7 ms·

"They hold more than a fifth of Earth’s unfrozen fresh water" I read quite a few stories about the horrible drought in the west, and here I am sitting on a goo

"They hold more than a fifth of Earth’s unfrozen fresh water" I read quite a few stories about the horrible drought in the west, and here I am sitting on a good part of all the usable water in the entire world. I can't help but think at some point a bunch of people are going to come for that water, in one way or another. Either by moving here, or trying to move it there. Some ideas have been floating around about that for a while https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/04/10/great-lakes-water-piped-southwest-our-future-says-nasa-scientist/100301326/ https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/04/10/g...

mcphage 4y ago
> Either by moving here That's one of the reasons I'm staying where I am. > trying to move it there Being that they straddle the US / Canadian border, it's legally much more difficult to mass pump water out of them. Probably the main reason it hasn't happened yet.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  There's an agreement not to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  It's legally forbidden by treaty of all the states and provinces that border them. For now. There's also little reason for it. There's plenty of rich farmland here to grow on. Agriculture should move back to this region, and growing practices and crops adapt for the colder climate. Growing heavily irrigated crops in the desert or semi-arid regions has many advantages but makes little sense in a water constrained world. Right now the rich well watered soils of the midwest and great lakes region are being wasted on cash crop soy/corn rotation. Chipping away at the rich top soils for animal feed etc. There's a lot more that could be done here. This land is good for so many things... growing almonds in California? Grow hardy hybrid hazelnuts in the east. Cold hardy, disease resistant grapes make exotic regional wines with a unique eastern terroir and a long history, mostly forgotten. Bring back the apples orchards. The peaches and apricots. Re-open the canning and juicing plants. It's a shorter, mostly single season for most annual vegetable crops, but so much fertile land and water. And greenhouses add a lot of value.
  - quxpar 4y ago
    We live in an age of profit pollution. Any farm doing this would be bought out by soy/corn growers, because the latter will be more profitable than the former. The same pollution is why your mailbox is full of wasteful garbage and your telephone line is harassed by scam calls until you stop picking up.
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      In large part farms doing this don't get so much bought out but destroyed with herbicide drift from cash crop farms next door. Not everywhere, but in major parts. And when you complain, the locals pitchfork you, because what are you even doing here if you're not growing corn?
  - sbradford26 4y ago
    I grew up in West Michigan in the farming country of Michigan, more specifically apple orchard/fruit orchard country. Michigan is the third largest producer of apples after Washington and NY. Also further up near Traverse city they produce a lot of grapes and cherries, and have some very good wineries. I think a big part of why there is not as much farming as the west is simply a matter of space, Michigan is large but nothing like the plains states.
  - duped 4y ago
    > Agriculture should move back to this region It never left, Illinois and Minnesota are the 3rd and 5th largest producers of staple crops (the other being California, Iowa, and Texas, respectively, and CA and TX are only slightly larger in production but massively larger in size). West of the Mississippi, ranching dominates agriculture due to the poor soil and dry climate. Largely that corn and soy in the Great Lakes region is being used as animal feed for the ranches out west. They already have massive utilization of land area for the production of these crops.
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      I should have clarified. It never left, but it became much less diverse. And in the more northeast states, it actually left.
Balero 4y ago
Would the energy used pumping the water from the quite low lakes, over the Rocky Mountains and Sierras to the west coast be less than a desalination plant? Another option is just moving the water usage closer to the usable water.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Most likely only a little bit would actually be piped. You’d just stop water from entering one watershed and send it into another and let gravity do its work. You would lose more to evaporation; but that happens to water in pipes too if they’re above ground. Would love to see the numbers. It’s fun looking at rivers from the Rocky Mountains in California that don’t make it to the ocean anymore. I recently proposed a transatlantic natural gas pipeline and people thought I was insane, but it would only be ~5x longer than the longest existing underwater natgas pipeline, which doesn’t sound impossibly viable.
  - Balero 4y ago
    Good point about the river re-direction. > I recently proposed a transatlantic natural gas pipeline and people thought I was insane, but it would only be ~5x longer than the longest existing underwater natgas pipeline, which doesn’t sound impossibly viable. Nordstream is 759 Miles. Newfoundland to Ireland is 1900 Miles!
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      Only problem is you gotta get the gas to the east coast on the americas, and that’s where a lot of the demand is already. Though it makes you wonder what kind of gas fields might exist along the way. As it goes, we exploit the oil and flare the gas. Pffft.
  - 83 4y ago
    I feel the transatlantic gas pipe wouldnt be viable just for the fact that Russian subs/ships would have a field day "accidentally" setting anchor on it and breaking it to keep their economy relevant.
engineer_22 4y ago
Water from the Great Lakes cannot leave the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Compact prevents construction of any water withdrawal that will move water outside of the watershed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact
- alanbernstein 4y ago
  ...According to current US law. Reading your comment, I wasn't sure if "compact" was a legal term or a geological one. Laws change much more quickly than geology.
  - selectodude 4y ago
    And Canadian law. The Great Lakes Compact is an international treaty.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  By act of Congress, not Constitutional amendment. It could be repealed in a matter of weeks if Congress saw fit.
  - ham-sandwich 4y ago
    I know many people who would oppose removal of water from the region with weaponry. People deeply care about them, more than outsiders know
    - pc86 4y ago
      And that's all well and good so long as the law backs you up. When it doesn't, that then falls somewhere on a spectrum from felony to treason.
      - bilbo0s 4y ago
        Yeah. I was just thinking that. I mean if the rest of the country decides that georgia and florida need our water, which is one of the more serious current proposals, then that's democracy. I'm from Wisconsin. Born and raised right on the shores of Lake Michigan. But the law is the law. Our best bet is to do our utmost to ensure that the law stays the way it is despite whatever pressures there are from other areas of the country.
hanselot 4y ago
Some day I will convince 16 million people to each dig a tiny bit of a canal on the northern border of South Africa. I hope that by simply plotting the perfect route for the water to travel, the natural erosion will finish my work for me. That way the entire Northern Cape (deserty region) and the Southern Namibia (deserty region) will have a massive amount of water suddenly closeby, eventually changing the surrounding environment naturally.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
The region adjacent to the lakes is not immune to drought. There were widespread crop failures a few years ago.
shadowofneptune 4y ago
The Aral Sea might act as a warning. It was used for agricultural irrigation without concern for if the water could be replaced, and now barely even exists (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dan-Shaw-3/publication/313656688/figure/fig7/AS:668882419331076@1536485404503/Landsat-images-taken-over-several-years-showing-the-drying-up-of-the-Aral-Sea-once-the.jpg https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dan-Shaw-3/publication/...). I live in Arizona. Most of our Colorado River water goes to agricultural irrigation. The drought is bad, but bringing in even more water from out of state wouldn't be an actual solution.

