My props to Bush for the dayFollow

Yesterday, Bush signed off on the Great Lakes Compact, an international treaty between the states in the Great Lakes region and Canada prohibiting the removal of water from the Great Lakes to outside of the Great Lakes Basin region. There had been talk before about the potential to build a pipeline one day from the lakes into the southwest so the people who think Arizona should look like Ohio could keep their lawns and golf courses well into the future. Now they'll just have to move to someplace not made of sand and rocks.

It's not a perfect agreement, for instance bottled water can still be taken from the Lakes, but there was a concern about getting the Compact passed before the 2010 census when it's expected the Great Lakes region states would lose congressional delegates to the southwest. So, it's good to hear that Bush signed off on it after its passage through Congress and the deal is settled.

They need to stay away from our water damn it. I enjoy never having to worry about the lack of water. We have a nice clean underground river flowing right through our county.

The lake is already low from the lack of snow over the past 10 years or so.

I'm a little worried about bottled water being allowed. I'd imagine places around Wisconsin (not Chicago, cause the lake is nasty down there) bottling massive amounts and shipping it westward.

Lake Erie is the worst of the Great Lakes. Also, since when is Lake Erie near Wisconsin or Chicago .

I was thinking more along the lines of Superior and Michigan, the nice ones. (As long as you don't count the polluted end of Lake Michigan down by Chicago).


If they have to do something, what they should do, is pipeline all that Ocean salt water, and purify it. It doesn't take much to remove salt from water, and there is tons of that water.

Still, it's that, or they don't have water. Cause they definitely aren't getting mine.

I bet they could genetically engineer the water to not be born with salt.

Just take the genes from the fresh water, and find out why it's different. Then modify the salt water, and put the new ones in a bucket and watch them multiply.

I don't know why this idea is so repulsive to people. I mean, we already do it, just in a less noticable fashion.

In my back yard, I have a septic tank, and a drain field (all the liquid from the tank drains out, allowing the tank to fill only with solids). In my front yard (about 30 feet away) is a well that goes 42 feet into the ground and pumps out water.

Everyone around me has a septic tank that drains the same way, down into the very water we all pump back out to use. But guess what, it's filtered! This stuff isn't even treated with chemicals to kill bacteria, it just relies on filtering.

Even in the city, our waste treatment plant just dumps into the Lake. Which returns back to the water table that the city pumps from.

It's ok when it's a hidden process by nature, but when we can see it happening, it's bad?

Both the river and the lake have cleaned up considerably since the 1970's. I'm not saying I want to drink a glass of water straight from the river but they're no longer catching on fire these days.

I'd do it for the cane sugar sweetner.

He was probably relieved to be reading *anything* that wasn't about he economy or the war, haha. "What's this, water? Sure, do whatever the hell you want!"

Nexa

Dammit! I'm agreeing with Shadow on something.

The whole "desalinization is expensive" argument is one of those that's full of all sorts of "new math". Usually, they include the full cost of desalinization, sterilization, filtration, flouridation (or whatever they're putting in the water these days), etc and then say "OMG! Look how expensive that is!!!".

90% of that stuff is done to any water used as a city's supply. Whether you're taking it from a river, a lake, a glacier, or from the ocean, there's a whole lot of filtering and treating done. The tiny bit of extra work to desalinate is almost lost in the wash of the normal treatments done.


It's a pet peeve of mine because where I live that's used to block desalination plants (which are desperately needed). Meanwhile, we pay absolutely top dollar for water from the Colorado river and/or piped down from up north somewhere (can't be ***** to look it up at the moment), and still suffer crippling shortages every few years. When someone says that desalination costs too much, they're either really saying they don't want to build them for some wacky environmental reason (in a "it looks ugly", and not even in the "save the pristine desert!" kind of way), *or* they're in the pocket of the people charging you for the water you get currently and they like getting tons and tons of money for something that should be almost free.

Doesn't this make you a 'terrorist'?

There is water in every country and in every place in this world. You have to drill deep enough for to find it. Think water not oil.

Well there is indeed groundwater most everywhere. But under much of the earth it's nothing more than damp brick like clay hundreds of feet down. Try extracting that!

Water is a resource. More and more water rights are being bought, sold, bargained for and politicized.