Foxconn: A new chapter in the Great Lakes water wars

Peter Annin

"Wisconn Valley" hats commemorated Foxconn's formal agreement to build its factory in Wisconsin. But questions remain about whether the company should have the right to divert large amounts of water from Lake Michigan for its operations.

On April 25, 1998, a newspaper in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario published a story that changed Great Lakes history forever. “Sault company given OK to sell Lake Superior water to Asia,” the headline read. The Nova Group, a small Canadian consulting firm, had quietly received a permit to export 158 million gallons of Lake Superior water to Asia every year.

That article sparked an international uproar. Stories throughout the U.S. and Canada spoke of ocean-going tankers hauling pristine Lake Superior water across the Pacific. “This is Pandora’s box,” warned Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak. “We’ve always worried that somebody will try to divert Great Lakes water to arid regions ... my worst fears have been realized.”

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The Nova proposal was eventually canceled, but it led to the adoption of the Great Lakes Compact in 2008. The compact bans new water diversions, with limited exceptions for communities on, or near, the Great Lakes Basin line. The first exception allows communities that straddle the Great Lakes watershed line to apply for a diversion, with the local governor having the final say on whether the diversion should be approved. The second exception involves counties that straddle the basin line. Communities that lie completely outside the Great Lakes Basin — but happen to be in a county that straddles the Basin line — can also apply for a water diversion. But straddling county applicants have a much higher bar: Their diversion requests require the approval of all eight Great Lakes governors.

The compact’s first major test came in 2010 when Waukesha applied for a straddling county diversion. Waukesha agreed to return 100% of the water, yet more than 11,000 comments streamed in, the vast majority of them opposed. In 2016, the Great Lakes governors unanimously approved Waukesha’s diversion of 8.2 million gallons per day, but Great Lakes mayors appealed the decision. For a time, it appeared the mayors and governors would awkwardly square off in court, but eventually they settled.

Today, the compact faces a new test from Foxconn Technology Group, a massive Taiwanese electronics firm that plans to build a $10 billion liquid crystal display plant in Mount Pleasant. Wisconsin recruited Foxconn with $3 billion in incentives, waiving some environmental requirements to fast-track the enormous operation — the size of three Pentagons — which could employ up to 13,000 people.

But the company must navigate the Great Lakes Compact first. By accident or intention, Foxconn sited its corporate campus right on top of the Great Lakes watershed line. Part of the facility will be inside the Great Lakes watershed, and part outside it, thus requiring a water diversion application. Foxconn can’t apply for a diversion under the compact, so Racine has submitted a straddling community water diversion application on Foxconn’s behalf — for 7 million gallons per day.

The compact allows exceptions for straddling communities, but what about straddling corporations? That was a key question at a packed hearing last month. The compact’s fine print says that in the rare event that water diversions are allowed, they need to be for “public water supply purposes … serving a group of largely residential customers.” But the compact goes on to say that those diversions “may also serve industrial, commercial and other institutional operators.”

The question is, does Racine’s application meet that test?

Wisconsin officials are expected to approve the Foxconn diversion in the coming weeks. Great Lakes advocates, already furious that environmental requirements have been waived, feel that Racine’s application may be straying from the compact’s original intent. Some of the compact’s authors share those concerns. But it remains unclear if the environmental advocates have the resources or the gumption to sue.

So as the 20th Anniversary of Nova’s controversial proposal approaches, people are still fighting over Great Lakes water. The Foxconn water fight is a reminder that potable, accessible freshwater is poised to become this century’s defining natural resource and that water stress will not be limited to the planet’s most arid areas.

It was hoped that the compact would reduce water tension in the Great Lakes region, but ever since it was adopted, the controversies have just kept coming — all of them in Wisconsin. In fact, over the last few decades, a half-dozen communities stretching from Menomonee Falls in the north to Pleasant Prairie in the south, have all been involved in Great Lakes water diversion disputes. Wisconsin has become the front line in the Great Lakes water war, and southeast Wisconsin — in particular — is starting to look like water diversion row.

Peter Annin isauthor of "The Great Lakes Water Wars." An extensively revised and expanded version of the book is due out this fall. He will speak Tuesday at the Marquette University Law School's Lubar Center as part of "Lake Michigan and the Chicago Megacity in the 21st Century," a half-day program at the school.