Fight Against Asian Carp Threatens Fragile Great Lakes Unity - NYTimes.

com

This copy is for your personal, noncommercial use only. You can order presentation-
ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers here or use the
"Reprints" tool that appears next to any article. Visit www.nytreprints.com for samples and
additional information. Order a reprint of this article now.

January 3, 2010

Fight Against Asian Carp Threatens Fragile Great Lakes Unity

By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO — Asian carp, the voracious, nonnative fish whose arrival near Lake Michigan is threatening to
cause havoc in the Great Lakes, are now setting off strife on land as well.

In an urgent effort to close down Chicago-area passages that could allow the unwanted fish to reach Lake
Michigan, the State of Michigan is suing the State of Illinois and other entities that govern the waterways
here. Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin have filed documents in recent days supporting Michigan’s move,
and Indiana says it will soon do the same.

The new rift between these Midwestern states, which would reopen a nearly century-old legal case in the
United States Supreme Court over Great Lakes waters, comes at a particularly sensitive moment — just as
the numerous entities with interests in the Great Lakes had united in what lakes advocates consider some
of their most significant progress in decades.

In 2008, the eight states that touch the Great Lakes helped push through a federal-state compact that bars
diversion of water from the lakes unless all of the states (and the Canadian provinces involved) agree. That
Great Lakes Compact, which was years in the making, at last calmed fears that other water-starved regions
might tap into the lakes, which make up 20 percent of the world’s freshwater.

And this fall, the federal government approved what many saw as the first step in a major restoration for
the lakes, long sought in these states.

Some $475 million was designated to clean up pollution, protect habitat and fight invasive species in the
Great Lakes.

“Years ago, we realized that this region of the country needed to do a much better job of speaking with one
voice or we would not be heard in Washington,” said David A. Ullrich, executive director of the Great Lakes
and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, one of several alliances that formed in recent years around the notion
that those with Great Lakes interests needed to work together if they hoped to draw the support and
attention captured, say, by the Florida Everglades.

Of the Asian carp threat and the legal sparring suddenly brewing between the states, Mr. Ullrich, whose
group of 70 lakes mayors includes Richard M. Daley of Chicago, a Democrat, said, “It’s a very serious issue,
and I think we are going to need to figure out a way to come together as a region.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/science/earth/03states.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print[1/4/2010 9:32:48 AM]

Fight Against Asian Carp Threatens Fragile Great Lakes Unity - NYTimes.com

For years, leaders in the region worried about Asian bighead and silver carp — large, imported fish that can
take over an ecosystem by consuming the food supply of other fish and that were known to be making their
way north up the Mississippi River. But the efforts took on a new urgency in November, when the
authorities reported finding genetic evidence of the carp within about six miles of Lake Michigan, in the
Chicago-area waterway system that links the Mississippi to the Great Lakes.

As lake advocates called on leaders to close locks in the waterway system in an emergency effort to block
the fish, representatives from the office of Mike Cox, the attorney general of Michigan, said he had reached
out to leaders on the other side of the lake, in Illinois, but got no response.

Mr. Cox, a Republican who is running for governor of Michigan this year, said hundreds of thousands of
jobs in his state depended on Lake Michigan, and in December he filed a lawsuit. “This is an environmental
and economic emergency,” Nick De Leeuw, a spokesman for Mr. Cox, said of the potential damage the carp
could inflict throughout the lakes. “It’s almost like a bad science fiction movie.”

In his legal filings, Mr. Cox called for an injunction to close locks immediately, but he is also seeking,
ultimately, to separate the Mississippi River system from the Great Lakes entirely.

More than a century ago, a canal was built linking the two waterways. Barges travel between the two, and
over the years, the design helped carry sewage away from Chicago and Lake Michigan as part of an
engineering feat that reversed the flow of the Chicago River.

The Michigan lawsuit would reopen a Supreme Court case from the 1920s (which was later modified
repeatedly) in which neighboring states complained that Illinois’s diversion of water away from the lake was
wrong.

The suit leaves Illinois leaders in an awkward spot: though many of them have expressed horror at the
thought of Asian carp taking over Lake Michigan, a closing of locks could also cause damage for a barge
industry here. And permanent separation of the two waterways might also require changes to the Chicago
area’s wastewater infrastructure.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Patrick J. Quinn of Illinois, a Democrat who is up for election this year, said he
believed that “everything should be looked at in a careful and studied way.”

And Suzanne Malec-McKenna, the commissioner of Mr. Daley’s Department of Environment, said, “While
we recognize that Asian carp pose a significant threat to the Great Lakes, shutting down the waterway
system in Northeastern Illinois before fully understanding the impact it would have on the movement of
people, goods and storm water is a shortsighted answer to a complex problem.”

Left uncertain is what so much turmoil over the carp might do to the broader efforts at cooperation on the
lakes, or whether it might damage relations just as the region tries to figure out how best to spend the
hundreds of millions of dollars in restoration money.

Notwithstanding this lawsuit, said David Naftzger, executive director of the Council of Great Lakes

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/science/earth/03states.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print[1/4/2010 9:32:48 AM]

Fight Against Asian Carp Threatens Fragile Great Lakes Unity - NYTimes.com

Governors (including Mr. Quinn and the governors whose states have signed on with Michigan to close the
locks), there have been long efforts to work together in the region to fight invasive species, even these carp.

“That will continue,” Mr. Naftzger said, pointing out that it is attorneys general, not governors, who would
be handling any legal back-and-forth. “This doesn’t mean other elements of the state governments won’t
persevere to find common ground.”

All that being said, Mr. Naftzger added, if some solution to the carp problem cannot be found, all sorts of
progress could eventually be at risk.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Privacy Policy Terms of Service Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/science/earth/03states.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print[1/4/2010 9:32:48 AM]