Conservatively Speaking

For the past year, I have been serving as a member of the Wisconsin Legislative Council Special Committee on the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact. My efforts have been focused on the Compact’s ideal goal to protect, conserve, restore, improve and effectively manage the Great Lakes waters. That is the large picture.

I have also been concentrating on gaining access to Lake Michigan water for New Berlin and Waukesha, a need that is critical for those communities. The work has translated into hours upon hours of meetings, exhaustive research, and numerous correspondences with other concerned officials and water experts from around the Midwest.

That is why I was very surprised to read the off-base comments of New Berlin Mayor Jack Chiovatero in today’s Milwaukee Shepherd-Express Metro weekly newspaper.

Reporter Dennis Shook writes in today’s Shepherd Express-Metro:

Chiovatero, who has meetings this week with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to discuss water access details, said he sees Lazich as the major obstacle to solving the city's water woes.

"These are her people ... she lives here," Chiovatero said of Lazich, who could not be reached for comment. "She has Lake Michigan water herself and she's enjoying it. So let everybody else [enjoy] it. This is just a political thing going on that has me upset," he said of her opposition to the compact.

Chiovatero’s rationale and line of thinking is small-minded and simplistic. His criticism is misdirected. Instead of cozying up to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett who opposes access to Lake Michigan water for New Berlin and Waukesha, Chiovatero should be working with me, the state Senate representative of the area most affected by the Compact, to ensure our communities get the water they so desperately need.

How ironic that Chiovatero would call me an obstructionist on the Compact when he sits down at a meeting with Milwaukee’s Mayor who has been steadfast in his opposition to our area getting Lake Michigan water. Barrett’s threat to prevent the ability of New Berlin and Waukesha to gain access to Lake Michigan water will result in requiring those communities to spend millions of dollars to drill new wells and treat existing wells. Withholding water from our area will endanger public health and will damage economic development.

Consistently, my opinion has been that the current Compact is a flawed document that is bad for public health, bad for the environment, bad for economic development, and generally bad public policy. I am in no rush to approve a Compact that allows a single Great Lakes Governor to veto any diversion of water to New Berlin. Apparently Chiovatero fails to understand that provision alone would put the city of New Berlin that he is supposed to be representing in serious jeopardy of obtaining much-needed water.

The Compact that Chiovatero and Barrett say we should approve immediately is filled with flaws. Mark Squillace, Director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado Law School has written a research paper titled Rethinking the Great Lakes Compact. Squillace maintains the Compact is so problematic that chucking it entirely and starting from scratch might be the best option.

Absent of any strict cap on overall use of water resources, the probability of overuse of water is high. Thus, the Compact fails to encourage conservation.

A critical Compact requirement is that states manage new or increased water withdrawals, a requirement Squillace calls cumbersome. Concentrating on new uses of consumption ignores existing uses of the resources that have a far more significant impact. This edict will result in a failure to protect lake levels and a failure to promote the ecological health of the Great Lakes Basin.

Squillace also contends the Compact focuses too much on the place of the water use instead of the impact of the use on the overall water resources of the Basin. Far from simple and efficient, the Compact forces states to regulate in a heavy-handed fashion that will impair economic development.

Chiovatero believes approving the Compact will be tantamount to waving a magic wand and like a panacea, our water troubles will conveniently be over. I have done a lot of homework on this issue and it is far more complex than that. Sadly, Chiovatero doesn’t get it.

I will not endorse a Compact that puts our communities in the precarious position of having water access stripped away by the whims of a single Governor in a neighboring state. Furthermore, I will continue to speak out against the many defects in the document as long as they pose a threat to the welfare of residents in New Berlin and Waukesha.