Calling
the resources of the Great Lakes "the oil of this century," policy
makers from the United States and Canada convened with environmental
advocates and attorneys on Friday to discuss policies for regulating
the use of the region's water supply.
About 100 attorneys, law
students and community members were at the fifth annual conference held
inside the Law Center Auditorium, listening to policy explanations and
critiques from a panel of experts.
One point of contention
brought up by Melissa Scanlan, executive director of Midwest
Environmental Advocates, was the now-omnipresent appearance of bottled
water around the country and the impact on the Great Lakes from
bottlers of these products.
"Bottled water is now ubiquitous," Scanlan said. "There's really no end to this [trend]."
In
the 1970s, about 300 million gallons of water were used for bottling,
according to Scanlan, compared to today's 22.3 billion gallons of water
used.
She said she wanted to provide the perspective of the
"public interest" and went on to grade recent laws and regulations put
in place based on circumstances like bulk export of Great Lakes water.
The
Great Lakes Charter Annex, an agreement made between the Canadian
provinces of Ontario and Quebec and the eight Great Lakes states to
regulate water use, failed in Scanlan's view with respect to export and
diversion of the resource.
"[There] shouldn't be exceptions for
bottled water," Scanlan said. "We don't have the laws to catch up with
the emerging industry."
Other panelists took a less critical, more explanatory approach.
Dick
Bartz of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and Kevin Wilson, an
Ontario government official, went through the laws' various stages in
negotiations and made a point to note the difficulties in reaching a
mutually beneficial agreement.
Wilson cited Rolling Stones
lyrics: "You can't always get what you want … but if you try sometime …
you get what you need," as a sort of description of where the
discussions have arrived at.
"I think that is exactly where we
are today," Wilson said. "I do think we've all come to an agreement
that gives all of us what we need."
"How to put all [the two
countries involved and tribal nations] together in a cohesive
government policy is brutal," said Noah Hall, assistant professor of
law at Wayne State University who moderated the final portion of the
conference.
All the talk of conservation led one audience member to ask, "Why are we being so stingy?"
Standing
before one of the microphones set up in the audience, he said current
laws don't do much about the Great Lakes states or provinces
wastefulness, but instead over-regulate the use of the resource by the
rest of the country.
He said a policy capping total use would make more sense.
Bartz
replied by saying, "We want to make sure we're good stewards of the
resource," adding that even though the water today is plentiful, only 1
percent of it is renewable.
"Water consumption worldwide is
doubling every 20 years," Scanlan said, and the consumption of water
now exceeds the population. "When you take water out of the basin, it's
gone, and it's altering the ecosystem."
A closer look at ... Water consumption
Water consumption worldwide is doubling every 20 years, with the consumption now exceeding the population.
Bottled
water has been a source of increase in the export of the Great Lakes
supply: in the 1970s, about 300 million gallons of water were used for
bottling, whereas in 2005, 22.3 billion gallons of water were used.
Information according to Melissa Scanlan of the Midwest Environmental Advocates.
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