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Water Wars In The Region Looming On The HorizonBy Lois B. Robbins October 18 was World Water Monitoring Day, with data coordinated on a global scale to protect community waterways. Water quality has become a global issue. More than once, we’ve heard that the next big war will be fought over water. With only 03% of the world’s water is available for use, this is not surprising. As clean water supplies diminish, and the demand for usable water swells, water will increasingly be seen as a valuable resource to be bought and sold. Water may soon be more valuable than gas or oil. The pressure to commodify water will amplify and tensions will boil over, as they already have in other parts of the world. With 20% of Earth’s fresh water supply, we in the Great Lakes Bioregion are on the front lines of this impending battle. Perennial proposals to divert Great Lakes water rear their heads whenever things get tough in the dessert. Aside from the considerable environmental consequences, diversions would accelerate the commodification of water, allowing it to be sold to the highest bidder. Initiatives underway in Lansing to write diversion prohibition into Michigan’s constitution have run into opposition on both moral and legal grounds. According to the Great Lakes Compact, Michigan must first establish its own internal water withdrawal regulations before we ban diversion to other states. Water diversion can happen in many ways. Water leaving the Great Lakes region in bottles is not different from water that leaves via a re-engineered river, or a pipeline to Arizona. Companies that draw down wells by bottling water for sale have run into trouble. Neighbors whose wells have run dry have sued other companies, which draw large quantities of water for their operations. Can you hear the drums of the water wars in the distance? Diversion is one problem. Pollution is another. A recent report on the Great Lakes by the International Joint Commission (IJC) cites the three most urgent threats to drinking water in the Great Lakes region: disease-resistant pathogens, (from overuse of antibiotics for humans and livestock); mercury (primarily airborne from coal-burning factories, ultimately deposited in water); and Urban Sprawl, spreading across the countryside, using up small wetlands and fouling rivers and creeks. Our bodies are composed of 75% water. Like all living beings, we cannot live without it. Many good efforts are underway to muffle the drums of the water wars. The annual global water monitoring is one. Coalitions are coming together as efforts in other parts of the world gather strength. Here in the Great Lakes Bioregion there are many initiatives to avert the catastrophic loss of the world’s greatest fresh water supply. The International Joint Commission has made strong recommendations to its eight states and two provinces for cleaning up the Great Lakes. Local watershed groups are becoming more effective, as are local conservancies like the North Oakland Headwaters Land Conservancy. More and more, we realize that water is a resource we cannot take for granted.
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