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Ishpeming, Michigan - An international group nearing completion of a 1,200-mile walk around Lake Superior today questioned the removal of a Republican Party platform plank against diversions of Great Lakes water.

"This is an ominous sign that some Republican Party interests would agree to sell our Lake Superior water to the highest bidder," said Esther Nahgahnub (Lake Superior Chippewa, Fond du Lac Reservation) of the Walk to Remember. The Walk is described as a "sacred journey" drawing attention to environmental threats facing the lake and surrounding communities.

"The Republican nominees are from the semi-arid states of Texas and Wyoming, which would love to pipe Lake Superior water to feed irresponsible interests," said Kurt Ruud of the Walk to Remember, which is now at Riper State Park, on Highway 28 west of Ishpeming, Michigan, on its way to a Friday, August 25th arrival at its final destination in Odanah (on Highway 2 east of Ashland, Wisconsin). Walk coordinators invited the public to welcome the walkers at the Bad River Pow-Wow in Odanah.

Frank Koehn (former Bayfield County Supervisor) noted that Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson chaired the Republican Platform Committee that adopted the original plank against Great Lakes water diversion, at the Party's recent convention in Philadelphia. Koehn also pointed out that one of Thompson's Republican predecessors, Governor Lee Dreyfus, proposed the piping of Lake Superior water to the Southwest; public opposition seemingly defeated that proposal in 1981.

"How could Tommy Thompson let this prohibition be dropped from his platform?," asked Koehn, "Is he acquiescing in the theft of our most vital public natural resource? First he gives away our springwater to Perrier, then our Great Lakes water to Bush and Cheney."

Koehn proposed that all political parties in the U.S. and Canada, local, state and provincial governments around the Great Lakes, and tribal governments in the Great Lakes watershed pass resolutions opposing any diversions of Great Lakes water outside the basin.

Contact Zoltan Grossman by e-mail (mtn@igc.org).