THE SHAPE OF THE CIVIL WAR TO COME?

Ten years ago, I feared a future conflict over Lake Michigan water, one starting, precisely, in the marsh at the headwaters of the Des Plaines River.  That's almost exactly where the new Foxconn factory is going to go.  Thus do environmentalists raise the alarm.  "At issue is whether Foxconn should be able to tap Lake Michigan water and what impact the company’s industrial process will have on the lake."  That becomes a more complicated issue in that marsh.  "The [Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources] plays an oversight role because Mount Pleasant is situated in both the Lake Michigan and Mississippi River basins. Thus, it straddles both watersheds."

So far, Wisconsin has not fortified the area, nor is Illinois preparing to shell it.  But there is a war of words.  "Foxconn finds way to stick 7 million-gallon straw into Lake Michigan."  That's the hype, this being an Illinois editorial.  Here are the details.

As envisioned by [Wisconsin governor Scott] Walker['s] administration, the water for Foxconn would come from Racine, an industrial city that would add the company to its larger base of residential customers, along with a small number of homes in Mount Pleasant, the community where the factory is to be located. Racine is entirely within the basin and has more than enough capacity from its existing allotment of water from the lake.

Thus, no problem. Unless you're in Illinois, and you want to suck more water through the Chicago Drainage Canal.

Some who were involved in the debate hoped the compact [the current treaty involving states and provinces with Great Lakes coasts] would discourage the use of Great Lakes water to fuel suburban growth outside the basin. Instead, the thinking went, access to the water should be limited to new industries and development in areas within the basin, such as Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and other older, urban cities ravaged by the loss of manufacturing jobs.

“Access to Great Lakes water is a contentious issue even within states, and we knew southeast Wisconsin would be one of the flashpoints,” said Noah Hall, a Wayne State University law professor who focuses on environmental issues in the region. “We wanted to discourage sprawl, but we made political, perhaps arbitrary, compromises along the way.”

The application to divert water for Foxconn assumes Wisconsin is not required to consult with other Great Lakes states, let alone seek their approval.

Southeastern Wisconsin is a flashpoint precisely because the sub-continental divide comes so close to Lake Michigan, and the project currently uses Racine's existing allotment, Racine and Kenosha being two of the lakefront industrial cities slammed by the failure of American Motors.

Foxconn would be one of the largest users diverting water outside the Great Lakes basin. The largest by far is Chicago, which under a 1967 Supreme Court decree is authorized to withdraw up to 2.1 billion gallons a day from Lake Michigan. The decree also resolved questions about the city’s nearly century-old practice of discharging treated sewage into waterways that drain toward the Mississippi, instead of the Great Lakes.

By contrast, the Great Lakes compact requires Foxconn and Waukesha to treat most of the water used and return it to Lake Michigan.

Cameron Davis, who served as Great Lakes czar for former President Barack Obama, noted the amount of Lake Michigan water that would be diverted for Foxconn is tiny when compared with the volume of the lake.

The bigger question about Foxconn, Davis said, is whether Wisconsin ensures the factory is prevented from releasing toxic pollution into the lake.

Under clean water laws, Foxconn could be required to treat wastewater at the factory to remove hazardous chemicals used during the manufacturing process before it is pumped through Racine’s treatment plant and released back into Lake Michigan.

“It’s understandable that people are focused right now on the compact and the proposed diversion,” Davis said. “But in the long run water quality should be the fight here, rather than water quantity.”

That's going to be the case, no matter where the factory is.

But why is the factory not going to be in Illinois?  Hillary Clinton has advised the world that she won the optimistic, forward-looking places, places like Illinois.  How forward-looking is Illinois?  It's a place where people are looking forward to leaving for California, which, itself, is losing population to other states ...

Tuesday comes the primary elections for Illinois state offices.  I have not seen anyone make an issue over losing people to California (and Wisconsin) or losing new businesses to Indiana (and Wisconsin) but I've seen Democratic attack ads that might actually make the candidate being attacked look better to centrist voters, and Republican attack ads that are more like Mad magazine than Mad ever was.  It will be business as usual in Springfield, and business startups in Wisconsin.