By Keith Schneider
Circle of Blue Senior Editor
(posted from Modeshift.org)

The era of global climate change has produced such rainy and warm conditions in northern Michigan that a winter’s worth of snow and ice melted completely here over the last two days. Meanwhile it’s dry, desperately so, in several huge and significant regions of the country.

The striking contrasts are putting strains on the culture and economy in ways we’re only starting to understand. Yesterday I stood in a driving January rain talking to Jim MacInnes, the chief executive of Crystal Mountain, our local ski resort. He was interested in new economic data he’d read online. I was watching the deep gullies forming at the bottom of Buck, the resort’s steepest slope.

The signs of changing climate and an economy that has been slow to respond, are everywhere.

Judging by the thickening white sashes of salt lining Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the largest reservoirs in the United States, the drought on the Colorado Plateau is not only deepening, it is pushing water supply conditions for roughly 25 million people from serious toward dire. The moment of reckoning over water supplies, anticipated since the 1960s, appears to have arrived.

Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and southern California form the fastest growing region in the country. All are served by the Colorado River, which provides drinking water to Las Vegas, San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and hundreds of smaller communities. Lake Powell, north of the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, which lies just south, are less than half full and dropping steadily. Both are 105 feet lower than their full pools, and dropping about eight to ten feet a year.

The ring around the reservoirs is beginning to be seen as a noose around the neck of the region. Not surprisingly it’s become politically palatable to consider changes in water management and use once deemed impractical. Conservation measures were put into effect in Phoenix, and in Las Vegas the water district is paying homeowners $1 a square foot to tear up their lawns and install desert plantings.

The Colorado Plateau states and California last month finished an agreement that provides both more flexibility and certainty in who has the right to what’s left in both reservoirs, and sets triggers for declaring emergencies that dramatically cut use. The Metropolitan Water District, southern California’s major water provider, announced in November that they will buy 65 billion gallons of water annually from Central Valley farmers north of Sacramento.

Orange County is preparing to turn on a new waste treatment plant that will pump “highly treated wastewater from their new purification plant to percolation ponds in Anaheim. Eventually, the recycled water will be delivered to about 2.3 million people.” And all the desert states are more intensely eyeing the Great Lakes.

Hot Atlanta
The other region of the United States where water demand is outrunning supply is the Southeast. There’s been more rain there this week; Nevertheless, for the first time in the lives of most of the 10-county Atlanta region’s 4 million residents, turning on the tap is an invitation to consider the limits of growth. The U.S. drought map continues to show that precipitation, soil moisture, and lake and river levels are in “extreme” dry condition.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a nice piece on the region’s inability to plan and invest in water supply infrastructure. And Atlanta Water Shortage keeps a near-daily update of conditions.

Texas Too
Water authorities in the Texas Panhandle late last month said they were cutting the water supply from Lake Meredith to 11 cities, including Amarillo, Plainview, Lubbock, and Brownfield. The reason, according to the Houston Chronicle: “brutal drought conditions in two of the past three years.”

As drought grips much of the nation, the mighty Great Lakes are shrinking, the New York Times reports today, expanding upon an AP story published August 3 that also said Lake Superior is getting warmer.

By Felicity Barringer, New York Times
(Aug 14, 2007) - Water levels in the three upper Great Lakes are wavering far below normal, and experts expect Lake Superior, the northernmost lake, to reach a record low in the next two months, according to data from the international bodies that monitor the Great Lakes, the world’s largest freshwater reservoir.

…and…

By John Flesher, Associated Press
MARQUETTE, Mich. (Aug 3, 2007) - Deep enough to hold the combined water in all the other Great Lakes and with a surface area as large as South Carolina, Lake Superior’s size has lent it an aura of invulnerability. But the mighty Superior is losing water and getting warmer, worrying those who live near its shores, scientists and companies that rely on the lake for business.

A quick search finds that the AP’s story had legs as far away as the Times of India.

Keith Schneider, my colleague and a NY Times contributor, also made note of this diminishing Great Lake back in June in his blog, Mode Shift.

So as we look at the world’s water woes — poring over satellite photographs of the Aral Sea’s demise and clinging to hope there’s a freshwater lake hidden below Dafur that’s large enough to sate thirsts for war — we might take a look around us here in the U.S. and attune ourselve the more subtle emerging examples and consequences of climate’s impact on freshwater.

Schneider writes: “The upper Midwest is one of three regions in the United States that is feeling the burn from global climate change. The other two are the Deep South and the Southwest, particularly around the Colorado Plateau. The Upper Midwest has the water. We have more clean fresh water than any place on earth. The two other regions have all the people. The Deep South and the Southwest are growing faster than almost any other region of the nation. Now answer this one. Do the states of the Great Lakes, which are growing more slowly and gradually shedding electoral college votes and House members, also begin to lose the capacity to safeguard their water supply?”

Steve Curwood, producer and host of NPR’s Living on Earth, visited a year or so ago and implored citizens of the upper Great Lakes region to gird for a future of global water envy. He said he had an epiphany while making the final approach over Lake Michigan to the airport here in Traverse City: The world will beat a path to your shores. Are you ready?

Indeed, are we ready?

For a barometer of the political future of water, at least in the Midwest, keep an eye on the U.S. Drought Monitor and watch as dust-covered faces turn attention toward the Great Lakes. And see if the politicians can keep cool heads as fiery words of desire are bound to emerge from parched lips.

U.S. Drought Monitor

Current Great Lakes water levels

At Circle of Blue Summit on the Shore, Dr. Jerry Linenger occupied the highest room at Pine Hollow, our remarkable host facilities. Fitting for the man who once held the record for longest time a U.S. astronaut has spent in orbit. Jerry joins the Circle of Blue board, bringing not only his unique perspective of the water planet, but his innumerable talents: two doctorates (medicine and research design) and two masters degrees (systems management and policy). His vision, backed by experience and science, is inspirational and grounding:

“Looking out the window I would see the great resources of freshwater on the planet. Lake Baikal, deeper than deep. The Great Lakes, well-named. The mighty rivers of the world – Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Amazon – defining civilizations, past and present. But still, when stepping back and looking at the big picture, not so much different than our little orbiting space station. A closed ecosystem. Only so many sources of life-sustaining water. And all the creatures of Earth, just like the three of us circling it, all dependent on water.”

Circle of Blue Summit on the Shore at Pine Hollow
ELK RAPIDS, MICH. (May 11-13) - How does one describe a monumental gathering of creative minds meeting together on the shores of Lake Michigan to define the broadest impact for Circle of Blue? At least for now, until we can internalize the sheer scope of the event’s outcomes, let’s turn to two participants who share the experience in their blogs:

Alon Halevy’s Blog: Circle of Blue

Flip: Circle of Blue