When it is truly needed, nothing is so excruciatingly desired as water.
Those with plenty of water don't think much about it.
Those with little think of little else.
Those with no water die.
These extremes have always existed and they exist to this day.
Never in fact has so much been written by so many on the importance of water and about the dire consequences of misusing water.
A problem of expanding gravity from Los Angeles to Hong Kong, New York to Calcutta.
The people in a certain fortunate city are happy about this new and widespread interest in the welfare of water because for a long long time this city seemed to be the only one seriously interested in protecting a natural resource of far greater value than all the precious ores and gems in all the world's mountains.
For what this city has right in its front yard is the southernmost boundary of some one -third of the world's supply of fresh water.
But this city found out more than three -quarters of a century ago that just being adjacent to all of this water was not enough, not nearly enough.
So they took some very large, very expensive steps to protect their great natural resource.
Today this city has fresh, clean water in great abundance for recreation and we should note that this is the only major metropolitan area on the Great Lakes whose residents can use beaches and inshore waters freely with no fear of the effects of pollution.
This city also has ample water for navigation, ample water for industry, ample water for beauty, ample water for home use, and most fortunately of all this city has ample helpful water for drinking from any and all city taps.
This very fortunate city as you may have guessed by now is Chicago, but it is much more than a single city in this context.
It includes 114 neighbor communities to the north, west, and south of Chicago's borders.
This growing complex of communities is the major population center of the Great Midwest and those large steps started in 1889 led directly to what has become known the world over as one of the seven wonders of modern American engineering.
Now just because it's out there wide and clean and deep doesn't mean that it's all ours to use up, not by a long shot.
As a matter of fact, we use less than a third as much today as we did 35 years ago and we're a lot bigger today.
A United States Supreme Court decision in 1930 limited Chicagoland's share of Great Lakes water, officially called diversion, to 1 ,600 cubic feet per second for domestic purposes plus another 1 ,500 cubic feet per second for navigation and other non -domestic purposes.
Fortunately there is still enough for everybody's reasonable needs.
Presently it averages out to approximately 250 gallons per day per capita.
That's a lot more than most of us use personally of course, but the millions of people in Chicagoland do fill their glasses, pitchers, sinks, tubs, laundry equipment and various other containers at a great rate day and night.
But sooner or later all of us get through with the fresh, pure water we draw out for all of these personal uses.
And then what? Well you might say we just pull the plug and get rid of it.
What else? We pull the plugs all right, but we don't get rid of it.
We just start it on its way.
It comes pouring down your kitchen drain and your bathroom drain and your laundry drain.
And down the assorted drains of your neighbors and their neighbors and people you never heard of by the millions.
From basement apartments to high -rises, from cottages and mansions, hotels and motels, office buildings, schools, hospitals, department stores, you name it.
And whatever you name, down it comes.
More than a billion gallons of it every day of the year.
Put one day's total into a five -inch pipe and it would reach the moon.
All of this used water doesn't reach the moon of course.
What it does reach are the facilities of the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Greater Chicago, easily the world's largest used water dealer.
The fiscal management that has so dramatically reduced the district's taxes and bonded indebtedness is the result of a pay -as -you -go policy adopted by the Board of Trustees more than a decade ago.
But finances, though of primary importance, represent only one of many areas requiring continuous supervision by the elected trustees.
Some of the deliberations of the Board of Trustees relate to such routine but important matters as petitions by outlying communities for admission to the district.
Others are as dramatic and far -reaching as the major canal project proposed in 1965 by Colonel Frank W.
Chesrow, president of the district.
This canal would connect the Mississippi River to the Chicago area waterways, thereby producing great improvement in both flood control and navigation.
The deliberations, decisions, and management by the governing Board of Trustees cover both the long and short -range goals of the district, all directly related to protecting the health and welfare of a population now equivalent to eight million people.
Backing the Board in these endeavors is an organization of 2 ,100 people, engineers, chemists, bacteriologists, technicians, and laborers, all dedicated to the district's far -ranging responsibilities.
Today, as on every day since its inception, the district has four major responsibilities specified explicitly by the Illinois State Legislature in 1889.
Responsibility for Sanitation, the collection and disposal of all domestic and industrial wastes.
Responsibility for contaminated storm flow.
Responsibility for navigation.
Today, the district's waterways carry more cargo than either the Panama or Suez canals.
Responsibility for water protection, protection of the water supply of the metropolitan area is on all counts the most important responsibility of the sanitary district.
But each of these responsibilities is in its own way vital to the city's welfare.
The battles are far from being all one, however.
The other lake states, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York have brought suit again to reduce our diversion of Lake Michigan to what we consider an insufficient 900 cubic feet per second, with the added stipulation that we dump the treated effluent of this area back into the lake as the other lake cities do, those cities with the unusable beaches.
We will continue to wage our battles on the legal front as we have fought them on the technological, financial, and political fronts to keep our special corner of a great natural resource pure and health giving for the millions who depend on it for sustenance.
