Watching water

Water quantity and quality in the Great Lakes is first and foremost on Joe Comuzzi’s mind these days.

Comuzzi, who spent more than two decades as the MP for Thunder Bay-Superior North before retiring from politics ahead of the 2008 federal election, was recently appointed as chairman of the International Joint Commission, a Canadian/American initiative focusing on the management of shared waterways.

Given the increasing need for water, particularly in landlocked American states, Comuzzi said he’d like to see more attention paid to the Great Lakes to ensure the quality of the water remains at its current level – or better yet, improves.

"There are a lot of states that don’t have enough water. North Dakota has got no fresh water going into it. That’s a problem that we’re seeing with the Devil’s Lake project and the flooding in the Red River," Comuzzi said.

According to a study conducted at Purdue University, the United States gets enough rainfall each year to cover the country to a depth of 30 inches. However, most of it is lost to Mother Nature.

A single tree, the study shows, can drink up to 50 gallons of water a day. Two-thirds of the water is recycled through evaporation. The vast majority of the remainder works its way into lakes and rivers and eventually returns to the ocean.

Only 0.1 inches of water make it to groundwater supplies, causing shortages in some locales.

"We’re trying to build what we call an international watershed initiative, which will take into account not only the pollution of the water, but the quantity of the water in those watersheds and where that water is going and how can we increase that supply of water," Comuzzi said.

"Those are initiatives we hope to put forward. Every time we do that we need government approval, but we don’t see much difficulty in getting those approvals."

Comuzzi, 76, said the issue is hitting close to home, to the west of Thunder Bay.

"They’re having issues with the flow of water between Minnesota and the Lake of the Woods area," he said. "Lake of the Woods isn’t as clear as it was, and needs some attention fairly quickly. There’s a lot of erosion on the south shore."

When broached about the effect global warming is having on water levels, Comuzzi was non-commital, though with rain falling outside on a mid-March afternoon and most of the winter snow having melted, he acknowledged weather patterns appear to be changing.

"Our big job now in the next few years is to analyze those changing patterns to be sure that we do something corrective to make up for the loss of water we’re experiencing. And I’m sure we can do that," Comuzzi said.

"Basically we’ve caused a lot of grief by abusing the water systems and the feeding systems over the last 100 years … If we can increase the flows through these river systems, I think we’ll be partially successful in what we’re trying to accomplish."

Comuzzi said he plans to continue to split his time between Thunder Bay and Ottawa, and has no intentions of giving up his hometown roots any time soon.