GLIN==> Alliance Speaks Out on Water Rates, Diversion Rules

Allliance for the Great Lakes

For Immediate Release			
Thursday, May 27, 2010
 				     
Contact: Ed Glatfelter
312-939-0838 x235, eglatfelter at greatlakes.org		


Alliance Speaks Out on Water Rates, Diversion Rules

Milwaukee – a city that built its foundation on brewing and manufacturing – hopes to lure new and expanding businesses there with the offer of cheap Lake Michigan water. 

The Alliance will testify that the proposal both undervalues water and is at odds with the goals of the Great Lakes Compact, when it asks Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) to reject Milwaukee’s request at a public hearing this summer.  

“Great Lakes municipalities with a ready supply of water who want to promote economic development need to promote the reliability and long-term sustainability of their water resource -- truly genuine qualities -- rather than create a false bargain with cheap water,” Alliance Water Conservation Director Ed Glatfelter said in comments filed with the PSC Wednesday.

The Milwaukee hearing is one of two June public meetings to address Great Lakes water use. The other, scheduled for June 10 in Chicago, is also highly relevant to current events in Wisconsin and will feature the state and provincial governments charged with overseeing implementation of the historic compact and agreement to protect the waters of the Great Lakes.

The city of Milwaukee is asking the PSC to approve a discounted “economic development” water rate to entice new businesses and industries that are high-volume water users, while encouraging existing high water-use businesses in the city to expand.

Although using Great Lakes water for economic development is consistent with the compact, offering to provide that water on the cheap undermines two central tenets of the pact: that Great Lakes waters are precious and worth protecting, and that a premium must be placed on water conservation and efficiency.

“The compact is not intended to obstruct access to those resources, but to make effective, efficient and sustainable use of water” without harming water resources, said Glatfelter.  

Beyond the compact, Glatfelter said there are other reasons to deny Milwaukee’s request – among them: Milwaukee’s water rates are already low. A draft PSC survey of large cities in Wisconsin and throughout the United States determined Milwaukee’s water rates would be the fifth lowest of the 28 cities surveyed if proposed alternative rate increases on the city’s existing water users are enacted. 

Sixty-eight percent of respondents to a recent survey of corporations considering relocation or expansion said sustainable development is more important now than ever. Combined with growing concerns about the availability of long-term water supplies beyond the Great Lakes Basin, Glatfelter said, “The reliability, long-term sustainability and quality of the Great Lakes Basin’s water resource should be attractive enough -- even at fully valued prices -- to be an effective economic development tool.”

The public will have a chance to address those charged with overseeing the compact on June 10 in Chicago. The Regional Body and the Compact Council meet there in anticipation of receiving a Milwaukee suburb’s application to divert Lake Michigan water to a community located entirely outside the basin, and then send its return flow back to the basin.

The first such request since the compact’s adoption in 2008, the Waukesha, Wis. application is prompting both bodies to establish the necessary procedures relating  to reviewing diversion requests before the bodies are asked to consider the Waukesha application. 

The Alliance, together with 34 other groups, is taking issue with the Compact Council’s stated plan to adopt proposed procedures as “interim guidance” at the June 10 meeting despite scant opportunity for public review and comments limited only to those given at the meeting. The groups are calling for the council to promulgate legally binding rules for reviewing diversion applications, which would include the public in the process of developing those rules.

“This will be an opportunity to tell the Compact Council it needs a legally binding process as it prepares to review the first-ever compact application to divert water entirely outside the Great Lakes Basin,” said Glatfelter.

Glatfelter said the June 10 meeting also gives the public the opportunity to call for Great Lakes states to adequately fund their agency staff to properly implement the compact at the state and regional levels.

The Regional Body/Compact Council is scheduled to meet Thursday, June 10, at 1 p.m. at the Avenue Crowne Plaza Hotel, Grand Room, 160 E. Huron, Chicago, IL, 60611.

Alliance PSC comments: http://psc.wi.gov/apps35/ERF_view/viewdoc.aspx?docid=132177
More information: http://www.greatlakes.org/Page.aspx?pid=1118

##

Formed in 1970, the Alliance for the Great Lakes is the oldest Great Lakes citizens’ organization in North America. Our mission is to: conserve and restore the world's largest freshwater resource using policy, education and local efforts, ensuring a healthy Great Lakes and clean water for generations of people and wildlife. More about the Alliance for the Great Lakes is online at www.greatlakes.org. 


Susan Campbell
Communications Manager
Alliance for the Great Lakes
414-540-0699
Visit http://www.greatlakes.org



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.great-lakes.net/lists/glin-announce/attachments/20100527/36082b55/attachment.html