The situation with the dishwasher is that Edmonton is part of the Lake Winnipeg basin, so there isn't an interbasin transfer. I think you're referring to the situation happening now with Devils Lake in North Dakota, where they began to pump water out of Devils Lake into the Sheyenne River, which will make its way into Lake Winnipeg. There's incredible concern around that, grave concern around that.
On August 5, 2005, the federal governments of Canada and the U.S. signed an agreement that there would be an advanced filter put in place so that water, if it had to be pumped—Manitoba's position is one drop is too much—then at least it would be going through a filter. No system is completely fail-safe, but we need to take whatever actions are possible.
We know that there are grave concerns. There's biota that is foreign to the Lake Winnipeg watershed that may be going in now. I'm here and I'll be meeting with the federal minister later. I'm going to ask him to step up the pace of working towards the placement of this advanced filter.
I'm also concerned that in the United States the federal government delegated, through the Environmental Protection Agency, the ability of North Dakota to establish their own environmental standards around the water. We have, through agreement with the International Joint Commission, a limit of 300 milligrams per litre of sulphates. Water could only be pumped if there were less than 300 milligrams per litre of sulphates from the Devils Lake area into the Sheyenne. Through the Department of Health in North Dakota, they have upped that amount to 450 milligrams with no visible science behind it. So we did challenge this. Unfortunately, we did lose the challenge in North Dakota, so we're looking at our next steps.
Again, I will be asking the federal minister today to talk to his counterpart in the States, for the federal government in the States to take back that power from North Dakota so that any change would be based on real science.