2023 04-18 CC PACKET - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

The Ghost OWater Wars Future: S Great Lakes C"ompact And The Freshwater Crisis - Update ,tea C ri The pI,• Environmental Law Group By Jennifer Davy/ August 11, 2021 ENVIRONMENTAL �,.; i w ByJeremy P. Greenhouse Water in the south is abundant; water in the north scarce. if possible, it world be fine to borrow a Iittle.m -- Chairman Mao zedong Half a century after Chairman Mao'reportedly made this comment in 1952, northern China's need for water had become more.critical than ever. Water supplies: in the Northern Plains ---home to over 240 mil Iion:people; including the megacities of Beijing and Tianjin —had reached dangerously unsustainable levels. With 60 percent of the. north's water being. purhPed from groundwater, scientists estimated that'the region's aquifers would dry up.with in 30 years. The water table around Beijing alone was d.roppirig by five meters each year; new wells did not reach groundwater until they were half a mil e.deep.? To address this looming.crisis, China finally acted on Chairman Mao's words, undertaking an infrastructure project ofjaw.d.ropping proportions to a.nn.ualiy move 12 trillion gallons of water from the Yangtae.River in the south to the Yellow River basin in the north, The project, known as the South -to -North Water Diversion, Project, connects four of. China's. major rivers; includes three.Iines'spa nning 12 provinces; shuttles water.throcagh 1;900 miles of canals and tunnels; and bears a price tag of over $80 bill ion USb.3 Two of thethree planned fines have been completed; and as of 2018, Beijing'was import! ng two-thirds of its tap water from SOEu.thern China.4 In the United States; as in China, freshwater resources. are unevenly distributed. Demand. in many areas of: the Country, particularly in the Southwest, significantly outpaces available supply. Herein Minnesota, meanwhile; we notonfy have relatively abundant surface and groundwaterresources—we are the Land of 10,000 Lakes.; after all, and the headwaters of the Mississippi River --but also join With seven other states and two Canadian provinces in bordering the largest fresh surface -water system on Earth: the Great Lakes. As climate change and population growth place mounting strain on U.S. water supplies, it:is not hard to imagine a scenario in.which poiiticlans from water-starved.states,'faced with struggling agricultural irrigation systems and. angry, thirsty voters, propose a Mao -inspired water diversion.: project —north to.south in this instance- to'`borrow"water 'from :the Great Lakes. Indeed, similar ideas have been proposed and seriously considered before,' and there are several ongoing, large; scale diversions. involving' Great hakes water: But any new 'scheme'to siphons water from the Great Lakes and divert it to other parts of the country would have to overcome a significant .fegaI hurdle: the 2008 Great Lakes -St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, a remarkable interstate:agreement. reached by the Great Lakes states far the precise purpose of preventing such diversions.