They Need It. W

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They Need It. W

e Waste It.

Prepare for battle.

By M

ichael Miner

January 13, 2006

Section One Letters 3ColumnsThe Works 4A candidate left out in the cold

The Straight Dope 5Those randy Greeks

Chicago Antisocial 7Looking for company

The Sports Section 8Rex ups the ante.

Our Town 10Illinois’ first small-batch distillery; a flamenco dancer who’s been around

ReviewsMovies 18Woody Allen’s Match Point

Theater 20Tango at Chopin Theatre

Books 21Miss Misery by Andy Greenwald

PlusWhat Are You Wearing? 13Simone Maurer

Ink Well 23This week’s crossword: Mixed Media

I f you saw Syriana you know. Laws get broken,spies tortured, and princes assassinated overoil. Imagine what we’d stoop to if we didn’t have

enough of something really important, like water. And we don’t. As Fortune magazine wrote in

2000, “Water promises to be to the 21st centurywhat oil was to the 20th century: the preciouscommodity that determines the wealth ofnations.” John Hart—CEO of Pico Holdings, awater management company active in Arizonaand Nevada and the largest private landowner inNevada—says on his company’s Web site, “As anasset class it’s near perfect. You’re dealing withan asset that is irreplaceable and critical. . . . Ithink the investment community is starting to

become much more aware of how critical the water issues are worldwide and particularly in the Southwest.”

The Fortune article reported that, according to the World Bank, “one billion people, one-sixthof humanity,” lacked adequate access to cleandrinking water, a portion expected to increase to one-third by 2025. Fortune wasn’t writing to sound a humanitarian alarm; it was simplynoting the opportunity smart businessmen had spotted to capitalize on the incompetence of some governments at maintaining the local waterworks.

This incompetence isn’t limited to the thirdcontinued on page 14

ON THE COVER: PAUL DOLAN (WATER), STEPHEN J. SERIO (VODKA), ANDREA BAUER (PEACE)

PAU

L D

OLA

N

They Need It. We Waste It.The powers that control the Great Lakes are fortifying the rampartsfor the day the westruns out of water. The Chicago River isthe chink in our armor.

By Michael Miner

14 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 13, 2006 | SECTION ONE

world. An article in theDecember 30 New York Timesdescribed Nevada, “the drieststate in the nation,” as perhapsone of the most foolish—everyday squandering to the mining ofgold ten million gallons of waterfrom an aquifer under the north-ern part of the state. It’s depletingan aquifer that Las Vegas—wherethree million people are expectedto live by 2020, in a desert thatreceives about four inches of raina year—is planning to build a $2billion pipeline to tap.

In Arizona, according to an e-mail sent to me by independentresearch scientist AlanChristopher, “groundwaterreserves are draining at a steadi-ly increasing rate that mirrorsthe rate of population growth.Even though the groundwaterreserves in some areas are enor-mous, continual pumping even-tually drains them. This hasalready happened at higher ele-vations in Arizona, where townsare now trucking in waterbecause their wells have run dry.”

Christopher adds ominously,“We in the West discuss ‘solving’our water problems by buildinga pipeline from the Great Lakes

to Arizona and paying for thewater to be diverted here. This,of course, is more of a pipedream since the Great LakesBasin has laws preventing thisfrom happening.”

Well, we’re doing our best towrite them. In 1998 a Canadiancompany was given permission bythe government of Ontario to ship158 million gallons of water a yearfrom Lake Superior to Asia intankers. Thirty U.S. congressmensigned a resolution protesting thesale, and an opposition leader inOntario thundered, “It’s open sea-son on our clean water.” Theprovince backed down, and theCouncil of Great Lakes Governorspromptly spent $250,000 onlawyers, who concluded that theexisting laws offered little protec-tion against predators.

That’s why last month theeight states and two Canadianprovinces of the Great Lakesbasin signed a compact to raisethe drawbridge. You can think ofthis compact as responsiblestewardship. You can think of itas our midcontinent OPEC mak-ing sure that the water we con-trol—20 percent of the world’sfreshwater supply—stays in ourcontrol. You can think of it as the

basin guarding against betrayalfrom within—some staggeringrust belt metropolis inking a dealto fill a mile-long tank train.

