dyirbal’s blog

Great Lakes agenda at the federal level

I understand that if you go looking for John Cherry next week in Lansing, you won’t be able to find him. That’s because, as chairman of the Great Lakes Commission, he’ll be in Washington promoting the Great Lakes legislative priorities for 2008 around and on Great Lakes Day, which is Wednesday.Every year is important in building a sound federal policy towards the Great Lakes. I realize that there are lots of folks who don’t want the feds involved, but as interstate and international bodies of water, there’s no getting around the federal role. And, because the lakes themselves play such an important role in daily life here in Michigan (from commerce to tourism to even influencing the weather), it’s important that federal policy be based on protecting and restoring and not regarding them as a resource to be squandered for short-term gain.The biggest Great Lakes fight this year might be over getting Congress to sign off on the Great Lakes Compact (that is, might, if the various state legislatures get their acts together and present it to Congress before the elections, it could be that both parties see it in their interests to not antagonize the electoral vote heavy Rust Belt and let the thing squeak through).The actual legislative initiatives are fairly comprehensive and built around a solid understanding of how things that take place even far inland impact the lakes themselves. For instance, the legislative priorities call for money for buffer strips for inland farms (a buffer strip is a strip of vegetation — usually trees — between farm fields and streams meant to prevent fertlizer and pesticides from running off fields and into inland waters … the failure to do so is believe to be a cause of the Dead Zone at the mouth of the Mississippi, and which has seriously damaged Gulf Coast fisheries).It involves appropriating money for electronic barriers to (hopefully) prevent the spread of Asian carp into the lake system. You might remember this from last year, when Smirky vetoed the reauthorization of the Water Resources Development Act on the grounds that it spent too much money, when it only authorized Congress to appropriate money for the projects at a later date and spent exactly zero (0) dollars on its own. The veto was overridden.And, of course, one of the other priorities is federal legislation prohibiting ocean-going freighters from dumping ballast water full of non-native critters into the lakes. Although you can credit the state Legislature for taking a leadership role on this issue last year, movement at the federal Michael Jackson Smooth Criminal mp3 level has been stalled, naturally, by the shipping lobby, which doesn’t like the idea of being told that it can’t dump ballast water laden with non-native species wherever it damn well feels like it.
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