mcphage 4y ago

> Either by moving here That's one of the reasons I'm staying where I am. > trying to move it there Being that they straddle the US / Canadian border, it's legally much more difficult to mass pump water out of them. Probably the main reason it hasn't happened yet.

maxerickson 4y ago
There's an agreement not to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
It's legally forbidden by treaty of all the states and provinces that border them. For now. There's also little reason for it. There's plenty of rich farmland here to grow on. Agriculture should move back to this region, and growing practices and crops adapt for the colder climate. Growing heavily irrigated crops in the desert or semi-arid regions has many advantages but makes little sense in a water constrained world. Right now the rich well watered soils of the midwest and great lakes region are being wasted on cash crop soy/corn rotation. Chipping away at the rich top soils for animal feed etc. There's a lot more that could be done here. This land is good for so many things... growing almonds in California? Grow hardy hybrid hazelnuts in the east. Cold hardy, disease resistant grapes make exotic regional wines with a unique eastern terroir and a long history, mostly forgotten. Bring back the apples orchards. The peaches and apricots. Re-open the canning and juicing plants. It's a shorter, mostly single season for most annual vegetable crops, but so much fertile land and water. And greenhouses add a lot of value.
- quxpar 4y ago
  We live in an age of profit pollution. Any farm doing this would be bought out by soy/corn growers, because the latter will be more profitable than the former. The same pollution is why your mailbox is full of wasteful garbage and your telephone line is harassed by scam calls until you stop picking up.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    In large part farms doing this don't get so much bought out but destroyed with herbicide drift from cash crop farms next door. Not everywhere, but in major parts. And when you complain, the locals pitchfork you, because what are you even doing here if you're not growing corn?
- sbradford26 4y ago
  I grew up in West Michigan in the farming country of Michigan, more specifically apple orchard/fruit orchard country. Michigan is the third largest producer of apples after Washington and NY. Also further up near Traverse city they produce a lot of grapes and cherries, and have some very good wineries. I think a big part of why there is not as much farming as the west is simply a matter of space, Michigan is large but nothing like the plains states.
- duped 4y ago
  > Agriculture should move back to this region It never left, Illinois and Minnesota are the 3rd and 5th largest producers of staple crops (the other being California, Iowa, and Texas, respectively, and CA and TX are only slightly larger in production but massively larger in size). West of the Mississippi, ranching dominates agriculture due to the poor soil and dry climate. Largely that corn and soy in the Great Lakes region is being used as animal feed for the ranches out west. They already have massive utilization of land area for the production of these crops.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    I should have clarified. It never left, but it became much less diverse. And in the more northeast states, it actually left.

