Water is Life #WorldWaterWeek

It's the noon hour on August 28, 2018 in East Central Minnesota. The skies are cloudy. The local temperature is 60℉. As we type this, we're wearing a fleece-lined flannel shirt and our fingers are cold. IN AUGUST? IN MINNESOTA? Clearly this is not part of global warming but it may well be related to climate change.

Plus, the areas of southwestern Wisconsin we've visited this year are currently under flood watches due to lines of thunderstorms that have been passing through Minnesota and into our neighboring state to the East.

Today is approximately the middle of World Water Week. According to one of their policy briefs,

All the 17 [United Nations] Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, are linked to water. The 2030 Agenda recognizes that social development and economic prosperity depend on the sustainable management of freshwater resources and ecosystems and it highlights the integrated nature of the SDGs. It is therefore important to consider how water contributes to all the goals. When looking for solutions, one goal cannot be tackled without taking into consideration how the others are affected.

Grand Marais Harbor on Lake Superior

Photo by J. Harrington

Lack of a holistic perspective is one of the current faults experienced in Minnesota. There, plus other Great Lakes States, people are faced with increasing competition for existing water resources, those once considered abundant to a fault. Are we killing the geese that lay the golden eggs? In the northern part of Minnesota, mining for copper is seen as presenting unacceptable risks to the Boundary Waters, St. Louis River and therefore Lake Superior. Yet, political pressure to proceed with the mining proposals continues. The southern third or so of Minnesota fails to meet water quality standards due, in large part, to (corporate) agriculture while growing numbers of proposed industrial-scale Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations [CAFO] further threaten the water supplies and local surface water on which communities and tourists depend.

a trout stream in Minnesota's farm country

Photo by J. Harrington

Wisconsin has already obtained an "exception" to the Great Lakes Compact and Agreement for Waukesha to withdraw Lake Michigan water, and the prospect of the Foxconn project offers further threats to maintaining any integrity to the Great Lakes compact.

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes offers insight to other perils facing these lakes, as does The Great Lakes Water Wars. We suppose that, as long as people continue talking about the growing demands on our finite resources, there's a chance that we'll escape some shooting wars. That's more than we can say about other parts of the world. We wonder how many Midwesterners are in attendance at World Water Week.

Water

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

The water understands 

Civilization well; 

It wets my foot, but prettily, 

It chills my life, but wittily, 

It is not disconcerted, 

It is not broken-hearted: 

Well used, it decketh joy, 

Adorneth, doubleth joy: 

Ill used, it will destroy, 

In perfect time and measure 

With a face of golden pleasure 

Elegantly destroy.

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