Another issue on my mind which hasn’t received enough attention, is the issue of Devils Lake, in North Dakota. Great Lakes Directory has a great article summarizing the issue.
“There has always been something quaintly reassuring about the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. That stolid Republican, William Taft, was president when Canada and the U.S. inked their remarkable pact. Sir Wilfrid Laurier was prime minister — although Britain signed on behalf of its bustling dominion. The two neighbours vowed to preserve the quality and quantity of their shared water, creating an International Joint Commission to arbitrate disputes. Through peace and war and the Depression, it has worked: 51 of the 53 joint references were resolved by mutual agreement.
And then along came North Dakota and its rash decision to lower Devils Lake. That closed, befouled so-called “sub-basin” about 100 km from the Manitoba border has been flooding its banks since a cycle of rainy weather began in 1993: the volume of water, tainted with agricultural chemical run-off, has quadrupled. Up to now, it’s been a North Dakota problem. In the late 1990s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers launched a lengthy study of diversion proposals. Daunted by the complexity and cost of the corps’ approach, North Dakota adopted its own unilateral, far cheaper project to dig an outlet canal to the Sheyenne River, a tributary of the Red River that meanders north into Canada and Lake Winnipeg. The state proceeded without its own environmental study — and ignored many of the corps’ planned safeguards, including a pricey sand filter. Pumping starts in mid-June.”
Okay that was a big excerpt. The polluted water won’t just end at lake Winnipeg. From there, water flows into hudson bay, which has been kept relatively clean. What impact this will have on wildlife, and the health of the surrounding native population is anyone’s guess – because nobody has carried out a proper investigation.
Again, short-term thinking in this situation will bring about long-term consequences. I just hope that the Canadian and American governments can get their act together long enough to stop fucking up.
