The Big Slurp

Water by the gallon is worth more than gasoline. Ask Perrier. Nestle and Perrier came a calling not too many years back, and they wanted our groundwater. Concerned citizens kept the corporate water miners at bay, but the threat lingers and there is no reason to think that we've protected the resources forever. We haven't. They'll be back, with pumps and pipelines and tank trucks and they won't leave us alone until the entire Great Lakes Basin is as arid as the Mojave.

In fact, while Wisconsin was able to stave off the corporate greedsters for a while, it was at the expense of Michigan, where the bottlers sunk their well and began extracting the fresh water. "Since May 2002, a facility owned by the Nestle Corporation has been pumping 200-400 gallons per minute from a Michigan aquifer that is hydrologically connected to the Great Lakes. The majority of the water pumped out is bottled and shipped away, never to return to the watershed."

The Great Lakes Basin is endangered. A few weeks ago I was swimming in Lake Superior and drinking the water I swam in. I remember when you could roam the high Sierra with a Sierra Club cup on your belt and no fear of contaminants in the mountain streams. Those days are gone. How much time does the big lake have left? Here's a cheerful thought.... The lakes will be terminally polluted long before they dry out.

And they will dry out. There are plans to divert the water as far as Arizona, and no plans for replenishment. I ask myself if I'm engaged in some kind of rarefied NIMBYism. I don't think so. I think it's my responsibility to be aware of those who would degrade my environment and to encounter them.

Sometimes it's hell living in paradise.