Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne says she's satisfied the decision to allow a Wisconsin city draw water from Lake Michigan won't compromise efforts to protect the Great Lakes.
Wynne admits the province didn't support Waukesha's exemption from a ban on municipalities outside the so-called Great Lakes compact from taking water from the lakes initially. She says as a member of the Great Lakes Premiers and Governors Council, the province managed to lower the allowable intake to 8.4-million gallons a day.
"We did ask for more information, and we asked for certain environmental standards and so on to be met," she says. "Our Ministry was satisfied that those standards had been met."
At a meeting in Niagara Falls last week, Great Lakes mayors strongly opposed the decision.
Leamington Mayor John Paterson told BlackburnNews.com the decision could be the start of many such requests from cities and towns outside the compact.
On Twitter, he wrote the decision "signals the end of the Great Lakes as we know them."
"I don't want to cause panic. I don't want to be exaggerating the potential here, but that's exactly why the compact was designed in the first place," says Paterson. "Once you turn on the tap for somebody outside the compact region, how do you argue not doing it for other cities and states?"
Wynne says as a member of the Council, Ontario will continue to play a role in conservation.
"It's important to have our scientists, our ministry officials working with officials from other jurisdictions to make sure the environmental standards that we have in Ontario are met, and that is exactly what has happened in this situation."
The aquifer Waukesha draws its drinking water from is running low and is contaminated with naturally occurring radium. Other communities that draw their water from the same aquifer successfully treat it, and those opposed to the decision say Waukesha should do the same.
