Holy Hell! The Shepherd Express May Have a Point... Or, They Might Not.

Note: This is the long awaited missing blog. I've tried to restore it to its original glory!

It's a rare event when the Shepherd Express prints something that is remotely readable. The Sept. 29 - Oct. 5, 05 edition has an interesting story in it, though. As always, when one reads the Shepherd, they must carefully dodge the opinions offered to get something out of the story. This time, I give them credit for making it relatively easy. And, they cover this story better than the Journal Sentinel did when I first read about it.

The story (News and Views: Redrawing Water Boundaries) is about the city of Waukesha's desire to draw water (20 million gallons per day) out of Lake Michigan to be used in Waukesha. The "problem" is that Waukesha is split by the subcontinental divide, and some of the water will not be returning to the lake to be recycled back into the ecosystem. This, anyway, is the claim being made by opponents.

The article fails to make an actual accounting of the flow into Lake Michigan. This is where they lose my support. Since they don't quantify the problem, there is no telling how concerned we should really be. The lake shrinks and expands naturally! If I had to guess, I'd assume that the lake would eventually (over a very long period) shrink on its own. It's a glacial lake, that's what they do when the glaciers go away. There was once a huge lake covering this state, Waukesha didn't drain that one! The article also conveniently ignores the fact that the Chicago River has been running backwards for a century! How many million gallons does that take out of the lake? This article estimates 2.4 BILLION (with a "B") gallons per day!

In order to quantify the situation myself, I searched for an estimate of the gallons of water in Lake Michigan. I found some essays to help me out. One of them even mentions the Waukesha plan, and its potential impact on lake level. This second article even suggests that lake levels are rising. That could be bad, too, right? Anyway, by using the low estimate (the government uses a higher number) of 1 quadrillion gallons of water in Lake Michigan, I calculated that Waukesha's plan would drain the lake completely in 136,986 years (not including extra days for leap years). I had to assume the flow into the lake is PERFECTLY balanced otherwise. HOLY COW! We'd better get a bucket brigade going right away! Chicago's usage would drain the lake in 1,141 years. But wait! Chicago has already been draining the lake for 100 years already, shouldn't the shoreline be about a mile out from Lakeshore drive by now? It isn't; Because the flow into the lake isn't balanced (there goes my whole calculation). This is still the assumption that the Shepherd Express is counting on you to make.

Reading the study cited by the Shepherd is of little use, too. It's conclusion is extremely weak. See for yourself:

[Compared to predevelopment, pumping has reduced the amount of ground water that flows directly to the Lake across the coastline or flows indirectly to it as part of river discharge. Calculations indicate the reduction in direct and indirect ground-water discharge to the lake is on the order of 8.5%. Some of this diverted water is eventually returned to the Lake through sewers and water-treatment plants, but the location, timing, and quality of the return flow is different than what it was under natural conditions.]

Translation: Pumping has affected ground water flow into the lake (duh). The effect is not easily measured, but we do know that some (between 0 and 100%) of the water pumped returns to the lake eventually. Mother nature does it differently, though.

[While the reduction in lake-bound ground-water discharge due to pumping is not an insignificant part of the total discharge from southeastern Wisconsin, it is very small in absolute terms when compared to the other items in the budget of the Lake such as precipitation and total inflow from rivers.]

Translation: One good rain storm or drought does a lot more to the system than pumping. But, we should still care, because we paid to do this study and don't want to admit that we didn't get the results we wanted.

Now, before you leave here thinking I'm on Waukesha's side, there's something else I'd like you to consider:

Both sides of this debate have some serious work to do if they are going to continue to use the lake level argument. I lean toward Waukesha's point of view on this issue, of course. But, there is another point to be made that (in my mind) trumps the lake level thing altogether.

There is a tiny, little, obnoxious critter in the great lakes ecosystem. We've been fighting like mad to keep it out of the inland waters. The zebra mussel is an ugly little thing that can wreck an aquatic ecosystem by eating everything in sight and by sucking oxygen out of the water. The USGS article that I've provided also claims that the mussels affect water clarity, which affects water temperature. They're just plain destructive!

You'd probably like to think that a good filtration system would keep the mussels from spreading into the Mississippi basin from Waukesha, but I'm not so sure. The larva stage is very small, small enough to take advantage of leaks, cracks, or bypasses in the water system. I would also say with a high level of certainty that water from the lake may be used prior to filtration for industrial purposes (it's cheaper). Unfortunately, zebra mussels have already found their way into parts of the Mississippi basin, so it's too late to stop the spread entirely. But, there could always be something else lurking, waiting for a chance to cross over into a new ecosystem.

I once talked with a DNR agent who was part of the sea lamprey patrol in the Great Lakes. He told me that there's a list of several hundred nonindigenous species in the Great Lakes. With this in mind, I say that Waukesha needs to prove that they've got this covered before I would give them a green light on diverting lake water.