For Immediate Release
September 23, 2008
Congress
Passes Historic Great Lakes Protection
With
passage of the Great Lakes compact by the
House, the only step remaining is the signature of the U.S. President
Earlier today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the historic
Great Lakes Compact, ensuring the strongest protections ever to stop water
diversions and to regulate large-scale water use. The final step is for
President Bush to sign the Compact, as he has already pledged to do.
“The Great Lakes are a region of
incredible beauty, but also tremendous fragility. Passage today shows that the
Great Lakes are at the front of the minds of legislators across the United States,
and that they are ready to act to protect this ecosystem,” said Derek
Stack, Executive Director of Great Lakes United.
“Seven years ago, citizens from across the region demanded that
their leaders shut the tap to large-scale diversion of Great
Lakes water,” said John Jackson, Director of Clean
Production and Toxics at Great Lakes United. “After painstaking work
between eight states, two provinces and countless citizens and stakeholders, we
have the laws that will protect these precious waters for generations to
come.”
The Compact, formally known as the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin
Water Resources Compact, stems from a binational Agreement of the same name forged
between the eight Great Lakes states, Ontario,
and Quebec.
The Agreement promises strong water conservation standards across the region
and a set of rules that will prevent harm to the environment when local
business and governments use water. Great Lakes citizens and environmental
groups will have to be actively engaged to ensure that these new standards and
rules live up to the promises made by Ontario, Quebec and the states in their
international Agreement, and now, pending President Bush’s signature,
U.S. federal law.
“In the coming world where water is more valuable than oil,
forward-looking agreements like this compact are indispensable for protecting
the economic livelihood and environmental health of a region like the Great
Lakes,” said Reg Gilbert, formerly Director of Sustainable Waters for
Great Lakes United, who led much of the coalition’s work on the Agreement
and Compact. “Passing the U.S. Compact is an absolutely critical step,
but our collective work has just begun. The states and provinces still must
implement the Agreement and Compact and bridge substantial differences to
assure that the waters of our region benefit our great grandchildren.
The legislation was prompted when, in 1998, the province
of Ontario approved a proposal to take
water from Lake Superior for the purpose of shipping it to Asia
in a tanker. The action outraged citizens across the region and highlighted the
need for strong protections for Great Lakes
water. As policymakers grappled with just what a new binational agreement would
look like, Great Lakes United served on the Advisory Team to the Agreement and
led public engagement to build consensus on critical and fundamental positions,
such as how to define the Great Lakes
ecosystem and consider groundwater in this landmark international agreement.
For more information:
Derek Stack, Executive Director 613-797-9532
John Jackson, Director of Clean Production and Toxics 519-744-7503
Reg Gilbert, 716-883-5504
____________________________________
Brent Gibson
Director,
Communications
(613) 867-9861
bgibson@glu.org | www.glu.org
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