This much is clear: by the tensof millions, our friends andneighbors are abandoning therust belt in favor of America’sparched west and southwest. TheGreat Lakes-Saint LawrenceRiver Basin Water ResourcesCompact is the answer now inplace when these emigres ask usto save them from themselves.

“Today the economics are notthere to say ‘We’re going to takeall the water in the Great Lakesand ship it to Phoenix andVegas,’” Todd Ambs, water divi-sion administrator of theWisconsin Department ofNatural Resources, told the NewYork Times last August. “Butwater’s not getting cheaper.Twenty-five, 30, 40 years fromnow, the economics are going tobe different. We’ve got to have asystem in place to deal with that.”

Hence the compact, which stillmust be ratified by the legisla-tures of the eight states and byCongress—no sure thing. Youmight ask why congressmenfrom Arizona or Nevada wouldapprove a plan that makes it

even harder for their states tocop a share of the lakes’ sixquadrillion gallons of water.Would they secretly agree withthe Great Lakes guardians whoassert that anyone who willinglymigrates to the land of cactusdeserves his fate? Or maybethey’d calculate that it’s in theirbest interest to encourage theGreat Lakes states and provincesto protect that six quadrillionuntil the day of reckoning comes,when Hobbesian instincts ruleand the compact’s not worth thepaper it’s printed on.

Alan Christopher’s dire mes-sage to Phoenix is this: stopgrowing. Not that Phoenix lis-tens. Throughout history, when-ever people suddenly recognizethat they’ve exhausted the landthey live on, their solution israrely to retrench. Instead theyalmost always blame their neigh-bors and try to overrun them. Inthis case those neighbors are us.

Should the day dawn when thePhoenixes and Las Vegases ofAmerica demand the “diversion”of Great Lakes water far beyondits basin, the compact will makeit easier to resist. “All New orIncreased Diversions are prohib-ited,” it states bluntly. An excep-

tion was written in to accommo-date towns and counties thatstraddle the lip of the basin.Another allows bottled water tobe sold beyond the basin. Butthese exceptions, opposed byGreat Lakes absolutists—Nestlespent four years in court defend-ing its Ice Mountain plant northof Grand Rapids and wasordered last month by theMichigan Court of Appeals toscale back the operation—offerno comfort to cactusland.

Here’s what does. “Diversion”is the polite way of saying “takingaway and not putting back,” andthe compact punts on the moth-er of all diversions: the LakeMichigan water diverted out ofChicago by way of the Sanitaryand Ship Canal, flushed downthe Mississippi River, anddumped into the Gulf of Mexico.Confronted with this diversionthe compact simply says the U.S.Supreme Court has spoken, in aseries of decrees known collective-ly as Wisconsin v. Illinois. Thefirst decree was issued in 1929—after six other Great Lakes statesaccused Illinois of draining thelakes—the most recent in 1980.

These decrees permit Illinois(i.e., Chicago) to divert as much

Water

continued from page 1

CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 13, 2006 | SECTION ONE 15

as 3,200 cubic feet a secondfrom the Great Lakes basin.That’s much less than the 10,000CFS flow the old SanitaryDistrict of Chicago, which builtthe canal, had in mind, but it’s alot—roughly a third more waterthan flows each year into thegreater Phoenix valley from theSalt, Verde, Agua Fria, andColorado rivers put together.

Thanks to Chicago, Illinois isthe one state in the Great Lakesbasin that takes from the lakesand puts next to nothing back.So when Phoenix says toChicago, “We only want whatyou’re flushing down theMississippi,” how does Chicagorespond? A cunning Arizonalawyer who tugged on this threadmight unravel the compact.

This can’t be allowed to hap-pen. They’ve got the gun, butwe’ve got the water. Think of the Great Lakes compact as acitadel, Chicago as the breachin the walls.

Chicago schoolchildren knowthey live in the place that makesno small plans and that theSanitary and Ship Canal, whichconnected Chicago by water toNew Orleans, was one of thebiggest—a 28-mile trench com-pleted in 1900. They know thistriumph of civil engineering,which reversed the ChicagoRiver, saved the city fromtyphoid, dysentery, and otherscourges by sending Chicago’ssewage south and west to theMississippi instead of into thelake we drink from. Theseschoolchildren are less likely toknow about Wisconsin v. Illinoisor that Illinois lost the earlyrounds of this long legal battle,prevailing in the end onlybecause it compromised on thescale of diversion and ceded con-trol of the canal to the federalgovernment. Few schoolchildrenhave any idea that beforeWisconsin v. Illinois there wasMissouri v. Illinois, a suit filed in1906 after a typhus epidemicbroke out in Saint Louis.

