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DAM-L Governors Curb Use Of Great Lakes Water: Canadians Join Plans (fwd)
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From: Right to Water <right-to-water@iatp.org>
To: dianne@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca
Subject: Governors Curb Use Of Great Lakes Water: Canadians Join Plans
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 13:40:07 -0500
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Right to Water (right-to-water@iatp.org) Posted: 06/19/2001 By svarghese@iatp.org
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Governors Curb Use Of Great Lakes Water: Canadians Join Plans to Limit
Diversions
By William Claiborne
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 19, 2001; Page A02
CHICAGO, June 18 -- The governors of the eight states that border the Great
Lakes today approved agreements aimed at curtailing exports of water to
inland municipalities, including arid regions that covet the resources of a
basin that contains a fifth of the world's fresh surface water.
While they did not ban such water diversions completely -- international
trade laws appear to make such a measure illegal -- state leaders made them
more difficult. Any proposal to send water inland would require governors
to consider whether the diversion is environmentally sound; necessary to
protect public health, safety and welfare; and likely to harm the quantity
and quality of the waters and tributaries of the Great Lakes.
The governors, joined by the premiers of the Canadian provinces of Ontario
and Quebec, also signed a wide-ranging but nonbinding plan to spell out
regional water management laws that governments on both sides of the border
would like to establish in the next three years.
New York Gov. George E. Pataki (R) called the amendment to the 16-year-old
charter of the Council of Great Lakes Governors "a road map for ensuring
the continued protection of the Great Lakes."
Meeting in Niagara Falls, N.Y., the governors unanimously discarded an
earlier proposal that diversions of up to 1 million gallons of drinking
water a day be exempted from stringent review. The state leaders agreed
that the smallest diversions should be scrutinized as thoroughly as the
largest.
A million gallons a day, while small compared to the drinking water intake
of large cities such as Chicago, is enough to supply a town of about 8,000
people. While the exemption would have primarily benefited smaller
communities within the Great Lakes drainage basin that have problems with
their groundwater supplies, environmentalists said the cumulative effect of
many diversions could eventually be ruinous to lakes in which water levels
have been steadily falling for years.
Environmentalists recalled that in the mid-1980s, municipalities in Arizona
and California seriously considered proposals to import vast quantities of
Great Lakes water -- via rivers, canals and pipelines -- to alleviate their
water supply problems.
The threat of diversions reached a peak in 1998 when a Canadian company
proposed exporting 158 million gallons of Lake Superior water by tankers to
Asia. The deal fell through under intense international pressure, but the
concept of exporting Great Lakes water to other regions of the United
States and the world has occasionally been considered.
Cameron Davis, executive-director of the Lake Michigan Federation, said
today's agreement "recognizes the notion that a lot of little straws are
just as bad as one big pipeline," and that the exemption would set a
precedent that could be exploited by larger buyers.
Noting that less than 1 percent of Great Lakes water is replenished each
year, Davis said it was important that the governors backed away from the
principle of automatic approval of modest water diversions and had
"signaled their intention to move in the right direction."
The diversion issue is critically important right now because reduced ice
packs in Lake Superior over recent winters have dropped water levels in
lakes Michigan and Huron to their lowest points in nearly 40 years.
The last approved diversion of drinking water from the Great Lakes occurred
in 1998 when Akron, Ohio, won approval to pipe in 3.4 million gallons daily
from Lake Erie. Environmentalists said the Akron diversion probably would
not have met the guidelines approved today.
Five major diversions are in place, the largest of which is the 2.1 billion
gallons that are taken each day from Lake Michigan at Chicago. Half the
water is for drinking and the rest is used to reverse the flow of the
Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The diverted water winds up in the
Mississippi River.
"Some might say this is not a serious problem because right now there are
no serious [export] proposals in front of us. But if there's ever a serious
drought elsewhere in the United States, you can be sure there will be
serious proposals," said Michael J. Donahue, president of the Great Lakes
Commission, a binational agency that promotes the protection of the Great
Lakes.
Donahue said that Great Lakes conservationists have learned from past court
cases that "you can't just say 'No.' You need to come up with
scientifically sound and defensible arguments, and that is what [the
governors] have tried to do."
Donahue and Davis characterized today's agreement as a significant step in
a continuing process. Davis said that the broad declaration of intent
approved by the governors, called "Annex 2001," which amends the council's
1985 Great Lakes charter, was important because it will "drive water use
decisions far into the future."
Reg Gilbert, senior coordinator at Great Lakes United, a coalition of 170
U.S. and Canadian groups working to protect the lakes, said that while the
annex and the diversion resolution contain some weaknesses, "on balance
they improve the region's protections against bulk water removals . . . and
appear to make diversions somewhat less likely."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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