The report found that it would take as few as 10 male and 10 female Asian carp to establish a reproducing population in the Great Lakes. Read the report here.

The Canadian study came as scientists in the U.S. continue to find Asian carp DNA in waters connected to Lake Michigan — well beyond an electric barrier that was supposed to halt its advance toward the Great Lakes.

“This report underscores the severity of the threat Asian carp threat and the need for leadership so that we can solve the problem once and for all,” said Andy Buchsbaum, director of National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Regional Center. ”The Asian carp are moving toward the Great Lakes far faster than the government response, and this report shows that the cost of inaction will be devastating. President Obama and Gov. Romney need to declare that they will take the necessary action to build an effective physical barrier to keep the Asian carp out of the Great Lakes.” Read the Great Lakes Pledge here.

Asian carp were imported to commercial fish farms in Arkansas in the 1960s. They escaped into the Mississippi River system in the 1980s and have been swimming up the river, toward Lake Michigan and Lake Erie.

Asian carp breed like mosquitoes, eat like hogs and leap out of the water when disturbed by the sound of boat motors.

Although Asian carp could live in all of the Great Lakes, the Canadian study concluded that the invaders would have major ecological impacts in lakes Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario. Asian carp would transform the ecosystems in those lakes, disrupt native fisheries and create new food webs, according to the study. Other findings were:

– Chicago area waterways and canals are the most likely entry point through which Asian carp would access the Great Lakes. The probability of entry of Asian carp entering Lake Michigan through the Chicago canal system is “very high,” with a “high” degree of certainty.

– Asian carp could survive in the relatively cold waters of all five Great Lakes.

– There is enough food in the lakes to support Asian carp.

– And there is suitable spawning habitat for Asian carp in tributaries that flow into all five Great Lakes.

Watch NWF’s video to see how Asian carp could wreak havoc on the Great Lakes.

Asian silver carp leap out of the water when disturbed by the sound of boat motors. (Great Lakes Fishery Commission photo)

“We’re winning the war on Asian carp,” Davis said Wednesday during a White House Great Lakes Summit, which was held in conjunction with Great Lakes Days in Washington, D.C.

Government crews are “beating back” the advance of Asian carp in the Chicago Waterway System, the network of manmade canals that form an artificial link between the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan, Davis said.

His claim was met with a stunned silence from the group of scientists and conservation leaders (including several from National Wildlife Federation) who were invited to participate in the Great Lakes Summit.

The reason: Researchers have repeatedly found traces of Asian carp DNA in Chicago-area waters with direct connections to Lake Michigan. Those findings suggest Asian carp have breached a flawed electric fish barrier in the Chicago Waterway System and reached the southern fringe of Lake Michigan.

Faster action needed on separating Great Lakes, Mississippi River basins

The Obama Administration has spent more than $100 million over the past two years to fight Asian carp and plans to spent another $50 million this year. That level of support is commendable.

Asian carp — which eat like hogs, breed like mosquitoes and leap out of the water when disturbed by the sound of boat motors — could decimate the $7 billion Great Lakes fishery and pose potentially lethal hazards to boaters in the region.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is currently moving at a snail’s pace as it studies how best to prevent Asian carp in the Mississippi River system from invading the Great Lakes. The Corps plans to study the issue for at least three more years before recommending solutions.

Experts have said that separating Lake Michigan from the Mississippi River is the only sure way to prevent Asian carp and other harmful invasive species from moving between the two basins.

The Great Lakes Commission produced a report in January that offered three options for breaking the artificial connection between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River basin. Read more here.

The looming threat

Currently, there are no reproducing populations of Asian carp in the Great Lakes. But individual Asian carp have previously been found in Lake Erie, Lake Huron and Chicago-area waters connected to Lake Michigan.

Given the mounting evidence of Asian carp lurking in southern Lake Michigan, it’s premature for government officials to claim they are winning the war against this menacing species of fish.

Worse, it’s tempting fate.

