We speak with Tressie Kamp a staff attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates, who is working with petitioners on the City of Racine Diversion Challenge.
The Racine Diversion is a water diversion application submitted by the city of Racine to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in January 2018 requesting permission to divert up to an annual average of 7 million gallons of water a day from Lake Michigan to the village of Mount Pleasant (near Racine) in the Mississippi River Basin. The diversion area includes part of the area identified by Racine County as the future site of the Foxconn facility.
What are the environmental implications of this diversion, and in what critical ways might it either comply with or contradict the 2008 Great Lakes Compact (a federal law and binational agreement between Canada and the U.S. to safeguard the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world, the Great Lakes)?