In today's Chicago Tribune: Wisconsin becomes the fifth state to sign the Great Lakes Compact, a further step toward setting up a legal agreement between all states and provinces bordering the Great Lakes to preserve their 20% of the world's fresh water.
Most of the attention to the Great Lakes Compact focuses on possible future attempts by the sunbelt cities to siphon some of our abundant water, but as the article points out, in the near term, the implications of the compact involve cities that straddle the Great Lakes and Mississippi watersheds. Chicago has been grandfathered in the agreement and is allowed to siphon off Lake Michigan water and send it downstream into the Chicago & Illinois Rivers, but in other places the watershed boundaries must be strictly adhered to. Whether the Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha and New Berlin are allowed to mix lake water and well water in their water systems will be the first test of the strength of the interstate agreement.