The Joliet Herald
By Kim Smith
March 23, 2010

WASHINGTON -- On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court shot down Michigan's second attempt to close the Chicago locks.

It's been a controversial question: How to protect the Great Lake from a giant fish with a voracious appetite capable of starving out native species? Michigan is pressing to close the O'Brien Lock and Dam and the locks at the Chicago Controlling works. The locks connect Illinois waterways, which are already infected with Asian carp, to Lake Michigan and the rest of the Great Lakes.

DNA evidence found in Lake Michigan suggests the fish already are there, but no actual Asian carp have been found in the Great Lakes.

"The carp are still over 20 miles away, and there is not a sustainable population for about 50 miles," said Illinois Chamber Executive Director James Farrell. "We at the Illinois Chamber of Commerce take this threat seriously and have come up with other ideas on how to solve the problem. Halting barge traffic would have devastating impacts on the region."

Farrell said an expansion of the fish barrier built in 2002 under the 135th Street Bridge in Romeoville is among the options. Another is controlling the oxygen levels of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to keep them from sustaining an Asian carp population.

"Barge transportation is still one of the most friendly and economical available mode available to us today," Farrell said. "We do not like to use poison."

During a fish kill in December, more than 30,000 fish were killed by putting poison in the canal. Workers only found one Asian carp carcass among the bodies.

U.S. Rep Judy Biggert, R-Hinsdale; U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson, D-Crete; and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, have long been proponents of keeping the locks open.

"Those pushing (closing the locks) seem to forget that Chicago's waterways represent a vital link, not just for Illinois, but for the entire Great Lakes region," Biggert said. "Even costs of basic products like grain, ore and energy throughout the Midwest would rise if the locks were closed."

Part of the reason the locks were put in was to alleviate severe flooding that would impact 3 million people living in the Chicago suburbs to Indiana. Those opposed to closing the locks say doing so would flood the area, creating new water paths for the fish to get to the lakes. It was floods in the Mississippi River a decade ago that released the invasive species from fishing ponds in the south into the Mississippi River and into the Illinois and DesPlaines rivers, north into the canal.