HOW coalition urges Congress, federal agencies to step up efforts to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes

WASHINGTON, D.C. (FEB. 25) — The co-chair of the Healing Our Waters^®-Great Lakes Coalition today called on Congress to declare the Asian carp an imminent threat to the Great Lakes and direct federal agencies to separate the carp-infested Mississippi River system from Lake Michigan.

Testifying before the Senate Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Water and Power, coalition co-chair Andy Buchsbaum urged Congress to give the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers a new mission: Stop the movement of live organisms between the Mississippi River system and the Great Lakes.

The Healing Our Waters^®-Great Lakes Coalition, which represents 114 conservation groups and other organizations in the region, wants Congress to direct the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to determine how best to separate the Mississippi River system from Lake Michigan. The Corps is currently studying whether it is feasible to create an ecological barrier in a manmade canal that links two of North America’s largest freshwater ecosystems.

“Ecological separation is essential for the Great Lakes — it is the only way of safeguarding the lakes from Asian carp,” Buchsbaum said. “Anything short of separation will fail sooner or later.”

Buchsbaum said Congress should direct the Corps to complete a study of how to separate the Mississippi River system from Lake Michigan by mid-2011, and then implement the report’s conclusions.

In his testimony, Buchsbaum also called on the federal agencies to quickly design and implement a contingency plan to stop any further movement of the invasive carp into Lake Michigan, and to eradicate the carp that are already in the Chicago Waterway system.

“Even under a best-case scenario, ecological separation will take time. We have to protect the lakes from Asian carp until the basins are separated, which could take several years. The agencies need to put into action a channel-by-channel, lock-by-lock plan to stop the carp from advancing further.”

Asian bighead carp and silver carp were imported to the U.S. in the 1970s to control algae in commercial fish farms in the southern U.S. The fish escaped into the Mississippi River in the 1980s and have since spread to the edge of Lake Michigan via manmade canals in the Chicago Waterway System.

The invasive fish — which can grow to 100 pounds, hog fish food and leap out of the water when disturbed by boat motors — pose a serious threat to the Great Lakes’ $7 billion fishery and $16 billion tourism industry.

Government agencies recently stepped up Asian carp control efforts after scientists detected Asian carp DNA in Lake Michigan, near Chicago.

“We recommend that Congress declare Asian carp to be an imminent and substantial threat to the Great Lakes and that stopping their movement into the Great Lakes be given the highest priority by the Corps and other federal agencies as they design and implement short-term and long-term measures to combat the carp,” Buchsbaum testified.

He praised state and federal agencies working to beat back the Asian carp invasion. But he said the federal government’s plan fails to address all potential invasion routes near Chicago and lacks specifics on what actions will be taken, and when, to keep the menacing fish from colonizing the Great Lakes.

“Although it has many useful and potentially effective elements, it is not nearly enough to protect the Great Lakes,” Buchsbaum said. “Most fundamentally, it does not shut the door on additional Asian carp reaching Lake Michigan.”

One of the major flaws in the control strategy is the government’s long-term solution — a series of studies, none of which commits federal agencies to taking action.

Despite a steady flow of bad news about Asian carp, Buchsbaum said there is still a chance to stop their advance on the Great Lakes before they begin reproducing in Lake Michigan.

“I believe our biggest challenge is not technical, but political,” he said.

Message From Congress: Keep Carping

Sixteen years ago, that is when Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-Mich.) first started asking his colleagues in Congress to deal with the Asian carp threat. “When I first learned about the Asian carp in the Mississippi, I thought good grief, we have to do something about this. They will get there (the Great Lakes)…but I could not get people excited about it and that is one of my chief frustrations of my life,” Ehlers said at a meeting this morning.

Had Congress listened to Ehlers back then we would not be faced with the difficult and expensive choices of closing locks and permanently separating the ecosystems. But that was then and this is now and for some reason Washington has a hard time dealing with long-term planning.

The Congressman implored coalition members and others to make dealing with the Asian carp a priority while talking to their Representatives today. “We absolutely have to do something immediately, it is truly an emergency.”

