Critics say Army Corps plan to keep Asian carp out of Great Lakes includes unnecessary billions

Critics say a large portion of the $15 billion proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to keep invasive carp out of Lake Michigan has "little to do with directly stopping invasive species," Dan Egan reports for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The proposal, which is designed to "restore the natural separation between the Lake Michigan and Mississippi River," includes about "$12 billion to build things like new reservoirs, sewer tunnels and water treatment plants, as well as remove contaminated river sediments." (Booth Newspapers graphic; click on it for larger version)

Jim Ridgway, an environmental engineer and board chairman for the Alliance for the Great Lakes, said one example of the unnecessary spending is the Corps' proposed tunnel-and-reservoir system, which "is designed to capture floods up to those triggered by a 500-year storm - a tempest so severe it would be expected to happen, as the name implies, maybe only twice every millennium," Egan writes.

Another concern is that some believe the Corps doesn't see the urgency in getting the project done quickly, calling for the work to take 25 years to complete, Egan writes. Tim Eder, executive director of the Great Lakes Commission, a body appointed by the region's governors and legislatures, told Egan, "The assumptions used in the report create the impression that the Corps thinks this situation is not urgent. Well, it is. We need action and we don't have 25 years to wait." If Asian carp get into Lake Michigan, they could threaten the region's $7 billion annual fishing industry. (Read more)