientists who monitored lakes in northwestern Ontario between 1970 and 1990 discovered that as temperatures rose by 1.6 degrees Celsius – more than twice the global average for that period – rainfall declined. But evaporation ballooned by 50 per cent. Annual runoff into Lake Superior plummeted by almost two-thirds, from 40 centimetres to only about 15.

[The combination of late-forming ice on the Lakes, and that invisible thief evaporation, may have been largely responsible for this past winter's record snowfalls in eastern Ontario and Quebec. With little ice to protect the Lakes' water, it easily evaporated into the dry arctic air that flows south during the winter, riding the wind to fall back to land later as snow. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, the record heaps of snow were not evidence of climate change slipping into reverse — but of it going into overdrive.]

If less water flows into the Great Lakes each spring, and more of it is drawn out by evaporation over longer ice-free seasons, exactly how much lower will the Lakes be at the end of each year?

If Mortsch and her colleagues are correct, Lake Superior's seasonal low-water levels could fall 38 centimetres below present-day lows before mid-century. Lake Ontario could drop more, losing 54 centimetres from present-day lows, with the deepest impact in the spring. But Lake Erie, already the shallowest of the five, could fall as much as 85 centimetres below its current low-water level. Another study has suggested that the St. Lawrence River at Montreal could in some late summers be at barely half its present volume.

Wood then goes to describe how we must use less water and use it more efficiently. We must also stop deluding ourselves and start paying a higher price for water, implementing a "scarcity" or "commodity" charge for the water we drink.

It's true. When most people get their water bill, there is no charge for the cost of the water. You're paying for water system O&M, yet the world's most precious liquid generally is assigned no price(there are some exceptions to this).

We also don't pay for the "services" that water renders - consider environmental flows, or ecosystem services.

He concludes:

Those who advocate the public commons and a human right to water are correct that water runs through us all. It infuses every aspect of economic, social and cultural life and every hour of the day. For this very reason, neither government, no matter how powerful and intrusive, nor any self-appointed overseer from "civil society," can possibly ensure its wise use.

Only we can do that, through the decisions we make in our homes, fields, office cubicles, plant floors, schools and shopping malls or wherever else we spend our time. It's what we each do daily in the marketplace that will determine whether collectively we protect our water and the natural systems that provide it, or despoil both.

The marketplace is the most flexible problem-solving institution we have. Adapting it to the smarter use of water veers away from the one-size-fits-all frame of last century's "big engineering" and outdated eco-Marxism that sets disciples of Blue Gold on course toward a tragedy of the commons.

It directs us instead toward a liberating ecology of persistent innovation in which a diversity of solutions can prosper.

Eco-Marxism and "tragedy of the commons", eh?

Amen, Chris!

"If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?" -- T.S. Eliot

NARA Project: Damning James Bay?

Yes, that's how I wanted to spell "damning".

Several weeks ago I posted an item on NARA - North American Recycling Alliance - a grand scheme that would harness the fresh water discharging into James Bay and ship 2,653 cms (cubic meters per second) to the Great Lakes via a tunnel for distribution to Canada and the USA.

The graphics I posted were those of Canadian Romain Audet, so if they flummox you don't ask me to explain them.

Audet makes the point that in addition to gaining revenue and hydroelectric power from the NARA Project, the Canadians could also extract support from the USA to its claim of Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic. This is becoming critical, what with global warming and the anticipated opening of a Northwest Passage shipping route and exploration for hydrocarbon and other resources.  That is an interesting trade both countries might be quite willing to make.

Gracious! WWMBS  - What would Maude Barlow say?

The key element of the NARA Project is the damming (red line) of the southern part of James Bay:

   

Here is a diagram of the dam:

The contour lines are bathymetric contours showing depths in meters. The total length of the dam is 231 km (144 miles). The amount of fill required for the dam is 845 million cubic meters. By contrast, the volume of concrete in Glen Canyon Dam is about 3.7 million cubic meters and that contained in Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest, is 39.3 million cubic meters. So we are talking about a big structure!

Here is the cross section of the tunnel from James Bay to Lake Superior:

 

And here is the 6m-diameter boring machine that will tunnel from James Bay to Lake Superior:

Audet makes an interesting statement:

The average daily inflow of 11,000 cubic meters per second of fresh water from 11 large rivers is lost [underlining his] to the ocean through James Bay.