The best option now is to separate the Mississippi River and Great Lakes Basins that were artificially connected in an engineering feat a century ago. If we do it right, separating the basins has to potential to create a lot of jobs in engineering, transportation and support industries while protecting a more limited barge industry.

“We need to separate the watersheds and we need to ask the Army Corps of Engineers to tell us how to do that. I think that is the only way to stop the spread of the Asian carp,” announced Rep. Mark Shauer (D-Mich.).

Some members from Illinois and Indiana are opposed to a short term closing of the locks or the long-term separation of the basins because it would initially harm the local economy. Unfortunately, the carp also have the potential to destroy the local economy once they establish themselves.

“Their economic loss is peanuts compared to the economic loss if the carp get into the Great Lakes,” Ehlers said and added that Lake Michigan stands to lose $7 billion and the entire region at least $18 billion in sport, recreation and fishery industries. “That’s a lot of money. Dirkson said one time, a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money.”

Lake Erie is expected to be a perfect home for the Asian carp and every mile of Ohio’s northern border is the lake. Marcy Kapture (D-OH) represents a lake district and she told Great Lakes citizen activists, “I can’t encourage you enough to be successful on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the Asian carp.”

Lake Erie also borders a small corner of Pennsylvania where Rep. Nancy Dahlkemper (D) lives. She is a new lawmaker but promised the carp and other Great Lakes issues are high on her radar.

Members have little to fear as the Asian carp are among our top priorities during this visit to the Hill. Ehlers will be happy to know that HOW members will do as he asked and “Keep on carping about the carp.”

One Voice

The Great Lakes Governors, the Great Lakes Commission and the Healing Our Waters- Great Lakes Coalition are joining forces to ask Congress and the President to save the Great Lakes from the Asian carp and continue to invest in restoration.

“The Asian carp have brought us back to reality,” said Andy Buchsbaum, co-chair of the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, “they threaten to overwhelm a lot of the progress we’ve seen. That threat is not just to the Great Lakes and the fishery, it is also to our unity and our ability to work together. We have succeeded so far because we have pulled together.”

This morning the Commissioners finalized their statement on the Asian carp threat. This encouraging, unanimous decision joins HOW, the Great Lakes Governors, seven of the Great Lakes states and others urging the federal government to quickly complete a study and create a permanent ecological separation between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins. This would deal with hundred-year-old manmade connections that changed the flow of the Chicago River to send the city’s refuse away from Lake Michigan. This can be done without destroying the barge industry that now works the system of canals, but it will require forethought and has the potential to create new jobs in the transportation industry.

Another big issue for the citizen lobbyists is the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding. Last year, the President provided $475 million for GLRI – a new historic commitment to restoration that was supposed to become annual, but this year, his budget request was lowered to $300 million.

Joy Mulinex, Director of the Great Lakes Task Force told the coalition that a number of Members of Congress are disappointed in this reduction and will be proposing the appropriators provide the full $475 million. Mulinex also indicated that the Task Force is trying to find alternative funding streams to fight the Asian carp. The current $78 million put forth by the White House was taken from this year’s $475 million GLRI grant.

“This is about our jobs and our economy,” said Tim Eder, Executive Director of the Great Lakes Commission. “This restoration initiative and the expenditure of the $475 million that we are talking about means jobs and investment in our economy a jumpstart to economic recovery.”

The Great Lakes Governors support the bump and in a letter to Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), head of the Great Lakes Congressional Task Force, Wisconsin’s Jim Doyle urges the Members to remember that GLRI funding is new funding and should not replace funding for old programs.

“GLRI funding is intended to supplement – not supplant – funding for other important programs. Therefore, we ask you to support priority actions needed to protect and restore the Great Lakes in FFY2011 that are funded outside of the GLRI. The Clean Water Sate Revolving Loan Fund continues to be an important source of funding to upgrade wastewater treatment facilities and protect the great lakes from sewage overflows.”

The majority of this nation’s sewer overflows are in Great Lakes states. Completing Great Lakes restoration includes spending $13 billion – more than half the money needed – fixing waste-water infrastructure. The Stimulus provided $4 billion to the nation to update our water infrastructure and another $2.1 billion was provided for FY2011. We are asking that another $2.7 billion be added for FY2011.

