Lawmaker calls for Indiana to join compact that would prevent diverting of waters

December 20, 2007

Associated Press

A state lawmaker is pushing legislation that calls for Indiana to join a regional compact intended to prevent arid Sun Belt states from tapping the Great Lakes’ waters.

Sen. Beverly Gard, R-Greenfield, said her bill is supported by business and environmental groups that want Indiana to sign onto the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact.

She said it’s “extremely important” for Indiana to protect the Great Lakes waters it now uses for business and recreational purposes from drought-stricken states in the West and South. “We don’t want to be in the situation that New Mexico is in or that Georgia is in, so it’s something that deeply concerns all of us,” she said.

Among the eight Great Lakes states, only Minnesota and Illinois have ratified the agreement, but legislation is being discussed in Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Congress also must give its approval to the compact, which the Great Lakes states’ governors and the premiers of Ontario and Quebec agreed to in December 2005, pending legislative approval. With limited exceptions, the compact would prohibit diverting water from the lakes and the rivers linking them, which hold nearly 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water. The compact instructs the Great Lakes states to regulate water use and adopt conservation plans.

Gard said there are real “immediate threats” to the Great Lakes — Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and Superior — some of which are facing drops in water levels.

She noted that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat who’s running for president, caused a stir in October when he said that as president, he would encourage Northern states with plenty of water to help drought-stricken Southwestern states, such as his own. “Wisconsin is awash in water,” Richardson told the Las Vegas Sun. Although far-northwestern Indiana includes a portion of Lake Michigan’s shoreline, several Northern Indiana counties fall within either Lake Michigan’s or Lake Erie’s drainage basins. On Monday, more than a dozen business and environmental groups testified in favor of Gard’s bill before the Indiana Senate’s environmental affairs committee, which she chairs. The Indiana Manufacturers Association also backs the legislation, although the group does have lingering concerns about the compact’s potential impact.

Patrick Bennett, an environmental lobbyist for the group, said some of its members are worried about how the compact might affect the permitting process for businesses, although those concerns have faded somewhat.

“I think the membership has come a long way to understanding and becoming more comfortable with the compact,” he said. A Legislative Services Agency fiscal analysis found that in its first year, it would cost the Indiana Department of Natural Resources an estimated $265,000 to monitor water withdrawals from the state’s portion of the Great Lakes basin.

Each subsequent year, those costs would total about $210,000, the analysis found.

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