are hotter, winters colder, and regional precipitation patterns have

changed.

In recent years, as Great Lakes officials have contemplated a

new water-management system, the Aral Sea disaster has been in-

voked repeatedly by environmentalists and others as an ecological

rallying cry—an example of what not to become. “Even the grand-

est of resources have dried-up or fallen to misuse,” declared the en-

vironmental group Clean Wisconsin in a 2004 press release.

2

“Consider the vivid examples of the Aral Sea in Central Asia and

the Colorado River in [the] Southwestern United States.” Because

many Great Lakes residents who refer to the Aral Sea know little

about it, and because most have never been there, this chapter at-

tempts to provide a firsthand look at the Aral Sea’s desiccation.

The purpose of this chapter is not to “prove” or “allege” that an

Aral-like draining of the Great Lakes is in the offing, but rather to

shed light on a place that is often referred to, but little understood.

That way, as officials contemplate passage of the Great Lakes water

Compact, regional citizens can decide for themselves whether there

are any lessons to be learned from the Aral Sea’s destruction.

v

S TA N D I N G   I N   T H E   M I D D L E

of the seafloor in a place where the

water was once forty-five feet deep, the magnitude of the disaster

can be difficult to grasp—nothing but sand stretches off to the hori-

zon in all directions. Photos cannot capture the true extent of this

ecological calamity; it even challenges the bounds of the written

word. The Aral has receded so far that it takes more than five hours

of driving on the old seabed in a four-wheel-drive vehicle to get

from Muynak, on the old south shore, to the edge of what’s left of

the shrunken Aral—a distance of more than sixty miles. Yes, there

is still water in the Aral, but since 1960 the sea has shrunk to one-

fourth its original surface area, and the water continues to fall by

nearly two vertical feet per year. Islands have become peninsulas,

peninsulas have become dry hills, and former sunken islands have

emerged from the surface to split the old Aral into two water

bodies—the “Large” Aral to the south and the “Small” Aral to the

T h e   A r a l   E x p e r i m e n t

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