Every year, $20 million is spent to control sea lamprey — the invasive fish that entered the Great Lakes via man-made canals and, in the middle of the last century, contributed to the demise of native lake trout and other critical fish species.
The lamprey is just one in a long line of non-native species that have found their way to the Great Lakes.
“Every new invasive species creates new vulnerabilities, uncertainties and difficulties,” says Marc Gaden, communications director and legislative liaison for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
They can be costly as well, with the sea lamprey control program being just one example. Gaden says “hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions” have been spent over the years on rehabilitating and managing the Great Lakes fishery, often in response to the impact of invasive species.
Other economically and ecologically destructive non-native species include zebra mussels, exotic zooplankton and the round goby. In all, there are more than 180 invasive species now in the Great Lakes system.
No potential invasion has received so much attention — or commanded as many resources — as that of the Asian carp. How much would it cost to control Asian carp? Could this aquatic invader be controlled at all? And what kind of ecological and economic damage would it cause?
These are largely unanswerable questions, save for the one scenario that states and the federal government are desperately trying to avoid: the introduction of a sustainable Asian carp population into the Great Lakes.
“With any invasive species, it’s hard to know the impact ahead of time,” Gaden says. “Any of them have the potential to change everything, and many of them have.”
That potential exists with Asian carp: They are large, travel long distances in short periods of time, and have shown in their migration up the Mississippi River system the destructive effects they can have on other species.
If there is any silver lining to the current Asian carp emergency, it is that public awareness has been raised about the seriousness of the invasive species threat. Their introduction and spread in the Great Lakes is “a huge and horrible problem, and is worth preventing,” says Allegra Cangelosi, principal investigator of the Northeast-Midwest Institute’s Great Ships Initiative, the goal of which is to “end the problem of ship-mediated invasive species.”
The ballast water of ships has been the most common way for invasive species to enter the Great Lakes, a fact that Gaden worries has gotten lost over the past few months with all of the talk about to how stop Asian carp and to separate the Great Lakes and Mississippi River systems.
“The ballast water problem is still unaddressed,” he says.
Yet progress is being made, in part because of the leadership role taken by the Great Lakes states.
Starting with the passage of legislation in Michigan in 2005, states began creating their own permit programs that set requirements for the treatment of ballast water. Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin all now have permit programs up and running (see table on page 6). Now, the federal government appears close to taking a more aggressive regulatory approach.
Meanwhile, momentum is growing for a new approach to the threat posed by the inter-basin movement of organisms such as the Asian carp between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River. That approach involves ecologically separating the two systems (which are connected now by a network of rivers and man-made canals in the Chicago area) with some kind of physical barrier.
On both fronts in the fight against invasive species, the region is entering a critical period.
Asian carp and ecological separation
Last year, Asian carp were found in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal beyond the electric barrier designed to keep the fish from entering the Great Lakes. In January, Asian carp DNA was found in Lake Michigan.
In response, state and federal officials unveiled a $79 million strategy to keep the carp out. Some Great Lakes political leaders and advocates have said the plan doesn’t go far enough, and have been pushing (both publicly and in the courts) for a closure of the canal’s locks.
Despite these regional disagreements over the short-term strategies being used, Jennifer Nalbone of the coalition group Great Lakes United believes it is possible to find regional consensus on the idea of permanent ecological separation.
In May, for example, 13 U.S. senators representing every Great Lakes state except Indiana signed a letter urging their congressional colleagues to direct the Army Corps of Engineers to study how to construct a physical barrier. Also this year, the Great Lakes Commission and advisers to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission passed resolutions in support of ecological separation.
Any such plan will require finding new ways to transport cargo in the Chicago area and accommodating the needs of recreational boaters. Upgrading the area’s water-management system would also be needed to avoid flooding problems.
Such a plan could garner widespread regional support, because it would protect the Great Lakes and Mississippi River systems from aquatic invaders while also bringing in additional federal dollars.
“Our challenge is going to be showing to the rest of the nation that this is in everybody’s best interest, and that it is not just a pet project for Illinois or the Great Lakes,” Nalbone says.
Of immediate importance is the direction that the Army Corps takes in studying how to prevent the inter-basin movement of Asian carp and other organisms. Even if some of the short-term strategies successfully keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, inter-basin movement will remain a threat to both water systems.
Gaden notes, for example, that the snakehead fish (nicknamed “Frankenfish,” it can survive out of water and is known to be a voracious predator) are “where Asian carp were 10 or 15 years ago.” Like Asian carp, an invasion of snakehead would be potentially devastating to the Great Lakes ecosystem.
Feds follow states’ lead on ballast water
Prior to the imminent threat of Asian carp entering the Great Lakes, most of the attention on invasive species centered on how to stop ships from introducing and spreading them.
“There has been huge progress in how ballast water is treated, really ever since the IMO [International Maritime Organization] produced its standards in 2004,” Cangelosi says.
Likewise, progress has been made on the policy side as well.
By year’s end, the U.S. Coast Guard may finalize rules that many Great Lakes advocates view as a significant step forward. Under the proposed rules, the federal government would require that ballast water be treated in order to kill living organisms. The Coast Guard’s ballast water discharge standard would initially be the same as the IMO’s, and would become more rigid if the treatment technology is available.
The stringency of the Coast Guard rules, Nalbone believes, is at least partly the result of states such as New York, California and Wisconsin establishing tough standards of their own.
And the creation of ballast water discharge permit programs in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin has also created a greater sense of urgency. Shippers do not want to have to deal with a patchwork of state laws and regulations.
Michigan Republican Sen. Patricia Birkholz was the sponsor of legislation that created the nation’s first state-level permitting program. She says one of her goals in getting that bill passed was to get the federal government to act.
Five years later, she is closer to reaching that goal; along with the proposed Coast Guard rules, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is developing organism-based discharge standards for its “vessel general permit.”
Over the next few years, one question for the eight Great Lakes states will be whether to maintain or establish their own ballast water discharge permit programs.
“If we get a good federal program, with assurances to the states that they have some way of knowing the federal government is going to follow through, then I would hope the states could relax,” Cangelosi says.
In large part, states have led the way on the invasive species issue. But all along, they have said they would happily step back once the federal government takes steps forward to address one of the biggest threats to the Great Lakes.