Fishing For Asian Carp Answers

For those of you who missed it, there was a, shall we say, spirited, discussion yesterday afternoon before the Regional Coordinating Committee working to address the Asian carp issue. The meeting was one of several public meetings being hosted by the Committee in the region, to allow for public comment and public airing of grievances. The panel consisted of Irene Brooks, the Commissioner of the International Joint Commission, and senior representatives from the EPA, the Nature Conservancy, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Army for Civil Works, United States Army. And despite the fact that the meeting took place in Ypsilanti, the audience consisted of what seemed to be mostly Chicagoans, representing the shoreline sightseeing, tour-boat, barge, and tugboat industries. It was a long meeting, and the same arguments were repeated ad nauseam, but here I will attempt to overcome my bias and frustration and give you an objective picture of the discussion that took place.

Lindsay Chadderton from the Nature Conservancy spent some time talking about the movement of the carp, the eDNA testing being conducted by The Nature Conservancy in and around the Chicago-area access points to Lake Michigan, and the general movement of invasive species. He made a very valid (and quickly overlooked) point when he said “We know the canal [the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (CSSC), which connects the Mississippi River basin to the Great Lakes] is a pathway for invasion…and it’s a two way pathway”. Yes, today we are talking about the Asian Carp, but thank you Mr. Chadderton, for attempting to remind us that there are a number of other invasive buggers (New Zealand mud snails, anyone?) lined up at this critical access point between these two massive watersheds, just waiting to spread their destruction into the lakes, and the other direction as well, into the Mississippi River. Unless we want an annually recurring invasive species crisis, we need permanent hydrological separation of the Chicago River (and the Mississippi River Watershed) and the Great Lakes.

Charley Wooley, the Midwest Deputy Regional Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, also spoke about the carp’s migration up the river, and the USFWS’ grave concern that the carp will completely out-compete our native fish if they get into Lake Michigan. He was followed at the podium by Jo Ellen Darcy, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, who discussed measures currently being taken to prevent the carp from making it into the lake. These include the construction of a third electric barrier, a feasibility study into the effectiveness of the electric barriers (although a study seems unnecessary at this point; I’m sure we will know soon enough whether the barriers are doing their job), additional fence barriers between the Des Plaines River and the Chicago canal, and perhaps modified lock operation. The Illinois DNR is also stocking up on Rotenone, in case another massive river poisoning becomes necessary, and they are currently doing aerial observation, electro-shocking, and gill netting in the CSSC, to locate and stop any live Asian Carp that have made it that far up the river. As of yesterday, no live carp have been found in the canals.

The educational portion of the program was followed by comments from elected officials. Grand Rapids Mayor Heartwell, Congressman Dingell, State Senator Stabenow, and a representative from the Michigan DNRE all spoke. Statements were made on behalf of Senator Levin, and Congresswomen from Michigan and Illinois.

• The Michigan politicians drove home similar points: We need to act with urgency, and do everything in our power to stop the spread of the carp, which includes closing the locks in the CSSC.
• They questioned the Federal Government’s carp control strategy framework, and its lack of details concerning when and what serious actions will be taken in the event that Plan A (presumably the electric and non electric barriers currently in the canals) fails.
• Senator Levin’s statement disapproved of the fact that funds from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative are being used to pay for carp mitigation, when this is not at all what that money is intended for.
• Congressman Dingell criticized the fact that it has taken so long to act on this issue. He also offered a creative solution for carp population control: we need to turn the carp into something of value; food, or perhaps fertilizer, and then get to work fishing the rivers. This makes a lot of sense; we have been overfishing and devastating fish populations for years, why not put our skills to work for good?
• A statement from Illinois Congresswoman Judy Biggert introduced an argument I hadn’t heard before; closing the locks will actually lead to an increase in the spread of carp, since the flooding that will result will allow them to swim around barriers and escape into the lake. I’m not sure about the validity of this statement, since I know the locks are closed on a regular basis and it has not caused the city to flood yet…

