Letter: Honor Great Lakes Compact

To the Editor:

There have been a lot of newspaper articles throughout the Chicagoland metro area about Hammond and Chicago jockeying for position to sell Lake Michigan water to the city of Joliet.

None of those articles mentioned the Great Lakes Compact or the wisdom of shipping large volumes of Great Lakes water outside of its watershed, the geographical area that drains into the Lakes. Nor did all those articles mention the fact that the Des Plaines River runs right through Joliet.

The Great Lakes Compact bans the diversion of Great Lakes water outside the basin, with limited exceptions. This conversation needs to start again. If the compact allows the diversion of Lake Michigan water to Joliet, from Chicago, Hammond, or anywhere else, why not to Springfield, Ill.? Why not Denver or Las Vegas?

Joliet and all the western suburbs need to make the investment needed to clean up the Des Plaines River to make it useable for local communities. Clean it up and control discharges to the river and then restore a bunch of its floodplain to address the polluted runoff from their towns and farms.

Great Lakes water should not be pumped outside the Great Lakes drainage.

Jim Sweeney

Schererville, Ind.