CHICAGO, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- A federal judge has blocked a third attempt to close shipping locks in the Chicago area to keep invasive Asian carp out of Lake Michigan, officials said.
U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow in Chicago said the carp do not appear to be an imminent threat and closing the locks might be ineffective at keeping the voracious fish at bay in any case, the Chicago Tribune reported Thursday.
Five Great Lakes states sued the federal government in July to force temporary closure of locks on the Calumet-Sag Channel and the Chicago River. Attorneys from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and Pennsylvania said lock closure was the most effective and immediate way to keep Asian carp out, as the Great Lakes were approaching a "biological tipping point" in a decades-long fight against the carp, a native of China with no known predators in North America.
If the fish reach the Great Lakes they could jeopardize the region's $7-billion-a-year commercial and recreational fishing industry, supporters of the lock closures said.
"They are amazingly fecund, they reproduce rapidly, they are very mobile, they can disrupt the aquatic food chain," Michigan Assistant Attorney General Robert Reichel told Dow during the trial. "The concern is that we are at a critical juncture in the migration of these species".
Opponents of the lock-closure plan called it a "politically motivated" attack and said that sealing the locks, even temporarily, would deal a crippling blow to the regional economy. UPI
