Three weeks ago, I wrote about Waukesha’s need for water from the Great Lakes, due significantly because some of that community’s wells had become contaminated with radium. See, Waukesha’s Water. A prosperous area thereby finds itself a supplicant for water supplies from the Great Lakes, because part of her own supply has become undrinkable.
As it turns out, her request has been trimmed, and she’s not only dependent on the consortium that regulates supplies from the Great Lakes (in this case, Lake Michigan), but she’s to receive less than she hoped:
Representatives of Great Lakes states and provinces meeting Tuesday in Chicago reached preliminary agreement to remove additional portions of adjoining communities from Waukesha’s planned area to be served with Lake Michigan water.
A straw vote of the officials also found preliminary consensus to further cut the volume of water that would be delivered to Waukesha, as part of the city’s request to switch to a Lake Michigan water supply.
See, Panel further reduces area in Waukesha’s bid for Lake Michigan water @ Journal Sentinel.
It doesn’t matter that Waukesha is a prosperous community: nature’s fragility is independent of assumptions of what may happen, ignorance of what may happen, or rosy projections of that there will be no risks and no problems.
Although one hears ample insistence that potential problems are unfounded, one actually sees confirmation not of potential but actual environmental and economic hardships.
The stronger argument is to be found in actual conditions, and sadly actual conditions deriving from natural and physical limitations are worse for many communities than optimists contend.