maria ines zamudio, an investigative reporter with wbez in chicago joined sc recently to s the findings. r> we found that the cost of water in the geat lakes region has increased dramatically. in somcacities, like co, the cost has tripled. and in other cities, like detroit and cleveland, the cost has ubled. and so, what we wanted to find out is how the acces w toer is compared to other areas. so we compared it to phoenix, arizona, which is a city that gets most of its water from the colorado river, about 200 milesy and we found that the cost of water in phoenix is actually a lot-- a lot less than the cities acrosshe great lakes region. >> sreenivasan: so you've got itcity that's in the desert and getting its water from 200 miles away, and that's still cheaper than a cityhat's on the great lakes adjacent to one of the largest resources of fresh water at america has. so give me an idea. like, for a family of four, what kind of money are we talking about? >> so we calculated the average usst for a family of four, assuming they e about 50 gallons of water per person, per day. sand so one of