Great Lakes Are Down In The Count When It Comes To Invasive Species

Saturday opened the first weekend of the baseball season and an excellent article in the New York Times on the government’s weak attempts to hit invasive species out of the park (or at least out of the Great Lakes). I’m afraid that we’ve used up one strike already, and we could easily whiff on the next two pitches.

Here’s why this metaphor is less strained that you’d think.

Strike one was the Coast Guard ballast water rules reported on by the Times. Twenty-two years after zebra mussels colonized the Great Lakes, the Coast Guard finally issues rules designed to keep out invasive species. Those rules are a step in the right direction (they actually require ships to install measures to treat invasive species for the first time – imagine!). But the Coast Guard’s rules are too little, and much too delayed.

The Coast Guard’s weak ballast water rules still allow ships to discharge some invaders in their ballast, and as we all know, it only takes two critters to meet at the right time, and suddenly you have a breeding population. Equally bad, the rules allow some ships to avoid installing any treatment for nine more years –  until 2021. D’ya think the first 20 years would have been enough lead time?

Two more pitches are coming over plate next, and our batters aren’t looking so good. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a draft permit that’s not much better than the Coast Guard rule. The permit is not final, so the agency has the chance to improve it, and many of us have sent in comments (pdf) urging just that–for the EPA to make important improvements to the ballast water permit. But if the EPA doesn’t do an about face on the permit, then the Great Lakes will suffer a big Strike Two.

And the final pitch is how the states handle the EPA ballast water permit. Each of the Great Lakes states has the chance to add protections to the EPA permit when it is applied in state waters. Given how much states depend on the Great Lakes for drinking water, economic growth, and quality of life, you’d think that the states would be lining up to bolster protections against the invasion of non-native species like zebra mussels. But so far, the silence has been deafening—and the clock is ticking. The states have until May to certify the EPA permit. At least one state (Wisconsin) has said it only wants to apply the weak EPA/Coast Guard standards, cracking the door open for new invaders.

State inaction would be Strike Three. With apologies to “Casey At The Bat,” striking out would bring no joy to Mudville … or to the Great Lakes.

Tags: ballast water, Coast Guard, EPA, invasive species