Can the Great Lakes become an engine for growth again?
The droughts plaguing much of the U.S. present
an opportunity for areas surrounding the lakes, whose fresh water is an
increasingly valuable resource
MILWAUKEE – Many parts of the world are suffering through desperate
droughts. Areas of California have enacted severe water restrictions,
while wildfires rage through parched regions of the West and communities
throughout the Southwest worry about how to get water for their growing
populations.
Those scenarios are expected to get only worse with climate change.
Now travel north, to the Great Lakes, the world’s largest natural fresh water reservoir. They contain 20 percent of the world’s surface fresh water and 84 percent of North America’s.
The light bulb has gone on for a few people in the old Rust Belt.
Great Lakes optimists are talking of a new, water-driven moniker for the region’s future: the Blue Belt.
In dozens of interviews with government officials, economic development experts, business executives, water researchers and environmentalists, a portrait emerges of some Great Lakes communities beginning to realize that their plentiful water supply represents a new selling card to reverse decades of population losses or stagnation.
Great Lakes communities can boast of an asset that other parts of the country – and world – can only dream of: a water resource that can be tapped for new, high-tech manufacturing, agriculture, food processing, cooling computer server “farms,” power generation and recreation.
Milwaukee appears to be the furthest along in embracing this concept.
“This is not 35 years out. It’s happening now. … The misfortune of California and Texas is the opportunity for the Great Lakes,” said Dean Amhaus, who, as president of the Water Council, is helping Milwaukee’s water technology industry to grow.
Efforts began about seven years ago, when government and private sectors unified the region’s water technology companies into a cluster where both competition and cooperation were encouraged.
So far, $100 million has been invested in water-driven facilities like the Global Water Center and the nearby university freshwater sciences center.
“And it’s just getting going,” Amhaus said.
To be sure, there is an asterisk to the optimism: Can Great Lakes communities take advantage of this water reservoir by attracting jobs and industry without repeating what happened a century or less ago, when factories dumped pollutants into the lakes, contaminating the region’s reputation?
Optimists suggest yes, that given a second chance of using the Great Lakes as a magnet for population, jobs and industry, stewards of the lakes will not squander the opportunity by poisoning their own well.
And what of New York State, which borders lakes Ontario and Erie? Have its communities and leaders done much to spread the message of what is on their shores?
Not so much.
An abundance of Great Lakes water is an “amazing advantage” for the state, said Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul. She and top economic development officials have discussed this advantage with executives considering relocations, she said.
“It is our heritage. It is our past economy, but without a doubt it is also our future economically,” Hochul said.
New York, of course, has a long tradition of tapping into the Great Lakes water for power generation. But when it comes to marketing the state’s abundant supplies from lakes Erie and Ontario, New York has not done much to take advantage.
For that, you must visit Milwaukee, on Lake Michigan.
Those scenarios are expected to get only worse with climate change.
Now travel north, to the Great Lakes, the world’s largest natural fresh water reservoir. They contain 20 percent of the world’s surface fresh water and 84 percent of North America’s.
The light bulb has gone on for a few people in the old Rust Belt.
Great Lakes optimists are talking of a new, water-driven moniker for the region’s future: the Blue Belt.
In dozens of interviews with government officials, economic development experts, business executives, water researchers and environmentalists, a portrait emerges of some Great Lakes communities beginning to realize that their plentiful water supply represents a new selling card to reverse decades of population losses or stagnation.
Great Lakes communities can boast of an asset that other parts of the country – and world – can only dream of: a water resource that can be tapped for new, high-tech manufacturing, agriculture, food processing, cooling computer server “farms,” power generation and recreation.
Milwaukee appears to be the furthest along in embracing this concept.
“This is not 35 years out. It’s happening now. … The misfortune of California and Texas is the opportunity for the Great Lakes,” said Dean Amhaus, who, as president of the Water Council, is helping Milwaukee’s water technology industry to grow.
Efforts began about seven years ago, when government and private sectors unified the region’s water technology companies into a cluster where both competition and cooperation were encouraged.
So far, $100 million has been invested in water-driven facilities like the Global Water Center and the nearby university freshwater sciences center.
“And it’s just getting going,” Amhaus said.
To be sure, there is an asterisk to the optimism: Can Great Lakes communities take advantage of this water reservoir by attracting jobs and industry without repeating what happened a century or less ago, when factories dumped pollutants into the lakes, contaminating the region’s reputation?
