Great Lakes and Fresh Water

Three percent of the world's water exists as fresh water - two percent is locked in the polar ice caps; less than one percent resides in freshwater lakes and streams according to the Wisconsin Water Library:

Sodus Bay NY Lighthouse

• The Great Lakes are the largest freshwater system on earth. 
• The Great Lakes contain an estimated 5,500 cubic miles (22,700 cubic kilometers)of water—a fifth of all the liquid surface fresh water on Earth. And, it's enough to submerge the continental United States in nearly 10 feet of water. 
• The United States draws more than 40 billion gallons (151 million liters) of water from the Great Lakes every day—half of which is used for electrical power production.
• Nearly a tenth of the U.S. population lives in the Great Lakes basin. 
• More than 35 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water, jobs and their way of life. That breaks down to 24 million people in the U.s. and about 9.8 million in Canada. That's roughly 8 percent of the U.S. population and 32 percent of Canada's. 
• The Great Lakes support one of the world's largest regional economies, including a $7 billion fishery and $16 billion tourism industry. 
• More than 3,500 species of plants and animals live in the Great Lakes basin.
• More than 170 species of fish inhabit the Great Lakes, their tributaries and connecting waterways.

Lessons from the collapse of Mississippi delta marsh wetland

Flooding of Mississippi River Delta from the Gulf of Mexico -- due to 
levees that divert sediment, extreme weather conditions, 
and freshwater canals which prevent the deposition 
of sediment which is the primary mechanism by which the 
delta was originally formed and is replenished.

What happens when you 'over-engineer' and do not take a simple thing like sediment deposition into consideration?  How does 'land' disappear?

"Subsidence" is the gradual sinking or caving in of land caused by a number of things including: climatic, mechanical [physical], chemical and other processes such as:

• lowering of the water table due to withdrawals [agriculture-irrigation, mining, salt removal, oil, natural gas extraction, etc.] which creates a space . . . and water will fill it.
• obstruction of the natural deposition of sediment due to re-routing of sediment-laden rivers and streams by levees, seawalls, etc. which cut sediment supply off from its original destination.
• chemical dissolution of limestone [composed mainly of calcium carbonate] which comes down in rain [the atmosphere absorbs carbon dioxide resulting in carbonic acid] with water filling in cracks, holes, caves, etc.
• hydrocompaction of soils when organic-rich sediment [peat, etc.] is subjected to loss of water due to draining of swamps.   

In marshes, deltas, etc. subsidence is offset by the deposit of sediment. Coastal wetland sedimentation is the key thing in keeping marshlands alive.  "By holding in floodwaters, the levees prevent sediment delivery onto much of the river's natural floodplain," said Carol B. Lutken, associate director of the Mississippi Mineral Resources Institute at the University of Mississippi.  "The levees focus greater volumes of water over a diminished area which results in more of the flow arriving at the river's mouth.  This focusing of flow enables the river to carry a greater suspended load of sediment and increases the proportion that will bypass coastal marshes."

Scientists agree: "The Mississippi River Delta is disappearing at an astonishing rate: A football field of wetlands vanishes into open water almost every hour. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost nearly 1,900 square miles of land, an area roughly equivalent in size to the state of Delaware.  Many factors have led to the delta's collapse. One of the most significant is that the lower Mississippi River has been straitjacketed with huge levees as part of a national program to 'control' the Mississippi River and protect communities, economic infrastructure and croplands from river flooding. But the delta's wetlands are built and sustained by sediment delivered by the river. Cutting the river off from its delta with levees doomed existing wetlands and largely stopped the cycle of new wetlands growth. Without land-building deposits from the river, the delta is doomed to continue sinking beneath the water, endangering people, wildlife and jobs," says the organization Restore the Mississippi River Delta.  

Lake Ontario ~ a natural world-class ecosystem

When you look from this angle, L. Ontario's inspiring blue waters and unusual surrounding topography remain one of the world's most valuable freshwaters, as are all the Great Lakes.  Take a look at 2013 Canadian award-winning documentary, Watermark, a beautifully-filmed and researched take on today's freshwater.

Living on the south shore of L. Ontario, I've come to see that with so many competing and overlapping agencies, the conversation needs to take in more information usefully. One way is to analyze the lake's "Water-Energy Nexus." 

Along with measuring our "water footprint," we are looking from many different perspectives to see the Great Lakes' basins from the angle of watersheds.   

We can no longer rely on old environmental-politics, but have to re-design the process by which we make decisions.  Lawsuits regarding 'water withdrawal' brought by the Sierra Club and others are always going to be part of the process as the technical, legal environment is highly complex and deserves this kind of action. In NYS, the legal battles over the Adirondacks are legendary.

Ever subject to criticism, the NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation is trying to keep the public informed: http://www.dec.ny.gov/enb/enb.html but its power appears to be eroded by over-arching laws and agencies. 

But over the past 50 years, increasing federal, state, provincial, international, local and micro-level agencies, laws, and actions have struggled to keep up with changes in industry, agriculture, tourism, sports, development, and hydro, nuclear, coal-burning, natural gas and other power-generation stations. 

The job is not done. Development and open space . . . management and restoration . . . water withdrawal and replacement are continuous. Citizens are now able to become conversant and aware and with that must take this new vocabulary and perspective to our governmental officials.  

Upstream Salmon Creek in center of village of Hilton NY

“It is estimated that more than $2.9 billion a year is spent on wetland and stream protection and restoration through the U.S. wetland mitigation program, and many tens or hundreds of millions more through other restoration efforts,” stated Jessica Wilkinson, senior policy advisor for mitigation at The Nature Conservancy.  

Watershed Approach Handbook