Water for thought

This report gets me thinking. Maybe it can do the same for you.

In a nutshell, fresh water is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity, and global warming is only going to make it worse. Those with access to fresh water could be sitting pretty as the century unfolds.

Close your eyes and image the Great Lakes as a future Saudi Arabia -- in more ways than one. I mean, we sit at the door step of something like a quarter of the world's entire supply of fresh water.

H2O can be an engine for industry, agriculture and energy production, as the aforementioned report notes in its executive summary.

And water can make a place a whole lot more livable for people. Yeah, it might be cold and snowy today, but we'll be able to water our lawns and wash our cars in July, unlike, say, much of the Sunbelt when the periodic droughts kick in and water is effectively rationed. 

Bob Shibley of the University at Buffalo lays it out in this story a while back in the Toronto Star.

Shibley told The Star:

"You're going to have 150 million people living in at least seven of the major regions that don't have water, don't have carrying capacity, can't feed themselves. 

"It's an ecological disaster waiting to happen. So there's a good reason to think that people should come back to the Northeast, where we have the carrying capacity, and have the water."

Some have already taken notice. Last year (2006), The Economist ranked Cleveland as the most livable city in America (26th in the world) based on five categories: stability, health care, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.

The Brookings Institute did an in-depth study of the economic potential of the Great Lakes region. This one-page summary provides a good overview.

Said Brookings:

In this new economic and security environment, both countries can-and should-once again turn to
the Great Lakes region for leadership and new opportunities:

• As a leading center for research and innovation, the Great Lakes can invigorate the U.S. and Canadian economies through new discovery in fields of health, science, materials, and communications.

• As the primogeniture of the world's carbon economy, the region has a special economic opportunity-and responsibility-to be a leader in developing the technologies that can improve the global climate (through energy, automotive, and transport) and be good stewards of natural resources (through freshwater, agriculture, and bio-science).

• As a center for human capital development and talent generation, the region can help educate the skilled professionals needed to keep both countries' economies at the top of the economic food chain in the 21st century, providing new generations with economic opportunity while allowing space for workers across the country and around the globe to learn, grow, and earn a decent standard of living.

• As the home of the largest grouping of interior lakes in the world, the region can uncover its “freshwater coast” from underneath the obsolete mills, factories, and brownfields of the industrial era, and create a new model of sustainable, amenity-rich development.

• As a tightly integrated economic area, the Great Lakes region can serve as a model for building a thriving, globally-engaged, bi-national economy across international borders, while maintaining homeland security.

In other words, we have a future to make here, if we could take time out from feeling sorry for ourselves and get on with it.

Comments

[BobbyCat]

An old suggestion of mine recycled from a decade or two ago:

Add an addition to the Sturgeon Point Water Plant building - add a bottling plant. Sell Erie County water by the gallon and by the truckload. Ship it all over. Use the revenue to offset our taxes. Water we got. New ideas and ambition, not so much.

[Meghan Joyce]

I definitely agree with you, BobbyCat, in that we should bottle and sell water from around here. If we begin to distribute the water now, when it becomes necessary in the future it won't come as quite a shock. This way we gradually work into developing an effective system. As you said in your blog, Jim, the demand for our water will emerge soon. Let's get started before that demand becomes too much; we have all this time to test out and perfect systems now, why wait? We could help so many people!

[Meghan Joyce]

I definitely agree with you, BobbyCat, in that we should bottle and sell water from around here. If we begin to distribute the water now, when it becomes necessary in the future it won't come as quite a shock. This way we gradually work into developing an effective system. As you said in your blog, Jim, the demand for our water will emerge soon. Let's get started before that demand becomes too much; we have all this time to test out and perfect systems now, why wait? We could help so many people!

[Fresno Jones]

Sure, lets just hook up a big pipeline and drain all of the water for money.

[Buffalo Libertarian]

Expect big nanny government (the folks in Washington) to come along and insist that water from the Great Lakes be shipped to the Californicators and the people in the other states that are drying up the Colorado River. Expect big nanny government to force rationing of water here so that we can be forced to provide water to other parts of the country or even other parts of the world.

[Jim Heaney, author, Outrages & Insights]

You can't sell lake water. Congress just passed a law protecting Great Lakes waters from being such exploitation. The idea is to make use of the water for home-grown purposes -- hydro-power, irrigation, recreation, industrial cooling systems, etc.

[BobbyCat]

I have some recollection of that law. I think the purpose was to prevent a massive diverting of great lakes water via canal etc. to the Ogalala Acquafer and other massive schemes. But it was never bottling plants that threatened Great Lakes water, therefore the existing bottling plants were not affected.

The bottling plants that draw from local artesian wells are using water that will eventually filter into Lake Erie, so what's the diff? Use it before it reaches the Lake, or after.

Besides, if a water plant bottled 100,000 gallons per day, that's a drop in the bucket, equal to the water useage of the families that have left WNY in the past year or two.

The law could be amended to allow bottling plants. Look, these thing won't happen by themselves. Sometimes, you've gotta kick the damn door down and break some furniture to get things down.

[Not Gullible]

If it it will be as important as you say, why is the marketplace not noticing all this time?

In other words, why haven't national and global investors been driving up the price of real estate in the Buffalo area over the past few decades in anticipation of Buffalo's future boom days that will happen due to its water supply?

Hmmmm... maybe it's because everyone knows there's MANY CITIES WITH PLENTY OF FRESH WATER!

[Al]

An oasis in the desert is often just a mirage. This topic "Water for thought", to WNY'ers in the economic desert, is just a mirage. The people who know what to do will not come here. This is a policy that has to start nationally, and that means Washington. Just as WNY will not benefit to any signficance from the enacted "Economic Recovery" Act, or in any other way. The politicians, business leadership in the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, and institutions as universities, are in the way of real innovators. When you are in the desert, get a camel.

[BobbyCat]

The fact that we continue to pour raw sewage into our greatest resource - Lake Erie and then continue to babble this pipe dream of building a beautiful new waterfront is a testament to the blindness of our leaders and their inability to see beyond tomorrow and the next bailout.

[Scott Richardson]

As Not Gullible began to allude to above, no one is yet realizing this future opportunity for our area. If they were, they would have already come and built up Buffalo to make it viable when a fresh water crisis hits. However, we do have an amazing resource at our doorsteps, and it would be foolish to not use this report to bring people back to the area. Our local politicians should seize this opportunity, and use it to bring money to the area, and make us as welcoming as possible for people who will feel the need to move here in the future.

[Not Gullible]

Scott R, That hopefulness may sound nice, but there's many U.S. cities with plenty of fresh water. Regardless of what politicains do, what is it about Buffalo's fresh water supply that would "bring people back to the area"?

It's not as though Buffalo's fresh water is better than fresh water in so many other places across the country. Water is water. Yeah, some cities face a shortage. Those are often dicussed but are few and far between.

[Melissa Litwin]

I actually agree with this point. I pride myself in living in Buffalo and after reading this point, it was another friendly reminder. Nothing is perfect, including Buffalo, but when it comes down to it, this city is not all that bad. I agree that people should stop pouting. Look on the bright side of where we live and roll with it. Sure we have cold weather, and lake effect snow, and an ugly water front for that matter; but look! all that is a trade in for something good, fresh water. Other places don’t have it, so why keep bashing Buffalo when it does? The water is beautiful and can do so much for a location, and how lucky are we to be living here.