Gl Compact Goes to Washington

  • Lake Superior's South Shore, Wisconsin (Photo by Dave Hansen, courtesy of the EPA)

There’s a new agreement that says the
Great Lakes water has to stay in the Great Lakes.
It’s been approved now by all eight of the states
and the two Canadian provinces that border the
Lakes. Rick Pluta reports the agreement is now
on its way to Congress:

Transcript

There’s a new agreement that says the
Great Lakes water has to stay in the Great Lakes.
It’s been approved now by all eight of the states
and the two Canadian provinces that border the
Lakes. Rick Pluta reports the agreement is now
on its way to Congress:

The Great Lakes region was worried that drier parts of the country and the world might
be eyeing the largest supply of freshwater on Earth.

Ten years ago, a Canadian company got permission from Ontario to send millions of
gallons of water to Asia via tanker ships. Fierce opposition from around the Great Lakes
region put an end to that project. But regions neighboring the Great Lakes basin still see
them as a possible cure for their water shortages.

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm says the Great Lakes compact offers an answer to
anyone outside the region who wants to get their hands on that water.

“Can’t touch this. (laughs) That’s what we say. They need to look at their own way of
preserving and managing their resources.”

When Granholm signed new laws in a ceremony here on the Lake Michigan shoreline,
Michigan became the last of the eight Great Lakes states to formally join the compact.

The compact was put together by leaders of the US states and two Canadian provinces
that border the lakes. Granholm says, once it’s adopted by Congress and signed by the
president, it will give the Great Lakes states new authority to protect their water.

“This allows me as governor to veto any large diversion of water, so we can put a stop to
it ourselves. It really allows us the autonomy of protecting these Great Lakes overall.”

It took 10 years for the Great Lakes states to get the compact through their legislatures
and signed by their governors. Members of Congress from the region are hoping it won’t
take quite so long to get it to the president’s desk.

Chicago Congressman Rahm Emanuel is expected to lead the effort to get the compact
through the US House. He says congressional hearings will begin this year and the
compact should be approved in time for it to be sent to the new president in early 2009.
Emanuel says he’s not expecting any problems.

“Because people understand and know, this is our Yellowstone Park, this is our Grand
Canyon. This is a national treasure. There’s been a lot of work and years of effort to get
this done. The good news is a lot of the chairmen of the committees that are relevant, come
from the Midwest, know how important the Great Lakes are and will act with due speed
in getting it done.”

Both the Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic candidate
Barak Obama have said they would sign the compact.

Environmental groups are among those backing the deal. But many of them say it
still comes up short because it does not stop bottled water from leaving the Great Lakes
region.

Cyndi Roper is with Clean Water Action.

“Water is water. You can’t fill a tanker with water and take it out of the Great Lakes, but
you can fill that same tanker with bottles of water and ship them to other parts of the
country and other parts of the world, and we believe as we move forward, that’s a very
dangerous precedent to set.”

She says that’s because many millions of gallons can still trickle out of the lakes – even if
it’s 12 ounces at a time.

For The Environment Report, this is Rick Pluta.

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Governor Blocks Great Lakes Water Diversion

The governor of Michigan is blocking a request by a town in
Wisconsin to pump water from Lake Michigan. The GLRC’s Sarah
Hulett reports:

Transcript

The governor of Michigan is blocking a request by a town in
Wisconsin to pump water from Lake Michigan. The GLRC’s Sarah
Hulett reports:


Under federal law right now, any one of the eight Great Lakes
governors can veto a proposed water withdrawal, but a
proposed agreement between the eight states would allow
communities that straddle the boundary that defines the Great
Lakes basin to draw water from the lakes.


The town of New Berlin, Wisconsin sits on the boundary. It’s
asking for permission to draw water from Lake Michigan for the
half of the city that sits outside the basin, but Governor Granholm
of Michigan says she won’t consider the request.


Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Spokesman Bob
McCann says he realizes one town won’t drain the lake:


“But a thousand such proposals coming in may do that. So the question is,
where do you draw the line?”


Michigan’s governor says until that new multi-state agreement is
ratified, it’s important not to set a bad precedent.