The 1980s were also a notoriously bad decade for the Great Lakes.

That’s when ocean freighters that access the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence Seaway began importing zebra mussels, quagga mussels and other harmful invasive species to the lakes.

Zebra mussels revealed the danger of biologically unsafe shipping — allowing ocean freighters to discharge untreated ballast water teeming with aquatic life from around the world — in the Great Lakes.

Zebra and quagga mussels, just two of the 57 aquatic invasive species that ocean freighters imported to the Great Lakes, are now causing the most profound ecological changes in the recorded history of the lakes, according to experts. Those 57 species cost the region $200 million annually in damage and control costs.

The plague of ship-borne invasive species wreaking havoc on the Great Lakes and spreading across the continent has not elicited a bold response from the federal government.

It’s been 24 years since zebra mussels were discovered in the Great Lakes. But the federal government has yet to require ocean freighters to treat ballast water before dumping it in the lakes. This despite the fact that ballast water from oceangoing ships is the main source of aquatic invasive species in the lakes.

Following a federal court order, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed ballast water treatment standards for ships operating on all U.S. waters. Unfortunately, the regulations won’t close the door on ocean freighters importing new invasive species to the Great Lakes.

>> TAKE ACTION: Urge the EPA to Protect the Great Lakes

The National Wildlife Federation was one of several conservation groups that said the EPA’s proposed standards aren’t tough enough and wouldn’t be implemented quickly enough.  (Read their comments here)

Under the EPA’s timeline, the ballast water standards wouldn’t apply to all ships until 2021. That’s simply unacceptable.

NWF and the other conservation want the EPA to make the following improvements to the ballast discharge permit:

• Adopt a zero-discharge standard for invasive species.
• Adopt the most protective technology standards nationwide.
• Develop standards for lakers, the ships that stay in the Great Lakes.
• Develop a faster timeline to implement new technology standards.

Currently, the U.S. and Canada require ocean freighters destined for the Great Lakes to flush ballast tanks with seawater before entering the St. Lawrence Seaway. Those regulations were a start but they didn’t close the door on foreign species hitchhiking into the lakes.

The EPA’s proposed ballast water treatment regulations don’t go much further than the existing rules.

It’s dangerous to assume that existing ballast water regulations are adequate because no new ship-borne aquatic invasive species have been discovered in the Great Lakes since 2006. Consider:

• There is no way of knowing whether current ballast water regulations are preventing introductions of invasive species because there are no programs that routinely monitor for new invaders in the Great Lakes. To say that existing ballast regulations are preventing new introductions of ship-borne invasive species is akin to giving a cancer patient a clean bill of health without conducting the post-treatment tests needed to determine if that person is actually cancer-free.

• Due to a lack of comprehensive monitoring it’s likely that scientists aren’t detecting all aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes. Case in point: Scientists discovered in 1981 that ocean freighters were hauling millions of zebra mussel larvae into the lakes in ballast water tanks; the first colonies of zebra mussels weren’t discovered in the lakes until 1988.

• The EPA recently identified 30 new aquatic invasive species that pose a moderate or high risk of entering the Great Lakes via ocean freighters and colonizing the lakes.

Until the EPA imposes strict ballast water treatment standards, ocean freighters will continue to practice biologically unsafe shipping in the Great Lakes.

This is one of those moments when government officials must be reminded of what’s at stake here.

The Great Lakes are more than the world’s largest source of surface freshwater and the backbone of one of the world’s largest regional economies. The Great Lakes are special; they deserve special protections.

Take Action! Help protect Great Lakes wildlife from invasive species by editing and sending a message to the Environmental Protection Agency today.

The reason: The Great Lakes Commission on Tuesday released its long-awaited study of how to separate Lake Michigan from the Chicago Waterway System and the Mississippi River basin. (Go here for more details)

The Chicago Waterway System, built in the late 1800s, is a network of canals that created an unnatural link between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River basin; it is also the pipeline through which Asian carp and other invasive species move between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes basins.

