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Asian Carp, Oil Spill and Great Lakes Restoration Highlights

September 9, 2010

I’m back after an August hiatus, and there’s lots happening. Here are a few items:

Asian carp: the breaking news is that the Obama Administration has created a new position, Asian carp director, in the Council of Environmental Quality, and filled it with none other than our own John Goss, the former executive director of the Indiana Wildlife Federation. I’m very excited about this. I’ve known John for years and he’s passionate about the Great Lakes and very good at getting things done, a combination we really need in that job. He’s got his work cut out for him because the position doesn’t come with new legal authority, just the power to persuade and cajole and coordinate. But that’s what John does best, so I have high hopes. And we look forward to working with him. Check our NWF’s news release on the Asian Carp Tsar announcement.

On the flip side, the Administration (via the Corps) is actively fighting a lawsuit brought by the states to shut the canals. The hearing is going on this week; stay tuned for the outcome.

Kalamazoo River oil spill: The good news is that the leak was stopped within days, the oil seems to be contained and it never reached Lake Michigan. The bad news is that the spill occurred in an area that was flooded due to heavy rain events the days prior. At the spill site, 5 acres of wetlands were heavily saturated in tar oil; around 30 miles of river banks were coated with oil; and surrounding wildlife has been significantly impacted and will continue to be impacted until all oil is completely removed from the river banks. Issues continue to arise around worker safety and residential rights. The spill happened in Congressman Mark Shauer’s district, and the committee he sits on (House Transportation and Infrastructure) is holding a hearing on it in Washington next week, September 15. NWF’s response coordinator, Beth Wallace, and I have been invited to testify before on the committee. More on that soon.

Great Lakes restoration: The first grants are out! EPA made the grant announcements this week in Green Bay and Toledo. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson personally made the announcements, four grants in Ohio totaling $1.9 million, and seven in Wisconsin at $5.2 million. These are the first wave of what’s expected in the next few weeks to be 270 projects and $160 million in grants from EPA.

Not to be outdone, the Healing Our Waters –Great Lakes Coalition announced our own Great Lakes restoration grants, 13 of them totaling $190,000. These grants are seed money to enable small organizations to go after the larger government grants.

There’s more, of course, but this post is long enough. Next week, I’ll be in Washington doing double duty: visiting Congressional offices as part of a HOW fly-in, and tracking the Kalamazoo River Oil spill hearings. I’ll post when I have more news.

Tags:Asian carp, Enbridge, invasive species, Kalamazoo River
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Bad News, Doubled, on Asian Carp

June 24, 2010

I don’t know which is worse: the discovery of a live Asian carp beyond the electric fence that is supposed to stop them, or the dismissive and obstructionist reaction to that discovery from the Army Corps of Engineers. That’s the negative impression I got after listening to an emergency briefing held yesterday afternoon by the agencies responsible for protecting the Great Lakes from the monster carp: the Corps, the Coast Guard, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. EPA, and the Illinois DNR.

Of course it’s bad news that a 20-pound, 34-inch bighead carp was captured in Lake Calumet, 6 miles from Lake Michigan and beyond the electric fence and the O’Brien Lock. There is no remaining physical barrier between where the fish was found and the Great Lakes. And because the fish was found in larger body of water (Lake Calumet) so close to Lake Michigan, chemical treatment may be unwise or impossible. That leaves increased electrofishing and netting to try to find more invasive carp and suppress whatever populations are present.

The good news is that most of the agencies on the call said that they plan to implement the electrofishing and netting measures and expressed a new urgency in making sure they were doing all in their power to stop the Asian carp from advancing. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US EPA, the Illinois DNR…. they all announced new measures to combat the carp, and each of them pledged to ramp up their efforts. But not the Corps.

The Corps spokesperson, Mike White, made it sound as if the Corps would just like to wash its hands of the whole problem. On the call and in the press release, he said the Corps’ primary responsibility was:

“to continue to operate the locks and dams in the Chicago Area Waterway System for Congressionally authorized purposes of navigation, water diversion, and flood control. We will continue to support fish suppression activities by modifying existing structures such as locks as requested by other agencies to support this common goal…”

Protect the Great Lakes? Forget about it. Apparently the Corps does not think that protecting the Great Lakes is part of its mission.

When asked if the Corps would post on its website the results, including the date and location, of the additional DNA sampling we assumed the Corps would be conducting, Mr. White said the Corps is in discussions with the institutions who have done sampling in the past (Notre Dame) about whether Corps will continue doing DNA sampling at all. So, will the DNA sampling resume? The Corps doesn’t know, but it certainly hopes those discussions come to resolution sometime soon. Well, that’s a relief, right?

