The House overwhelmingly approved the Great Lakes Compact yesterday, a measure that will ban the diversion of most water from the natural basin to places outside of the region.

The 390-25 vote comes a month after the Senate approved the decade-in-the-making agreement. President Bush has said he will sign the bill, which aims to prevent other water-hungry states -- and even other countries -- from tapping into the lakes, which make up 20 percent of the world's fresh-water drinking supply.

The governors of the eight lake-bordering states -- as well as the premiers of Quebec and Ontario -- signed the compact nearly three years ago, but it wasn't until this July that Michigan became the last state to ratify the agreement. The origins of the compact date back to 1998, when a Canadian company announced plans to export Great Lakes water overseas.

Which brings us to a rather glaring loophole in the final version of the compact -- one that has raised the ire of a few vocal officials. Among the exemptions to the prohibitions on diversion is water in containers smaller than 5.7 gallons, and that makes the bottled water people very happy.

Our first reaction: They really bottle water from the Great Lakes? Not exactly. It's the pristine aquifers near the lakes that have attracted companies like Nestle Waters, which bottled 295 million gallons last year from such a location in northern Michigan.

"Try to explain to me the difference between putting water in bottles and exporting it in tanker trucks?" asked Rhonda Huff, a spokeswoman for Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation. "The only difference is the water is in bottles in a semi instead of filling a tanker."