My interests and views on water have been shaped by where I’ve lived, worked, and played. I grew up in suburban-like San Diego, a place with beautiful green landscaping surrounding newer and more numerous homes. It strikes me that, at the time, I wasn’t curious about the discrepancy between the amount of water consumed and the local rainfall (about 10 inches per year). But, it was wonderful living next to the largest water body on earth- the Pacific Ocean. Exploring the tide pools and skin diving the kelp beds made me want to become a marine biologist, until I took courses in the topic…

I went to college in New England in 1977 and began to learn about the environment. While avoiding going to class, I worked at an NGO, “Save the Bay,” which was dedicated to preserving and restoring Narragansett Bay. My first inkling that some people actually may not have shared these goals came when I saw bumper stickers exclaiming “Pave the Bay!” After graduation, I started my professional career as an engineer working for a very large water and wastewater utility in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this job (I started with the job title ”Junior” Engineer- makes one think that you can get a plastic nameplate out of a box of cereal, pin it to your shirt, and, there you are ). Water in California is a spectacular subject; evoking the old Mark Twain saw: “Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.” Trillions of dollars, raw political power, and cheap lettuce hinge on the ability to move water over lengths exceeding 600 miles in the State. If you’re interested, I highly recommend two books about water resources in California (and the West in general): “Cadillac Desert,” by Marc Reisner and “Rivers of Empire,” by Donald Worster.

After working for a few years at the utility, I began to wonder whether this system of growing water-hungry crops in the desert or semi-desert (rice, alfalfa for hamburgers?) and feeding water to ever-increasing numbers of people demanding an ever-higher standard of living made sense from both a human and natural perspective. The term “sustainability” was not in vogue yet, but something like the opposite of this concept seemed to be going on. I moved on to graduate school in North Carolina, eventually obtaining a PhD in environmental engineering (another title you can get out of a cereal box if you look hard enough). At North Carolina, I learned Tarheel allegiance and how to be an academic engineer/scientist. In terms of environment, North Carolina is a humid state, with rainfall exceeding 60 inches per year. And yet, in my fourth year of slogging away at graduate school, a severe drought occurred and water rationing was imposed. At the other extreme, in my first year in North Carolina, we experienced Hurricane Gloria: almost 10 inches of rain fell in a matter of hours, not to mention 145 mph winds. How dare nature be so fickle!

In 1991, I have lived in Houghton, Michigan, 11 miles from Lake Superior. Before moving to Houghton, I had seen the Great Lakes from Chicago, where my grandmothers lived, and in their German sense of cleanliness, spoke of Lake Michigan as if it were cesspool, and a cold one at that. Needless to say, it was hard to think of that lake as being great (at the time). On a post-college trip across the US and Canada, I had stopped at the shores of Lake Superior, and refused to believe that a freshwater body could stretch so far that you couldn’t see the other side. I took a sip of the lake water, and yes, it was fresh, but my southern California-centric brain still couldn’t accept it. The same thing happened on the same trip, when we crossed the Mississippi: it was impossible that so much fresh water could be flowing past. “But right now I'll just sit here so contentedly. And watch the river flow.”

It was a job at Michigan Technological University that brought me to Houghton. I had never heard of the Upper Peninsula before my interview at MTU. But here I am. I teach and conduct research on water resources. It’s a great job: don’t tell anyone, but they actually pay you to sit there and think about anything you want (once you get tenure). My work has taken me to fascinating places around the world, including The Netherlands, Vietnam, Cuba, Guatemala, and Mexico. I have worked with colleagues in the Mexican state of Sonora on water resources issues since 1994. In terms of environment, it is the opposite of the Lake Superior region: the average temperature is 77 degrees Fahrenheit; it is not unusual to have temperatures in excess of 115 degrees F in the summer. Rainfall averages less than 10 inches per year along the coast (Hah! In Houghton, we can get that in a single snowstorm; well, ok that’s a bit of an exaggeration). The state includes a few medium-sized cities and an intensive agricultural industry. In fact, the Yaqui Valley, in southern Sonora, is known as the birthplace of the Green Revolution for wheat. Norman Borlaug, credited by many as the “Father of the Green Revolution,” won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize in part for developing a high-yield strain of wheat introduced in the Yaqui Valley.

My work in Sonora, which has consisted of technical research and educational initiatives, has been very rewarding. I have had the privilege of working with excellent university faculty, government officials, and students. We have exchanged more than 100 students in study abroad programs. Some of my favorite moments in this initiative have come from watching students from the upper Midwest experience the desert environment and human attempts at overcoming the lack of water in Sonora. And the reverse has been equally fascinating- imagine a group of Sonora students seeing the never-ending Lake Superior in May, when there are still chunks of ice still bobbing in the water, but temperatures at home are already hitting 100 degrees F and water rationing is limiting water at their homes to a few hours per day.

