For all the talk about oil as America’s most vital commodity, the fact is that there is one commodity that is far more valuable, one that people get far more hot and bothered over, and one which can’t be piped in from Saudi Arabia.
And the fighting over America’s huge supply of fresh water, the Great Lakes, has already started. Today’s New York Times details a “local” spat between the city of Waukesha and the state of Wisconsin over access rights to Lake Michigan water, but the national, and perhaps even international, implications are huge. (And perhaps one day, political implications.)
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…
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Some politicians in Milwaukee, where the population fell by 8.9 percent in the 1990’s, are loath to sell the city’s Lake Michigan water to suburbs that have been draining away their businesses and wealthier residents, and their tax base.
Waukesha County “supports widening roads to allow for more transportation on the roadways to get more access out to that community, rather than try to limit the sprawl out there,” said Michael Murphy, a Milwaukee alderman. “Their solution to the problem is not the conservation of their limited resources, but looking to Lake Michigan.”
What’s that slurping sound you hear? It’s America’s exurbs in the warm, dried-out climes of the near and far West, sucking up the Great Lakes with a straw.
Oil for their SUVs isn’t the only resource they’re sucking up.
The Rust Belt is poor in jobs, poor in weather (well, for candy-asses I guess), and, if you don’t have electoral votes for anyone, the politicians don’t find you of much interest either. But boy, it sure seems everyone wants all that water, though.