For the GLRC, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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Forest Land on the Market

More than a million acres are up for sale in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Two large paper companies are selling vast tracts of land. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports, it’s a trend that’s occurring throughout the country. And residents are worried that the land will be split up and developed:

Transcript

More than a million acres are up for sale in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Two large paper companies are selling vast tracts of land. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports, it’s a trend that’s occurring throughout the region. And residents are worried that will be split up and developed:


Escanaba Timber and International Paper have put more than one-point-one million acres of forestland in the Upper Peninsula on the market.


Paul DeLong is the chief forester for the state of Wisconsin. He says many timber companies across the nation are finding it’s more profitable to sell their land as real estate than maintain it for lumber. DeLong says environmentalists, state governments and timber companies are increasingly joining forces to preserve large tracts of forestland.


“So we’re seeing this convergence of interest from across the political spectrum, recognizing that maintaining larger blocks of forestland as working forests can be a real win-win from an ecological and economic and social standpoint.”


The Michigan Nature Conservancy plans to work closely with Governor Jennifer Granholm to create a conservation easement on the property when it’s sold.


For the GLRC, I’m Celeste Headlee.

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Bottling Restrictions Lifted for Katrina Victims

Officials are suspending a fight with water bottlers over diversions from
the Great Lakes basin – as long as the water is used for hurricane relief.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta has more:

Transcript

Officials are suspending a fight with water bottlers over diversions from the Great Lakes basin – as long as the water is used for hurricaine relief. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta has more:


Michigan’s in a legal fight with Nestle Waters over the company’s right to tap into springs, bottle the water, and then sell it outside the Great Lakes basin.


Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm says that amounts to a diversion of water from the Great Lakes, and it should be regulated, but she’s signed a directive saying that limits on water bottlers will be lifted to support hurricane relief.


“It’s going to allow for the relaxation of rules during the time of a national emergency to allow water to be pumped and distributed to areas of great need.”


The governor says her directive will expire once the immediate crisis is past, but the court fight is still pending over the right of Michigan – and other states in the Great Lakes region – to place limits on how water can be withdrawn from the basin and sold somewhere else.


For the GLRC, I’m Rick Pluta.

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Companies Push for Forest Certification

  • Magazine publishers and other companies are thinking ahead and getting their paper from forests that have been certified. But what does this really mean? (Photo by Stanley Elliott)

Officials in the Midwest want to prove they’re not damaging their state forests. States that sell timber to paper companies are spending thousands of dollars to earn a certificate that says they’re managing the forests in a sustainable way. Paper producers are demanding that state foresters earn certification because officials want to stave off protests from consumers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

Officials in the Midwest want to prove they’re not damaging their state forests. States that sell timber to paper companies are spending thousand of dollars to earn a certificate that says they’re managing the forests in a sustainable way. Paper producers are demanding that state foresters earn certification because officials want to stave off protests from consumers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:


It’s lunchtime and employees on break from Compuware in downtown Detroit are browisng through the magazine racks at Borders. Melody Kranz says she reads three different magazines every month. She says she is an avid recycler and an impassioned environmentalist, but never considered what kind of paper was going into her magazines.


“I don’t know why I haven’t thought about it, I just haven’t. I will now. Because I’m a gardening nut, I love to garden. So yeah, I just never really thought about it.”


But executive David Refkin is betting that Franz and others like her would think twice before picking up Time Magazine if they thought a forest was demolished to make the paper. Refkin is the Director of Sustainable Development for Time Incorporated. He says he’s noticed a strong surge in environmental awareness over the past two or three years.


“We don’t want people looking at a magazine and feeling guilty that a stream has been damaged and the fish are dying in there, or that habitats aren’t being protected because people are practicing bad forestry practices.”


Refkin says his company wants to take action now, before consumer groups decide to boycott its magazines over ecological issues. Time uses more coated paper for its publications than any other company in the U.S. The company is asking that 80 percent of all paper products Time buys be certified by 2006.


To the average consumer, that may not seem like big news. But for paper producers and foresters, it’s earth shattering. Larry Pedersen is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Pedersen says getting certified means years of work for state employees. The government has to prove to investigators that its management standards take into account issues such as biodiversity, water quality, soil erosion and wildlife habitat. Pedersen says the state is also required to provide records for each tree from the moments it’s planted or inventoried to the time it’s cut down and then made into planks or paper. But he says it’s worth the effort.


