There are legal questions about Chicago’s plans to sell Lake Michigan water to Joliet [JOE-lee-ett], Illinois.
The Great Lakes Compact restricts most water use to communities within the Great Lakes basin. Joliet is several miles outside the basin. But a nearly 100-year-old Supreme Court case that’s still open allows Chicago greater access.
Noah Hall is a professor of law at Wayne State University. He says Chicago is taking advantage of that 1929 court case.
Hall says, “And now, in 2023, Chicago is using that legal decision to turn around and sell water to suburban communities that would otherwise not be able to divert water from Lake Michigan.”
Hall says water is not a commodity to be brokered out to the highest bidder.
Michigan was a party to that century-old case and could ask to revisit how the water is allocated.