Last Piece Of The Great Lakes Compact Puzzle Is An Ohio Puzzler

You may remember that state and property rights' zealots in Ohio held hostage the legislature's approval of the Great Lakes Compact until there was a measure inserted into the Ohio Constitution that was more about rhetoric and fringe politics than sound water management in the public interest.

Here is a good explanation in Ohio media of the measure that is on the Nov. 4th ballot in The Buckeye State, and as the story says, it's unknown down the road how this provision could effect Ohioans and their portion of the region's Great Lakes watershed.

Thank goodness when these kinds of irrelevancies were offered into the Wisconsin debate by people like State Sen. Mary Lazich, (R-New Berlin) , the State Department of Natural Resources, the rest of the legislature and Gov. Jim Doyle turned her down.

Ohioans were not that lucky, or well-prepared, or able to block that ideological sideshow, so the ballot initiative is there. Conservationists oppose it because they understand that the Compact, above all, is a conservation plan to preserve and sustain the Great Lakes, not a narrow scheme to lock up rights to waters that in Wisconsin law, and in common sense, are 'owned' in the public domain, in trust for generations to come.