OPINION

Editorial: Inviting invasion on Great Lakes

EDITORIAL BOARD
BATTLE CREEK ENQUIRER

Aquatic invasive species pose huge threats to the Great Lakes, but they have no impact on national security, and legislation dealing with this menace has no place in the defense budget. Congressional Republicans, however, have different ideas.

Margaret Schupp displays zebra mussels that have latched on to a small twig on the shore of Fair Hills resort on Pelican Lake in Minnesota in July 2011.

The party that once promised to end the practice of attaching riders to “must-pass legislation” last month opened a line of attack on EPA regulatory oversight of the shipping industry.

Tucked in the $602 billion defense bill is a provision that would exempt ballast water discharge from the Clean Water Act, conveying regulatory authority to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which has been under a court order to tighten ballast regulation, would lose all authority on the issue. The bill also would nullify state oversight.

The House passed the bill in May, surreptitiously adding the “Vessel Incidental Discharge Act” — which failed to win support in October — without debate or even a voice vote.

Defenders of the Great Lakes are apoplectic.

“The Great Lakes are already reeling from the impacts of invasive species that have completely changed the ecosystem for the worse,” Rebecca Riley, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “A new invasive species transported in ballast water was just observed in San Francisco Bay last week — it’s an ominous precursor to Great Lakes arrivals that could occur as a result of this cave to special interests.”

People who live, work and play in the Great Lakes basin know well the threat invasive species and the role that ballast water plays in their spread.

Ships use ballast tanks filled with water to add stability at sea or while loading or unloading cargo. Purging those tanks releases untold number of aquatic species — including viruses – into new environments where they often thrive.

The infamous zebra mussel, native to lakes in southern Russia, has wreaked havoc on lakes throughout the Midwest, disrupting ecosystems and damaging harbors, boats, water treatment systems and power plants.

It’s just one of hundreds of species introduced to the lakes that have contributed extinction of native species and cost taxpayers billions in remediation efforts and economic impact.

A 2008 study by the Center for Aquatic Conservation at the University of Notre Dame and a University of Wyoming economics professor estimated the loss to commercial fishing, sport fishing and water supply in the Great Lakes region from ship-borne invasive species at $200 million annually.

The shipping industry, long resistant to tighter restrictions on ballast water discharge, is trying to protect its losses, as well, and has been pushing for the legislation for the past year.

Proponents say conflicting requirements across state and federal jurisdictions place an onerous burden on the industry and hurt commerce. The provision’s sponsor, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California, wants to give the U.S. Coast Guard sole authority to bring about consistency.

“There has to be one single federal rule that everybody’s required to go by,” Hunter told The Associated Press.

Call us skeptical. While we are sympathetic to the challenge of businesses navigating numerous bureaucratic requirements, we suspect that pressure on the EPA to mandate on-board treatment systems is behind this push.

The necessity of such regulation is certainly open for debate, but that’s the point. This is legislation that should rise or fall on its own merits rather than being attached to another bill.

The Senate can stop this by passing a defense budget without the provision, and we encourage it to do so. The health of Great Lakes is too important to our economy and quality of life to be compromised by political subterfuge.