Environmental groups are saying the new discovery of a breeding population in the Wabash River near Fort Wayne – downstream of a floodplain that separates the Wabash from the Maumee River and Lake Erie – “signals the immediate need for effective leadership on a crisis that has moved well beyond the control of the federal agencies tasked with handling it.”

The news came not from any of those agencies but in an aside in a press release from Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Henry Henderson of NRDC points out at Huffington Post.

News of the discovery of a breeding population in an offshoot of the Mississippi River within hailing distance of the Great Lakes come one week after an Asian carp was caught in Lake Calumet, beyond electrical barriers that were supposed to prevent a carp invasion.

Environmentalists said the discovery adds urgency to the call by Senator Richard Durbin for a “carp czar” to coordinate the response to the threat.

“We now see direct threats to two of the Great Lakes,” said Henderson. “We cannot afford foot-dragging and confusion about the problem or the solutions. It is time for focused, determined action, which requires direct and firm engagement from the White House.”

The environmental groups expressed a growing frustration with the federal response, saying it has “fallen far short of expectations” and involved “numerous costly missteps.”

These include delay by the Army Corps in starting a study of ecological separation of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River water basins.  Congress authorized the study in 2007, but the Corps has yet to even release an initial study plan, and 2012 date for completing a study of the Chicago waterway system has been pushed back a year, according to a letter from the groups to President Obama released last week.

New legislation from Durbin and Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan would mandate an Army Corps study focused on ecological separation to be completed within 18 months.

An editorial in Friday’s Sun Times praises the “wise approach” of authorities responding to the capture of an Asian carp in Lake Calumet last week.

At the Detroit Free Press, meanwhile, outdoor writer Eric Sharp suggests the carp crisis shows government protection of the environment to be “hopelessly slow and often massively incompetent.”

And at NRDC’s Switchboard, Thom Cmar slams “the mismanagement of this situation” as “scandalous.”

What’s going on?   Read the rest of this entry »

Last week’s fish poisoning located no Asian carp in the Calumet River – “good news for Illinois business leaders and politicians who have been highly critical of a push by Great Lakes regional politicians to close two navigation locks to block the advance of Asian carp into Lake Michigan,” the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports (via Progress Illinois).

The results didn’t surprise wildlife scientists – who warn that they don’t prove the absence of carp.

A small number of Asian carp could be very hard to locate, US Geological Survey expert Duane Chapman has said.  “It’s typical for a species to putter along at a barely noticeable level for several generations,” he told the Grand Rapids News in January.  They may not be noticeable until they are a well-established population, he said.

In addition, the DNA traces which the fish kill focused on are at least a month old, Thom Cmar pointed out at NRDC’s Switchboard.  “Just because there were Asian carp there a month ago does not mean they sat still and did nothing in the meantime.”

As the scientists who pioneered the DNA testing told the Chicago Reader in March, alternative hypotheses to account for the traces – involving birds or wastewater carrying carp DNA – don’t explain the pattern of the evidence, especially the repeated findings of DNA traces at the same locations.

“These results are not chance events, and the distribution is consistent with the movement of fish,” said Lindsay Chadderton.  “For example, the number of positive samples decreases as we get closer to the barrier.  That’s consistent with an upstream invasion.”

What NRDC’s Henry Henderson calls “the ’show me a fish’ crowd” is trying to deny that the threat of an Asian carp invasion is serious – and sidestepping the larger question, the ongoing threat to the integrity of the Great Lakes from invasive species caused by Lake Michigan’s artificial linkage with the Mississippi River.

Henderson fears that netting and poisoning operations which aim at producing “physical evidence” to confirm “indications” from DNA (as a federal official told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) are sucking up resources that should go to a long-term solution.

“The Asian Carp Control Strategy framework is overwhelmingly tipped towards short-term tactics, with only $1 million of their stated $78.5 million budget devoted to the study that is intended to determine the permanent solution,” Henderson pointed out.

“In 2007 Congress authorized the corps to look at ways to stop the spread of invasive species between the two waters,” according to the Alliance for the Great Lakes. “The corps’ study, however, focuses on a variety of approaches to controlling invasive species—none of which is 100 percent effective—and does not look at the only permanent solution to the problem: building a physical barrier between the two waters.”