In short, the popular versionof our civic epic fogs the detailthat when we diverted LakeMichigan through constructionof the Sanitary and Ship Canaland later the North ShoreChannel (1910) and Cal-SagChannel (1922)—which collec-tively were named one of the topten public-works projects of the20th century by the AmericanPublic Works Association—therest of the Great Lakes basindespised us for it. There’s not aword in the new compact thatendorses the diversion, andChicago wouldn’t stand a snow-ball’s chance in hell of pulling offthe same kind of stunt today.

Waukesha is a smallWisconsin city about 80

miles north of Chicago and 15miles west of the Milwaukeelakefront. It’s the focus of theAugust New York Times article inwhich Todd Ambs was quoted.Because it stands just beyond theGreat Lakes watershed it’s been

denied direct access to waterfrom Lake Michigan, drawing itswater instead from an aquifer;after decades of depletion,Waukesha is now drawing waterfrom so deep that it’s contami-nated with radium. Some geolo-gists believe the aquifer is fedbelowground by Lake Michigan,which is why the general manag-er of Waukesha’s water utilitytold the Times he simply wantsto shift from “a vertical straw to ahorizontal straw.” All we need, hesaid, is permission to divert 20million gallons of lake water aday. He’s been told no. Chicagogets to permanently removeabout 2.1 billion gallons a day.Too bad we can’t just flush someof it to Waukesha.

This has to be one of the mostflagrant double standards on theface of the earth. On December12 the governors of Wisconsinand Ohio (cochairs of the Councilof Great Lakes Governors) andMayor Daley (chair of the GreatLakes and Saint Lawrence CitiesInitiative) signed—in Chicago, noless—a letter to President Bushasking for another $300 millionin federal funds for programs “tobetter protect and restore GreatLakes.” Virtue drips from thisambition. But consider the irony.No step to restore the GreatLakes approaches the one that’snot on the table: returning ourbeloved backward-flowing riverto its true path.

It’s telling that during the win-

ter water at the bottom of theChicago River continues to seekthe lake, though the surfacewater flows in the opposite direc-tion. The river remembers whatit was—it yearns to be again aneastward-slogging slough. I sug-gest we respect the river’s wishes.Let it once more replenish thelake. True, the Sanitary and ShipCanal would run dry, but itwould make a fine bicycle path.

There are reasons not to rushinto this. Dan Injerd, chief of theLake Michigan managementsection of Illinois’ Departmentof Natural Resources, says it’sbeen calculated that a century ofdiversion through Chicago haslowered Lake Michigan by atotal of 2.1 inches. So we’re not

exactly draining it dry. What’smore, while Chicago divertswater out of Lake Michigan at3,200 cubic feet a second,Canada, to support hydroelectricplants, redirects water thatwould otherwise drain intoJames Bay into Lake Superior at5,000 cubic feet a second. Wheneverything’s added up the GreatLakes basin gains more than itloses from human meddling.

Then there’s the fact that formore than a century commercehas developed around the man-made reality that water flowsaway from Chicago. TheSanitary and Ship Canal is abusy federal waterway lined bycommunities such as Lockportcontinued on page 16

16 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 13, 2006 | SECTION ONE

that would not take kindly toseeing the canal disappear.

As for the argument one hearsfrom time to time—that it’s sim-ply wrong for Chicago to flush itswastewater downstream to SaintLouis and New Orleans—there’sthis rejoinder: waste treatmenthas progressed by leaps andbounds. Saint Louis hasn’t had atyphus scare in decades.

