Compact may not stop water wars

Critics say Great Lakes legislation doesn’t protect against commercialization of water

The Great Lakes Compact may be headed for Congressional approval, but stormy waters could still lie ahead. The Compact agreement is intended to protect against misuse of the Great Lakes.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed it last week and it appears headed to Congress where it is expected to pass. But some observers say it will not stop water wars within the Great Lakes region and that more must be done to plug water-diversion loopholes.

The Great Lakes contain 90 percent of the fresh surface water in the U.S.

The Great Lakes Compact is the result of a request from Congress to the states in the region to come up with an agreement on how to manage water to keep it in the basin. It has received bipartisan support and broad approval but it does not counter the trend of treating water as a product, it doesn’t limit the export of water in containers, and some argue that it doesn’t impose adequate in-state consumption limits.

Continued -Environmentalist blogger Dave Dempsey had this reaction to Governor Granholm’s signing of the bill:

A great deal of hard work went into these bills and this compact. It’s tragic that the architects of this work are overselling this as some kind of solution to the problem of control and conservation of Great Lakes water. It’s not. The new policies are about as effective in stopping water loss as caulking the floor of a bathtub but forgetting to insert the drain plug.

Dempsey has been a prominent advocate for including language in the compact that emphasizes water should be conserved as a resource in the public trust. On his blog, Dempsey has proposed some alternate language for the Great Lakes Compact.

Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, like Dempsey, has spoken out with concerns that the compact’s failure to regulate the export of water in containers smaller than 5.7 gallons is a loophole that could open up vast tracts of Michigan water to commercialization.

A spokesman for Stupak has said that he has not yet decided whether to support the Great Lakes Compact in Congress.

Environmental lawyer Jim Olson has represented the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation in their battle to stop the Nestle corporation form harming the watershed with withdrawals for their Ice Mountain bottling plant in Stanwood.

“[The agreement] wasn’t intended to turn water into a private commodity or to privatize water, and there’s a huge risk that the compact does exactly that,” Olson said in an interview with Circle of Blue.

This is what he had to say about the Michigan water-use language tied to the compact:

“