The study by the Great Lakes Commission and Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative — which cost $2 million and was completed in just 14 months — provided three options for separating Lake Michigan from the Mississippi River basin.  Most importantly, the study showed that separating the two basins could be achieved without causing flooding in Chicago or harming the regional economy.

The Great Lakes Commission study provided three options for separating Lake Michigan from the Mississippi River basin.

Keeping Asian carp out of the Great Lakes will take a Herculean effort by many government agencies. But it is clearly a war worth fighting. Allowing Asian carp to invade the Great Lakes would cost far more than preventing this ecological disaster.

Scientists have concluded that separating the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River basin is the only permanent solution to the invasive species crisis that is wreaking havoc on both of these massive ecosystems.

It’s important to note that the Great Lakes Commission produced its study in 14 months. The U.S. Army Corps Engineer’s study of how best to keep Asian carp in the Mississippi and Illinois rivers from invading Lake Michigan won’t be completed until late 2015, at the earliest. The timeline for the Army Corps study is simply unacceptable.

It took the United States four years to win World War II and a decade to put a man on the moon. At its current pace, the Army Corps will take at least eight years — from the time Congress authorized the Asian carp study — to propose solutions; implementing a solution will take several more years.

Asian carp could be spreading throughout the Great Lakes by the time the Army Corps proposes a permanent solution.

The Chicago Waterway System created an unnatural link between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River basin.

Much of the information in this timeline was culled from a series of articles written by Dan Egan of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Egan’s outstanding work brought the Asian carp crisis to the nation’s attention and he continues to break news about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers questionable handling of this looming ecological disaster.

ASIAN CARP TIMELINE

1963: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service imports grass carp from Malaysia to a federal research facility in Arkansas.

1966: First believed escape of Asian carp into U.S. waters, in Arkansas.

1970: State of Arkansas begins stocking grass carp in weed-choked waters throughout the state.

1973: An Arkansas fish farmer who ordered the first commercial import of grass carp from Taiwan unintentionally receives the nation’s first shipment of bighead, silver and black carp.

1974: The Arkansas Fish and Game Commission agrees to take the bighead, silver and black carp from the fish farmer who mistakenly received the fish from Taiwan. The state begins breeding the fish and reports it stocked more than 380,000 grass carp in Arkansas waters.

1979: Arkansas Game and Fish, with a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, begins using silver and bighead carp in sewage treatment experiments.

1980: The first report of silver carp swimming in the wild.

Early 1990s: Flooding allows silver and bighead carp in Arkansas fish farms to escape into the Mississippi River.

2002: Electric fish barrier is installed in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, about 25 miles from where the Chicago River connects with Lake Michigan. The barrier was originally built to prevent round gobies in Lake Michigan from migrating into the Mississippi River basin via the Chicago canal system. Gobies breached the barrier before it was completed, so government officials opted to use it to stop the northerly migration of Asian carp.

Late 2002: Biologists find Asian carp 21 miles downstream of the experimental fish barrier, roughly 45 miles from the Lake Michigan shoreline in Chicago.

2003: After a common carp is tracked swimming through the electric fish barrier, operators increase the voltage. The barrier then fails for 25 hours, but government officials doubt that any Asian carp passed through it during the power outage.

2007: Congress directs the Army Corps of Engineers to find ways to halt the movement of Asian carp and other invasive species between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes basins. Three years passes before the Army Corps begins the study.

November 2008: A study commissioned by the Alliance for the Great Lakes concludes that hydrologic separation of Lake Michigan from the Chicago Waterway System and Mississippi River basin is technically feasible.

November 2009: The Army Corps of Engineers discloses that 32 positive samples of Asian carp DNA were found beyond the electric fish barrier; some were found within nine miles of Lake Michigan. In response to those findings, National Wildlife Federation and other conservation groups call for permanent separation of Lake Michigan from the Mississippi River basin.

