ABSTRACT

This chapter examines United States (US) congressional legislation about the Great Lakes from the 1970s to contemporary times through an interpretivist lens. Tarlock identified five views that have emerged over the past two decades: perpetual gift, world heritage ecosystem, natural resource, commodity, and constrained natural resource. Tarlock's analysis is based on examining water diversion debates and includes perspectives from major stakeholders, states, provinces, Native American tribes, Canadian First Nations, and user and environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN) Video Library study provides a broad overview of legislation through a keyword search referring to bills with the term "Great Lakes". The C-SPAN Video Library categorizes bills by topics and keywords and used 53 terms and phrases for indexing Great Lakes bills. Chief among them was the term Great Lakes. The next four were environmental protection; government opinion and politics; water resource development; and marine and coastal research and fisheries.