New York Times Editorial: Great Lakes Rescue

New York Times Editorial: Great Lakes Rescue
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: August 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/opinion/01tue3.html?th&emc=th


Barack Obama, of Illinois, is the first president since Michigan’s Gerald Ford to come from a heartland state that depends heavily on the Great Lakes for its economic well-being. Hopes have thus been raised that the Great Lakes will at last get the help they need.

The Clean Water Act of 1972 did much to stop direct discharges from industries and municipal sewage systems. But the lakes still suffer — from lingering industrial pollution, toxics like mercury, deteriorating wetlands and, more recently, invasive species that have devastated the fishing industry and fouled shorelines.

In response, the Environmental Protection Agency will soon roll out recovery programs known collectively as the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. In June, the House gave the program the entire $475 million the White House wanted. The Senate should do likewise.

This is a small down payment on a project that could ultimately cost $20 billion. But it is an important start that will be administered by one agency, the E.P.A., in an effort to avoid the scattershot funding that undermined earlier restoration efforts.

Many of the tasks that lie ahead are easily identified, and some are “shovel-ready,” awaiting only an infusion of federal energy and money. But nobody has found the answer to what has become the lakes’ biggest and most complex enemy — the invasive species.

The worst is the quagga mussel, a fingernail-sized shellfish that made its way to the lakes on an ocean freighter. First documented in Lake Erie in 1989, these tiny creatures now carpet the lake floor and filter out the tiny organisms at the bottom of the food chain with such efficiency that there is little left for bigger fish. Species vital to local economies — like salmon and whitefish — are disappearing. Recreational fishing in Lake Huron has nearly collapsed. Lake Michigan could be next.

The hope is that a truce of sorts can someday be reached between native species and the exotics. But that will not happen unless new invasions stop — which will require sterilizing the ballast of overseas freighters or, possibly, closing the lakes to foreign shipping.

That would be a radical step, but not irrational. It seems increasingly clear that the economic damage from exotic species outweighs the benefits of allowing polluting ocean ships into the Great Lakes.