Optimists suggest yes, that given a second chance of using the Great Lakes as a magnet for population, jobs and industry, stewards of the lakes will not squander the opportunity by poisoning their own well.
And what of New York State, which borders lakes Ontario and Erie? Have its communities and leaders done much to spread the message of what is on their shores?
Not so much.
An abundance of Great Lakes water is an “amazing advantage” for the state, said Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul. She and top economic development officials have discussed this advantage with executives considering relocations, she said.
“It is our heritage. It is our past economy, but without a doubt it is also our future economically,” Hochul said.
New York, of course, has a long tradition of tapping into the Great Lakes water for power generation. But when it comes to marketing the state’s abundant supplies from lakes Erie and Ontario, New York has not done much to take advantage.
For that, you must visit Milwaukee, on Lake Michigan.
Milwaukee leads the way
Milwaukee’s promoters talk of taking advantage of worldwide drought conditions by luring companies and people to the Great Lakes and its abundant water supplies. But mostly, they talk of having a water technology sector that will help people and companies better use their water resources – whether they are located in abundant water regions like the Great Lakes or water-thirsty areas like southern California, Asia or the Middle East.“We just found this industry that was literally at our doorsteps,” Amhaus said.
Milwaukee’s rapidly expanding water technology industry has, at last count, 160 companies. Other communities and countries are now quickly trying to emulate it.
“What oil is to Saudi Arabia, we are to water,” says Milwaukee business executive Rich Meeusen.
Meeusen is a founder of the Water Council, a nonprofit organization. He was interviewed earlier this year in a conference room in the group’s energy-efficient, seven-story Global Water Center building.
The Water Council brings together startups and established companies, along with scientists, all hoping to attract new water technologies to the marketplace. For new entrepreneurs with water-related ideas offering commercial potential, seed money is made available in return for small equity in their firms. Mentors abound, and university scientists can take ideas from an entrepreneur and, using public sector-owned computers and testing equipment on an upper floor of the building, verify the potential.
The Water Council is closely aligned with the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences, which is located a short drive away in an area of brownfields, railroad tracks and on a waterfront spit of land not far from the Kinnickinnic River’s entrance into Lake Michigan. The college program’s dean is Australian transplant David Garman.
Garman takes his time while he gives a tour of his sprawling new research center and its labs, classrooms, testing facilities and aquaculture research space, which is attracting students and professors from around the world. Researchers test every imaginable aspect of Great Lakes water and life within, including faraway fish samples that come from Lake Erie’s waters just off Buffalo.
Outside, among its fleet, is the Neeskay, an old Army T-Boat from the Korean War that Garman, with the newest technologies all around him, wants the state to replace with a modern vessel.
Milwaukee’s economy has diversified over the decades, but its water technology sector offers some of its most exciting possibilities with both commercial and societal benefits at play.
“We are reaching a stage where, probably more than ever, we have the chance to produce a community as well as an industry that is water-centric,” Garman said of his adopted city.
But Milwaukee’s water technology industry goes far beyond measuring water use. Its players are researching and marketing new ways to sustain water, improve its quality and get as much information about where, why, how and when people and industry use water. Research at the university’s labs are doing the major work in the Great Lakes basin on invasive species, the dangers to fish species and water-quality issues that will guide future policy decisions across the regions touched by the lakes’ waters.
But not many Great Lakes communities are as far along as Milwaukee.
The start of the conversation
Conversations are just beginning in many Great Lakes communities about how to market the region’s water, economic development experts say.Several officials openly worried that if they don’t get into the water marketing game, someone else in the Great Lakes region will.
In Illinois recently, the governor and mayor of Chicago played hosts at a conference about Great Lakes economic potentials.
“There are discussions that instead of bringing water to people over long distances, this is a time people could move back here to around the Great Lakes. There was a reason we had all these great cities built up here,” said Aaron Packman, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwest University in Chicago.
In Michigan, surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes, Gov. Rick Snyder talks of his state’s current and future “blue economy.”
“This is a region that can accommodate tremendous increase in population and economic growth, and we have the infrastructure to support it. In the long run, people and business will start moving back to the Great Lakes because we’re one of the few places on the planet with abundant water,” said John Austin, who directs the private Michigan Economic Center and has studied Great Lakes economic issues for the Michigan governor and the Brookings Institution.
