Canadian, U.S. mayors seek to challenge diversion of water from Great Lakes

Argue that allowing the Wisconsin city of Waukesha to take water from Lake Michigan sets dangerous precedent

By DIANA MEHTA The Canadian Press

A group of mayors from Canada and the U.S. are trying to challenge a recent decision allowing an American city to draw water from the Great Lakes, arguing that it sets a dangerous precedent.

The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative asked Monday for a hearing with the group of eight states that make up what’s known as the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Council.

In June, the council gave the Wisconsin city of Waukesha the green light to divert water from Lake Michigan, making it the first exception to an agreement banning diversions of water away from the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River basin.

The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, which represents more than 100 local governments on both sides of the border, is now looking to fight that decision.

“This is just the beginning of something that could potentially grow and just be catastrophic,” Sandra Cooper, the mayor of Collingwood, Ont., and the group’s secretary-treasurer, said of Waukesha’s diversion. “There was no opportunity for public input with our Great Lakes community and I think that’s a downfall of the whole process.”

The group argues that the area to be serviced by Waukesha’s diversion is too large, the return flow of treated water to Lake Michigan hasn’t been analyzed enough and there wasn’t enough public participation in the process dealing with the city’s request.

It has also written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Barack Obama asking for “appropriate action” to stop Waukesha’s diversion of water from Lake Michigan.

Waukesha, a city of about 70,000 people, asked for permission to take water from the Great Lakes because its own aquifer is running low and the water is contaminated with high levels of naturally occurring cancer-causing radium.

Waukesha argued that although it’s located outside the boundary of the Great Lakes basin, it is part of a county straddling that geographical line and should be allowed access to the lake’s water.

The request created significant concern on both sides of the border, but after making a series of amendments to Waukesha’s original application, the eight states adjoining the Great Lakes — which had final say on the matter after input from Ontario and Quebec — gave the city’s proposal unanimous approval.

The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative said it’s now fighting to ensure the long-term integrity of the agreement meant to protect the Great Lakes.

“There was already a region that was established that could draw from the Great Lakes basin. That region is now being expanded. What says down the road that those southern states who are having difficulty with water aren’t going to start drawing more water from our Great Lakes basin,” said Randy Hope, the mayor of Chatham-Kent municipality in southwestern Ontario, who is on the group’s board of directors.

“It’ll lower our waterways, it’ll have eco and social and economic effects that people cannot determine at this time.”

The Great Lakes support 33 million people, including nine million Canadians and eight of Canada’s 20 largest cities, according to the federal government.

Mayors demand water decision reversal

By JT McVeigh, The Enterprise-Bulletin August 25 2016

Citing a dangerous prescendant, the mayors of towns and cities bound by the Great Lakes are calling in the big guns to reverse a decision to allow a small American city to pump water out of Lake Michigan.

A June decision by the governors of eight states surrounding the Great Lakes, the Great Lakes Compact, has members of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative (GLSLCI) demanding that the decision be reversed.

Waukesha, Wis. lies outside of the Great Lakes Basin by more than 30 kilometres near Lake Michigan. The community’s aquifer, which now supplies the city’s water, is running low and is contaminated by naturally-occurring radium, a known carcinogen. The water for their reservoir is drawn from the Mississippi River.

Members of GLSLCI, of which Collingwood and The Blue Mountains are members, fear that this decision sets a dangerous president that would allow any community outside of the Great Lakes watershed to just tap into the lakes. They have asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. president Barack Obama and the International Joint Commission to intervene.

“I don’t think people really understood the importance of what the decision really meant (at first),” said Chatham-Kent Mayor Randy Hope, a director of the Cities Initiative.

“From our perspective, how far is is going to go? Once the floodgates are open, how far does it continue to flow?”

This application is the first challenge to the Great Lakes Compact, an agreement between eight states that border the Great Lakes and was signed in 2008.

The agreement was designed to protect the Great Lakes from significant diversion of water from the Great Lakes out of the Great Lakes basin. Ontario and Quebec are not part of the compact, but obviously impacted by decisions made by the compact.

Collingwood Mayor Sandra Cooper, on the executive of the GLSCI, agrees that to allow Waukesha the right to pump water from Lake Michigan is short-sighted and sets a dangerous precedent.

“The interesting thing about the decision to allow Waukesha to pump the water was that there was only one public meeting and it was held in only the area of Waukesha, not even neighbouring municipalities,” says Cooper.

“Small and large, we are all impacted, one way or another” by what happens on the lakes, she said. The effects of fluctuating lake levels have been particularly acute along Georgian Bay,” says Cooper.

Some concerns have suggested what happens to the Great Lakes if drought-stricken states like California ask for assistance.

More than 30 million litres are expected to be pumped from Lake Michigan daily and replaced by treated effluent from the town.

“Apparently the effluent from Waukesha will pour into the Root River that empties into downtown Rachine, Wis. (and back into Lake Michigan) and there hasn’t been much thought put into that as well.”

The GLSLCI is a binational coalition of 123 mayors and officials that works with federal, state, provincial, tribal, and First Nation governments for the protection and restoration of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River.

Although they offered their objection to the decision, the eight governors voted to allow the project to go ahead.