This is just one post in the International Water Issues Category

Turn off Canada’s tap? Activists say yes but others say Canada could share for a price

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 29, 2008 at 6:17 am

From the London Free Press:

In the middle of the Arizona desert, where a merciless heat zaps away all moisture, a group of entrepreneurs plan to build a water park oasis that will make it the largest water adventure park in the world.

The specs are ambitious: Called Waveyard, the 45-hectare water park is expected to be completed by 2010 and will have the largest man-made, recirculating white water river in the world, a scuba lagoon, snorkelling, kayaking, and surf-sized, four-metre waves. The park is expected to use 380 million litres of groundwater a year, water they say won’t come from the neighbouring potable water system.

Meanwhile, the U.S. announced last year that 36 states face water shortages in the next four years.

It’s this kind of immoderate squandering in the U.S. that makes them the largest per capita users of water in the world, water advocates say. And it’s why Canada should close the door should the U.S. come knocking for our water, they add.

“It’s not sustainable,” says Maude Barlow, an internationally known water advocate and author of Blue Covenant. “I will share anything with anyone, but I won’t destroy the Canadian ecology so people can have golf courses and swimming pools.”

The spectre of bulk water exports to the U.S. has been a historically emotional issue for Canadians, who guard it jealously as a national heritage. But, as discussed earlier in this series, there is a myth of water abundance in Canada. We receive the same amount of the world’s renewable water supply (rain and snow) as the U.S. — 6.5% of the global share. We don’t have a large surplus to spare, experts say.

But not everyone agrees.

Chris Wood, B.C.-based author of Dry Spring, describes this attitude as anti-American, anti-business and bigoted. “We wouldn’t accept that kind of (attitude) of any other ethnic group,” he said in an interview. “These people are our best customers, closest neighbour, and we share the watersheds. It’s completely poisonous.” Water, like the fugitive nature of air and carbon, isn’t ours to horde since it’s always “passing through” on its way to somewhere else, Wood says.