Here & Now

Reflection on the Great Lake Compact After 10 Years

Frederica Freyberg:
Now to another Wisconsin water topic and a forthcoming anniversary. Next month marks the 10-year anniversary of the Great Lakes Compact. The compact is a highly detailed water resource management document approved by Congress and signed by the governors of the nine Great Lakes states. The demand for Great Lakes water was on the rise a decade ago, but that was long before projects like Foxconn came over the horizon. Last spring the state DNR approved diverting millions of gallons of Lake Michigan water to be used at the Foxconn technology plant in Mount Pleasant. The approval has and will continue to test interpretations of the compact. Ron Seely is an environmental writer whose report is called “Can the Great Lakes Continue to Fend Off an Increasingly Thirsty World”? It’s running in the non-profit environmental magazine Ensia. Ron, thanks for being here.

Ron Seely:
It’s a pleasure.

Frederica Freyberg:
As to the Great Lakes Compact, is it working as designed?

Ron Seely:
Well, there are differing opinions on that. Largely the people who are involved, it was a five-year effort, of course, and this is the ten-year anniversary. It was signed ten years ago by George w. Bush. The people who were involved in putting that together, very complex effort, largely believe that it is working. People like Todd Ames, who is head of DNR’s division of water then, points out we now have a means to test these proposals like Foxconn which would remove seven million gallons a day from the lake. Without the compact, there wouldn’t be that discussion.

Frederica Freyberg:
But do diversions like the one for Foxconn represent a threat to the compact in some experts’ minds?

Ron Seely:
These diversions are mostly coming from within the basin or communities that straddle the basin. The real threat that prompted the creation of the compact were diversions that were proposed by dry states like Arizona. One of the things that prompted the creation of the compact was a proposal from a private company to ship Great Lakes water to Asia.

Frederica Freyberg:
Right.

Ron Seely:
Those have largely faded into the background, and people who have studied the compact and worked on it believe that is largely due to the compact, which doesn’t allow diversions from outside the basin.

Frederica Freyberg:
And yet in the circumstance where there’s kind of a global water shortage, which people anticipate there will be, does that doom the compact? Or is there a fear that it does?

Ron Seely:
I think that people, scholars who have looked at this, University of Saskatchewan has a really busy water program, and there are scholars there who have looked at this and believe there is a threat long-term simply because of climate, the scarcity of water. Many places around the world now, Cape Town, South Africa, for example. The more we enter into this period of drought and scarcity of water, people do believe that there are places that are going to turn to the Great Lakes. People are already asking why should we be able to lock up such a public resource when the rest of the world, large parts of the world are thirsty.

Frederica Freyberg:
What is the current health of the Great Lakes according to your reporting and the experts?

Ron Seely:
It’s a tremendous — first of all, it’s just a tremendous freshwater resource. It’s the largest freshwater resource in the world, holds 85% of North America’s freshwater, 21% of the world’s freshwater. The lakes are — Lake Superior is pristine. The lakes are clean. A lot of communities obviously rely on the lakes for the surface water for drinking water. So they’re a remarkable resource, and the people who put together this compact, some of the people I talked to who have studied the compact and followed it over the years have said that it was — it took a lot of foresight and was an important effort that we realized the value of this resource and did something before the threats become real.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Ron Seeley, thanks very much.

Ron Seely:
Sure.