Letters to the Editor
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And we're well fed too!
I do media production for a living. I used to live in San Diego, but returned to MI to set-up shop. Economically this place is a disaster, but it's cheap and I still get to play in the sprinkler during the summer time. I even used a banana slide last year and got a nasty grass stain/burn when I flew off it at the end.
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Loch Erie
Great article,but you left out the Loch Erie Monster! Some say He looks alot like former Governor John Engler who supposedly had a secret deal with DUMYA to pipe water to Texas!!! Tommie27
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Hands off our water.
"You wanted to go live in that sandbox. Don't come crying back to us when you can't find anything to drink."
This Minnesotan seconds that emotion.
Southwest America has become an experiment in terra-forming. Wisely done, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's too damn expensive to pipe water across a continent. They should de-salinate their own local water first.
If humanity wants to make paradise wherever it wants, it better hurry up and find a cheap and inexhaustable energy supply.
Or live with the earth the way it wants to be.
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Fresh water in Syracuse?
Surely you are not referring to Onondaga Lake right smack dab in the middle of the city...one the most polluted lakes anywhere. I love Syracuse for many things, but superior water quality is not one of them.
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Idle. It's not an idle appeal.
Not an "idol" one.
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Where is the mention of recycled water?
As someone who grew up in CT, and for the past 5 years has lived in Melbourne, Australia I've seen two vastly different attitudes to water.
CT is by no means on the great lakes, but water is not a problem there. When my parents talked about a 'drought' they basically meant that their lawns were looking a bit brown because it hadn't rained in a few days.
Melbourne is in the throes of a decades-long drought (begging the question of when does a drought stop being a drought and start just being considered the normal climate?) Meanwhile the population here has been growing at a record pace (no thanks to immigrants like myself!)
What baffles me is that with a drought that has lasted over 10 years, the local government has done virtually nothing to seriously fix the problem. Water restrictions are a good SHORT TERM solution, but do nothing to solve the long-term issue of a growing population and dwindling supply.
Instead of looking for new ways to pump water from far-off places (destroying ecosystems and costing millions to build pipelines in the process), why don't cities start recycling their water? This is almost certainly both the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly solution. And yes, by recycled water, I mean treated effluent. (like, OMG, drinking pee!)
Effluent that has been treated to a high standard is often cleaner than water that has been pumped out of 'natural' resivors. It must meet incredibly high standards to be considered drinkable. Altering existing sewage treatment plants to make them able to fully recycle water back into the drinking water supply makes the most sense (or at least a lot more sense than pumping water from Lake Michigan). Cities should make the water restrictions permanent, and start building water recycling plants. Anyone who has a problem with drinking highly treated effluent can move back to upstate New York, or build a bridge and get over it.
Its just a shame for everyone from the fishes to the 4 million inhabitants of Atlanta that local governments are too scared to introduce drinking recycled water because of perceived public backlash.
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Desalinization
is improving, but it's still a long way off in most places. Right now it requires a tremendous amount of energy, with the attending problems of cost and hazardous waste. I'm sure we'll get better at it.
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This is the flip side of freedom
You can go and live wherever you want, but you can't control it if ten million of your fellow citizens decide to do the same. I live in the Orlando area, and when I moved here 14 years ago I saw "L.A. circa 1950" -- cheap flat land with orange groves and a decent enough climate (at least half the year). Sure enough, the nighttime sounds of frogs and crickets has given way to the drone of vehicles. And here, unlike the Southwest, the ecosystem is naturally in need of huge amounts of rainfall. The porous limestone under us can collapse like a drying sponge, taking houses and roads into the maw of expanding sinkholes.
So, do I feel like packing up and moving to ...Duluth? Egads! People live here and happily endure the six-month sauna of "summer" and the threat of hurricanes and the wonderful home insurance rates they bring because to us, less than sixty degrees feels downright polar! I really don't think I could stand the cold and snow. Call me a wimp. But it's January 6 and 75 degrees outside. The days I have to actually wear something heavier than a short sleeve shirt to go outside are, maybe 15 a year. Wimmmmmp!
But this is a conscious decision to live here, with the understanding that there is no place one can live consequence-free.
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GREAT LAKES WATER
Um, I notice that neither the article nor any of the letters so far have mentioned one little obstacle to directing the Great Lakes water south.
Want a hint?
Neighbour to the north. Your biggest trading partner. 2nd-biggest country in the world by land area.
Yes. Canada co-owns four out of the five Great Lakes, and because the lakes cross both our piddly national boundaries, the entire drainage basin is actually a shared responsibility and a shared resource.
There's not going to be any draining of the Great Lakes simply because that project might kill the entire heartland of Canada, and as not-Americans, we have interests which are not American.
Not going to happen.
There's going to have to be conservation, limits on growth, and other such things.
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Shhh! don't tell them!
Cut it out! the midwest is the best place in America to live and (probably) the most protected from the really terrible concequences of climate change. We don't need more people, we don't WANT more people. The (relatively) small population makes it very livable and pleasant around here. The last thing we want is the population of Georgia moving in.
Everyone's so keen on living in the south and west, let them figure out how to get water. Don't encourage them to come pitch a tent in MY backyard!