When you don't like an agreement, see if you can change the wording after all parties signed on, and also agreed to making no major changes.

That's what Waukesha wants to do with the eight-state Great Lakes Compact - - toss out its major decision-making standard.

That's so Waukesha can get more water, or so it thinks.

Similar thing happening in Georgia.

Legislators there want to change the boundary with Tennessee, so Tennessee water becomes Georgia water.

If these jurisdictions were talking conservation and sustainable planning and development, none of these tricks would even be open for discussion.

Details here.

WisDOT Coming Under Increasing Fire Over One-Sided Highway Spending

The refusal of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) to consider transit services in its $1.9 billion plan to rebuild and widen I-94 from Milwaukee to Illinois has led to detailed, written objections from the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works.

Since this is agency-to-agency, engineer-to-engineer, bureaucrat-to-bureaucrat disagreement over a major state project, the DPW letter has genuine significance.

In the last few weeks, a coalition of elected officials in Milwaukee County, along with a separate action by Milwaukee's Common Council, approved strong resolutions of support for the Great Lakes Compact.

The Compact is an agreement among the eight Great Lakes states to establish diversion rules, conservation standards and legal processes to preserve this precious regional fresh water system.

The Madison Capital Times editorially amplified these growing calls for action by urging the state legislature to approve and implement the Compact.

The Cap Times editorial was an unusually strong statement: details here.

Two environmental organizations - - Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers and Midwest Environmental Advocates (a public interest law firm) - - are trying to use the US Clean Water Act to stop something pretty unbelievable:

A Milwaukee business is routinely dumping toxins, including cancer-causing chemicals, into the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District system - - but the MMSD's treatment methods cannot get the poisons out.

Which means they flow into Lake Michigan, where any number of cities get their drinking water, and from which people eat fish.

 Details here.

Dave Dempsey is one of the Great Lakes most credible, prolific writers and activists, and he thinks the Wisconsin DNR is treading on thin ice if it thinks it can approve a diversion of Lake Michigan water to New Berlin without the approval of all eight Great Lakes states.

As others, including then-Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlater have pointed out, it's a matter of federal law.

Details here.

I detail here, using Wisconsin's open records law, how the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources argues that a 21-year-old federal statute controlling how water can be diverted from the Great Lakes doesn't necessarily apply to the agency.

To make matters worse, major media in Wisconsin will not disclose a lengthy Wisconsin Attorney General opinion that documents just how and why the law does apply to Wisconsin. 

Two years ago this December, the Great Lakes governors and Canadian premiers met in Milwaukee and agreed to a Compact to manage the Great Lakes. Two years later, Wisconsin doesn't even have a draft bill on the table,

And in December of 2006, Wisconsin's Attorney General warned state agencies like the DNR that it could not approve a diversion of Great Lakes water to a city like New Berlin or Waukesha without the approval of all the other Great Lakes states, according to a federal law.

The DNR is dismissive of the opinion, and major media in the state will not report it.

So here's more information about both the legislative and media failures to protect the Great Lakes. Some legacy for Wisconsin.

When the Senate does the same Wednesday, Congress will have succeeded in funding a national water systems' improvement spending package and overridden a thoughtless presidential veto at the same time.

Imagine if the Congress had enough backbone to take charge of the war in Iraq or through any number of bills to restablish Constitutional government in the country?

Additional posts about water, Great Lakes politics, at The Political Environment blog.

According to one business writer, water sales from our region to Texas and beyond are predictable and calculable.

And separately, the Chief Executive of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange thinks there could soon be a lucrative market in trading futures contracts to deliver bulk water.

With billions of dollars to be made from very willing (parched) buyers, are the pending Great Lakes Compact and existing, but relatively weak US Water Resources Development Act effective enough to prevent such sales?

Will the Wisconsin legislature move forward and ratify the Compact, or will it continue to be cowed by anti-regionalists like State Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), who, along with states' rights allies in Ohio, torpedo the Compact and make bulk water exports away from the Great Lakes even easier?

There are analysts in Canada, according to this website posting from north of the border, that have looked at their nation's natural resource use for various exports to the US and don't like what they see.

Note the linkage to the production and export of Canadian tar sand crude oil - - a process that uses substantial amounts of water, which like oil is also a finite resource.

And the tar sands provide the crude oil that will supply the expanded refining capacity on the US Great Lakes at Whiting, Indiana (British Petroleum) and Superior, Wisconsin (Murphy Oil).

It takes three gallons of water to produce a barrel of crude oil for export, with polluted wastewater to deal with in Canada, experts say.

Then it takes more water to refine that crude oil, and produces more waste that has to be dealt with by the refinery - - on the Great Lakes.