The Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are the source of drinking water for three-quarters of Ontarians, and millions of people in Canada and the USA. The Great Lakes face unique and complex challenges, which include both drinking water quantity and quality issues.

To address these challenges, numerous treaties, laws, agreements and regulations have been passed over the years to help restore and protect the waters of the Great Lakes. Several of these agreements are outlined below.

The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement

The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement is an agreement between Canada and the US to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the Great Lakes basin ecosystem. It was signed in 1971 in response to the severe degradation of Lakes Erie and Ontario.

Both countries agreed to implement programs to reduce the pollutants entering the waters of the Great Lakes basin. The Agreement also lays the framework for the development of Remedial Action Plans (RAPs) and Lakewide Management Plans (LAMPs). In Canada, these programs are administered by Environment Canada and the Province of Ontario and in the US by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The International Joint Commission (IJC) is responsible for ensuring that each country lives up to its obligations under the agreement. It also releases a biennial report on the status of the programs.

Great Lakes Charter and Annex 2001

The original Great Lakes Charter was a non-binding agreement signed by all governments in the Great Lakes basin (8 states and 2 provinces) in 1985. It stated that any projects taking more than 5 million gallons (or 19 million litres) of water per day from the GL basin would require notification of all the jurisdictions.

Questions remained, however, about whether the states and provinces had the legal authority to say no to large-scale diversion proposals. So negotiations began for a binding agreement that would establish common standards for decisions regarding large diversions and give them the power to stand up to trade agreements.

Those negotiations produced the Great Lakes Charter Annex. In 2001, all jurisdictions signed an "agreement in principle", essentially an outline of what the final agreement would look like. That agreement became known as "Annex 2001".

Further negotiations produced 2 more documents, referred to as the Annex 2001 Implementing Agreements. One is a non-binding agreement between the states and provinces, and the other is a binding compact between the states only. In July 2004, both the bi-national agreement and the inter-state compact were released for public comment.

Some key elements of the agreements are:

  • They apply to all waters within the Great Lakes basin (i.e. the watersheds that drain into the Great Lakes).
  • Proposals to divert more than a certain amount of water out of the basin (a threshold of 2,000,000 gallons per day is currently proposed) will trigger a joint review by all 10 jurisdictions.
  • The joint review will assess whether the proposals meet certain criteria, including:
    • net improvement to the resource;
    • guarantee of return flow;
    • demonstration that there is no feasible alternative; and
    • inclusion of stringent conservation measures.

Opinions are divided as to whether the Annex Implementing Agreements, as currently proposed, will be effective in protecting the waters of the Great Lakes from over-consumption. Some see it as necessary in order to stand up to a rapidly increasing thirst for large, reliable sources of freshwater. Others see it as the first step on a slippery slope that in the long run will end up allowing more large-scale diversions than it prevents.