By Jay Zenker, Vice President for Loyola University Chicago’s Environmental Law Society
About two miles from the Chicago lakefront, resting right atop the horizon, from a swimmer’s point of view, are a series of six structures. They are oddly shaped (one looks like a carnival tent), floating silently, and alone. What are they? I and others asked. Well, as it happens, they are water cribs, vestiges of an era when the City of Chicago had to go miles out from the shore to find clean drinking water. Though only two of the six are still in use, these water cribs can take in water and, through underground pipes, send it to dry land where it’s used for cleaning, drinking, and draining. The story of the water entering these cribs, however, begins much earlier than the moment it drifts into the crib, and ends much further than the Chicago city limits.
The Great Lakes are big (six quadrillion gallons), but not infinite. The Lakes support 1.5 million jobs, a long cycle of shipping and manufacturing, and endless recreation for the citizens who live around it (itself worth $52 billion annually). Still, in a world where water is becoming increasingly scarce, the region is becoming increasingly protective of its six quadrillion gallons. Water use in the region is governed by a legal regime known as the Great Lakes Compact. This regime was signed by all regional governors and approved by the United States Congress in 2008. In short, sidestepping many exceptions and complexities, the Compact restricts water use to only those municipalities or counties that have land within the Great Lakes watershed. In other words, if rain falls on your hometown and trickles down into one of the Great Lakes, your town has the right to pull that water back out for its own use (so long as the town returns that water to the lake afterwards). In some areas, the watershed is expansive (all of Michigan is contained within it); in others, it’s narrow.
Very narrow. So narrow that most of Chicago aren’t. Ever since Chicago famously reversed the flow of the Chicago River, most water that falls on Chicago heads west, ultimately to the Mississippi River and then to the Gulf of Mexico. And yet, those water cribs most certainly take water from Lake Michigan and give it to Chicago. As such, they symbolize the biggest exception to the Great Lakes Compact: Chicago and its collar counties. By the Compact’s terms, Illinois can take water out of the Great Lakes watershed and never return it.
That exception is grounded in the reversal of the Chicago River, which was controversial outside of Chicago when it occurred and is controversial nearly everywhere today. When it occurred, the idea was to shift pollution away from Lake Michigan; and now, as less water is needed for sanitation, its primary purpose is to send drinking water to Chicago and a handful of large suburbs. In 1967, long before the Compact was ever considered, the United States Supreme Court decreed a fixed allotment for Illinois water withdrawals from Lake Michigan. That amount: 2.1 billion gallons per day, enough to hydrate Chicago and suburbs like Elmhurst, Villa Park, Lombard, and more. Enough that more suburbs can hook into the supply with the proper applications and approvals, if needed. It’s no understatement to say that Illinois’s legally sanctioned ability to port water outside of the watershed is what fueled the growth of the suburbs, and, in turn, Chicago itself.
The Great Lakes Compact provides for the Chicago River exception, giving Illinois (the state with the shortest Great Lakes coastline) an enormous relative advantage in water withdrawal. The Compact was cleverly designed to match the watershed of the Great Lakes: only those states in the watershed are parties, and only those towns within the watershed can access water. With this notable Illinoisan exception, the jurisdictional limits of the Compact are coextensive with the ecological boundaries that it attempts to govern.
In my view, this match is crucial, and will become ever more crucial as water becomes more scarce, and regions further afield will look to our Great Lakes to quench their thirst. I find it easy to criticize towns like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and even Los Angeles that live far beyond their hydrological means, and I lament the dissipation of the Colorado River. And when I do that, I must remind myself: Chicago and its collar counties are currently living beyond their hydrological means. Water must be supplied to the neighboring suburbs because the extensive growth of the Chicagoland region has severely depleted the regional groundwater supply. Chicago has long waged a battle against its water resources, and that war is very far from being won.
In so many places, the natural resources on which we, our communities, and our cities thrive come from somewhere else. Food, water, electricity, metals, wood, and labor. In my mind, the Great Lakes Compact combats that tendency by, legally, matching the users of water with the land from which that water flows. And yet, I’m writing this from Chicago, whose river contravenes the very thesis of the Great Lakes Compact. While I’m certainly not advocating for Chicago or its counties to necessarily cut off the supply of water from Lake Michigan, we would do well to remember that our reversal of the Chicago River is not only an engineering marvel, but also an unfortunately consequential departure from the world in which we live.
Some have recommended that the water cribs in Lake Michigan be granted landmark status so that they are not torn down even if they are not online. I suppose that’s a good idea. At the least, they pose a few questions to those who view them: what are they? why are they there? what do we do with our water now? That last one is more important than ever.
Jay’s Recommended Reading:
Peter Annin, The Great Lakes Water Wars (2018); Dan Egan, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes (2017)