I have a planning tool (a Trello board) where I keep track of blog post topics. There is one that I have had on my board for months, listed with an unknown date. It’s titled “Could Great Lakes water be piped?” and the entry includes notes from conversations I’ve had on the topic as a volunteer ambassador with the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

Well, this topic just got bumped up to the top of the list. On my Monday morning news scan, I picked up an Opinion piece in the New York Times by Dr. Jay Famiglietti titled “Will We Have to Pump the Great Lakes to California to Feed the Nation?”. Thanks to those of you who emailed or texted me the article as well!

When I first read it at 8 AM, there were 32 reader comments on the article. I was somewhat stunned when I revisited it at 2 PM that same day to see over 1,800 reader comments. This is a good deal of traction for an Opinion piece in that amount of time. I generally never read article comments but this was an incredibly lively thread.

Reading them gave me a dizzying array of reactions, thoughts and emotions. But the overwhelming one was a form of pride and general excitement about the energy in the conversation. There were tons of readers from the Great Lakes region saying in many different frames, “Not on my watch”.

Dr. Famiglietti’s main points in the article:

Key food producing regions of the US (far west Great Plains, California and the southwest) rely on groundwater for irrigation and groundwater is disappearing. 

In order to continue producing food in these areas, water “must” be piped from other parts of the country, including the Great Lakes.

Some places (e.g. California) are trying to manage their groundwater, but it’s not clear whether that management is effective. There are other places (e.g. Arizona) that are engaging in minimal groundwater management.

The US does not have plans for the food scarcity that would result. This food scarcity would impact us all – not just those living in the west.

There would be massive challenges to considering a pipeline for water in regards to complexity, cost, politics and environmental disruption. 

There needs to be a national water policy that would support systematic exploration and management of groundwater.

Dr. Famiglietti actually makes some important points regarding food systems and national water policy that I think he buries with the headline about pumping the Great Lakes. I was left wondering if he was seriously focused on the idea of piping Great Lakes water, or was using it to attract attention to the magnitude of the issue. If he is serious, there were two key facts missing from the article from my point of view:

The first was repeatedly jumped on by many commenters. There was NO mention in the article of the fact that the Great Lakes sit squarely across the US-Canadian border. This felt like sort of a stunning oversight. The waters are governed by international treaties. I don’t see Canada being down for this idea.

The second key fact missing was clarity that, at this time, the Great Lakes waters are protected by The Great Lakes Compact. The Compact was signed into federal law in 2008 and it bans the diversion of water outside of the geographical basin of the lakes other than in very limited scenarios. The geographical region that can pull water from the Great Lakes is quite limited in some places. We have friends living 10 miles further out from Cleveland who are outside of the basin.   

Now, federal law can change. And with the growth of the US population in the south and southwest, it would not be a shock (does anything shock us anymore??) to see elected officials from these areas push for policy revision, but it would be a long, drawn-out political fight. Beyond that, the price tag for the infrastructure required to transport water, a very heavy substance, would also be unfathomable.

So what should we do? There seem to be a number of avenues that need further collective examination, attention, and action:

National water policy that includes groundwater management;

Changes in farming practices; 

Changes in what we eat; 

Continued efforts to identify technological innovations in desalinization as well as pulling atmospheric water to a usable state.

What are the first steps for any of us individually? Learn more about the issue and intentionally decide what we spend our money on, where we invest it, who to vote for, and how to spend time that we can on civic or political issues and activism.