Interstate lawsuit, presidential summit on Asian carp

The Asian carp invasion has pitted most of Great Lakes states against Illinois as well as environmental interests against Chicago’s regional transportation industry, which uses a canal originally designed to spirit away the city’s wastewater to connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River basin.

Over a hundred years after the canal’s construction, northbound Asian carp are exploiting this connection, despite an electric barrier intended to keep them from passing the canal.

DNA evidence places some fish already in Lake Michigan, though as of Jan. 26 no fish themselves have been reported caught beyond the electric barrier.

After carp DNA was detected beyond the electric barrier late last year, the state of Michigan sued the state of Illinois, seeking to reopen a longstanding feud between Great Lakes states and Chicago over the deleterious effects of its canal.

The U.S. Supreme Court Jan. 19 rejected Michigan’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have ordered locks shut on the Chicago waterways in an effort to seal Lake Michigan from the greatest volume of Asian carp. 

But the court has not yet ruled on the accompanying suit, which argues the Asian carp pose imminent harm to the Great Lakes directly related to Chicago’s diversion from Lake Michigan. Briefs in this case are to be filed by Feb. 19.

President Barack Obama, formerly junior senator from Illinois, has thus far supported Illinois, which is reluctant to close the locks because of the economic effect of preventing barge traffic as well as some risk of flooding low-lying regions of the Chicago area.

However, when running for president in 2008, Obama signed the Great Lakes Protection Pledge and said his administration would have a “zero tolerance policy for invasive species.” The Obama/Biden campaign issued the following statement as part of its Great Lakes agenda: “They will aggressively pursue policies and dedicate federal funds to control and prevent Asian Carp and other new harmful species from entering the Great Lakes. They will also enhance investment in research, development and necessary actions, such as electric barriers, to support efforts to prevent, control, and eradicate invasive species, as well as to educate citizens and stakeholders.”

After the Supreme Court did not order Chicago’s locks shut, states kept up the pressure on the federal government to act.

Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle and Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm wrote to Obama Jan. 19, requesting “an immediate summit between Great Lakes governors and senior White House officials to identify a rapid response to the threat posed by Asian carp to the Great Lakes.”

Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, responded Jan. 20, suggesting the summit take place the first week of February, either in Washington, D.C. or in the Midwest. At press time, no further information was available about the location or scope of the summit.

Also Jan. 20, Michigan Congressman Dave Camp introduced legislation that would order the closure of locks, install interim barriers, and give the Army Corps of Engineers new authority to eliminate Asian carp.

The recent legal and political efforts all represent an 11th hour disaster-prevention response to the Asian carp situation, which has been identified as a potential ecological calamity since at least the mid-1990s.

Unnatural Selection

The Chicago River today flows away from Lake Michigan. Naturally, it flowed into Lake Michigan. That changed when the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal opened in 1900, reversing the river’s flow, and artificially connecting the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River, then farther inland to the Illinois River, which empties into the Mississippi River. The city reversed the flow to divert its sewage and industrial waste from Lake Michigan, also the source of its drinking water.

After that massive engineering project, Illinois was barraged with lawsuits. In the first decade of the 20th century, from Missouri, downstream recipient of Chicago’s waste. Later, repeatedly from Wisconsin and other Great Lakes states (Wisconsin v. Illinois 1929, 1930, 1933, 1967), which prompted Chicago to build its own sewage treatment facilities. Great Lakes states argued harm to their shipping industries because of declining lake levels resulting from the diversion.

The 1967 Supreme Court decision, still the law of the land today, was to compromise-capping the diversion at 3,200 cubic feet per second (2.07 billion gallons per day), but leaving the door open to future legal challenges should further harm be alleged by the Great Lakes states. That’s the strategy being attempted by Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, who is later expected to mount a Republican campaign for Michigan’s governor.

Dan Eagan of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has followed the Asian carp story closely and thoroughly in his Great Lakes, Great Peril series. Given the monthly status of this publication and the fast-changing developments of the Asian carp story, we recommend readers check online for updates.