Tag: ontario

Interview: Keeping Alien Invaders Out

  • Asian Carp is one species that is very dangerous to the Great Lakes ecosystem (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Nature never made a connection between the nation’s big rivers and the Great Lakes. But Chicago did. A canal was dug connecting the Mississippi River system – including the Missouri, the Ohio and all their tributaries – to all of the Great Lakes at a point on Lake Michigan. It opened up commercial shipping to the interior of the nation.
But it also opened up both bodies of waters to aquatic life you don’t want traveling back and forth. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel have traveled from one to the other. Asian Carp have already caused havoc in the Mississippi. Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. There’s an electric barrier in place, but some people don’t think that’s enough.
Joel Brammeier is with the environmental group Alliance for the Great Lakes. His group is proposing a barrier that will separate the Mississippi system from the Great Lakes completely, to stop those invasive species. He talked with Lester Graham about the barrier:

Transcript

Nature never made a connection between the nation’s big rivers and the Great Lakes. But Chicago did. A canal was dug connecting the Mississippi River system – including the Missouri, the Ohio and all their tributaries – to all of the Great Lakes at a point on Lake Michigan. It opened up commercial shipping to the interior of the nation. But it also opened up both bodies of waters to aquatic life you don’t want traveling back and forth. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel have traveled from one to the other. Asian Carp have already caused havoc in the Mississippi. Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. There’s an electric barrier in place, but some people don’t think that’s enough. Joel Brammeier is with the environmental group Alliance for the Great Lakes. His group is proposing a barrier that will separate the Mississippi system from the Great Lakes completely, to stop those invasive species. He talked with Lester Graham about the barrier:

Joel Brammeier: Well, ecological separation means no species moving between
the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. When you consider the problem of
invasive species, unlike chemical pollution, which you can reduce to a certain
safe level, there is no safe level of invasive species. Once two get in, they can
reproduce, and the damage is done, and there’s no going back. So, an
ecological separation means stopping fish, and eggs, and other critters from
moving back and forth between the two systems.

Lester Graham: How do you do that when there’s so much commercial traffic
and recreational boating, and just the water flowing through?

Brammeier: Well, in our research, we found that tech fixes – electrical barriers,
sound barriers, blowing bubbles through the water to try and deter fish from
moving – those things can reduce the risk. But for invasive species, risk
reduction really isn’t enough – you need 100% protection. And to do that, we’re
probably looking at some physical barrier that prevents water and live organisms
from moving between those two great watersheds.

Graham: I can imagine the commercial shippers are not thrilled about that.

Brammeier: Well, I think it remains to be seen. Nobody’s quite sure where the
best place is to put a barrier. We discussed about half a dozen different
scenarios under which you could implement that kind of separation. The
Chicago waterway system does support about 25 million tons, give or take, a
year of commercial commodity traffic – and that’s a significant amount. The
reality is that most of that cargo is internal to the Chicago waterways. So, there
isn’t a huge exchange of cargo between the Chicago waterway and the Great
Lakes. And that’s a good thing. That means we have opportunities to actually
split the system back to the way it historically was, and at the same time, solve
our invasive species problem.

Graham: Now, we can see how that would benefit the environment, but how
would it affect the economy?

Brammeier: Well, again, going back to this issue of commercial navigation. If we
create a separation in this system that has a minimal impact on most of the cargo
in the Chicago waterway, we’re really talking about potentially a very small
impact. And, frankly, there’s an opportunity here to create a benefit for
commodity movements as well. A lot of the cargo transfer facilities on the south
side of Chicago are outmoded, outdated, and not competitive. And, any
investment in this kind of project that changed that and also allowed cargo to
move more efficiently and created new port facilities, could have that kind of
benefit, besides protecting the Great Lakes from invasive species.

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Nature on a Concrete Canvas

  • Artist Christopher Griffin, the owner of the house, uses a long smooth bone to draw a picture after each swipe of the trowel (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Sometimes cities can seem like drab, impersonal places. But every once in a
while, you see a building that stops you in your tracks. Karen Kelly tells a story about a house designed to do just that:

Transcript

Sometimes cities can seem like drab, impersonal places. But, every once in a
while, you see a building that stops you in your tracks. Karen Kelly tells a story
about a house designed to do just that:


(sound of construction and trucks)

When you first see it, you’re just not sure.

