Selling Cree Water to the U.S

The Montreal Economic Institute has just published a new study that shows how the province of Quebec could make billions selling water from the north to the United States.

The study’s author, F. Pierre Gingras, a former hydroelectric power engineer for Hydro-Québec, said that this project would involve capturing and diverting the seasonal floods waters of the Broadback, Waswanipi and Bell rivers.

The project would involve creating a canal and expanding some waterways to pump water down to the Ottawa River and then on to the Great Lakes where the U.S. could then use it for drinking water.

Though Robert Bourassa talked a great deal about the original concept for the Grand Canal back in the 1970s, at the time the plan had been to use a series of nuclear power plants to generate the energy to pump the waters downstream.

According to the study, “There are three rivers in the James Bay basin, just north of the Abitibi region, which have not been developed for hydroelectric power: the Broadback, Waswanipi and Bell. The Northern Waters project would capture the seasonal runoff and gather it in basins before it flows into the northern lowlands. Compared to the Grand Canal project, 85% of pumping efforts would thus be eliminated.”

Not only would this project stand to provide drinking water for 150 million people in the U.S., according to Gingras, the water would restore Lake Huron and Lake Michigan back to their natural levels. He said that they are both currently five meters below where they should be.

Were the project to ever go through, it could potentially generate $9.5 billion annually for the Quebec government. It would take 15 years to build and it would cost at least $15 billion.

“There would be less environmental impact because this would focus on spring flooding, not disturbing the regular flow in the river bed. This water would come from spring and fall flooding. The rivers would remain about where they are except in the spring time,” said Gingras.

The project would however involve flooding some land. About 1800 sq km would be flooded for this over a long distance, but 1000 km of it would be on Cree territory.

Though Gingras insists that the environmental impact of this project would be very low, many environmental groups are already outraged at the prospect. He also said that both Hydro-Québec and the Quebec government are not necessarily on board with the project either but that’s because this version of the project has not been discussed publicly yet.

“I don’t think this project would do that much damage. I have spent many years on this project with my friends and experts to make sure that it would be very well integrated,” said Gingras.

Chris Colvel, an environmental scientist and expert on water, does not agree with Gingras. Covel, who possesses a B.A. in Geology from the University of Massachusetts and a M.Sc. in Environmental Studies: Resource Management and Administration, has devoted 25 years of his life to working with water.

“The bottom line here is that any time you divert a drainage basin of any size, shape or form you are going to have an environmental impact. What this is proposing to do is alter the ecosystem of a huge area that is going to have a devastating and irreversible environmental impact to the entire southern Cree Nation as well as ecosystems from James Bay all the way into the U.S.,” said Covel.

According to Covel, not only would this project devastate a series of ecosystems, the Great Lakes are already experiencing huge environmental impacts from things like the zebra mussel choking up the waterways that came in on ships from other countries. In his professional opinion, the invasive species alone that would result from this type of operation coming in from the St. Lawrence Seaway up into James Bay would have such an negative impact that it would destroy the existing ecosystem and alter the ecosystems permanently to the point that they would never recover.

At that, Covel insists that the U.S. is already in possession of enough water to meet their needs and he was doubtful that the U.S. would ever sign on for such a project because of the devastating environmental impacts of the project.

Whatever happens, both Covel and Gingras pointed out that it would be the Crees who would have the last say on the project.