A crack in the Great Lakes Compact? Approved water diversion prompts pushback

The Great Lakes hold quadrillions of gallons of water. Is allowing one more company to take water from them such a big deal?

Yes, say groups worried about the slippery slope of Great Lakes’ diversions.

A controversial plan to divert 7 million gallons of water a day from Lake Michigan to the proposed site of a factory in Wisconsin, run by Foxconn, an international manufacturer of electronics, was upheld by an administrative law judge earlier last month. That hasn’t ended opposition to the plan by environmental groups or settled worries that this decision is the first crack in the Great Lakes Compact, a regional agreement to keep 21 percent of the world’s surface freshwater where it is now: within the Great Lakes basin.

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Ken Notes: I again suggest we have an opportunity here to demonstrate using our water and returning it to the watershed better that we found it. If we just say no we continue the cycle of finding areas with the least regulation and polluting there rather than developing clean systems here. We did not clean the great lakes by ending manufacturing we cleaned them by improving manufacturing. We are very NIMBY for a group that embraces the term GLOBAL.