Feds oppose closing locks to block invasive carp

Attorney General Mike Cox’s request that the U.S. Supreme Court protect Great Lakes fisheries from invasive Asian carp by ordering the closure of the locks that connect the Mississippi River to the Lake Michigan drew opposition from the Obama administration this week, the AP reports.

In a Jan. 5 brief Solicitor General Elena Kagan told the U.S. Supreme Court that there isn’t enough evidence that the carp pose an imminent danger to the lakes and that closing the locks would raise shipping costs and interrupt Coast Guard activities.

“In a host of ways, the federal government has demonstrated its commitment to protecting the Great Lakes from the expansion of Asian carp,” she said in a written memo. “Nothing in federal law warrants second-guessing its expert judgment that the best information available today does not yet justify the dramatic steps Michigan demands.”

Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, and the Canadian province of Ontario have filed briefs in support of Michigan’s bid to force the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the State of Illinois, and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago to close the locks.

Writing at Great Lakes on the Ground the National Wildlife Federation’s Andy Buchsbaum says the legal arguments over how to handle the invasive carp are moving at warp speed.

The Supreme Court is meeting in a regularly scheduled “conference” on January 8, and it will take up Michigan’s lawsuit then. Nobody knows what issues it will decide then, much less how it will decide them.