New Great Lakes bill should get full hearings in Columbus

Gov. John Kasich did the right thing last summer when he vetoed a hasty and ill-conceived bill that would have greatly expanded the ability of Ohio businesses to draw water from the Great Lakes.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Lynn Wachtmann, R-Napoleon, a legislator who has a more-than-passing interest in tapping water from Lake Erie and its tributaries: He owns a water bottling company.

That Wachtmann would come up with a bill that would have allowed any entity in the lake’s watershed to extract 5 million gallons a day if taken directly from the lake and as much as 2 million if taken from groundwater or other inland sources was not so surprising. What was surprising was the speed with which he was able to ramrod his legislation through both houses of the General Assembly. In voting for Wachtmann’s bill, legislators ignored the pleas of two former Republican governors, Bob Taft and George Voinovich, who advised the legislators to slow down and take a closer look at what they were about to do.

Among its many faults, the legislation contained no requirement that the effects of potentially enormous uses of Great Lakes water be scientifically monitored. And it provided no legal method for the state to reverse overuse.

We’ll acknowledge that we were surprised — and pleasantly so — when Kasich used his first veto to send that horribly flawed bill back to the General Assembly.

Last month Wachtmann introduced a revised version, and he has recently been working with Kasich’s office to overcome the governor’s objections.

Last week Kasich endorsed the new bill, although it appears that there are some agreed-upon amendments in the works. Kasich thanked Wachtmann for “working with us to get to this point.”

For his part, Wachtmann said the bill “offers more than adequate stream protection.” And yet he couldn’t resist accusing critics of his bill of “using scare tactics” to keep it from becoming a reality.

Improved, but still ...

One of the critics of Wachtmann’s first bill, the Ohio Environmental Council, acknowledges that Kasich and the Ohio Department of Natural Resource achieved substantial improvements in the new bill, including:

Significantly reduced limits on the amount of water an industrial operation may withdraw or use before triggering a permit.

Strengthened protections for high-quality streams.

Empowering Ohio DNR regulators to develop rules to enforce the Great Lakes Compact.

Added checks and balances to ensure that permit requirements are followed.

Grounding in science the management of Ohio’s Lake Erie basin water.

But the council still has its reservations about permitting processes, about how “average use” is computed and changes in the law that could make it more difficult to protect Lake Erie and its tributaries from large water users.

The bill would also severely limit the rights of people — especially sportsmen and recreational water users — to appeal the issuances of a permit that they believe would impact them.

Leaders n the House and Senate should give proponents and opponents of this legislation ample opportunity to testify. This is a bill that could affect the future viability of one of Ohio’s greatest assets, Lake Erie, and Ohioans should know exactly what’s in this legislation and be given the opportunity to express their concerns before it goes to a vote.

Other states and the two Canadian provinces that are part of the Great Lake Compact might also want to take advance notice of what’s happening in Columbus.