The Great Lakes Compact became law in late 2008, and bans (most) diversions of water out of the Great Lakes Basin. FLOW’s 2024 report, A Watershed Moment, offers a history of the agreement, analysis of its achievements and gaps, and recommendations to strengthen its protections.
The short history
The Compact was born of a movement triggered in 1998, when Ontario granted a permit for a Canadian company to ship 156 million gallons of Lake Superior water annually to Asia. Great Lakes Basin citizens reacted with outrage. The public demanded that the province revoke the permit. In response, the company gave up its permit, and the governments of the Great Lakes states and provinces began conferring on a new,
binding agreement on Great Lakes water diversions.
A decade later, that agreement would become the Great Lakes Compact, an unprecedented international water protection accord, binding among the eight U.S. states, with a parallel, non-binding corollary with Ontario and Quebec. The Compact is a step forward for the Great Lakes, but it is just the beginning of a long journey.
A step forward for the Great Lakes
Positive features of the Compact include:
- A ban on most out-of-basin diversions that risk damaging the delicate balance of this freshwater system, as previous human interventions have done.
- Increased efforts by the Great Lakes states and provinces to monitor use and promote water conservation as a model for freshwater consumption. A forum for dialogue on Great Lakes water quantity issues.
The Compact does have weakness:
- Ironically, while banning most new or increased Great Lakes water diversions, the Compact facilitates the treatment of Great Lakes water as a product – the very activity that led to the Compact.
- Approvals by the State of Wisconsin of some in-state water diversions open up the potential for widespread abuse of Great Lakes water as an economic development tool to serve industries, rather than serving “a group of largely residential customers” as required by the Compact.
- Vaguely defined exceptions to the ban on diversions could harm the Great Lakes. This includes an exception that allows diversions on a “short-term” basis for humanitarian purposes.
The future of the Great Lakes
“We’ve got to learn to live with the lake; it’s too big for us to control,” said Lee Botts, a lifelong Great Lakes advocate and founder of the Lake Michigan Federation. Her advice to remain humble in the face of the majesty and complexity of the Great Lakes is well-taken, as their stewards contemplate the future of these sweetwater seas. Time after
time, the Great Lakes have surprised scientists and government agencies with their response to human manipulation.
They will undoubtedly do so again as humans seek to affect the levels of the Great Lakes, by tapping them for water demanded by development just outside the basin. We must also sort out when furnishing water in a humanitarian crisis makes sense. has no ecological justification. Rather, it is a carve-out for the commercial bottled water industry. The Compact offers a remedy. Each state has the legal authority and discretion to treat transfers out of the basin in containers of 5.7 gallons or less as a diversion. This is a defense against the further commercialization of fresh water.
FLOW advocates policies based on the precautionary principle, especially in a time of rapid climate change, to minimize new uses of Great Lakes water, and prevent water from being treated as a commodity. We must preserve and protect public control and stewardship of the Great Lakes.
The Great Lakes Compact can exemplify the precautionary approach, but only if we can answer these questions, strengthen its implementation, and close the gaps.