Balero 4y ago

Would the energy used pumping the water from the quite low lakes, over the Rocky Mountains and Sierras to the west coast be less than a desalination plant? Another option is just moving the water usage closer to the usable water.

Scoundreller 4y ago
Most likely only a little bit would actually be piped. You’d just stop water from entering one watershed and send it into another and let gravity do its work. You would lose more to evaporation; but that happens to water in pipes too if they’re above ground. Would love to see the numbers. It’s fun looking at rivers from the Rocky Mountains in California that don’t make it to the ocean anymore. I recently proposed a transatlantic natural gas pipeline and people thought I was insane, but it would only be ~5x longer than the longest existing underwater natgas pipeline, which doesn’t sound impossibly viable.
- Balero 4y ago
  Good point about the river re-direction. > I recently proposed a transatlantic natural gas pipeline and people thought I was insane, but it would only be ~5x longer than the longest existing underwater natgas pipeline, which doesn’t sound impossibly viable. Nordstream is 759 Miles. Newfoundland to Ireland is 1900 Miles!
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Only problem is you gotta get the gas to the east coast on the americas, and that’s where a lot of the demand is already. Though it makes you wonder what kind of gas fields might exist along the way. As it goes, we exploit the oil and flare the gas. Pffft.
- 83 4y ago
  I feel the transatlantic gas pipe wouldnt be viable just for the fact that Russian subs/ships would have a field day "accidentally" setting anchor on it and breaking it to keep their economy relevant.

engineer_22 4y ago

Water from the Great Lakes cannot leave the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Compact prevents construction of any water withdrawal that will move water outside of the watershed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact

alanbernstein 4y ago
...According to current US law. Reading your comment, I wasn't sure if "compact" was a legal term or a geological one. Laws change much more quickly than geology.
- selectodude 4y ago
  And Canadian law. The Great Lakes Compact is an international treaty.
ceejayoz 4y ago
By act of Congress, not Constitutional amendment. It could be repealed in a matter of weeks if Congress saw fit.
- ham-sandwich 4y ago
  I know many people who would oppose removal of water from the region with weaponry. People deeply care about them, more than outsiders know
  - pc86 4y ago
    And that's all well and good so long as the law backs you up. When it doesn't, that then falls somewhere on a spectrum from felony to treason.
    - bilbo0s 4y ago
      Yeah. I was just thinking that. I mean if the rest of the country decides that georgia and florida need our water, which is one of the more serious current proposals, then that's democracy. I'm from Wisconsin. Born and raised right on the shores of Lake Michigan. But the law is the law. Our best bet is to do our utmost to ensure that the law stays the way it is despite whatever pressures there are from other areas of the country.

hanselot 4y ago

Some day I will convince 16 million people to each dig a tiny bit of a canal on the northern border of South Africa. I hope that by simply plotting the perfect route for the water to travel, the natural erosion will finish my work for me. That way the entire Northern Cape (deserty region) and the Southern Namibia (deserty region) will have a massive amount of water suddenly closeby, eventually changing the surrounding environment naturally.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

The region adjacent to the lakes is not immune to drought. There were widespread crop failures a few years ago.

shadowofneptune 4y ago

The Aral Sea might act as a warning. It was used for agricultural irrigation without concern for if the water could be replaced, and now barely even exists (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dan-Shaw-3/publication/313656688/figure/fig7/AS:668882419331076@1536485404503/Landsat-images-taken-over-several-years-showing-the-drying-up-of-the-Aral-Sea-once-the.jpg https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dan-Shaw-3/publication/...). I live in Arizona. Most of our Colorado River water goes to agricultural irrigation. The drought is bad, but bringing in even more water from out of state wouldn't be an actual solution.