SoylentNews

fork(2) [soylentnews.org] writes:

Waukesha gets water!

      If you live in the US's upper-midwest, you've probably already heard the brief news article about Waukesha, WI's approval to draw city water from Lake Michigan. If you live elsewhere, you maybe thinking, "What's the big deal?" (Or maybe you're thinking, "Where's Waukesha?")

      Waukesha is a Milwaukee suburb of about 70,000. Milwaukee lies on the shore of Lake Michigan (but Waukesha does not). Lake Michigan is one of the Great Lakes (together with Lakes Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario). The Great Lakes comprise over 20% of the world's fresh water and are used to supply drinking water to tens of millions of people in bordering areas.

      The water in the Great Lakes is too attractive to some. In the 1980s a drought prompted Illinois Governor James Thompson to propose tapping the Great Lakes water to lubricate barge traffic on the Mississippi (divert water from Lake Michigan into the Chicago River, which ultimately would feed into the Mississippi). In 2008 Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico suggested that Great Lakes water be distributed to the increasingly dry Southwest.

      In response to attempts to divert Great Lakes water, which could have detrimental affects to the lives and livelihood of the people in the neighboring states and provinces, the state governors of the Great Lakes States and provincial premiers of the Great Lakes Provinces created The Great Lakes Charter. The Charter is a good-faith agreement to intelligently manage the use of the Great Lakes water resource. (Details/timeline here [wordpress.com].) A series of legislative actions gave teeth to this agreement and ultimately resulted in The Great Lakes Compact which Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] describes as follows:

            The Great Lakes--St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact is a legally binding interstate compact among the U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The compact details how the states manage the use of the Great Lakes Basin's water supply and builds on the 1985 Great Lakes Charter and its 2001 Annex. The compact is the means by which the states implement the governors' commitments under the Great Lakes--St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement that also includes the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec.
     

      The controversial decision to allow Waukesha to draw water from Lake Michigan marks the first test case of the Great Lakes Compact. From the Detroit Free Press [freep.com]:

            A community of about 70,000 people, Waukesha lies just outside the Great Lakes basin, 17 miles west of Lake Michigan. The deep groundwater aquifer from which the city gets its water supply now is severely depleted and contaminated with naturally occurring radium, a carcinogen. A provision in the Great Lakes Compact allows communities straddling the basin to have access to Great Lakes water under certain circumstances and with conditions.

            The governors approved allowing Waukesha to divert up to 8.2 million gallons of Lake Michigan water per day -- provided a like amount of water is appropriately treated by the city and then piped back into the Great Lakes basin.

            [Michigan Gov. Rick] Snyder, in an interview with the Free Press before today's vote, said essential to his approval of the plan were amendments strengthening oversight of the agreement's terms. "We put tight conditions on this," he said. "If you are using the water, you have to treat it and return it to the basin, and then there are audit and enforcement mechanisms addressing any shortfall in the long-term implementation of those actions."

            Analysis showed that 30% of the deep aquifer water Waukesha was currently using would otherwise flow into the Great Lakes basin, Snyder noted. And that water, up to a half-billion gallons per year, flowed from the city's wastewater treatment into the Mississippi River. Approving the compact stops the aquifer withdrawals, so it stops that loss of Great Lakes water, he said.
     

      The The Chicago Tribune [chicagotribune.com] adds:

            Before the eight states approved the new pact, Waukesha agreed to recycle all of the water it draws from Lake Michigan and return it to a river that flows into the lake. Another provision limits the amount pumped to the city to an average of 8 million gallons a day, down from the original request of 10 million.

            Perhaps even more important is the area served by the new source of water is restricted to Waukesha's current borders, meaning the city can't use it to advance suburban sprawl.

            "They've set a very high bar," said Peter Annin, co-director of a Northland College water center and author of The Great Lakes Water Wars. "If you are a water manager in another suburb or rural community, this just doesn't seem like an attractive or inexpensive option."
     

Original Submission