The Great Lakes were in the news last summer, and especially poor Lake Ontario. The Great lakes, including Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario, make up the largest cluster of freshwater lakes, by surface area, in the world. Given how little fresh water there is in the world (and most is tied up in glaciers, groundwater and frozen ground), it is prudent to be especially careful with this precious resource.
Several decades ago, some forward-thinking politicians and water resource specialists created the Great Lakes Compact, a legally binding interstate compact with protections for the use and transfer of the waters of the Great Lakes and signed in 2008 by the governors of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. The full title, the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement, also includes the premiers of the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
The compact not only regulates the water in the Great Lakes themselves but also protects all the water in the watersheds of the Great Lakes. A watershed is the land that drains into a water body. Depending on the water body in question, the watershed will be large or small and may drain into a lake or a stream. In Wisconsin, some of our water drains into the Great Lakes and eventually into the St. Lawrence Seaway and then empties into the Atlantic Ocean. But most of Wisconsin drains into the Mississippi which empties into the Gulf of Mexico (which of course is also part of the Atlantic Ocean). Because Wisconsin is relatively flat, it isn’t always easy to see the boundary between the Great Lakes watershed and the Mississippi watershed. This boundary is known as the subcontinental divide – separating the two large watersheds. (The continental divide in the US is more or less the Rocky Mountains and most everything east goes to the Atlantic Ocean and most everything west goes to the Pacific.) In Wisconsin, the Lake Superior watershed is a rather narrow strip of land stretching from Superior to Ashland to Hurley and east to the northern edge of Vilas County, including much of Presque Isle. The Lake Michigan watershed is a wider stretch from Florence County south to just west of Milwaukee. Altogether, about 20% of Wisconsin is in the Great Lakes Watershed.
So what does the Compact protect? One of the most important rules is that, with only the rarest exceptions, water may not be diverted from the Great Lakes watershed to another watershed. The authors of the Compact were especially worried that water would be diverted by truck or ship or railroad out of the Great Lakes basin. Even worse, they were worried that water might be diverted by way of a pipeline or canal out of the basin. In Wisconsin, that meant that water within the Lake Superior or Lake Michigan watersheds cannot be diverted to the Mississippi watershed. This led to two interesting cases.
Back in 2013, the city of Waukesha found that the radium levels in its public water supply exceeded federal standards. The city was forced to find an alternative source of water. The city is located wholly outside the Great Lakes watershed, but because Waukesha County straddles the boundary, it could apply to the State of Wisconsin to be allowed to pump water from wells located within the Lake Michigan watershed. The state of Wisconsin submitted a proposal to the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Water Resources Council for review and in 2016, after a prolonged review, Waukesha was allowed to take water from the Lake Michigan watershed, with conditions.
In the second case, and closer to the Northwoods, Trig Solberg proposed drawing water out of a property near Carlin Lake in the town of Presque Isle in Vilas County. His plan was to fill three tanker trucks per day, each holding 6,000 gallons of water, down to a Minocqua bottling plant. As mentioned before, Presque Isle, including the Carlin Lake property is within the Lake Superior watershed and Minocqua is in the Wisconsin River basin, and ultimately the Mississippi River basin.
Local townspeople in Presque Isle were worried about the precedent of taking water out of the Lake Superior basin as well as problems that might come with heavy trucking on the local town and county roads. Over five years, Mr. Solberg repeatedly appealed against the denials by the Vilas County court for permission for the project. In the end, the WDNR informed Mr. Solberg that his plan would violate the Great Lakes Compact and Mr. Solberg abandoned his plan.
The Great Lakes Compact was a farsighted agreement that will protect the water of the Great Lakes. Regardless of ill-advised name changes, the compact will keep all the water safe.
