Asian Carp Framework Still Not A Clear Plan

With great fanfare, the federal and state agencies who are now calling themselves the “Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee” (formerly known as the “Rapid Response Group”) released a new document on Monday they call the “Asian Carp Control Strategy Framework.”  That’s a mouthful…  much like the document itself, which includes a laundry list of 32 different potential actions -- some of which the agencies are already doing, others of which they may (or may not) decide to do in the future – which the agencies say is a “unparalleled effort” to stop the Asian carp.

Sounds good, right?  Except… what does it all mean?

It’s hard to tell.  The Framework generally identifies the tools in the agencies’ toolboxes.  But it still does not include a clear plan that will actually work.

What’s missing?  The specifics.  Which agency actions will be used in which combinations, and along which timeframes?  How do all 32 potential agency actions fit into a larger strategy that is rationally designed to attack the problem urgently with the goal of solving permanently?

We still don’t have that from these agencies…  and we may not have much time.

With week after week bringing more environmental DNA evidence that Asian carp have made it past electric barriers and entered the Chicago canal system, the agencies need to implement short-term “zero tolerance” strategies to ensure both that carp do not continue to breach the electric barriers, and that any carp swimming north of the electric barriers cannot establish a breeding population in Lake Michigan.

At the same time, the agencies’ efforts need to move as soon as possible toward the only permanent long-term solution to this problem:  physically separating the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River Basin so that the Chicago canal system can no longer serve as a “superhighway” for invasive species to travel between the two ecosystems.

Unfortunately, the Framework appears to be a document whose contents were politically negotiated, rather than scientifically based.

Take, for example, the controversial idea that the Army Corps of Engineers should close, on a temporary basis, the navigational locks leading from the Chicago waterways to Lake Michigan, in order to impede the progress of any Asian carp swimming in Chicago waterways to buy us time to move toward permanent solutions.  Much has been made in the media about how the Framework includes, for the first time, a statement from the Army Corps that it is considering closing the locks some of the time. 

These are both significant caveats.  The Army Corps has not committed to make any changes to lock operations, and even with the changes it now says it’s considering, it’s not clear why any of them will be expected to work.  If the Army Corps closes the locks one week out of every month, or three days out of every week, or some other half-measure, why will that strategy actually work, if the locks are open the rest of the time?  The Framework doesn’t say.

The Framework also includes a rehash of many of the same lines that the Army Corps has been using for months now:  that the locks leak and would not create a perfect barrier, and that closing the locks would cause serious harm to Chicago’s economy.

Pardon the pun, but neither of these reasons holds water.  No one has been saying that closing the locks is a perfect (or permanent) solution – only that it is one of a number of things that should be done as part of a rational response to an urgent threat.  Even if they wouldn’t create a perfect barrier, when closed the locks do hold back most of the water – that’s their function.  And if they wouldn’t work at all, why is the Army Corps now considering closing them?

The Army Corps’ economic arguments are equally suspicious.  As my colleague Henry Henderson pointed out last week, a new study by Professor John Taylor of Wayne State University filed by Michigan with the Supreme Court blows huge holes in these claims.  Taylor found that the economic impacts of lock closure had been significantly exaggerated by the Army Corps, because the Army Corps failed to account for the fact that a substantial amount of barge traffic would still continue even if the locks were closed.  Moreover, according to Taylor’s analysis, the closure of the locks would likely create jobs in Chicago – not reduce them. 

If the Framework were a document based on reason rather than politics, it would discuss these issues openly and honestly, in a way that explains how these agencies intend to solve this urgent problem in both the short term and the long term.  Sadly, it does not do this.

With the future of the Great Lakes hanging in the balance, we still don’t know if these agencies are up to the challenge of stopping the Asian carp.

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