Lake Erie cleanup-aid cut fought
CONGRESS
WASHINGTON — Rep. Marcy Kaptur warned Thursday that President Donald Trump’s plan to eliminate $300 million in federal funding for a Great Lakes cleanup program would devastate efforts to keep Lake Erie free of the voracious Asian carp.
“You’ve heard the stories about the Asian carp,” the Toledo Democrat said. “But it’s one of the biggest threats to the entire Great Lakes fishery. And Lake Erie is the largest fishery.”
“These are mean critters,” Kaptur said. “And they are big. Everyplace they go, they eat up everything. They’re like massive vacuum cleaners.”
Kaptur and Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., briefed reporters from Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania on their efforts to preserve the funding for what is known as the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
The White House’s proposed budget for the federal spending year that begins in October would kill all money for the Great Lakes program. The White House released its budget last month.
The fight to restore the $300 million has been spearheaded by the Senate’s two Ohioans: Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Sherrod Brown.
Since the Great Lakes program was launched in 2010, the federal government has spent $1.8 billion aimed at preventing invasive species such as the Asian carp from entering the lakes, curbing algae blooms and pursuing other cleanup programs.
Kaptur said some of the funding helps pay the costs of fishermen using nets to catch scores of Asian carp in the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River, the carp’s path of migration north.
The Army Corps of Engineers also has built three electric barriers in the Chicago Area Waterway System linking the Illinois River to Lake Michigan. Those barriers are intended to block Asian carp from entering the lakes. The corps reports that “no Asian carp have been captured or observed above the barriers since the summer of 2010.”
Kaptur also plans to introduce a bill requiring the corps to release its report on a plan to construct additional barriers at a lock and dam near Joliet, Illinois, to keep Asian carp out of the lakes.
Although the report was scheduled to be made public in February, the White House delayed the release pending a review.