Gone Surfing  

As the end of the year is approaching its time for Peak Energy to take a break and hopefully spend a few sunny days on the beach somewhere. Hope you all have a great Xmas and New Year and thanks for dropping by.

I'll leave you with this surfing tale from the shores of Lake Erie - these guys are clearly on a plane of their own when it comes to surfing ...

They surf in Cleveland because they must. They surf with two-inch icicles clinging to their wet suits, through stinging hail and overpowering wind. They work nights to spend their winter days scouting surf. They are watermen on an inland sea.

Given its industrial past, Cleveland largely turns its back to Lake Erie, lining the coast with power plants, a freeway and mounds of iron ore to feed its steel factories. The shore is especially deserted in winter, when strong winds and waves pummel the land. In December, as temperatures dip into the 20s and ice gathers in the lake’s small coves, Cleveland surfers have Lake Erie almost entirely to themselves.

“Surfing Lake Erie is basically disgusting,” said Bill Weeber, known as Mongo, 44. “But then I catch that wave and I forget about it, and I feel high all day.”

Scott Ditzenberger hoped to experience the same feeling when he heard that the first blizzard of the winter was pounding across the Midwest.

“I was so excited I could barely sleep last night,” said Mr. Ditzenberger, 35, who quit his job as a lawyer in August to spend more time surfing and to film a documentary about Cleveland’s surf community.

It was the kind of day that lives mostly in Cleveland surfers’ fantasies. Pushed by the storm’s winds, water the color of chocolate milk rose 10 feet in the air before slamming onto a beach of boulders and logs. The temperature was 40 degrees and falling. One surfer, Vince Labbe, climbed onto his board only to get blown backward by 40-mile-an-hour winds.

Mike Miller, known as Chewbacca, managed to tuck his head and left shoulder into the barrel of a wave before being crushed by a wall of water.

“I haven’t seen a break this good in 10 years,” Mr. Ditzenberger said.

Go ahead and laugh. Cleveland surfers are used to it.

The Great Lakes have had a rough ride over the last century. From fish kills to flaming rivers, the globe's largest concentration of fresh water has borne the brunt of the Rust Belt's rise and fall. Most folks in Chicago only concern themselves with the Great Lakes during summer heat waves, when boating and beaches beckon.

However, the hydrological assets of the Great Lakes are astoundingly valuable. Alan Atkisson wrote on Worldchanging in 2004 that water conservation may well prove to be the defining environmental effort over the next few decades. The water in Lake Michigan, for example, is poised to become Chicago's greatest natural resource in the future and a key element of the city's evolving economy. Safeguarding the supply of fresh water to our east is rapidly becoming essential to the future of Chicago and other Lake cities.

According to Great Lakes Forever, a nonprofit dedicated to furthering education and conservation efforts around the Lakes, about 5,000 gallons of water are lost annually for every one of the Great Lakes basin's 33 million residents, which is equivalent to 157 billion gallons of water forever lost from the region's watershed. So not only must we clean and purify the water remaining in the Lakes, but we must also watch over and cultivate its healthy renewal.

An article in Rachel's Democracy & Health News by Tim Montague spotlights exactly what's been done over the years, both to damage and repair the Great Lakes system. According to the article, the management of the Lakes in the last century can best be categorized as a series of missed opportunities. Vague laws and lackluster enforcement resulted in a narrowly averted catastrophe – and we're not out of the woods yet.

But unlike many other environmental causes, the Great Lakes have a relatively powerful advocate out front. The International Joint Commission, a US-Canadian governing entity established by the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, has been increasing its calls for more regulation and conservation of the Great Lakes. The commission has even taken the important and unusual step of calling for the elimination of all substances for which health and environmental information is still uncertain.

Most importantly, the IJC recently called for an entirely new rendition of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. The 1972 legislation was well-intentioned but doomed to fail when the US Congress and the Canadian Parliament refused to ratify it. The new Agreement advocated by the IJC is streamlined and forward-thinking – but Rachel's article suggests as much as $20 billion will be required to return the Great Lakes to something approaching a sustainable development path.

There's no doubt the Great Lakes will be part of the Midwest's worldchanging future, but will that future see the Great Lakes as a rusty reminder of our industrial past or a shining example of resource management on a grand scale?