Ohio close on compact, but...
UPDATE on post below.
I asked Jim Olson, who's fought a great fight on behalf of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, what he thought of the proposed Ohio compromise. Again, neither of us has read the proposed Ohio constitutional amendment:
*****
As always, the meaning is best determined by reading the proposed constitutional amendment language. But to enact in a state constitution an exclusion from the public trust for certain classes of waters is to invite the privatization on a mass scale of water that feeds the Great Lakes. It appears highly risky at best.
The Ohio Senate unanimously agreed yesterday to put the question of water property rights directly before voters, breaking a logjam that long has blocked ratification of the multistate Great Lakes compact.
Mr. Shaner said his group actively will support the amendment. He noted it will clarify that "these waters - groundwater, well water, or nonnavigable water as in a pond or tiny creek on someone's land - are not in the public trust. Nonetheless, the state retains the authority to regulate its use so that we can't have abuse, overuse, or degradation of those waters. It's a good balance.''
I asked Jim Olson, who's fought a great fight on behalf of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, what he thought of the proposed Ohio compromise. Again, neither of us has read the proposed Ohio constitutional amendment:
The compromise
amendment is a terrible direction for Ohio or anywhere. The direction has
been the other way. Just how Ohio is treating the waters is unclear.
At the very least the amendment should reaffirm that all waters, including those
listed, are a public resource that is managed by the State on behalf of and for
the benefit of all citizens. The way it reads, it implies the
opposite: that the waters identified are private and subject only to
regulation like any private property. This of course is like handing a
public resource over to those who want to export it, so that they can resist
state regulations for degradation or abuse under NAFTA and GATT, and claim the
water for export under NAFTA and GATT for any use that does not violate such
regulations.
It's a lousy balance. Tips it toward likelihood of export
and a loss for all citizens, businesses, property owners, and communities in
Ohio. The balance is already struck between the right to use water for
reasonable use against public resource and public trust. The public trust
doctrine has never interfered with private reasonable use of water in connection
with land, only its diversion or disposition to promote primarily a private
purpose or gain. Most common law cases acknowledge that the private right
to reasonable use of waters sits side by side with the public trust and public
uses protected by the public trust, and that the uses are basically
correlative. One cannot interfere with reasonable use of the other,
except again for the diversion or export for private purpose
restriction which protects all private reasonable uses and the public trust
within the state.
*****
As always, the meaning is best determined by reading the proposed constitutional amendment language. But to enact in a state constitution an exclusion from the public trust for certain classes of waters is to invite the privatization on a mass scale of water that feeds the Great Lakes. It appears highly risky at best.
The Ohio Senate unanimously agreed yesterday to put the question of water property rights directly before voters, breaking a logjam that long has blocked ratification of the multistate Great Lakes compact.
Mr. Shaner said his group actively will support the amendment. He noted it will clarify that "these waters - groundwater, well water, or nonnavigable water as in a pond or tiny creek on someone's land - are not in the public trust. Nonetheless, the state retains the authority to regulate its use so that we can't have abuse, overuse, or degradation of those waters. It's a good balance.''
What does Jim Olson know about GATT and NAFTA anyhow, aside from the fact that he can scare folks by writing or saying those acronyms.
If Olson and his fellow quasi-religious enthusiasts would get the Ice Mountain plant out of the foreground for one minute, I think two things would become clear 1) Bottled water is just not that important an issue, and the more what we do becomes distorted by Olson's Ice Mountain obsession, the MORE likely some sticky legal issue will arise with the compact. Bottled water should just be treated like any other product primarily containing water--soft drinks, beer, watermelons, whatever. Whether or not any of these products leave the blessed Great Lakes basin matters little, unless you are a frothing-at-the-mouth bioregionalist . . . in which case please wipe the froth from your mouth before leaving the basin.
2)Real water protection legislation should be primarily aimed at regulating USE--aggregate use and particular allowable uses--not export, as useful as the pipeline bugaboo is as a rabble-rouser.
Posted by: Oran Kelley | July 13, 2008 at 08:34 AM