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Fresh water: Our 'sea of diamonds'

Steve Rice / Star Tribune

This scarce resource -- much of which resides in the Great Lakes -- will be exploited if we lower our guard.

By DAVE DEMPSEY

Last update: June 28, 2009 - 10:13 AM

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Minnesota has long been a national leader on conservation issues. One of the state's most recent claims to environmental excellence is its role as the first of the eight Great Lakes states to ratify, in 2007, the Great Lakes Compact. Congress and former President George W. Bush signed off on the compact -- sold to the public as the best hope of stopping water exports -- last fall.

But the work of protecting the Great Lakes is just beginning. Efforts must continue on two fronts in order for Minnesota to remain a leader.

First, citizens and our congressional delegation must make a strong case for capturing a piece of the $475 million in Great Lakes restoration money proposed by President Obama in his 2010 budget. The money is the first significant federal investment proposed for the purpose of cleaning up toxic hot spots, restoring habitats and attacking invasive species. Although prior presidents and Congresses have been glib in calling the Great Lakes a national treasure, they haven't been willing to defend them, even as the Florida Everglades and Chesapeake Bay benefited from substantial federal dollars.

Second, and less well understood: Minnesota must close a giant loophole in the Great Lakes Compact that could render the entire document null and void. That's unacceptable when you're talking about 95 percent of the fresh water in America and 18 percent of the fresh water in the world.

The little-publicized flaw in the compact is that it threatens to turn the waters of the Great Lakes into a product.

Once those waters are extracted from the lakes or their tributaries and are intended for consumers, they are exempt from the compact's prohibition on diversions and exports outside the region.

The compact originated from a Canadian firm's proposal in 1998 to export 50 tankers per year of Lake Superior water to Asia. The Great Lakes states and many citizens worked to prevent the commercialization of the lakes. But they didn't succeed. While it is now illegal to export 50 tankers per year of Lake Superior water without the permission of the governors of every Great Lakes state, it is perfectly legal to export 50 tankers per year of bottles or other containers holding Lake Superior water with no interstate approval.

The specter of large-scale private claims on the Great Lakes is not mere worry. The scarcity of water -- not only in developing nations, but also in the drought-menaced southeastern and southwestern United States -- could make it supremely valuable on an open market. If the financier T. Boone Pickens is buying Texas groundwater in the hope of selling it to parched Texas communities, how long before tycoons snap up Great Lakes water rights? And how much water can be withdrawn before irreversible damage occurs?

It's not too late to close the loophole and truly secure the future of the Great Lakes and of fresh water in general. Two members of Minnesota's U.S. House delegation, Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison, signaled their concern about the loophole by voting against the compact last September. They and others can help conserve America's greatest freshwater resource.

The fix is simple, if not politically easy:

•Correct the oversight in Minnesota's and other Great Lakes states' laws that fails to reaffirm water as a public resource that cannot be privately owned, any more than the air can.

•Enact a congressional resolution expressing the policy of the U.S. House, Senate and president that the Great Lakes Compact cannot be interpreted or used by any party to claim private water ownership.

The late Minnesota Gov. Elmer L. Andersen, whose centenary was observed June 17, once called the waters of Voyageurs National Park that he fought so hard to protect "a sea of diamonds." So are all the fresh waters that define Minnesota. A critical part of defending those diamonds is taking leadership again on the Great Lakes.

Dave Dempsey, of Rosemount, is the author of "Great Lakes for Sale" and communications director for Conservation Minnesota.

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