I’ve talked about water a lot on this blog. It’s the “next” oil.

Who has it and who doesn’t? Eventually, this will become the defining question of our time.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that with millions of people living, literally, in the desert in places like Las Vegas, that there will be a water crisis there sooner rather than later.

The drought in the Southeast seems to have abated (for now.) But for how long? The lakes are still low in the Atlanta region.

Where will you want to live when the the you-know-what hits the fan?

These cities will be at the top of the list:

Chicago
Detroit
Cleveland
Buffalo

Yes, Buffalo will rise again from the dead. As I’ve also said before, there’s a reason these cities were built in the first place in their current locations- access to ports and water.

The Great Lakes Basin makes up the states, and Canada, that surround the Great Lakes. Only, the water from the Great Lakes aren’t available to everyone.

If you live in downstate Illinois, for example, you are not considered in the “basin” and cannot tap Lake Michigan for water.

The designation is restrictive enough that many of Chicago’s suburbs were originally excluded from the “basin” but because of a loophole many years ago have now been able to tap the lake.

That won’t be allowed to continue.

Already you have haves and have nots. From the Chicago Tribune:

“The realistic fear for the Great Lakes comes from within the region,” Glennon said, pointing to communities with polluted drinking water, such as the western Milwaukee suburbs of New Berlin and Waukesha, which have a clear interest in the water compact being approved.

“We’re kind of the poster child of Wisconsin,” quipped Jack Chiovatero, mayor of New Berlin.

Here’s why: New Berlin straddles the Great Lakes Basin, with about one-third of its 38,000 residents receiving water from Lake Michigan, and the remainder getting drinking water from wells contaminated with radium. The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the city to either clean up or find a safer source of water. Either solution is expensive.

Water rights in New Berlin are pretty much divided by Sunny Slope Road. If you live on the east side, you get Lake Michigan water, and whatever you use is eventually returned—after treatment—to the lake. If you’re on the west side, you don’t get lake water because without a means to return it, it works its way toward the Mississippi River. This is a situation the water compact is intended to prevent — draining the Great Lakes of water that will never be returned.

“If you have a thousand straws sipping into the lake,” Brammeier said of communities outside the basin, “we don’t want to go there because that could have an impact.”

Chiovatero, who lives east of Sunny Slope Road, said the city has set up a means to return lake water that goes to the west side. The water compact would create the legal rules to do that.

A trickier situation exists in rapidly growing Waukesha, a suburb to the west that is outside the basin and, like New Berlin, has unacceptable levels of radium in its drinking water. Mayor Larry Nelson said that “Great Lakes water is the best environmental option” for the city.

Obtaining it will require Waukesha to establish a way to return the water it uses to Lake Michigan. “If we decide to move forward,” Nelson said, “we intend our application to be a role model for other [communities] to follow.”

The most valuable real estate will be those already within the basin- and that includes the cities listed above.

Detroit and Buffalo will see a resurgance? I know- you’re laughing.

Mark my words.

Those glistening lakes are worth their weight in gold.

You know what they say about real estate: location, location, location.

We are seeing the water wars really break out in the United States now as record droughts in the Southeast and the Southwest continue to cause a near crisis on drinking water in several areas- but especially Metro Atlanta- with its 5 million people.

Ironically, as I’ve stated before, the areas suffering the worst droughts are those with the population explosions as people in the northern colder climates have fled to the sunbelt states with their jobs and better weather.

But is the weather really better? Endless sunshine and no rain don’t seem to make a great mix.

Atlanta has been around since before the civil war, but never with a population of 5 million people. Las Vegas was just a blip on the map even 50 years ago and now has large scale urban sprawl. What happens when Los Angeles has 30 million people in its metro area? That’s not too far off at current growth estimates.

The states are suing each other for rights to water- and it will get worse. Currently, Alabama and Georgia are in a nasty spat as each suffers from severe drought. The Feds are going to have to decide that one. But South Carolina seems destined to get into the mix because of the Savannah River- which runs along part of the state line- making it the property of both Georgia and South Carolina. From the Island Packet:

Now, with Metro Atlanta more than 16 inches behind in annual rainfall, and its primary source of drinking water — the 39,000-acre Lake Lanier — drying up, the specter of the city tapping into the Savannah is less a question of “if” than “when,” water officials say.

“They have a very significant problem, so quite obviously, they’re going to have to do something,” said Dean Moss, general manager of the Beaufort-Jasper Water & Sewer Authority, which treats and distributes Savannah River water to a majority of area customers. “The Savannah River is just too logical of an alternative for them to ignore.”

