“as far as you can see there is nothing but sere sand, white bones of dead cattle poisoned on toxic plants, the rotting hulks of fishing vessels and barges, the pathetic detritus of a once thriving fishing culture. In the foreground are the broken timbers of what used to be a wharf; beyond that are six or seven hulls, grounded at random, pointing in no way in particular, some of them still upright, but broken, the paint reduced to small scraps of rust. Further on are humps in the sand where other hulls have been buried, and beyond that only dunes, sand, salt, and nothingness.”
The Russians had a dream for creating lush farmlands and extensive cotton growing plains in the region aside of two rivers, the Amu and the Syr, the two rivers which contributed the majority of the water that entered the Aral sea. In 1956 the Russian planners opened the Kara Kum Canal that was to divert water from the Amu, near the Afghan border and diverted it to their cotton-growing region near the Turkish town of Ashgabat. The fields that the canal was feeding were haphazard, and poorly laid out, loosing as much as sixty percent of the water to evaporation and poorly designed fields, however, what did it matter, there was plenty of water. Between 1956 and 1960 three more canals were opened to feed more water into the region and the Aral Sea began to drop. The village of Muynak was an island in 1956 when the first canal was opened, but by 1962, the sea had changed to the point that the village found itself on a peninsula. No worries though, it made transportation to and from the village much easier. However, by 1970 the Aral Sea had retreated ten kilometers from the shore of the town. In 1980 the sea had moved forty kilometers away, and in 1998, the closest shore was seventy-five kilometers away. There were other unforeseen effects to the shrinking Sea, as the sea got smaller and smaller the salinity in the water increased to levels ten times the original level, effectively killing all life in the water. Of course the commercial fishery in Muynak had closed in 1982. The industry had employed 60,000 people and produced a sustainable 50,000 tones of fish a year, but the loss of the Sea had most effectively killed that. There were other effects that the Russian planners had not accounted for either. When the Sea effectively dried up, water tables dropped across the region, this destroyed oases and unirrigated farms all over the region. With the loss of the Sea, wildlife disappeared from the region, and the once lucrative muskrat fur industry collapsed. The over irrigation of the surrounding area caused explosive salt concentrations in the region. The Aral Sea also used to control climate in the region to a greater extent then the planners realized. It acted as a heat buffer in the summer, and as a heat sink in the winter making the area quite temperate in the winter, despite its proximity to Siberia. However, with the loss of the sea the winds of Siberia began to sweep into the region, changing the climate from a temperate one to a much more continental climate and the growing season in the area dropped to only 170 days. This of course was the great irony of the loss of the Sea, the dry land cotton that the Russians had been diverting water from the Sea to grow required a growing season of 200 days, with the Sea gone, the growing season was to short, and the cotton industry also collapsed.The Aral Sea is a huge object lesion in the principals of unforeseen consequences, and what happens when humans interfere with natural cycles. An Israeli hydrologist who had been in the area studying the sea left with a comment, “Maybe that will be the Aral’s only legacy. It will help make things better elsewhere by frightening people half to death.”
As you travel to the southern regions of the United States you will realize an amazing phenomenon. In the areas of California, Nevada, and parts of Florida, cities covered in green lawns, and fountains, seem to spring out of the desert, a welcome oasis, for the weary highway traveler to stop and relax from the heat in the swimming pool of whatever hotel they choose to stop at for the night. A stop in Palm springs brings relief in the form of lush green golf courses, lakes, flow through toilets, and ‘area misters’ – little jets of spraying mist, designed to cool the air by spraying a mist of water into it. Few pay attention to the simple question; ‘how did all this water just show up here in the middle of the desert, so that these wonderful oases can exist?’ “The United States has essentially ‘stolen’ the Colorado River from Mexico, much of it to irrigate the deserts of Arizona and California, but a good deal of it to fill swimming pools in Los Angeles and fountains in Las Vegas.”The demand for water in these regions is not decreasing either, plans to divert even more of the Colorado River, which is little more then a trickle of its former self by the time it reaches Mexico are in the works, as the cities keep growing, and the demand increases. There was no lack of controversy in Texas when in 1998, following the drought that cost Texas farmers millions, the 37-acre Super Splash Adventure Water Park opened, the park cost 13 million to build, and the irony of all that water splashing around and evaporating, beside hundreds of bone dry farms, was apparent to all.With the supply in the Colorado River almost entirely taken up, water officials in California are beginning to look for other sources, and their gaze has inevitably turned northward.