“You are all on the same page,” said Cam Davis, special assistant to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson for the Great Lakes. “This is a real testament to why you are here today and why this is here today and that is the cohesion of the region. This region knows how to play well in the sand box. The fact that you are all going to the hill, you are all here harmonizing your message is so absolutely critical.”

Davis is correct, our past success is intimately tied to our ability to work together as a region. Great Lakes restoration has drawn together the keen interest of government officials, business leaders, chambers of commerce, environmentalists, conservationists and residents.

“Lets demonstrate to the world and show ourselves that we have that unity of purpose, that partnership that allows us to move together in partnership to restore the Great Lakes,” said Buchsbaum.

Stop the Carp: In Unison GL Commission Calls for Separation of Basins

The Great Lakes Commission – including Illinois – unanimously approved a resolution calling for Congress and the US Army Corps of Engineers to establish ecological separation of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds as the long-term strategy to keep the carp out of the Lakes.

HOW Co-Chair Andy Buchsbaum called the resolution “a very strong step forward in promoting actions needed to stop the Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes.”

This historic move urges Congress to give the Corps authority and funding to finish up the study of ecological separation. The resolution also calls for quickening the timetable for operating the electronic barrier at full blast and creating structures to prevent the carp from flooding from the Des Plaines River into the canal.

The resolution was approved at the Commission’s Semiannual Meeting in Washington DC. The meeting is in conjunction with the Healing Our Waters Coalition’s Washington meeting. The Commission is made up of the eight Great Lakes states, Ontario and Quebec.

It’s Lobby Season and the Great Lakes are on the Agenda

Healing Our Waters Coalition Members are arriving in Washington DC today to launch an aggressive lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill. It is true that HOW comes to the Capitol City to pay our Senators and Representatives a visit annually, but this year, we have a lot of really big fish to fry. The Asian Carp are threatening years of restoration efforts; the White House has cut Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funds by $175 million; and we need to support an EPA reauthorization bill.

Since November, the entire nation has been focused on our Asian Carp problem, but we still have not been able to convince the White House to use its authority to close the locks. Closing the locks immediately will allow our region some much needed time to work on a long-term solution such as a permanent separation of the basins. HOW members will be pressing our Congressional team for immediate action to halt the advance of the voracious fish.

Last year, the President proposed $475 million for FY10 restoration work and the House and Senate approved the full amount (a huge victory and credit goes to Wisconsin Rep. David Obey (D) Chair of Appropriations and also Washington Rep. Norm Dicks (D) Chair of the Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior.) This year, the President has recommended spending just $300 million but we argue this is a mistake. When the EPA recently requested proposals for the $120 million in FY 2010 GLRI funds they were prepared to grant, they received 1,050 proposals totaling more than $940 million – that is seven times the amount available. Worthy restoration projects are going unfunded – we have a plan and we know where to plug the money in to get this work done. Fortunately, we have friends in the House and Senate and we are going to take this ask to them: please restore the $175 million to the GLRI for FY11. This is not the time to shirk restoration work – we are making great strides, providing jobs and we are building an economic platform that will take our region into the next century.

HOW believes we need a Great Lakes Ecosystem Protection Act of 2010 that reauthorizes the GLLA multiyear so we don’t have to constantly ask for reauthorization, it sets u establishes the permanent Great Lakes restoration framework. The focus should be on what is happening on-the-ground in our restoration work. It would create a stakeholder board that sets clear goals and priorities each year that the federal agencies can use to develop their budgets and plans. It would reauthorize the Great Lakes Legacy Act on a multiyear track at $150 million a year so that we don’t have to fight for this annually. This bill is ready to be introduced by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and George Voinovich (R-OH) and Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-Mich.) in the House.

HOW members will be holding strategy meetings on Tuesday, attending an event at the Canadian Embassy in the evening and then will hit the Hill on Wednesday.

The Great Lakes are the Talk of the Town

It is a big week for the Great Lakes, not only are HOW members flying into Washington today to encourage lawmakers to continue to support restoration, but the Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday morning. THIS IS BEING RESCHEDULED NEW TIME TBA.

