It's about time the Great Lakes Compact gets taken up by the US House. It's an important measure that will prevent the Great Lakes from being diverted to other uses outside the region - a serious threat, when you consider what the lust for water is doing in some places (e.g., Colorado, Utah, Nevada, etc). There'd been serious proposals periodically to pipe it to other places, something that makes about as much sense as building a house inside an oven. This (piping or trucking this much water) seems crazy only until you're living in a chronically water-poor area that's experiencing a boom in building. What needs to be done is people need to stop building golf-courses and resorts in the middle of blasted wastelands (I'm looking at you, Las Vegas) when there's no water to support the existing residents.
It's not just an issue in the Great Lakes, either. In the Great Basin, especially around Salt Lake City, there's a problem with where water is (In the Wasatch Mountains) and where building is occurring (South Jordan, and West Valley City, which lack city-scale water resources). It's worth noting that a large chunk of Alaska's water fowl winter in that area, so the land-use policy of a state 3,000 miles away would seriously and directly impact the wildlife resources of home.
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