So it’s significant that U.S. Senators from the Great Lakes, reaching across the divide that’s separated Illinois from neighboring states, issued a letter yesterday urging Congress to direct the U.S. Army Corps to study how to build a permanent barrier between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi.

Signing were Schumer and Gillibrand of New York, Specter and Casey of Pennsylvania, Voinovich  and Brown of Ohio, Levin and Stabenow of Michigan, Kohl of Wisconsin, Klobucher and Franken of Minnesota – and Durbin and Burris of Illinois.

The senators joined the Great Lakes Commission (chaired by Governor Quinn), which in February called on Congress and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “to embrace a clear goal of ecological separation of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds as the key, permanent strategy in the war against Asian carp and their threatened invasion of the Great Lakes.”

Conservation groups praised the senators.  “We applaud Senator Durbin for his leadership in seeking a long-term  solution to the threat posed by Asian carp, and other invasive species, to Lake Michigan and our Illinois River system,” said Jack Darin of the Sierra Club in a release from the Great Lakes Coalition.

“For right now, we have little choice but to try to find and kill Asian carp,” Darin said, “but the study [the senators] are calling for gives us hope for a permanent fix that won’t require repeated poisonings of the Chicago River system.”

Local conservation groups are praising efforts to keep Asian carp out of Lake Michigan by state and federal agencies, as they begin four days of dumping fish poison in the Cal Sag Harbor today.

A statement by six groups characterizes the fish kill as unfortunate but necessary — but calls for “planning for management of the Asian carp threat by other means.”

The emergency effort to stop the carp is a setback for recent gains in repairing long-term damage to the ecosystems of the Chicago waterway system, including the repopulation of rivers and canals by native fish, said Glynnic Collins of the Prairie Rivers Network.

Conservation groups believe the only permanent solution is to restore the ecological separation of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River water basins that was breached by the “Chicago diversion” over a hundred years ago.

It’s not just about carp, said Henry Henderson of the Natural Resources Defense Council; ‘the Chicago waterway system is a highway for invasive species moving in both directions,” most of which can’t be stopped by nets or electric fences.

“It’s time to get focused on moving the Great Lakes and Mississippi River out of harm’s way permanently before carp and dozens of other invaders wreak havoc in those massive freshwater ecosystems,” said Joel Brammeier of the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

Also signing on the statement were Environment Illinois, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Sierra Club.

At NRDC’s Switchboard, Thom Cmar has a somewhat more critical view – of the failure of government agencies to do a thorough search for Asian carp in the previous fish kill (last December in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal); and of the danger of those agencies bowing to pressure from local interests, which are promoting doubt about the science that warns of the carp’s progress toward Lake Michigan.

“We cannot allow this continuing food fight over how many Asian carp are present, and where, to distract from the need for a permanent, long-term solution,” Cmar writes.  ”The Asian carp are really just the ‘poster child’ for a much larger, long-term problem: infrastructure” which leaves us open to the ecological and economic harm of a host of invasive species.

The Illinois Chamber of Commerce projects a $4.7 billion cost to the state’s economy over the next twenty years if locks between Lake Michigan and the Chicago waterway system are closed to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes.

But Thom Cmar at NRDC’s Switchboard points out that no one is actually proposing that.   What’s needed, he argues, is not a simple closing of locks, but a well-planned permanent solution including hydrological separation of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River ecological systems, through construction of barriers that prevent transfer of water – but also new infrastructure that’s badly needed to address a range of looming water management and transportation challenges.

As Cmar suggests, the choice is between a kind of willful, blind resistance and responsible, comprehensive planning – and the latter is more likely to minimize economic pain in the long run.

We’ve been told by politicians, lobbyists, and editorialists that closing the O’Brien and Chicago locks would be devastating to the local economy.   Governor Quinn has said it would be tantamount to “strangling our economy.”

Now a new analysis (from Michigan) argues that closing the locks would lead to an increase in local employment.

The study was submited as part of Michigan’s motion on Thursday asking the Supreme Court to reconsider a preliminary injunction to close locks in order to keep Asian carp out of Lake Michigan.  The motion is based on the revelation that the Army Corps of Engineers had information that carp DNA had been detected for the first time in Lake Michigan – but didn’t release it until just after the Supreme Court dismissed an earlier motion.

