Environment: The OPEC of the Midwest

A national water war looms over the Great Lakes

They were formed at least 7,000 years ago when the retreating glaciers of the last ice age left behind great pockets of water. So pure and shimmering were they that early Jesuit explorers called them "seas of sweet water." During the War of 1812, they were the scene of a memorable battle in which the young American Navy administered a stinging defeat to the British. In the nearly two centuries since then, the Great Lakes have seen nothing more violent than the nor'westers that occasionally blow down from Canada. Forming an extraordinarily peaceful boundary between eight American states and the Canadian province of Ontario, they are huge catch basins for industry, commerce and recreation.

Now the waters may be roiled again. This time the battle involves not gunfire or frigates, but skillful political and legal maneuvering. The issue, discussed at some length last week during the 21st Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Governors' Conference in Des Moines, is control of the water. Containing some 67 trillion gal. of fresh water, enough to cover all of the U.S. to a depth of 10 ft., the Great Lakes are a priceless asset to those who live and work along their shores. More than 24 million people in the U.S. and Canada depend on them for drinking water. Industries in both countries draw off 55 billion gal. a year.

Forming a necklace across a quarter of the North American continent, the lakes are an important artery for commerce, allowing ships to ferry such products of the American heartland as grain, steel and timber to countries around the world. They also are a major sport fishery for such species as lake trout, salmon and muskellunge and an aquatic playground for vacationers. Environmentalists used to fear that some of the lakes were dead or dying, but the era of mindless dumping has finally ended, and the water's purity seems to be improving from year to year.

Thus it is hardly surprising that this liquid treasure is being eyed covetously by those less richly endowed, who live in what Michigan Governor William Milliken scornfully dubs the "parch-belt": the water-poor states of the West and the Sunbelt. Milliken and other Great Lakes Governors fear that as the need for water grows in these areas during the coming decade, there will develop a prodigious national thirst for Great Lakes water. Wisconsin Governor Lee Dreyfus goes so far as to predict that Great Lakes states, along with Ontario, could become "the OPEC of water."

The bountiful, but not bottomless well soon may be tapped. Texans are talking of pumping water from the Mississippi River, which draws much of its volume out of the states in the Great Lakes watershed. Coal mining interests in Montana have approached Wisconsin for access to Lake Superior. They want to pipe water to the Montana coalfields, where it would be mixed with crushed coal to form a mudlike slurry that would in turn be fed to other parts of the country. uch schemes are not pipe dreams: South Dakota earlier this year agreed to sell 50,000 acre-ft. of Missouri River water to a San Francisco-based consortium, Energy Transport Systems Inc., which plans to pump the water 260 miles to the coalfields of the Powder River Basin near Gillette, Wyo. Coal slurry would then be moved through conduits to power plants in the South.