Great Lakes Compact Council
The Great Lakes form an international water border between the U.S. and Canada. According to Lynne Heasley and Daniel McFarlane, the U.S.-Canada border is an embodiment of dualisms: both a division and unifier, a barrier yet a gateway, solid yet porous, and fostering both cooperation and competition. The situation around the Great Lakes Basin is complex, and border waters complicate matters even more. A century before the Great Lakes Compact, the Boundary Waters Treaty (1909) created a formal diplomatic relationship between the U.S. and Canada to deal with the water peacefully. The treaty later spawned the International Joint Commission (IJC) to resolve any future disputes. The legal framework for the boundary waters included federal, state, and provincial governments, First Nations and Native American tribes, governmental agencies, municipalities, industries, universities, and nongovernmental organizations. The border itself is better thought of as regions or watersheds with geographically specific issues. U.S.-Canadian border waters diplomacy is neither an end point nor outcome; instead, it is a constant process of changing situations on the ground and an open-ended process of negotiation.
In 1982, Supreme Court Case Sporhase v. Nebraska declared water an article of commerce that was subject to interstate trade under the commerce clause of the Constitution. Two Canadian provincial preimiers and eight U.S. state governors around the Great Lakes Basin collectively imagined the implications for the freshwater housed between their borders. The Great Lakes had suddenly become an "aquatic El Dorado" (Lynne Heasley and Daniel McFarlane). Fears of harmful diversions were not unfounded, and the Supreme Court decision had come on the heels of a US Army Corps of Engineers study of the possible use of Great Lakes water to restore Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains. The study itself had suggested redistrubution of water sources from "water rich" to "water poor" regions. Sporhase and the Army Corps study galvanised a 25-year long struggle to protect the Great Lakes which came to fruition in 2008. Over the course of nearly 35 years, 748 relevant bills were introduced into the U.S. legislature about the Great Lakes, an average of 42 per year. Congressional interest in managing the Great Lakes highlights the lakes as a complex, multifaceted ecosystem highly interdependent with human social systems.
Because the Great Lakes holds approximately 80% of North America's surface freshwater, national and international legislation has been put in place to protect the resourse. Following schemes and proposals stemming from California to corporations, two Canadian provinces and the eight Great Lake states united to adopt the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Sustainable Water Resources Agreement among all of these jurisdictions. A separate Great Lakes Compact was created among the states to ban harmful diversions. Great Lakes policy intersects with international and interstate policy because more than 35 million people in multiple jurisdictions rely on the basin. This translates to roughly 10% of the U.S. population and 30% of Canada's population. Like the Great Lakes Compact, the International Joint Commission (IJC), which is a binational commission created to manage the boundary waters of the U.S. and Canada, has prioritized protecting the Great Lakes from both diversions and excessive consumptive water practices.
The Great Lakes Compact, signed into law in 2008 by President George W. Bush, is one of the most important public water policy success stories in the world. The Compact is a contract between the eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces: Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ontario, and Quebec. Under the compact, the states and provinces share duties to conserve, protect, and manage the basin. This entails water management programs, studies into water use efficiency, and conservation efforts. The Compact is bound by federal law and operates like an international treaty, banning the diversion of basin water outside the region with few exceptions. The Compact and its companion Great Lakes–St.
Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement have been described as a stunning environmental landmark of the 21st century.
There are only two situations that allow a community located outside of the Great Lakes to apply for a diversion:
1. A community that is located partially in the Great Lakes basin may apply for a diversion
2. A community that is located within a county that is partially in the basin may apply for a diversion
Any community applying for a diversion must demonstrate that it has exhausted all available options for getting water; a diversion must be a last resort. Any diversion application must be approved by all eight Great Lakes states. The two Canadian provinces—Quebec and Ontario—also bordering the lakes are allowed to provide input as well. Any state may veto the diversion application. The Compact also required each Great Lakes state and province to set up water management programs to ensure the water that we have is used wisely.
Straddling the basin boundary, Waukesha, Wisconsin applied for an exception to the Great Lakes Compact in 2013. Waukesha is the first and, as yet, only community located outside of the Great Lakes Basin to receive a diversion, doing so as a community in a county that straddles the Great Lakes watershed's limit. With rising levels of radium—a naturally occuring carcinogen—in the ground water, the community requested Lake Michigan water for clean drinking water supplies. The city itself had long relied on a deep aquifer groundwater supply and had high levels of radium beyond federal standards. Due to the public health nature of the request, multiple impact studies were conducted by various government agencies and Waukesha’s petition was granted for a limited diversion in 2016. Waukesha's continued use of the Lake Michigan water relies on their ability to follow the terms of the agreement. The Watershed Council commented on the Waukesha diversion in 2016, expressing that they were pleased the diversion was significantly narrowed from the original request. Moreover, the Compact Council required Great Lakes advocates to be vigilant and keep up a rigorous enforcement of the conditions approved.
As with all political issues concerning water, the exception for a limited diversion of water for Waukesha continues to evolve. According to the Wisconsin DNR, Waukesha's current groundwater supply, contaminated by high radium concentrations, requires treatment. The city is now under an amended court order to comply with federal radium standards by September 2023. The City of Waukesha intends to switch from groundwater wells to a Lake Michigan water supply in 2023 and return treated wastewater via the Root River, which flows into Lake Michigan. With numerous conditions on the city for monitoring the diversion and the return flow, many environmental and water groups are keeping a close eye on the Waukesha diversion. Midwestern Environmental Advocates have expressed concern about the diversion plan of returning treated wastewater back into Lake Michigan and are monitoring the situation closely.