It turns out that water, which drove some of the original expansion of many Great Lakes communities, offers the chance for localities and states to say something some other parts of the country and world can’t say: We have water, lots of it, and come here if you want it.
“I think water is going to be a major part of what all these states and cities up here are going to do to try to recruit businesses and people to come back,” said David Ullrich, executive director of the Chicago-based Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a binational group that represents 110 U.S. and Canadian local communities, including Niagara Falls, the group’s sole Western New York member.
Changing times for water
When it comes to water and population in America’s drought regions, the math doesn’t work.California is just one state where water supplies dwindle as population rises. The Brookings Institution recently reported 57 percent of the nation’s population growth between 2000 and July 2014 occurred in counties experiencing drought conditions, and nearly 10 million now reside in regions with a drought level labeled as “severe.”
NASA recently predicted a “mega-drought” for parts of the West and Great Plains later this century.
Meanwhile, the confidence of Southwest communities in their ability to tap into and divert water from once-reliable sources, such as the Colorado River, has been severely eroded.
Drought problems go far beyond the United Sates, as communities in the Middle East, Australia, China and Brazil know. Stanford University scientists last year found 35 percent of 71 cities studied with populations of more than 750,000 were considered to be “water vulnerable,” a number expected to rise to 45 percent in 25 years unless actions are taken.
Water technology companies are racing to bring an array of ways to stretch water supplies into drought areas, like better cleaning of water that homes and businesses use before being reused.
But experts say there is a tipping point for how long some people can remain in a drought region before putting a “for sale” sign on a home, farm or water-dependent business.
Can bottling plants, for instance, continue to locate in a desert region? Will California’s dairy industry keep its place as the nation’s top milk-producing region?
Drought-related agriculture losses this year alone in California will total $1.2 billion, the University of California at Davis projected two months ago.
The opportunities
There are several possible ways the Great Lakes region can draw businesses and people.It will start out, experts predict, with an attempt to lure water-reliant industries, such as high-tech manufacturing, bottling plants or the food-related sectors, away from drought areas.
Some Great Lakes advocates also see agriculture as a potential boom industry, particularly with technology advances that have already made greenhouse operations abundant along sections, for instance, of Lake Erie in Ontario.
“It absolutely could be a massive opportunity for this region to play a much more strategic role of being not only the bread basket for the United States and Canada, but for the world,” said Mark Fisher, the Toronto-based president of the Council of Great Lakes Region, of the water available for agriculture needs.
As the economies of Great Lakes states shift to more-advanced manufacturing and such growing sectors as health care, tourism and education, Fisher believes there is nothing wrong with these states and provinces luring people to water.
“It only makes sense to play to your strengths,” he said.
Beyond industry, Great Lakes advocates believe the region could draw people who still want green lawns, more-affordable housing close to water, and a lifestyle where water – and restrictions – is not the primary topic of conversation.
A fledgling water outreach
There have been some baby-step signs of droughts forcing companies or people to look at the Great Lakes.Water restrictions imposed on California residents earlier this year seemed to jump-start talk in meetings, seminars and site location agencies about the possibility of Great Lakes states taking advantage of drought conditions in other regions, according to interviews with industry, economic and water experts.
Meeusen, who is head of water technology firm Badger Meter of Milwaukee, said he has yet to see companies pack up and move to the Great Lakes basin to get near water. But there are some growing signals.
“My friends at Miller might get upset with me, but one of Miller’s little secrets is they are brewing more and more Coors here in Milwaukee. They are recognizing you might not be able to continue to brew beer with Colorado River water when there’s all this water here in the basin,” he said.
There is another advantage to the fresh water of the Great Lakes.
“Water can be reused. It’s not like oil,” said Austin, the co-author of Michigan’s “Blue Economy” report. “If water is priced accurately, it would drive people back to the Great Lakes, because relatively speaking, it’s one of the few places on Earth that has abundant water that can be used and reused if you take care of it.”
Great Lakes water isn’t likely to be diverted to drought areas
A decade ago, during another drought period, the Great Lakes states and Canada worried about water diversion. There was talk of constructing massive tunnels to move water from the Great Lakes basin to the West and Southwest.
There was speculation about filling tanker ships with Great Lakes water and shipping it around the globe to the highest bidders.That diversion chatter had its effects.
