The sixth great lake

LAWRENCE BASIN Alice Cohen Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support through the Water Policy Fellowship program at the Walter and Duncan Gordon foundation, as well as the support of the Sierra Club of Canada, the Program on Water Governance at the Uni- versity of British Columbia, and the time and expertise of those who were consulted. [...] The comprises the largest concentration of report focuses on the Canadian side of the unfrozen fresh surface water in the western basin, and, more specifically, on the On- hemisphere,2 about 5,500 cubic miles or tario portion of the Canadian side. [...] In basin; addition to the Great Lakes, there are over 2. To present a ‘snapshot’ of the current 80,000 smaller lakes5, thousands of rivers state of groundwater knowledge and and streams that flow into the them, and a policy in the Canadian (and specifically considerable ground water system, estimat- Ontario) side of the basin; ed to be roughly the size of Lake Michigan 3. To overlay this ‘snapshot [...] Great Lakes both directly, through the •. The Great Lakes Charter Annex banks and the base of the lakes (“direct Agreement (2001, signed by Ontario ground water discharge”), and also indi- in 2005) aims to “conserve the levels rectly through streams and rivers that then and flows of the Great Lakes and their flow into the Great Lakes (“indirect ground tributary and connecting waters” and water dis [...] Lawrence Basin tive programs and management of In terms of quality, then, it appears the the water resources of the Great most relevant piece of groundwater protec- Lakes Basin by the signatory States tion – Annex 16 of the GLWQA – is not and Provinces; to make secure and meeting its intended goals.