While Georgia state law precludes Atlanta from piping in water from the Savannah, Moss and other South Carolina officials say the situation in North Georgia is so dire that no water source is out of the question.

“The whole Atlanta story has to be a wake up call for South Carolina, because the Savannah River is becoming a very critical water source right now with a lot of pressure from a number of (entities),” said Jeffrey S. Allen, director of the South Carolina Water Resources Center at Clemson University.

Yes- Atlanta will want to pump from the Savannah eventually.

Good luck South Carolinians! (and even Savannah residents.)

Of course, it’s not like a pipeline magically appears and you can start pumping immediately. Any sort of pipeline from the Savannah River would take years (and lots of money) to build.

What happens when Georgia does want to tap this resource? From the Island Packet:

“When you get right down to it, we have to look at what we might be entitled to,” Waldrep said. “Legally, that should be half of the water in that river.”

It’s unlikely, however, that Georgia — which has always negotiated from a position of political power — sees the river as a fifty-fifty resource, S.C. water officials say.

Ah, yes. Who has more political power?

I’ve said before that in a few years, people may actually WANT to be moving back to areas in the north near the Great Lakes, the largest supply of fresh water in the world. But according to the Chicago Tribune, even the Great Lakes aren’t “safe” from the thirsty needs of the rest of the country (despite treaties with Canada that forbid piping the water.) From the Tribune:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic candidate for president, gave voice to his water lust early this month by suggesting that water from the Great Lakes could be piped to the rapidly growing — and increasingly dry — Southwestern states.

“States like Wisconsin are awash in water,” Richardson told the Las Vegas Sun.

Yes- they’d love to just build some massive pipeline to the southwest and feed the water to the millions who are now living there. But that seems kind of silly to me (a midwesterner)- does it to you? Why are people living where there are no resources? Our ancestors would be aghast. Why are we building huge metropolises in the desert?

Midwest governors are aware that they have something that others now need and they are guarding it closely.

“We are the water belt of the nation, and we have a real opportunity to not only do the right thing environmentally but also have a sustainable management policy that makes tremendous economic sense for the region,” said Todd Ambs, water division administrator for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

“I wouldn’t say we are awash in water, but there’s certainly enough [water] to have a strong economic driver,” Ambs said, to lure back businesses that left the region.

But if the Feds step in, there will likely be little the Governors can do to stop a pipeline from being built to “help” the millions that will be suffering in the southwest.

As I’ve said before, suddenly, the thought of living in, say, Cleveland sounds very attractive. Heck, even living in Michigan. The entire state of Michigan is within the Great Lakes Basin, meaning water can be pumped to anywhere in the state (by contrast, most of Illinois is not, with the exception of the city of Chicago and a fluke ruling decades ago to allow the Chicago suburbs access to Lake Michigan water.)

Michigan may not have any jobs, but it has water. When will the tide turn and make that into a very, very valuable commodity?

I guess we’ll have to wait and ask the Atlanta citizens in about six months.

I know a few houses in Detroit selling for only $3000. Wanna make a deal?

Did you leave grayness of Cleveland to move to Las Vegas a few years ago? Love the sun, the great casinos, resorts and pools?

Good luck to you by 2010. Without beating around the bush, the “>Southern Nevada Water Authority said last week that unless some much needed upgrades are completed (and prayers are answered) they will run out of water for thousands of residents by 2010.

Hate to be in Las Vegas when that happens. Won’t be a fun place if you can, say, only flush the toilets once a day.

From KLAS-TV in Las Vegas:

SNWA data shows drought conditions getting worse, not better forcing the general manager of the water authority to ask the board to spend more than $45 million to upgrade water pumps at Lake Mead.

It apparently will take at least 3 years to get the proper pumps installed and working so if they aren’t installed immediately, Armageddon awaits in 2010. Said General Manager Pat Mulroy:

“The point I was making today is that we have run out of options. We have run out of time to wring our hands about it and try to delay it. If we do that we are putting our own families and our own security in jeopardy.”

Even if they get the proper pumps in place, that is no guarantee that there won’t be shortages in 2010.

As I’ve said before, living near one of the Great Lakes, even with all of their problems, is becoming more attractive every day.

Here’s a house on Craigslist for only $159,000 on a street with a park that overlooks Lake Erie.

Water. Lots of water.

Maybe it’s time to start looking at all of that Cleveland lake front property.