“ ‘A significant part of the world is under water stress and, obviously, that won't happen in the Great Lakes region because we do have that source of water here,’ said Dr. Jeff Foran, director of the Great Lakes WATER Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. WATER is an acronym for Wisconsin Aquatic, Technology and Environmental Research Institute.”The possibility for the bulk shipment of water out of the great lakes and into, tankers, pipelines, and other methods is not the far off possibility that one might think, entrepreneurs have already tried their hand at exporting Canadian lakes and streams for sale elsewhere. On March 31, 1999, the province of Ontario issued a permit to Nova Group, a Sault Ste. Marie company, that entitled the company to ship up to 600 million litres of Lake Superior water to Asia by 2002. However when the permit was issued the ensuing media frenzy and public outcry over the export of Canadian lakes and streams caused the permit to be cancelled, and the Canadian government has since placed a moratorium of the bulk export of water.This of course has had many Canadians giving a sigh of relief over the fact that Canadian water is safe, until all the provinces can agree on a common law that is supposed to prevent the bulk export of water, however, what many Canadians don’t’ realise is that already about 272 million litres of Canadian water is bottled and sold to the United states every year, and now the province of Newfoundland is looking to allow the export of some 13 billion gallons of water by McCurdy Enterprises, as they had already invested a million dollars into their scheme, before the federal moratorium was enacted.The problem is, if Newfoundland allows the bulk export of water to take place, a precedent will be set. A precedent that under the term of NAFTA would allow the bulk export of water to become a commodity under the terms of the agreement, and then technically under the terms of NAFTA it would be illegal for the Canadian government to prevent the bulk export of water. Should there be concern that this precedent will be set?
In the 1960’s a number of proposals for cross continental Interbasin water transfer frameworks were proposed. Of course in the sixties, these proposals were deemed extravagant, and unnecessary, and were shelved. The growing demand for water in the southern United States has however brought some of these proposals back down from the shelves, and proponents of massive Interbasin transfers are giving them a second look. The frameworks involve the bulk transfer of water from Canada to the US, on a level that should have many Canadians very concerned; there are three basic plans, with many more that are simply variations off of them.
North American Water and Power Alliance
The North American Water and Power Alliance, or NAWPA, is one of the three most ambitious projects, NAWAPA was first proposed in 1964 by the Ralph Parsons Engineering Company from Pasadena, California. The NAWPA envisions damming virtually every major river in Alaska and British Columbia, including, but not limited to the Yukon, Susitna, Tanana, Skeena, Peace, Churchill, MacKenzie and Fraser rivers. The “harvested” water would then be diverted into the Rocky Mountain Trench, a five hundred mile, natural depression that runs the length of British Columbia. The depression would store up to 400 million-acre feet of water. Which is about 130,340,400 gallons of water, just in filling the depression.Water is then supposed to take various paths from the newly made Rocky Mountain Trench Reservoir. From the north end, a canal would be build that would direct the water southeast, joining up with the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. The water level in the Great Lakes would rise, -no doubt causing no few headaches for the inhabitants of the Canadian city of Toronto, and others along the shores of the lakes on both sides of the border. The bonus is that hydroelectric output at Niagara Falls could increase and ocean-going vessels would be able to move up the Mississippi to St. Louis, assuming that the wharfs are not all under water. Most of the water, however, would travel along both sides of the Rockies towards the Great Plains and to the southwestern deserts. Idaho could expect to receive 2.3 million acre-feet of water; Texas would get 11.7 million; California, 13.9 million; and Mexico 20 million, assuming of course that California doesn’t need it.
