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.

Zebra and quagga mussels imported to the Great Lakes by ocean freighters are wreaking havoc on the ecosystem.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 4 approved legislation that would leave the Great Lakes and other U.S. waters vulnerable to invasive species that live in ocean freighters’ ballast water tanks.

The House approved H.R. 2838, the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2011. The resolution includes the text of another bill, the Commercial Vessel Discharges Reform Act of 2011.

In addition to reauthorizing the U.S. Coast Guard, HR 2838  eliminates many of the tools used by federal and state officials to control the introduction of aquatic invasive species from ships’ ballast water.

If approved by the Senate and President Obama, the legislation would jeopardize the health of America’s aquatic ecosystems, exacerbate the spread of invasive species, undermine recreational and commercial fishing interests and threaten regional economies that depend on healthy waterways.

NWF and other conservation groups worked with members of the House to remove the harmful provisions from the legislation, but that effort was defeated by a vote of 237-161.

The legislation now moves to the Senate.

For more background on the issue, and how you can get involved, please read this blog post from last week:

Nov. 4 blog post:

Three decades ago, scientists warned federal officials in the U.S. and Canada that ocean freighters entering the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence Seaway were carrying zebra mussels and dozens of other invasive species in their ballast water tanks.

Federal officials ignored those warnings. Seven years later, in 1988, scientists found zebra mussels in Lake St. Clair, near Detroit.

The rest, as they say, is history: Zebra and Quagga mussels spread rapidlythroughout the Great Lakes, into the Mississippi River system and across North America. (Watch how it unfolded here) These destructive invaders are now found in 23 states and two Canadian provinces, where they disrupt ecosystems and force communities to spend millions of dollars annually to combat the menacing mollusks.

Flash forward to 2011 and you confront a bad case of déjà vu.

Congress is currently considering legislation that would gut proposed ballast water treatment standards for transoceanic freighters entering U.S. waters. (The House of Representatives may vote on this bill as soon as Friday, Nov. 4). The ballast treatment standards are supposed to prevent ocean freighters from importing more foreign species to the Great Lakes and other U.S. ports.

Instead the legislation — contained in House Resolution 2838 and known as Title VII, the “Commercial Vessel Discharges Reform Act of 2011 — would protect the shipping industry at the expense of the Great Lakes and America’s other coastal waters. It would:

—  Adopt international ballast treatment standards that are weak and would allow more invasive species to reach the Great Lakes via ballast water tanks.

—  Delay the implementation of ballast treatment standards for as long as 10 years.

—  Prevent state and federal agencies from setting tougher treatment standards even if officials document fatal flaws in the international regulations.

—  Prevent citizens from enforcing the law. Citizen lawsuits are one of the hallmark provisions in America’s most successful environmental statutes.

—  Derail progress on setting a strong national policy to stop invasive species from entering the Great Lakes via ships’ ballast water discharges.

Bottom line: This legislation would allow ocean freighters to carry more invasive species into the Great Lakes.

This is no small matter. Since the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959, the ocean freighters it invited into the Great Lakes have imported 58 invasive species, including many of the worst invaders.

Those invaders now cause between $200 million and $400 million in environmental and economic damage annually. Just a few of these foreign species have plunged the Great Lakes into biological chaos.

Congressional approval of the Commercial Vessel Discharges Reform Act of 2011 would exacerbate the problem.

Is this any way to treat the Great Lakes, the world’s largest source of surface freshwater, the source of drinking water for 30 million people and the foundation of one of the world’s largest regional economies? Of course not.

Call or e-mail your representatives in Congress now and demand they protect the Great Lakes from new ship-borne invasive species. Remind them that the government’s mandate to protect public health and the environment supersedes the financial interests of the shipping industry.

Zebra Mussels have invaded the Great Lakes. Are Asian Carp next? (Photo Credit: Flickr/Christhegirl)

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is facing intense pressure to pick up the pace of its study of how best to keep Asian carp and other invasive species from migrating between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes basins.

The Corps’ Great Lakes and Mississippi River Interbasin Study, known as GLMRIS, is slated for completion in mid-2015. The study could become the federal government’s blueprint for breaking the artificial links between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins.

Unnatural links like the Chicago Waterway System have allowed zebra and quagga mussels that were carried into the Great Lakes in the ballast water tanks of transoceanic freighters to spread into the Mississippi River system and across much of the United States.

Asian carp that escaped fish farms in Arkansas and invaded the Mississippi River system are now on the brink of invading Lake Michigan via the Chicago Waterway System.

The discovery of Asian carp DNA, and one live carp, above an electric fish barrier that was supposed to keep the menacing fish out of Lake Michigan has politicians, conservation groups, anglers and boaters calling on the Corps to complete its study by mid-2012.

Corps officials claim the study is too complex to complete in 2012. Agency officials have said they are moving as fast as they can to expedite the GLMRIS study and doing everything possible to keep Asian carp from invading Lake Michigan.

But Marc Smith, a senior policy manager at National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Regional Center, said he’s convinced the Corps could move faster on the GLMRIS study. He said the Corps has shown the ability to move very quickly to prevent the spread of invasive species, when properly motivated.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Perhaps the question isn’t whether the Corps has the capacity to finish its GLMRIS study before 2015. A more defining question might ask whether the Corps has the desire necessary to hasten the completion of this critically important study.

You can tell the Corps to pick up the pace of the GLMRIS study. Go here to find out how to attend a hearing, or take action online — submit comment to the Corps.