Asian Carp. Photo: Kate Gardiner, Flickr

A $78.5 million dollar federal plan to keep Asian carp from becoming established in the Great Lakes is drawing criticism from diverse groups that say the proposed temporary closure of the locks in Chicago area canals will disrupt the economy without stopping the spread of aquatic invaders.

The Chicago canal system that connects the Mississippi River system to the Great Lakes basin conveys much of the Chicago region’s petroleum, coal, road salt, cement, and iron, according to federal officials, along with 15,000 recreational boats and 900,000 passengers that travel through the locks on the system each year.

The canal system is also thought to be the route through which Asian Carp could enter — or perhaps already has entered — Lake Michigan. Asian carp have been designated a nuisance fish by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because they can out compete other fish and dominate ecosystems. The Bighead carp can grow to 100lbs, and the Silverhead carp has been called a “live missile“ because it can jump several feet out of the water and has caused injuries to boaters. Many worry that these Asian carp, which have no natural predators in this region, could destroy Great Lakes fisheries and recreational boating if they become established in the lakes.

The draft Asian Carp Control Strategy Framework, released last week, includes short and long term action items that range from fish herding and poisoning to construction of new barriers, changes to the operations of the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal and long term studies on the movement of invasive species between waterways.

At a hearing on this framework, convened last Friday by the EPA Office of the Great Lakes in Chicago, it became quickly apparent that the locks are the flashpoint in the growing national debate over how to respond to Asian carp.

Dozens of people from the Chicago and Indiana maritime industry — tugboat operators, tourism officials, and others — urged officials not to close the locks. They stressed that their livelihoods are at stake, that even the suggestion of temporary lock closures is endangering jobs in the region. Some also argued that the concerns over carp were vastly exaggerated and based on little information.

A new DNA testing technique called environmental DNA testing or eDNA, extracts fragments of DNA from water samples. EDNA sampling has found genetic material from the carp past the electric barrier and in a harbor of Lake Michigan, but only one actual fish has been found past the barrier, and e-DNA does not tell where the fish are or whether a breeding population has been established.

Some opponents of lock closure pointed out that Asian Carp were once found in Lake Erie, a fact corroborated by Charlie Wooley, deputy regional director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Though it is thought that there are no Asian Carp in Lake Erie now, no environmental DNA testing has been done to establish this. EDNA sampling has only been used around Chicago.

Several also warned that the locks, when closed, do not block the flow of water so fish can cross even when they are closed.

This is how the framework imagines the temporary lock closures:

Periods of non-operation would be synchronized with efforts by other agencies to take steps to suppress, eliminate, or reduce Asian carp populations that may be present in a target area of action. This concept envisions controlling the periods during which navigation traffic could pass through the locks, so that effective measures to attack Asian carp populations that may be present in the waterway could be taken.

The federal carp control framework states that a plan for how to change canal operations to minimize carp movement should be developed by early March for possible implementation by April 30.

Other actions that are either already taking place or are planned to begin by mid-May include using chemicals, electro fishing and netting against the carp in areas where eDNA has been found, more eDNA sampling, and the construction of barriers to keep fish from moving between the Des Plaines River and the Illinois and Michigan Canal into the Chicago waterway system.

The framework also calls for construction of a new electric barrier that will serve as a backup when the existing barrier is undergoing maintenance. Electric barriers combat the movement of the carp by feeding a low level electric current into the water.

John Rogner, assistant director of the Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources, said that members of his staff planned to use the current cold weather to hunt for Asian Carp around the warm water out flows in the canal system. He said that the DNR would hire commercial fishers to assist in finding and killing as many carp as possible.

Long term carp control ideas in the federal plan include developing a commercial market for carp to encourage people to catch them, exploring new types of barriers that use sound, lights and bubbles to repel fish as well as new biological and chemical controls.

Rogner said that his department planned to make sure that Chicago area bait shops are not inadvertently selling Asian carp minnows as bait.

Other long term action items involve investigating the possibility that freighter traffic may be spreading carp; disrupting the known large Asian carp populations in the rivers south of Chicago, and studying the possibility of creating a dead zone in the canal system by creating a low oxygen environment.

National Wildlife Fund regional executive director Andy Buchsbaum said that the federal carp framework was like a list of ingredients without a recipe and he called it “dramatically incomplete.”

“We need a true contingency plan, a lock by lock management plan that combines all these measures,” he said. “The framework proposes no long term solution, it just studies long term solutions.”

“Ecological separation is the clear solution.”

Tom Cmar, attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council said that Army Corps statements about the economic impacts of lock closure have indicated that the Corps is prejudiced against the possibility of permanent lock closure.

Ecological separation is only permanent reliable way to control the spread of carp, Cmar said. “We should not assume that we have no choice but to rely on a 19th century canal system.”

States, divided by their economic interests, continue to fight over how to best manage the carp.

The governor of Indiana announced on Feb. 12 that his state has decided to oppose the closure of the Chicago area locks. According to Rogner of the Illinois DNR, two of the five Chicago area canals that need to be modified are in Indiana.

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said that partial temporary lock closures are not acceptable and vowed to continue to fight for total closure.