Later, in a call with the press, Mr. White was asked if the discovery of a live carp beyond the electric fence, 6 miles from Lake Michigan, made a response to the problem more urgent. His response was that the Corps would consider its statutory authorities and determine a course of action. In other words, the Corps is going to think about it and get back to us.

Will the Corps act forcefully and with urgency? Forget about it – not to protect the Great Lakes.

What’s terrifying is that the Corps is the agency that is supposed to decide on whether a permanent separation of the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River is feasible. Given the performance we saw yesterday, why bother? Their answer is predetermined (since Great Lakes protection apparently isn’t part of the Corps’s mission), and given the low urgency that agency is assigning to this issue, it could be decades before it finishes the study, anyway.

We’re supporting a bill to force the Corps to do a real feasibility study on hydrological separation, and to do it rapidly. Thanks to the leadership of the Great Lakes senators, particularly Senators Durbin, Stabenow, Levin and Voinovich, this bill might move, and move quickly. It will be a big help with the Corps’ mission.

But what about the Corps’ culture? I think we need to change the agency’s incentives. How about this: if Asian carp colonize the Great Lakes, then the costs to the ecosystem and the economies that depend on it get deducted from the Corps’ annual budget. Or even better: deduct those costs from the paychecks of their staff.

That might light the fire under them the Great Lakes need.

Tags:Asian carp, Great Lakes, invasive species, US Corps of Engineers
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New York shuts the door on ballast water discharges of invasive species into the Great Lakes

June 22, 2010

This is the best news in decades on invasive species in the Great Lakes, and chances are, you haven’t heard it yet. Thanks to a New York rule upheld in court last week, starting in 18 months no ship can enter the Great Lakes unless it has the technology to disinfect its ballast water to stop the discharge of invasive species. And that’s not just in New York; it’s anywhere in the Great Lakes.

What happened last week is pretty technical, and that’s why it’s been quiet: New York’s Court of Appeals (the state’s highest court) refused to overturn the state’s conditions for certification of EPA’s national ballast water discharge permit. That means New York’s rules for implementing the national ballast water discharge permit are final – no more appeals. (Check out Thom Cmar’s blog post for further details).

What does that mean?

Well, New York’s rules say that beginning January 1, 2012, no ocean-going ship can travel through New York waters without having a ballast water treatment technology that meets some of the toughest standards in the world – approaching zero discharge of invasive species. To repeat: any ocean-going ship that PASSES THROUGH NEW YORK’S WATERS must have a treatment system that meets these protective standards.

And how many ocean-going ships entering the Great Lakes pass through New York’s waters? EVERY SINGLE ONE. Any ocean-going ship entering the Great Lakes must travel through the St. Lawrence River, through a series of locks including the Snell and Eisenhower Locks in New York. Ships can’t get through the river into the Great Lakes without transiting those locks, and the two other entrances to the Great Lakes (the Erie Canal and the Chicago canals) aren’t big enough to handle ocean-going vessels. So ocean-going ships can’t get into the Great Lakes without traveling through New York’s waters.

And because every ocean-going ship entering the Great Lakes has to travel through New York’s waters, every one of those ships will have to install technology that can meet these incredibly protective ballast water discharge standards by January 1, 2012.

That’s huge.

Ballast water discharges from ocean-going ships are the largest source of invasive species in the Great Lakes. They’ve brought us creatures like zebra mussels, quagga mussels, round gobies, and spiny water fleas. And once these invaders establish residence in the lakes, they’re here to stay. They have few natural predators, so they outcompete native species, reproduce like crazy, and damage the Great Lakes ecosystem.

The Coast Guard and EPA have both taken half-measures to address these ballast water discharges, but none have been very effective. Congress has considered new legislation, but it stalled last session and in any event would not be implemented nearly as rapidly as New York’s rule. States like New York have begun to step up, but common wisdom was that no single state could stop harmful ballast water discharges throughout the Great Lakes because ships could simply avoid that state and instead discharge their ballast water in a state with weaker protections or in Canadian waters.

But New York took advantage of geography. Knowing that every ship entering the Great Lakes has to travel through New York’s waters, New York set requirements for ships that are just passing through, even if they don’t actually discharge in New York. That means the New York standards apply to all ships entering the Great Lakes. The weaker protection efforts by the Coast Guard and EPA and the slower standards proposed in Congress have been left far behind.

