Alot to Carp About...

We're welcoming a guest post today, from River Alliance aquatic invasive species chief Laura MacFarland, alerting all you readers to a very scary threat to the Great Lakes--Asian Carp. These huge, hungry invaders are something right out of a river horror movie, and action is needed to get the authorities that be to do what needs to be done (isn't it always?...) to stop the Carp's spread. Read on, river rats, read on...

"The Army Corps and Notre Dame University has detected DNA evidence of Asian Carp ABOVE the electric barriers in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, the Cal-Sag Channel and the Calumet River. That means the fish could be within 6 miles of Lake Michigan with only navigational locks (insufficient barriers) standing in their way.

The River Alliance of Wisconsin is writing the Council of Great Lakes Governors to encourage them to ask the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency, which will allow Federal agencies to enact emergency measures to prevent the invasion of Asian carp from the Chicago Shipping and Sanitary Canal into Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes.

The federal government must declare a state of emergency, so that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Coast Guard have the authority to do what is necessary to stop the Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes. This is the opportune time for such measures because of the planned shut down of the electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal for maintenance, and due to recently revealed hydrological connections between the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (CSSC) with the Des Plaines River and the Illinois & Michigan Canal (I & M Canal) during high flows and possibly low flows as well.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/70573047.html

Call your member of Congress AND the Director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and urge them to:

- Tell the Corps to immediately close all controlling locks in Chicago waterways that lead to Lake Michigan.

- Tell the Corps to take any and all monitoring and control efforts to keep the Asian carp at bay and the Great Lakes safe.

- The risk is too great to delay taking action, we must act today to save the Great Lakes from this devastating invasive species.

To reach your member of US Congress, you may call the Capitol Switchboard at: 202-224-3121

To reach IL DNR Director Marc Miller, you may call 217-785-0075"

Sacrificing rivers? And why not a lake or six, too?

Rat has been reading with great interest the most recent issue of The Flow, the River Alliance's newsletter. This issue is all about the connection between food, farming and rivers. Lot's of intriguing stuff in there...not the least of all the comment made by a "high level" state official, who thinks, “We may have to sacrifice a few rivers to grow the food we need to grow.” Well, at least now we know where some of our "leaders" stand, I suppose.

I was a little suspect when I read in there that, "Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't" -- "it" being a lot of groundwater pumping for agriculture drying up lakes and rivers in sandy central Wisconsin. For the Rat, it's obvious -- you pump a bunch of water through big wells, you're bound to dry up the nearby lakes and rivers that depend on that very same groundwater.

Wisconsin Public Television's latest entry in water issues takes on the delusion, expressed in their piece by a potato farmer, that we have plenty of water and don't worry, be happy. In central Wisconsin, we have a case of good science undermining the myth and, implicitly asking, "Whose water is it, anyway?" Watch and learn: http://wpt2.org/npa/IW808.CFM

Great Great Lakes Reporting

Zebra mussels getting cozy (too cozy) in Lake Keesus in Waukesha County
(photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Of all the laments about the demise of the daily newspaper, one of the most salient is the loss of good, factual, analytical reporting. For all their ubiquity (and their iniquities), Rat fully understands that blogs – even this one – are not journalism.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Dan Egan served up some fine reporting lately, however – reporting with a bit of an edge. In the October 27 edition, Egan asked the question that’s gotta be asked: what will $475 million of federal money for saving the Great Lakes really get us? Probably not what’s needed most – enforcement of existing laws. Read the sobering conclusion from his reporting here.

He keeps up the drumbeat in a follow-up story zeroing on invasive critters that hitchhike from foreign ports and get dumped into the Great Lakes, the most infamous of which is the zebra mussel.

To Egan’s point again: the zebra mussel is out of the barn door (can you say that?), and the new federal largess won’t touch this problem. In this case, it’s not the lack of enforcement, but a lack of good laws in the first place to keep nasty bilge water from being dumped in the Great Lakes.

Rat can’t imagine why a relatively tiny industry like Great Lakes shippers have such a grip on the tillers of Congress and state legislatures. (It’s not like they’re running casinos.)

Yet, lawmakers continue to refuse to regulate these ships. Their cargo could get moved around the Great Lakes by train or truck cheaper anyway. What gives? Maybe they're swept up in the romance of the high seas. Maybe they're in the hip pocket of the zebra mussel lobby. Or maybe they've listened to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald one too many times and have lost all perspective. We might never know why they're so reticent to regulate this industry and the many menaces it's responsible for dumping in the Great Lakes. But we do know one thing...

....better start getting used to zebra mussels...and little else... in Wisconsin's inland waters...

Asian Carp: The Stuff of River Rat Nightmares

Action Needed: Contact your federal Representative, Senators and the Army
Corps immediately - read on for more information and how to get involved.

Oh, how this river rat wishes this was just a spooky Halloween tale! One good rain event and Asian carp could get into our Great Lakes and Wisconsin’s rivers, if action is not taken immediately to stop them.

Why should you care?
These bad boys are quite frankly the guests from hell. They're big, agressive and destructive. Sometimes weighing as much as 100 pounds, they are voracious predators, chomping down on everything in sight, muscling out smaller, less assertive native fish, and altering native habitat. They've also developed an espcially nasty party trick: when startled, silver and bighead carp leap straight out of the water into the air, often landing in boats, rattling boaters, even knocking teeth and jaws loose on occasion.

