I'll take that one on. The Great Lakes are different in that they are effectively a border; they require a cooperative stewardship, and in that spirit there are existing international agreements between the two countries. That's why I strategically tried to cast that issue as being part of the international agreements discussion--because those agreements do exist--and if we want to meet those agreements beyond just the Great Lakes, including some of the other agreements in place to regulate toxics, I think that would be the place to do it.
I quite agree with you that no particular region of the country should have a better environmental stewardship than any other region, and certainly that wasn't the intent of trying to address the Great Lakes. Simply put, the Great Lakes are not the canary in the coal mine, if you'll excuse the metaphor--they are the coal mine. We're quickly moving toward a water-short world; to have effective legislation in place to prevent the toxification of that resource is critical to our future.