Commentary: The West should put its straws away. Great Lakes water is not for sale

It is my hope to put to rest the mistaken belief that Great Lakes water, now, or at any point in the future, will be used to solve the water woes of the western United States. This is not going to happen. Westerners cannot have an honest discussion about their future until we dispel this myth once and for all.

Standing anywhere on Chicago’s famous lakefront, it is easy to imagine the freshwater resource in front of you is limitless. I have seen visitors to our city stare in awe at Lake Michigan and say, “You call this a lake? That’s an ocean!”

We know our Great Lakes are an enviable resource, one that is becoming more attractive to covetous states in the western U.S. that have been facing long-term drought, a process called aridification by some experts. No one is surprised that the squabbling has become more intense as the water supply out West has dwindled. With so many stakeholders, it will not be easy to reach a consensus on the changes that will need to be made to how this precious resource is managed and who will pay for it.

A recent guest essay in The New York Times, “Will We Have to Pump the Great Lakes to California to Feed the Nation?” imagines a future in which we have no choice but to pump fresh water from hydrologically rich areas such as ours in order to supply farmers in the West or face starvation. That essay is not necessarily advocating the creation of cross-country pipelines or canals across the U.S. like what is being proposed in India and China.

While I recognize that water policy is intrinsically linked with food security for our nation, the headline is more than just misleading. It also is perpetuating a dangerous fallacy. The idea that water from the Great Lakes will solve the thirst of the western United States is not just a misplaced notion; it is also an obstacle delaying the inevitable reckoning with the unsustainable status quo.

The proposal to take water from the Great Lakes also ignores the existence of the legally binding interstate compact that governs how the states bordering them manage it. Known as the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, it places strict limits on how much water can be used as well as who can divert it.

Additionally, Canada borders four of the five Great Lakes, which means that our neighbor to the north has a say in what happens to these bodies of water. Often overlooked in this discussion, there are also governments of Native American tribes on both sides of the border in the Great Lakes region. None of these partners that share control of the Great Lakes would be willing to let water be shipped out of the Great Lakes Basin.

The solution to the west’s water problems cannot be piping water from the Great Lakes, as scarce Colorado River and groundwater resources continue to be under stress.

There are also valid reasons for residents of the Great Lakes to question how effectively residents of the western U.S. make use of the water they already have. Much of the water management of the West is driven by the “law of the river” precedent that allocates water rights from the Colorado River to the oldest users of that water, mostly farmers and ranchers. Confiscatory laws in some states create perverse incentives for farmers to grow the most water-intensive crops. An estimated 79% of water from the river is devoted to agriculture.

In Arizona, groundwater extraction in 80% of the state is a complete free-for-all with no limit on how much can be extracted. Does Arizona need to have golf courses in the desert?

I agree with the author of the New York Times essay, Jay Famiglietti, with his urgent call for a national water policy and a census of existing ground water, as well as better management rules around safe and sustainable extraction. My only ask of him, as well as any other expert who cares to discuss solving the water issues of the western United States, is to keep the delusion of piping water from the Great Lakes to the West out of it.

If you want our water, move to Chicago.

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Dan Pogorzelski is a commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.

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