Asian Carp Need a Political Action Committee

Mon, 07/26/2010 - 15:37 — Dave Dempsey

Robert Thorpe: Chicago Skyline ~Enlarge

A quick Google News search for 'asian carp' yields over 2,000 articles in the last month alone. Not many of them speak favorably of the latest and largest non-native aquatic threat to the Great Lakes.

Kind of makes you think the carp should hire a K street lobbyist.

But they won't and they can't and so they're easy to beat up.

It's heartening to see Great Lakes political leaders speak out in unison (except for those from Illinois) against the carp. It's great to see specific anti-carp measures proposed. It's a little difficult, however, to see some of the rhetoric as anything but pure posturing.

Sure, we need desperately to stop an asian carp invasion. But we also need to do other things. Where's the chorus calling for actions to promote steep reductions in farm runoff, global reductions of persistent organic chemicals that end up in the Great Lakes, regionwide and enforceable water conservation and public trust protections that will stop raids on the Lakes by water barons who want to sell them for private profit?

These are more difficult issues that require politicians to sacrifice a little of their political capital. What else is it for?

I hope we see more than 2,000 articles on another Google news search soon -- for "Great Lakes protection" that reflects real action on tough issues.

» About author Dave Dempsey

Comments

And What About Beach Closings?

Submitted by Gary Wilson on Mon, 07/26/2010 - 17:57.

Where's the political outrage over Chicago's beaches being closed because of all the raw sewage dumped into Lake Michigan in the past few days?

Beaches closed to swimmers

Officials are concerned about sewage dumped into Lake Michigan.

Source: Chicago Tribune 7/26/2010

Chicago Floods

Submitted by Brian Creek on Mon, 07/26/2010 - 20:10.

"I just saw in Yesterday's Chicago Sun Times that,

"The heavy rains - which dumped an estimated 60 billion gallons of water on
Chicago and parts of Cook County - filled all 190 miles of the Deep Tunnel
system, said Terry O'Brien, president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation
District. The district opened floodgates in Wilmette and on the Chicago
River to release stormwater into Lake Michigan""

Anybody know if this was carp infested water they were dumping?

—

What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? Henry David Thoreau

PACs for Carp

Submitted by h2oyu on Tue, 07/27/2010 - 15:01.

Dave, the carp do have allies. Big River Fish and the Chamber of Commerce to name a couple I don't know if they qualify as pac's but the latter certainly has great influence with policy makers.

Brian, flooding has been the main catalyst to migration. Does anyone know if the flooding affected areas near the fences or other relevent tributaries?

Gary, several friends came to da' city to see the Cubs v. Cards and were quite disappointed that they could not take a dip.

Better waste water/sanitation is needed in most GL cities. Opening the waste gates during heavy rain is common practice it seems. Sadly.

—

'Life is what happens while your busy doing something else.'[sic] J.Lennon

Opening the gates for waste...

Submitted by Gary Wilson on Tue, 07/27/2010 - 19:53.

....yep, that's been the practice for a long time. Most have become sensitized to the practice as just the way it is. We dump our sewage into our drinking water then clean it up so we can drink it.

Carp and CSOs

Submitted by Matt Jones on Wed, 07/28/2010 - 08:12.

It's a worry that several large cities are taking a page from the Chicago Sanitary District playbook in regards to their Combined Sewer Overflows. We have a community here that wants a variance on the rivers stating they are not capable of sustaining recreation and are certainly not swimmable/fishable.

Mind you, thats the opinion of the municipal utility and not that of the community at-large, which thinks only a 100 percent reduction in overflows is reasonable. The precedent of a local rafting event and involving over tens of thousands of people held in recent decades doesn't seem to sway their opinion of that. Nor does a river navigation map issued by the very same utility back in the 1960's.

Now to be fair, the utility states that recreation on the rivers should only be limited during "wet weather" events. This is Indiana and it has been a very wet Spring and Summer hasn't been all that dry. The "wet weather" axiom with the requisite 2-3 day settling period after the event eliminates more than half of the water recreation season here.

The attitude of this utility also flies in the face of the immigrant populations here that are supplementing their diets with fish from the rivers. Most of these new folks in the community do not speak English well, if they speak it at all, and have an inherent distrust of governments.

On the other hand, this area has been designated as "ground zero +1" for the carp invasion. There are a lot of good people trying to find the best method and acting to prevent the invasion from gaining traction here. There are also a lot of negative opinions stating that the proposed safeguards will not be enough. What's worse, I fear they may be right.

—

Matt Jones

"With water, we are blessed and cursed; Both by it's excesses and our thirst" -self, 2007

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