Both bids to tap into Lake Michigan were tests of a decade-old, congressionally approved pact intended to make it almost impossible to pump water outside the natural basin of the Great Lakes unless it is added to certain products, such as beer and soft drinks.
But as debates about the Foxconn and Waukesha water diversions continue to roil the region, it turns out Wisconsin gave another city permission nearly a decade ago to send significantly more Lake Michigan water beyond the subcontinental divide that separates the Great Lakes basin from other parts of the Midwest where water flows toward the Mississippi River.
Pleasant Prairie, a fast-developing community just north of the Illinois border, started with a daily limit of 3.2 million gallons when regional leaders approved the Great Lakes Water Compact in 2008.
Two years later, records show, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources boosted the city’s allotment of lake water by another 7.49 million gallons a day — almost as much as the controversial Waukesha diversion approved in 2016 and a little more than the bounty of Lake Michigan water secured for the Foxconn factory earlier this year.
While the village’s average daily withdrawal from Lake Michigan was just 2.49 million gallons in 2017, dramatically increasing the amount of water allocated for Pleasant Prairie sets the stage for future development in the Interstate 94 corridor between Chicago and Milwaukee.
I’m not sure we want a situation where a state is unilaterally increasing a water diversion by millions of gallons a day without any public notification.” At least one other expert questions whether giving Pleasant Prairie access to more lake water violates the spirit, if not the actual language, of the Great Lakes compact, which officials began negotiating during the early 2000s after an Ontario firm unveiled plans to ship 158 million gallons a year from Lake Superior to Asia.
State officials said they followed all proper procedures when expanding the Pleasant Prairie water diversion to more than 10 million gallons a day.
In response to questions from the Tribune, the Wisconsin DNR said state law required the agency to base the village’s allotment of Lake Michigan water on the size of its sewer service area “and the projected land use and build out within that area.” Details were included in documents filed with a panel created to oversee the water compact, the agency said.
“Neither the compact nor Wisconsin’s implementing statute required public hearings,” the agency said in a statement.
Michael Pollocoft, who was Pleasant Prairie administrator when the state gave the village access to more lake water, told the Tribune in an interview that he recalled being told the area needed to have water and sewer plans in place for the next half-century.