Water shortages in lower 48 spur interest in Alaska [H.sup.2]O: can we build a pipeline to the rest of the U.S. to help out our southern neighbors?

• Author: Colby, Nicole A. Bonham

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Maneuvering through another day of horizontal, winter rainfall in coastal Ketchikan, it's often difficult to imagine the plight of those Lower 48 cities embroiled in high-stakes poker to secure and deliver a steady water supply to their residents.

While many regions of Alaska are advantaged with an over-abundance of the precious life spring--a landscape saturated with consistent rainfall, glacier-fed mountain pools and rivers, and the dark tannin waters of the peaty muskeg--the nation's drought-ridden population centers of the Southwest and Southeast face an uneasy water future. Currently, such metropolitan areas look to a variety of ambitious and entrepreneurial methods to replenish available water stores, from recharging groundwater aquifers to re-circulating treated effluent as residential drinking water. While a lack of water in the desert is a time-worn story, provoking some ambivalence by those in less arid corners of the country, the headlines last summer of Atlanta's dire water shortage brought home to the nation's consciousness what water managers have known for years--considerable portions of the country's water supply are over-appropriated and under-conserved.

The obvious question, broached time and again through Alaska's history, remains pertinent today: Given the disparity between water availability in the north and south, will there come a time when large projects--the scale of an oil or gas pipeline--will seem similarly feasible for transporting water? In other words, is Alaska's water its new oil, to be traded across the globe as a valuable commodity?

NOT So FAST--WATER IS DIFFERENT

To date, there is considerable industry conversation and academic debate regarding how water is historically and philosophically elevated as more than a simple natural resource commodity. Beyond the administrative or judicial controls in place at a state level to assign and manage water rights, there is a common view that water is not the same as coal, oil, natural gas, sand, gravel and other mine-able resources. For those who consider themselves in the water-as-non-commodity camp, the natural liquid is instead seen as a cultural legacy and societal lifeblood, beyond the reach of the marketplace. Others, however, argue that the world's population would benefit from a water economy, that the marketplace would yield the necessary equity and balancing. Some economists suggest that water is already a commodity, its usage...