Book: Great Lakes Water Fight to Heat Up

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2006/oct/07/100705518.html

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) - Peter Annin recalls staring in horror at what had been the coast of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, now a wasteland strewn with scrub brush and corroded hulls of abandoned fishing boats.

Once the world's fourth-largest inland water body, the Aral has shrunk to a quarter of its previous surface area in less than half a century - the result of a Soviet-era decision to divert rivers feeding the sea to promote farming in that arid section of central Asia.

Annin visited the region while researching his newly released book, "The Great Lakes Water Wars," published by Island Press. The former Newsweek magazine correspondent says he'd heard ominous references to the Aral disaster while studying the debate over Great Lakes water diversion.

"It kind of defies the bounds of the mind to grasp how dire the ecological situation is there," Annin said in an interview. "When you're standing on the bottom of a sea bed where there should have been water 45 feet over your head, and instead there's none as far as the eye can see, how do you describe that?"

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[philb]

1. U.S. Great Lakes warming rapidly

the U.S. Great Lakes have warmed over 2 degrees F in the last 20 years,
with similar warmings in U.S. coastal ocean waters

www.flcv.com/sitesum.html