NEWS ARTICLE from THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, By KATHERINE RIZZO, 3/15/00
WASHINGTON (AP) -- ... The International Joint Commission [IJC] recommended preemptive steps the two nations could take to impede future water entrepreneurs without actually banning big water sales.
"We have come up with a recommendation which, in my own opinion, would make it virtually impossible to come with any large-scale removal" of Great Lakes water, said Leonard Legault, chairman of the International Joint Commission's Canadian section ...
The commission concluded that despite the lakes' abundance -- 6 quadrillion gallons of water -- since only 1 percent gets replenished each year with rain and melting snow, the Great Lakes don't have a single drop to spare.
Communities along the lakes and their connecting rivers already draw out some 55 billion gallons each day for irrigation, manufacturing, electricity and drinking water. About 52 billion gallons of that remains in the Great Lakes basin, either evaporating, seeping into ground water or being discharged after treatment.
The commission suggested that any future water-using projects be required to maintain that ratio, and return into the system at least 95 percent of the amount taken out.
It also suggested the states, provinces and federal governments should require that any new large-scale water removal project first show it has no practical alternative to taking water out of the Great Lakes basin; that the region's ecosystem wouldn't be hurt; and that the destination community has instituted water conservation.
To back up the demand for conservation by potential customers, the Great Lakes states should institute their own conservation standards, the report said.
"In the charter that was signed by the two provinces and eight states in 1985, they made a commitment in that document to speak to each other and plan a conservation program for the Great Lakes," said Thomas Baldini, chairman of the IJC's American section.
"We're suggesting to them that they get on with it."
The report urged governments on both sides of the border to be cautious about acting on any water removal requests for the next 24 months, to give legislators time to get standards in place.
The commission did not suggest banning future water sales because of potential conflicts with the North American Free Trade Agreement and other international trade pacts.
However, international trade law does allow Canada and the United States to protect the Great Lakes ecosystem with measures that would apply equally to local and foreign water users.
The Council of Canadians, an environmental group, did not find that reassuring.
If an outright ban is too potentially costly under NAFTA, then NAFTA should be renegotiated, campaign coordinator Jo Dufay said from Ottawa.
"They should go beyond what the IJC is calling for," she said.
Dufay also was pessimistic about prospects for getting a water conservation standard in place in the states and provinces. "To get that level of agreement is impossible," she said.
In Washington, Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said he wasn't certain that equally applied environmental standards would protect the lakes from future water raids.
"The World Trade Organization has ruled against every environmental law that has been brought before it, pronouncing these policies barriers to trade," he said. "We need to be sure our natural resources aren't at the mercy of unaccountable trade lawyers."
Legislation has been introduced in Congress to impose a two-year moratorium on bulk water sales from the Great Lakes, but those bills have not yet advanced to the point of a committee hearing.
In Canada, legislation banning Great Lakes water exports is before the House of Commons, and the federal government has been negotiating with the provinces on a pact that would prevent bulk exports of all other Canadian water.
Canada's environment minister, David Anderson, said the IJC report "reinforces our strategy to prohibit bulk water removals, including recognition of the environmental basis for action."
The report covered only the Great Lakes, even though the IJC has authority over all of the boundary waters shared by the two nations.
On the web: The full report of the International Joint Commission is posted at http://www.ijc.org
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NEWS ARTICLE from The Chronicle-Telegram, 4-2-07, By the Associated Press
``Great Lakes water deals irk some
In 1998, an Ontario consultant sent a shudder through the Great Lakes region by proposing to ship Lake Superior water to Asia. The plan quickly sank. But it inspired the eight states and two Canadian provinces adjoining the lakes to devise a strategy for warding off raids on the system that holds nearly 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water. Their governors reached a deal in 2005, but it takes effect only if ratified by the state legislatures and Congress. In this series, Protecting the Lakes, The Associated Press examines how the pact is faring in the statehouses and why some lawmakers don't like it.