He also says:

We capture water currently wasted as it washes into the Arctic Sea.

I provide these two quotes because of Audet's use of the words "lost" and "wasted". These words illustrate a viewpoint that was common not so long ago: that we viewed water solely from a "human use" vantage point. I f we are not "using" the water, then it's wasted. That is especially true for fresh water flowing into the ocean - it's wasted because we are not "harvesting" it to irrigate, drink, etc.

I remember listening to my hydrology professors at the University of Arizona in the 1970s talking about taking Columbia River water and piping it to the Southwest USA. This wuld not cause any problems in the Pacific Northwest because the fresh water was "wasted" flowing into the Pacific Ocean.

I thought such an atavistic view had disappeared. Apparently I was mistaken.

Stay tuned...

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the the same as to be right in doing it." -- G.K. Chesterton

Canada's NARA Project Will Solve USA Water Problems

In January 2008 I posted an item about NAWAPA - the North American Water And Power Alliance, a grandiose scheme to bring Canadian water to the USA and generate some power as well. The idea was hatched in the 1950s and finally petered out in the 1970s.

Imagine, in the not-too-distant future, lush Kentucky bluegrass lawns in Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Denver, and Las Vegas - all with no guilt feelings. Fountains and verdant gardens gracing the Las Vegas Strip. Pat Mulroy of the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) halving water rates with a broad grin on her face. Georgia cheerfully donating Lake Lanier water to Alabama and Florida, and building a pipeline to supply Tennessee with all the H2O it needs.

You'd say, "What have you been smoking?" Or worse.

Well, looks like something similar to NAWAPA is in the works, again exporting water from the Great White North. So how does it work? Dam the southern half of James Bay (the southern extension of Hudson Bay), run the water through helical turbines, then dump it in the Great Lakes for distribution to the USA and Canada's prairie provinces. The scheme will provide Canada with hydroelectricity and almost $8B in revenue.

Sounds like a lot of money, but as you'll see, it is not.

Colleague Paul Godfrey of the University of Massachusetts sent me some slides prepared by Canadian Romain Audet that describe how all this will work. It's pretty awesome, eh? The McKenzie Brothers (both hosers!) would be proud.

Will it fly? Do cats fetch? All you need is lots of money and likely suspension of a large number of environmental and other regulations. But the scheme to dam James Bay has been around for quite some time.

Audet proposes capturing 2, 653 cms of the 11,000 cms (cubic meters per second) that runs off into James Bay by diking the southern part of the Bay and creating a huge freshwater lake. That 2,653 cms  is about 68 MAF (million acre-feet) per year.

   

The water would be conveyed to Lake Superior by a tunnel.

 

Some of that water would go west to Canada's prairie provinces  via a 1000 km canal that Audet pegs at a cost of $780M (seems kind of low to me). The canal will take almost 50% of the James Bay water - 1,263 cms (32 MAF/year) - to the prairies; some of this water - 600 cms or 15.4 MAF/y - will head south to the western USA.

Finally, we have the North American Recycling Alliance (NARA), which distributes the captured James Bay runoff to the eastern and western USA. Audet says NARA is a word derived from the Sanskrit word for "water".

 

Hmmm...Looks like Atlanta and Charlotte have their own diversions!

Here is a summary of the NARA diversions, in cms and MAF/year. Recall that the initial diversion from James Bay is 2,653 cms or 68 MAF/y, which is allocated as follows:

• Canadian Prairie Transfer Canal - 663 cms or 17 MAF/y
• Great Plains Canal (from Lake Michigan), as far south as Mexico  - 500  cms or 12.8 MAF/y
• From Lake Superior to the Western USA - 600 cms or 15.4 MAF/y
• From Lakes Erie/Ontario to as far as the Southeast USA - 137 cms or 3.5 MAF/y
• Great Plains Canal (from Lake Michigan) to the Midwest USA - 410 cms or 10.5 MAF/year
• Lake Michigan to south of Chicago - 30  cms or 0.8 MAF/y
• Total  -  2,340 cms or 60 MAF/y
• Addition of water to Great Lakes - 313 cms or 8 MAF/y
• The numbers in the last two bullets sum to 2,653 cms (68 MAF/y), the amount diverted from James Bay

The amount of water added to the Great Lakes annually - which hold a total of about 23,000 cubic kilometers or 18.7 BAF of water - is about 0.04% of the total. Since the total surface area of the lakes is about 60.2 million acres, the annual water level increase would be about 1.6 inches. 