Now the New York rules must be implemented and enforced, which is no small challenge. But New York deserves our applause and gratitude. In a mere 18 months – many years faster than the Coast Guard or Congress has even contemplated – no ocean-going ship will be able to discharge invasive species-contaminated ballast water into the Great Lakes. That truly will be something to celebrate.

Tags:Asian carp, ballast water, Great Lakes, New York
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Real progress on carp!

May 25, 2010

It’s nice to be able to report good news on this topic, and this news is big.

Remember how many times I’ve emphasized that we must implement a permanent solution to stopping the Asian carp invasion? Well, the only way to guarantee that carp would not move through the canals into Lake Michigan is to create a physical barrier between the Mississippi River system and the Great Lakes – hydrological separation. And in order to create that physical barrier the Army Corps of Engineers must first complete a feasibility study. But the law directing them to do the study was vague, and by all reports the Corps is not intending to take a hard look at hydrological separation.

Today the Great Lakes Congressional delegation took a big step toward hydrological separation. Led by senators from Michigan, Ohio and Illinois — yes, Illinois, too — the Great Lakes Congressional Task Force sent a letter to their Senate colleagues calling for legislation to direct the Corps to do a study of hydrological separation. Now, this is a study, not an order for action, but it’s an essential step and it’s the right step. Illinois Senator Durbin has really stepped up here, joining Michigan’s Senators Levin and Stabenow and Ohio’s Senator Voinovich in leading this Great Lakes protection effort. You can read the environmental community’s positive reaction to the letter.

Senators Durbin, Levin, Stabenow, and Voinoich, and the other 9 Senators who also signed the letter, recognize that hyrdological separation is not only essential for saving the Great Lakes ecosystem, but if done right can be of great benefit to improving Chicago’s transportation system, lowering transportation costs for businesses in Chicago and throughout the region, better cleaning Chicago’s wastewater, and bringing federal investment and jobs into the city. In other words, hydrological separation can be a win for the Great Lakes, the city of Chicago, and the entire region.

Congress should act quickly on the recommendations in the letter. Of course, the Corps doesn’t have to wait for Congress to authorize a new study. It should take the hint from these Senators and get started on a hydro sep study right away.

I hope this regional unity on this study is the beginning of a trend. The Great Lakes community is an incredible political force when we’re unified; just look at our successes the past two years on Great Lakes restoration funding and the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact. Now facing one of the most serious threats to the lakes in decades, we need that unity more than ever. Our Great Lakes senators are moving us in that direction, and just in time.

Tags:Asian carp, Asian carp task force, Great Lakes, U.S. Senate, US Corps of Engineers
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Is this the Asian carp action plan we’ve been waiting for?

May 13, 2010

Last week, the federal and state and federal agencies constituting the Asian carp task force released what looked like an action plan to attack Asian carp.

The agencies’ plan is to take lethal measures to kill Asian carp wherever eDNA testing indicates those carp are present – most recently, near the O’Brien Lock and Dam and in the North Shore Channel. They will use rotenone to poison the fish in a two-mile stretch near the O’Brien section, and they will use electroshocking and netting to kill the fish in a narrow section of the North Shore Channel. In both locations, they will close the locks for several days to increase the efficiency of the response actions.

Attacking the Asian carp wherever the evidence says they are present sounds like progress to me. It sounds like the kind of action plan we asked for three months ago.

It is also a positive sign that the agencies are acknowledging by their actions that DNA evidence is a good indicator of where carp are. The agencies are using the DNA hits to determine where to attack the carp.

But while these specific measures are good ones, it is now unclear whether these actions actually part of a comprehensive plan.

Unfortunately, the agencies’ press release (pdf) makes what they are proposing sound like more monitoring and not like a new response plan. And after a conversation with agency staff, it’s clear to me that their plan is being spun as monitoring: the agencies are planning on poisoning fish to see if Asian carp are present, not killing fish because the evidence already indicates that Asian carp are present.

And that difference is important; it will make a real difference on the ground. If agencies’ activities are just monitoring, then there is no way of knowing whether new evidence of Asian carp will trigger a killing response or some form of monitoring that isn’t lethal to carp.

So if this is the agencies’ new action plan, they should tell us. And if this is not their action plan, then they should come up with one fast. It’s been over six months and the Asian carp continue to move faster than the government.

