Turmoil Over Great Lakes Water Pact

The governors of the eight Great Lakes states worked for four years to write a plan that would protect their abundant water from being piped south to regions where booming populations face dwindling water supplies.

But the sharpest attacks on the proposed regional compact are coming not from the distant Sun Belt but from within the Great Lakes states themselves as the plan is submitted to legislators for ratification.

Some communities in the eight states say the compact's strict limits on water diversion could leave them high and dry....

The longer the delay, they say, the greater the risk of losing control over the lakes - which, with their connecting channels and the St. Lawrence River, hold nearly 20 percent of the world's fresh surface 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 the thirsty Sun Belt, saying shipping or piping water over such distances would have staggering costs and engineering challenges.

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 companies such as Dow Chemical Co. and U.S. Steel Corp.

Despite the difficulties, grandiose diversion schemes have surfaced, including one entrepreneur's 1998 proposal to send tankers of Lake Superior water to Asia.

That idea quickly evaporated. But it inspired the governors to devise the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, which treats the lakes and associated groundwater as one shared system.

It outlaws new or increased diversions, with limited exceptions, and also requires each state to adopt a conservation plan and regulate its own water use in keeping with common standards.

The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec weren't included because U.S. states can't make treaties with foreign nations, but they signed a similar, nonbinding agreement....

Among the issues facing lawmakers is the status of communities inside a Great Lakes state but outside the lakes' natural watershed.

Waukesha, Wis., a Milwaukee suburb, wants to draw water from Lake Michigan, only 15 miles away, but is just outside the lake's drainage area. The compact might allow the city to get its water because it's within a county that straddles the basin boundary, but that would require unanimous consent of the eight states' governors.

The Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce wants the deal amended 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," chamber spokesman Brian Nemoir said.

The pact appeared headed for approval in Ohio last year. But state Sen. Tim Grendell raised enough concerns to stall it. The Cleveland Republican particularly distrusts a declaration that Great Lakes water is held in public trust, saying that provision would void private ownership of farm ponds and even well water.

"The government is being encouraged to take people's property without paying for it. That is flat-out un-American," Grendell said.

Compact supporters say it honors existing rights. The public trust doctrine has been settled law since the late 1800s and balances needs of individuals and society, said Hall, the Wayne State professor...