A two-story house is being covered with marks etched in concrete.

Is it intentional? Or just a layer of construction?

Then you see a large black figure on the west side of the house and realize- oh, it’s
a whale. Waves are etched in the concrete around it. Walk around the corner and
you see flocks of birds flying over roughly drawn buildings.

(sound of scraping)

And just past the birds, there are three men working silently on a platform. Two
are spreading layers of fresh concrete.

The third is artist Christopher Griffin, the owner of the house. He uses a long
smooth bone to draw a picture after each swipe of the trowel – and before the
concrete sets.

He says he has to work fast.

“They would scrape the mud on and I would be going around them, over top of
them, actually right behind their trowel and there’s no chance to stand back; there’s
no chance to second guess.”

Griffin has been a professional artist in Ottawa, Canada for almost twenty years.

Griffin’s motivation was simple: his house really needed a new exterior. But the
regular stuff that people put on their houses didn’t feel right to him.

Instead, he thought he’d try some drawings like he’d seen in a photo of mud huts in
Africa.

“It was irregular; it was organic; it wasn’t pristine; it wasn’t crisp; it wasn’t
heartless. And that sort of quality was something I was after.”

(sound of chatting and scraping)

But while Griffin had this vision of giant sunflowers and caribou, contractors had
no idea what he was talking about.

Several told him it couldn’t be done.

Dan Charette is part of a team that was willing to give it a try.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity to bring our craftsmanship to a different level. There’s
a whole other creative level to what we do here with constructive behaviors, so it’s
really a lot of fun.”

For instance, the contractors suggested adding fly ash to the cement. It’s a
byproduct of burning coal and it also makes the cement more elastic.

Griffin liked that it was more environmentally friendly.

He also recycled building materials and added solar panels. But usually that’s not
what people see.

He says what really makes him feel good is when people just stop and stare.

“Absolute strangers stopping their cars, getting out and having a look. There’s a
teenage skateboarder who stopped and said, ‘Wow, awesome house.’”

Griffin says, in that way, his house has become a public space.

In fact, he argues everyone’s house is a public space.

And he suggests people think about what they want their house to say to someone
walking by.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

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Canada’s Blue Flag Beaches

  • Toronto is now getting its beaches certified as safe by an international program called 'Blue Flag' (Photo by Julie Grant)

Beaches on the Great Lakes have
been closed a lot this summer because of
pollution. But instead of raising the
white flag of surrender, in Canada, they’re
starting to raise a blue flag. Julie Grant
reports the Blue Flag Programme certifies
a beach is safe:

Transcript

Beaches on the Great Lakes have
been closed a lot this summer because of
pollution. But instead of raising the
white flag of surrender, in Canada, they’re
starting to raise a blue flag. Julie Grant
reports the Blue Flag Programme certifies
a beach is safe:

(sound of beach)

It’s a clear, cool summer morning by Lake Ontario. Some
people are playing volleyball, others are walking along the
boardwalk at Woodbine beach, on the east side of Toronto.
Nobody is swimming in the lake.

Beach person 1: “No I don’t swim here.”

Beach person 2: “I grew up here, and I’ve never actually
swam in Lake Ontario. Sometimes they were closed and it
was always off and on, so it never seemed like a good thing
to do.”

Beach Person 3: “It’s gross, man. It’s pretty nasty. One
time I found a couple of Band Aids. After that, I was like, ‘I’m
not going back in this water.’”

City leaders say those views are outdated.

Lou DiGeranimo is Toronto’s general manager of water.
He’s in charge of everything from drinking water to sewers
and storm water runoff.

DiGeranimo says the Lake’s bad reputation lingers
from the time when Toronto was a major port for lumber, for
shipbuilding, and for foundries.

“When you talk to certain people in the city, they remember
the old industrial heart of our city and they think that Lake
Ontario is polluted and you shouldn’t swim in it. Well we beg
to differ. You can swim in it and our water quality is actually
quite good.”

