New Berlin Diversion Proposal Being Monitored Across The Great Lakes

Minnesota-based author and environmental organizer Dave Dempsey, with his Michigan political background and regional contacts, is obviously watching the water diversion drama playing out in Wisconsin around the Great Lakes Compact.

That's the stalled eight-state cooperative agreement to better manage the Great Lakes that is stalled in Wisconsin, might get legislative consideration later this month, but faces an uncertain future.

If any Great Lakes state won't ratify and implement the Compact ( Minnesota and Illinois have, the other six have not), it fails to go into effect, and its standards'-based focus on Great Lakes water conservation and management goes by the wayside after years of US-Canadian effort.

The Badger State is also where a Wisconsin Attorney General opinion from December 2006 about limited state authority to approve diversions from the Great Lakes is being discounted as relevant at the Department of Natural Resources.

You can read an analysis of the DNR's philosophy, here.

Sometimes I wonder if politicos and bureaucrats at our State Capitol, and especially in anti-Great Lakes Compact Waukesha County, fully understand the breadth and depth of interest in their political and legal maneuverings across the Great Lakes region.

Time will tell, aina.