4/26/2018 by Darcy Klyne
The recently deceased Canadian Senator Tommy Banks wrote to Joe Biden on behalf of the Canadian Senate Committee in 2005 citing an "Urgent matter". Warning that the State of North Dakota was "about to unilaterally abrogate the Boundary Waters Treaty", between Canada and the United States.
Senator Banks went on further to state that,
"This will be done by draining water from Devil's Lake into the
Sheyenne River through a large ditch. Devil's Lake is a closed ecological
system that has been geographically separate from the surrounding Hudson
Bay basin for more than a thousand years. Its salty water contains high
levels of nitrogen, sulfates and phosphates that could cause severe digestive
stress if ingested, and could be lethal to aquatic life. The State of North
Dakota will not allow water from Devil's Lake to be used even for
irrigation."
"Water flowing out of this ditch (at the rate of 45,000 gallons a minute)
will have disastrous ecological effects in North Dakota, Minnesota, and
Manitoba. Species of fish, plants, parasites and viruses now confined in
Devil's Lake will flow into the Sheyenne and then into the Red River, Lake
Manitoba, Lake Winnipeg, and Hudson Bay. The results could be an
ecological disaster on an unprecedented scale."
U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Water Transfer Rule (WTR) codified in 2008 that "water transfers" (meaning from one body of water to another) are excluded from regulation under the Clean Water Act (CWA) thereby not requiring National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits. In a letter provided by The People to Save the Sheyenne ( http://www.savethesheyenne.org/ ) dated from November 2010 on behalf of U.S. Senators Kent Conrad and Byron L. Dorgan to the Mayor of the City of Devils Lake Richard Johnson, they stated that they have "had numerous conversations with the Vice President and the EPA to make sure the EPA does not stand in the way of appropriate state action to move more water off Devils Lake in a controlled manner." Going further to state, "At our request, the Obama Administration conducted a review of this question and has concluded that the EPA’s Water Transfer Rules means that the state can proceed, without EPA approval, to move more water off the lake without being constrained by the current water quality standards downstream.".
Read full letter below -