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Drip, Drip: Enough Water To Fill The Soo Locks A Few Times

Peter Payette

Water drips through my kitchen sink all day every day, like many others in the region, to keep my underground pipes from freezing.

For a month or so, we've let it flow at the width of a pencil lead. Some run water advisories are in effect until mid-April.

So just how much water is going through there?

I stuck a plastic gallon milk jug under the flow and timed it. I calculated that I’m running about 90 gallons a day. That's about two bathtubs of water run right down the drain daily.

Now, that doesn't sound like that much when I look out and see a snow bank almost up to my garage roof, but I'm not alone. There are 41 cities and villages in the northern Lower Peninsula asking people to leave a faucet running.

The city of Cadillac figures its residents run enough water to fill its one million gallon water tower every two days.

And here in Michigan, it makes financial sense to let it run. Water is plentiful and frozen pipes are expensive. But we're also using lots of electricity to cycle water through the wastewater treatment system.

"They have to clean up clean water," says Jeff Dietlin, Cadillac's water director.

At Cadillac's rate, northern Lower Peninsula towns are dribbling away 121 railroad tankers of clean water every day. In less than two weeks, it's enough to fill up both of the Soo Locks.

That's not even counting the people who live in the country and have private wells. They may be especially motivated to keep their taps running; since the pipes they save may be their own.

Having the water to do that is a luxury. In other parts of the world water is like gold or oil, says Carl Ganter, director of Circle of Blue, a non-profit news agency devoted to global water issues.

"I was recently in India, where they don't have access to safe drinking water, much of the population," he says. "Even in southern California, we're facing a major water crisis."

But even in terms of the relatively modest water and sewer rates in northern Michigan, we’re trickling away more than $400,000 dollars of water per month.

And what does that look like?

Credit New York State Parks

Picture Horseshoe Falls at Niagara: $400,000 of Michigan water would keep the falls thundering over for two minutes and 17 seconds. We do it one pencil-thin stream at a time.