Author : A. Dan Tarlock
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (137 download)
Book Synopsis Five Views of the Great Lakes and Why They Might Matter by : A. Dan Tarlock
Download or read book Five Views of the Great Lakes and Why They Might Matter written by A. Dan Tarlock and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compared to many of the world's contested international watersheds such as the Amu Darya in Central Asia, the Colorado River, or the Nile Basin, the Canadian-United States Great Lakes Basin is a paradox: the level of controversy about the management and use of the waters is inverse to the amount of water in the basin. The lakes themselves contain twenty percent of the world's fresh water). However, comparatively little of this water is currently withdrawn, and only about five percent of that amount is consumed and not returned to the watershed. In 2002, the International Joint Commission (IJC), the Canadian-United States body which administers the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, revised its previous consumptive use estimates downward by eighteen percent. Out-of-basin diversions are even smaller. The major transbasin diversion is the Chicago diversion. Chicago and its lakeshore suburbs are authorized by a United States Supreme Court decree to with-draw 3,200 cubic feet per second from Lake Michigan. Only the fact that the Mississippi watershed encompasses most of the metropolitan Chicago area makes this a transbasin diversion. The other major transwatershed diversion, the Long Lake and Ogoki diversions, actually add water to Lake Superior. However, despite the modest levels of present and projected consumptive use and the vast amount of water in the lakes, fears about future in-basin consumptive uses and transbasin diversions have been a major political and legal issue in the basin for more than two decades.
