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Great Lakes Compact Success!
The future of the Great Lakes is secure, with foresighted plans now locked in place to safeguard their waters and health for generations to come.
The Compact stresses conservation and establishes first-of-its-kind decision-making standards for Great Lakes water use. Read more
Great Lakes Compact & Agreement Meeting
May 6-7, 2010 in Ann Arbor, MI
Save the date flyer (pdf)
Please join us to discuss timely information regarding the implementation of the Great Lakes Compact & Regional Agreement. Enjoy this opportunity to network and increase communication with all Great Lakes conservation organizations regarding Compact/Agreement implementation. Register today.
Why a Great Lakes Water Compact?
The Great Lakes are a unique and precious resource, providing freshwater for 40 million people who live within the basin and supporting the region’s ecosystem and economy. It is the only freshwater system of its kind in size and ecological diversity and is essential to humans and wildlife alike, providing homes, food, recreation and economic sustainability.
The Great Lakes are vulnerable to depletion and degradation. The Great Lakes may be a vast resource, but each year rainfall and snowmelt replenish only about one percent of the water in the basin. The other 99 percent is finite and nonrenewable. That fact coupled with a growing demand for water by domestic users—including utilities, agriculture, manufacturers, and housing--and the growing impacts from climate change, is cause for concern about the Great Lakes' future.
What is the Great Lakes Water Compact?
The Great Lakes Compact is an historic eight-state water management agreement that protects the nation’s largest fresh surface water resource, the Great Lakes. All eight Great Lakes states Governors and more than 1,300 state legislators from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin passed this precedent-setting agreement. Together with companion laws in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, the Compact stresses conservation and establishes first-of-its kind
decision-making standards for Great Lakes water use. The Great Lakes Compact is an important step in improving Great Lakes water resource policy to meet the challenge of climate change.
A decade in the making, the Great Lakes Compact, for the first time ever, treats groundwater and surface water as one system subject to the same standard; considers the Great Lakes and their tributaries to be one ecosystem; establishes protection of Great Lakes ecosystems and economies as priorities everywhere in the basin; ensures that every Great Lakes state will have the same fair set of rational protections, while allowing each state flexibility.
The Road to Great Lakes Protection
The Great Lakes Natural Resource Center has been working closely with affiliates and partners across the Great Lakes Basin to protect and conserve the water in the Great Lakes Basin. Together we have played a key role in Great Lakes protection by:
(1) Bringing state and provincial stakeholders together to engage in discussions about a Compact that will protect and conserve Great Lakes water;
(2) Designing and negotiating strong, protective Compact language;
(3) Achieving gubernatorial endorsement of the Compact;
(4) Developing successful strategies resulting in state-by-state legislative adoption of the Compact; and
(5) Achieving U.S. Congressional approval of the Compact.
The Compact is now binding, after being approved by all eight Great Lakes state legislatures, consented to by Congress and signed by President Bush. The next step is working with each of the Great Lakes states to acheive implementation.
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