DiGeranimo is trying to change the public image of Lake
Ontario one beach at a time. So far he’s been able to get six
Toronto beaches certified as safe by an international
program called Blue Flag. DiGeranimo says the blue flag
shows that someone besides the city is checking up on the
beaches.

“There’s an external group, Environmental Defense, that
actually, we work with. And they themselves are part of a
larger international group who come round and audit to
make sure that we are following the program accordingly.”

Thousands of beaches in The Caribbean, Europe and South
Africa fly blue flags. Toronto has some of the first beaches
in Canada to be certified by the program. The city has to
test water quality every day. It also has to provide
lifeguards, recycling containers, and environmental
education programs.

But water quality is usually the biggest obstacle for beaches
trying to get a certification.

(sound of beach)

A blue flag waves in the wind at Toronto’s Woodbine beach.
But not without considerable cost. The sewer used to
overflow regularly here into Lake Ontario. The city built
underground retention tanks to store sewage overflow until it
could be sent to a treatment plant.

But multi-million dollar sewer fixes usually are not possible
for many cities.

So DiGeranimo says people also need to take action at
home. Toronto has been trying to educate people to be
careful what they wash down the drain. And DiGeranimo
says Toronto banned the use of some lawn chemicals
because they were polluting the Lake.

“If I took a bag of chemicals and then just dumped it in the
river, I could charge you for impairing the water quality. But
if you dumped it on your lawn first, and then it ended up in
the creek, that would be okay. So in the city we passed a
bylaw that restricted the use of certain chemicals.”

That kind of ban would be a tough sell in most U.S. cities. It
wasn’t easy in Toronto either.

But Jody Fry says it’s helped the city earn Blue Flags at
many beaches. Fry is Canada’s national Blue Flag program
coordinator. She says people on all shores are starting to do
the work to certify their beaches.

“It raises awareness both at the beach and throughout the
community of what actions people can take to help improve
the water quality. Which, I think, people are looking for,
because they want to help contribute to protecting the
environment.”

The city of Toronto hopes to raise Blue Flags at five more
beaches soon. For now, they want to spread the word – if
you see a Blue Flag flying at the beach, it’s a signal that you
can trust that the water is clean for swimming.

For the
Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Great Lakes Call for Help

  • Some feel the Great Lakes are being ignored by Congress (Photo courtesy of Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, NOAA)

The Great Lakes might be the most ignored
resource on the continent. Great Lakes advocates
say they have not been able to get enough attention
or money from Congress. Rebecca Williams reports
one group is outlining what needs to be done to fix
the Lakes before climate change makes things worse:

Transcript

The Great Lakes might be the most ignored
resource on the continent. Great Lakes advocates
say they have not been able to get enough attention
or money from Congress. Rebecca Williams reports
one group is outlining what needs to be done to fix
the Lakes before climate change makes things worse:

Washington D.C. is a long way from the Great Lakes. Most members of
Congress don’t live near the lakes. And many don’t understand just how big
they are.

Don Scavia used to work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration in Washington.

“I’ve spent 15 years inside the Beltway and I just know that the Great Lakes just don’t
have the same sense of urgency and importance inside the Beltway as some other places like the Chesapeake Bay and others have. Senators and
Congressmen don’t have boats on it like they do on the Chesapeake. I think
it’s a matter of if you haven’t been here, if you haven’t seen them, you
really don’t get it.”

These days, Don Scavia is a scientist at the University of Michigan. He’s a
co-author of a report on global warming and the Great Lakes. He says we
need to help the Great Lakes adapt to the changes that are already happening
because of global warming.

“The restoration strategy is put in place specifically to increase the
resiliency of the Lakes, increase the buffering capacity of the Lakes, to allow them
to adapt to this near-term climate change.”

Just about everyone around the Great Lakes has noticed that water levels are
dropping. Recreational boats can get stuck. Big cargo ships can’t get into
harbors. And they have to carry lighter loads when lake levels drop. That
means more trips, and, eventually, higher prices for all of us. And
climate change might make it worse.

On top of that, the Great Lakes are struggling with fisheries collapsing,
invasive species damaging the ecosystem, and pollution that’s never been
cleaned up.

Jeff Skelding is with the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition.

