New York could soon join two other states and two Canadian provinces in trying to prevent outsiders from taking Great Lakes water.

Earlier this year, the State Senate approved the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement, a pact setting limits on taking water from the lakes for use outside the region. The Assembly was supposed to vote on the same bill in October, but didn't. A feud between Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer and Republican Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno stalled many pieces of legislation, including the Water Resources Agreement, says Assemblymember David Koon, a Perinton Democrat and bill co-sponsor. The Assembly did pass an earlier form of the bill, but it needs to approve the Senate-amended version.

"If the governor and Bruno can bury the hatchet, we'll vote on it in December," Koon says.

The idea of sending Great Lakes water to dryer states has become increasingly controversial and has even seeped into the 2008 presidential race. The lakes hold over 20 percent of the world's freshwater, and drought in the south and fires in the west will only add to pressures to tap the lakes as a national water resource.

The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, both of which border the lakes, have already approved the agreement and taken steps toward implementation, says Tim Morris, a representative of Sierra Club of Canada.

Minnesota and Illinois have signed the agreement. The legislation lags, however, in Ohio and Wisconsin. The governors of both states support the agreement, but some lawmakers have concerns. Ohio Republican Senator Tim Grendell, for example, has argued that it could intrude on property owners' rights, reports the Toledo Blade.

If the states pass it, the agreement will need Congressional approval. And some resistance is expected, particularly from lawmakers representing the drier southwestern states, Koon says.

Environmentalists and others trying to protect the lakes want to get the agreement through the state legislatures and Congress before the 2010 Census. They worry that after the Census, the Great Lakes region, which has been losing population to the southern states, will have fewer seats in the House of Representatives. (In 2004, President George Bush went on the record supporting the Great Lakes agreement.)

In 2001, Webster village officials placed an ad in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, offering to sell up to two million gallons of water a day. Webster lies within the Lake Ontario basin, and the water would have come from the village well. Opponents, including John Engler, former Michigan governor and one-time chair of the Council of Great Lakes Governors, objected because of the precedent it would set, reported Time magazine.

This October, the idea of transporting Great Lakes water to the south was raised by a powerful politician. New Mexico governor and Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson told the Las Vegas Sun that the water could be piped to dry southwestern states to solve their water problems.

Michigan governor and fellow Democrat Jennifer Granholm greeted that idea with a firm and resounding "Hell, no," reported the Toledo Blade.

Richardson quickly retreated from his statement and proclaimed that water should stay in its "basin of origin" and that he in no way proposes "federal transfers of water from one region of the nation to another."