It comes as three Midwest governors plan to meet with federal officials at the White House on Monday, with a congressional hearing on the issue scheduled for Tuesday.

Environment Illinois is calling on Governor Quinn to embrace a temporary closing of the locks and make public contingency plans for action if carp continue to advance. “We need to know that all options are on the table and that science is guiding the decision-making process, funding is available and agencies are being coordinated — and that the shipping industry is not the only voice being heard,” said Max Muller of EI.

The group is part of the Healing Our Waters Great Lakes Coalition, which has issued a comprehensive plan for the crisis.

Joel Brammeier of the Great Lakes Alliance applauded the growing attention to the issue, but told the Circle of Blue’s Water News that it’s not yet clear whether “the agencies are willing to go to the mat and make stopping Asian carp priority one in both word and deed.”

Estimates by Illinois and the Army Corps of Engineers of the economic costs of closing the O’Brien and Chicago locks are “seriously exaggerated,” said John C. Taylor, a professor of Wayne State University and director of its supply chain management program.

His study is discussed and linked by Henry Henderson of the National Resources Defense Council on his Huffington Post blog.

A key error is the Army Corps’ assumption that barge cargo would be shifted to truck or rail from its starting point, Taylor writes.  He argues that the cost advantages of barge traffic mean such cargo would still go by water, but would be shifted to other modes of transportation at new transloading terminals that would be needed downstream of closed locks.

While the Army Corps estimates additional costs for the 7 million tons of cargo that pass through the two locks each year at $27 a ton, Taylor pegs it at $10 or less.  That reflects the difference between a 400-mile truck ride from New Orleans and a 7- or 12-mile route from the O’Brien Lock and a nearby customer.

There would be some loss of barge jobs, but in most cases employment would move from areas where navigation is reduced to areas where it continues, he says; overall, he expects additional  transportation and cargo-handling jobs — and a net increase in employment.

Most of the $70 million in increased costs that Taylor projects would go to wages for truck drivers and other new workers, he said.

The assertion in court filings by the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and the American Waterways Operators that transloading is not feasible “flies in the face” of the realities of the industry, Taylor said.  “Almost everything is transloaded in some manner” – including a large percentage of cargo now carried on barges on Chicago waterways.

The assertion is belied every day by long lines of trucks outside Calumet River terminals, Taylor said.

Whatever the outcome of the Asian carp crisis, the scientific consensus is that it’s time to separate the two great water basins, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River,  joined a hundred years ago by the Chicago Diversion.   Asian carp is not the first invasive species to threaten the two ecosystems and it won’t be the last, and the connection puts both ecosystems at peril.

Forward-looking leadership with the courage to plan responsibly would minimize economic dislocation.  Denial, resistance, and foot-dragging will ultimately make things harder.

Today the Supreme Court denied Michigan’s request for an emergency injunction to close Illinois locks — on the same day that Asian carp DNA was reported found in Lake Michigan for the first time.  Some people think it’s a pretty serious situation [e.g., see Thom Cmar at NRDC's Switchboard].

But the Chicago Tribune reports that “Illinois” welcomes the ruling (in fact recreational boaters and fishermen and women in Illinois are generally much less sanguine) – and runs not one but two “relax and enjoy it” stories (see Tex Antoine) about how to cook carp.

The forced humor of the paper’s food blog – “Illinois doesn’t have the best history when it comes to preventing unfortunate things, but we’ve always been pretty good about turning a buck on them” – is particularly tasteless.

Life imitates bad art, however:  the LaSalle News Tribune reports that Illinois politicians are talking with a big Illinois fish processing company that says it could process carp from the Illinois River – if the government can come up with a $100 million subsidy.

Next month the Supreme Court will consider the case on the Chicago Diversion filed by Michigan and backed by Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and New York, not to mention Ontario.  And AP reports that, in response to calls by Michigan officials and others for a White House summit on the crisis, “the Obama administration said it would welcome such a meeting.”