Tags:Asian carp, Asian carp task force, Great Lakes, invasive species, rotenone
Posted in Asian carp, Great Lakes, Invasive Asian carp | 1 Comment »

Supreme Court decision on Asian carp: the ball is in our court now

May 4, 2010

Pardon the length of this post, but I haven’t blogged in awhile, and this one is a bit complicated. Prominent in the news last week was the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Michigan’s petition to end the Chicago diversion and restore the natural divide between the Mississippi River system and Lake Michigan. After earlier refusing to hear two emergency motions to order short-term actions to stop the carp, the Court refused to reopen its consent decree that governs the Chicago diversion — which means the Court has declined to participate in any way on the Asian carp issue. That’s certainly disappointing, but at least in my mind, it does not have to be devastating.

Here’s why.

The only way to make sure Asian carp don’t enter Lake Michigan is to create a permanent barrier in the Chicago waterway system that stops live organisms from traveling through the canals (otherwise known as “ecological separation”). And the only entity that can build that barrier is the Army Corps of Engineers. To build such a barrier, the Corps would need to do studies on where and how the barrier could be built so as to maximize ecological protection while simultaneously creating economic growth (or at least minimizing economic harm). And then Congress would need to authorize the Corps to do the work and provide significant funding for construction.

Now, all this can happen without intervention by the Supreme Court. The Corps can do its study in a timely way (say, in 12-18 months), Congress can adopt the recommendations and fund them, and the Corps can then undertake construction. The problem is that the Corps is dragging its feet on the study and our Congressional delegation is divided as to what it would like the Corps to do. We heard last week that the Corps thinks it cannot finish its study by the end of 2012. And Congress isn’t likely to provide clear direction because there have been divisions between the Illinois delegation and most of the other Great Lakes states over the issue of ecological separation; without a unified front from the Great Lakes, Congress is unlikely to provide billions of dollars to fix a problem primarily associated with the Great Lakes.

Until the Supreme Court decision last week there were two strategies to getting the Corps to act quickly to complete the right kind of study and then for Congress to fund it.

The first strategy was (and is) to build consensus: to work with members of Congress, the states, the cities, the business community, scientists, and environmental organizations to find a method to do ecological separation that closes this canal system to invasive species while improving transportation and the Chicago and regional economies. This strategy brings people together to find a win-win outcome; it builds a consensus that the Corps would have every reason to adopt. We are already seeing signs that such a consensus is possible: the adoption of resolutions endorsing ecological separation by the Great Lakes Commission and its chair, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, was an excellent development. But that strategy takes time, and the Corps so far has been resistant to changing the slow, ineffective path on which it currently treads.

The second strategy was the opposite of consensus – the litigation option. Over the opposition of Illinois and some Chicago stakeholders, the Court could just order the Corps to do a study to determine the best ecological separation option and then implement it. Such an order would have been helpful in the following respects: it could have made sure the Corps did the right study (on how, and not whether, to do ecological separation); it could have forced the Corps to do the study quickly; and it could have established a special master to push the Corps to implement the study. But even under the best case scenario, the Court’s order could not have forced the government to stop the carp. The Court could not order Congress to provide funding, and without funding, there’s no construction for ecological separation. So even if we had the best decision from the Court, we’d need major action from Congress to protect the Great Lakes.

And that’s where the lawsuit created a bit of a paradox. A successful lawsuit could move the Corps along much more quickly…. but it also made action by Congress more unlikely. The lawsuit deepened and exacerbated the conflict between Illinois and other states, particularly Michigan, and their Congressional delegations. That conflict has made it extremely difficult for Congress as a whole to act. So while the lawsuit would have been really helpful in getting the Corps to do a good study quickly, it could have made doing the construction needed for ecological separation more difficult.

The dismissal of the lawsuit is a mixed bag. On the one hand, no lawsuit means a chance for the first strategy to work: to find widespread agreement around a win-win scenario for ecological separation. That agreement can be a force for funding and construction of ecological separation in ways that a Court order could not. On the other hand, it means that there’s no clear way to hold the Corps accountable – to conduct the right kind of study, and to conduct it quickly. It means that the first strategy becomes the only strategy. If we can’t build consensus and build it quickly, then the Corps will continue plodding along, often in the wrong direction, and the Great Lakes will be in real trouble.

That means the ball’s in our court now: we in the region, and not the Supreme Court, will decide the fate of the lakes. We’ve got some work to do.