My numbers are a bit off from what Audet presented - the total amount is the same - but the allocations may be different. But you get the picture - we are talking about moving a lot of water. The amount diverted to the western USA is slightly more than the mean annual flow of the Colorado River.

One thing  to remember is that Canada is to get about $8B/year from the US for water - a lot of water,  43 MAF per year according to the above table That is cheap!  About $186 per acre-foot!
The price of water varies across the country, but $186 per acre feet is unreal (sounds like cheap, government-subsidized ag water). I know of some places in the western USA where water rights have gone for more than $40,000 per acre-foot.

Even Bob and Doug McKenzie recognize a rip-off when they see one! No amount of Molson's would get them to agree to that deal!

I'll talk more about this later. Think about it for a while.

"Human beings were invented by water to transport it uphill." -- Unknown

States Seek Curbs on Great Lakes Water Exports

The Great Lakes states and provinces are casting wary eyes at their brethren in both the USA and Canada. I have previously posted about this, including Gov. Bill Richardson's (D-NM) now-infamous comment,  "States like Wisconsin are awash in water."

Today there was another article about this issue by Richard Mertens  in the Christian Science Monitor. Mertens' article is the basis for this post.

Two years ago, the eight Great Lakes Basin (GLB) states and two Canadian provinces signed a compact to ban diversions outside the GLB. Six of the eight state legislatures must approve the compact, and then Conbgress must approve it. But there are objections to the ban. Some in Ohio have argued that it infringes upon local property rights. In Wisconsin, there is some opposition to a ban on exports to communities at the edge of the GLB. 

It's that latter issue that has impacted Waukesha, WI, a community that wants water from the Great Lakes. As the map from the CSM article shows, the City of Waukesha is just outside the GLB; Waukesha County actually straddles the basin divide (see James Rowen's comment below).

Not all are supportive of the city's bid for GLB water, although exceptions have been made in the past. Chicago is the best example; it can withdraw up to 2.1 bgd (billion gallons per day), enough to supply suburbs outside the GLB.

Below you can download a two-pager on the Waukesha water issues from the Great Lakes WATER Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM).

Download WaukeshaHandoutBWeb.pdf

One way to keep on t0p of this and related GLB issues is to subscribe to Brown and Caldwell's Great Lakes Water News and read James Rowen's blog.

And let's not forget that the Great Lakes contain about 20% of the earth's fresh unfrozen surface water, about the same amount as Lake Baikal. Don't forget those qualifiers!

For today's quote, I could not help but think of the following, supposedly the English translation of a Chinese proverb that was supposedly meant as a curse. Whether it's a curse or not, when it comes to water, we certainly do live in interesting times.

"May you live in interesting times." -- Chinese proverb

Great Lakes Water to the West and South? No Way!

Good friend Michael Dale, who toils for an unnamed Federal agency, sent me this article, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune on 28 October 2007. Governor Bill Richardson has backed off his "Wisconsin is awash in water" comment but the damage has been done.

I am really surprised Richardson made the remark. He's a Westerner, and God knows that a Westerner should know that anytime he/she makes a comment that event hints of coveting someone else's water, even a neighbor's, them's fightin' words.

************

Great Lakes Key Front in Water Wars

by Tim Jones, Chicago Tribune

While the West burns and the Southeast bakes, there is little to suggest a large-scale, climatological catastrophe playing out any time soon in the Midwest. In fact, farmers in Iowa and Minnesota had trouble last week harvesting their corn and soybean crops because there had been too much rain.

But potentially huge battles over water are looming in the Great Lakes region as cities, towns and states near and far fight for access to the world's largest body of fresh surface water, all of it residing in the five Great Lakes.

Call them water wars, with the Great Lakes states hunkering down to protect what they see as theirs.

Water for the West

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic candidate for president, gave voice to his water lust early this month by suggesting that water from the Great Lakes could be piped to the rapidly growing -- and increasingly dry -- Southwestern states.

"States like Wisconsin are awash in water," Richardson told the Las Vegas Sun.