States and provinces across the basin areas quickly passed the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, protecting the basin’s water from going elsewhere
That compact – signed into state law in 2008 in New York by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer and federal law several months later by then-President George W. Bush – includes strict bans on water diversion to other states without the unanimous approval of all eight Great Lakes states’ governors and the input of the premiers of Ontario and Quebec.
Could a severe water emergency change the compact?
Most insist that will not happen. No community has been permitted to divert water from the lakes outside the basin, though one Wisconsin community, Waukesha, is seeking to become the first.
There have been in-basin worries.
In 2011, the Ohio governor vetoed a bill that would have permitted Ohio factories to sharply increase water intake from Lake Erie.
“The idea that the Great Lakes needed protection certainly, I think, will stand the test of time and will go down as good policy,” said California-based Edward Osann, who runs a national program on water efficiency at the Natural Resources Defense Council, of the compact.
How can water-rich WNY tap into fiscal opportunity?
Economic development officials are looking at ways to pitch the availability of the region’s sustainable resource to lure water-dependent companies
Every time HealthNow President David Anderson
looks out the windows of his eighth-floor office in downtown Buffalo, he
sees something he believes could be a major economic resource for
Western New York: the waters of Lake Erie. Robert Kirkham/News file photo
When David Anderson moved from
California to Buffalo a couple of years ago, local business leaders
recall their first conversation with him about how to improve the
region’s economy.
“He said to buy a ticket and get on a plane to California and say to people there, ‘We have water,’ ” recalled Dottie Gallagher-Cohen, president of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, the area’s biggest business promotion group.
As disruptive droughts rage in the West and around the world, Anderson is someone who has lived through water shortages. Now as a resident of a Great Lakes state, he sees the economic development possibilities available to places such as Western New York, thanks to its abundant access to water.
The Buffalo area’s economic ties to water are, of course, long ones. Among the key celebrations of the 1901 Pan American Exposition was electricity generated by the region’s hydropower.
Yet many watercentric companies have shuttered, and there are some who believe the region is not doing enough to tap into its proximity to an abundant supply of water and bring back jobs and people.
Anderson spent 38 years in southern California, and at least 30 of those years were spent in some level of drought.
“The single biggest issue in southern California, all of that time I was there, was water,” said Anderson, now the president and chief executive officer of HealthNow New York, the Buffalo-based parent of BlueCross BlueShield of WNY and BlueShield of Northeastern New York.
When Anderson moved to Buffalo two years ago, he recalls the first couple of meetings with representatives from the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise.
“Everybody was excited because there were four cranes in Buffalo," Anderson said. “From my office in south Los Angeles, I could probably count 34 cranes. So I started scratching my head. … I thought four cranes in Buffalo is a failure.”
The health care executive, whose business growth relies on a growing population, was immediately struck by one big difference between California and New York: water.
Lake Erie hits him in the face every day as the dominating view from his eighth-floor office on West Genesee Street.
“What are you doing about that? How are you marketing that?” Anderson recalled asking local economic development officials about Lake Erie. “You have an abundance of power and water here. You don’t have a more regulated (business) environment than California. And you’re happy with four cranes?”
The Buffalo News over the past several months interviewed dozens of government officials, water scientists, environmentalists, economic development advocates and key industry executives about whether the Great Lakes and its huge fresh water reservoir present communities on its shores with an opportunity to add jobs and people.
Based on those interviews, Western New York executives and officials appear hesitant or unsure about how to promote the region’s water supplies to people and companies in drought regions of the country or world.
There is still a bit of a learning curve, acknowledged Gallagher-Cohen, of the Buffalo business advocacy group.
“We sort of get it, but maybe we don’t understand the business pains of people who don’t have water,” she said.
“He said to buy a ticket and get on a plane to California and say to people there, ‘We have water,’ ” recalled Dottie Gallagher-Cohen, president of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, the area’s biggest business promotion group.
As disruptive droughts rage in the West and around the world, Anderson is someone who has lived through water shortages. Now as a resident of a Great Lakes state, he sees the economic development possibilities available to places such as Western New York, thanks to its abundant access to water.
The Buffalo area’s economic ties to water are, of course, long ones. Among the key celebrations of the 1901 Pan American Exposition was electricity generated by the region’s hydropower.
Yet many watercentric companies have shuttered, and there are some who believe the region is not doing enough to tap into its proximity to an abundant supply of water and bring back jobs and people.
Anderson spent 38 years in southern California, and at least 30 of those years were spent in some level of drought.
