Protect Lake Michigan In the News

You don't have to travel around the world to find challenging issues of water quantity and quality. They're right in your own back yard, whether you live in Mundelein or Wilmette. The Great Lakes are being depleted at a faster rate than they are naturally replenished, said Max Muller of Environment Illinois.

"There's a limit on the amount of water we can withdraw from Lake Michigan," said Robert Gemmell, who has taught civil and environmental engineering at Evanston's Northwestern University for 44 years. "The problem is that there might not be enough for everybody (if population keeps growing) and many of the groundwater supplies have problems with radium or arsenic."

Max Muller is an environmental policy lobbyist who helped guide the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact to victory in the Illinois legislature this year. This agreement between the eight Great Lakes states and Ontario, Canada, will severely limit any Great Lakes diversion out of its ecological and geographical region--over the years, various groups have proposed diverting Great Lakes water to Arizona, western Canada and even Asia via overseas tankers.

"The Great Lakes are very big, but they are not replenished very quickly," said Muller. More than 30 million people get their drinking water everyday from the Great Lakes. Lake Michigan provides water to Chicago and 40 suburban communities, and water in Chicago is then diverted away from the lake via the Chicago River (reversed in 1900 because of water-borne disease epidemics).

"We're actually depleting the water," Muller said. "If the Great Lakes go down, we'll see wetlands dry up and ecosystems that have been dependent on stable water for millennia go down."

The Illinois state legislature voted unanimously to approve the compact, which prohibits diversions out of the Great Lakes basin. It was signed by the eight governors in 2005 and has since been making its way through state legislatures. Minnesota is the only other state to have passed it, although Muller said the signs are good for passage in other states.

Once the states agree to the compact, it then must pass both houses of Congress. But Muller said protecting Lake Michigan should give north suburban residents peace of mind.

"People here can have some faith that this resource we get our drinking water from now is being managed in a way that makes it pretty certain it'll be around in 100 years," Muller said. "The compact is an example of how we have to protect the Great Lakes, make sure we're not depleting them or that they're being used at an unsustainable rate."

Plenty of water quality and availability issues remain, however. Communities that don't receive water from Lake Michigan must find ways to treat the radon- or arsenic-tainted ground water supplies. Other challenges include the growing numbers of steroids and other biotic compounds ending up in the water after they're fed to animals.

"Most of these biotics are not being affected by the treatment processes currently in use," said Gemmel.

"At the moment, they don't seem that monumental in terms of their impact."

Then there are environmental questions like invasive species in the waterways and trace amounts of phosphates and detergents. Not to mention an ever-growing population.

"We use an awful lot of water for needless purposes," Gemmell said. "Many toilets use six or eight gallons when they should be using one and a half."