The Senate EPW Committee will be investigating the science behind federal efforts to control the Asian carp and stop them from getting a foothold in the Great Lakes. NY Sen. Kirsten Gilligbrand is a member of the EPW and she has been pushing for the closure of the locks via a new piece of legislation called the Close All Routes and Prevent Asian Carp Act of 2010. The bill, if approved, would require the Secretary of the Army to temporarily close the O’Brien and Chicago Locks while a permanent management strategy is sought.

“The Asian Carp pose a traumatic and long term threat to the Great Lakes and the enormous economic benefit the Lakes provide to New York and the nation,” Senator Gillibrand told a blogger at the Times Union of Albany. “The Lakes help drive our economy, draw tourism, offer endless recreation and provide drinking water for millions of families. The Asian Carp could potentially destroy all of that, disrupting the food chain and disturbing the natural ecosystem permanently. We need to take aggressive action now to stop the spread of Asian Carp and establish a long-term solution that will keep New York’s waterways and natural habitats free from invasive species.”

New York’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo joined the now seven-state legal effort to get the US Supreme Court to close the locks and create a permanent separation between the basins.

The hearing is Thursday, Feb. 25, at 10:30 a.m. in 406 Dirksen.

Carpageddon Devours GLRI Funds

If it wasn’t bad enough that the Federal plan for dealing with the carp is short sighted, now Carpageddon is eating into the historic Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding. The Feds are paying for their $78.5 million battle plan (weak as it is) with the $475 million GLRI funds.

We fought long and hard for those dollars. Now a significant portion will not go toward Great Lakes restoration priorities, but instead will be spent on fish poison, electronic barriers (that have yet to be turned on at full voltage), increased monitoring and flood control. Meanwhile, the one urgent move the Feds could make – closing the locks until a permanent separation can be made – remains off the agenda.

“In various meetings with federal officials, they have assured our delegation that they have the necessary funding to address the situation and that they have authority to close the locks,” Mich. Sen. Carl Levin (D) stated. He added that he was not happy with the way the agencies are budgeting for the problem. “The Administration is relying on funding from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) to supplement Asian carp control efforts. That was not the purpose of that long fought-for initiative.”

Not only do these fish threaten the $7 billion Great Lakes sport fishery and all the business and real estate values that are attached to it, but their invasion will also render useless our plan to restore the region’s economy. The Brookings Institution found that restoring the Great Lakes would bring the region $2 for every $1 invested in restoration activities. The President’s commitment in his first budget of $475 million put us on track to begin this economic renaissance, but now it is being devoured by the worst possible invasive species.

The lackluster response from the White House and agencies begs the question: will Carpageddon become Obama’s Katrina?

Federal Asian Carp Plan Needs to Be Strengthened

Conservation groups today are urging the Obama Administration to strengthen a federal plan to protect the Great Lakes from the advancing Asian carp and move toward a permanent solution of physically separating the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes basin.

Read the press release here.

The call to accelerate short-term actions to prevent the non-native fish from taking hold in the Lakes comes as the U.S. EPA prepares to hold a public meeting in Chicago on the federal government’s response to the relentless advance of the Asian carp.

Read the federal Asian carp framework here.

Asian Carp Get Hearing on Hill

In the midst of back-to-back snowstorm that have disabled Washington, several members of the House Transportation Committee met for a hearing on the Asian Carp crisis.

But even though the audience was small, the news was not – the Federal Government is strongly considering permanently separating the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basins as a long-term solution to the carp crisis. In the short term, the Army Corps refuses to shut the locks until they have been able to complete a study of the impact of doing so, not just on the carp and the lakes but on the local economy and barge industry.

“If we were to close the locks they would need to be shown effective as impediments to Asian carp movement. We are actively studying whether we should close them but we need a vast amount of information on impacts and consequences. This is a very complex issue there are orders of magnitude impact that we cannot understand until we complete our studies,” US Army Corps General John Peabody answered Rep. Jim Oberstar (DFL-Minn.), Chair of the T&I Committee.

