Michigan News
(2010-02-25)
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T. J. O’Brien Lock and Dam on the Calumet River, which is part of the Illinois Waterway. The dam is located in Burnham, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
(U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual Library)
Asian Carp are huge, hungry, and since one species tends to jump out of the water, they can also be dangerous.
At a Senate subcommittee hearing chaired by Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, most agreed that the fish should be stopped. The disagreement is over how to do that.
Michigan officials want to close shipping locks near Chicago. But officials in Illinois and Indiana say that will hurt business, and increase the risk of flooding.
Andy Buchsbaum of the National Wildlife Federation says the locks shouldn't be the focus.
"I would suggest that the more we focus on lock closures as the lead thing to happen, the more it's difficult to get the focus on where it needs to be, on this channel by channel plan," he says.
Buchsbaum says there are five separate channels where Asian Carp could enter the lakes. In the short term, he favors closing the locks. But he says that won't stop the fish long term.
Contact Dustin Dwyer at dtdwyer@umich.edu.
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