GLIN==> sign on to GLWQA comment by Great Lakes United

[Reg Gilbert <reg@glu.org>]

Dear Great Lakes citizen,

Please consider commenting on the draft summary document by the 
Canadian and U.S. Governments on the review they conducted during 
2006 on the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Their document is 
available at www.binational.net/glwqa_2007_e.html.

The deadline for comment is Saturday, July 14.

If you represent an organization, we welcome your comment in the form 
of signing on to the position statement prepared by Great Lakes 
United, attached to the message. Individuals should feel free to cut 
and paste any or all of the attached document in individual 
submissions to the governments.

This governments' 66-page report summarizes the findings, results, 
and recommendations of the nine review working groups and a 
governance institutions workshop formed by the governments to review 
the GLWQA. These review work groups met -- primarily by phone -- 
between April and December of last year. The participants were from 
all levels of government and a range of non-government organizations.

Great Lakes United believes that the government report is a fair 
representation of the consultation that happened over the past year. 
Therefore, in our submission for this round of consultation, which is 
attached to this message, we have presented our preliminary position 
on revision of the Agreement.

As the review and possible renegotiation continues over the next 
couple of years, we will present more details on these policy 
directions. Our position statement can be found at the Great Lakes 
United web site at www.glu.org.

Our position statement is the product of extensive consultation with 
our members over the past two years. During that time, we have held 
numerous conference calls to develop positions on a range of GLWQA 
issues as well as holding a video conference, linking participants in 
Toronto, Cleveland, Ann Arbor and Chicago. Most recently, at our 
annual meeting in Toronto on June 17th, we spent two hours with our 
members reviewing and revising the draft position that is attached to 
this email. This position does not have all the details in it for 
revisions to the Agreement. We will continue to work with our members 
over the next year to develop the details.

We urge organizations to sign on to our position statement by Friday, 
July 13. In addition, we encourage you, either as an individual or as 
an organization, to send a separate letter to the governments 
commenting on the part of the government report of most interest to 
you and using any or all of our position statement.

We hope that by putting out this position statement now we can help 
to set the agenda for future government discussions on the Great 
Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

To sign on to Great Lakes United's position statement as a 
representative of an organization, or if you have any questions about 
commenting on the review of the Agreement individually, please 
contact John Jackson at jjackson@glu .org, or by calling (519) 744-7503.

Thanks.

Reg



Great Lakes United is an
international coalition promoting and
coordinating basinwide initiatives to protect
and restore the Great Lakes and
St. Lawrence River ecosystem

Great Lakes United staff are represented by
United Autoworkers Local 55 Amalgamated

Attachment: GLWQA commentsJuly20073.doc
Description: MS-Word document