By Christina Kim, USCM Intern
August 11, 2008

Grand Rapids (MI) Mayor George Heartwell testified on July 30 before the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Senator Russell D. Feingold (WI) urging the Senate to pass The Great Lakes'saint Lawrence Compact, S.J. Res 45, an international agreement between the eight Great Lake states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario that would for the first time set region-wide standards for the use and withdrawal of waters from the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes is one of our nation’s greatest natural resources and serves as a source for drinking water, jobs, energy, shipping and recreation. The total body of its waters covers an area of 94,000 square miles, and contains 95 percent of the nation’s and 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water. However, its quality has been suffering over the past century from the introduction of invasive species, industrial discharges, runoff, toxic contamination, combined sewer overflows, and wetland destruction among what Heartwell calls an endless list of threats. The pollution has become so extreme that it caused Lake Erie to be declared a dead lake, and the Cuyahoga, a major river, to catch on fire years ago.

The quality of the water is not the only danger that the Great Lakes face. Low water levels have also become an issue as Lake Superior’s water levels hit record lows last year, and Lake Michigan is on the verge of doing the same. “Significant reductions in lake levels have already begun to cause problems for recreational boating, commercial shipping, municipal water intakes, coastal wetland viability, and is affecting the economy and the environment of the area,” said Heartwell. With less than one percent of the water lost being replenished each year, and 99 percent being unrenewable, one of the biggest threats to lower lake levels is the increase in the amount of water withdrawn from the lakes.

The Great Lakes'saint Lawrence Compact would protect this depletion of fresh water by creating uniform and binding water use standards for the region to govern the withdrawal and use of the waters, prohibiting new or increased out-of-basin diversions except under special circumstances, and establishing uniform standards across the Great Lakes states for evaluating new in-basin uses of water. The Compact would also require all Great Lakes states to develop water conservation and efficiency programs and have a requirement for a return flow that would require a certain amount of water taken to be returned to the Great Lakes.

The outlook of the United Nations predicts that about two-thirds of the world’s population will live in areas that lack ready access to clean fresh water, stressing the importance of the Compact, and the global need and responsibility to protect water. This Compact is significant because, as mentioned above, it is the first time the lakes will be protected and managed by a binding universal standard in the Great Lakes states and the Canadian provinces, and also, because it may serve as a model for creating international agreements to protect other resources globally.