Speak up to protect the Great Lakes;Hearing Monday night in West Allis

Now more than any time in recent memory, we have a chance to guarantee the long-term protection and sound management of the waters of the Great Lakes, insuring that they are not sold to the highest bidder and that they are protected for generations to come. The choices we make about how we protect land and water resources in our communities within the Great Lakes drainage basin affect the future of the Great Lakes themselves.

The water management agreement among Canadian provinces and US states -- including Wisconsin -- that border the Great Lakes is being amended for the first time since its creation in 1985, and that process is drawing to a conclusion.

Your only chance to attend a public meeting in southeast Wisconsin is Monday, August 22, on the State Fair Grounds.

The revised agreement is a good start towards improving the health of the Great Lakes and bringing about greater conservation of Great Lakes waters. But it needs to be strengthened.

The current draft creates a new category of community that will be eligible to apply for a diversion of water from a body of Great Lakes water, like Lake Michigan - - even if those communities are entirely outside the Great Lakes basin.

That creates the potential for permanent water losses from the Great Lakes basin. The City of Waukesha is interested in receiving Lake Michigan water. But it sends its treated wastewater down the Fox River, which flows to the Mississippi River and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico - - not to Lake Michigan. Because piping back wastewater to replenish the Great Lakes' source water would be very costly, Waukesha has already said it would seek an exemption from the return-flow requirement.

Another problem with the draft agreement is that it does not strongly regulate the export of bottled water from the Great Lakes. This is a growing problem, as brands such as "Ice Mountain," which originate inside the basin in Michigan, but are sold far from the region ,lead to permanent losses to Lake Michigan and thus the entire basin's ecosystem. (This would have been more of an issue in Wisconsin if Perrier had not been barred from bottling water here;after its rejection, the operation morphed into Nestle's Ice Mountain bottling plant in Michigan.)

The public meeting runs from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Aug. 22, at the Wisconsin State Fair Park Youth Center, Governor's Banquet Room, 640 South 84th Street. The nearest entrance to the Youth Center is south of Interstate 94 in West Allis through Gate 5. Parking is free. The meeting is hosted by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

There is an open house from 6:30 to 7 p.m., during which you can fill out a comment form and talk to the DNR staff. They will make a formal presentation about the agreement and the revision process at 7 p.m., followed by public comment. An executive summary of the agreement, links to the entire agreement and an electronic form on which you can send in comments, is available here. Deadline for written comments is Aug. 29.

Clean Wisconsin has more information.