The Ballast Water Bill Is Back
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund
Congress’s favorite zombie ballast water bill has emerged from the grave again this year, hell-bent on letting special interests devastate the Great Lakes and other US waters. This is the fourth year in a row we’ve seen this legislation, which would roll back clean water protections and make it easier for ships to introduce and transport invasive species to and between the Great Lakes and other sensitive American waters.
This is no small thing. The Great Lakes have been utterly devastated by invasive species introduced via ballast water. Zebra and quagga mussels now coat the bottom of portions of Lake Michigan and have filtered the waters enough to allow unprecedented algae growth—while costing local governments millions to address their water infrastructure impacts. There are now more invasive mussels in the Great Lakes than fish in all the world’s seas. And round gobies are squeezing out native fish. Invasive species are helping to push the Lakes’ ecosystem into dangerously unstable territory. The economies of cities in the region relying on the Lakes for water, jobs, tourism, and quality of life have a lot at stake in this discussion. The Chicago Sun-Times has a strong editorial running down the many reasons this bill needs to be put in the grave once and for all.
Others are sounding the alarm, too. A bipartisan group of state Attorneys General from Illinois, Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Maine, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington sent a letter to Congress opposing the bill on the grounds that it will increase the risk of new invasive species infestations.
The states have it right. This bill will make expensive and dangerous species invasions more likely in the future. It would give the shipping industry preferential treatment that no other industry receives by exempting it from the Clean Water Act. It would make it virtually impossible for the Coast Guard to strengthen the standards regulating ballast water, ever. And most distressingly, the bill would exempt “geographically limited area[s]” like the Great Lakes from future protections.
We did not elect Congress to make our waters, from the Great Lakes to Puget Sound, more friendly to invasive species. Let’s make sure they get that message.
Read the full article at: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/rebecca-riley/ballast-water-bill-back
