Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat News The Newsletter of the Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund Volume 8, Number 4 • July-August 2000

Great Lakes Bulk Water Export – An Ecosystem Agenda

By Jennifer Nalbone, Great Lakes United

In 1998 a highly publicized controversy broke out over a proposal to export bulk water from Lake Superior. The proposal was eventually turned down, but in the process the governments discovered that it is not necessarily legal to simply ban export and diversion of water from the Great Lakes basin. A little thing called trade law severely limits government ability to simply ban any form of trade in water.

According to some high-priced legal talent hired by the Great Lakes Protection Fund, the solution is reforming water use law so that it judges proposed water uses according to impact on the ecosystem. Basically, to protect against ecosystem-threatening export or diversion, we need to regulate *all* water use on the basis of ecosystem protection.

As a result, the ten states and provinces around the Great Lakes are considering a complete overhaul of every basin state and province’s way of managing water so that it has an ecosystem protection basis. Of course, where water runs, how much of it, how often, and when, is the basis of much habitat functioning. The contemplated government overhaul could have arguably the most significant impact on habitat protection since the creation of environmental assessments, fisheries law, wetlands protection and endangered species legislation.

This year, five environmental organizations sat down to figure out what such a new system would like if it was going to be effective. For six months staff and board members from Great Lakes United, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, the National Wildlife Federation’s office in Ann Arbor, the Lake Michigan Federation, and a Quebec group called Strategies St. Laurent, worked to hammer out a consensus document. We want to ask: have we done a good job?

We think the program we outline hits the major points, and suggests the right approaches; but does it? We would like you to help us refine the document so that it is truly comprehensive and on-target. Please take a look at the summary below. We would like you to comment to us on the summary or, better yet, ask for the full twelve-page document, and comment on that. We’re asking for comment from a lot of quarters. Once we get it, we plan to make changes and ask for mass sign-on before we present the plan to state and provincial officials. Please take a look:

“An Ecosystem Agenda for Water Use Management in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River.”

In the wake of recent proposals to divert and export water from the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River basin, government will soon be putting forward plans to reform basin water use management. The International Joint Commission has issued its report on the subject. Both Ontario and Québec are currently developing strategies for water use issues. The two provinces and the eight Great Lakes states have been meeting to create a basin-wide strategy.

It is up to the public to insist that new solutions for managing water-use fully protect and restore the basin ecosystem while sustaining water for future generations. To do this we must address the many changes people cause in the natural state of water, from exporting water for drinking to damming streams for electricity.

This document provides analysis and recommendations that embody such an approach. There are several environmental “must haves” that will distinguish between proposed approaches that lead to sustainable use of Great Lakes waters and those that push the region further down the spiral of non-sustainable water use:

• The objective must be to protect and affirmatively restore the Great Lakes water system, not just fend off additional harm
• The strategy must result in dramatic reductions in basin human water use
• All changes to the Great Lakes water system must be addressed. Managing solely for how much water is used while neglecting how and where it moves, for example, will not protect water for the benefit of all users, including wildlife
• A comprehensive strategy for the protection and restoration of the Great Lakes water system, and a standard for implanting it, must be developed. The strategy must:

-provide specific, binational protection and restoration goals for the Great Lakes water system -include a basin-wide standard to be applied to all decisions on proposed new water uses or alterations of the water system -be conservation-based: protecting and restoring the Great Lakes water system as opposed to accommodating and mediating the needs of use sectors -set conservation targets by use sectors with timelines -take a watershed approach to system protection and restoration aimed at encouraging living within the means of individual watersheds -embody the precautionary principle: conservative approaches in the absence of perfect information about the needs of the water system

• The process for developing the strategy and standard, and for making decisions based on them, must be open and accessible to the public and subject to challenge by citizens. The process for developing and implementing the strategy and standard must be guided by the region’s state, provincial and tribal governments. The process must also respect and accommodate the legitimate role of federal governments in overseeing national and international interests in protecting and restoring the Great Lakes water system
• The federal governments must assure the availability of a constitutionally valid mechanism that enables vigorous international, provincial and state cooperation
• Should state, local and First Nations governments fail to create a strategy, the federal governments should step in to assure that a strategy is created
• The onus must rest with those proposing new or increased water uses or alterations to the water system to show that they are consistent with the strategy and standard
• Information on the connection between the water system and the life it supports should be continuously and aggressively gathered and assimilated into a publicly accessible, binational water information base that is understandable and useful to lay citizens
• Regional climate change should be aggressively researched and climate change data evaluated with water data to routinely review the estimated impacts of climate change on water supplies
• The effects of all approved water uses must be monitored for periodic evaluation of uses against the standard and strategy, and to inform future water use decisions. This monitoring information should be included in the binational water information base
• Water use approvals must be rescindable if evidence later arises that they are no longer, or never were, consistent with the strategy and standard
• Every individual’s right to water for basic human needs must be guaranteed
• The waters of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River basin are a single ecosystem. If they are managed as such, according to the principles outlined in this document, it is highly unlikely that any diversion or bulk export of water out of the basin would ever take place
• The federal, state and provincial governments should place a moratorium on new or increased diversions into or out of the basin, and on new or increased water uses and other changes to the basin water system until a strategy has been implemented

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