January 2010: The U.S. Supreme Court rejects Michigan’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have forced the closure of locks in the Chicago Waterway System to prevent Asian carp from reaching Lake Michigan. Hours later, the Corps of Engineers announces it has found Asian carp DNA in waters connected to Lake Michigan.

June 2010: Federal officials rule out closing locks in the Chicago Waterway System to prevent Asian carp from reaching Lake Michigan. That same month, one live bighead carp was found in Lake Calumet, which is several miles south of Lake Michigan but directly connected to it.

February 2010: President Obama pledges $78 million to prevent Asian carp in the Mississippi River and Chicago Waterway System from invading the Great Lakes.

April 2010: The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear a request to permanently separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River to prevent the movement of Asian carp and other harmful aquatic invasive species between the two basins. The attorneys general of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio and New York filed the case.

July 2010: Asian carp are found in Indiana’s Wabash River, a few miles from where the Wabash often floods and flows into the Maumee River, a major tributary of Lake Erie.

December 2010: The Corps of Engineers launches its Great Lakes and Mississippi River Interbasin Study, known as GLMRIS. The agency announces that the study of how to keep Asian carp and other invasive species from moving between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes basins will be completed in 2015. Conservation groups and some members of Congress call on the Army Corps to complete the study within 18 months, but the agency refuses to alter its timeline.

March 2011: The Corps of Engineers acknowledges that the electric barrier in the Chicago Waterway system doesn’t repel all sizes of Asian carp.

June 2011: A group of prominent scientists, after concluding that an Asian carp invasion of the Great Lakes is imminent, calls for the hydrologic separation of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins.

July 2011: For the third time in 2011, the Corps of Engineers finds Asian carp DNA in Lake Calumet, which is directly connected to Lake Michigan.

December 2011: A Corps of Engineers study reveals that the volume of cargo hauled on the Chicago Waterway System decreased by nearly 50 percent between 1994 and 2009. The study discredits the claim that separating the Lake Michigan from the Chicago Waterway System — to halt the movement of Asian carp and other invasive species between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes basins — will devastate Chicago’s economy. Go here for more study details.

January 2012: The U.S. Geological Survey concludes that three of Ohio’s largest rivers — the Maumee, Sandusky and Grand — provide suitable habitat for Asian carp, which could allow the fish to establish a reproducing population in western Lake Erie.

January 2012: The study by the Great Lakes Commission and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative provides three options for creating a permanent hydrologic barrier between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River basin. Building the barriers would cost between $3 billion and $9 billion and take at least a decade to complete, according to the study.

Asian carp were imported to Arkansas fish farms in the 1960s; the fish have since spread throughout the Mississippi River basin. The menacing invaders, which hog fish food and leap out of the water when disturbed by the sound of boat motors, are on the verge of invading Lake Erie and Lake Michigan.

A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that Asian carp could thrive in Ohio’s Maumee, Sandusky, and Grand rivers, which could allow the fish to establish reproducing populations in Western Lake Erie. Such a development would be devastating for the most bountiful of all the Great Lakes fisheries.

Michigan’s U.S. Senators, Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin, called for immediate, stronger action to keep Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes.

“Asian carp represent a critical threat to our boating, fishing and tourism industries, and ultimately our Michigan way of life,” Stabenow said in a press release. “This report further shows how devastating the carp’s entry into the Great Lakes would be. We need action now to protect our natural resources.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is currently studying how best to keep Asian carp and other invasive species in the Mississippi River basin from invading the Great Lakes. The problem is that the study won’t be completed until late 2015, at the earliest.

Stabenow recently introduced the Stop Asian Carp Act of 2011 in an attempt to speed up the Corps of Engineers study. Her bill, which is stalled in a Congressional committee, would require the Corps to complete its Great Lakes and Mississippi River Interbasin Study within 18 months.

National Wildlife Federation is leading efforts to keep Asian carp from colonizing the Great Lakes. Go here to learn more about what we are doing to combat the invasive fish.

