Water withdrawals from the Great Lakes declined in 2023.
According to the Annual Report of the Great Lakes Regional Water Use Database, 35.4 billion gallons of water per day were withdrawn from the Great Lakes basin in 2023.
The report’s authors say that is about a 13% decrease from 2022 withdrawals.
Michigan represents about a fifth of that total, or roughly 7.2 billion gallons a day.
The water withdrawals were used for a variety of purposes, including thermoelectric power production, public water supply, and industrial use.
However, just over 5% of the total reported water withdrawn was consumed or otherwise lost from the Great Lakes Basin. So the vast majority of the water withdrawals were returned.
“With storm events and other effects of the weather increasing, we need to know the current status of our water to ensure abundant clean water resources for future generations,” said Mary Mertz, Great Lakes Commission (GLC) chair and director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
The GLC has been collecting water withdrawal data from the eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces that border the Great Lakes since 2008.
There is an estimated 6.5 quadrillion gallons of fresh water in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River basin.
