Detroit Paper Urges Water Compact With Eased Rules

The Detroit News, that city's second-largest newspaper, says the Great Lakes Compact will hurt job growth in Michigan, and lauds that state's highest court for a recent ruling in favor of the bottled water industry.

Environmental groups in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the eight-state Great Lakes region think the mild restrictions on exporting bottled water in the pending Great Lakes Compact are, in fact, a loophole that needs closing.

So support for a strong Compact in Michigan is not a given, as feared by some Wisconsin Compact foes, and at least one major paper in Michigan isn't looking for Michigan at all to take the lead on tough regional water conservation and diversion rules, either.

As I noted on this blog last week, anti-Compact forces are gathering in Traverse City, MI, in late August; property rights, state soverignity, water access and ownership are major sticking points for the Ohio critic who is organizing the Traverse City meeting, and Waukesha County political and business interests, sharing some of the Ohio perspective, are leading the battle in Wisconsin to weaken or derail the Compact.

The Compact faces substantial obstacles across the region.

The alternatives are diversion of Great Lakes water, and its usage, without reasonable procedures or standards.

Another contradiction:

Compact critics are fooling themselves into thinking that their perceived entitlement to Great Lakes water wouldn't be threatened and overwhelmed by greater diversions of water by dozens of far-flung communities in many other states.