An open front door to invaders in Great Lakes
Destructive species hitching ride on cargo ships make Seaway a bigger threat 
By Dan Egan of the Journal Sentinel
Oct. 3, 2010 For thousands of years, the Great Lakes were protected by Niagara Falls on the east and a subcontinental divide on the west, but those barriers to our grandest freshwater system were obliterated over the past century so that oceanic freighters could float in and Chicago sewage could float out. Unwanted species have been invading with tick-tock regularity ever since. It is a problem that lacks the graphic horror of the Gulf oil spill, but is more environmentally catastrophic in that it unleashes a pollution that does not decay or disperse – it breeds. Native fish populations have crashed, freshwater beaches have suffocated under mounds of rotting algae, bird-killing botulism outbreaks have soared and the lakes’ invasive species problems have spread down Chicago’s canals, into the vast Mississippi basin and across the continent. Politicians have paid little attention. Until now. While the lakes have become a biological stew thick with an estimated 185 foreign species, elected officials from both parties in all eight Great Lakes states are demanding that federal agencies muster the will to stop number 186. They have turned to the courts and to Congress to compel the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to keep Asian carp from colonizing Lake Michigan by slamming shut the back door to the Great Lakes blasted open by Chicago canal builders more than a century ago. But what about the front door? It is still basically business-as-usual on the St. Lawrence Seaway. Biologists say the artificial shipping link between the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean has already wrought more damage than the carp might ever do. And they worry about what might be coming in next, even as the drama to shut the back door plays out in a Chicago federal courtroom and as the Obama administration touts its new Asian carp czar. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is no big fan of the czar system, but he says if President Barack Obama felt compelled to appoint one, it should have been to deal with the Seaway. Daley built a career keeping his eye on the big picture, and when he looks at Great Lakes overseas shipping he sees an ever-shrinking industry taking an ever-growing toll on the region’s premier natural resource. “How can we allow invasive species to come through the St. Lawrence Seaway and no one says anything?” he says. He wants the Seaway shut to overseas vessels. He wants this pollution spill plugged. …
