Water, Water Everywhere…

Have you heard about the upcoming adoption of the new Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact (not to be confused with the The Great Lakes Basin Compact)? This new layer of government authority will dictate what is acceptable use and abuse of the Great Lakes.

All the Great Lake states are joyously surrendering sovereignty to this new authority in the name of “protecting the Great Lakes.”

It doesn’t matter that Great Lakes oversight is already a rat’s nest of government and non-government bureaucratic balderdash. Who cares that this will be just one more expensive nightmare of awful officious offal. So what if this monstrosity basically duplicates what is already being done. What’s great is it creates a higher level of authority over all aspects of the Great Lakes. It does this primarily to once-and-for-all establish big government ownership and control of all that wonderful water.

The hallmark, this-is-why-we-need-it provision of this binding authority springs from the idealistic, public-spirited, humanist philosophy best expressed as: It’s all mine and you can’t have any.

The compact is an agreement among the eight Great Lakes states intended to protect the world’s largest freshwater system from being drained by parched regions around the country, or even the world. (Dan Egan-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel)

In other words, those building the new global village wouldn’t sell, much less give, a glass of water to their thirsty neighbor.

Now I’m not proposing anything, but it really wouldn’t be all that difficult to divert some water to the headwaters of the Colorado River, thus providing water to Arizona and California. It would be even easier to send some to Nebraska to replenish the Ogallala aquifer. This is the kind of horrible thing they fear. I guess they believe those heat-crazed Phoenicians are going to come and steal it away. Drain those lakes dry.

In order to avoid this, they have for years effectively prohibited any water from leaving the basin. Very Little of this new luvgovfest is really new. The new compact just gives them another bureaucratic layer to make absolutely sure they can continue to disallow any new diversion of Great Lakes water. Even if they do condescend from Olympus and deign to authorize a diversion, they’ve insured they won’t lose anything. Any diversion must be replaced by an equal amount of treated water. That’ll show those greedy, selfish barbarians.

Now we’re not talking about whether Springfield should sell some of its precious reservoir water to Shelbyville. We’re talking about 90 percent of the fresh surface water in the entire United States being held captive by less than 15 percent of the population. And even they must kiss the emperor’s ring if they want any.

Lake Superior alone holds more than 3 quadrillion gallons of water. If you sucked an inch off the top, you’d have 550 billion gallons. The United States uses around 525,000 gallons per person per year. That’s about 150 trillion gallons. This would be about 23 feet off the top of Lake Superior. With an average depth of more than 480 feet, it would take 21 years to drain it dry if no more water were added.

Correcting for evaporation, Lake Superior receives about three feet of water per year in precipition and stream inflow. If you removed just that three feet of new water, you’d have about 20 trillion gallons, 13 percent, or nearly 1/7, of the nation’s water needs. That’s only Lake Superior, just one of five Great Lakes.

With all that free water just hangin’ around with nothing to do, these hoarders wouldn’t let a Canadian shipping company haul away a piddlin’ 160 million gallons a year. That was ten years ago. More than 15 years ago they denied Lowell, Indiana, one of their own, use of a mere 700 million gallons a year.

This is how we foster a spirit of cooperation? Show love for our fellow Gaians? Bring about a world of peace and harmony?

Supporters of this sort of high-powered resource control justify it in the name of “protection,” environmental or otherwise. They say things like: “You shouldn’t be living in the desert, anyway. Why should we divert our water to help you?”

I would generally agree with at least part of this sentiment; just as I would take the same view of people living on floodplains, bluffsides, or in hurricane country. You want to live there, fine by me, just be prepared to deal with the inevitable problems and don’t come crying to me for help. Then again, I don’t think government, big or small, should be messin’ with much of anything (but I’ll take small over big anytime).

On the other hand, these thoughtful, caring people love big government (as long as it does what they want) and expect it to be nanny to us all. They’re more inclined to have big nanny move you out of the “sensitive area” (at government expense), then pat themselves on their humanitarian backs for a job well done. They’ll trumpet to the world their selfless good deeds, crowing noisily about how they rescued you from an awful fate and protected the environment from your irresponsible presence.

What you want doesn’t matter.

Now the truth is, our big ‘ol US government spends an awful lot of money “protecting” the Great Lakes. Furthermore, the people of the Great Lakes benefit greatly from all the farmin’ and ranchin’ goin’ on outside their basin fortress (try growing food in January). And it’s not like those wanting the water wouldn’t pay handsomely for it. Why not sell a few billion gallons here or there? You’ll never miss it.

Oh no, that would be an ecological disaster. Our ecosystem needs all the water it can get. Your’s, however, is not supposed to have any. If we divert water to you, not only will our environment suffer serious, irreparable harm, so will yours. We couldn’t live with that.

This is what you get from an all-caring nanny state created by global village people who gleefully throw billions of dollars around like it’s candy at a parade. They claim to have your health, safety, and general welfare in mind, but only as they define it. Your dissenting opinion is irrelevent.

Phil