The plan would be the largest engineering project on the face of the earth, moving billions of litres of water southward every year, while the plan was originally shelved due to its high cost, and political and environmental resistance, the increasing costs and demand for water in the south are making the cost vs. eventual profit margin grow closer and closer to making the framework a possibility. Of course the consequences of this plan would be virtually unimaginable, flooding thousands of miles of wilderness, and displacing hundreds of indigenous peoples, the pools in the south, would however, be filled.
The Great Replenishment and Northern Development Canal
The GRAND Canal is eastern Canada’s answer the NAWAPA. Thomas Kierans first proposed the Plan, in the 1950s. Kierans, is the founder and president of the
GRAND Canal Co. Ltd. The project has received the endorsement of many of Canada's leading engineering firms; Bechtel, Lavalin, and Hydro- Quebec have all endorsed the project. The proposal contemplates the construction of a huge dike across the northern end of James Bay. The many rivers feeding into the bay would then fill it to a reservoir approximately the size of Lake Ontario. From there the water would be channeled into the Great Lakes, from there it could be pumped to various regions across the continent. The total estimated cost of the project in 1985 was $100 billion. The controversial LaGrande River hydroelectric projects, and other projects around James Bay can actually be viewed as significant steps toward the eventual framework of the GRAND Canal project. Although it was built for hydroelectric power generation, the $20 billion complex is a phase straight out of the CANAL project, and would be necessary to send James Bay water south. The next stages of Hydro-Quebec's plans, which are being implemented at the time of the production of this paper, involve damming or diverting all the remaining major rivers flowing into James Bay by the year 2001, all at a cost of $44 billion. After the diversion is complete all that would be required to channel all that water to the Great lakes would be the construction of a few relatively simple canals.Not that expensive at all.
The Alaska-California Subsea Pipeline Project
The Subsea pipline is a 400-2100 mile long undersea pipeline designed to transport more then four million acre-feet of water straight from Alaska and into Lake Shasta in northern California. This pipeline is one of the cheapest ideas on the drawing board, and one of the more likely plans as flooding of areas alone the route would be non existent. The American federal Office of Technology Assessment [OTA] was interested enough in the project to put together a workshop and conduct an investigation into the economic feasibility of the project. The study concluded at the time that at a price tag of $110 billion, the pipeline was not economically feasible with the other options currently open to California.
The pipeline option does however attract supporters because it affords less to the environment than other schemes. As planned, the pipeline would intake water from the mouth of the Copper or Stikine River. The potential problems, -aside from the sudden geographical movement of the water, are changes in coastal salinity and temperature. The changes sound minor, however these minor changes would endanger the critical salmon and marine mammal habitats along the Eastern coast.
Even though at the time the project was dismissed as being non competitive as compared to the other water sources available to California at the time, the growing consumption and the statement made at the end of the workshop, make the possibility of this project much more real as the wells in California run dry. “California does not currently need the large volumes of imported water that could justify a major
Inter-basin transfer.” So when will California currently need that water?
The conclusion that one comes to after looking at these projects is alarming indeed. How safe is our water, right now at least it is temporarily out of reach of hungry investment developers, of course movements in the global community and the ever profit seeking visions of investors leaves that safety in doubt. John Bastin a member of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development has said, “Water is the last infrastructure frontier for private investors.”Of course, why should we worry? “Obviously, that won't happen in the Great Lakes region because we do have that source of water here,”of course that sounds a lot like what the Russian planners said when they were talking about the rivers around the Aral Sea.
Bibliography & References
Baalu, Shri. “Water cannot be treated as a pure economic commodity.” M2 Presswire. Coventry. Nov 2, 1999.
Barta, Patrick, and Sholnn, Freeman. “Idea of Water Park In Drought Area Is All Wet to Some.” Wall Street Journal; New York; Jul 8, 1998. Eastern edition. Start Page: T2.
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Shiva, Vandana. “Now Monsanto is after our water.” The Ecologist. Sturminster Newton; Aug/Sep 1999. Volume: 29. Issue: 5. Start Page: 297.
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“U.N. Panel on Water Sees It as Commodity.” New York Times. New York. Mar 22, 1998. East Coast Eddition. Section: 1. Start Page: 6.
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