Imagine my surprise when, out of the blue at a recent Haven Town Board meeting, I encountered yet another version of the proposal that is guaranteed to raise the hackles of every resident of the Great White North, where Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan lie in wait on the shores of Longfellow’s “Shining Big Sea Waters” – that is, taking fresh water from the Great Lakes and shipping it somewhere else.
This latest affront to GWN sovereignty was revealed to me by Jane Korte, a Haven Township resident and long-time environmental activist (she drives a Subaru), who addressed the town board on the proposed Sandpiper pipeline project that would cross Itasca State Park to connect the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota with the refineries in Superior, WI, and the adjacent port facilities in nearby Duluth, MN. It could also be used later to pipe Canadian tar sand oil, not unlike the much-discussed Keystone pipeline, once the Bakken fields dry up. And it has one other curious feature, according to the environmentalists – it can flow both ways.
State of Superior
The idea of removing portions of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and all of Upper Michigan and stitching together a brand new state was first put forward in 1858, when a convention was called in Ontonagon, MI for the purpose of forming the new State of Superior from these components. The idea was again floated in 1897, when it was pointed out that the Upper Peninsula (the U.P., home of the Yooper Nation) and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan have no geographical connection, and remained so until 1957 when the Mackinac Bridge established a tenuous link. No new statehood, though.
But it was the first “water re-allocation” (read: theft) proposal in 1962 that really supplied the accelerant to the combustibles in the GWN, an idea that would have seen a pipeline reaching up from Arizona to abduct water from Lake Superior and “make the desert bloom” in the Great Southwest. Yoopers and others in the GWN were quick to suggest what the Arizonans could do with their sand instead, and the Upper Peninsula Independence Association was quickly formed to combat this and any other similar madness while it chaffed the state governments to speed approval of Superior as America’s 51st State. And the state governments were not at all opposed to the idea, as the death of the iron mines had created massive unemployment in the northern tier of all three states.
It was only later that they realized that in doing so, they would forfeit all of the untapped mineral deposits in all three states, not to mention billions of acres suitable for logging, and the only international port facility in Duluth which handles ore shipments, grain and all foreign trade. “Whoa, Nelly,” they said in unison, though the Yoopers did get their own area code (906).
The matter has lain dormant for many years, as the initial “Over My Dead Body” attitude of the GWN has kept the fresh water lust of the west at bay, but they never give up. Water levels in Lake Superior have been low in recent years, and even a minor drop can have significant negative impacts on shipping, the life-blood of the GWN.
If Robert Frost were writing today, he may well have had something to say about the situation. Maybe this:
“Whose waves these are, I do not know,
They almost all have shotguns, though.
And if I drain great Gitchee Gumme,
Her icy winds will blow right through me.”