“The single biggest issue in southern California, all of that time I was there, was water,” said Anderson, now the president and chief executive officer of HealthNow New York, the Buffalo-based parent of BlueCross BlueShield of WNY and BlueShield of Northeastern New York.
When Anderson moved to Buffalo two years ago, he recalls the first couple of meetings with representatives from the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise.
“Everybody was excited because there were four cranes in Buffalo," Anderson said. “From my office in south Los Angeles, I could probably count 34 cranes. So I started scratching my head. … I thought four cranes in Buffalo is a failure.”
The health care executive, whose business growth relies on a growing population, was immediately struck by one big difference between California and New York: water.
Lake Erie hits him in the face every day as the dominating view from his eighth-floor office on West Genesee Street.
“What are you doing about that? How are you marketing that?” Anderson recalled asking local economic development officials about Lake Erie. “You have an abundance of power and water here. You don’t have a more regulated (business) environment than California. And you’re happy with four cranes?”
The Buffalo News over the past several months interviewed dozens of government officials, water scientists, environmentalists, economic development advocates and key industry executives about whether the Great Lakes and its huge fresh water reservoir present communities on its shores with an opportunity to add jobs and people.
Based on those interviews, Western New York executives and officials appear hesitant or unsure about how to promote the region’s water supplies to people and companies in drought regions of the country or world.
There is still a bit of a learning curve, acknowledged Gallagher-Cohen, of the Buffalo business advocacy group.
“We sort of get it, but maybe we don’t understand the business pains of people who don’t have water,” she said.
No signs yet
At Buffalo Niagara Enterprise, another local business development group, officials have heard the talk about drought and economic development possibilities for the Great Lakes.But Paul Pfeiffer, the group’s director of investor and public relations, said local officials have not picked up signs yet of companies wanting to leave drought-stricken areas for the Great Lakes.
“We consistently monitor and track the primary factors that drive location decisions for companies, and while our abundant freshwater access is a plus in the form of generation of low-cost hydropower and waterways that provide access for goods and products, existing droughts or water rationing have not produced an increase in potential attraction opportunities,” Pfeiffer said.
But he said that could change.
“We would certainly assess the potential and seek to mobilize our efforts around it, if it was deemed to be feasible or potentially beneficial to our local economy,” he said.
Still, there are those talking about Western New York initiating efforts to promote its water-based location.
A formal push
While water availability is pitched to companies eyeing expansions or relocations, it might be time for New York to launch a more formal marketing program, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul said. For instance, New York could reach out to water-dependent companies and people who moved from upstate Great Lakes communities to places such as Arizona and California.“I’ve seen it firsthand. The grass is no longer greener elsewhere,” she said of dead lawns and companies worried about water supplies in places such as California. “It’s greener here.”
Rep. Brian Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat, sees the same opportunity. He has been a longtime promoter of cleaning up and restoring Buffalo’s water and the city’s waterfront areas.
“Buffalo really has an opportunity to sustain its economic momentum by positioning itself and marketing itself as a Great Lakes community that has an abundance of water that can be used for a variety of purposes,” he said.
But Higgins said nothing should be undertaken that upsets the renewal of the area’s waters – such as the Buffalo River, declared biologically dead nearly 50 years ago – that are now recreational meccas for kayakers and anglers.
Higgins pointed to an effort several years ago by Ohio business interests within the Great Lakes basin to sharply increase the amount of water taken out of Lake Erie. It failed, but it served as a wake-up call about water diversion despite a rigorous binational compact restricting water taken from the basin.
“Buffalo and Western New York should be aggressive pursuing new international and national positions to realize the full economic benefit of being situated where we are on the Great Lakes and an abundance of rivers,” he said.
Delicate balancing game
But attracting big water users, especially those who do not clean and recycle water back to the Great Lakes, has its own set of risks, he warned.“It’s a two-edged sword,” Higgins cautioned. “It’s good to use the natural resource as a marketing tool, but in a responsible way.”
Other states are developing plans to marry Great Lakes economic development with water protection. Officials in some states point to the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes as one of the leading government voices on protecting and promoting the basin.
It released in July a 30-year strategy for the state’s major waterways, including the Great Lakes that surround Michigan. It envisions, for instance, a 40 percent reduction in phosphorus in the western Lake Erie basin.
Attitudes have changed in the basin states about the stewardship of water, said Jon Allan, director of the Michigan office.