John Flesher
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- As governors of the Great Lakes states debated how to prevent outsiders from staking a claim to their precious water, advocates warned that without a deal, the region would be at the mercy of an increasingly powerful -- and thirsty -- Sun Belt. But since the eight governors shook hands on a water compact in December 2005, the loudest complaints have surfaced within the Great Lakes region itself, where people find it easier to say "no" to Arizona than to restrain their own appetites.
With limited exceptions, the accord would prohibit diverting water from the lakes and the rivers linking them, which together hold nearly 20 percent of the world's fresh surface supply. That's a popular idea across a watershed extending more than 2,300 miles from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River to the Lake Superior port of Duluth, Minn.
What many don't like is that the compact also instructs the Great Lakes states to regulate their water use and adopt conservation plans, in keeping with regional standards. The rules could affect virtually anything requiring lots of water, from sewage treatment to irrigation to manufacturing cars.
That explains why the pact has been approved by lawmakers in just one state -- Minnesota, where it passed in February, although the Illinois House and Senate were preparing to vote. It takes effect only with ratification by all eight legislatures and Congress.
Bills are pending in Indiana and Michigan but aren't close to enactment. The compact imposes no deadline, and supporters say they're confident it will be ratified. But the longer the delay, they say, the greater the risk of losing control over their water.
"It's OK to take a year or two to sort this out, but then they'd better buckle down and get on the same page," said Noah Hall, an environmental law professor at Wayne State University. "The real attacks are going to come in Congress, from states outside the region who don't want to see the Great Lakes locked up." Skeptics doubt the supposed threat from arid regions. Shipping or piping water over such distances would pose staggering costs and engineering challenges, they say.
Still, "the time to put in place good water management is when you don't have a problem," said George Kuper, president of the Council of Great Lakes Industries, which represents the likes of Dow Chemical Co. and U.S. Steel Corp.
The governors began negotiations in 2001, concerned that a federal law empowering any of them to veto proposed diversions wouldn't survive if challenged in court.
Legal experts said an interstate compact treating the lakes, their connecting channels and the streams and groundwater feeding them as one shared system would be more defensible ...
"It's based on the idea that how people use water in places like Duluth and Green Bay has an impact on people in Cleveland and Toronto, and they all ought to have a say," said Todd Ambs, water administrator for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
One of the toughest issues is playing out in Wisconsin, where a legislative panel is struggling over a plan for implementing the compact: what to do about communities within Great Lakes states but outside the lakes' drainage basin.
Although just 15 miles west of Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha is barely on the other side of the natural divide. Its wells are contaminated, and local officials want to tap into the lake.
The compact might allow it, because Waukesha is part of a county that straddles the watershed boundary. But it requires unanimous consent of the eight states' governors, which the city considers an unfair burden. The Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce is lobbying to amend the compact so one state can't veto diversions to straddling counties.
"Our argument is not to eliminate the compact. Our argument is to make sure it's fair," said Brian Nemoir, the chamber's leader on the issue. Illinois and Michigan have little incentive to approve diversions to growing communities in Wisconsin, their competitors for industry and jobs, Nemoir said. He noted that when New Berlin, Wis., floated the idea of a diversion last year, Michigan officials quickly turned thumbs down.
Compact supporters said Michigan, itself almost entirely within the basin, acted properly. Diversions shouldn't be allowed until the compact is ratified, they said. Even then, the bar should be high to discourage runaway sprawl and limit how much water escapes the basin.
"Otherwise, you open the floodgates," said Cameron Davis, president of the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes. The basin's other straddlers are watching the situation closely -- including large cities such as Indiana's Fort Wayne and South Bend. Akron, Ohio, already gets water from a diversion but under the compact would need its state's permission to expand it.
Ohio is another battleground. State Sen. Tim Grendell, an outspoken property rights advocate, wants the states to renegotiate parts of the compact -- particularly its declaration that Great Lakes waters are held in public trust ...
