Testing the Great Lakes Compact: Administrative Politics and the Challenge of Environmental Adaptation

• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0032329217714783
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329217714783

Politics & Society

2017, Vol. 45(3) 441 –466

© 2017 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329217714783

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Article

Testing the Great Lakes

Compact: Administrative

Politics and the Challenge

of Environmental Adaptation

Ben Merriman

University of Kansas

Abstract

This article examines public involvement in the six-year administrative review of an

application by Waukesha, Wisconsin, to draw water from Lake Michigan to replace its

radium-contaminated local water supply. The article shows that public positions on

the proposal inverted the typical relationship between partisanship and environmental

attitudes, prompting both supporters and opponents to ignore scientific evidence

and the central matter of water safety. In successive rounds of state and regional

administrative review, these political stances induced administrators to engage in

increasingly legalistic forms of assessment. Although Waukesha’s application was

approved in 2016, such administrative dynamics may limit the ability of the recently

enacted Great Lakes Compact to address current and prospective water safety

problems in the region. The case typifies an emerging pattern in water governance in

the United States: contentious administrative politics drive cooperative agreements to

resemble adversarial proceedings, limiting their ability to adapt to new environmental

problems.

Keywords

administration, environment, federalism, Great Lakes Compact, water

Corresponding Author:

Ben Merriman, School of Public Affairs & Administration, University of Kansas, 4060 Wescoe Hall,

1445 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA.

Email: bmerriman@ku.edu

714783PASXXX10.1177/0032329217714783Politics & SocietyMerriman

research-article2017

442 Politics & Society 45(3)

In early 2016, the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin, was nearing the final stages of a six-

year approval process for its plan to draw water from Lake Michigan, located about

ten miles from the city limits. Waukesha sought water from Lake Michigan to replace

its existing supply, drawn from a deep aquifer lying beneath the city, which was con-

taminated with radium, a naturally occurring radioactive heavy metal and an acknowl-

edged health hazard. Levels of radium in the water supply had been increasing over

time, and the city contended that no alternative water sources or treatment methods

could reliably provide safe drinking water without serious adverse environmental

effects. The city’s application for a diversion of Lake Michigan water had been under

review in the state of Wisconsin since 2010. With Wisconsin’s approval, the applica-

tion was forwarded to a relatively new pair of regional administrative bodies that

included representatives of the eight Great Lakes states, as well as the Canadian prov-

inces of Ontario and Quebec: the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water

Resources Compact, commonly known as the Great Lakes Compact, and the Great

Lakes-St. Lawrence River Water Resources Regional Body. These new agreements

were unproven; Waukesha’s application was widely acknowledged to be a key test of

their viability.

In superficial respects, Waukesha’s situation resembles the recent water safety cri-

sis in Flint, Michigan: both are mid-size cities in the Great Lakes region facing the

problem of heavy metal contaminants in drinking water. Of course, these parallels are

limited: high levels of lead were introduced into Flint’s water as a result of gross mis-

management and callous indifference to public health,1 whereas radium entered

Waukesha’s water supply as a result of natural processes. The health hazards in Flint

were also far more severe. Yet the two cases are similar enough that one might expect

that Flint would have merited some mention during the regional review process, which

began in February 2016, immediately after the crisis received national attention.

However, neither administrators nor civil society actors involved in the regional

review of Waukesha’s application made any acknowledgment of Flint, or of the persis-

tent problems of water safety in the Great Lakes region. That absence is closely related

to the explanatory goals of this article.

The article has two purposes. First, using a large volume of material from public

comments and hearings, the article examines public participation in the review process

for Waukesha’s diversion application, including three rounds of administrative review

in Wisconsin, two rounds of regional review, and a regional appeal hearing. Public

participation in the matter is notable for two reasons. First, the stances taken on the

proposal were precisely opposite to what overall partisanship would seem to predict:

the supporters were Republicans from wealthy, predominantly white suburbs; the

opponents were environmentalists and community groups. This pattern is explicable

by the local political context, which includes recent patterns of contention arising from

Waukesha County’s support for Governor Scott Walker, as well as persistent, high

levels of racial segregation and racialized politics in the Milwaukee metropolitan area.

It is nonetheless significant that partisanship was so readily subordinated to immediate

commitments in the case at hand. Second, supporters and opponents both elided the

key regulatory and scientific facts in the case. Supporters sought a new, safe drinking