Something's fishy about federal plans to control Great Lakes invasion of carp

[Spiel]

Something's fishy about federal plans to control Great Lakes invasion of carp: D'Arcy Egan analysis

 

 

February 09, 2010,

D'Arcy Egan / www.cleveland.com

 

 

A federal subcommittee on water resources and environment

welcomed two Asian carp as guest on a hearing Tuesday on

preventing the induction of the invasive species into the Great Lakes.

The Asian carp, which can grow up to 100 pounds, were caught in Havana, Ill.

Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press

 

 

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A federal plan designed to keep hordes of Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes includes catching and eating them, a sure sign the strategy is a recipe for disaster.

 

For almost three decades, federal officials promised to deal with contaminated ballast from ocean freighters, yet invasive species are still arriving.

 

Asian carp were purposely brought to America, but escaped into the country's major rivers. They now dominate the fish populations of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers, and threaten to invade the Great Lakes through a Chicago waterway.

 

Federal officials won't agree with state managers that we must slam that door.

 

Asian carp made it to America with the blessing of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They were introduced to control parasites in southern fish farm ponds. No one seemed to realize how prolific the carp would be, pushing aside native species, or that they would vault into the air and injure boaters when disturbed.

 

The Obama administration wants to spend $78.5 million on the problem, but still allow the locks on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in Chicago to remain open on a part-time basis for shipping and flood control.

 

Federal officials are adamantly opposed to the solution favored by Great Lakes officials of shutting down the waterway after Asian carp DNA had been found on the Lake Michigan side of the locks.

 

"The economic damage from these carp coming into the Great Lakes system would be irreparable," Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm told The Detroit News. Granholm said DNA evidence of Asian carp found on the Lake Michigan side of the locks should be enough to convince everyone.

 

Those in favor of permanently closing the canal's locks say Asian carp threaten a $9 billion sportfishing and commercial fishing industry. No one can put a price on the effect of leaping Asian carp on the Great Lakes boating community, the largest in the country. Or the damage they could do to the recreational value of the Great Lakes shoreline economy and its restaurants, motels, gas stations, marinas and bait shops.

 

Shippers say the closure would cost them about $200 million a year.

 

An insult to the Great Lakes states is the $78.5 million earmarked for Asian carp management would come from funds for Great Lakes restoration, a $475 million promise that already had been reduced to $300 million.

 

Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the federal plan would use the best available science. Its goal is to stop Asian carp that do make it past the barriers from establishing a breeding population in Lake Michigan.

 

How will this plan accomplish that? They have no idea.

 

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox told reporters the federal plan sounds as logical as keeping criminals in jail four days a week, and hoping the other three days go well.

 

The plan also calls for more chemical treatment of the Chicago canal and $3 million to expand the commercial market for Asian carp and raise funding for Asian carp control. Only $1.5 million would be spent on new research.

 

Asian carp may be in the spotlight, but Great Lakes managers have struggled for years with dozens of other invasive species, such as zebra mussels, quagga mussels, round gobies, bloody red shrimp and even a virus, VHS (viral hemorrhagic septicemia), which was found recently in Lake Superior, the last of the Great Lakes to be invaded by the infectious disease.

 

Federal officials have yet to solve the ballast water woes, with devastating results.

 

Constructing a third electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, or finding new markets and a good recipe for Asian carp, is a neglectful plan as perilous as the present controls on invasive species.