“I am not moved that this is a solution at all. If this course of action is to be followed, there is little to stop the certain infestation and ruination of the Great Lakes by Asian carp. Further study and open locks is unacceptable.” Van Hollen said in a statement. “I have instructed our team here at Justice that our participation in the litigation will continue. The Great Lakes are not a koi pond for six foot flying fish that eat half their body weight every day.”

The state of Michigan, together with Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania have renewed a recently rejected request that the US Supreme Court grant an immediate order to close the locks of the Chicago waterway system until a method can be found to ensure that Asian carp don’t travel through the canal and enter Lake Michigan.

The Supreme Court has not yet indicated when or if it will consider the request.

Michigan Attorney General, Mike Cox, who is running for governor as a Republican, is using the carp fight to slam Obama.

Cox told FOX that the federal framework proves that President Obama will “do anything to protect the narrow interests of his home state of Illinois, even if it means destroying Michigan’s economy.”

Obama has dedicated more for the Great Lakes cleanup than any president. This years budget included $475 million budgeted for a range of projects including controlling invasive species, and the president has requested an additional $300 million for Great Lakes projects in the 2011 budget.

(WDCpix)

BENTON HARBOR, MICH. — Former President George W. Bush, in a nearly 90-minute-long unscripted address to the local economic development club in this down-trodden southwest Michigan city, said Thursday evening he was honored to have served during “some unusual times,” making repeated references to the challenges he faced as commander in chief amid the “fog of war.”

George W. Bush at an armed forces event before leaving office in January. (Photo via Flickr)

For his first domestic post-presidential talk, Bush spoke to and took questions from a highly sympathetic audience of about 2,500 people at an event sponsored by the Economic Development Club of Southwest Michigan, a group that has recently hosted former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and top Bush political strategist Karl Rove as speakers, according to organizers.

Bush, en route to Toronto for an event with former President Bill Clinton, flew to Michigan on a jet furnished by Whirlpool Corp., which is headquartered here.

“At least you gave me a chance to get out of the house and come to southwest Michigan,” he told the mostly older, white audience from an area in and around Benton Harbor, one of the state’s poorest cities.

During his remarks, Bush did not mention Michigan’s feeble economy or the dominant news story scaring the state: a General Motors bankruptcy, a possibility that now seems all but certain to become reality very soon.

The former president reminisced about his time in the White House and seemed at ease and at times, waxed philosophical talking about his family, telling the audience: “Victory or defeat is nothing without love.”

Torture and tough decisions

Bush spoke without a teleprompter and took questions from the audience and avoided gaffes — for which he is famous — steering clear of any commentary about his successor’s Oval Office performance, which has come under intense fire from Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney.

But the former president spoke indirectly of his administration’s authorization of the use of torture against detainees captured during the War on Terror, avoiding the words “torture” and “abuse.”

“You have to make tough decisions,” Bush said. “They’ve captured a guy who murdered 3,000 citizens … that affected me … They come in and say he may have more information …and we had an anthrax attack … and they say he may have more information. What do you do?“

Bush was firm and defended his record as president: “I will tell you that the information gained saved lives.”

He acknowledged that weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq but said that this was not the only rationale he gave for the 2003 invasion.

Fear of an economic freefall

During last fall’s economic unraveling, Bush said he was forced to “abandon principle,” fearing the nation’s economy could slide into something worse than the Great Depression under his watch.

“You are only really as good as the people you listen to,” Bush said, adding that then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told him that if he did not approve the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the nation’s economy would have quickly crumbled.

“I can’t prove to you that the measures we took averted failure,” he said. “The major culprit was a lack of responsible regulation.”

There need to be regulations, he said, particularly in the housing market.

Bush said he tried to take steps to reign in lending by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but was unable to push reform through Congress.

“Markets obviously sometimes need restraint and oversight,” said the former president.

Predicting his own legacy

Bush appealed to the audience to imagine the stresses he was under during and following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying that he projected calm because he felt it was his duty and he was concerned about the psychology of the nation. But he said that some did not understand the seriousness of the threats faced by the U.S.

He urged people to consider the long view — the United States and Japan were enemies in World War II, he said, but during his administration Japan’s prime minister was a friend and ally, even making a trip to Graceland together.

“Freedom is transformative,” he said. In the future, Bush predicted, people will think back his presidency and say: “Thank God they didn’t lose faith.”

Bush acknowledged that he was in the White House during trying times.

“There is such a thing as the fog of war,” the former president said, mentioned repeatedly that during a crisis it can be difficult to get good information to make the best decisions.

Several questioners thanked Bush for his service and he received passionate applause in response to a question about his legacy, where he said he wanted to be known as “the man who showed up in office and was unwilling to compromise his soul for the sake of popularity.”

Asked about what role religious extremism will play in the future, Bush took the opportunity to state that all mothers want their kids to grow up in peace and that stereotypes are politically convenient, admitting that he didn’t do a good job in changing the political use of stereotypes.

Eartha Jane Melzer is a reporter at the Minnesota Independent’s sister site, the Michigan Messenger.