It was a watershed moment for the Great Lakes.
A seven-year push by the region's governors to build a legal dike around the world's largest freshwater system almost died in Madison in February.
The Great Lakes Compact to protect the region's water from being pumped away to thirsty states had passed three state legislatures and the Wisconsin Senate. But a handful of Wisconsin Assembly leaders - fretting that the compact might hamper Wisconsin's ability to pipe Lake Michigan water to Waukesha County and other booming areas - tried to essentially derail the measure by refusing to bring it to a vote before the Legislature adjourned for the year.
They allied themselves with Ohio lawmakers also bent on scuttling an agreement that needed approval from all eight Great Lakes legislatures, thinking they'd found a winning issue with water-dependent industries and the thirsty Wisconsin communities lying just outside the Great Lakes basin.
But they grossly underestimated the swelling public support for Great Lakes protection, and within two months, their opposition caved like a dam built of sand, unleashing what conservationists say has become a "tidal wave" of bipartisan support for Great Lakes protection, the likes of which they've never seen.
"There was a crush of momentum - a stampede," for the remaining states to pass the compact, says Cameron Davis, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
"None of the states wanted to be the last one to approve the compact," he says.
That wave might ripple into the upcoming presidential election, where several Great Lakes states could tip the balance. But the compact isn't the only Great Lakes issue that has grabbed the public's attention.
Great Lakes advocates say the No. 1 threat to the lakes today remains the onslaught of invasive species that have ravaged their native ecology. Unwanted organisms dumped by the relatively tiny number of oceangoing ships that visit the lakes each year have been implicated in fish population crashes, algae-smothered shorelines and botulism outbreaks that have led to widespread bird die-offs. Noxious, expensive
The toll of these invaders is both ecological and economic - the cost of pipe-clogging zebra mussels to water-dependent industries alone has been estimated at $1.5 billion. The estimated annual economic gain tied to the overseas ships: $55 million. Add in lost property values due to noxious algae piling up in front of lakefront properties, lost access to public beaches and vanishing fishing opportunities, and the economics of overseas shipping on the lakes looks even worse.
Environmentalists, the shipping industry and members of Congress have been haggling for years over legislation that would require treatment systems for the ship-steadying ballast tanks that carry in the foreign organisms, but the issue has stalled in the Senate.
Public tolerance, meanwhile, is waning as the scope of damage from this biological pollution comes into sharper focus.
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