The disturbing results of the USGS study were the most recent reason for the Corps of Engineers to hasten its study of how best to separate the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins.

A Corps of Engineers study released in December found that the volume of cargo hauled on the Chicago Waterway System decreased by nearly 50 percent between 1994 and 2009. That study destroyed claims that separating the Lake Michigan from the Chicago Waterway System — to keep Asian carp in the manmade canals from invading the Great Lakes — would devastate Chicago’s economy. Go here for more study details.

Later this month, the Great Lakes Commission will release a much-anticipated study of potential options for separating Lake Michigan from the Chicago Waterway System. The Chicago-area canals  provide an artificial link between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River basin.

The rationale for acting quickly to separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River basin grows stronger with every passing day. Sadly, most members of Congress and the head honchos in the Corps of Engineers don’t view this brewing ecological disaster with the same sense of urgency that is shared by the millions of people who rely on the Great Lakes for recreation and their livelihoods.

Perhaps a blow to the head from a flying Asian carp would change the minds of those in Congress and the Corps of Engineers who believe that we have plenty of time to keep Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes. We don’t.

The U.S. and Canadian governments are both studying the possibility of building radioactive waste dumps in the Great Lakes basin.

This is, in a word, INSANE.

The Great Lakes are the largest source of surface freshwater on the planet, provide drinking water for 30 million people and support one of the world’s largest regional economies.

There are also large deposits of granite in parts of the Great Lakes basin, which has caught the attention of federal officials looking for a place to store radioactive wastes for eternity.

The Associated Press reported that the Obama Administration’s decision to scrap the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada has federal officials looking at new sites in areas with large deposits of granite. Minnesota and Wisconsin have large deposits of granite, especially around the western end of Lake Superior. Read more here.

The Canadian government is considering a proposal to store most of that nation’s spent nuclear fuel rods along the shores of Lake Huron, in the tourist town of Saugeen, Ontario. Read more about that plan here.

Of course, these studies are in the initial stages. My point is that the Great Lakes region shouldn’t be part of the discussion of where to permanently store high-level radioactive waste.

I’m sure the nuclear power industry and government agencies could provides all kinds of data and studies that suggest nuclear waste repositories are safe and pose little risk of causing pollution.

The salient point here is that we must stop playing Russian roulette with the health of the Great Lakes and the millions of people who rely on the lakes for drinking water, employment and recreation.

Many nuclear power plants, including some adjacent to the Great Lakes, currently store spent fuel rods in concrete casks because there is no repository for the radioactive waste. (U.S. Department of Energy photo)

The U.S. and Canada are already paying an extraordinarily price for our past willingness to risk the health of the Great Lakes for commercial gain.

Over the past two centuries, industries littered the lakes with millions of pounds of toxic chemicals that have contaminated fish and wildlife and made some areas unfit for human use.

The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, which allowed ocean freighters into the Great Lakes for the first time, unleashed a biological catastrophe in these freshwater seas. Zebra mussels and other invasive species have caused the most profound, destructive changes to the Great Lakes in recorded history.

When Congress and President Obama passed the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, it seemed that our nationally elected officials had finally realized that the lakes are a national treasure worthy of protecting.

Inviting nuclear power plants across North America to send their high-level radioactive waste to repositories in the Great Lakes basin would be a monumental mistake and the pinnacle of hubris.

Opponents claim the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality should not have issued Kennecott Eagle Minerals Co. a permit to build and operate the mine because it could endanger workers, foul the air and poison pristine trout streams in Michigan’s scenic Upper Peninsula.

The Chicago Tribune published an Associated Press article on the issue Monday. Read it here.

Critics contend the mine, which will extract high grade nickel from an ore body located beneath the headwaters of the Salmon Trout River, could collapse because it was designed improperly. They also believe the project will pollute the air and nearby waters with toxic sulfides that are unleashed during the mining of nickel.

