Make the effort now to preserve 21st-century gold By Curt Andersen News-Chronicle The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 2003 to be the International Year of Fresh Water. The proclamation is intended to reawaken nations to the importance of fresh water. Skeptics say this is just another unreasonable complaint by environmentalists, but clean, fresh water is essential to the economy of our state. We in Wisconsin are well aware of fresh water because our state borders on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, and because of the nearly 15,000 freshwater lakes that cover nearly 1 million acres. We've got it good in Wisconsin, but it may be easier to abuse this resource because there is so much fresh water. Water covers more than 70 percent of our planet's surface. Besides lakes and oceans, there is water vapor in our atmosphere, our soils, our aquifers and trapped in polar and other ice. This is an estimated 326 cubic miles of water, with each square mile containing more than 1 trillion gallons. It sounds like a lot of water, but fresh water is only 0.3 percent (yes, that's point three) of the total. Clean, fresh water is a smaller percentage. Industry has long abused our waters by dumping their waste rather than treating it or turning their system into a closed loop, as is done in some European countries. In spite of the Clean Water Act, some companies continue to pollute. They tend to lack creativity or have other issues, like making more profits in the short term while abusing public property. Indeed, these companies' selfishness has had a colossal negative effect on other local industries, notably commercial fishing, sports fishing, duck and goose hunting, tourism and real-estate sales. It is no surprise the corporate world has recently decided to make fresh water a commodity. What that means is the water you now get for a nominal fee will cost you lots more. The old rules of supply and demand will still apply, but the ways of finagling your perception of supply and demand will be new and improved con games. Since corporations now control mass media, it will only take a few mentions of water shortages for the supply to "drop" (wink-wink) with the inevitable price rise. This is the same con game that was used to hike the prices of electricity in California a year ago. People abuse our fresh water by wasting it, by dumping crankcase oil down storm sewers, by dumping pesticides on lawns, by watering lawns, by roiling shallow waters with boats, and by using harsh chemical cleaners for their drains and toilets. Filling in wetlands is another abuse of our fresh water. Wetlands are key to protection of surface water. The plants and soils in wetlands filter out most of the pollutants before they can contaminate our ground water. Developers continue to fill in wetlands. They need only make political contributions to weak legislators who will write laws that allow developers to move wetlands to perimeter areas of land parcels, second-guessing the Creator. These wetlands have formed over many millennia, and yet some guy with a plat map thinks he knows better. Unless we control weak politicians who sell out to corporate con artists, we are headed for a showdown on clean, fresh water, the Gold of the 21st Century. Good luck to us. Andersen is a lifelong resident of the Green Bay area and a Navy veteran. He owns a small business and is an adjunct instructor at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. He is vice president of Clean Water Action Council. His column runs Wednesdays. Write to him via e-mail at [email protected].