New book predicts Great Lakes ecological tragedy

The Michigan Daily has an article about "The Great Lakes Water Wars", a new book by Peter Annin:

Peter Annin recalls staring in fascinated horror at what had been the coast of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, now a desolate wasteland strewn with scrub brush and corroded hulls of abandoned fishing boats.

Once the world's fourth-largest inland water body, the Aral has shrunk to a quarter of its previous surface area in less than half a century - the result of a Soviet-era decision to divert rivers feeding the sea to promote farming in that arid section of central Asia.

Annin visited the region while researching his book, "The Great Lakes Water Wars," published by Island Press and scheduled for release Sept. 14. The former Newsweek magazine correspondent says he'd heard ominous references to the Aral disaster while studying the debate over Great Lakes water diversion and wanted to see it for himself.

Ecological and political differences make it unlikely the Great Lakes will suffer the Aral's fate, but the tragedy still conveys a warning, Annin says: "What it showed to me in a very surreal way was that these giant lakes are vulnerable, they actually can be drained. They are not immune to human destruction."

The book relates the history that began more than a century ago with construction of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which diverts water away from Lake Michigan and other legal and political skirmishes that led to the regional agreements. And it explains how the Great Lakes were formed, their unique characteristics and the threats facing them, from the global water shortage to exotic species and climate change.