“When Great Lakes effort began, we had a lot on our plate to deal with and
then we looked at the science of global warming and its impacts on the Great
Lakes it kinda froze us in our tracks. Now we’ve got global warming to
contend with.”

So, what do the advocates want from Congress?

There’s a $20-billion price tag on Great Lakes restoration.

Bits and pieces of it have gone before Congress. And there’s been some
progress on money for things like restoring wetlands. But for the most
part, most of the time, the Great Lakes just haven’t been a priority in
Washington.

Rahm Emanuel is a Congressman from Illinois. He holds a leadership position
among the House Democrats. He says he hopes the money will be approved by
Congress sometime soon.

“I don’t want another study, I don’t want to pay for another analysis, I’m
over studied, over analysis-ed. We know what it takes to fix it, we know
what the pollutants are, now we’ve got to put our money where our mouth is.”

Politically, the time might not get any better for Great Lakes advocates.
There’s a Census coming up and new Congressional district lines will be
drawn. The Great Lakes region will lose representation in the US House.
That means the Great Lakes states will lose clout in Congress.

So, the region’s members of Congress need to get a Great Lakes restoration
package to the next President before that happens. Great Lakes advocates
are hoping the next President – whether it’s McCain, Obama or Clinton – will
give the Great Lakes more attention, and money.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Interview: Great Lakes Compact

  • Map of the Great Lakes, the basin, and the 8 connecting states. (Photo courtesy of Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, NOAA)

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Compact is an
agreement to stop shipping water out of the Great Lakes
basin. But all eight Great Lakes states and Congress
must approve it first. Lester Graham talked with Peter
Annin, the author of the book “The Great Lakes Water
Wars.” Annin says some of the states have been reluctant
to approve the treaty because Michigan has an image of saying
‘no’ to water requests from other states while putting
almost no water restrictions on its own towns and businesses:

Transcript

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Compact is an
agreement to stop shipping water out of the Great Lakes
basin. But all eight Great Lakes states and Congress
must approve it first. Lester Graham talked with Peter
Annin, the author of the book “The Great Lakes Water
Wars.” Annin says some of the states have been reluctant
to approve the treaty because Michigan has an image of saying
‘no’ to water requests from other states while putting
almost no water restrictions on its own towns and businesses:

Peter Annin: “Michigan has been a laggard in monitoring and regulating its own domestic water
use. And so it’s seen by some other states as being somewhat hypocritical in the water debate.
For example, Minnesota, which is the most progressive domestically, if you’re going to withdraw
water from the Great Lakes at 10,000 gallons a day or more, you have to get a permit. In the state
of Michigan you can go up to 5 million gallons of water withdrawn from Lake Michigan per day
before you have to get a permit. 10,000 gallons in Minnesota, 5 million gallons in Michigan, and
this is what is causing tension between Michigan and some of the other Great Lakes states.”

Lester Graham: “Lets assume that all 8 Great Lakes states do pass this within the next year or
two, Congress then has to pass it – and many of the members of Congress are in those thirsty
Southwestern states. What happens then?”

Annin: “Yeah, that’s a really good point. We have to remember that the compact is just a piece of
paper until it passes all 8 Great Lakes legislatures and then is adopted by Congress. And there
are a lot of concerns among the general public, given that we have these dry-land states that have
a lot of problems with water perhaps opposing the Great Lakes compact. I’m not so certain that
that’s going to be an issue, because those states also have a lot federal water projects that come
up for renewal all the time that require the Great Lakes Congressmen to sign off on. And I’m not
sure they’re in a position, given how precious and important water is for them to survive on a daily
basis down there, that they’re really that interested in getting into a water fight with the Senators
and Congressmen in the Great Lakes basin. But, we’ll see.”

Graham: “I’ve looked at different models for getting Great Lakes water down to the Southwest,
and economically, they just don’t seem feasible. It would be incredibly expensive to try to get
Great Lakes water to the Southwest states, yet, State Legislators say again and again ‘oh no,
they have a plan, they know how it will happen.’ And as water becomes more valuable, they could
make it happen. How likely is it that there would be a canal or pipe and pumping stations built to
divert Great Lakes water, if this compact doesn’t pass?”

