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The Great Lakes. are enormous. Covering over 94,000 square miles and holding some 6 quadrillion: gal Ions of Water, the lakes and their connecting channels comprise 21 percent of the world's supply of fresh surface water, and no less .than 84. percent of fresh surface water in North America.23 They provide drinking water -for more than 48 m llion.people in.the. U.S. and Canada, direct ly:generate more than 1.5.millionjobs and $60 billion. in annual wages, serve as the foundation for a.$6.trillion regional economy, and generate more than $52:billion annually for the region frorn.reue.ation. on the lakes z¢ For many residents of Minnesota and other Great Lakes states, tribes, First Nations, and Canadian provinces,. however, the lakes represent more thanjust hydrogeologic and. economic facts and figures..They area. fundamental part of who we are. For generations, those of us:living in this part of the world have been moved. by Lake Superior's transcendent waves crashing against the North Shore: We. have found :solace wrapping our fingers around one of its cold stones, smoothed -by centuries of waves: We have been enchanted by the lake's changing moods,.and have contemplated life sitting on its windswept rocks, staring out at the water. In. short, -for so rna.ny of us the Great Lakes are nothing short of sacred, which makes the prospect of sorneone taking large amounts of water from "our" Great. Lakes to use .elsewhere: pa.rticularly galling. Yet this exact scenario has been discussed. for decades. Water wars I'm from Teas and down there we understand that whiskey is for drinking and. water is for fighting over. If we get [co ntro1.of) it in Washington, we're not going. to be buying it. We III he stealing it. You are going to have to protect your Great Lakes. --]dormer Republican congressman. Dick Armey�5 Chairman Mao is not the only head of state who. thought large-scale water diversions could be a. solution to the unequal distribution of a countrys freshwater resources. Perhaps the most infamous.large-scale diversi.on.in modern history is the former Soviet Union's diversion of water from the Aral Sea —which, in theeariy 1900s, was the fourth largest inland lake in the world, larger than every Great Lake but Lake S:uperior.26 At the end of World Wart, policymakers in what Would shortly become the Soviet Union decided to divert water from the Syr Darya. and the.Amu Darya rivers, the major inflows for the Aral Sea, to irrigate and regions of Uzbekistan and Turkrnenistan.27