An Earth Day reminder: Great Lakes are great resource that needs protecting
Act on water compact
The Buffalo (NY) News
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Or, at least, until you’ve made a multistate, cross-border effort to make sure you don’t lose any more of it than absolutely necessary.
Getting a handle on what we’ve got, and what threatens it, is the point of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, which Sen. George D. Maziarz, D-Newfane, and Assemblyman Bob Sweeney, D-Lindenhurst, have placed before the New York State Legislature for ratification. That approval needs to come as soon as possible, so the business of protecting that crucial natural resource can get the attention — and legal underpinning — it needs.
The Great Lakes, you should get used to hearing, hold 20 percent of the world’s fresh water — 95 percent of the fresh water found in the United States. A good number of North America’s major cities — Toronto, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee — are where they are because those lakes provide water for domestic and industrial use, transportation and recreation. At least, they used to.
But the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlines an imperfect but frighteningly plausible forecast that Lakes Ontario, Erie, Michigan, Superior and Huron will significantly recede in the coming years. Existing docks and harbors could be left high and dry, severely limiting the lakes’ role as a carrier of cargo and as a fishing and boating playground.
(The rest is here. Note: Minnesota was the first state to approve the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact.)
The Buffalo (NY) News
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Or, at least, until you’ve made a multistate, cross-border effort to make sure you don’t lose any more of it than absolutely necessary.
Getting a handle on what we’ve got, and what threatens it, is the point of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, which Sen. George D. Maziarz, D-Newfane, and Assemblyman Bob Sweeney, D-Lindenhurst, have placed before the New York State Legislature for ratification. That approval needs to come as soon as possible, so the business of protecting that crucial natural resource can get the attention — and legal underpinning — it needs.
The Great Lakes, you should get used to hearing, hold 20 percent of the world’s fresh water — 95 percent of the fresh water found in the United States. A good number of North America’s major cities — Toronto, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee — are where they are because those lakes provide water for domestic and industrial use, transportation and recreation. At least, they used to.
But the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlines an imperfect but frighteningly plausible forecast that Lakes Ontario, Erie, Michigan, Superior and Huron will significantly recede in the coming years. Existing docks and harbors could be left high and dry, severely limiting the lakes’ role as a carrier of cargo and as a fishing and boating playground.
(The rest is here. Note: Minnesota was the first state to approve the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact.)
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