The pact also grants excessive powers to a regional council that could undermine state sovereignty by preventing them from using water for economic development, he said. Compact supporters said it honors existing rights under state and federal law. The public trust doctrine has been settled law since the late 1800s and simply balances the needs of individuals and society, said Hall, the Wayne State professor.
Either way, Grendell raised enough concern to stall the compact in the Ohio Senate last year after it cleared the House with strong backing from outgoing Republican Gov. Bob Taft.
In New York, lame-duck Gov. George Pataki's support couldn't overcome Senate distaste for a provision allowing private citizens to sue government agencies over failure to enforce the pact's environmental standards. A lawyer's bonanza, critics said.
Sen. George Maziarz, a Niagara County Republican planning to sponsor a ratification bill this year, says the compact grants no more access to the courts than citizens enjoy under other environmental laws. Still, the threat of litigation would deter "back scratching among the states -- you approve my diversion and I'll approve yours," said Davis of the Alliance for the Great Lakes ...
Two Canadian provinces -- Ontario and Quebec -- are within the Great Lakes watershed. Because they couldn't legally make treaties with the states, both sides signed a nonbinding agreement nearly identical to the compact.
Supporters say the compact gives states flexibility to handle local concerns in their own water-use rules. They want legislators to approve it as written by the governors, saying amendments could make it unravel.
"The governors looked at all these issues and found ways to delicately handle them," said Molly Flanagan, a Great Lakes specialist with the National Wildlife Federation in Ann Arbor. "Now is not the time to renegotiate the deal. Now is the time to get it done."''
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EDITORIAL from The Plain Dealer, 1-2-08
``Failure of Ohio Senate to prevent legal larceny' of Great Lakes water would be unconscionable
Within a matter of weeks, the Ohio House will again take decisive action to protect Northeast Ohio's most precious asset -- its bountiful supply of fresh water.
This deja vu moment will come a little more than two years after the House voted 82-5 to approve a compact with other Great Lakes states designed to prevent other parts of the country from raiding the Earth's largest supply of fresh water.
In many parts of the West and the Southwest, booming economies are running out of the water they need to sustain their growth. They're already angling to tap into the mother of all fresh water supplies -- ours.
A federal law passed in 1986 supposedly prevents other parts of the country from taking Great Lakes water, but many legal experts call that protection a "paper wall" that would not withstand a constitutional challenge.
That is why the eight Great Lakes governors agreed more than two years ago to an agreement designed to withstand any legal challenge -- a compact that would drastically restrict the ability of other states to siphon off any of our 6 quadrillion gallons (that's 15 zeroes) of fresh water.
But legislatures in those states must first approve the compact. Three states have done so, and momentum is building for passage by state legislatures in two more -- Michigan and Wisconsin.
Then there's Ohio.
After the House first approved the compact, it died in the Senate, largely due to opposition from State Sen. Tim Grendell, whose district includes all of Geauga and Lake counties, and part of Cuyahoga. Grendell ... [has] complained the compact threatens private property rights -- a claim most dismiss. Nevertheless, the compact's main sponsor in the House, State Rep. Matthew Dolan of Geauga County, says the new version he introduced Dec. 18 [2007] will include even more protections for property owners.
Gov. Ted Strickland is a strong supporter of the compact, as is anyone who cares even a little bit about Northeast Ohio's future.
As the Traverse City (Mich.) Record-Eagle said in a Dec. 21 [2007] editorial, this compact is imperative to protect the Great Lakes states from "legal larceny and other threats." It continued, "The surest way to control our own destiny is to have the clout needed to fend off future water raids."
In Ohio, the Senate cannot allow crackpot conspiracy theories to hold hostage this state's future. Of all of Ohio's assets, none comes close to matching the importance of our abundant supply of fresh water.
And there is no place in public life for elected officials who would put at risk the future of that water supply. ''
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF AVON, OHIO, TO 1974
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