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Minnesota is defined by our sparkling waters – our abundant lakes, rivers and wetlands that provide habitat for people and wildlife alike.
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President Bush signs Great Lakes pact
President Bush signed the
Great Lakes compact into law Friday morning, culminating a decadelong push to pass sweeping protections for the world’s largest freshwater system.
“Today we mark a historic accomplishment for our region’s greatest natural resource,” Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said in statement issued shortly after Bush made good on his promise this summer to sign the measure. “After years of negotiating and building support for this interstate compact, we now have a defined legal framework to protect the waters that define us.”
Efforts to create stiffer protections for the lakes started in 1998 after a Canadian business owner proposed shipping tankers full of Lake Superior water to Asia. That plan was scrapped after public outcry, but the controversy made it apparent that existing laws might not be strong enough to block it and other large-scale diversions.
After nearly five years of negotiations, the governors of the eight Great Lakes states met in Milwaukee in late 2005 and agreed upon a new set of rules that will prevent most large-scale diversions outside the massive watershed known as the Great Lakes basin. To read more regional, national and international articles about water and the environment, go to What’s New, at left, or click
here.
--Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel