Progress Illinois

A decade-long effort to prevent the world's largest supply of fresh water from being diverted from the region won a hard-fought victory when the Great Lakes Basin Compact was signed into law in early October. But some environmentalists are concerned that the protective measures don't go far enough and they're launching a new campaign to see the Compact strengthened.

Led by Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation (and the group's outspoken attorney Jim Olson), a coalition of environmental groups wants Congress to amend the legislation so that Great Lakes water is classified as a public resource, rather than a private commodity. Doing so would send a clear message to the bottled water industry: Don't even think about it.

Under the current language, corporations could make a strong case for their right to bottle Great Lakes water for sale under international trade law. In an earlier interview with Circle Of Blue, Olson explains:

[A] precedent is being set that water can be privatized for export and sale. It is not subject to the diversion ban and Compact, which could tilt the gradient of Great Lakes water to the West, or to the Southeast, or anywhere in the world if it was in a container. It wasn’t intended to turn water into a private commodity, or to privatize water and there’s a huge risk that the Compact does exactly that.

If Congress won't take up amending the Compact, the activists have a plan B: They'll attempt to write the additional protective measure into the Michigan Constitution.