“We would highly recommend we exhaust every other option before we look at the effects of closing the locks,” responded Del Wilkins, VP of Canal Barge Company Inc. who testified for the American Waterways Operators. Wilkins spent the hearing in damage control mode in an effort to ensure barge operators stay in business. This became more difficult after Joel Brammeier of the Alliance for the Great Lakes testified that the volume of cargo traffic that needs to move from the Mississippi River to the Great Lakes is less than one percent and therefore fairly insignificant in comparison to the economic damage the carp will leave in their wake.

“These next few years are a tremendous opportunity,” Brammeier told Rep. Oberstar. “This is a great time to be thinking big and what we need to do not just in the short term to deal with the carp but how we can make change in the long term,” he said in an effort to push basin separation.

“Ecological separation is a huge game changer,” Wilkins opined. “It would eliminate a lot of jobs, not just in the barge industry.”

But Michigan Officials are still fighting to close the locks. After the White House Summit on Monday, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm promised to continue the legal challenge to close the locks and called on the Federal Government to think more long-term. At the hearing, Michigan Department of Natural Resources Rebecca Humphries reiterated that the state won’t be satisfied unless the locks are closed and a permanent separation is erected. “What is at the crux of this is where are we going with the long term. Is our goal to physically separate these watersheds or is it not? Because it does make a difference as to how we address this in the short term. We do not feel that continuing the operate the lock structure and poisoning off those waters on a regular basis is a sustainable strategy.”

One of the more telling points made during the hearing was by Great Lakes Czar Cam Davis. When asked if the right authorities and legislative structures were in place to deal with this problem he replied, “the real question on the table is, have we been able to act fast enough, and the clear answer is no, we haven’t.

Does The White House Plan Add Up to Zero Tolerance for Asian Carp?

The White House has promised a zero tolerance policy toward new invasive species and they believe that the draft Asian Carp Control Strategy Framework released today at the summit meeting with Great Lakes Governors is proof positive that they are taking this issue seriously.

White House Counsel for Environmental Quality Chief, Nancy Sutley described the multitier plan of defense as evidence of an unparalleled federal effort. Charles Wooley, deputy regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service pronounced with conviction “we are doing everything humanly possible to keep these fish out of Lake Michigan.”

Except shutting the locks. Michigan’s Governor Jennifer Granholm and Wisconsin’s Governor Jim Doyle left the meeting without saying they would stop trying to get the Supreme Court to agree to an injunction that would force the locks to close until a more permanent solution could be implemented.

“We did not discuss the legal action with the Governors,” Sutley admitted and added, ”that will just go on as it was.”

Governor Granholm acknowledged that a lot of work went into this proposal, but she was left “very disappointed.” “We have to prevent Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes, but the proposal presented still leaves the lakes vulnerable to this threat.” She then called for the closing of the locks between the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal electrical barrier and Lake Michigan.

Right now the locks in question open and close whenever a boat or barge presents itself. The White House has offered a compromise – a modified lock closure – and what that boils down to is a schedule for opening and closing the locks. They would also provide some sort of treatment, possibly fish poison, each time they open the locks to prevent any Asian carp that may be there from moving through the waterway.

Andy Buchsbaum, co-chair of HOW, said the plan, ”leaves the details of when and how long the locks would be closed and how the poison would be used until later.”

In a press conference following the summit, the Feds said that they are not willing to close the locks permanently yet. Not until they have had time to “consider all factors” and can “make a decision whether it is in everyone’s interest to close the locks.”

One problem that CEQ’s Sutley pointed to is that there may be other pathways for the carp to get to the lakes such as the connection between the Mississippi watershed and the Great Lakes watershed. “Closing the locks are only two pathways,” she said.

Both Michigan officials and HOW have called for a permanent physical and biological separation of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basins to stop the fish from using the rivers as entryways into the lakes. Sutley said that the Army Corps of Engineers is studying whether changing this connections would make sense. But right now, the framework does not require such a separation. Because of that Gov. Granholm said, “I believe the proposal’s primary objectives are not sustainable, and that this is a plan to limit damages – not solve the problem.”