Oil hell, give me water!

This should be something of concern to all of us.

States eye stricter curbs on Great Lakes water
Lake levels reached record lows last year, and the region worries that fast-growing states and communities will try to grab its water.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson created a stir in October when, campaigning for president in water-hungry Las Vegas, he called for a national water policy and remarked that states like Wisconsin were "awash in water."

No one has seriously proposed that parched western states sip from the Midwest. And Mr. Richardson's office swiftly declared he had no such intention. But his remark tapped a growing sensitivity here over the Great Lakes and has given new urgency to a regional initiative to protect them from outsiders.

"There's a tremendous economic impact here," says Ohio state Rep. Matthew Dolan. "We want companies to come where the water is. We don't want the water to go where they are."

Several recent trends have heightened the concern of those in the Great Lakes Basin: Lake levels fell to near record lows last year, drought struck the Southeast, and climate-change studies have cast new uncertainty over water supplies in the Great Lakes region. Meanwhile, population shifts are slowly draining the region of its political power. Great Lakes states lost congressional seats after the 2000 census and expect to lose more after 2010.

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