Tags:Asian carp, Chicago, Great Lakes, invasive species, Supreme Court, US Corps of Engineers
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Houston, we have a solution

April 14, 2010

I spent much of last week at NWF’s annual meeting in Houston, Texas, with affiliated organizations from 46 different states and Washington, D.C. While national issues like climate change took up most of the agenda, guess what caused the biggest stir? That’s right, Asian carp.

Everybody had heard about these huge flying fish, they knew the crisis facing the Great Lakes, and they wanted to know how to help.

They found a way. Several of our affiliates, led by Illinois’ Prairie Rivers Network and NWF Board member Clark Bullard (also from Illinois), proposed a resolution calling for hydrological separation of the Mississippi River system and the Great Lakes basin, to be done as rapidly as possible. That resolution went through committee last week and was voted on by the all of the NWF affiliates.

The result? Unanimous approval.

Check out this television news segment and article from Chicago’s Fox News on NWF’s carp resolution.

Wildlife Federation Wants Drastic Anti-Carp Measures

Chicago – The National Wildlife Federation is calling for drastic steps to protect the Great Lakes from Asian Carp. The plan, approved unanimously at the federation’s national meeting in Houston, calls for setting up a barrier to separate Lake Michigan from the Mississippi River Basin.

The plan would once again reverse the flow of the Chicago River so it would empty into Lake Michigan.

The barrier could be set up out near Romeoville or Joliet, according to Clark Bullard, one of the Illinois representatives. Electric barriers now in place in the shipping canal currently serve as the barrier to keep the carp from migrating into Lake Michigan.

Read the rest of the story

Tags:Asian carp, Great Lakes, invasive species
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Too quiet on the Asian carp front

April 9, 2010

The cameras have stopped rolling. The national newspapers have stopped calling. The editorials have stopped opining.

But the Asian carp haven’t gone away.

In any long-term environmental crisis, this is the most dangerous time — after the initial rush of concern passes and the media begin looking at other stories. The profile of the issue declines, and so does the political will to address it.

We can’t let that happen here, but that trend certainly is a risk for the Great Lakes. The last major story on Asian carp is that they were NOT found beyond the electric barrier after 6 weeks of fishing and sampling by the Illinois DNR and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. That’s not exactly a surprise, as most experts predicted that the odds of finding a live or dead fish in that stretch of the canals were quite low. But that story has the potential to take the pressure off the Corps and the other agencies who are supposed to be taking action quickly but haven’t:

The Corps had a deadline of “early March 2010” to develop a “modified lock operations” plan to reduce the chances of carp movement through the canals. That plan will determine the short-term actions needed to stop the carp right away, while a permanent solution is found. But the deadline for the plan has come and gone. When will we see the plan, and when will it go into effect?
The permanent solutions will be guided by a feasibility study on ecological separation of the Mississippi River system and the Great Lakes that the Corps is supposed to be undertaking right now. There’s broad agreement that study needs to be completed within a year; the Corps says it needs two years, in part to get sufficient guidance from outside experts and the public. But so far, there’s been no effort by the Corps to line up that guidance or begin the study. When will the Corps get moving?

So far, the Asian carp have moved much faster than the government’s response to them…and that was when there was enormous media pressure for action. As the media pressure lessens, the public needs to step in. The millions of members of our organizations, the cities, the tribes, the states, we all have to push for fast action. The Corps should understand: the carp aren’t going away, and neither are we.

Tags:Asian carp, Great Lakes, US Corps of Engineers
Posted in Great Lakes, Invasive Asian carp | 1 Comment »

Great Lakes Restoration Returns, Part 2

March 15, 2010

In last Friday’s post, I mentioned two major Great Lakes restoration developments over the past several weeks, and focused on one — the Administration’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Action Plan.

Today I’ll talk about the Congressional side: proposed legislation to lock in and accelerate Great Lakes restoration.

The bill is called the Great Lakes Ecosystem Protection Act of 2010, and it’s a good one. If passed, it will establish a permanent framework around which to build Great Lakes restoration funding, programs, and governance.

