State Sen. Timothy Grendell and state Rep. Lynn Wachtmann appear driven to serve a narrower set of business interests, their proposal paying too little heed to the $10 billion a year industry around Lake Erie, including tourism and recreational and commercial fishing. They claim to take a comprehensive view of protecting the Lake Erie basin. Yet the bill would leave rivers and streams vulnerable to harm, overlooking that adverse activity on a small stage can ripple through the whole.
The compact focuses rightly and heavily on preventing excessive diversions of water. Yet Grendell and Wachtmann would allow a new or expanding business to draw as much as 5 million gallons a day from Lake Erie without a permit or government review. The threshold would be 2 million gallons for a rivers and groundwater, and 300,000 for ''high quality'' streams. The combination rates as much more generous than neighboring states.
For instance, Michigan requires an adverse impact assessment at 100,000 gallons per day. At 2 million gallons? All businesses must enter the regulatory program. Indiana allows for 5 million gallons daily from Lake Michigan. What many Ohioans know is that Lake Erie is a much different body of water, shallower and having significantly less flow.
No surprise, then, that the other states bordering Lake Erie have proposed or established more stringent thresholds than Ohio.
Grendell and Wachtmann would sound an alarm if Lake Erie's water level dropped one inch during a five-year period, or a related river declined by a half-inch. Neither of these standards has a firm basis in science. The proposal carves a loophole around the compact requirement for all users to set up water conservation programs. It provides the state Department of Natural Resources with the mechanisms to collect and analyze information, yet fails to supply the agency with the necessary authority to act.
The department would have the authority to write rules governing the compact. Still, the legislature would have the final say, a ''we don't trust you'' intrusion into what usually is an executive process, an agency acting after full public comment.
The legislation poses as business friendly, the stress on economic growth and jobs, a handy rationale for acting swiftly. Troubling is the limited concept of what is economically sound. Legislation implementing the Great Lakes Compact must take a broader and more careful approach, keeping in mind tourism and recreation, enlightened stewardship and the commitment to regional partners.
In their rush, Republicans in charge of the Statehouse risk failing to strike the essential balance for Ohio to do its part in managing well the Great Lakes.
