This week-old story on MSNBC underscores the seriousness of what is happening in SE Wisconsin. Sprawling outward like most Great Lakes metropolises, this area is finding water supplies the limiting factor in its runaway consumption of farmland, open space, and tax revenues. Will Wisconsin choose to redevelop the inner urban core of Milwaukee or keep moving away from its history and its water resources, the basis of its initial development?
Significantly, if it does the latter, the Great Lakes may be doomed. It's at the boundary of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins in Wisconsin that the issue of Great Lakes sustainability -- that elusive term meaning, "can we live within the means of our resources, or must we artificially and expensively move those resources to suit our whims temporarily?" -- has been joined. For the Great Lakes and for far more than the Lakes, much is at stake. Good luck to Wisconsin advocates, a brave and stubborn and principled group.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13679754/