Here’s how:

The bill contains long-term statutory authorization for substantial levels of Great Lakes restoration funding. Right now, Great Lakes restoration funding is authorized as it’s appropriated, year-by-year. That can work for the short term, but it’s an ad hoc process that depends on the extraordinary efforts of the Administration and our Congressional champions. What this bill does is to establish a 5-year authorization of $650 million annually. Although the funds still will need to be appropriated every year, the long-term authorization sets an expectation for Congress and the Administration of high levels of Great Lakes funding every year. And the level of authorization – the $650 million is higher than last year’s historic $475 million – indicates the right level of commitment to funding the federal component of the $20 billion required for Great Lakes restoration.
It makes one agency – the U.S. EPA – the director of Great Lakes restoration, and makes other agencies accountable to it. The Great Lakes have long lacked an “orchestra leader,” as Senator Voinovich noted in hearings in 2004. Dozens of agencies supervise over 100 programs on the Great Lakes, which in the past has led to fragmentation, inefficiency, and delays. This bill makes EPA that leader. It not only puts EPA permanently at the head of an interagency task force; it designates EPA as the agency to receive all the funding for Great Lakes restoration and then enables EPA to give some of that funding to other agencies doing Great Lakes restoration work. This funding arrangement is essential because it gives EPA the clout to really direct the restoration effort – even the priorities of other agencies. But EPA does not have carte blanche; the bill also directs EPA and all the agencies to follow a single Great Lakes restoration plan. And for those who really like inside baseball, these provisions in the bill have the added benefit of streamlining and consolidating the appropriations process for Great Lakes restoration funding, making approvals necessary from only one appropriations committee in each legislative chamber. (If this part of the bill sounds familiar, that’s because it closely tracks the Administration’s agency directives in the GLRI over the past two years.)
The bill establishes a broadly participatory and potentially effective advisory panel for the decisions made by EPA and the other federal agencies. One criticism of the GLRI process over the past two years has been that decisions are made without adequate knowledge or participation by key stakeholders – like states, tribes, cities, and community and business leaders. The bill creates a leadership board and a management committee comprised of those entities to advise EPA and the interagency task force and requires the federal agencies to consider that advice.

So the bill’s a good one. But will it pass?

Well, it has bipartisan co-sponsors from both chambers and many states. And in many respects, it’s simply putting into law what the Administration is already doing and what Congress has already approved through the appropriations process.

The real question is whether Congress (and the rest of us) can get past the Asian carp crisis. If Asian carp take all of our energy and focus, this bill could languish or get derailed.

Yet another reason to figure out how to stop the invasion of the carp, and stop it now.

Tags:5-year Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Action Plan, Asian carp, Great Lakes, Great Lakes Budget, Great Lakes Ecosystem Protection Act of 2010
Posted in Great Lakes | 3 Comments »

Successful Great Lakes Day and Carp Hearing on the Hill

February 26, 2010

I’m just back from a full week in Washington, D.C., where the Healing Our Waters Coalition and the Great Lakes Commission held an awesomely successful Great Lakes Day. Over 200 leaders descended on the Capitol, visiting over 85 House and Senate offices and talking to key members of the Administration.

Great Lakes director Cam Davis keynoted the HOW and GLC conference, and the groups gave special recognition awards to Senator George Voinovich and Congressman Vern Ehlers. For more details on this event, check out Jeff Alexander’s post on the Healing Our Waters blog.

I also had the chance to testify yesterday before Senator Stabenow’s subcommittee on Asian carp and the government’s plans to combat a Great Lakes Asian carp invasion. You can read my full testimony here. There were eight of us on two panels, a wide variety of witnesses from federal agencies, the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, Dr. John Taylor (who authored the best study to date on the real costs of lock closure), Michigan Office of Great Lakes Director Ken DeBeaussaert, and Illinois DNR Director Mark Miller. I saw some real progress at the hearing. Almost all the witnesses, including Illinois’ Mark Miller, favored ecological separation as a permanent solution and wanted to get there as soon as possible. The witnesses also all recognized that there is no short-term emergency measure that can completely safeguard the lakes and so all the measures need to be used together. There was disagreement over the frequency and scale of some of the measures (particularly lock closures), but there was more emphasis on where there was consensus for moving forward.

The big development that helped bring everyone together was the Great Lakes Commission’s adoption of a resolution endorsing the concept of ecological separation as the best way of protecting the Great Lakes from Asian carp. This was so important because it included support from Illinois; it really made all the Senators sit up and take notice.

The next milestone (at least, the next one we can anticipate) is the Corps’ release of a modified lock operations plan, due out in the next week or two. Here’s hoping that the new plan is a channel by channel, lock by lock strategy on how to stop the movement of the invasive carp in the short run, and not another concept document.

Tags:Asian carp, Great Lakes, Healing Our Water's, invasive species, locks
Posted in Great Lakes, Invasive Asian carp | 1 Comment »

Great Lakes on the Ground