Such laws could link the fate of the Great Lakes with that of, for example, rainwater in Sitka, Alaska. By June, Global Water Corp., a Vancouver company, expects to begin shipping fresh Alaskan rainwater in 50,000-ton tankers to China and the Middle East. The deal has caught the attention of Great Lakes advocates, including Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan, who worries that removing fresh water in bulk from any U.S. site could make all of the country's fresh water vulnerable to trade agreements such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the North American Free Trade Agreement. If the Nova Group had sold water from Lake Superior, all Great Lakes water might have been established as a commodity, and because of the nondiscriminatory nature of trade laws, other companies would be allowed to sell that water, too. The idea that once one company sells bulk water other companies will have the right to ''go in there and scoop vast amounts of the Great Lakes is just plain silly,'' said Milos Barutciski, a trade law attorney in Toronto.
Trade agreements have measures allowing members to prevent further export and protect resources.
Whether and how trade agreements affect Great Lakes water is as murky as the lakes themselves, because of restrictions, exemptions and differences of interpretation. But if the United States and Canada do not get a grip on the trade issues soon, advocates fear, the lakes' fate will be out of the hands of legislators and in the hands of the economists who sit on international trade tribunals. Those figures are alarming. By 2050, some parts of the world are expected to have 70 percent less water per capita than in 1995, and nearly half of the world's countries are projected to have 50 percent less water per capita, the result of population growth and water consumption. Globally, the single greatest environmental crisis that faces humankind in the next century will be the availability of drinking water.