by David Shane

Created on: May 25, 2009   Last Updated: May 27, 2009

"U.S. faces era of water scarcity," proclaims an article published by Circle of Blue. "Water Scarcity: The Real Food Crisis," says an article by Fred Pearce in Yale Environment 360. Meanwhile, governments around the United States and world pass laws to force water conservation, mandating low-flow faucets and showers, restricting the watering of lawns and sometimes even industrial or agricultural activities. But is this how is has to be?

Steve Milloy, in his book "Green Hell," calls water conservation, "a fake solution to a fake crisis." And no one can argue with his first premise - water is the most abundant substance on the planet. And it is a renewable resource. Water we use doesn't just disappear, but eventually finds its way back into some body of water, where it can be used again. But we've all heard of real water shortages occurring, either because water isn't available or, for one reason or another, the water that is available cannot be used. Conservation can help in such circumstances, but because water is so abundant what we really have is a production and distribution problem.

Fortunately, at least in America, we have the resources available to improve both, if we are permitted to. What Milloy points out in his book and what I want to point out here, is that the same environmental groups that push for mandatory conservation measures, are often also responsible for stopping the production and distribution projects that would help keep the water shortages from occurring in the first place and often not for very good reasons, or reasons you would agree with.

There are many examples of this we could showcase, but let's just take a couple big ones. In the United States and Canada we are fortunate to have available the single largest fresh water system in the world, the Great Lakes, which hold a whopping 84% of the surface fresh water in North America. Unfortunately, there is also something called the Great Lakes Compact, signed by President Bush in October 2008. According to an interview James Olsen did with Circle of Blue, the Compact is "designed to prevent diversions of water outside of the Great Lakes Basin and to impose consumptive use limits within the Basin." So unless you happen to live in an adjacent state, you won't be seeing any of that water.

But why did environmental groups lobby in favor of such broad legislation as the Compact? When reading past news articles on the topic, most of the justifications I came across were quite vague.

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