“The Case for Selling Our Water” – second of two excerpts from new book by Chris Wood
Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America
The Tyee has published two excerpts from Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America, the new book by Chris Wood.
In his second excerpt, Chris Wood observes that we Canadians are damn serious about “our” water.
Wood notes that iIt’s a source of pride for a national ego otherwise notoriously wracked by doubt.
So, he says let’s give ourselves a shake here because: there is virtually no likelihood that the U.S. will suddenly decide to twist our tap and drain us dry.
And despite that general truth, should a few local opportunities arise here and there to sell modest quantities of water to Americans,Wood believes that doing so wouldn’t trigger the kind of continental demand for every drop of our water that activists invoke.
Our water has in fact flowed south by truck and pipeline for years notes Wood, and yet no stampede of NAFTA-quoting claimants has appeared at the border demanding to stick a pipe in Lake Athabasca.
There’s more. If Americans or others do arrive at Canada’s door with checkbooks and empty billycans, Wood states that we shouldn’t send them away.
To read the complete excerpt in the Tyee, click on this link to The Case for Selling Our Water. To download a copy, click here.
To view the first excerpt in the two-part series, click on this link to They Don’t Want Our Water .
An Introduction to Chris Wood
A full-time writer for over twenty-five years, Chris Wood contributed radio documentaries to CBC and articles to a string of national print publications before joining the staff of Maclean’s in 1985. As National Editor, Business Editor, U.S. and later Pacific-rim correspondent, as national technology 
correspondent and a senior writer, Wood contributed scores of cover and inside stories to the magazine. He also managed numerous special projects. For more information on the career accomplishments of Chris Wood, please click here.
Chris Wood is based in B.C.’s Cowichan Valley.In 2006 he wrote a series for The Tyee on global warming and B.C., supported by a $5,000 Tyee Investigative Reporting Fellowship.
Acknowledgment:
The Tyee is an independent publication that went online in November 2003. According to David Beers, Editor, “We’re dedicated to publishing lively, informative news and views, not dumbed down fluff. We, like the tyee salmon for which we are named, roam free and go where we wish.” Over the past three years, The Tyee has attracted some of the best journalists in B.C. who have broken many important stories.
Posted June 2008