water outside the Great Lakes Basin would have to run the WRDA

gauntlet first. While the Charter had targeted diversions and in-

Basin consumptive uses, WRDA was strictly an anti-diversion doc-

ument. WRDA went on to say that neither the Army Corps of

Engineers nor any other federal agency could even study the feasi-

bility of diverting water from the Great Lakes without the unani-

mous approval of all eight Great Lakes governors. WRDA was a

dream come true to Michigan. Finally, it had attained a magic veto

over diversion proposals in all the other Great Lakes states without

the concern of retribution or the burden of regulating its own con-

sumptive water use. That was a power that other states would come

to regret, as later chapters in this book will show.

After WRDA, the idea of forging a consensus over Great Lakes

water withdrawals was lost. From here on out, on the U.S. side of

the border at least, water diversions would be decided by a straight

up-and-down vote. Those who wanted a binding diversion law had

finally gotten it. Governors who worried that the Charter’s consen-

sus format was too weak now had the comfort of a veto pen in their

pocket. But was it constitutional? Many experts didn’t think so.

The main problem was that the document lacked any guidance on

how diversion applications should be judged—forcing the gover-

nors to make up the rules as they went along—and not necessarily

requiring them to treat all water applicants by the same standards.

In addition, the law provided no opportunity for spurned water ap-

plicants to appeal. That left WRDA highly vulnerable to allega-

tions that the law was arbitrary and capricious, if not

unconstitutional.

Unlike the Charter, with its clear procedures for “prior notice

and consultation,” WRDA laid out no such procedure for how gov-

ernors should go about exercising their newfound water veto pow-

ers. Did they have to meet in person? Did the veto have to be in

writing? Was a consultation required first, or could a governor just

veto the project by making a phone call after reading about it in

the newspaper? “For many of us at the time, [WRDA] was viewed as

an abomination. And as it’s grown it’s become a bigger abomina-

tion,” says attorney R. Timothy Weston, a former Pennsylvania

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