@Stradee,
Hello, hello, hello. Thursday. Fall colors are blazing outside. The remainder of the week is mine. Joy.
Our great lakes.
From:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-12-10-great-lakes-debate_x.htm
The Great Lakes contain nine-tenths of the nation's fresh water and supply drinking water to 30 million people in Chicago, Toronto, Buffalo and elsewhere. The lakes are an economic engine and the cultural centerpiece for much of the upper Midwest. But the fragile ecology of the lakes has suffered from pollution, invasive species of fish and the diversion of water to support Chicago and other cities.
The new agreement would control who can use the water and how much.
The eight states started work on the compact in 1999 when a Canadian company proposed shipping water in tankers from Lake Ontario to Asia. Other proposals had been floated over the years about piping Great Lakes water to Arizona, western Canada or elsewhere.
and.........
From:
http://www.detnews.com/2005/business/0506/18/biz-219327.htm
Bottled-water company sues state over restrictions
LANSING -- A bottled-water company sued the state Friday to challenge recent restrictions placed on permits allowing it to buy water for its Ice Mountain Spring Water plant in Mecosta County.
Nestle Waters North America Inc. filed a complaint in Ingham County Circuit Court and a federal lawsuit in Grand Rapids, contesting the requirement that water from the city of Evart be sold only within the Great Lakes basin.
The company officials have called the action unprecedented and unfair. They have said restricting distribution to the Great Lakes basin would severely limit its ability to compete with other bottled-water brands.
Michael Haines, an attorney for Greenwich, Conn.-based Nestle Waters, said the company had no choice but to file suit.
"Nestle Waters is only asserting the same rights that every other water user in Michigan enjoys," he said.
The bottling company said the permit conditions violate the U.S. Constitution's interstate commerce clause and argued the state Department of Environmental Quality had no legal authority to impose the restrictions