Richardson soon backed off after swift protests from the Midwest, including a resounding "No" from Michigan's Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

That won't be the end of it. The fires in Southern California, the prolonged drought in the Southeast and the shrinking flow of the Colorado River, which feeds seven Western states, have underscored the importance of water supplies in rapidly developing regions and the determination of a handful of states to hold on to a resource they see as key to their economic future.

With fresh water supplies dwindling in the West and South, the Great Lakes are the natural-resource equivalent of the fat pension fund, and some politicians are eager to raid it. The lakes contain nearly 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water.

"You're going to see increasing pressure to gain access to this [water] supply," said Aaron Packman, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University. "Clearly it's a case of different regional interests competing for this water."

Eight Great Lakes-area states, from Minnesota to New York, and two Canadian provinces have proposed a regional water compact that would, among other things, strengthen an existing ban on major water diversions outside the Great Lakes Basin, home to 40 million Americans and Canadians. That proposal still has to work its way through several legislatures, and then it must go to Congress, where the political balance of power has been tilting west and south for decades.

Coveting Great Lakes water is not a recent development. In the past two decades, governors have effectively resisted attempts to divert water outside the Great Lakes Basin. For instance, they joined forces with Canada in 1988 to block an effort by then-Illinois Gov. James Thompson to tap into the Great Lakes to help free up drought-stalled barge traffic in the Mississippi River.

Those are the loud fights, conjuring images of enormously expensive pipelines delivering billions of gallons of water daily to distant, parched lands.

But there also are smaller but no less significant frictions among the states trying to protect the water, notably in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, which wants to pipe Lake Michigan water into its community because its drinking water wells show high levels of cancer-causing radium. The Waukesha conflict stems from the city's being outside the vast Great Lakes Basin, which means the Lake Michigan water it would use would not be returned to the lake; it would be lost, draining into the Fox River and ultimately down the Mississippi and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Waukesha is a small but important example of the potential precedent-setting nature of diverting water to a city or state outside the Great Lakes Basin.

"There's a concern that the thirsty in the Great Lakes region will set the precedent locally, even though they may be 5 or 10 miles outside the basin. But 20, 30 or 50 years from now, that precedent could be used to send water to far-flung reaches of the continent," said Peter Annin, author of "The Great Lakes Water Wars."

"If you make the exception at 15 miles, what about 30 or 50 or 500 miles? That's the fear," Annin said.

Chicago River precedent

Of course, a glaring precedent was set a century ago when Chicago reversed the flow of the Chicago River. The Supreme Court repeatedly upheld the legality of the Chicago diversion and, in 1967, opened the door to Chicago suburbs to receive Lake Michigan water, even though those communities are outside the Great Lakes Basin.

But in an age of water wars, Waukesha may be the most visible line drawn in the sand.

Water levels of the Great Lakes are down substantially, and while that may be part of the historic cycle of ups and downs, water managers argue the region must jealously guard what is here. At the same time, more communities are discovering contamination of their drinking-water supplies, which already has increased the pressure to obtain Great Lakes water. A recent report forecast water shortages in northeast Illinois by 2020.

"We are the water belt of the nation, and we have a real opportunity to not only do the right thing environmentally but also have a sustainable management policy that makes tremendous economic sense for the region," said Todd Ambs, water division administrator for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

"I wouldn't say we are awash in water, but there's certainly enough [water] to have a strong economic driver," Ambs said, to lure back businesses that left the region.

In Michigan, Granholm fought with Nestle Waters North America over the company's pulling millions of gallons from Lake Michigan for its Ice Mountain bottled-water franchise. The state has negotiated limits on the amount the company can pump.


'We're going to be stealing it'

When he was House majority leader, then-U.S. Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas) warned a gathering in Michigan that federal control of Great Lakes water would not be in the state's interest.

"We're not going to be buying it. We're going to be stealing it," Armey said in 2000. "You're going to have to protect your Great Lakes."

That's the incentive behind the proposed water compact. David Naftzger, executive director of the Council of Great Lakes Governors, said he is optimistic that the water compact will be adopted by the eight states and approved by Congress.

"It's our water, and there's an interest in ensuring that it is used sustainably," Naftzger said. "If we don't have a good framework in place, we'll start to see shortages and conflict."