Annin: “It looks highly unlikely today, for the reasons that you just mentioned. It takes an
extraordinary amount of money to send water uphill, which is what would be to the West, and we’d
certainly have to cross mountain ranges if you’re even going to send it a shorter distance, to the
Southeast. To the point where it would be cheaper for many of these places to, even though it’s
expensive, to desalinate water from the ocean and then send it to inland places. But, you know, a
lot of water experts in the United States say ‘never say never’, because the value of fresh, potable
water is probably going to skyrocket in this century. We’re leaving the century of oil; we’re entering
the century of water. But, for right now, you’re absolutely right, it is extraordinary cost-prohibitive.
But let me say one other footnote here, it’s hard to find a federal water project in this country that
actually made economic sense.”

Related Links

Asian and Black Kids Misdiagnosed

A new study has found that a test used to identify kids with asthma could
misdiagnose children of certain ethnic backgrounds. Karen Kelly has the story:

Transcript

A new study has found that a test used to identify kids with asthma could
misdiagnose children of certain ethnic backgrounds. Karen Kelly has the story:


Until now, doctors looked for a standard level of nitric oxide in a child’s breath when diagnosing asthma.
But a study of 650 kids in Detroit and neighboring Windsor, Ontario led to a surprising discovery: healthy kids of Asian descent had two times more nitric oxide than what’s
considered normal, and healthy African-American kids exhaled 50 percent
more of the gas.


Dr. Thomas Kovesi conducted the study, which was published in the journal
Chest.


“If based on this test, a child gets diagnosed with asthma when they don’t have
asthma, it’s possible that they’ll end up on medications the child won’t benefit
from. Every medication has potential side effects.”


Kovesi tells parents to ask their doctors to consider their child’s ethnicity if the
kid is taking an exhaled nitric oxide test.


For the Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

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Tree-Killing Bug Continues to Spread

  • An adult ash borer. The tree-killing bug has now been found in Toronto. (Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Agriculture)

Since arriving in North America in the 1990’s, the emerald ash borer
has largely been contained to the upper Midwest. But now scientists say
the destructive beetle is spreading. Noah Ovshinsky has more:

Transcript

Since arriving in North America in the 1990’s, the emerald ash borer
has largely been contained to the upper Midwest. But now scientists say
the destructive beetle is spreading. Noah Ovshinsky has more:



Since the emerald ash bore arrived, the pest has killed more than 20
million ash trees in North America. Canada has by and large been spared
with infestations confined to the extreme southwest of Ontario.


Now, Canadian officials say the bug has traveled more than two hundred
miles to Toronto. Scientists don’t know how many trees have been
infested. Ken Marchant is an ash borer expert with the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency:


“It can be in a tree at undetectable levels and be quit heavy and then
the tree dies and so it’s incredibly difficult to detect at low levels.
Nothing has changed, there’s no traps for it and really no effective
way of surveying for it with any great accuracy.”


The ash borer has now spread across southern Ontario and six states.


For the Environment Report, this is Noah Ovshinsky.

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The 100 Mile Meal: A Homegrown Thanksgiving

  • Reporter Dustin Dwyer found all the ingredients for his Thanksgiving dinner within 100 miles of his house, including the turkey (poor thing). (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)

Thanksgiving is about family, friends, and ridiculous amounts of food. But the food we buy can have a big impact on the environment. And a lot more people are starting to look for local ingredients to put in their meals. One movement encourages people to get all their food from within 100 miles of their home. Dustin Dwyer tried to find out how practical that could be for his Thanksgiving feast:

Transcript

Thanksgiving is about family, friends, and ridiculous amounts of food. But the food we buy can have a big impact on the environment. And a lot more people are starting to look for local ingredients to put in their meals. One movement encourages people to get all their food from within 100 miles of their home. Dustin Dwyer tried to find out how practical that could be for his Thanksgiving feast:


I like to look at labels on my food. I don’t care so much about the nutritional info, I just want to know where it came from.


But there’s a problem with that. Even if I know where something is packaged, I still have no idea where the actual ingredients come from. I mean, where the heck do they make partially hydrogenated soybean oil?


I have no idea. And so, for one meal, for the most important meal of the year, I decided to try to get all my food, and all the ingredients in my food, from within 100 miles of my apartment in Southeast Michigan.