Currently, an electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (CSSC) is all that prevents the fish from spreading into the Great Lakes. Recently discovered just a mile from the barrier, the carp have also been found in waterways less than 100 feet from the canal, and could bypass the barrier completely if a heavy rain causes the Des Plaines River to flood. A barrier, by the way, that has been installed with many, many of your pretty pennies that I would hate to see go to waste.

There are three emergency actions that Army Corp of Engineers can take this fall to further prevent Asian Carp from entering the Great Lakes. ACE should ensure that:

1. An emergency physical barrier (like sandbags) be built between the Des Plaines and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to ensure the Des Plaines River and live carp cannot flood into the CSSC past the electrical barrier.
   
   
2. An additional barrier (such as a bubble/acoustic barrier) is installed to stop the carp from migrating upstream into the Des Plaines River.
   
   
3. Critical sections of the I&M Canal be filled in, so that carp cannot swim into the CSSC during floods.

What should you do? Make your voice heard to elected officials!

First, follow this link to learn more about this threat and the emergency actions that should be taken.

Next, reach out and touch someone: namely your elected officials and the Army Corps of Engineers. Give them a call, write them a letter, email them - whatever works for you, just let them know you care about this and want action.

Ask your member of Congress and two Senators to tell the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take the immediate emergency actions above to stop Asian carp from getting into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal during a flood.

Contacting your US Representative and Senators:
Find your representative online here and your senators here
-or-
Call 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected to your Representative's and Senators' offices.


Contacting the Army Corps of Engineers:
Contact Ms. Jo Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works).
Tell her that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must take immediate emergency action to ensure Asian carp cannot get into the Great Lakes during a flood. Assistant Secretary Darcy can be reached at (703) 697-8986 or by writing 108 Army Pentagon, Room 3E446, Washington, DC 20310-0108.


posted by the River Rat

Rogue River, OR: A little wilder and a lot more scenic

A free-flowing river where the Savage Rapids dam once stood. Photo credit: Jeff Barnard/AP Photo

The wild and scenic Rogue River has become even wilder with the demolition of a dam that had hindered passage of salmon and steelhead to their spawning grounds for 88 years. The removal caps an epic, nasty and expensive 21-year battle that pitted local irrigators against a dwindling population of wild salmon - it's a familiar sad song out west where one can still spot the "I eat spotted owls for breakfsat" bumper stickers on the occasional pickup truck bumper.

Read the full AP report here.

posted by the River Rat

Groundwater Guys

Rat has been most gRATifed with the River Alliance's steady stream of insights about all that's happening with groundwater in Wisconsin. (Check out their newsletter here).

We learned in a fundraising letter from River Alliance in recent days that two guys -- from different parts of the state, with different interests and different approaches -- share a common concern for the fate of the vast underground water world we know as Wisconsin groundwater.

Stu Grimstad is an avid trout angler and Trout Unlimited activist. He knows streams and hydrogeomorphology better than many people who have diplomas big enough to hold that word. He's been an intrepid watchdog for many streams in central Wisconsin, especially lately the Little Plover River (dried up for the fourth year in a row from groundwater pumping), and the Isherwood Lateral, a pathetic little stream-turned-drainage-ditch that Stu and others in Portage County are committed to restoring with the help of farmers Justin and Lynn Isherwood.

Chuck Wagner is well beyond Jobian patience when it comes to the perennial dose of manure his drinking water gets at his rural Kewaunee County home. Yet he soldiers on with many others in the five-county region of northeastern Wisconsin who live on top of so-called "karst" geologic features, which makes groundwater very vulnerable to contamination by the many wastes (cow, human, industrial) spread on farmland. He's a Kewaunee County supervisor and he's involved with River Alliance and many other groups promoting legislation to stem the flow of contamination to Chuck's well and scores of other people like him.

It's good to know that there are regular Chucks and Stus out there working to make sure Wisconsin fresh waters are clean and available. We're all the better for them.

The "Right" to Put Poo in Your Water

Water on the left taken from a Luxemburg, WI
tap in the spring of 2008.
(photo courtesy of Chuck Wagner)

For most of this year, several conservation groups with whom Rat is very familiar have been working to get a bill rolling in the Wisconsin Legislature to prevent people's wells from getting contaminated by manure and other liquid wastes spread on farmland, especially in the 5 counties of northeastern Wisconsin.

You propose such an idea and your draw out the heavy artillery of the dairy industry, especially the Dairy Business Association. As they almost always are, farmers have been effective in scaring legislators into thinking this proposal will put them out of business, restrict their "right to farm," and other overstated calamities. It seems that poisoned wells just can't hold a scented candle to farmers' "right" to spread their own manure and septic, industrial and muncipal wastes.

But that artillery has been really tested this week by a small army: Michael Pollan and the New York Times. Pollan, who appears in Madison this week, has riled up Big Agriculture with his critique of industrial farming systems and industrial food, and the fact that the University of Wisconsin provoked the debate by giving away one of Pollan's books to students too.

Rat was especially pleased to see the Times' piece about dirty wells in Brown County, Wisconsin -- not pleased, of course, that these poor folks' wells have been fouled, but hopeful that the national media attention may shame lawmakers to finally act to protect their own constituents' drinking water.