It’s striking the way some people’s response to the issue depends on which side of the state line they’re on – particularly politicians, but also newspapers.  And you have to wonder whether the Obama administration would have opposed the motion if the President and his chief of staff (and everyone else, down to his chef) came from Milwaukee instead of Chicago.

(That could have made a difference today; one legal expert tells the New York Times that the court may have deferred to the administration’s position.)

That parochialism doesn’t apply to environmental groups, based here and elsewhere, which have pushed for an end to the stalling.  They criticized the Obama administration’s position on the Michigan motion, and today they issued a joint statement saying the court’s ruling means U.S. and Illinois officials need to take responsibility.

“State and federal agencies keep saying they understand the problem,” said Jeff Skedling of the Great Lakes Coalition. “Talking about the urgency comes cheap.  We can’t wait another two minutes — let alone another two months — to know how one-fifth of the world’s fresh surface water will be protected from these monsters.”

“This is a crisis,” Dr. Marc Gaden of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission told Newstips last week.  “It’s impossible to move fast enough. We don’t have the luxury of time.

“We need to move at the speed of carp, not the speed of government,” said Gaden.

He points out that the electronic barrier that is now failing has been 15 years in the making.  First authorized in 1996, a full-strength barrier was finally installed last year.

He applauds the Army Corps for undertaking a study of possible solutions, including separation of Lake Michigan from the Mississippi River water system.  But the study could take years.

“We’re now in the 21st century,” he said. “It’s not like we need a canal to deal with wastewater – every other city deals with it without a canal – and there are other modes of transportation.  It’s time to make a transition.”  He talks about a “paradigm shift.”

“These are very solvable problems – if we are willing to make the investment in a 21st century transportation system that will accommodate the interests of a variety of stakeholders.”

But “it’s absolutely unthinkable to consider a tradeoff of the integrity of the Great Lakes for the ability of some people to continue doing things in the ways they are used to, when they can certainly be done in a different way.”

The $7 billion Great Lakes fishing industry includes 5 million people who fish, including 70,000 who work in commercial fishing as well as Indian tribes with historic claims.

“Millions of people rely on that resource for food, for income, for recreational value, and for subsistence,” he said.  “There are whole communities built around recreational, commercial and tribal fishing that we have to protect.  There’s a way of life that we have come to respect and revere.  And it’s all in jeopardy.”

“It’s my job to clean up our water and keep pollution out of Lake Michigan,” says MWRD president Terrence O’Brien in the first TV ad of his campaign for County Board president (watch it on youtube).  “It’s time to clean up Cook County.”

In fact, as Newstips reported last April, under O’Brien the MWRD has resisted calls to disinfect wastewater for nearly a decade.  In a letter to the Tribune last February, O’Brien claimed it would cost $2 billion; Newstips reported the US EPA’s estimate that it would cost at most $650 million, and perhaps as little as $250 million, over 20 years.

“Environmental groups believe MWRD is exaggerating the cost of disinfection as part of a strategy of delaying action,” we wrote, citing John Quail of Friends of the Chicago River.

Ann Alexander of the Natural Resources Defense Council pointed out that MWRD is spending millions of dollars on lawyers and experts in its effort to prevent the Illinois Pollution Control Board from implementing a recommendation by the Illinois EPA (endorsed by the city) to require MWRD to disinfect.

As far as “keeping pollution out of Lake Michigan,” here’s what we reported in August of 2003:

“During ‘extreme storm events,’ locks are opened and river system water is released into Lake Michigan.  ’There is undoubtedly bacteria from the waterways system getting into the lake,’ said [Laurel] O’Sullivan [of the Lake Michigan Federation].

“‘The overall quality of the water sent out to the lake would be much higher if they disinfected.’”

UPDATE:  Last year we reported a ruling was expected by the end of the year.  Alexander now says she has no idea when a ruling will occur, noting this “has set the record for the length of a rulemaking proceeding.”

The delay results from MWRD’s effort “to contest the obvious,” she said.

“They’ve presented multiple purported experts before the pollution control board to defend the proposition that pathogens in the water aren’t really bad for you.” That’s forced NRDC to spend time and resources “to prove that in fact they are.”

It’s a remarkable story that to date has gone virtually untold.  Will O’Brien’s candidacy give it any currency?