Great Lakes for Sale is a book for anyone interested in saving the Great Lakes, a huge fresh-water system that contains an estimated 6 quadrillion gallons of water and about twenty percent of the world's fresh surface water. The book poses---and answers---important questions about the export and diversion of Great Lakes water. Not only does Great Lakes for Sale examine past and present water-diversion practices; it also shows readers what they can do to save this natural resource.It's difficult to understate the importance of the Great Lakes water system---economically, environmentally, or from a public-health perspective. The Great Lakes support year-round sport fishery, they provide a route for commercial and recreational navigation, and they supply many communities with drinking water. Water means jobs and life in the Great Lakes region. And, while residents of this huge region revel in a seemingly limitless quantity of fresh water today, it's likely that the future will see that same fresh water grow ever more scarce as well as become a source of contention between thirsty communities---and corporations---further afield and those who live in this giant watershed.Great Lakes for Sale is an important part of the effort to remind people why commercialization of Great Lakes water is a dangerous threat. It's not simply a matter of how much water in the short term is removed; the long-term threat is control of water and the possibility that non-Great Lakes interests will assert ownership of the very substance of the Great Lakes.Dave Dempsey serves as Communications Director for Conservation Minnesota and consults for other environmental and conservation organizations across Minnesota and Michigan. He is author of William G. Milliken: Michigan's Passionate Moderate and Ruin and Recovery: Michigan's Rise as a Conservation Leader.

Product Description: "Bill Milliken has always been a thoroughgoing pluralist. He cherishes diversity and differences of opinion and he shuns extremism. . . . My hope is that history will show he was closer to the mark than the Republican Party of today...read more

Product Description: This book presents Michigan's greatest resource through the lens of a camera. One cannot think of Michigan without the image of water. Water as vast as the Great Lakes, as serene as the inland lakes, and as long and lazy or sleek and fast as the numerous byways that runbetween and among them...read more

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