Part of it is recognition by both government and industry that communities are still paying a price for decades of pollution dumped into the Great Lakes.
Part of it comes from new technologies that make it easier and more profitable for companies to conserve and protect the water supplies they use.
And part of it comes from many Great Lakes communities “turning their faces to the water,” which has led to new development and restoration projects. Milwaukee and Buffalo are among those communities.
Such projects have proven to be important drivers of community pride.
“Buffalo looks better if Buffalo is in the business of taking good care of its water,” said John Austin, who has studied Great Lakes economic issues and heads the Michigan Economic Center.
One way the Great Lakes states convinced Congress to approve the basin-protecting Great Lakes Compact, which then-President George W. Bush signed in 2008, was recognition by the eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces that basin water resources needed to be more effectively managed.
“The Great Lakes states realized they needed to approach with clean hands that they would use the water of the Great Lakes efficiently,” said Edward Osann, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Officials from Great Lakes states always have known of the water assets, Osann said, but were guided in the past by shipping, heavy manufacturing, iron ore facilities and power facilities.
“New York has probably the clearest, long-term economic interest in keeping clean the water in the Great Lakes basin because everything leaving the basin goes through those turbines in Niagara Falls,” he said.
Water experts say the lakes are no doubt cleaner now than a generation ago and that per capita consumption by residential users is declining. Help has come from technologies that have made for more efficient showers and washing machines. Some appliance makers have made efforts toward “net zero” water collection systems.
But residences aren’t the biggest users of water, and as California has seen, much of the water used by farms, for instance, ends up being wasted.
Spotty conservation efforts
Moreover, researchers say water-conservation efforts in many Great Lakes communities have been spotty since the implementation of the Great Lakes Compact less than a decade ago. Some blame turnover in state administrations.Others say the compact’s efficiency standards should have been made compulsory for the states and not voluntary.
“There are many communities in the Great Lakes basin with wonderful quality of life and water access and that should be attractive for lots of people. I think the industry piece remains to be seen,” Osann said of the region’s trying to attract larger water-using companies.
Whether or not Buffalo and New York get in on the action, officials in other Great Lakes states say a pitch about abundant clean water will be made to drought-based companies and residents.
But there will limits, they insist.
“We’re not going to put an ad in the L.A. Times saying we have all this water and come use it however you want. The ‘however’ is conditional,” said Allan of the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes.
The Great Lakes states are facing what Allan called a “deeply important question” over how to use the abundant water supplies to promote their economies.
“We have this ubiquity, a tremendous volume and capacity of water,” he said. “But, historically, we’ve not treated it as well as we should.”
As evidence of what’s to come, the Great Lakes marketing terms are well underway: Blue Economy, Fourth Coast, Fresh Coast.
Anderson, the health care executive in Buffalo, believes Western New York’s Great Lakes water resources need to be better developed for job creation. He said he understands the region’s long tradition in attracting and retaining companies – and recent efforts such as SolarCity’s future manufacturing facility in Buffalo – through the availability of cheap and reliable hydropower.
But the region can do more.
“This is a sustainable, long-term solution,” he said of the water he sees every day outside his office windows. “You don’t ever have to worry about it again. That’s not the case in California, and it won’t ever be.”
Taken on its own, water could be a major driver. But businesses don’t locate somewhere based on a single criterion, and New York still has a sour business climate reputation, thanks in part to high taxes and a regulation-heavy environment.
Still, economic development officials in other Great Lakes states say someone is going to act first in a major way to shout out about the region’s water resources. Anderson believes that Buffalo needs not wait.
“I think the time is now, and I do think we have to have a better message about the water availability. It isn’t the only issue, but it’s an important piece,” he said.
email: tprecious@buffnews.com
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's School of Freshwater sciences conducts research on the water in the Great Lakes.
A year ago, things were looking grim on the Colorado River. After more than a decade of drought, the reservoir system was only about half full and water managers were expecting another dry year. Arizona and Nevada faced the prospect of cuts in water deliveries.
Instead, it just kept on snowing and raining in the upper basin last winter and spring. June flows into Lake Powell, which stores water for release to Lake Mead, were 176% of average. July flows were 280% of average.
Powell hasn't been this high in a decade and the level of Mead, the biggest reservoir in the country, is shooting up. Although it's too soon to tell whether Colorado's stubborn drought is over, talk of shortages has been put off for at least several years.
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