If you’re impressed by my ingenious and creative idea, don’t be. I stole it from someone else. Alisa Smith and her partner James MacKinnon were on a 100 mile diet for a year, and they’re writing a book about it. I called up Alisa for some help.


Dwyer: “So my wife and I are going to do the 100 mile Thanksgiving, and I want to ask some advice.”


Smith: “Oh, great! For doing a single meal you picked a very good time to do it because it’s the harvest bounty, so that makes life a lot easier.”


I’m thinking, excellent, this could be a piece of cake. But I’m worried about a few tough ingredients, such as salt. Alisa says salt is a problem for a lot of people.


“I think in the end, you probably will find that salt isn’t available. And not being able t o make it yourself you might just say ‘okay salt is going to be an exception for us.'”


Ok, fine, but I still wanted to make as few exceptions as possible. I’ve got to have a challenge here, somehow.


That said, our menu would be simple: just turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie. Turkey turned out to be easy.


“Roperti’s Turkey Farm.”


Christine Roperti has been living on her family’s turkey farm in suburban Detroit all her life. Farms like this one are getting crowded out more and more by suburban sprawl. There’s even a brand new subdivision next door to Christine’s place. There have been offers for her land too.


“Yeah, but I don’t want to go anywhere. I like the farm, and like raising my turkeys.”


I liked knowing that Christine actually enjoys this, and cares about it. It made me feel good. And that’s important, because I was also paying a lot more for her turkey than the store-bought stuff.


Anyway, I was flying high, and things were going really well. My list of exceptions was firming up, and it was mostly spices: salt plus all the spices for the pumpkin pie.


Then, while I was bragging at work about how I’d be able to get almost everything but salt for my local dinner, someone reminded me that there are actually salt mines under the city of Detroit.


Like a good journalist I looked into it, and ended up on the most absurd shopping trip of my life.


“Okay I’m headed over the Ambassador Bridge, going from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario. They do have salt mines in Detroit, but they don’t sell that salt as food salt in the US, they only sell road salt. So in order to get food salt that’s made within a hundred miles of my house, I have to go to Canada.”


Because of some trade regulation I don’t understand, table salt from this mine can’t be commercially shipped into the US. So I ended up in a city I barely know, looking for a grocery store. I went into the first, and then the second without finding the right brand of salt. Then an hour or so later, in the third store…


“Finally! Windsor salt.”


So, I wasted a lot of fuel putting this dinner together. It’s probably still an improvement over what the Sierra Club says is an average two thousand miles of driving that goes into each ingredient for my usual dinner.


But here’s the thing: if all this local stuff is available, I think I should be able to get it at the grocery store down the street. I should probably let them know that, and let them know I’m willing to pay more for it. I mean, that’s better than driving to Canada for salt, anyway.


But making that happen would take a lot more effort, a lot more voting with my pocketbook, and a lot more than just checking labels.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Related Links

Who Gets Great Lakes Water?

  • Lake Superior's North Shore. (Photo by Dave Hansen - Minnesota Extension Service)

For the first time, state legislatures in the Great Lakes region have a set of laws in front of
them that could comprehensively define how and where they can use Great Lakes water.
Melissa Ingells has a look at the document called the Great Lakes Compact:

Transcript

For the first time, state legislatures in the Great Lakes region have a set of laws in front of
them that could comprehensively define how and where they can use Great Lakes water.
Melissa Ingells has a look at the document called the Great Lakes Compact:


For a long time, nobody thought much about regulating the water of the Great Lakes.
They just seemed inexhaustible. There was no firm legal definition of who the water
belonged to, or who could give it away.


At some point, scientists figured out the boundaries of what’s known as the Great Lakes
Basin. It’s like a huge land bowl where all the waterways flow back into the Lakes. It
includes areas of eight states and parts of Canada. Scientists figured out that you had to
leave at least 99% of the water in the lakes in order to maintain all the important
ecosystems that depend on the water.


The natural boundary of the Great Lakes basin started to become a political boundary
when demand for water started rising. The only regulation for a long time was a 1984
federal law that said all the Great Lakes governors had to agree before any water could
be taken out of the lakes.


