A new push to clean up the Great Lakes

Ecologists are eager to do everything possible to keep the carp out, since dealing with invasive species once they enter the system can be much trickier. "Prevention is your first line of defense," says David Reid, a research scientist with NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich. There are currently around 180 non-native species living in the lakes, says Mr. Reid, although perhaps only a dozen of those might be considered truly invasive.

The poster child for such "bad actors," as Reid calls them, is the zebra mussel. Since they first appeared in Lake St. Clair in 1988, from ballast water discharged from oceangoing ships, the mussels have spread rapidly. More disturbing than the proliferating shells on some beaches is the rapid disappearance of tiny Diporeia shrimp, which historically constituted up to 80 percent of the food available at the bottom of the Great Lakes. Now, some places in Lake Michigan that used to have 10,000 of the shrimp per square meter have none.

What's needed, most scientists agree, is both more resources to combat the existing invasive species problems as well as policy changes - particularly to the regulations governing ballast water - to keep more from being introduced. And some are hopeful that the new collaboration will help with speedier responses. When the Eurasian Ruffe showed up near Duluth in the 1980s, Reid remembers, it was discovered quickly. But by the time local officials had gone through all the necessary bureaucratic channels to get a consensus on the response, six years had passed and the fish was no longer contained.

Invasive species, meanwhile, are just one of eight issues the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration identified. Habitat destruction and sewage overflows are a problem, as well as the infusion of toxins like mercury. Some of what's needed may be policy changes - the regulations governing coal-fired power plant emissions, which deposit mercury into the lakes, are particularly controversial, and an issue the EPA has largely declined to address - but money, in the end, is pivotal.

EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt hasn't guaranteed that the collaboration will lead to any new funding. This has many people worried. Others hope that the planning, with reports expected in a year, will give new weight to bills already pending in both houses asking for several billion dollars for the region.

"This is going to require $4 billion to $5 billion of federal money to clean it up," says Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois congressman who wrote one of the bills. "The good news is we don't have to guess what the problems are. My big worry here is that they're hoping everybody gets blinded by the neon lights. At the end of the day - show me the money."

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