Stopped Diversions of Water Out of the Lakes

The Wake-up Call
Our region uses over one trillion gallons of basin waters each day. Those uses include generating electricity, irrigating agricultural fields, supporting a wide range of industrial operations, and providing 40 million residents with drinking water. The basin’s waters also support a thriving ecosystem and a $50 billion recreational economy. 

Historically, the governance of users and uses was fragmented, driven by a patchwork of regulatory and common-law schemes, and only loosely connected to the health of the lakes and the natural resources that depend on them. Early non-binding agreements led to better coordination of decisions, but it was in the late 1990s that the region had a wake-up call—a formal approval to export Great Lakes water in bulk for sale abroad. 

In response to this threat, the Fund engaged experts to help define a framework for a regional authority to manage major new uses of water—what became known as the Great Lakes Compact. 

Along the way, the Fund supported teams who pioneered new science and created new practical approaches that tie the health of our natural resources to our management of water uses.

Building a Governance System
In 1998 when a firm secured the rights to export millions of gallons of Lake Superior water in tanker ships to Asia, the region was challenged to rethink how the two countries—eight states and two provinces—manage their shared waters.

The Fund assembled, funded, and directed a team of legal experts to advise the region’s governors on their legal authority over their shared waters. That team concluded that the region would benefit from a single decision-making body, created through a multi-state compact and approved by Congress and the president. 

The team also had advice about conflict resolution. They recommended that conflicts be resolved with the best interests of the region’s water-dependent resources as a guide, not by economic advantage or the sale of water as a commodity. In fact, water governance that relies on economic protectionism was found to be the easiest to thwart. 

At the same time, the Fund supported a broad set of project teams that explored the scientific, technical, and practical dimensions of how water could be governed to benefit the natural resources that depend on it. The work of these teams has led to a new generation of water governance in the Great Lakes region. The federally approved Great Lakes Compact requires the states to act with a single voice on new, regionally significant water uses.