Governor Jennifer Granholm and Attorney General Mike Cox don't like each other much, but they have a few things in common. Both came out of nowhere to be elected Michigan attorney general, and soon started thinking about running for governor.
And both think the federal government isn't doing nearly enough to stop Asian carp from getting into the Great Lakes.
Yesterday, the White House held what was billed as an Asian carp summit, to figure out how to deal with these fish, they've been migrating north ever since they accidentally got into the Mississippi River in Arkansas, about twenty years ago.
It would be hard to exaggerate their potential threat to the Great Lakes. There are two varieties. The bighead carp is an ugly fish that can get up to four feet long and weigh a hundred pounds. The silver carp are slightly smaller, but have a distressing habit of jumping. They have knocked boaters unconscious and broken bones. Worse, these fish multiply rapidly, and suck up most of the plankton other fish need to survive.
Experts differ on how quickly they could establish themselves in the Great Lakes. But it is clear that if they do, it could wipe out the fishing industry, which is worth something like $7 billion a year.
We can't take chances, in other words. Now, we should have seen this coming. For years, Asian carp have been working their way north. But now, silver carp DNA has been found in Lake Michigan near Chicago, though no fish themselves have been found yet.
Michigan officials wanted a series of artificial locks connecting the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to Lake Michigan closed, permanently. Illinois and Chicago officials oppose this, saying that would hurt their economy. President Obama is from Illinois, and he sided with them. Ever since, Attorney General Cox, a Republican, has been bashing the President. Governor Granholm has to be far more circumspect about this, but it is plain she disagrees too. However, it is worth noting that the U.S. Supreme Court, which can hardly be accused of doing Obama's bidding, also refused to close the locks.
Yesterday, the federal government did propose a $78 million plan to try and keep the carp out. This would not in fact be new money, but money intended to improve the lakes in other ways. The government intends to build new barriers to try and stop the fish.
They also intend to improve efforts to search for the carp. While it seems likely that some fish have strayed into Lake Michigan, experts say it would take several hundred to establish a permanent breeding population. So it may still be possible to stop them.
I am by no means an expert in aquatic biology, but I do know something about politics and people, and here's what I think.
Our only hope to save the lakes ecology from being destroyed by these creatures is eternal vigilance; we need to forget political grandstanding and stop looking for one-step solutions.
We need to fund and put in place a host of federal, state and regional measures designed to keep out the carp. That is, unless you would rather explain to your grandchildren over one more carp dinner that there were once perch and walleye in the Great Lakes too.
The locks and the unnaturally-linked connections between Lake Michigan, the Chicago River, the Des Plaines and Calumet Rivers and even the Fox River system are all under the control and supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard and the EPA, among a smattering of other federal agencies. Those are all Article II-empowered agencies; all under the direct control of none other than the President of the United States.
President Barack Obama has the clear Constitutional power to take decisive action in this case; he has chosen not to.
For someone like Jack Lessenberry to hint that just maybe the U.S. Supreme Court should have acted to save the Great Lakes from the President's inaction is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who passed high school civics. President Obama didn't merely look to the Supreme Court for a decision; he had his Solicitor General Elena Kagan actively fight with the Attorneys General from Wisconsin and Michigan over the matter.
And to read the Solicitor General's brief, she states, on the President's behalf, that the Supreme Court had no power to insert itself in the matter via a motion to reopen an 80 year-old case on the operation of the locks. (A new lawsuit might ultimately succeed, though not through lack of opposition coming from the Obama Administration. The Supreme Court, in the case arcanely known as "Matters No. 1, 2 and 3," simply did not reopen an old case for the purposes sought. The Supreme Court, very much unlike Obama, did not reach the merits; those merits have not yet been tried in a trial court.
(Newsflash for Jack Lessenberry; the U.S. Supreme Court does not act as a super legislature. It does not function to cure stupid acts or omissions on the part of the President or Congress. The Court accepts appeals from the states and lower federal courts. It intervenes in legislation, occasionally, via judicial review, when the legislation offends Constitutional principles. The situation with the Asian carp requires a smart, tough Executive, and a Congress that cares about the Great Lakes. Not a court.)
Michiganians and all of the Great Lakes population, in the U.S. and Canada, can safely and accurately blame the current standoff on Barack Obama. No one else. He leads the agencies that control the waterways in question.
And the next time that anyone, like Jack Lessenberry, tries to shift blame to the U.S. Supreme Court, you can point them to the Constitution of the United States, and the briefs recently filed in the Supreme Court, and say, "Nice try; you might think it fashionable to blame the Court, but this one is all on Obama."
Posted by: Anonymous | February 09, 2010 at 04:50 PM
Mr Lessenberry,
I don't know much about politics but I have a suggestion if anybody thinks it might be worthwhile. Just about the best way to make anything endangered is to give it value. In the Asian carp case, market value. We use thousands of tons of fish meal every year for animal feed and fertilizer. Asian countries use thousands of tons of fish meal for human consumption too. Why couldn't we overfish this population of Asian carp into extinction? Wouldn't the domestic animal, farm animal and poultry industry be interested in this resource? Isn't fish meal something we could export to cash rich China? May be this is too simple a solution and there is something wrong in my thinking, but it seems logical.
Posted by: Mike Rawson | February 10, 2010 at 03:43 PM
Carpus Obamus?
I’ve been thinking that since our President refuses to take steps that would absolutely prevent the spread of silver/big head carp into the great lakes, the very least the State of Michigan can do is to commemorate this soon to arrive species by naming it after the administration that made its Great Lakes appearance possible. This would probably get a lot of publicity and is something that should be kept right in the admin’s face as well as the voters (all great lakes states). How would this Carp’s appearance in the great lakes affect his chance of re-election? I’d bet no WI, MI, OH, NY?, IN … He’d be toast! I have a hunch they'd be super sensitive on anything like this. Maybe you can launch a contest to come up with a suitable name?
Posted by: Matt | February 10, 2010 at 04:11 PM