Great Lakes senators want more from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers than the $25 million battle plan the agency released in January to stop the advance of Asian carp into the Great Lakes.
A March 14 letter signed by a bipartisan group of 11 U.S. senators — including Wisconsin's Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin — tells the agency to turn that plan into action.
"We want to impress upon you the need to implement short-term measures to stop Asian carp from getting into the Great Lakes, and to move aggressively toward a long-term solution," the senators wrote.
The Army Corps released a 10,000-page study on Jan. 6 that examines a range of options to stop the marauding exotic carp from invading the Great Lakes by swimming up the Chicago Sanitary and Ship canal, which provides a man-made link between Lake Michigan and the Asian carp-infested Mississippi River basin.
Asian carp are the species most people are worried about at the moment, but the goal of the project is to stop unwanted species from migrating in both directions; biologists have identified about a dozen species poised to ride the canal waters out of the Great Lakes and into the Mississippi River basin, including a fish-killing virus that could wreak havoc on the Southern fish farm industry.
Great Lakes advocates and most scientists agree the best way to solve the problem is to rebuild the natural divide between the two watersheds by erecting some sort of structure to physically plug the canal. It is a project the Army Corps' study claimed would take decades and cost as much as $18 billion because of the need to drastically change the way storm and wastewater flow through the nation's third largest city.
A Journal Sentinel analysis of that plan, however, revealed that much of the Army Corps' proposal to physically separate the basins is tied to massive upgrades for the way Chicago manages its waste and storm water that have little to do with directly stopping the carp.
A 2012 plan released by the Great Lakes Commission, for example, demonstrated the canals could be plugged for as little as $3 billion, be done in a matter of years, not decades, and still keep water flowing in a manner that won't degrade Lake Michigan and trigger increased flooding in Chicago.
The Army Corps' new plan also presented a range of cheaper options that are not as effective in stopping invasive species as physically separating the watersheds but could provide an added level of protection for the Great Lakes in the immediate future.
The only thing standing between the carp and Lake Michigan at the moment is an electric barrier on the Chicago canal some 35 miles downstream from Lake Michigan that is not strong enough to repel all sizes fish.
One option in the new Army Corps plan considered by many to be a potential intermediate-term solution to the fish-leaking barrier is to modify a navigation lock downstream from Lake Michigan in a manner that could block the migration of species between the basins.
Some conservationists fear that if the Army Corps pursues a navigation lock fix, then plans for a long-term solution will be scrapped. The senators indicated in their letter they don't want that to happen.
"To move forward with a long-term solution, a phased implementation may be needed," the senators wrote. "What interim measures could the Corps move forward with that would allow for the most flexibility with a long-term solution?"
The letter was signed by senators representing all the Great Lakes states except Illinois and Indiana, the two states that would be most affected by any plan to physically plug the canal system that the barge industry relies upon.
