Tag: quagga mussel

States Pass Feds on Invasives Law

  • Federal restrictions have not stopped importation of invasive species. Now some states are passing laws that will stop some ocean-going ships from docking in their ports. (Photo by Lester Graham)

US ports receive more than imported cargo.
They often receive fish and other aquatic organisms
from foreign ports. They stow away in the ballast
water of cargo ships. Once in US waters, some of
the foreign species become invaders, damaging the
ecosystem. The federal government has done little
to stop these invasive species. Rick Pluta reports now some states have decided to take
things into their own hands:

Transcript

US ports receive more than imported cargo.
They often receive fish and other aquatic organisms
from foreign ports. They stow away in the ballast
water of cargo ships. Once in US waters, some of
the foreign species become invaders, damaging the
ecosystem. The federal government has done little
to stop these invasive species. Rick Pluta reports now some states have decided to take
things into their own hands:


The damage caused by invasive species carried to the US in
ballast water is not only harmful to the environment, but it
hurts the economy. The federal regulations have not stopped the
problem. So, states such as California and Michigan have passed
laws that require foreign ships to treat ballast water like
pollution. They have to clean it up before they can discharge it
into a port. The problem is, almost no ships have a way to treat
the ballast.


In Michigan, the Great Lakes shipping industry is trying to delay
the new Michigan rules. Shipping companies, port owners, and
dock workers say Michigan’s new rules are jeopardizing jobs
without actually stopping the introduction of new species into
the Great Lakes.


The damage caused by invasive species carried to the US in
ballast water is not only harmful to the environment, but it
hurts the economy. The federal regulations have not stopped the
problem. So, states such as California and Michigan have passed
laws that require foreign ships to treat ballast water like
pollution. They have to clean it up before they can discharge it
into a port. The problem is, almost no ships have a way to treat
the ballast.


In Michigan, the Great Lakes shipping industry is trying to delay
the new Michigan rules. Shipping companies, port owners, and
dock workers say Michigan’s new rules are jeopardizing jobs
without actually stopping the introduction of new species into
the Great Lakes.


People in the shipping business say the problem is Michigan is
the only state in the Great Lakes region that is requiring ocean-
going freighters to install expensive technology as a condition
of using one of its ports.


John Jamian is the president of the Seaway Great Lakes Trade
Association. He says requiring ocean-going freighters to install
expensive technology before they can dock in Michigan ports won’t
solve the problem. The ships will just go to other Great Lakes
ports.


If a ship goes to Windsor or Toledo that doesn’t have these rules
and regulations, they will discharge their cargo. If there were
any critters on those ships they could still swim or crawl into
Michigan waters, so you still haven’t solved anything.


Jamian represents the owners of ships that travel from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes via the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
He says ship owners will very likely avoid Michigan ports, and
choose to unload at ports in other states and Canada:


“The fact of the matter is that they’re not going to put an
expensive piece of equipment just because Michigan calls for it
on their ship when in fact it may not be acceptable anywhere else
in the world and it might just be easier to take that cargo
across the river and unload it where they don’t have these
regulations.”


And for Michigan ports that are near other competing ports,
that’s a concern. Patrick Sutka is the treasurer for Nicholson
Terminal and Dock Company at the Port of Detroit:


“We fear these ships may be going to other ports, such as Windsor
right across the waterway, or other competitors of ours such as
Toledo or Cleveland.”


At the height of the shipping season, there might be three
freighters at a time moored to the docks, offloading steel and
other cargo. A hundred trucks a day will move in and out of the
docking area to get those commodities to factories.


On the dock right now are dozens of stacks of 20-ton slabs of
steel from France and Russia. That Russian steel was most likely
shipped from a port in the Caspian Sea or the Black Sea. The
freighters take on ballast water from those seas for the voyage
to the Great Lakes. That ballast water helps keep the ships low
and steady in the water.


The ships are required to exchange the water in deep ocean mid-
journey. The salt water is supposed to kill the fresh water
organisms. But, some organisms can survive the trip. That’s how
zebra mussels, quagga mussels and the round goby fish made their
way from the Balkans to the Great Lakes.


Those invasive species and others combine to cost the economy an
estimated 5 billion dollars a year. For example, zebra
mussels cost taxpayers and utility customers. It shows up in
your power bill because the utilities have to pay divers to
scrape the crustaceans off pipes carrying cooling water to power
plants.


Shipping companies, port owners, and dock workers’ unions are all
pressuring Michigan to hold off on enforcing its new law. What
they’d really like is for the federal government to step in,
negotiate with Canada, and create a regional set of rules for
combating aquatic invaders:


“…But the federal government has not had the guts or the
gumption to step up to the plate and get this done.”


Patti Birkholz chairs the Michigan Senate Environmental Affairs
Committee. She sponsored the law:


“So we’re going to do it on a state-by-state basis. Our eco-
system within the Great Lakes is what many scientists have termed
‘on the tipping point.’ We cannot deal with any more invasive
species in this system, and we know the majority of the invasive
species come through the ocean-going vessels. They know they’re
the cause. We know they’re the cause. We’ve got to deal with this
situation.”


