One useful outcome of this debacle is that it exposed a loophole in the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact. Under that agreement, pumping water from the Great

One useful outcome of this debacle is that it exposed a loophole in the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact. Under that agreement, pumping water from the Great Lakes for industrial purposes is supposed to be disallowed, preventing e.g. chip makers or bottled water companies from buying land and setting up shop to pump water out of the lakes for export. During this agreement, the city of Racine was given enough incentive to allow FoxConn to pull water from the lake via the city (there's an exception in the compact that allows cities who already pull their drinking water from the lakes to keep doing it). So Racine bypassed the compact by using their legal way to pump Lake Michigan water to supply FoxConn's industrial needs. Fortunately this didn't happen, but the GLWRC needs some editin'.