“The evidence related to the likely collapse of the roof is overwhelming and that really needs to be addressed,” said Michelle Halley, attorney for the National Wildlife Federation.

Other groups fighting the mine include the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, the Huron Mountain Club and the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve.

A sign in Michigan's Upper Peninsula warns of a metallic sulfide mine.

“We must ensure that the law’s protections of human health and the environment are honored and applied,” Halley told the Associated Press. “So far, they have not been and that is why we are seeking leave to appeal. Many more mines are in the queue and this is a precedent-setting case.”

At least three other companies hope to open metallic sulfide mines to probe for nickel, gold, platinum and other valuable metals in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Michigan officials claim the Kennecott mine is safe and that other metallic sulfide mines could be opened without threatening public health, polluting the environment or harming the region’s tourism economy .

More background on the dangers associated with sulfide mining can be found on the Web site of NWF’s Great Lakes Regional Center,  which can be found here. NWF also produced an award winning documentary on the Kennecott case. Watch it here.

The online magazine Bridge recently published an article which revealed that most mining operations in Michigan are exempt from severance taxes that other extractive industries pay. The loophole could cost the cash-strapped state tens of millions of dollars in lost tax revenue.

 Photo by Jeff Alexander

Asian carp/ Photo courtesy United States Fish and Wildlife Service

Finally.

The invasive fish could be part of the U.S. Senate’s 2012 budget vote. The Senate may vote as early as this week on a budget amendment that would require the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to speed up its study of how best to keep Asian carp in the Mississippi River basin from reaching the Great Lakes.

For that we can thank U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. She introduced the Stop Asian Carp amendment to the budget bill.

Stabenow’s amendment would direct the Army Corps to complete its study of how best to separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River basin within 18 months. As it stands now, the Corps won’t complete its Great Lakes and Mississippi River Interbasin Study (GLMRIS) until 2015. That’s far too long — Asian carp are on the verge of invading Lake Michigan.

Four species of Asian carp were imported to commercial fish farms in Arkansas in the 1960s; they later escaped into the Mississippi River. The gluttonous invaders now dominate vast areas of the Mississippi River basin. If allowed to reach the Great Lakes, the fish would pose potentially deadly threats to boaters and could devastate the region’s $7 billion fishery.

The Army Corps is currently relying on three electric fences in the Chicago Waterway System to keep Asian carp in the Mississippi and Illinois rivers from reaching Lake Michigan. But those electric fences don’t repel all sizes of Asian carp, according to the Army Corps’ own studies.

Researchers have already found Asian carp DNA, and one live Asian carp, in waters near Chicago that are connected to Lake Michigan. Despite the imminent threat of these menacing fish invading the Great Lakes, the Army Corps is content to study the problem for another four years.

The Stabenow amendment would ensure that agencies charged with protecting the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basins have the information needed to re-imagine the Chicago Waterway System to protect U.S. waters that provide drinking water, jobs and recreational opportunities to millions of Americans.

Please take a moment today to call or e-mail your U.S. senators and urge them to vote for the Stop Asian Carp amendment. It is our best hope of keeping these invasive fish from laying siege to the world’s largest freshwater ecosystem.

Sleeping Bear Dunes | Credit: Jennifer Janssen, NWF

“Before we eat,” the host will announce, “I’d like to go around the table and have everyone say what they are thankful for this year.”

The collective gulp is almost audible.

I know this to be true because I’ve been guilty in the past of subjecting my Thanksgiving Dinner guests to this unique form of torture.

The first person facing the question gets off easy.

“I’m thankful for my family,” he or she will say. Everyone will nod in agreement.

Others will express gratitude for having a job, devoted friends or an adoring pet.

Before long, hungry guests desperate for an answer that won’t offend friends or relatives are offering thanks for such trivial things as the weather.

Great Lakes Thanks for Thanksgiving

In anticipation of the Thanksgiving Dinner interrogation, I’m offering up a list of things I am thankful for in 2011. This list focuses on the Great Lakes because I live in the Great Lakes basin and I write about issues facing the lakes.

