There has been a lot of talk in our area of using water from Lake Superior for areas to the south and west of us when their aquifiers dry out.
Here is some information on the subject from an Anishinabe (Ojibwe) point of view:
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The Ogallala Aquifier that runs under the plains states of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and west Texas is being emptied by the thirst of agribusiness at a much higher rate than expected. When the US Army Corps of Engineers checked it out in 1976, water was being pumped out of the Aquifier at a rate of 27 billion cubic metres a year. The Corps recommended it be filled up with Great Lakes water. [Joyce Nelson, Canada Dry, This Magazine, October 1987].
In the early 1980s, the US Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for any state to ban water export across its boundary--to do so would be a restriction of interstate commerce. The Court's rulings have helped to define water as a commodity, and they have helped to discourage a conservation ethic under which people might conserve the water in their own back yards rather than think they can always buy more from their neighbours.
And if their neighbours south of the 49th parallel should run out, then it's time to look to the friendly giant in the north--the one with 90% of North America's surface supply of fresh water.
Canada has done nothing to discourage the US from seeing us as drawers of water. As Brian Mulroney put it in a Fortune interview: "I'm favourably disposed to anything that improves our relationship with our neighbor. If it [water export] happens to make good economic sense and improves the environment, why not?" Or, as Robert Bourassa put it in his Power from the North, "Water is a good, like any other, and can be bought and sold." Or, as Simon Reisman, Canada's negotiator during the free trade talks with the US, said, "America's interest in trading with us has always been linked to something else they wanted from us. I felt water should be looked at in economic terms." [Joyce Nelson, Canada Dry, This Magazine, October 1987]
To the Anishnabek, as we explain later, these statements are highly offensive and could only be said by extremely foolish men.
The St. Lawrence River
The only other place where we might look for the ecological effects of massive displacements of water is in the St. Lawrence River. Here there is more information, much of it being gathered by Warwick Vincent and Julian Dodson of the Départment de biologie, Université Laval, Québec. The following quotes are taken from their paper, "The St. Lawrence River, Canada-USA: the need for an Ecosystem-Level Understanding of Large Rivers" (currently in press in a symposium edition of the Japanese Journal of Limnology (1999):
Discharge plays a pivotal role in the structure and functioning of all flowing water ecosystems including large rivers. According to the analysis by DYNESIUS and NILSSON (1994), the hydrological regime of 77% of the 139 largest rivers in North America and Eurasia has now been subject to modification by dams and other control structures, with deleterious effects (including fragmentation) on habitat quality, land-water interactions and migration corridors for aquatic wildlife. Throughout the twentieth century, the St. Lawrence River has been extensively modified for navigation, flood control and hydroelectricity generation, but little consideration has been given to the ecological impacts of these changes.
Variability in discharge is an important feature that influences the productivity and biodiversity of flood plain environments. The flood-pulse concept draws attention to dynamic character of the floodplain and the importance of periodic flooding for vegetation dynamics, nutrient exchange and access by fish and other animals to wetland habitats as well as to the main stem of the river (JUNK et al., 1989)." ...
Certain freshwater fish species have life cycles that are intimately linked to the hydrological cycle and variations in the St. Lawrence. For example, the year class strength for lake surgeon in the river appears to be strongly determined by hydrological conditions in June, the time of year when the larvae drift from their spawning grounds and begin exogenous feeding (NILO et al., 1997).
A major impediment to a full understanding the pathways and effects of contaminants in the St. Lawrence is the lack of information about food web relationships and biogeochemical cycling processes in this system. Even for the base of the food web our understanding of in situ production processes is still rudimentary.
In certain parts of the world, considerable funds are now allocated towards the process of "renaturalization" of heavily modified streams and rivers. For example, the Danube River has been subjected to large-scale hydraulic modification for more than 100 years. All the meanders have been cut off from certain reaches thereby shortening the channel by c. 20%, resulting in an increased hydraulic gradient. This in turn has led to more rapid erosion and a lowering of the river by 2.5 m in some places with the concomitant of a lowering of the water table and loss of wetland habitat. The German government has allocated 100 million DM for the rehabilitation of a 160 km stretch of the Danube involving re-adjustment of water levels, re-activation of old meanders and the retention of the straight channel sections for flood control. This trend towards renaturalization has been strengthened by environmental laws in most of the German states (LARSEN, 1995).
We have quoted at length from the Vincent-Dodson paper in order to make one, crucial point: the ecosystems of large bodies of water and tremendously complex and extremely fragile. The best scientists admit our scientific knowledge of their complexity is shallow. No one can say with certainty what will or won't happen when those ecosystems are thrown out of balance. It begs the question: "If we don't know, what do we do?"
Our answer is: "Nothing. Let it be."
The taking of water offends the spirit and is a violation of Anishnabe values
This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth ... Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. --Chief Seattle to the President of the United States, 1854
What is happening right now not only affects us native people because we are very close to the earth .. we take pity on Mother Earth. But it really affects us, the responsibility, the total responsibility of all people in Canada is to take care of the earth. ... We are all in this together. Where the Mother is at is where we have put her. the state where she's at is our responsibility.
--Pauline Shirt, Aninishnabe elder in conversation with Nawash Band member
Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, Earthkeeper vol. 2, issues 3 & 4, 1992.
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PG