Sunday Symposium

Water concerns run deep

Posted: Oct. 14, 2006

Consider effort to enhance our region

Two things cross my mind as Waukesha and other communities step up efforts to dip into Lake Michigan for water.

First, how does Waukesha propose to return the water used for watering lawns? Helping a McMansion grow 3 acres of grass is not my idea of a good use of Lake Michigan.

Second, it strikes me that an economically and environmentally sound opportunity for the "regional cooperation" so frequently called for is staring us in the face. This region could create a development district based on the Lake Michigan watershed, similar to the development district Portland, Ore., created to prevent sprawl.

Provide benefits to businesses and residents to locate inside the Lake Michigan drainage basin, one of which is clean, abundant water. Simultaneously, develop some form of revenue sharing with the surrounding counties, to compensate for reduced development. Willing participation in this region-enhancing scheme should be rewarded.

With enforced growth in a confined area, Milwaukee may even develop enough population density to actually need light rail.

Best of all, we could immediately solve Waukesha's problem of needing water to support development that its overtaxed, radon-laced aquifer can't support.

Rob Schneider
Brookfield

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Plans should strive for a balance

Those of us who love Lake Michigan and want to maintain its viability would join in preserving its content first and foremost.

Developers in the region look at the lake as a good source of water. There are other sources and means for obtaining and expelling water available to the people living in Waukesha County. Growth should be limited to these nearby available resources and methods.

Does the fact that the United States has grown to a population of 300 million mean that because of that population growth we've improved all that much from the time when we were 250 million or 200 million? What great benefits are to come from an overpopulated region or from its unlimited growth?

Growth is not a good in and of itself. Even the Chinese tried to control their population growth. We must develop goals that provide balance - balance of nature and appropriate distribution of human population.

In this case, growth in relation to our water supply and our ability to replenish it - not growth for growth's sake.

Joseph Mangiamele
Shorewood

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Passing Great Lakes compact is vital

Thank you for the Oct. 1 editorial "It's not just Wisconsin's water." It made the critical point that no single state can manage the waters of the Great Lakes effectively on its own. It must be a regional effort.

The Great Lakes compact provides Wisconsin and the rest of the region with an incredible opportunity to work together to protect and conserve the Great Lakes.

Once adopted by the eight Great Lakes state legislatures and consented to by Congress, the proposed compact will prevent mass exports and diversions of Great Lakes water to places like the arid Southwest. It also will provide a simple, durable and efficient system for making decisions about diversions of water to near-basin communities like New Berlin and Waukesha.

If, after the compact is ratified, these communities can meet all its requirements, including the return of water taken from the Great Lakes basin, then serious consideration should be given to their requests. But first, each state should adopt the compact and implement its provisions.

The Great Lakes are important to all of us. Any state that changes the compact could wreck this opportunity for the region, leaving all of us with a current system of protections that are simply not good enough.

Molly Flanagan
Great Lakes water resources advocate
National Wildlife Federation
Ann Arbor, Mich.

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Suburbs must not develop unchecked

The Oct. 10 editorial was once again flawed in its reasoning and its conclusion, as the Journal Sentinel's editorials on water tend to be ("Give . . . if it comes back").

"Regional cooperation" has become code for helping the suburbs develop without limits and the devil take the hindmost. There is absolutely nothing regional about Waukesha's water proposal or any proposal to ship Lake Michigan water out of the basin.

Conveniently forgotten is the region that is the Great Lakes basin. It is more important to protect that than to protect a developer's right to profit from another strip shopping center that does nothing for the economy. But the Journal Sentinel will continue to pander to its suburban advertising base on every issue that favors thoughtless suburban consumption.

Steven T. Branca
Racine