Then, in 1998, an organization called the Nova Group got a permit from Ontario to ship
water to Asia. People didn’t like that idea at all, and the politicians reacted:


“It seems like every major policy change has a triggering event.”


Dennis Schornack is the U.S. chairman of the International Joint Commission, which
oversees Great Lakes issues:


“The Nova permit granted initially by Ontario to this shipping company to take Great
Lakes water apparently by tanker to the far east… was the triggering event to start the
compact in motion. There have been a number of cases over the years… they all lead
down the same path, and that is that we had to have a structure to manage these waters
cooperatively.”


The Compact Schornack was talking about is the Great Lakes Compact. It’s a
comprehensive set of strict water usage laws. The states realized the need for something
like it after the Nova Group incident, and work on it was completed in 2006. It’s a strong
agreement because each state, and two Canadian provinces through a separate agreement,
must get it through their legislatures and get their governors to sign it. After all the states
have passed it, it has to be approved by the U.S. Congress.


Schornack was one of the people who helped write it. He thinks it’s a pretty good
solution for the lakes:


“This is really a big deal. Whether it’s a perfect solution, who knows, only time will tell,
but it certainly is a very strong and positive step in the right direction. When eight
governors get together and two premiers and decide we’re going to manage a fifth of the
world’s fresh surface water, and we’re going to do it with conservation, we’re going to do
it with very severe restrictions on diversions, this is all very good for the basin, this is
good news.”


The Compact does have its detractors. There are people from the business and
environmental worlds who have problems with some of it, but the general feeling is that
something has to be settled on, and the Compact is a good start. Most states seem
to have bipartisan support in their legislatures, although so far only Minnesota has
actually passed it. Peter Annin is the author of “The Great Lakes Water Wars.” He
thinks that by legislative standards, things are moving pretty quickly:


“The pace of ratification to the average citizen might seem like it’s
painfully slow and laborious. But in fact, with compacts in general, some of them have
taken ten, twenty years to make it through all the various legislatures. And so here we
are about 18 months after the documents were released… if you look at the eight states,
the vast majority of them have some sort of activity going.”


Annin also thinks that given the pressing issues over natural resources everywhere, that
agreements like the Compact will change the way other regions think about their
resources:


“Why it’s a model I think is because it’s encouraging to people to think not just in
political boundaries, but in watershed boundaries, in that the Compact encourages people
to work communally to a greater social and sustainability good on behalf of the regional
water supply and water resources and I think that’s going to be a model for the future no
matter where you are.:


Annin thinks there will be a flurry of activity in the legislatures in the next year or so.
That’s because after the 2010 congressional redistricting, the water-hungry Southwest
will likely have more power in the U.S. House. So it’s in the interest of Great Lakes
States to get the Compact through Congress before those political changes happen.


For the Environment Report, I’m Melissa Ingells.

Related Links

States Slow to Pass Great Lakes Compact

In 1998, people became outraged when a company tried to ship Great
Lakes water to Asia. Politicians said they wanted the Lakes protected.
Now – almost a decade after the event that sparked the controversy –
officials say the effort to protect to the Great Lakes is picking up
steam. Noah Ovshinsky has more:

Transcript

In 1998, people became outraged when a company tried to ship Great
Lakes water to Asia. Politicians said they wanted the Lakes protected.
Now – almost a decade after the event that sparked the controversy –
officials say the effort to protect to the Great Lakes is picking up
steam. Noah Ovshinsky has more:


Two years ago officials from the eight Great Lakes states and two
Canadian provinces agreed on a plan that largely bans the diversion of
water outside the basin. The plan, known as the Great Lakes Compact,
went to each state’s legislature for debate.


Pete Johnson is with the Council of Great Lakes Governors. He says
even though it’s been two years the effort is starting to gain
momentum:


“We’re no longer at the beginning. There are still a number of states
that still need to pass the legislation but we feel that we’re well on
the way of actually turning this thing into law.”


Minnesota has officially signed onto the Compact. Illinois is expected to sign on soon. The legislation remains under consideration in the six other Great Lakes states.


For the Environment Report, this is Noah Ovshinsky.

Related Links