MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Senate passed an interstate treaty Thursday designed to keep arid states from pulling water out of the Great Lakes. But it appears doomed anyway in the Legislature.

The 26-6 vote in the Democratic-controlled chamber sent the Great Lakes Compact to the state Assembly, where Republican leaders have raised objections to part of it.

The Republicans run the Assembly, and they aren’t happy with a provision that would let one Great Lakes state block a city’s request to use lake water. The legislative session is set to end next week, too, leaving little time for revisions or compromises that could pass both houses.

“This is one of those bills everybody knows is not going to pass next week,” Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, told his colleagues before they voted Thursday.

The governors of all eight Great Lakes states, including Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, signed the compact in 2005 after years of negotiations. Each state’s legislature and Congress must approve the treaty before it can take effect.

Illinois, Indiana and Minnesota have passed the compact. A bill has passed both houses of New York’s legislature and one chamber in Ohio, Pennsylvania and now Wisconsin.

Michigan hasn’t passed the treaty through any legislative house, according to the office of Sen. Mark Miller, a Monona Democrat who has been pushing the compact through the Wisconsin Legislature.

The compact generally prohibits removing water from the lakes’ basin.

Counties and communities that straddle the basin could use water if all eight Great Lake states approve and the municipality follows guidelines laid out in the compact.

Federal law already allows governors of Great Lakes states to block any water diversions from the lakes. The compact would reinforce that but also set up criteria for the municipalities straddling the basin boundary to draw water.

Any changes of the compact would then have to be approved by all the states and would probably blow up the deal, critics say.

Posted 3/7/2008