While the intentions may be well-meaning, there are many examples of what seem to be unsustainable water resources practices in Sonora. In the Costa de Hermosillo region, over-pumping of groundwater for agriculture has lead to seawater intrusion of up to 20 miles inland from the Sea of Cortez, causing the abandonment of many pumping wells. In Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, a nine-year-long drought led to the emptying of water storage reservoirs for this city of about 800,000 inhabitants. It is heart-sinking to see cows grazing at the last fringes of grass the bottom of a 2,200 million gallon reservoir. And, in the aforementioned Yaqui Valley, diversion of water, primarily for agricultural uses, has caused the Rio Yaqui to go dry for at least 60 miles upstream of its mouth.

Although these situations continue to exist and are reasonably well-publicized, change is very slow. The governmental institutions seem to be stalemated on how to deal with these issues, and I think many people feel defeated- that individuals can't do anything about it. The solutions to these problems are most likely not technical, rather they require political, cultural and economic change. After slowly coming to this realization, I recognize that it is critical to understand people’s attitudes, perceptions and beliefs about water. I’m beginning to learn how one studies these issues, from my colleagues in the social sciences, in particular the particularly brilliant Kathy Halvorsen, an natural resources sociologist, and Hugh Gorman, an environmental historian. Investigations and solutions to water resources problems in places from Sonora to the Great Lakes must be based on the perspectives of many disciplines.

It wasn’t until about 2003 that I began to study Great Lakes issues. Sure, living in Houghton, I had had many pleasurable experiences enjoying the natural beauty of Lake Superior, but like so many, it hadn’t occurred to me that there could be anything interesting to study, from a water resources perspective, in this seemingly limitless body of water. I have to give Dave Dempsey credit for the inspiration. I had the chance to meet Dave in 2003 when he was visiting Houghton. In the course of a breakfast at a local café, I began to understand that the Great Lakes were indeed under threat, and that there was a pressing need to resolve these threats. I still enjoyed my omelet, by the way, and then devoured Dave’s excellent “On the Brink” in a couple of evenings. Dave has continued to share with me his profound understanding of Great Lakes policy issues. But I have also learned from Dave about how deeply people in the Great Lakes region care about the Lakes.

Since then, I have worked to understand the huge and complex issues surrounding the Lakes. I have learned much from my MTU colleagues here about how the biophysical system of the Lakes works, especially Noel Urban, an environmental scientist. And I have learned from my colleague Joan Chadde, environmental par excellence, the importance of acting locally and the potential role of young people in protecting and restoring the Great Lakes and the environment in general.

In September 2007, we began an ambitious project, funded by the National Science Foundation, to understand the value of water in the Great Lakes region, in an economic sense. We all know that fresh water is the foundation of our economic, societal, and environmental well-being. However, water is often treated as a free resource, since, in most cases, no charge is imposed for withdrawing water from its source. We may pay for the transport of water from its source to its place of use, and for treatment of the water and disposal of the return flows, but the water itself apparently has no intrinsic value. However, other materials that are vital to our prosperity, such as petroleum or metals, are valued based on their present and anticipated scarcity and quality.

It is not hard to imagine that, if any one us were to suddenly be cut off from our supply of clean water, its value would very quickly become apparent. And, we rely on fresh water to maintain the ecosystems that give us food, energy, and other vital services. There is also a value associated with keeping water clean- if a water supply becomes too polluted, either we must spend more money to purify it, or abandon that supply for another, more expensive supply.

Ultimately, we hope to demonstrate that sufficient supplies of clean water are critical to our society, and should be valued as such. Through this work, we will identify policy innovations, such as pricing policies, to address vulnerabilities in the Great Lakes water system under future scenarios of climate and land use change. Results from this project will aim to demonstrate that assessing the “true” value of water can be extended to other regions in the U.S. and the world for informed water use decision-making and policies promoting a sustainable future.

My office window is less than 50 feet the Portage waterway, which connects to nearby Lake Superior. It’s often hard to imagine the Lake as being anything but limitless. But last year’s record low water levels reinforce the fact that, while the volume of the Lakes is staggering, the replenishment or renewal rate is very low. Water that evaporates or flows into the outlet of the Lakes is replaced at a rate of less than 1 percent per year. I tell visitors that we will check their pockets for water at the airport or at the Great Lakes watershed border crossing, and to urge them to pee before leaving the watershed. But, as soon as the Compact is signed, during my travels outside the watershed, I will start dragging 5.7 gallon containers with me and stockpiling them on the other side. I hope that reader will see this as a continuation of my (lack of a) sense of humor.

The tidbit on the replenishment rate of the Great Lakes may be a little known statistic, and as my colleague Noel Urban reminds me, there is much that we don’t understand how about how the Lakes work, in a biophysical sense. I look forward to many more years of researching the Lakes, teaching about the Lakes, and learning about the Lakes from my colleagues and from those who care about the Lakes.