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Friday, September 11, 2009
Environment - More on: Great Lakes losing even more water via St. Clair River
Updating this ILB entry from July 26th, Dan Egan of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports today in a story headed "Great Lakes consultants hold back public comments on study." It begins:
The authors of a controversial study looking into low water levels on Lakes Michigan and Huron promised from the outset that their $3.6 million investigation would be "as open and as transparent as possible."It's been anything but.
The latest example: The study authors are refusing to release the public comments they spent the summer soliciting. Some of those comments are highly critical of the study's conclusion that nature - instead of a 1960s Army Corps of Engineers dredging project - is to blame for recent lake-lowering erosion in the St. Clair River and therefore nothing should be done to fix the problem.
The St. Clair River is the primary outflow for Lakes Michigan and Huron.
The heavy-hitting conservation group Great Lakes United isn't buying the decision to do nothing, claiming that the study's own science shows the daily water loss from Lakes Michigan and Huron is 9 billion to 12 billion gallons per day - more than five times the amount of water siphoned by the city of Chicago.
But don't expect the study authors to release Great Lakes United's detailed critique of their report. At least not yet.
The public comment period ended Aug. 1. The study is scheduled to be submitted Oct. 1 to the International Joint Commission, which funded the work.
The Joint Commission is a binational board that oversees U.S. and Canadian boundary waters issues.
Study spokesman John Nevin says the public comments will be released once the study board has had a chance to respond to them. He can't say when that will be.
"What are they hiding?" said Noah Hall, a law professor at Wayne State University who was heavily involved in the crafting of the Great Lakes compact, an agreement reached last year among the eight Great Lakes states that restricts large-scale water exports from the five Great Lakes.
The compact is viewed as a model of how to engage the public in big issues facing the Great Lakes.
'Very disappointing'"That's a very unusual position to take regarding public comments," Hall said of the St. Clair study. "Typically at the state and federal level, public comments are made available instantly - usually online - as soon as they are submitted. It's very disappointing."
The report is important because it is designed to serve as a guide for lake management decisions for the coming decade, and its conclusions could affect everything from public beaches to marina operators to commercial shipping.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 11, 2009 09:17 AM
Posted to Environment