On the hottest of Chicago's summer days it's not unusual to see an illegally uncorked fire hydrant gushing to the delight of neighborhood children. It's also not uncommon to see a city worker bottle up that fun with the conscientious turn of a wrench.
Call it an early message in moderation for Lake Michigan's young benefactors. Or a microcosm of water management for the Great Lakes region. Either way, the scene illustrates a lesson learned by local policymakers.
"Many of us, myself included, have grown up in the region operating under the myth that the Great Lakes go on forever," says Cameron Davis, executive director of Alliance for the Great Lakes, formerly known as the Lake Michigan Federation. "We now know better. Less than 1 percent of Great Lakes water is renewed every year through rain and snow melt."
The Great Lakes region — Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec — has the world's largest source of fresh water. And area leaders want to secure this asset for future generations.
State and provincial officials are putting what they hope will be the final touches on a regional plan to responsibly manage the Great Lakes water supply. The agreement would limit local consumption and protect the region's natural resource against what could be a future wave of interest in diverting Great Lakes water to more parched places.
In general, it's still considered too costly to pipe the water for western irrigation or ship it to international dry spots. But who's to say the benefits won't exceed those costs in coming decades?
Such possibilities have forced politicians to wade into the debate.
"Here's an instance where eight different states, with governors of different political stripes, have come together to say, 'This is important,'" Davis says. "You don't see that very often."
Much of the credit belongs to The Nova Group, an Ontario consulting firm that in 1998 won a Canadian permit to ship tankers of Lake Superior water to arid areas in Asia.
"That was the thing that kind of drove this new effort at strengthening water management," says Dan Injerd, chief of Lake Michigan management for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Federal law allows any Great Lakes governor to veto a proposed water diversion. But shortly after The Nova Group's failed endeavor, the Great Lakes governors committed to strengthening their legal standing. The goal was to establish a clear set of supporting principles that could protect their veto power against a constitutional challenge.
The eight governors and two Canadian premiers signed the Great Lakes Charter Annex of 2001, essentially agreeing to update the region's water management policies.
A draft of the new rules was released a year ago, prompting more than 30 public meetings and some 10,000 comments.
Participants say that input will be reflected in a revised report scheduled for release sometime this July. There will be another two months of public comment and the report could be presented to Congress by the end of the year. The two main issues are diversions and consumption within the watershed basin, the area where water flows back into the lakes.
A diversion is akin to the immediate, high-impact drain of an open fire hydrant, while excessive consumption is more like letting the faucet flow while brushing your teeth. From an environmental perspective, both practices are bad. Diversions, of course, are worse. And the July 2004 draft proposal recognizes that.
"Diversions weren't just banned outright. It was an extremely stringent standard, but it was a standard that, in theory, if a project applicant met that standard, they'd get a permit," Injerd says. "All of the jurisdictions would be committed to applying the principles of the standard in their review. In other words, it wouldn't just be subject to a political decision."
A new diversion would require unanimous approval, granting every state veto power over such withdrawals. And any wastewater from a diversion would have to return to the water basin surrounding the Great Lakes, effectively sinking anything similar to The Nova Group's international shipping scheme.
A simple majority vote would suffice for a consumption increase within the basin that exceeds 5 million gallons a per day, whether it be for drinking water or industry. Smaller increases would not prompt a vote.
As diversions go, Illinois has a unique situation resulting from the 1900 reversal of the Chicago River. Building the 28-mile Sanitary and Ship Canal forced the river to begin flowing south, taking with it waste that had flowed into the lake and polluted city drinking water.
The engineering feat eventually led to court challenges over the billions of gallons of lake water Chicago was directing downstream. In 1930, the U.S. Supreme Court began limiting the diversion.
Currently, the state can sap no more than 3,200 cubic feet per second of Lake Michigan water, or about 2.1 billion gallons a day, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. While the Chicago River and canal system still get their shares, the state's public water supply is the diversion's deepest dependent.
