Transcript: The Great Lakes

Host: What makes something valuable? People need it, desire it. It's basic supply and demand! Usually we think of oil, diamonds, cars, even cell phones as valuable commodities, but many experts think that within this century, water will become more valuable than oil. And that's because the population is growing and access to clean fresh water is not. Basic supply and demand. Today, more and more people are focusing their attention on the Great Lakes as an obvious source of water for a thirsty world.

Stephanie Smith: The Great Lakes are 20% of the world’s fresh surface water. They are 90 – 95 % of the United States’ fresh surface water. They contain about 6 quadrillion gallons of water which is just an amazing amount.

Host: With that amazing amount of water, the Great Lakes supply drinking water to a very small percentage of the world's population. Some municipalities and private companies are interested in buying Great Lakes water and selling it to people in dry regions like the American southwest, even China, for a profit.

Sandra Postel: Water is the basis of life. And I think we need to be very careful when we start commodifying the basis of life.

Stephanie Smith: One other thing to think about is that the Great Lakes were formed by glaciers. We don’t get a lot of water from tributaries coming back into the Great Lakes. So it sure looks like a lot, but in fact there is a limit to it.

Student 1: I think the water is owned by the region to where the people are, you know, and it should be decided by the people where the water should go.

Student 2: If we hold out on giving water to other people, that would be like us killing them, in a way, because they won’t have enough water to drink, so I think that’s wrong.

Stephanie Smith: There have been companies who look to the Great Lakes and say, “Hmm. I might like to have some of that water,” and there have also been other states that have looked to the Great Lakes and said, “Wow. We don’t have quite enough water in our state, and we would like some more fresh water.”

Student 1: I think no, they shouldn’t be able to come in and just take the water without giving back to the community that they’re taking it from.

Stephanie Smith: In fact, that is a very emotionally charged issue. Certainly on a human level, no one really wants to deny people a resource that they really need in order to survive – fresh water – but on another level, what about being able to protect the resource that we have right here and make sure that no further harm comes to it because we divert too much water from it.

Host: Experts predict that conflicts over water will pit nation against nation and even neighbor against neighbor. Take the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin. It's not even 20 miles from Lake Michigan, but it happens to be just outside the Great Lakes watershed. And Waukesha has got big time water problems.

Dan Duchniak: The problem with the Waukesha water supply is that there’s a quality issue. Right now, we have radium in the water. Radium causes bone cancer. We need to get rid of that radium. And we also have a quantity issue because the amount of water and the level of water is declining as we're pulling it from the aquifer.

Host: For the last hundred years, Waukesha's population has been growing and people haven't paid much attention to water conservation until recently. That's not unusual. What makes Waukesha's problem so serious is that their groundwater comes from an aquifer that recharges, or replenishes, very slowly.

Dan Duchniak: We need to be make the decision on a water supply that is the most environmentally friendly. And right now, that appears to be getting water from Lake Michigan.

Stephanie Smith: If water is diverted from the Great Lakes in gallons and gallons that are just too large for the capacity of the lakes to be able to recharge, then we will start to see some effects.

Sandra Postel: Before we start sending water from the Great Lakes to a place like the Southwest, we need to be sure that water is being used as sensibly, as productively, as efficiently as it can be.

Host: We asked the beach cleanup volunteers in Chicago and a group of Waukesha Boy Scouts what they thought about exporting Great Lakes water.

Scout 1: We keep saying well this state doesn’t have enough water, this state’s running low, and we’re saying, “All right, well, let’s use the Great Lakes.” And then other states will start running low and saying, “Well, let’s use the Great Lakes. OK, let’s use the Great Lakes.”

Scout 2: So I just want to know how they’re going to pay for it if they start doing this.

Scout Leader: So you think they should start charging people to use Lake Michigan water?

Scout 3: I would say the government should also put restrictions on it so people don’t abuse the right of taking the water or else we’ll have a problem: there’ll be no water in Lake Michigan.

Teacher: What’s happening now, people like to play golf. We have golf centers in Arizona, but Arizona is primarily what? Sand, desert. They’re trying to put grass there. So what does grass need?

Students: Water.

Teacher: So they think that they should be able to take water from this place and run it to Arizona.

Student 1: Whoever wants to play golf should move.

Student 2: Or they should charge the people who come golfing. And maybe they can give Chicago back some of the money they get from organizing their golfing thing, and maybe we can start programs here in Chicago to conserve the water.

Scout Leader: Is water not a human right? If water is one of the basic things we need to survive, so should everybody have access to it? I mean, before you guys were talking about going to the polar ice caps and taking some of that. You know, how are we different that we can go up there and take that, but, say, Africa or the Middle East couldn’t have some of our Great Lake water?

Student 2: Africa is surrounded by water. I mean maybe we can sponsor like a maybe a way to clean that salt water out there.

Student 3: I think we should be able to recycle our water better.

Host: There are no easy answers. In the future, people all over the world are going to be dealing with complicated questions like these. To be active in the conversation, we all have to understand more about water.

Stephanie: When you don’t know where something comes from, there’s an idea that you can always just go out and get more. Whether it’s food or water, there’s this idea that it’s limitless. You turn on the tap and it comes pouring out and it will never stop. But when you know that it comes from a limited resource, then that brings that to the forefront for you that you’d better take care.