Michigan’s new law is as much a political statement as anything
else and other states are starting to follow Michigan’s lead.
Birkholz says Wisconsin and New York could pass ballast standards
this year.


In the mean time, Michigan environmental officials say they
intend to enforce the state’s requirements when the Great Lakes
shipping season resumes in the spring. But, so far, no ocean
freighters have applied for a permit to dock at a Michigan Port.


For the Environment Report, this is Rick Pluta.

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Woman Gives Poisoned Birds Refuge

  • Not only are birds affected by Type E Botulism, but fish are also killed by it. (Photo by Lester Graham)

For several years now, a strain of botulism has been killing shorebirds along parts of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. Tens of thousands of birds have died on Lake Erie in the last several years. But there’s one place where some sick birds are taken to be nursed back to health. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:

Transcript

For several years now, a strain of botulism has been killing shorebirds along parts of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. Tens of thousands of birds have died on Lake Erie in the last several years. But, there’s one place where some sick birds are taken to be nursed back to health. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


(Sound of an engine)


We’re crawling along sand dunes in a three-wheeled cart. Ray Bierbower is taking me to Gull Point. It’s an area on a spit of land called Presque Isle that juts out into Lake Erie at Erie, Pennsylvania. This area is part of a state park that gets four million visitors every year. But here, except for birds, it’s deserted.


“A lot of the shorebirds come through here, migrating, and they want to leave it alone. It’s shut off to the public. Basically, there’s just a select few that are allowed out in this area and we’re one of the groups that are allowed.”


We’re here to pick up some dead birds. A couple of years ago you might have found dozens of dead birds at a time. Today, only five seagulls. Well, parts of them: two heads and some rotting carcasses.


“We haven’t been out here for two weeks. So, this is not too bad considering before.”


If these birds are like hundreds of others tested, they died from botulism poisoning. Researchers are figuring out how the botulism got into the food chain. The theory is that massive beds of zebra mussels and quagga mussels – both invasive species brought into the Great Lakes in the ballast water of ocean going ships – are causing conditions that rob oxygen on the bottom of the Lakes.


That encourages botulism bacteria to flourish and give off toxins. The mussels aren’t hurt by them, but round gobies, another invasive species, eat the mussels. When they get sick, they become easy pickings for the birds. Then, the birds get sick.


Sometimes, Ray Bierbower and his fellow summer interns find a bird that’s sick, but not beyond saving. The state park doesn’t have the facilities to help the birds, so they take them to a wild bird rehabilitation center in town.


The center, called Wild Wings is looks like some of the other two story houses in this blue-collar neighborhood. But once you’re inside, there’s no doubt that you’re in the right place.


(Sound of birds)


A man is dropping off four tiny wrens from the nest. Their mother stopped coming to feed them and he figures a cat must have killed her.


Wild Wing’s director, Wendy Campbell, takes them in. She’s a whirlwind of activity as she flits from cage to cage. She makes sure birds have water. She gives some of them medicine. And now with the tiny wrens here she makes sure they don’t miss feeding time.


In the basement, chickens, crows, an owl, and some pigeons are separated by chicken wire walls. She checks on a couple of seagulls in one the pens. Campbell is helping them recover from botulism poisoning.


“What you do is provide them with supportive care. You want to keep the birds out of sunlight, because sunlight perpetuates botulism toxin. And by re-fluiding them, because they’re usually dehydrated. And a lot of times, too, we can use Phillips Milk of Magnesia because that binds with botulism toxin and draws it out of their system. And many of the birds recover.”


Campbell says after she’s sure they’re fully recovered, she’ll release these gulls back into the wild.


“There’s no danger of them spreading it, because I’ve asked the Wildlife Health Center to make sure that I could release these birds that have recovered from botulism that they weren’t now going to be carrying it. And he said absolutely not. It’s out of their system.”


Wendy Campbell is quick to add that it doesn’t mean that the gulls can’t contract the botulism toxin again. Campbell says if this were a natural phenomenom, she would let nature take its course. But it’s not; humans brought the zebra mussels and quagga mussels that are causing the problem in the Great Lakes.


“Over ninety percent of the time, it’s as a result of human activities. We don’t believe in interfering with nature. But when they get hurt because they get hit by a car or they get poisoned by lawn care chemicals, that’s not nature. And so, somebody has to help them, and that’s why I do this.”


Campbell says the authorities in her area are doing a good job of cleaning up the bird carcasses along the lake beaches. If they’re not picked up, flies lay eggs, maggots are infected by botulism, and other birds eat the maggots, causing the botulism problem to spread.


Campbell says of the one thousand birds brought into Wild Wings center each year, only a handful of them are sick from botulism. That’s because most of them die from it before they can be helped.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

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