To fight invaders, Michigan fights the EPA

Posted on May 04, 2007 under Environment, Government Issues |

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BY ERIC SHARP | Source: Detroit Free Press

Michigan has joined five nearby states in a California lawsuit that would force the Environmental Protection Agency to shield the Great Lakes and other American waters from continued arrivals of exotic species in the ballast tanks of ocean-going ships.

“They say they have regulations in place; we say that they do not have enough effect,” said Peter Manning, environmental division chief for Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox.

Manning added that regulations for treating ballast tanks were so weak that that they amounted to “swish and spit.”

It’s not as if the feds are ignorant of the danger. There are many examples of exotic species causing serious damage to the lakes, from alewives to sea lampreys, zebra mussels to round gobies. And many of them almost certainly arrived in the ballast tanks of saltwater ships, including viral hemorrhagic septicemia that recently caused big fish kills in lakes Ontario, Erie and St. Clair.

There also are hundreds of examples of unwanted and harmful exotic species arriving in ballast water in places such as the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest and San Francisco, Chesapeake and Mobile bays.

Michigan has passed a law that would require ocean-going ships to sterilize their ballast tanks before dumping or picking up water. The industry has sued to overturn the law, and, incredibly, the EPA is siding with the polluters.

The EPA says the Coast Guard, which is supposed to do ballast inspections, is the only agency that can enforce the laws. This is the same Coast Guard that in 2002 was told to come up with new regulations but has yet to accomplish anything, although it is promising we’ll see a proposal later this year.

“I think the Michigan law has had the effect of jump-starting the debate on this issue,” Manning said.

That’s good, because to be effective, ballast control rules must be uniform, not just among the states, but with Canada, which also controls huge chunks of the lakes.

It’s ironic to see Cox, a Republican, suing the EPA on an environmental issue. The GOP administration of George W. Bush houses the biggest collection of environmental knuckle-draggers ever seen in the White House.

But this isn’t just a Republican problem. Many Democrat administrations also turned blind eyes to the ballast issue, especially when industries that didn’t want strong laws backed their arguments with campaign contributions.

I’m not sure the technology exists to give us the 99.99% surety that we need when it comes to preventing bad things from reaching the lakes in the ballast tanks of saltwater vessels. I still think that the smartest and most practical solution is to stop the salties somewhere on the St. Lawrence River, downstream from Lake Ontario, and transfer cargoes between them and lake freighters.

Businesses on Lake Huron have suffered serious losses because salmon populations declined, most likely thanks to zebra mussels. But Huron always has been a poor relation in Michigan’s Great Lakes fisheries. The bulk of the tourist money goes to Lake Michigan, and I sometimes think that it would have been better if the salmon collapse had happened there.

Because while Lake Huron’s tourism industry has produced only a sad bleat, the screams from a similar disaster on Lake Michigan would be heard all the way to Washington.

Of course, with a new ship-borne disease on the way (viral hemorrhagic septicemia), we may hear that outcry yet.