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Comment by jdhn | Hacker News Reader

They're building the plant near Columbus, which isn't near the Great Lakes. If they wanted Great Lakes water they would've chosen Cleveland, which is very close to Lake Erie.

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Are you from California? It rains a ton in that part of the country, water is not scarce. It’s hard for Californians to wrap their heads around but water is not universally rare.

> Cleveland, which is very close to Lake Erie.

It's on the shore of Lake Erie. If it were any closer to Lake Erie it would be underwater!

Lake Erie is not so far from Columbus: When I was a prof at Ohio State, my wife and I would go to Lake Erie just for a pleasant Saturday afternoon. So we'd go to Cleveland, ..., Sandusky, etc.

Semantically, damning water in the Great Lakes Watershed (how Columbus get's its water) is not THAT different from letting that water flow into Lake Erie and then piping it back.

Point being, Ohio has very few long-term drought concerns.

Columbus is not in the Lake Erie watershed. It is in the Ohio River watershed. The Great Lakes Compact does not allow Columbus to get its water from Lake Erie.

There are actually extremely specific and intense rules about which parts of the country can take water from the great lakes and what burdens they incur when they do.

It's not necessarily aligned with any specific jurisdictions either, I believe it's largely based on the boundaries of the watersheds. Or at least where the boundary was ascertained to be at some point.

So yes it's very different, regardless of the semantics(?).

The idea that the Great Lakes are going to be tapped to solve water problems outside the watershed is fall flat when they realize those Great Lakes states aren't going to sell off access like that.

I remember some moonshot proposal to pipe the water to the Southwest, which is wild.

There might be redirecting (or excessive drawing) of tributaries though.

It's surprising, actually, how small the Great Lakes watershed is, compared to the surface area of the lakes. You really aren't going to get much of anything from tributaries; if you want some of the water you draw it from the lakes.

> Semantically, damning water in the Great Lakes Watershed (how Columbus get's its water)

Wrong. Columbus gets most of its water from the Scioto River, part of the Ohio/Mississippi River watershed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scioto_River

You might be thinking about Cleveland instead, but I don't think anyone dares drink from the Cuyahoga River, since its had a history of catching fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River

Akron’s reservoir is on the Cuyahoga River just North of Kent. Though this is far upstream from “catching fire” location.

https://www.akronohio.gov/cms/Water/Watershed_Cuyahoga/index...

Is this the same Kent, Ohio that Nestle uses to bottles their water with? I may be mistaken here.

The Cuyahoga is pretty darn clean these days.

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