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Water, water everywhere. Sandwiched among four Great Lakes and boasting 11,000 inland lakes, Michigan is among the most water-rich states in the US.

That's why it's strange to hear that there's not enough water (FindLaw):

It might seem unlikely that the Great Lakes state could see water shortages. But in at least three Michigan counties, limited water supplies have led to finger-pointing and lawsuits between families and businesses. Some predict that as demand increases, it's only going to get worse unless the state makes sure the water supply is protected.

"If there are not limits, we're going to see more and more communities run dry," says Cheryl Mendoza of the environmental group Lake Michigan Federation. "It's a different time, there's millions more people and what we do impacts our neighbor."

According to the state Department of Environmental Quality, more than 1.1 million Michigan households use private wells, more than any other state. The amount of groundwater available in each area depends on geology, how it's being used and how fast it's being restored.

[...]

The state is trying to help. Gov. Jennifer Granholm in August signed two new groundwater laws designed to resolve disputes and determine where, and in what quantities, Michigan's groundwater exists.

The first law asks the DEQ and Department of Agriculture to investigate disputes, such as those in Saginaw County, and help negotiate an agreement. One remedy for homeowners could be replacement of their wells.

Under the other law, the state will create a list of major water users and map the state's aquifers, the underground water sources reached by wells. The maps will help officials figure out where groundwater is less plentiful to avoid future water conflicts.

[...]

Environmentalists and others say the state should go further and establish a water-use law that would encourage conservation and restoration. Such a law might require big users to make sure water isn't being removed from an aquifer faster than it's being replenished, and to certify that, by taking the water, they aren't damaging the aquifer or the environment, Mendoza says.

Perhaps part of the problem is the fact that Perrier (i.e., Nestlé) has a permit to remove 200 million gallons per year from Michigan. Perrier brands of spring water sold in the US include: Arrowhead (sold in the West), Calistoga (West), Deer Park (East), Great Bear (Northeast), Oasis (Texas), Poland Springs (in the Northeast), Ozarka (in the South), Zephyrhills (Florida), and its Midwest brand, Ice Mountain. Here's a primer in water privatization in Michigan, courtesy of waterissweet.org. Business Week covered this story in 2002.

How does water end up diverted into the hands of commercial interests? Here's an example ("Out of Sight, Cheney Is Power," by Greg Hitt in WSJ, sub, req'd.):

Late one Friday afternoon about a year ago, Vice President Dick Cheney put a call through to an unsuspecting lawyer at the Department of the Interior. On his mind: water rights in Oregon's Klamath River.

A prominent Oregon Republican had lobbied the vice president to allow more water to be diverted from the river for farmers, and Mr. Cheney was irked that the Interior Department wasn't moving fast enough. Instead of delegating the matter, as might be expected amidst the larger worries of terrorism and Iraq, Mr. Cheney took matters into his own hands. "What are you doing?" he said in a terse voicemail message left for the attorney, recalls a person familiar with the call. "Why are we doing this?"

The water eventually got released. But Mr. Cheney's role in the seemingly small-time drama never came to light, underscoring the way he prefers to do business: far behind the scenes.

That Mr. Cheney would plunge into the issue at all underlines how he has turned the very job of vice president upside down. Normally vice presidents have limited duties and make maximum efforts to publicize them. Mr. Cheney does the opposite. Never in modern times has there been a vice president who has taken on such extensive responsibilities, and never has there been a vice president who so assiduously sought to escape the public eye.

Upside down is the politest possible way to characterize the priorities of this administration. Peace, prosperity, air, water... nothing is safe from their thieving interventions.

None of Cheney’s Oregon interventions have any direct bearing on the Michigan situation so far as I know. But both cases are representative of the overwhelming GOP-led trend to move as many public resources as possible (clean water, Medicare, radio spectrum, the US Treasury) into fewer and fewer private hands (Nestlé, Pfizer, Clear Channel, Halliburton).

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