"Lake Michigan, far and away, is the dominant supply source in the region," Injerd says. "Over half of the residents of the entire state of Illinois use water from Lake Michigan, which illustrates the population concentration we have in the six-county area."
From 1983 until 1994, Illinois consistently consumed more lake water than it was entitled to, Injerd says. But a reduction in rainfall and lower lake levels helped reverse that trend in the past 11 years. Repairs made to leaky Chicago River structures and new water mains that replaced aging city infrastructure also dropped water usage.
Technological advances and climatic cycles are part of the ebb and flow state officials must consider when a new suburb requests permission to tap into Lake Michigan water. The state's limited diversion allowance also helps to explain why a handful of southeast Chicago suburbs buy their lake water from Indiana towns. Again, the key is location because the Great Lakes Charter Annex is much more stringent when it comes to water being used outside the watershed basin — essentially water that could not be funneled back to the lakes after use.
Take, for example, Waukesha, Wis. About 20 miles west of Milwaukee, the town is just outside the watershed basin. Waukesha wants to use Lake Michigan water because its underground source has high levels of radium. But the 2001 annex brands Waukesha an undue drain on the Great Lakes. Back in Illinois, the state's court-sanctioned diversion allows lake water to flow as far away as Plainfield, a Will County suburb nearly 40 miles southwest of Chicago.
Illinois has the only major diversion out of the Great Lakes, taking 2 billion gallons daily, while Canadian rivers continually pour nearly twice that amount into the lakes each day. Expect Illinois to keep its unique status, as the revised draft agreement that debuts this summer is likely to maintain an onerous approval process for new diversions. Other states have much smaller diversions, but most of the Great Lakes water they use is consumed within the watershed basin or extracted from underground aquifers.
"I'm of the mind that in-basin water uses are far more harmful than diversions," says Davis of Alliance for the Great Lakes. "And that's not to say that diversions aren't harmful. It's simply to say that a diversion is very difficult to get, whereas how we use our water inside the basin is still extremely wasteful and allows much room for improvement."
That was one of the major criticisms of last year's draft agreement. If the states and provinces don't reduce their own consumption, how can they restrict international access to the Great Lakes?
Conservation was one of the core principles incorporated in the Great Lakes Charter Annex of 2001. Preventing basin water loss, doing no harm to the area and improving the system also topped the list.
Some groups would like this year's draft agreement to take a stronger ecological stance, while others argue that mission falls outside of the charter's scope. If nothing else, cementing the agreement could open the door to other environmental efforts.
"We recognize that the opportunity for the large-scale, long-term federal funding is sometime in the future," says David Naftzger, executive director of the Council of Great Lakes Governors.
In addition to the water management objectives addressed by the charter annex, the council is pushing to combat pollution, thwart invasive species, restore coastal wetlands and improve recreational opportunities. A plan to implement these priorities was scheduled for release early this July. Officially recognized by a May 2004 executive order from President George W. Bush, the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration also incorporates cooperative efforts from local governments and federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Illinois took a small restoration step last fall, setting aside three decades of stubbornness to sign onto a federal coastal management program that could net $2 million in annual grants. Illinois originally held out at the behest of wealthy lakefront landowners who feared federal encroachment on their properties.
A much more substantial federal windfall could materialize after the states adopt the two complementary plans for managing, protecting and improving the Great Lakes, Naftzger argues. Illinois representatives are among those in Congress calling for a five-year $4 billion Great Lakes Restoration Fund. The proposal, however, has been in limbo for two years.
"It's the governors' hope and expectation that this Great Lakes Regional Collaboration leads to large-scale, long-term federal funding, and we've had very encouraging progress over the last few months," Naftzger says.
Implementing the charter annex and the principles outlined by the Council of Great Lakes Governors could be the key to moving the plan off the table and into the federal budget.
Illinois Issues, July/August 2005
