09 February 2010

Make the Asians do it

Rico says we don't know for sure who started the problem, but eighty million of your tax dollars will attempt to fix it, according to a Monica Davey article in The New York Times:
Federal authorities on Monday presented a $78.5 million plan intended to block Asian carp, a hungry, huge, nonnative fish, from invading the Great Lakes. The threat has grown increasingly tense throughout the region in recent months as genetic material from the fish was found near and even in Lake Michigan.
In a meeting in Washington with leaders of some Great Lakes states, officials from the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other agencies laid out an “Asian Carp Control Strategy Framework” to ensure that the fish, known to take over entire ecosystems, do not establish themselves in the lakes. The state officials said they appreciated that the federal government was stepping in, but at least one said the plan did not go far enough.
So far, DNA material— but no actual fish— has been found in Lake Michigan, and federal officials want to improve the search with additional physical and sonar monitoring, faster testing, more nets, electric shocks, and other measures.
The plan, which would be paid for mostly with federal money already promised to Great Lakes restoration efforts, calls for new barriers to prevent flooding that might allow the spread of the fish. It also seeks completion of a third electric barrier aimed at preventing the fish, which have already made homes in the Mississippi River system, from traveling through the waterways that lead to the Great Lakes.
The plan suggests that navigational locks along those waterways, which connect to Lake Michigan and are crucial to commercial barge traffic in the Chicago area, could be opened less often than they are now as a way to slow the carp.
Governor Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan, a Democrat who attended the meeting, said the measures were inadequate, particularly the notion of opening the locks less frequently. “They just need to shut the locks down, at least temporarily,” Ms. Granholm said in a telephone interview after the meeting. She added that some type of modified schedule for closing the locks would hardly stop the fish from swimming.
Everyone agrees that the carp should be kept out of the Great Lakes, which contain 20 percent of the world’s freshwater, but economic interests appear to have divided state officials.
Leaders from Michigan and other states point to the risks the carp pose to the fishing industry here, valued at $7 billion a year. But officials in Chicago worry about closing waterways between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River because of a barge industry that carries millions of tons of gravel, coal, cement, and salt along that path.
Governor Patrick J. Quinn of Illinois, a Democrat, described Monday’s meeting as “productive” and said he looked “forward to working with all parties to protect the Great Lakes.”
But Mike Cox, the Michigan attorney general who has filed a lawsuit against Illinois and other parties demanding that the locks be closed, was critical. He described the federal plans as “half-measures and gimmicks” inclined toward Chicago’s wishes. “President Obama proved today that he’ll do anything to protect the narrow interests of his home state of Illinois,” said Mr. Cox, a Republican who is running for governor, “even if it means destroying Michigan’s economy.”
Rico says electric shocks should be applied to those idiots who let these stupid carp go in the first place...

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