Intensify efforts to halt water-borne invaders
December 30, 07 by TheFleetIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
by Eric Sharp | Source: Detroit Free Press
States are passing stricter ballast control measures than the Environmental Protection Agency, which has sold out to the businesses that want saltwater ships to continue to come into the Great Lakes with little or no controls.
But we have hard evidence now about how much damage they cause. John Taylor at Grand Valley State has shown us how much more they cost our economy than they add to it.
And we know from the work of David Lodge at Notre Dame that not only is the threat from ballast water inside the ships greater than we thought, the growths on the outsides of ships may be an even more significant source of invaders.
Politicians are loath to afflict the well-connected, and most bureaucrats are too timid to upset the politicians. So it’s imperative that we see that researchers, such as Taylor and Lodge, get the support they need to continue their studies.