In Injerd’s view, the financialcost of undoing and redoing theregion’s hydrology would be stag-gering and the ecological issuesprofound. The subject does comeup, he allows, primarily in thecontext of the invasive-speciesproblem. In 1990 a nuisance fishcalled the round goby, native tothe Black and Caspian seas,turned up in the Great Lakes. By1994 it had spread to theCalumet River, which meantthere was no way to keep it out ofthe Mississippi River watershed.At the moment the big concern isthe far more destructive Asiancarp, which has worked its wayup the Illinois River from theMississippi to within 50 miles ofLake Michigan. To keep it out ofthe Great Lakes, Illinois hasjoined forces with five national

and international agencies tobuild a $9 million electronic bar-rier across the canal atRomeoville to replace the cur-rent temporary barrier.

Alien species notwithstanding,the Chicago diversion is a politi-cal and legal issue. Seven otherstates and two provinces justdealt with it in the Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence River BasinWater Resources Compact byholding their noses and goingalong with a done deal. “It wasgrandfathered in,” says hydrolo-gist Daniel Feinstein of theUniversity of Wisconsin. “It wasseen as a very specific, adjudicat-ed, confined, isolated diversion.It’s not seen as a precedent—Waukesha is seen as a precedent.It was a one-shot thing.”

There’s hope in Waukesha. If itfinds a way to return to the basinas much water as it removes, itmight yet be allowed to tap LakeMichigan. If Chicago ever asksthe Supreme Court for permis-sion to divert more than 3,200cubic feet of water per second,seven states and two provinceswill line up against it. AridAmerica might one day vieweven its present allotment as aprovocation worthy of war.

Injerd thinks the economics ofpiping lake water great distanceswill never justify a raid byPhoenix. Arizona officials—ifnot Cassandras like AlanChristopher—claim to agree withhim. Doug Dunham, who man-ages that state’s Assured WaterSupply Program, says any crisis is60 or more years away, and atthat point desalination plants willmake more economic sense thana pipeline through the Rockies.But Las Vegas, where there arealready laws against growinggrass, is in more desperate straits.And between Vegas and Chicagolies the vast, drought-plaguedGreat Plains, rapidly draining theOglala aquifer. The truth is, noone on earth has enough water.No one but us.

Wisconsin’s Todd Ambs speaksof our water with the ferocity ofsomeone preparing for a siege.“I’m sure that in the future folkswill begin to look longingly atwhat I like to refer to as thewater belt of the country,” he toldme. “And if we do this right andwe get this agreement in placeand we are managing our watereffectively, then we are in a posi-tion as an area to say, ‘Hey, weput our system in place in 2005

to do a good job of managing ourwater resources. What right doyou have to come in now and askfor water because you haven’tdone a good job of managingyour water resources?’”

The answer to that, I remindedhim, will be, “We never had thewater resources to begin with.”

He said he’d tell them, “Youcan move to Chicago orMilwaukee or Detroit or any oneof many lovely communities thatare up here in the midwest andactually have the benefit of hav-ing water for their populations.”

Ambs went on, “We have tograpple with the fact we needenough energy resources to sus-tain a population that’s snowedin six months of the year.Phoenix has to manage itsresources in a region where theyhave a very, very limited watersupply. Frankly, there’s going tobe a point in some of thoseplaces where they say, ‘You knowwhat? We can’t handle any morepeople in this area.’”

That would be like the UnitedStates telling itself, “Screw SaudiArabia. We’ll just stop drivingcars.” The Great Lakes basin haswhat the whole world wants. Itshould expect the world to come

Water

after it. United we must stand. The rereversal of the Chicago

River would be an extraordinaryundertaking, undoubtedly one ofthe top public-works projects ofthe 21st century. But it’s thething to do. “Why not bringintegrity back to the levels andflows in the basin?” muses JimOlson, attorney for MichiganCitizens for Water Conservation,the grassroots organization thattook on Nestle over IceMountain bottled water. TheChicago diversion, he says, is “ahistorical artifact. It’s directlycontrary to the intent of the[compact] agreement.”

The big question, says Olson, iswho pays? He thinks that sinceChicago has rights over GreatLakes water no other state or cityhas, in giving them up it wouldbe acting more clearly in thebasin’s interests than in its own.So it should be rewarded. “Therest of the basin would have tonegotiate with Chicago to helppay for this,” he says.

That’s the beautiful thing.Seven states and two provinceswill admire us so much for doingwhat’s right that with a littlesmooth talking they could windup footing most of the bill. v

continued from page 15

CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 13, 2006 | SECTION ONE 17