A hat tip to 728huey who already covered this story about the Aral sea even as I was opening up my browser to write up something about this very topic. I'd like to expand on it a bit and bring it on home...
The Aral Sea, one of the world's largest freshwater gems, has been sucked dry. It's 10% of what it was. Just a couple decades ago it was the 4th largest body of freshwater in the world, and now it's been reduced to three small lakes surrounded by miles of arid, barren land...and when I say "small" I mean "you can see the other side."
This is actually an old photo with a lot more water in it than there is now...
A current picture can be found here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The shrinking of the lake has changed the weather patterns in the region, demolished the fishing industry, and took a centuries long way of life from communities that grew up around the lake...and it all happened in about half a lifetime. One day kids were splashing and fishing in a lake that seemed eternal. Then, a few decades later when they have their own children, the lake is mostly gone.
So what happened to this lake, which is on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan?
It wasn't global warming. The water was diverted for agricultural endeavors during the Soviet Era. From the 1960s to now, the lake got smaller and smaller and smaller.
The thing about water diversions is, once water leaves the watershed, it's gone forever. It happens fast. And then the water is no good for anybody.
As parts of the US continue to get drier and the climate warms up, there's going to be an increasing temptation to divert water from our own massive sources of fresh water for agriculture and survival.
In 2008, the US government started a dialog about National Water Policy
The United States faces severe water resource challenges today and in the decades ahead. The Nation must deal with significant drought, floods, growing threats to its water quality, continuing loss of wetlands and the impact of these losses on the natural and beneficial functions of floodplains and estuaries, and a water resources infrastructure that is aging, in need of revitalization and whose collapse would threaten our economic vitality. The potential impacts of climate change that could increase the intensity of floods, severity of droughts and change or weaken the health and stability of many ecosystems only adds to the challenge. These challenges were highlighted in the reports of three earlier water resource policy dialogues sponsored by the American Water Resources Association at the request of federal water agencies.
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There is an immediate need for an assessment of the Nation's water resources to include the current status of the resource, the future needs for water and identification of gaps that exist in fulfilling these needs.
This dialog hastened the Great Lakes Compact, a legally binding agreement among the U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Basically it says "you're not sticking a straw into the Great Lakes." As in, you can't take water out of the Great Lakes watershed in units larger than 5.7 gallons. As in, you can't pipe it out or truck it out...
There is, unfortunately, massive loopholes in the Great Lakes Compact. For example, what if Nestle wanted to bottle 1 liter bottles and ship them out...they can do that. And they do.
"the Compact left the door wide open for out-of-Basin exports of our water intended for consumers. If Michigan does not close it, global special interests will exploit global water scarcity at the expense of Michigan’s livelihood and quality of life
Let me reiterate...every drop that leaves the water basin is gone forever. It takes about 250 years for a drop of water to leave the Great Lakes, starting from Lake Superior on down to the Atlantic Ocean. It takes seconds to gush it into thousands of bottles of water and ship them around the country.
This is a loophole in the Great Lakes Compact that needs to be closed.
Don't imagine it can't happen here.
