A World of Thirst

by Robert Downes

In fact, the U.S. Congress is presently butting heads against their counterparts in Ottawa over a bizarre plan to sell up to 3 billion liters of Lake Superior's water to Asia. In a rare display of bipartisan cooperation this fall, Congress sent Canada a unanimous resolution opposing the sale.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg of ominous trends shaping up around our parched planet: trends which are turning the human birthright of fresh water into a commodity shaped by politics and greed.

Let's take a little canoe ride, shall we? From the sweetwater seas of the Great Lakes, to a UN conference on the Siene in Paris, to the dried up rivers of China...

The Nova Group, based out of Sault Ste. Marie, Canada, received the go-ahead from Ontario's Environmental Ministry to take 10 million liters of Lake Superior water per day for a five-year period. The Nova Group plans to pump Superior's water aboard cargo ships and sell it to Asia.

Rep. Bart Stupak, whose district includes 1,556 miles of Great Lakes shoreline, blew a gasket.

"Allowing the diversion of billions of liters of water from the Great Lakes would create dangerous consequences for the Great Lakes region and the United States," Stupak said. "This permit could open the door for additional water diversion opportunities, putting the waters of all the Great Lakes on the world market.

"We cannot afford to turn our Great Lakes into a tradable commodity."

The result was an international incident that embarassed the conservative Harris government in Canada. Howard Hampton, leader of Ontario's opposition New Democrat Party, met with Stupak on the Ambassador Bridge at the U.S./Canada border in Detroit to blast the plan as a political giveaway that would damage the lake and provide neither country with fees or royalties as compensation.

"For years governments and citizens have fought this type of action," Hampton said at the bridge meeting. "But now the Harris Government has opened the floodgates. It's open season on our clean water."

By early May, Rep. Stupak had introduced a House resolution to block the sale. The resolution was co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of 30 congressmen.

Faced with an uproar from south of the border, Ontario backed down and rescinded the permit. The Nova Group, however, has appealed the decision, putting Superior's water once again at risk.

Congress, in turn, is rattling its saber. In late October, the House voted unanimously to oppose the sale and to seek action from President Clinton and the U.S. Senate. The resolution has been forwarded to the Canadian government, where it will be discussed in a hearing on the matter this December.

Some environmentalists feel, however, that as world demand grows for fresh water, the Great Lakes will become an irresistable temptation.

"Water is going to become like the oil of the next century," noted Sara Miller of the Canadian Environmental Law Association in the Associated Press. "There are a lot of companies positioning themselves to be water brokers."

If, as environmentalists say, water serves as the "oil" of the 21st century, one has to wonder if a global thirst for H2O will spark future wars, just as Hitler invaded Russia to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus, or the U.S. plunged into the Gulf War to protect the oil of Kuwait.

Forty years from now, the volume of the Great Lakes could drop by as much as 25 percent, according to a 1997 report by a coalition of U.S. and Canadian environmental groups.

Besides the impact of stranding pricey lakefront property, a depleted waterline could wreak havoc on Great Lakes shipping, diminish the output of hydroelectric plants, and harm fish and wildlife habitat, the report claims.

The culprits are industry, farmers and ordinary folks who use fresh water as if there was an endless supply. The average American uses two-three times as much water as the citizens of Europe or Japan, for purposes as ill-advised as watering desert golf courses.

"The Great Lakes Region continues to lead the globe as per capita wasters of water," the report claims. "Water conservation programs are much more the exception than the rule."

Released on the 12th anniversary of the Great Lakes Charter, the report was based on consumption trends, predictions of global warming, and studies by the U.S. and Canadian governments. Its recommendations: consumers should go easy at the faucet, and farmers should develop conservation-minded ways to irrigate crops.

Unfortunately, that means there's not enough fresh water to keep up with the Earth's booming population, according to the findings of a United Nations International Conference on Water and Sustainable Development held in Paris last March.

Currently, 1.2 billion people on Earth do not have access to clean water. That's one in five persons on the planet. Of that number, an estimated 10 million die each year from diseases arising from water infested by micro-organisms or contaminated by pollution. Most victims are impoverished women and children, the U.N. claims.

The U.N. conference also predicted that by 2050, two-thirds of the world's anticipated population of 10-14 billion could face a serious water shortage. The problem is compounded by the fact that the Earth's growing population is polluting the same water it drinks. Mind-boggling amounts of industrial pollutants, sewage and fertilizers are draining into watersheds, lakes and rivers around the world to support 5.9 billion human beings.

Critics say Americans use water like there's no tomorrow, trying to replicate suburban Connecticut in the deserts of Phoenix, or diverting the watersheds of the Rocky Mountains to supply the swimming pools, industry and agriculture of Southern California.

At the U.N. conference, scientists revealed that human water consumption has increased by seven times since 1900, and has doubled in the past 20 years. Of all the countries on Earth, the United States ranks as one of the biggest water wasters: When the Earth's total water consumption is divided by population (factoring in industry and agriculture), each American uses an average of 150 gallons per day. That compares to 50 gallons per day for each European, and 7 1/2 gallons for the average African.

Last year, a study by scientists of the World Bank reported in the New York Times that "whole ecosystems" were breaking down from "the increasing pressure on this limited resource base to feed, house and meet the energy needs of the Chinese."

The Times also reported that watertables are falling across the country. Wells that produced water at 40 feet in the 1960s must now be sunk to 250 feet. Resources such as the Heaven River have dried up. And according to China's Water Resources Ministry, more than 300 cities are short of water, with 100 of them in serious deprivation. China adds to its own problems through a lack of environmental regulations, resulting in the poisoning of water supplies from pesticides and pollutants.

According to the World Bank study, lack of water could result in a collapse of the Chinese economy, with devastating consequences for trading partners around the world. Worse, China has so many people (adding 120 million in this decade alone), that one researcher claims there may not be enough of a world food surplus to rescue the country if famine strikes.

California has considered water a market commodity since early in this century, with 12 percent of it siphoned from the 1,400 mile Colorado River. With its wellsprings and run-off located high in the Rockies, the Colorado River nourishes seven states as well as Mexico, providing fresh water for 9 percent of Americans.

Critics say that the Colorado is literally being sucked dry, its resources being gobbled by boomtowns such as Phoenix, which Graham writes, is "growing at the giddy rate of an acre every hour" and demanding hydroelectric-powered air conditioning to boot.

Will aging midwesterners who once splashed on the beaches of Lake Michigan cast a covetous eye on the water wealth of the Great Lakes to sprinkle their desert golf courses? We'll see.

One thing that's sure, however, is that thousands of years of human acceptance of water as a free birthright is at an end.

At the U.N. conference in Paris last March, the officials and environmental ministers of 84 countries agreed that henceforth, water should be considered a "commodity" to be paid for, rather than a free, essential element to life on Earth.

Water should be considered a commodity, like oil, minerals or produce, because lack of fresh water for one-quarter of the Earth's population threatens world peace, the conferees declared. "The gradual introduction of a system to recover the direct and indirect costs of services should be encouraged," stated a conference declaration.

Needless to say, there are critics of putting a price on a substance which we've always considered as free as the air we breathe.

"When you start thinking of water as a commodity for the use of business, instead of a fundamental resource that every human being is entitled to, then we've got a real problem," says environmental attorney Jim Olson. "Water as a commodity changes everything we believe in."