GLIN==> Obama must act to halt Asian carp: editorial

PLAIN DEALER OPINION

Obama must act to halt Asian carp: editorial
By The Plain Dealer Editorial Board<http://connect.cleveland.com/user/clevepdedit/index.html>
May 31, 2010, 4:29AM
Enough with the disingenuous delays, the futile fish kills and the stonewalling. President Barack Obama needs to demand immediate action against a looming ecological disaster that threatens our nation's most precious freshwater assets.

Bighead and silver carp are spreading inexorably up the Mississippi River to the Illinois River and moving through the Chicago Waterway System toward Lake Michigan and the largest collection of freshwater lakes in the world. Only a temporary closure of the shipping locks can stop them now.

But instead of decisive action, there has been a White House summit (minus Obama). There has been a congressional hearing. There have been meetings that produced a 46-page Asian Carp Control Strategy Framework, with the proposal that the carp be used as food in U.S.-sponsored humanitarian relief efforts.
It is time to stop flip-flopping around this real and present danger to the Great Lakes' multibillion-dollar commercial and sports fishing industry. The only sure strategic response is to immediately shut the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal locks to Lake Michigan.

Ohio Sen. George Voinovich, backed by 11 of his colleagues, is urging the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to authorize the Army Corps of Engineers to achieve a physical separation of the waterways.

That missive comes on the heels of a letter to the Corps from the attorneys general of Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin criticizing a lack of inclusiveness and transparency by the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee. The attorneys general demand a permanent physical separation between the Chicago locks and Lake Michigan.

And the Great Lakes Commission, which represents eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces, has applied for a Joyce Foundation grant to study engineering solutions to achieve that end.
None of that sits well with Obama's Chicago shipping industry cronies, which might explain the president's unconscionable silence.

He needs to do the right thing: Close the locks immediately, initiate the needed studies for a permanent solution and have appropriate state and federal agencies design a new infrastructure to move goods and people and address the subsidiary wastewater-management and flood-control issues. And he needs to do it now.


Kristy Meyer, M.S.
Director of Agriculture & Clean Water Programs
Ohio Environmental Council
1207 Grandview Ave., Ste. 201
Columbus, OH 43212
Direct Phone: (614) 487-5842
OEC Phone: (614) 487-7506
Kristy at theOEC.org
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