“A number of wood and paper-using companies brought it to our attention that they needed to have certified products because their consumers were demanding those. And with us having four-million acres of state forestlands, we saw the writing on the wall that we needed to jump on this.”


State forests in the region generate a lot of revenue. Wisconsin’s forests earn two and a half million dollars from timber sales and Ohio pulls in almost three million. Michigan’s forests bring in 30 million dollars annually. Earlier this year, Michigan’s Governor Jennifer Granholm announced that all state forests will be certified by January 1st of 2006. And the Great Lakes State is not alone… New York, Wisconsin, and Maine are also pursuing certification and Ohio and other states are considering it.


Andrew Shalit, with the environmental activist group Ecopledge, says he’s glad Time Warner is encouraging paper companies and state governments to get certified. But he says that doesn’t necessarily mean the paper is produced in an environmentally friendly way.


“It’s great to say that they’re going to get all of their paper from certified forests. The question is, who is certifying? And in the case of Time Warner, a lot of the forests are certified by a group called SFI, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and their standards are so weak as to be almost meaningless.”


There’s a heated debate over just what certification means. There are currently two groups that certify forests in the U.S. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative, or SFI, was originally founded by the timber industry but is now an independent body. The Forest Stewardship council, or FSC, came out of the environmental movement… or more specifically, out of the effort to protect South American rainforests. Shalit says he doesn’t think SFI certification is as rigorous or as comprehensive as FSC.


“It really is a problem for the consumer because you see something in the store and it has a little green label on it with a picture of a tree and it says sustainably certified, and you think you’re buying something good. It’s hard for the individual consumer to keep up with that.”


Shalit says several states, like Michigan, have solved the dilemma of rival certification programs by getting dual certification. he says although the system has flaws, it will improve if consumers demand more stringent forestry regulations.


Executives at Time Warner hope they can avoid boycotts and pickets by taking action preemptively. The company is leading the push for forest certification in the U.S., and environmentalists say the federal government may have to bow to pressure eventually and get the national forests certified as well.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.

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Candidates Play on Water Diversion Issue

Great Lakes water has become an issue in this year’s presidential campaign as both candidates try to pick up valuable votes in the swing states. Both of the major party candidates say they’re against diverting the water to other states, and both say their opponent has been inconsistent on the issue. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:

Transcript

Great Lakes water has become an issue in this year’s presidential campaign as
both candidates try to pick up valuable votes in the swing states. Both of the
major party candidates say they’re against diverting the water to other states,
and both say their opponent has been inconsistent on the issue. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:


President Bush says he favors keeping Great Lakes water in the Great Lakes.
He said so this summer during a campaign stop in Traverse City, Michigan.


“My position is clear. We’re never going to allow diversion of Great
Lakes water.”


And John Kerry says he is against diverting Great Lakes water. It’s one of six
points included in his recently-released plan to clean up and preserve the lakes.
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm discussed that plan in a conference call
with reporters.


“They are adamantly opposed to diverting water from the Great Lakes
basin. They will institute a no diversions policy for the Great Lakes.
They will block any water diversion.”


And while both the Bush and Kerry campaigns are promising not to let other
states tap into the Great Lakes, they’re accusing each other of going back and
forth on the issue. Bush says back in February, Kerry referred to the diversion
issue as a “delicate balancing act.” The next day, Kerry’s campaign said the
Democrat was “absolutely opposed” to diversions. The Kerry campaign
says back in 2001, President Bush expressed support for diverting Great Lakes
water to the Southwestern United States. The president wasn’t that specific
about it, though he did say he’d be open to discussions about water with
Canada’s prime minister.


Michigan’s Governor Granholm says there’s no immediate threat that Great
Lakes water would be diverted, though she says it has to be a concern as the
dry, Southwestern part of the United States continues to add people, and
members of Congress who might one day vote on such an issue.


But some experts say diversion of Great Lakes water is much more likely to happen
in areas closer to the Lakes. They say diverting water to the arid Southwest
would cost too much.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Michael Leland.

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