Clean Water In the News

State Sen. Tim Grendell has introduced legislation he says corrects problematic wording with the existing compact to protect the Great Lakes.
Grendell, R-Chester Township, said the legislation also ensures Great Lakes states have more flexibility in pursuing future economic development.
The senator said the measure, Senate Bill 291, has the support of Ohio Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, and Wisconsin's state assembly, where a companion bill will be introduced.
However, strongly opposing Grendell's proposal are a number of Ohio environmental groups.
They charge Grendell's legislation "shelters the strong bipartisan momentum that has been building to ratify the Great Lakes Compact."
The bills seek to protect the Great Lakes from water being diverted outside the basin in the future, while making two clarifying changes within the existing language that threaten private property rights. They also grant participating states unilateral authority to block one another from future intra-Basin water transfers, Grendell said.
Legislators hope that if given a viable alternative to the problematic wording in the Compact, the other Great Lakes states will follow suit and pass an agreement that is stronger and a more accurate reflection of the participating states' intent.
"We support passage of a multistate Compact to protect the Great Lakes," Grendell said. "What we cannot support is ambiguous language that would call into question for example, the rights of private property owners to use or tap into groundwater on their own land. As it stands today, the Compact we are being asked to approve would be in direct conflict with Ohio's tradition of strong private property rights."
In 2005, Gov. Bob Taft joined with the eight Great Lakes governors and the premiers of two Canadian provinces in signing the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement and pushed the Ohio General Assembly to be among the first to ratify a Compact that seeks to protect the Lakes from future diversions.
But Grendell's proposal does not measure up in the eyes of a number of environmental organizations.
Among them are Audubon Ohio, the National Wildlife Federation, Environment Ohio, Ohio League of Conservation Voters and the Ohio Environmental Council.
In a joint statement, the groups said that it is a "sad and ironic fact that the very week that the legislatures of Indiana and New York have given their final and overwhelmingly bipartisan approval to the Compact and sent it on to the governors for approval, the GOP leadership of the Ohio Senate and the Wisconsin Assembly suddenly propose to swim against this strong bipartisan tide in a naked show of partisanship.
"All who love and depend on Lake Erie for drinking water, jobs, and recreation need Ohio to step up and offer thoughtful bipartisan leadership, not ideological, imbalanced responses."
JHutchison@News-Herald.com