Open to Exploitation
Michigan’s blanket well-drilling permit for the Perrier Group amounts to a ìWelcome” sign for global entrepreneurs. It swings wide open the door to further commercial water exports and unregulated exploitation because it comes without the Michigan Legislature’s clear authorization, and it confirms a hands-off regulatory environment for such water diversions.

This is important under new international trade laws, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA makes it easier for companies to take natural resources from states that have not clearly articulated and consistently implemented public policies to manage their water resources. Michigan is a prime example with its failure to expressly authorize or apply public trust principles to the Perrier Group’s plan to transfer water out of its basin. NAFTA also protects companies from discriminatory regulation, such as any future attempt Michigan might make to establish more stringent water regulations.

Shortages Already
In addition to sidestepping the question of whether the Perrier Group can legally transfer pure water out of its rightful basin, the DEQ’s permitting process also failed to fully consider the long-term effects of draining the water from its basin. Perrier’s test wells, for example, showed reductions in the flow of surface waters in the vicinity. But the DEQ’s analysis and public hearings did not include consideration of this information.

Focused almost exclusively on water quality, Michigan regulations do not fully consider potential damage from high-capacity wells on interconnected rivers and lakes and the Great Lakes themselves. This absence of comprehensive water supply considerations in Michigan already is showing negative effects, with many parts of the state suffering shortages as high-capacity, unregulated suburban, agricultural, and industrial wells stress local aquifers; create new water infrastructure costs; and deprive future business, residential, and recreational users of adequate water supplies.

21st Century View
Modernization of Michigan’s water policies will involve changing the state’s frontier mindset that its water resources are inexhaustible. This 19th-century attitude about abundant natural resources led the state’s residents and leaders to promote rampant clearcutting in the Lumber Baron era, which left entire ecosystems and the human communities that came to depend on them in shambles. It also fueled the careless killing that decimated the passenger pigeon and led to the extinction of Michigan’s native game fish, the grayling. The recipe for these disasters ó insatiable world demand and unregulated exploitation ó was the same then as the current trend in global water markets. Michigan knows how voracious commodity markets for natural resources can be. It now has the opportunity to step in ahead of the 21st century’s ìliquid gold rush” and establish ownership and management rules that secure the state’s water future. If Michigan fails to do so, it will lose its place in the nation and the world as a respected steward of fresh water.

Recommendations
The Perrier Group’s entrance into Michigan is a singular starting point for the Legislature to take a leadership role and more clearly define the state’s water policy. Specifically, the Legislature should:

1) Define and restrict commercial water transfers out of local basins.

2) Hold public hearings to decide how to define and restrict commercial water transfers, as well as whether and how to authorize any exceptions to commercial restrictions and how to respond to humanitarian aid requests.

3) Design a new water use statute that recognizes clean fresh water as a finite and threatened resource impressed with the public trust. Sound management principles should be rooted in water availability and conservation. They should also recognize that water supplies are part of a hydrological system in which surface water and groundwater, like water quality and quantity, are inextricably connected.

4) Expand and strengthen rules for reviewing and permitting new, high-capacity water uses. Such rules would improve assessments of water availability and water needs, evaluations of the ecological effects of water removal, and determinations of acceptable levels of harm and/or improvement the water removal would cause. The new rules would also implement a system for compensating the public, as well as private well owners, for harm that may occur in the future.

5) Improve water use monitoring by mapping the state’s underground water system; keeping detailed, up-to-date records on the physical characteristics of underground aquifers; and requiring large water users to report the amounts of water they withdraw from aquifers and surface waters.

6) Establish a Water Resources Trust Fund similar to the existing Natural Resources Trust Fund to enhance research, stewardship, quality, public access, conservation, and restoration of Michigan’s waters.

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