Oberstar Taking Fight to Invasive Species

This is a long article from the Duluth News Tribune today, that focuses on invasive species that are infecting/affecting our lakes, and Great Lakes as well.

Invasive species targeted
John Myers Duluth News Tribune
Published Sunday, December 31, 2006
The incoming chairman of the U.S. House committee that oversees ports and shipping vows to head the federal government’s strongest action ever to regulate ships’ ballast water and thwart invasive species.

U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., soon to be chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said he’ll hold hearings in coming months.

He promised to pass a bill in 2007 ordering ships to treat their ballast water to ensure that foreign species can’t be moved into U.S. waters or spread between the Great Lakes.
Zebra mussels.
Zebra mussels.
On the day a Michigan law targeting ballast water takes effect, and on the heels of a federal judge’s order that ballast water be regulated as water pollution, it’s the strongest sign yet the federal government will act on invasive species.

“We were in a position to start taking action in the 1980s and early 1990s, and we could have stopped many of these species from coming in,” Oberstar said in a recent interview with the News Tribune. But opponents to ballast regulations “said there wasn’t the technology. They said it was too expensive. They said it wasn’t enforceable and that we needed more science. Bullshit. We don’t need any more scientific certainty. We know how adversely these species have affected the Great Lakes. It’s time to take action.”

Oberstar called invasive species the top threat to Great Lakes ecosystems and among the nation’s most-pressing environmental problems.

“Mercury [pollution] is a problem. But mercury doesn’t reproduce. Viruses reproduce. Zebra mussels reproduce. Lamprey reproduce. We have to stop that chain now or we’ll lose control,” Oberstar said. “We’re going to move a bill that has strong enforcement of ballast water to stop the destruction of one-fifth of the world’s fresh water. … If the president vetoes it, it will be on his grave marker, not mine.”

Stars aligning for action

The ballast water issue, simmering for decades, has started boiling. The signs:

* Last year a federal judge ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to start regulating ballast water under the federal Clean Water Act by September 2008.

* A new Michigan law that demands permits for saltwater ships takes effect Monday. If ships exchange ballast, they’re required to treat it to kill exotic species. Experts predict a showdown over jurisdiction.

* On July 1, a Washington state law will begin requiring state permits for ships entering state waters and requiring ballast water exchange outside state borders. California and Oregon have similar laws intended to add teeth to existing federal policy. Minnesota and Wisconsin haven’t taken any action on ballast water to stem invasive species.

* A new exotic species has emerged in the Great Lakes in the past year, killing fish across wide areas. Viral hemorrhagic septicemia — or VHS — has infected 27 species, killing fish from Lake St. Clair near Detroit into Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River and a New York lake. The saltwater virus is expected to spread west, possibly devastating native fish stocks in Lake Superior within years.

More than 20 years after zebra mussels invaded the Great Lakes, the emergence of a virus that can quickly kill native fish has pushed the issue of invasive species control into a new era of urgency.

“We support what Michigan has done, because Congress has dragged its feet for 20 years,” said Jordan Lubetkin, spokesman for the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes office. “But we really need a national solution, and it appears the stars may finally be about to align to get that. People are fed up with things like VHS killing fish. Fishermen are fed up. And this isn’t just about the Great Lakes. We’re talking Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf Coast and San Francisco Bay.”

Industry officials agree, although a fight is likely on the timeframe and methods. The shipping industry would have to spend millions of dollars to comply.

“I think we’re seeing the heat being turned up, mostly because of the change in leadership in Congress,” said Steve Fisher, executive director of the American Great Lakes Ports Association. “The Democrats appear more willing to take action on this. If this new momentum leads to federal legislation, that would be great. Our industry has been pleading for a federal law.”

The emergence of VHS also adds a controversial wrinkle to ballast water regulation, Fisher said. Michigan’s law and past federal proposals have focused on saltwater vessels. But with VHS already in the Great Lakes, protections would only work if they also applied to lakers — vessels that never leave the Great Lakes.

“We’re talking a whole new issue here that’s going to have huge ramifications,” Fisher said. “Imagine if someone decides that VHS has to be stopped and that we can’t move ballast around in the lakes? That kills your taconite industry and the Iron Range overnight.”

INVASIVE HITCHHIKERS

Ballast water is used to help balance ships so they float evenly and steer better. Ships can carry more than 2 million gallons of ballast water that must be moved quickly into and out of tanks as they unload or take on a load.

There are at least 183 invasive species in the Great Lakes, and scientists say the majority got here hitchhiking in ships’ ballast. A new invasive species is found in the lakes every 28 weeks, on average.

But it’s far from just a Great Lakes issue.

The U.S. Geological Service estimates that 45,000 vessels globally are moving some 7,000 different species in their ballast on any given day. Experts say there are now more foreign species in San Francisco Bay than native species.

Industry officials note that, even if all shipping ended, exotic species still would invade U.S waters.

The mean-looking snakehead fish found in East Coast waterways recently was imported by Asian chefs as a delicacy that needs to be transported live. The giant, leaping Asian carp now thriving in the Mississippi River system and threatening to enter the Great Lakes is spreading without any help from ships. Imported to the U.S. by fish farmers to clean fish holding ponds, it escaped during floods.

“We’d like to see comprehensive aquatic invasive species legislation, not just ballast water,” Lubetkin said. “It’s impossible to talk about restoring the Great Lakes if you don’t stop invasive species.”

Testing ballast treatment

Shipping industry leaders say nearly 40 companies have developed on-ship technology to treat ballast water. Several of those products are expected to be available to ship owners in coming months.

In the Twin Ports, the Great Ships Initiative is working to test ballast treatment in the lab at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, in giant on-land tanks being built near Barker’s Island and on vessels later this year. The effort is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Great Lakes port authorities.

“We expect to get something [in a ship] on the water this spring,” Fisher said. “We have several vendors who say they are almost there with the technology. We just want to make sure it really works before someone spends $1 million on something.”

While the Michigan law requires one of four specific technologies — two chemical treatments, ultra-violet light and deoxygenating water — Fisher said the best treatment may be by another means or a combination of methods to kill even microscopic organisms.

Other technologies are being tested at similar facilities in Key West, Fla.; Tacoma, Wash.; Norway and Singapore.

Duluth scientist Gary Glass, a former EPA researcher, said the solution might be easier and less expensive than previously believed. Glass envisions a system that would use chlorine to kill organisms inside the ballast tanks of ships and then use sulfur dioxide to render the chlorine harmless before it’s released into a harbor.

Whatever technology is used, environmentalists say it’s up to the federal government to set a standard that will keep everything from new viruses to mussels to ruffe out of U.S. waters.

“The industry has had 20 years to do something on their own. The time has come for the government to set a strict standard and then hold the industry to it,” Lubetkin said.

But Jim Sharrow, the Seaway Port Authority of Duluth’s facilities manager, said it may be impossible to kill 100 percent of invasive species.

“Hospitals aren’t even 100 percent sterile,” he said. “You can get close. But trying to make a [ship’s ballast] totally sterile, that may not happen.”