When it was finally over, 2008 was a good year for the Great Lakes. But work remains.
Lake levels rose after nearing historic lows, a historic agreement to protect the lakes was approved by the Great Lakes states and Congress and the nation elected a president from a Lake Michigan state who is expected to give greater credence to science-based concerns, the environment in general and the lakes.
Just a few weeks ago Congress adopted and President Bush signed a long-awaited Great Lakes compact aimed at limiting water diversions and managing state, federal and Canadian water policies.
In addition to limiting diversions, the compact also calls on the eight Great Lakes states to regulate their own water use, including withdrawals for drinking water; Traverse City, for instance, draws its drinking water from the East Arm of Grand Traverse Bay. The compact requires such communities to meet rigorous requirements for managing water use.
There is still work to do, however, and it needs to begin now.
Although it was a huge step forward, the compact still contains a major diversion loophole that must be immediately addressed. During the last stages of actually writing the compact it was changed to exempt water diversions -- make that sales -- in containers of less than 5.7 gallons.
While the move was defended as a minor wrinkle by compact defenders, environmental attorney Jim Olson of Traverse City pointed out that such a designation could be construed as declaring Great Lakes water a commodity and stripping it of the protections the compact supposedly provided -- not to mention opening lake waters to bottling companies selling it in containers up to 5.7 gallons.
U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Menominee, whose district includes portions of lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron, felt so strongly about the loophole that he voted against the compact as a whole. New wording to close the 5.7-gallon loophole must immediately be adopted.
High on the agenda of the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama and Congress, then, must be closing that gap, no matter how much the lobbyists for the bottled water industry howl. What seems now to be a trickle could grow to a flood as parched states probe the compact for ways to get at the largest concentration of fresh water in the world. Once a federal court decides that the rules that cover other commodities also cover water, watch out.
The federal government also needs to put some teeth into a new policy announced at the end of the year. The Environmental Protection Agency announced a requirement that commercial ships must dump ballast water at sea or rinse their tanks if they're empty in an effort to prevent invasive foreign species from entering the Great Lakes and other U.S. waters.
On its face, it appears to be the regulation activists have long hoped for. The announcement came after years of foot-dragging by the EPA and the U.S. Coast Guard and the flat-out refusal by both agencies to enforce federal Clean Water Act regulations and federal court decrees in relation to Great Lakes shipping.
In reality, however, the new requirement falls far short of regulations that would force ships to install systems for sterilizing ballast tanks to kill aquatic creatures. Though other countries have long approved similar standards, we haven't.
Critics derided the new rules as a "rinse and spit" solution that would still allow the 61,000 domestic and 8,000 foreign-flagged vessels that ply the lakes every year to continue to bring invasive species into the lakes.
Obviously, there are changes to be made, and if Great Lakes activists are going to make further headway, this seems the time. The anti-science Bush administration is on the way out, the Compact has just been signed and we're getting a president who knows water issues.
Stupak, Olson and others have work yet to do; if it's ever going to get done, 2009 seems the time.
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