Michigan to file federal suit: Fear of Asian carp prompts effort to close Chicago locks
By The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
12/7/2009
By Dan Egan, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Dec. 8--Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox says he's been stonewalled by officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in his efforts to learn from them precisely how they intend to protect the Great Lakes from the Asian carp.
Now he says he plans to take the Army Corps to court.
Cox announced Monday he will file a suit in federal court to force the Army Corps and Illinois officials to close the navigation locks that are now the only physical barrier between the giant jumping fish and the Great Lakes -- the world's largest freshwater ecosystem.
"Asian carp must be stopped now because we will not have a second chance once they enter Lake Michigan," Cox said in a statement.
Cox said he sent a letter to Army Corps officials last week asking for details on how they intended to beat back the fish that threaten the Great Lakes' $7 billion fishing industry, but as of Monday morning, had heard nothing back.
In late November, the Army Corps acknowledged that water samples taken in September and early October revealed the presence of Asian carp above the agency's new electrical barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.
No actual fish have been found above the barrier, which itself is about 20 miles downstream from Lake Michigan, but water samples show at least some fish have been swimming just below the O'Brien Lock and Dam, which is about six miles from the shores of Lake Michigan.
Illinois officials were busy last week trying to confirm the presence of the fish in the water below the lock with a netting operation.
Officials say the accuracy of the cutting-edge DNA testing was confirmed last week when fishery crews found a bighead carp just below the electric barrier in the wake of a massive poisoning effort below the fish-zapping barrier to clear the canal of all fish so it could be briefly turned off for maintenance.
Prior to that bighead find, the only evidence of Asian carp just below the barrier was the DNA tests.
Cox said Monday the situation is dire enough to force the Army Corps to do more than study the situation, which is what Army Corps officials said late last week they were doing.
"The Great Lakes are our greatest natural resource, and we have a duty handed down to us from past generations to preserve them for future generations," Cox said. "They are also essential to our economy, our national image, and our way of life. We will do whatever is necessary to protect them."
Closing the locks on the three waterways that flow from Lake Michigan and feed the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal would have a dramatic impact on the barge operators and the industries they feed.
Lynn Muench, spokeswoman for the American Waterways Operators, said the equivalent of 230,000 semitrailer trucks' worth of cargo moves on barges annually through the O'Brien lock.
"If you're looking at closing a structure long term, it would be irresponsible not to consider the possible impacts," Col. Vincent Quarles, commander of the Army Corps' Chicago District, said late Friday.
But Cox wants action now, and he wants Army Corps and Illinois officials to develop a long-term solution to the crisis. That could mean permanently severing the manmade link between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River basin that the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal created when it opened over a century ago.
The canal, fed by diversion of Lake Michigan water, was built to carry Chicago's sewage away from the lake and into the Mississippi River basin.
One option Cox's office is considering is reopening a U.S. Supreme Court case governing that diversion.
The justices ruled in 1967 that the diversion could continue, but that any of the Great Lakes states that sued over the diversion could bring the case back before them if they felt they were being harmed by it.
"The Supreme Court case over the Chicago diversion is one avenue the attorney general's team may take," said Cox's spokesman, Nick De Leeuw.
Read more at JSOnline.com Check out the Journal Sentinel's series of stories on the Great Lakes at jsonline.com/greatlakes.
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