U.S. Water News Online
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Concern over Ohio's power under a water-rights agreement with fellow Great Lakes states and Canada has stalled the measure's adoption at the Statehouse.
In internal correspondence, questions about the Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence River Basin Compact -- which seeks to protect lake neighbors from water withdrawal by population centers in drier climates -- have ranged from the highly serious to the highly speculative.
"What happens if Quebec secedes from Canada and becomes its own country?" Rep. Bill Seitz asked the bill's sponsor, Rep. Matthew Dolan, in one recent memo.
"Why should Ohio give up its sovereign power to control the use of Lake Erie water within Ohio?" asked Sen. Tim Grendell in an open letter to fellow senators.
The future of the compact rests on its success in Ohio, whose governor, Bob Taft, is chairman of the panel that initiated it.
If the Senate accepts a bill implementing the agreement, Ohio will be the first of the eight states bordering the lakes to act. Similar bills introduced in Illinois and Michigan failed to pass, and several of the states have not introduced such legislation.
The Ohio house cleared a bill on the compact, but it landed in the Senate Rules Committee where unwanted bills sometimes die.
Grendell, a suburban Cleveland Republican, has led a campaign among fellow lawmakers to stamp out the compact, which he sees as dangerous to property owners who he believes will lose rights to groundwater to the governments of the states and provinces that are part of the compact.
"The Compact would convert privately owned lakes, ponds, farm irrigation, drainage ditches, well water, and (potentially) wetlands into public trust property," Grendell argued in one of several memos against the bill. "This is a major change in property law in Ohio and an unprecedented taking of private property."
Dolan, a Republican from Novelty, defended passage of the agreement as critical to maintaining Ohio's environment and economy.
"In its simplest form the compact is designed to keep the water here," Dolan told lawmakers before the vote. "If the water's here, our businesses will be here. If the water's here, economic activity will stay and grow here. If the water's here, businesses that want to locate elsewhere will find their way here and bring their businesses here."
Dolan said strong political forces are working against the compact.
"The opposition to this compact comes from across the country, and across our oceans," he said. "Why does the Southwest, why do the Western states want us to fail today? Why does Japan, or China, want this compact to fail? Because they want to generate economic activity in their area. They want to promote tourism, they want to promote homes. What do they need -- what's the one thing they need that we have? That's an abundance of fresh water."
But Grendell, Seitz and other skeptics worry that the language of Dolan's bill could have sweeping legal consequences for groundwater management, property rights along Lake Erie, and the potential impact on water consumption in the state.
"I know it's voluntary, but I can tell you that there's going to be pressure on Ohio to pass legislation that would be more restrictive than what we have today," said Rep. Bob Gibbs.
Senate spokeswoman Maggie Ostrowski said President Bill Harris has sent the bill to the Rules Committee in hopes that some of these lingering issues can be addressed.
The Senate anticipates adjourning the two-year session soon, and Taft leaves office in January due to term limits.
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