Water Diversion Candidates in Wisconsin Lobby for Unlikely Changes to Great Lakes Compact
February 29, 08 by TheFleetIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
By DARRYL ENRIQUEZ | Source: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Waukesha - Two Waukesha County leaders said Thursday that state legislation on the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact should not be rushed through the current legislative session because of concerns that it would allow competing states to use the agreement to squelch growth in Wisconsin.
“It’s worth taking more time to get it right,” Waukesha County Executive Daniel Vrakas said.
Speaking at a forum sponsored by the Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce, Vrakas further suggested that governors of the eight Great Lake states could be forced to make changes to the compact if they really wanted it to pass in Wisconsin. The goal is to eventually send the compact to Congress for a vote to make it national law.
Vrakas’ comments drew quick responses from other speakers who stressed that Great Lakes governors would not change the compact that had taken years to draft and already had been passed by four of the eight states.
Panelist Peter McAvoy, vice president for environmental health at the Sixteenth Street Community Clinic in Milwaukee, defended the compact, saying it provides clear standards on how to obtain permission for diversions, something the current law governing Great Lakes use does not.
“Opening the compact at this point doesn’t make sense,” McAvoy said.
Draft legislation with 153 pages was introduced to the state Legislature last week.
The forum discussed efforts to craft a compact that establishes water conservation measures and policies that govern water withdrawals from within and outside the Great Lakes drainage basin.
The panelists were Vrakas; McAvoy; Waukesha Mayor Larry Nelson; and Matt Moroney, director of the Metropolitan Builders Association of Greater Milwaukee.
Moroney echoed Vrakas’call to slow passage of the compact.
“We cannot afford to not do it right,” Moroney said. “Instead of blowing it up, as I have been accused of wanting for the whole concept, make some surgical revisions. We’ve got to take time and do this right.”
Moroney and Vrakas spoke of their mutual angst with a compact provision that allows one governor to veto a water diversion proposed for another state. Instead, they want diversions ruled by a simple majority vote.
Moroney said that Michigan, which is almost totally in the basin and does not need diversions, has a history of turning down diversion requests made by other states. Illinois already has an exemption for 2.1 billion gallons a day that it takes from the lake and does not have to return to Lake Michigan.
Neither state has the impetus to approve diversion requests, and the compact must provide a level playing field for Waukesha County, one of the economic engines of Wisconsin, Vrakas said.
McAvoy said the compact must be passed quickly to enable Great Lakes states to ward off threats of other thirsty areas of the country trying to tap into one of the lakes for much-needed water.
McAvoy said past efforts to divert water, including shipping it to a mine in Wyoming, have been defeated. Other efforts keep coming, he said, including talk of an Alabama community that wants Illinois to direct more Lake Michigan water to the Mississippi River, where it can be captured farther south and sent to the Alabama community via a water pipe.
Nelson said Waukesha needs the compact approved quickly so it can move on its need to either apply for a diversion from Lake Michigan or sink a new well field in western Waukesha County. The city, which lies just outside of the Great Lakes drainage basin, needs a source of clean water to replace ailing wells that tap into radium-infused deep ground water.
Waukesha, if it wants lake water, would submit what he called a model application, complete with effective conservation measures and a plan to return the water.
“We would show that the compact does work,” he said.
If there was an arbitrary denial by a single governor, Waukesha would then have a good case to appeal the decision or reverse the decision in court, Nelson said.
