By VLADISLAVA SUKHANOVSKAYA
Capital News Service
LANSING – A coalition of organizations is developing an innovative and expensive engineering project at the 96-year-old Brandon Road Lock and Dam on the Des Plaines River south of Chicago to block invasive carp from reaching Lake Michigan.
The $1.146 billion project, paid for with 90% federal and 10% state funds from Michigan and Illinois, is meant to help prevent catastrophic damage to the $7 billion Great Lakes fishery and prevent untold disruption to the $15 billion boating industry, according to authorities.
Addressing the need for a better barrier at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam could also fix one potential carp entry point.
There are at least 18 other connections between the Mississippi River Basin and the Great Lakes for aquatic invasive species to get in, as identified in the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Interbasin Study.
That 2013 study assessed pathways and gave a level of risk to each of them. Since then, connections such as Eagle Marsh in Fort Wayne, Indiana were closed with barriers.,
One common effort of all the agencies is fishing invasive species out and educating people about behaviors such as cleaning boats before putting them in different bodies of water.
Engineers are adding new impediments to electrical barriers now in place at the Brandon Lock to block fish that can grow to 4 feet and 100 pounds. But the existing barriers are effective only on fish 6 inches or bigger, said Scott Whitney, the chief of project management at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The new barrier will produce sound, electricity, a first-of-its-kind locking mechanism to flush lifeforms out of the river and a “bubble curtain” – a wall of bubbles – to block carp. The intent is to prevent damage to Pacific salmon, lake trout, walleye and whitefish fisheries that are among the most lucrative sectors of the Great Lakes recreational economy.
“Remember the movie ‘Jaws’?” said Whitney. “In this underground viewing chamber, they had this bubble curtain going in front of the wall thinking that that would stop Jaws from penetrating. But in this case, we’ve shown in the laboratory that bubble barriers can be very effective in keeping fish from moving through them.”
He said fish will see the bubble curtain and swim beneath it. Additionally, silver carp “have a very unique connection between the inner ear and their swim bladder that creates an echo chamber, and that echo chamber reacts to a negative noise. That’s why they jump in the air and hit people in boats.”
The risk of ruining Great Lakes fisheries has its genesis in human ingenuity that turned out to be anything but genius.
The three species of invasive carp – bighead carp, silver carp, and grass carp – that could ruin Great Lakes fisheries were imported to the United States in the 1970s to control nuisance algal blooms in wastewater treatment plants and aquaculture ponds, as well as for human food. They grow quickly and can outcompete other fish for food, according to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
According to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR), “These species of invasive carp are moving toward Michigan and threaten our fisheries. If these carp become established in Michigan waters, they will eat the food supply that our native fish depend on and crowd them out of their habitat.”
The second mistake was made 70 years earlier when engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River, turning it from emptying into Lake Michigan. Instead, filthy water and floating carcasses of dead livestock were directed to the Mississippi River Basin.
The reverse flow connected the Mississippi River Basin and Great Lakes, establishing a backdoor for invasive species, including carp.
The center of the country provided a perfect feast for the voracious carp to expand their range and numbers. Females can produce up to 1 million eggs per year.
“They all grow quickly to large sizes, which kind of precludes them from predation at a relatively young age,” said Peter Alsip, an ecological modeling data analyst for the University of Michigan’s Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research.
“We were working at night. You could hear them jumping around us, but you couldn’t see. And then one just popped out of nowhere and jumped right at me. I’ve been hit once in the back.”
John Navarro, an Ohio DNR program administrator, said grass carp are already swimming in Lake Erie. The department is fishing grass carp out and collecting eggs.
Their main spawning point is the Sandusky River, according to a University of Toledo study. To eradicate them in Lake Erie, the Ohio DNR proposed a behavioral barrier with a bubble barrier and acoustic deterrents in the river.
The department’s strategy works so far: “We’re not seeing impacts now,” Navarro said.
The Brandon Road project is in the last stage of design. In addition to bubbles and sound barriers, the project will have an automated barge-clearing deterrent.
Whitney said, “It’s creating this turbulence in the middle of the bar that forces material out to the sides, and lots of current take it away. So any eggs, any detritus, any material that can carry floating life forms or life forms attached to another material are pushed out before it gets into the chamber.”
After that, the flushing lock forces any remaining water down and out of the chamber before a barge comes in.
Marc Smith, the policy director at the National Wildlife Federation, said architectural designs are “done first, before you start coming in and removing and putting in new cabinets. And we’re almost done with that.”
The next step is signing a product agreement between the Corps of Engineers and the state of Illinois to start construction, which would take six to seven years.
According to an Environmental Integrity Project website, one of the sites, an electrical generating station, is contaminated with cobalt, manganese, sulfate, antimony, nickel, cadmium, and lead.
“This property – owned by Midwest Generation – is more than likely contaminated with various substances. However, it is our hope that the Corps of Engineers and the state can find a solution to this and advance this project across the finish line. Invasive carp continue to swim towards the Great Lakes, and we can’t afford further delay,” Smith said.
Vladislava Sukhanovskaya has an internship under the MSU Knight Center for Environmental Journalism’s diversity reporting partnership with the Mott News Collaborative. The Knight Center partners with CNS, and this story was produced for Circle of Blue.