Despite Abundance, New Talk About Limits

Until two years ago, Mecosta County (Big Rapids, MI) was notable for nothing more or less than the decent state university campus here and 40,000 generally well-behaved Midwesterners who regularly attend church and send their children off to school on yellow buses. They never for a moment worried that the clean, fresh water flowing past their homes or from their taps would ever run dry. Mecosta County, after all, sits squarely in the middle of the largest supply of fresh water on earth.Then came the water war.