More and more, communities outside of the Great Lakes watershed basin are looking for ways to tap into Great Lakes water, despite the Great Lakes Compact agreement ban on most out-of-basin water diversions.
The latest example is the City of South Barrington, Illinois, which announced recently it is paying $154,000 to a consultant to prepare a plan to buy water from the City of Chicago. That city diverts Lake Michigan water into the Illinois River watershed to prevent city sewage from fouling its drinking water, and to support barge traffic on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The diverted water is also treated and used by the City for drinking water.
Despite its geographic proximity to Lake Michigan, South Barrington lies outside the Lake Michigan watershed.
Although large, new consumptive uses of Great Lakes water require approvals under the Great Lakes Compact, water allocations from Chicago to other Illinois cities are exempt from the Compact as long as they stay within Chicago’s 3,200 cubic feet per second diversion, which is allowed by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Due to increased water use efficiency, Chicago has reduced its consumption, opening a margin that it is selling.
In other words, rather than returning the water it doesn’t use to Lake Michigan, Chicago can use it as an asset to be leased to communities beyond its borders and outside of the watershed. Last year, Chicago and the City of Joliet, Illinois – 35 miles from Chicago’s downtown – announced a 100-year agreement for Joliet to purchase treated drinking water from Chicago. The estimated price for the lease is $1 billion.
“It is time to reset the decades-old Supreme Court’s order,” says Jim Olson, founder of For Love of Water.
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“The decree continues to bind the states and Great Lakes to the loss of 2 billion gallons a day, a drop of more than two inches a year, which during record low level years can result in devastating harm to the public trust for navigation, boating, fishing, shoreline wetlands and habitat along our coastlines. Yet it was entered into two decades before the nation’s and states’ first environmental and water laws and it was entered into before the legal recognition of the rights of the public and the lakes themselves that are protected by the universally accepted public trust law principle. And while the Chicago Diversion was exempted from the 2008 Great Lakes Compact’s diversion ban, that doesn’t prevent review of Chicago’s abuse of the Supreme Court’s consent order.”
Wisconsin is also using Lake Michigan water to support economic development outside the Great Lakes watershed, exploiting authority conferred by the Compact. In a report released earlier this year, FLOW found that state officials had okayed five new or increased water diversions outside the Great Lakes for development and population growth.
“Wisconsin’s reinterpretation of lawful exceptions to the Great Lakes Compact’s diversion ban has deviated from the common understanding upon its 2008 ratification. The Compact now enables rather than prevents diversion proposals in [watershed] straddling communities, and fosters population growth and water consumption outside the Great Lakes watershed,” FLOW said in the report.