Besides, I’m pretty sure none of my relatives will beat me to the punch with any of these offerings. (Feel free to use any of these to shock or awe your friends and relatives).

With all due respect to family, friends and employers, here are three things I am thankful for in 2011.

• The Great Lakes and, more specifically, Lake Michigan.These wondrous lakes slake my thirst, offer countless recreational opportunities and provide respite from the grind of life.

• Ongoing efforts to restore the Great Lakes, which are yielding tremendous benefits. Congress and President Obama over the past two years have approved $775 million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The GLRI, along with other Great Lakes programs, are cleaning up toxic hot spots, reducing polluted storm water runoff, restoring wetlands and bolstering fish and wildlife populations. One of the most dramatic examples is in Lake Ontario, where wild Atlantic salmon are spawning naturally again in rivers. The salmon, which are native to Lake Ontario and its tributaries, were sustained for years by hatcheries. The Wall Street Journal recently published a fine article about the lake’s Atlantic salmon recovery.

• A filthy coal-fired power plant near Chicago will be shut down in 2012, two years ahead of schedule. The Chicago Tribune reported that Dominion Resources would close its State Line Power Plant, which is visible from the Chicago Skyway, instead of making the huge investment needed to reduce air pollution at the facility. The power plant is one of the nation’s worst air polluters, according to the Tribune. Closing the facility will mean cleaner air for everyone downwind; it will also be another step toward reducing America’s reliance on fossil fuels that contribute to global warming and cause asthma and other lung ailments for millions of Americans. Clean air — it’s as American as Mom and apple pie.

So there you have it. I’m off to visit family for a day of food, fellowship and football.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The GOP-led House passed a Coast Guard authorization bill that contained two bad amendments: Weak ballast water regulations, which will allow ocean freighters to carry more invasive species into the Great Lakes; and an exemption that will allow the coal-powered SS Badger ferry to continue dumping 500 tons of toxic coal ash into Lake Michigan every summer.

It’s bad enough that House members from outside of the Great Lakes basin supported legislation that would harm the world’s largest source of surface freshwater. For GOP lawmakers from the Great Lakes region to support the legislation was just shameful.

And yet, some lawmakers boasted about sponsoring amendments that authorize the SS Badger’s use of Lake Michigan as a landfill for coal ash containing lead, mercury and other toxins. This is the same Lake Michigan that is home to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which was recently voted The Most Beautiful Place in America.

Legislation approved by the U.S. House of Representatives will allow the SS Badger to continue dumping tons of toxic coal ash into Lake Michigan.

The pollution-permitting exemption for the SS Badger was cosponsored by Republican Congressmen Tom Petri, of Wisconsin and Bill Huizenga of Michigan.

Huizenga, whose district includes a large stretch of the Lake Michigan coast, said the federal rules requiring the Badger to stop dumping its coal ash into the lake by 2012 were “an example of how federal government regulations threaten small businesses.” Read his statement here.

His claim doesn’t hold water.

The Badger’s owners agreed in 2008 to install a cleaner fuel system and end the coal ash dumping in 2012. But when the company didn’t get a $14 million federal grant to pay for a new propulsion system, it hired lobbyists to secure an exemption to the federal regulations.

Huizenga said the Badger exemption would protect a ship that is vital to the economy of the communities where it docks.

Here’s a news flash: A healthy Lake Michigan is far more valuable to those communities — and the entire region — than one antiquated, polluting ferry.

The House bill now goes to the Senate for its consideration. Hopefully, the Senate or President Obama will sink this bad legislation.

It’s ironic that Rep. Huizenga’s Web page features a scenic photo of Lake Michigan waves crashing against the lighthouse in Grand Haven.

The photo implies that Huizenga cherishes the Great Lakes. I just can’t comprehend how someone who treasures the lakes would support the SS Badger’s cynical, wanton pollution of Lake Michigan.