Quote:
Originally Posted by racerford
Do you have a source for that statistic? There must be some sort of qualifier on that. So they have 9 times more fresh water than the Mississippi, Amazon, Colorado, Nile, Yellow rivers and all the other rivers and lakes of the would, and all the glaciers, polar ice caps, and the atmosphere combined?
The oceans are filled with fresh water, it just has a few salts and other impurites mixed in, that can be removed.
I found one source that indicates the great Lakes contain 90% of the US' fresh water. Even that is dubious, as a good portion of the Great Lakes belongs to Canada. That same sources indicates they contain 20% of the World's Fersh Water.
Other sources indicate 2/3s of the world's fresh water is ice. Of the liquid Fresh Water, the bulk is underground, not surface water.
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I think the stat he was going for is 7/8 of the world's fresh water resides in fresh water lakes (per wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_water#Source
And about 84% of North America's surface fresh water and 21% of the world's total fresh water per the epa resides in the Great lakes
http://www.epa.gov/greatlakes/basicinfo.html
However, this fight has already started. I do remember several years ago here in Wisconsin some law was passed when I believe California was looking to have great lakes water brought in?
Edit: I believe its the potential lawsuit from California which caused several states to form the Great Lakes Compact in 2008.