Noah Hall, who specializes in environmental and water law at Wayne State University, said there is an urgency to get the compact to Congress before the next census, because the eight states involved could lose 10 to 15 seats in Congress.

Hall said Congress is inclined to approve regional water compacts, but noted there is "no way for the Great Lakes states to prevent the U.S. government from taking the water if the federal government wants to do so."

Northwestern's Packman said the issue that needs to be addressed is "how many people do you want living in those [water-short] areas and how much agriculture do you want to support?"

History suggests that question will be ignored in favor of scrambling for new sources of water.

"It doesn't make economic sense to send Great Lakes water to the High Plains or the Southwest," Annin said, "but we know the thirsty will be calling."

*************

Bill should take up pipe-smoking.

"A pipe stimulates thought in the mind of the philosopher and shuts the mouth of the fool." -- Anonymous

Bill Richardson: Wisconsin Water Wends Westward?

I came across this from the Aquafornia blog, who got it from the Las Vegas Sun. The BuRec as a Cabinet-level agency? Water from Wisconsin? Has the Governor checked to see if there is any water available to share in Wisconsin and whether the natives want to share it? A national water policy - yes!

**********

Sharing water is key to Richardson's plan

By Michael J. Mishak

Published in the Las Vegas Sun on Oct. 4, 2007

Seizing on a hot-button issue in the desert state of Nevada, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson is calling for a national summit on water to address needs in the parched West.

If elected, Richardson said, he would bring states together to talk about a way for water-rich northern-tier states to help with shortages in the Southwest. He also said he would elevate the Bureau of Reclamation to a Cabinet-level post. The bureau within the U.S. Interior Department manages water resources in the West.

“I believe that Western states and Eastern states have not been talking to each other when it comes to proper use of our water resources,” Richardson told the Sun. “I want a national water policy. We need a dialogue between states to deal with issues like water conservation, water reuse technology, water delivery and water production. States like Wisconsin are awash in water.”

Las Vegas faces a water shortage, but the issue has received short shrift in the presidential race as Democratic candidates campaign in Nevada looking for support in the state’s second-in-the-nation caucuses.

The national Democratic Party last year sandwiched Nevada between the traditional early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire in the hope that candidates would address Western issues.

Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and the only Westerner in the Democratic field, says he sees a natural advantage in staking out positions on Nevada issues — perhaps none more pressing than water. He said he would direct the newly elevated top water official to host negotiations between rural and urban areas when conflicts arise over water rights. The talks, he said, would ensure a balance between environmental protection and economic development.

Some background:

The Colorado River is in the midst of an eight-year drought, and no state is feeling the squeeze more than Nevada. In 1922 the river’s water was divided among seven Western states in the so-called Colorado River Compact, with Nevada receiving the smallest allotment. Despite Las Vegas’ booming population and sprawling development, the state’s share of the river has remained the same, forcing the Southern Nevada Water Authority to find alternatives.

In the short term, the water authority plans to install an $817 million third intake valve at Lake Mead, the main source of water for Las Vegas. Without the intake, if water levels continue to fall as projected, taps across the valley could run dry by 2010, the authority says.

Beyond that, the agency appears to have abandoned the idea of reopening the river compact, settling instead on plans to build a multibillion-dollar, 285-mile pipeline that will carry water from rural Nevada to Las Vegas.

Told Wednesday of Richardson’s proposals after a Las Vegas City Council meeting, Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, dismissed them. On the national water summit, Mulroy said she doubted negotiations would bring more water. She recalled being greeted by protestors in Ohio with signs showing Southwestern states sinking giant straws into the Great Lakes. “They are as emotional around this issue as every Western state is,” she said.

As for making the Bureau of Reclamation a Cabinet-level agency, Mulroy said she doubted it would do much good, given that the Interior secretary, the nation’s point person on water, already has a Cabinet seat.

Richardson declined to comment specifically on the controversial pipeline to Las Vegas.

Sun reporter Joe Schoenmann contributed to this report.

Michael J. Mishak can be reached at 702-259-2347 or at michael.mishak@lasvegassun.com.

