AMHERST, N.Y. (February 22, 2001) -- Protecting Great Lakes water from thirsty onlookers requires a much more aggressive stance than what is being proposed, Great Lakes advocates and residents told Great Lakes officials Wednesday night.
The first of two public hearings in New York about a proposed change to an international agreement covering the Great Lakes brought resounding agreement among the more than 50 people who attended: Lawmakers must more aggressively protect one of the area's most important assets.
"The whole world wants our water," John Rickers of Tonawanda, Erie County, said at the public hearing at the State University of New York at Buffalo's north campus. Rickers, as well as other speakers, said he has for years seen businesses leave New York. The area's water is one of the best things that remain, he said.
When the people who moved to southern and western states need water, the Great Lakes is where they will look, he said. "They're going to take our water," he said.
And the proposed change in laws won't stop them, he said. "This whole thing seems to be a faint-hearted attempt to protect our Great Lakes."
Annex 2001, which would be added to the Great Lakes Charter, is currently in draft form. Created by the governors of the eight Great Lakes states, the annex -- when finished and agreed upon by the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario -- would create new standards by which Great Lakes water could be removed.
International trade agreements and U.S. law prohibit outright bans on water removal. The existing Great Lakes Charter is nonbinding and requires review by Great Lakes states and provinces of removals of more than 5 million gallons per day.
An existing U.S. law requires approval among all of the eight governors for any diversion, which involves moving the water outside the Great Lakes Basin, even if an equal quantity of water is returned. But it does not require approval of the provinces, and the governors have no control of small removals from the Canadian side of the Great Lakes.
Loopholes in Canadian and U.S. laws were discovered in 1998 when the Nova Group of Ontario, Canada, received a permit -- later rescinded -- from the provincial government to siphon water from Lake Superior for shipment to Asia. The action led to political scrambling, and to the draft of the annex.
What bothered speakers Wednesday night was the provision that removals of less than 1 million gallons per day would not require approval. Removals would be allowed, however, only if no other alternative could be found, and if they were necessary for public health and safety.
It is the cumulative impact of several small diversions that worry residents such as Donna Cederman of Wheatfield, Niagara County. "Is there a cap on how many different people could do this?" said Cederman, who said she was at the meeting representing her grandchildren.
People who left the Great Lakes region should not have the ability to seek its water, she maintained.
"You took our industry. You cannot take our water."
A second hearing will be Thursday night in Oswego.
Comments from the hearings, which have been held in several Great Lakes states, will be taken into consideration for the final draft of the annex, said Jeff Edstrom, senior policy director for the Council of Great Lakes Governors.
Lawmakers hope the annex will provide the framework for binding laws passed in the United States and in Canada.
Edstrom expects the annex to be finalized by this summer, and the binding laws to be passed within three years after that.
[By Kim Breen, Democrat and Chronicle]
