What is the single most important rate-limiting factor when it comes to economic development?
If you live in Northeast Ohio and have been following the Avon exchange controversy, you might think it was highways and roads. Proponents argued the new highway exchange will be a much needed stimulus to the economy; opponents argued that it contributes to sprawl and negatively affects efforts to revitalize downtown.
Both arguments contain some truth–and yet both also miss the single most important factor that enables economic development to occur in the first place: access to cheap, potable water. There could be no economic development in the area surrounding the Avon exchange if there weren’t also easy access to abundant fresh water.
Why was it that places like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and even Chattanooga became major industrial centers? Water. And lots of it.
Most attention these days is placed on developing alternative energy resources, yet even here water plays a critical role. Water plays a major role in removing carbon from the atmosphere. The quality of our water has been adversely affected by the choices we’ve made with respect to the fuels and other energy sources we use.
(Historical note with no small amount of irony: When Rockefeller first set up shop in Cleveland he developed a process for extracting kerosene, the fuel of the day, from oil. A by-product of the cracking process was gasoline. Since there was no use for gasoline at the time, Rockefeller and team simply dumped the gasoline into the Cuyahoga River…)
Everything eventually comes back to water. Our manufacturing processes depend heavily on water, and in the process have damaged the quality of our water, air, and land. Precipitation draws pollutants out of the air and puts them into our water table. It also pulls them out of the ground and deposits them in our rivers and streams.
We certainly can and need to develop alternative fuels–indeed, we have to if we want to survive–but what we can’t develop is an alternative to water.
As a result Northeast Ohio has two critically important assets that, despite continued industrial use, are woefully underutilized: Lake Erie, part of the chain of lakes that make up the largest remaining source of surface fresh water in the world (the five lakes combined account for nearly 20% of the world’s surface fresh water), and the Cuyahoga River Valley watershed–once the source of late night TV jokes but today one of the most important watershed testbeds in the world.
In our 2005 report on the possible futures Northeast Ohio might face, green/sustainable systems and new energy sources were identified as key global drivers of importance to the region. Increasingly, access to fresh water is becoming a key driver for other regions around the world. While we currently explore the feasibility of offshore wind as one possible energy solution, have demonstration solar setups at the Great Lakes Science Center and Progressive Field, have projects in the Valley focused on fuel cells, green bulkheads, alternative storm water treatments, and even a nanotechnology-based filtration company in the region, we don’t have a highly visible, focused effort around fresh water issues and solutions.
With the Port of Cleveland contemplating a move–the kind of thing that happens in a region once every hundred years or so at best–with a LEED certified development going up in the Flats District, the potential to develop offshore fresh water wind in Lake Erie, with the 50th anniversary of the river catching fire coming up in just over a decade, and with the region as a whole sitting right on the edge of the shallowest of the Great Lakes with one of the three most critical dead zones in the country, the opportunities for Northeast Ohio to be the testbed for critical fresh water research and solutions development is enormous.
And this is the most important economic development lesson I learned from my visit to Chattanooga. Water–access to it, its quality, and how it is used–is the single most critical factor to the amount of productive economic development that can take place in a region. Does that mean I think we should run out and build an aquarium? No, but we should learn from the Tennessee Aquarium’s efforts to focus on the freshwater econsystem and the watersheds that run from Chattanooga down to the Gulf.
While fresh water fish will always be fascinating to flyfishers like me, they don’t make for the most exciting aquarium exhibits, and so Chattanooga had to build on a salt water addition so people could see “all the pretty colors.” Given Chattanooga’s emphasis on developing downtown as a tourism destination, this made sense. The same for their River Walk, which is far more people-friendly than our Towpath Trail, with well-designed convenience centers that incorporate recycled materials from the region’s major industries every two miles, and exceptionally good signage that ties the city’s industrial past to its present and future direction.
We should certainly do more with design than we do (another of the key global drivers identified in the 2005 report), plagued as we are with a plethora of Soviet-era style architecture that is almost as much of a turn off in our wonderful summers as it is in our more Soviet-like winters. But the main things I took away from Chattanooga that are important to Cleveland are the following:
We know we need to boost the amount of R&D that takes place in our region. We also need to pay greater attention to design as well. The two can be done together.
We know water is the ultimate rate-limiting factor on economic development and that, while we have it in abundance today, tomorrow may well be a different story.
We know that water touches or is touched nearly every major sustainable technology in some way or another: nutrient loading from and diversions for agricultural use and neighborhood development; pollution from industrial processes; dredging to keep shipping channels open; green bulkheads to help repopulate depleted fish stocks; permeable concrete to minimize stormwater runnoff; filtration to remove contaminants; alternative energy that uses offshore wind and water movement to generate clean power; diminishing sources of fresh, clean drinking water sufficient to support growing populations…the list goes on and on.
And so it isn’t an aquarium we need, but rather a Fresh Water Institute–not a building, but a way of organizing and increasing the amount of academic research that takes place here focused on near shore and watershed loading issues in Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga, things that have universal applicability and growing importance over time. An organization that is able to focus attention on that research and raise its visibility the way Woods Hole and Scripps do for oceanic research. But even more the organizational capacity to convert what we learn from this increased academic research into commercial solutions that serve the global marketplace but are based here in Northeast Ohio.
We also need to make sure that as part of the marketing and educational pieces of this Institute that the public outreach and K-12 educational components are thoroughly integrated, so that people in the community understand the importance of these resources and our children grow up with an enthusiasm for both water and the science of making sure there will be enough fresh water for all of us in the future.
Lastly, because so much depends on how we use this essential resource, having a policy group within the Institute–a mix of legal, research, commercial, and governmental expertise–is essential. It not only can help change how we use water here, but how water is used around the world, and it also helps to elevate the visibility of both the research and the commercial development occuring in the region. Not to mention reinforcing the image of Cleveland as a “Green City on a Blue Lake,” an attractive, clean place to live and raise a family.
There were lots of other lessons I learned in Chattanooga, but for purposes of the economic development in Northeast Ohio, this is it: make better use of water as the key factor necessary for robust, successful economic development.