Following the statements by elected officials, the public was allowed to come forward and ask the panel “technical” questions. It was at this point that we realized that quite a large contingency of representatives from the Chicago shoreline tourism, water taxi, and pleasure cruise industry had made the pilgrimage to Ypsilanti to express their opposition to the suggested lock closures. Apparently, and I’m still unclear how exactly, closing the locks in the CSSC would result in the total destruction of the Chicago river-boating and shoreline tourism industry, leaving thousands out of jobs. Few questions were actually asked in this portion of the meeting, but the point was made, (more than) several times over, that what has been found in Lake Michigan up until this point is only eDNA, not an actual population of fish. Countless Chicago pleasure-boat representatives questioned why the Committee is taking preemptive action, including the aerial observation that is going on at the moment, and even suggesting that the locks ought to be closed, before determining that live fish are actually in the lake.

This is when my blood pressure began to rise. The actions being taken today by the Army Corps and Illinois DNR are hardly what I would call preemptive. The fish have been swimming towards Chicago for the last forty years. It wasn’t until this year, when the carp started flopping at the gates, that the third electric barrier, which has been under construction for five years, finally got the funding to be put into operation. This is not excessive preemptive action, this is too little too late. And at this point we need to do absolutely everything in our power to keep the carp out of the lake; we don’t have the luxury of waiting until we are completely-certain-beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt that the carp have slipped through the canal. As Senator Stabenow pointed out, we need to act now because once they are in the lake, there is no solution. We are already employing emergency measures as a last resort, and to exert anything less than our most dedicated effort to protect the lakes would be irresponsible.

I don’t want to dwell on the tug- and pleasure-boat industry’s contradictory argument against those advocating for a zero-tolerance, total lock-closure strategy. It is too easy to point out the logical shortfall of a tourism industry that depends on the lakes fighting efforts to protect the lake from a particularly nasty invasive fish. I can only imagine the effect on the lakeshore if giant Asian carp take up residence, not to mention how water-taxi drivers will deal with a lake full of hundred-pound fish that tend to leap out of the water and bean recreational boaters in the head when they get agitated. Instead I would like to point out two important points that were made by the Chicago passenger-boat crowd.

• There should be a representative from the passenger boat industry on the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee, to at least be a voice for that group of stakeholders.
• Serious mitigation efforts should be taken downstream, where the carp are currently thriving, before they enter the Chicago metropolitan waterways. This is not to say that actions shouldn’t also be taken in Chicago, but the carp are a threat to everyone in the Great Lakes basin, and the mitigation efforts shouldn’t fall heavily on any one municipality.

The question session was followed by a chance for public comment, and sad stories were shared by both parties, about the potential loss of jobs, and loss of a way of life. I acknowledge that jobs are a central issue, especially in lean times, when everything is framed by economic loss and gain. And there’s no way to tell someone that their livelihood is less important than another person’s. The Committee has an incredibly hard job ahead of them, I’m sure the people who spoke yesterday represent only a fraction of the concerned stakeholders. But to be blunt, the numbers will come out in the wash. There is no industry that even compares, either in economic or ecological value, to a healthy Great Lakes ecosystem, and every job, animal, plant and watershed that accompanies such an ecosystem.

Anyone who walks or swims or takes pleasure in the lakes, or drinks water from the tap for that matter, has a stake in the future of the Great Lakes. It is incredibly valuable, especially when dealing with something in the public trust, such as the lakes, that regular citizens have a voice before the government agencies that will ultimately be making decisions that will affect all of our lives. But as Notre Dame Professor David Lodge reminded us during the Congressional hearings on the Carp issue, while we are talking, the carp are swimming. They might not be in the lake quite yet, we may have been granted a moment of clemency, in which we must choose to act with urgency and close the locks, and work decisively towards permanent hydrological separation of the Chicago river and Lake Michigan. As a representative from Michigan Trout Unlimited said, “This is our opportunity to get this right.”

~Posted by Hannah Smith, Policy & Programs Associate

When available, the framework and a transcript of the meeting will be posted on http://www.asiancarp.org/regionalcoordination