Controversial carp detector now peer-reviewed and published

Talk about your non-story stories.

The recent news out of South Bend, Ind. was about how the University of Notre Dame’s Environmental Change Initiative — under the direction of esteemed Great Lakes researcher David Lodge — has had the environmental DNA (eDNA) technique it used to detect Asian carp in Chicago-area waterways peer-reviewed and published in Conservation Letters, the flagship academic journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

The 15-page paper provides the methodology for how Lodge’s four-member team found Asian carp DNA in 128 samples pulled from the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and neighboring waterways from the summer of 2009 through May, 2010.

Whew. For a moment there, I thought one of the Great Lakes region’s top scientists had fallen off his rocker and lost his mind.

Why else would Lodge want to be a modern Paul Revere and stake his reputation to sounding one of the scariest alarms the Great Lakes region has ever heard?

First, a mini history lesson, kids.

David Lodge is no ordinary professor. If he’s not the Michael Jordan of Great Lakes aquatic researchers, he’s part of an elite class. I’ve seen his work quoted at academic conferences for years. Many researchers I trust and admire are truly in awe of him. You get the idea.

So when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers went looking for help in assessing where the heck those pesky bighead and silver Asian carp are, it enlisted Lodge.

Let’s forget for a moment that trying to track those incredibly voracious and destructive fish is something which — doh!- the government should have been doing as soon as those carp species began escaping Southern fish farms and sewage lagoons at least 15 years ago and possibly 30 or more. With assistance from the Nature Conservancy and under a cooperative agreement funded by the Corps, Lodge assembled a team of experts and sent them into the field.

Well, guess what? The result wasn’t what the Corps wanted to hear. Of the 128 samples that were positive for Asian carp DNA, 58 of them were past the series of electrical barriers 20 miles southwest of Chicago that the government wants you to believe is impermeable even though it hadn’t been crankin’ out the juice 24/7. The first barrier there also was initially designed to stop a much smaller and less destructive exotic species, the round goby.

The findings that Lodge and his colleagues came up with convinced many people that the government’s lazy approach to problem-solving didn’t cut it. That wasn’t the mission or intent of Notre Dame researchers, of course. But that was the conclusion many people shared after learning the fish had snuck past the only real barrier created to stop them after being on the lam for so many years, kind of like an armed-and-dangerous fugitive showing up at your doorstep.

Several agencies responded by poisoning sections of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal with the fish-killing chemical rotenone, which is akin to putting on mosquito repellent after you’ve been bitten.

Pleas for closing down the locks, seen by many as the only sure-fire antidote, fell on deaf ears in Chicago and with the Obama administration in Washington.

The Corps, which is responsible for building the barrier and making sure it runs effectively, did what all government agencies seem great at doing — contacting their lawyers and discrediting people who make them look foolish. In this case, that would be Lodge and others, people whom the Corps had sought out for help.

Poor Lodge had to defend his work from a witness chair in a federal courtroom in Chicago last September as government attorneys grilled him about a technique that, while not published in an academic journal per se, had been endorsed by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientific panel.

The irony is Lodge’s eDNA technique was deployed rapidly because — surprise! – the government had finally awakened and saw the calamity at hand. Even U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow Jr., in his Dec. 2 ruling in favor of keeping the Chicago shipping locks open, took Lodge to task for not having his eDNA technique published.

So what now?

The Great Lakes’ $7 billion fishery, which helps anchor what’s left of the region’s depressed economy, tax base, and property values, remains in danger of being wiped out by a bunch of overly aggressive and hungry fish that got away.

More hand-wringing and speeches are on the way. There’s even a laughable cost-benefit study underway that looks at the possibility of reversing the flow of water between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River and permanently separating the waterways. It’s laughable only because the study itself will take years and, if it somehow recommends that’s the thing to do, then Congress would be asked to fund what would easily be one of the largest and most expensive multi-billion dollar engineering feats the nation has ever attempted.

A mess? You bet. But Lodge didn’t create it. He was only the messenger.

In other regional news since the New Year began…

Purdue University: U.S.  lacks infrastructure to meet the federal mandate for renewable fuel use with just the grain-alcohol version of ethanol. But it said it could meet the standard with significant increases in cellulosic fibers and next-generation biofuels.

America is now capable of producing about 13 billion gallons of renewable fuel, a little more than a third of the 36 billion gallons a year that will be required under the federal Renewable Fuel Standard by 2022. The country not only is tapped out on available land for grain-based ethanol but also only has about 2,000 E85 pumps distributing the fuel. And those took more than 20 years to build, researchers said.

“Even if you could produce a whole bunch of E85, there is no way to distribute it,” said Purdue’s Wally Tyner, whose collaborative work with others was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Verdant Power has applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the first commercial-scale tidal power plant in the United States, a 30-turbine facility in New York City’s East River

OK, it’s the Big Apple, which isn’t part of the Great Lakes. But New York State is. And, as I mentioned in a past column about a test project over in Montreal, tidal power has intriguing clean energy possibilities for the Great Lakes region. Verdant claims its six-turbine pilot demonstration from 2006 to 2008 went well.

Birders push for proper Great Lakes wind turbine siting

Just east of my home base here in Toledo, the Black Swamp Bird Observatory is convening a rally for birders playing the watchdog role with the booming wind-turbine industry. It’ll be on Jan. 18, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, 14000 West State Rt. 2, near Oak Harbor, Ohio. The group has a couple of the nation’s leading birders among its ranks and is mustering up support for proper siting of wind turbines, especially those being contemplated near the Great Lakes shoreline or in the water.

Western Lake Erie, from Monroe to Sandusky, is Ground Zero for the bird-turbine issue. It lies in the heart of a pair of major North American flyways. It would be the most lucrative area to wind-farm developers if the flyways weren’t here because of its shallow water (which makes installation more affordable) and access to the regional electric grid. Plus, there are more people living between Detroit and Cleveland than anywhere else along the lakes. In other words, maximum bang for the buck the closer you get to western Lake Erie.

No surprise here, but a 2005 General Accounting Office report concluded it’s “location, location, location” when it comes to avoiding problems with wind turbines.

Students sought for Emerald Ash Borer University

A series of free, online webinars called Emerald Ash Borer University is being offered again by Purdue, Michigan State University and Ohio State University. If nothing else, the thumbnail-sized exotic Asian beetle that’s killing most of North America’s beautiful ash trees might help you learn how to work your computer better.
Sessions are being held at 11 a.m. eastern standard time through June 2. Go to http://breeze.msu.edu/eab-university/ for details or call 517-432-1555, ext. 222.

NOAA improves Great Lakes weather forecasting

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it is now using enhanced weather and marine forecast models for the Great Lakes that will extend forecasts from 36 hours to 60 hours.  NOAA says that should be particularly helpful to commercial and recreational boaters, the shipping industry, emergency responders, water resource managers and the private weather industry — not to mention those of us who’d just like to know when conditions are best for a stroll on the beach.

Tom Henry covers the environment for The (Toledo) Blade and writes an occasional column for Great Lakes Echo.