On behalf of Clean Water Action and our 170,000 Michigan members I am here today to support the proposal to strengthen protection against diverting Great Lakes waters and to thank Leader Byrum for her leadership on this important issue.

When Clean Water Action put out the call to our members to support the idea of putting the Great Lakes in Michigan’s Constitution the response was overwhelming—people throughout the Great Lakes States understand we must prevent our waters from being privatized by keeping them in public control.

Putting the Great Lakes in Michigan’s Constitution means providing our strongest possible protections for our state’s most treasured asset—our waters.   It is clear to many of us that unless we do this  it is likely that large corporate interests and their friends in Lansing and Washington, DC will be unable to resist turning our public waters into private wells.

In February Governor Granholm signed into law standards for any new or expanded water bottling plants withdrawing more than 250,000 gallons per day.   This was an important victory and reflected strong leadership by the governor and members of the Legislature.

However, we must eliminate the legal Trojan Horse of water privatization that is threatening our control of Great Lakes waters--the exemption under current law for diversions of water in containers of 5.7 gallons or less.

The current exemption takes us down the path toward more demands by more international companies who want to market and export Great Lakes waters.   A company that can claim water as a private commodity if it’s in a 5.7 gallon container is a company that can claim a right to that water in any size container and at any amount. 

As the worldwide demand for water increases and the Great Lakes State becomes more and more of a magnet for water export plants, the political clout of international water companies will increase. Eventually we will see special interest money being used to create even larger diversion exemptions for water exports.

That's why we must eliminate this Trojan Horse and put the Great Lakes and Michigan's waters into the Michigan Constitution.