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And don't look to the Great Lakes for Western water, Governor.  Lakes Huron and Michigan are about 2 feet below their long-term average levels; Lake Superior is about 20 inches off and is at its lowest level ever for this time of year. Lake Ontario is about 7 inches below its long-term average and Lake Erie is a few inches down. The US states and Canadian provinces (Quebec is included along with Ontario) in the Great Lakes basin are not in a sharing mood these days. They would all have to agree to transfer water outside the basin.

My assessment: the Guv needs better advice vis-a-vis water.

"Every calculation, based on experience elsewhere, fails in New Mexico." -- former territorial governor Lew Wallace, 1878

I came across this from the Aquafornia blog, who got it from the Las Vegas Sun. The BuRec as a Cabinet-level agency? Water from Wisconsin? Has the Governor checked to see if there is any water available to share in Wisconsin and whether the natives want to share it? A national water policy - yes!

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Sharing water is key to Richardson's plan

By Michael J. Mishak

Published in the Las Vegas Sun on Oct. 4, 2007

Seizing on a hot-button issue in the desert state of Nevada, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson is calling for a national summit on water to address needs in the parched West.

If elected, Richardson said, he would bring states together to talk about a way for water-rich northern-tier states to help with shortages in the Southwest. He also said he would elevate the Bureau of Reclamation to a Cabinet-level post. The bureau within the U.S. Interior Department manages water resources in the West.

“I believe that Western states and Eastern states have not been talking to each other when it comes to proper use of our water resources,” Richardson told the Sun. “I want a national water policy. We need a dialogue between states to deal with issues like water conservation, water reuse technology, water delivery and water production. States like Wisconsin are awash in water.”

Las Vegas faces a water shortage, but the issue has received short shrift in the presidential race as Democratic candidates campaign in Nevada looking for support in the state’s second-in-the-nation caucuses.

The national Democratic Party last year sandwiched Nevada between the traditional early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire in the hope that candidates would address Western issues.

Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and the only Westerner in the Democratic field, says he sees a natural advantage in staking out positions on Nevada issues — perhaps none more pressing than water. He said he would direct the newly elevated top water official to host negotiations between rural and urban areas when conflicts arise over water rights. The talks, he said, would ensure a balance between environmental protection and economic development.

Some background:

The Colorado River is in the midst of an eight-year drought, and no state is feeling the squeeze more than Nevada. In 1922 the river’s water was divided among seven Western states in the so-called Colorado River Compact, with Nevada receiving the smallest allotment. Despite Las Vegas’ booming population and sprawling development, the state’s share of the river has remained the same, forcing the Southern Nevada Water Authority to find alternatives.

In the short term, the water authority plans to install an $817 million third intake valve at Lake Mead, the main source of water for Las Vegas. Without the intake, if water levels continue to fall as projected, taps across the valley could run dry by 2010, the authority says.

Beyond that, the agency appears to have abandoned the idea of reopening the river compact, settling instead on plans to build a multibillion-dollar, 285-mile pipeline that will carry water from rural Nevada to Las Vegas.

Told Wednesday of Richardson’s proposals after a Las Vegas City Council meeting, Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, dismissed them. On the national water summit, Mulroy said she doubted negotiations would bring more water. She recalled being greeted by protestors in Ohio with signs showing Southwestern states sinking giant straws into the Great Lakes. “They are as emotional around this issue as every Western state is,” she said.

As for making the Bureau of Reclamation a Cabinet-level agency, Mulroy said she doubted it would do much good, given that the Interior secretary, the nation’s point person on water, already has a Cabinet seat.

Richardson declined to comment specifically on the controversial pipeline to Las Vegas.

Sun reporter Joe Schoenmann contributed to this report.

Michael J. Mishak can be reached at 702-259-2347 or at michael.mishak@lasvegassun.com.

**********

And don't look to the Great Lakes for Western water, Governor.  Lakes Huron and Michigan are about 2 feet below their long-term average levels; Lake Superior is about 20 inches off and is at its lowest level ever for this time of year. Lake Ontario is about 7 inches below its long-term average and Lake Erie is a few inches down. The US states and Canadian provinces (Quebec is included along with Ontario) in the Great Lakes basin are not in a sharing mood these days. They would all have to agree to transfer water outside the basin.

My assessment: the Guv needs better advice vis-a-vis water.

"Every calculation, based on experience elsewhere, fails in New Mexico." -- former territorial governor Lew Wallace, 1878