The Exportation of Fresh Water in Western Canada

Essay by swonder911High School, 10th gradeA+, June 2004

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The Exportation of Fresh Water in Western Canada

Fresh water is something that almost every human, plant and animal needs to survive. Unfortunately, it is not distributed evenly throughout the world. Canada, with just one per cent of the global population, contains over 40% of the world's accessible fresh water, which means that the water is not frozen in glaciers, ice sheets, or simply too far underground to reach. In western Canada, most of the water we use comes from lakes. Vancouver, for example, gets almost all of its water from the Capalino reservoir, using 1 billion liters every day. On the other hand, the United States is more even, with 12% of the population and 17% of the world's fresh water. However, American industries, farms and households are drying up their reservoirs faster than they can be replaced. In California, the city of Los Angeles is facing a small water crisis, as 4 billion liters of water are used by its citizens every day, and supplies in May 2004 (not yet the height of summer)were hovering around less than one-fifth of capacity.

One possible solution to this problem is for Canada to export, or sell, some of our water to the USA. In the short term, this would benefit both sides, as our government would receive much-needed cash, and the US would be tapped in to a source that would be reliable for many years to come. Many ways of transporting the water have been suggested, from a multi-billion dollar pipeline connecting Great Bear Lake in the Yukon to several US cities, to towing by tugboat giant balls filled with water from Canada along the Pacific Coast. Private companies have even tried, unsuccessfully, to bottle Arctic glacier ice water. In the long term, though, there are some major problems.