In the land of glacial waters and spring thaws the last thing most Canadians think about is where their next drink of clean water is coming from. Big mistake. Canada does not have a limitless supply of fresh water. Only a small fraction of the water we see when visiting the Great lakes, for example, is "new" and if we consume it or pollute it or otherwise make it unusable it will not be readily replaced.

In today's Globe and Mail John Austin makes his case to Canadians that we have to protect and conserve this finite resource:

Water is something Canadians and Americans take very much for granted, particularly people in the vicinity of the Great Lakes, where water's abundance has long been the foundation of agriculture, industry, trade and economic development. Around the world, water matters powerfully, and in new ways. Not only is it a vital and increasingly precious source of life – access and proximity to it is a valuable commodity in today's economy.

Most Canadians haven't yet realized that their country faces an imminent shortage of fresh water. A March 19 Ipsos-Reid poll showed that 80 per cent of Canadians are confident that the country's supply will meet long-term needs. Two-thirds don't think there is a shortage. This attitude helps explain why Canada is second only to the United States when it comes to wasting water.

Part of the challenge is that most don't understand the important distinction between regular fresh water and renewable fresh water. Canada has about 20 per cent of the world's regular fresh water, which gives the false illusion of an immensely abundant supply. But little of this water is replenished annually. Most of Canada's fresh water is a legacy of the melting large ice sheets that once covered much of the country's land mass. When water is used or evaporates, it doesn't always return in useful quantity or quality.

That's why we talk about renewable water sources. Roughly 7 per cent of the world's renewable fresh water is found in Canada. More than half of it flows northward into the Arctic Ocean and Hudson Bay, which leaves the 85 per cent of Canadians who live close to the U.S. border with access to just 2.6 per cent of the world's renewable fresh water.

The Great Lakes are an intricate part of our two countries' shared environment, health and economy. They provide drinking water to 8.5 million Canadians while supporting 45 per cent of Canada's industrial capacity and 25 per cent of its agricultural capacity. They contribute $180-billion a year to Canada-U.S. trade, sustaining a $100-million commercial fishing industry and a $350-million recreational finishing industry.

According to Environment Canada, water directly contributes between $7.5-billion and $23-billion a year to the country's economy. On the U.S. side, a recent Brookings Institution study suggested that making priority renovations of sewer infrastructure, cleaning up toxic areas and protecting important pieces of the Great Lakes ecosystem would eventually pay off with $80-billion to $100-billion worth of regional economic development.

Exacerbated by climate change, even the world's largest freshwater resource is not immune. Home to a broad variety of natural habitats, the Great Lakes are under serious threat. Huge swaths of wetlands have been lost, thousands of kilometres of rivers have been impaired and much shoreline has been degraded. Invasive species ply the waters, and climate change places human and ecosystem health in peril.

For the past decade, drought and warmer temperatures have caused constant decreases in the water levels of Lake Superior, which feed into the other (...read more...)