Great Lakes Water Issues' Chronology, Websites, Definitions, Documents

A good primer to work one's way through some of the context for discussing the Great Lakes water management with Canada - - "The Compact" - - is here.

Those in Waukesha County who think that scrapping the whole process is a reasonable option are not seeing the full picture.

Their self-interested exceptionalism - - (that hotlink will get you to a national news story that outed the Waukesha County deal-breakers) - - and distorted belief in their procedural entitlement to a resource shared among eight states and two Canadian provinces is...jaw-dropping.

Kevin Crawford, the Mayor of Manitowoc, is a member of the Kedzie Committee, and he had some choice words for the City of Waukesha's committee representative that have sat posted on the committee's website for months, and are among the many documents there that have yet to be covered in the traditional media.

The Manitowoc letter helps explain why I would use the term "exceptionalism" to describe some of the Waukesha spin that has helped lead the committee to its stalemate.

And let's also remember that twice last year, Waukesha tried to get Gov. Doyle, through confidential communications, to approve a diversion from Lake Michigan without going through the Great Lakes Compact or federal statuatory procedures.

Had those documents not been discovered and posted on line in a commentary I wrote for WisOpinion.com, their existence and the planning behind it might never have been made public.

Waukesha sent the documents to the Kedzie committee after they were published, and has cited them in additional materials forwarded to the committee.

Waukesha is still pushing the line that it doesn't need those permissions.