Dear Governor: People in Michigan like to talk about their cultural and natural jewels. And there is no jewel more symbolic or more important than our Great Lakes. If the domestic auto industry weakens, we can change our economy.
If we ruin or permanently damage the lakes, Michigan will never recover, and you now can, and must, do something about it. Here’s the deal. There’s a new deadly virus that causes fish to bleed to death. The virus, which probably came here from Europe, so far has killed fish in Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Lake St. Clair.
More than likely, it came here inside some fish that was in some freighter’s ballast water. And if we aren’t careful, another ship’s ballast water will soon bring the virus to Lakes Huron, Michigan and Superior.
The federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service was so worried about this that it temporarily blocked imports of live fish from any of the Great Lakes states. That would have been a devastating economic blow to the region’s fish farmers, and was later relaxed to allow some exports under much tighter rules.
However, the real danger is that the virus may spread. Accordingly, the Michigan Natural Resources Commission wants the federal government to order an emergency ban on freighters filling their ballast water tanks from the virus- infected waters of Lake Erie, Ontario and St. Clair or the St. Lawrence River.
Scientists say that if we can control the ballast water, it may take decades for the virus to get into the upper Great Lakes – if it ever does at all. Otherwise, it will hitch a ride aboard some fish like the ever-present little goby, which itself arrived in ballast water.
Then we will be in real trouble. But commercial shipping interests don’t want to be inconvenienced. And Governor Granholm, you have yet to decide whether to join the push for the ballast water ban.
So, governor, hear me out. You just won re-election by a historic landslide. You have a mandate to do the right thing. Every indication is that saving the Great Lakes is politically popular. It might not be with large interests who could donate to a political campaign.
But thanks to term limits, you can’t run for governor again, ever. Even if you run for senate someday, being the governor who fought to save the lakes sounds to be like a pretty good platform to me.
When they rank our presidents, most historians put James Buchanan at the bottom. Not because he was a bad man. But because he did nothing to stop the coming of the Civil War.
I don’t think you want it said that you were the governor who did nothing to save our Great Lakes. We elected you to make the hard decisions, governor. Now please do the right thing.
Right on!
Posted by: Margaret Dochoda | December 06, 2006 at 08:56 AM
Hear Hear! At some point, common sense and our children's children need to be driving policy.
Posted by: Andy McFarlane | December 06, 2006 at 09:16 AM
Right on, contd:
Unfortunately, however, stopping ballast transfer from the lower lakes to the upper will only slow and not stop the spread of VHS: fish swim, e.g., salmon stocked in Lake Erie are reported in Lake Michigan; walleye move regularly between Saginaw Bay and Lake St. Clair.
It would be great if ships could do their best to not spread VHS among the Great Lakes, however our ship-ballast priorities should be two-fold:
(1) stop import of new species into the Great Lakes. There are more to come, e.g., scientists predict we will one day greet Europe's Dikerogammarus villosus, which is feared may quickly munch through recently rehabilitated mayfly propulations. (Mayflies are an important fish food. The Great Lakes are already losing other important fish foods, e.g., Diporiea.)
(2) stop export of Great Lakes species elsewhere. Our valued species are exotic if introduced to other ecosystems. In addition, the Great Lakes now have two rather unique pests and pathogens that could be introduced to east coast or European harbors by infected fish taken up in the ballast water of ships, e.g., our particularly virulent strain of VHS (kills many fish species), the parasite Heterosporis (renders many fish species unpalatable). (The Herpes virus EEDV (kills young lake trout) is also unique to the Great Lakes, but lake trout are less likely, I think, to be taken up in ballast water.)
Canada and the United States have spent billions cleaning up Great Lakes pollution, controlling sea lamprey, and attempting to rebuild devastated fish stocks. We should be enjoying fruits of these efforts, but instead GLs aquatic communities are reeling from one invader after another. Invasions like extinctions are permanent changes, and unfortunately, as Andy and Jack wrote, exotic species such as sea lamprey and zebra mussels and VHS are now part of our childrens' inheritance...
Posted by: Margaret Dochoda | December 06, 2006 at 11:45 AM