“The Great Lakes Water Wars”: Will Erie Fight?

The Speaker Series at Penn State Behrend 

The Erie region sits atop the planet’s largest reserve of fresh surface water. How much—if any—of this precious resource do we want to share with our less hydrologically-fortunate neighbors?

Growing pressure to divert Great Lakes water to urban sprawls in the drier southern and western regions of the country will be the topic of a Speaker Series event at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. Former Newsweek journalist Peter Annin, author of the book “The Great Lakes Water Wars,” will discuss historical and expected water-sharing controversies and other environmental pressures on the Great Lakes on Monday, Feb. 18. His talk will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Reed Auditorium, located on the second floor of the college’s Reed Union Building; admission is free and open to the public.

Annin currently is managing director of the University of Notre Dame’s Environmental Change Initiative, which studies the interrelated impacts of invasive species, land use and climate change on our nation’s water resources. In a decade spent as a correspondent at Newsweek, he covered domestic terrorism and the radical right, including the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City and the Branch Davidian standoff outside Waco, Texas, in addition to environmental topics.

Since 2004 Annin also has served as the volunteer executive director of Gull Rock Lightkeepers, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring Gull Rock Lighthouse, a Lake Superior light 2.5 miles off Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula.

The “Great Lakes Water Wars” Speaker Series event is supported by Penn State Behrend’s School of Science, the Student Activity Fee, the Division of Student Affairs, and the Harriet Behrend Ninow Memorial Lecture Series Fund. For additional information, contact the Office of Student Activities at 814-898-6171.