Michiganders, and Great Lakes citizens broadly, still largely understand water as a public good—something we don’t pay a premium for, something everyone has a right to access and enjoy, and something that sits at the foundational center of our social and economic lives. Thus, in the end it doesn’t matter that Nestlé is a drop in the freshwater ocean. The United Nations and the World Bank predict widespread water shortages worldwide by 2030, when 3 billion won’t have consistent access to clean, affordable water. On Monday, August 7, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a draft plan for how to protect the Great Lakes from invasive Asian carp. At the time, lake levels were nearing historic lows, and industries relying on the Great Lakes were suffering: commercial fishing, hydropower electricity generation, tourism, shipping, etc. A little over 200 million gallons per year. Their handful of wells in mid-Michigan alone each pump over 200 gallons per minute, amounting to hundreds of millions of gallons per year. The five great lakes cover an area the size of Oregon. Urge Governor Cuomo to Si…. The law is clear: no diversions of Great Lakes basin water, period—not by pipe to Arizona, not by ship to China, not even to Madison, Wisconsin or Columbus, Ohio. Pfizer’s pharmaceutical manufacturing operation near Kalamazoo alone draws around 6.9 billion gallons annually. Critics charge that Nestlé is unjustly exploiting a public resource, but Michigan law permits any private property owner to withdraw from the aquifer directly below for free, given they pay a nominal $200 paperwork fee each year. The city expects to complete the transition by 2023. At the center of the Nestlé conflict is a fundamental disagreement about what water means in our society and in our culture. Governors and legislators in the region, alarmed by the schemes, realized there were no legal barriers to such proposals and no legal authority they could exert to stop them. In the grand scheme of things, a few million gallons from an inland waterway seem trivial. Pfizer returns over 97% of that water, unpolluted, to the ground. He says it is less a matter of politics than practicality, especially when it comes to growing food. Cases like Nestlé may seem like an blip on the map in this context, but they reflect a deeper cultural anxiety about a potential future in which water is the new gold and the Great Lakes the world’s largest gold mine—and potentially the site of the world’s largest gold rush. When John Engler was governor of Michigan in 2001, he made an agreement with bottle water giant Nestle, allowing them to open a plant in Mecosta County. Approximately 1% of the water evaporates or leaves the Great Lakes Basin each year, and approximately 1% is returned through precipitation. All Rights Reserved. April 9, 2018. The city limit of the Milwaukee suburb Waukesha lies several miles outside the Lake Michigan drainage basin and approximately seventeen miles from Lake Michigan itself. This water war in mid-Michigan is a harbinger of the violent 21st-century wars that many predict will be fought over water resources. Jim Thompson supported temporarily stealing billions of gallons more each day to … At the heart of this controversy is a little-known piece of legislation called the Great Lakes Compact. Nestle Continues Stealing World’s Water During Drought Nestlé is draining California aquifers, from Sacramento alone taking 80 million gallons annually. Despite overwhelming legislative support, not everyone enthusiastically lined up behind the Compact. What happens when half of a town is inside the Basin, and half is outside? What made the Compact such a radical departure from the natural resource law of the time is that it treated groundwater, surface water, and Great Lakes tributaries as a single ecosystem. Their combined waters could cover the contiguous United States to a depth of nine feet. While these challenges have been dropped, they led the states of Michigan and Minnesota to offer amendments to the agreement that clarified the definition of ‘straddling community,’ thus reducing the original proposed service area and requested diversion volume. Do watersheds and ecosystems have inherent value outside human use and consumption? Ratified by all 8 Great Lakes States, approved by both houses of Congress, and signed by President Bush on October 3, 2008, the legally-binding interstate compact created a standardized set of tools and protocols for the management of Great Lakes water. Great Lakes residents understand this. A drinking water summit was held this week in Chicago, hosted by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. The Great Lakes compact has given us a foundation on which to begin answering these questions, but how we choose to adapt, interpret, and implement it in the case of Nestlé and beyond will have tremendous consequences in the years to come. Last week, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality did the unthinkable; they ruled in favor of Nestle in their controversial bid to double the amount of water they pump for next to nothing and sell back to us. You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. It’s a delicate balance that humanity must take care not to disrupt. It’s a delicate balance that humanity must take care not to disrupt. From combined sewer overflows to old lead service lines, our water infrastructure needs to Groundwater withdrawals in Michigan add up to 700 million gallons per day. Turning the “Rust Belt” into the “Water Belt” The Great Lakes are a national treasure. The case of Waukesha was inherently controversial because the entirety of the city was well outside the drainage basin boundary. The answer is complicated, in part because it’s still being debated. A nine-month investigation by APM Reports examined the cost of water in six large cities near the Great Lakes – Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, Buffalo … Make no mistake, the amount of water that Nestle will now be taking qualifies as a harmful water withdrawal according to MDEQ’s own flawed water withdrawal … The ruffe is originally from fresh and brackish waters in portions of Eurasia. Do we have an obligation to share Great Lakes water with the world? This includes some species that are rare, threatened, or even endangered. Nestlé? Jay Famiglietti, director of the Global Institute for Water Security at Canada’s University of Saskatchewan, says water scarcity may conspire to force the opening up of the Great Lakes or other water resources as sources for water in the future. The Great Lakes compact has given us a foundation on which to begin answering these questions, but how we choose to adapt, interpret, and implement it in the case of Nestlé and beyond will have tremendous consequences in the years to come. The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact is an agreement between eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces to regulate diversion of water from the Great Lakes basin. At the moment, rules are in place to protect the Great Lakes from a national water grab. Scientists puzzled by mercury's jump in Great Lakes fish "Companies who sell water gain high profits off the backs of a nonprofit, cost-based system. Since 2001, bottled water consumption in the United States has exploded, surpassing even carbonated soft drinks to become the nation’s largest beverage category by volume as of this year. is in the case of municipalities that straddle the Basin. Do we each have a right to clean, affordable, and accessible water for drinking, fishing, and sport? Nestle might be selling its contentious Michigan bottled water brand, but water rights activists in the Great Lakes region aren’t so quick to let go of the issue. By Sean McBrearty - Michigan Campaign Organizer. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic. This pesky pirate was notorious for his stealthy crimes. While some folks aren’t happy with the outcome, the agreement held up and operated as intended. A clause in the compact exempts water shipped in containers under 5.7 gallons—without regard to the total volume and number of containers. Most notably, the agreement effectively banned all water withdrawals by municipalities located outside the Great Lakes basin, and it restricted withdrawals that have a measurable negative impact on a surrounding watershed—the latter being the component that has Nestlé and the Michigan Department Environmental Quality butting heads. The ruffe came to Lake Superior probably in the ballast water of a transoceanic ship in 1985. Or even more drastic, what if a town finds itself just barely on the wrong side of the water slope? The water temperatures on the surface of Lake Michigan look to … Still, it’s important to keep this in perspective; this is 6 quadrillion gallons we’re talking about. 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