{"id":544895,"date":"2010-04-27T17:27:29","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T21:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.circleofblue.org\/waternews\/?p=14708"},"modified":"2010-04-27T17:27:29","modified_gmt":"2010-04-27T21:27:29","slug":"supreme-court-rejects-michigan%e2%80%99s-asian-carp-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/544895","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Rejects Michigan\u2019s Asian Carp Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michigan’s Attorney General Mike Cox is \u201clooking at other legal avenues\u201d to pursue the carp battle.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"flying<\/p>\n
\n
Photo by Jason Lindsey<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

By Steve Kellman
\nCircle of Blue<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michigan\u2019s effort to bring the Asian carp fight to the U.S. Supreme Court came to an abrupt end Monday with a terse two-sentence denial from the court.<\/p>\n

The ruling effectively ends Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox\u2019s four-month effort to convince the nation\u2019s highest court to wade into the legal debate over the invasive species threatening Lake Michigan. Cox sought to reopen a decades-old lawsuit against Chicago’s diversion of Lake Michigan water to force the closure of Chicago-area locks that threaten to let the carp into the freshwater body.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fight to protect Michigan\u2019s jobs and environment now falls to President Obama and Congress,\u201d Cox said in a statement. \u201cWhile President Obama has turned a blind eye to the millions of Great Lakes residents who do not happen to live in his home state of Illinois, it is now up to him to save thousands of Michigan jobs and our environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asian carp have been making their way up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers for decades since being imported to clean catfish ponds in southern parts of the country, while government workers also attempted to use the fish for weed control sewage disposal. Established populations now live just a few miles from Lake Michigan, in the Illinois River and the canals that transport Chicago\u2019s municipal waste away from the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile President Obama has turned a blind eye to the millions of Great Lakes residents who do not happen to live in his home state of Illinois, it is now up to him to save thousands of Michigan jobs and our environment.\u201d <\/br>-Mike Cox<\/span><\/div>\n

Midwest officials and environmentalists fear that the invasive fish could devastate the Great Lakes ecosystem and destroy the region\u2019s $7 billion sport fishing industry if a breeding population becomes established in the lakes. DNA tests suggest that at least some fish have already made their way past the electric fish barriers.<\/p>\n

But the high court dismissal does not end the attorney general\u2019s legal options, according to spokesperson Joy Yearout.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looking at other legal avenues including action in federal district court, but we\u2019re reviewing those options right now,\u201d Yearout told Circle of Blue. \u201cEven while that legal review is happening, the attorney general is still committed to doing what he can to raise public awareness and put pressure on Washington to take action.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth the president and Congress could take action to solve this problem; it doesn\u2019t need to be a legal solution,\u201d Yearout added.<\/p>\n

Nick Schroeck, executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, said the attorney general has several legal options, including suing the state of Illinois and the federal government in federal court. He could also a file suit in state court in Illinois against the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, which oversees the network of locks and canals that threaten to let the carp into Lake Michigan.<\/p>\n

Environmental groups could take up legal action in state court as well, Schroeck said, \u201cperhaps using the Illinois Endangered Species act.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOther states could sue too,\u201d Schroeck noted. \u201cThe other interesting case is that Canada may now choose to get involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, an independent, not-for-profit group of environmental attorneys working to protect the lakes, supported Cox\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n

Since the case was reopened in December, the Michigan case generated more than two dozen motions, responses, memoranda, appendices and friend of the court briefs. The states of Indiana, Minnesota, New York, Ohio and Washington all weighed in with motions in support of Michigan\u2019s efforts, as did the Queen in Right of Ontario. Ontario is the only Canadian province to border the Great Lakes, and Ontario officials fear that Asian carp could devastate the province\u2019s fishing industry.<\/p>\n

Illinois state officials oppose the closure attempts on economic grounds, noting that the locks and canals are used for flood control and to transport some 7 million tons of cargo a year. The U.S. Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, sided with Illinois and noted that the federal government is already taking several steps to block Asian carp from getting past the locks and into the lake.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a host of ways, the federal government has demonstrated its commitment to protecting the Great Lakes from the expansion of Asian carp,\u201d Kagan wrote in her memorandum in opposition to Michigan\u2019s request. \u201cNothing in federal law warrants second-guessing its expert judgment that the best information available today does not yet justify the dramatic steps Michigan demands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kagan\u2019s argument\u2014and the fact that the U.S. government took sides in the dispute\u2014might have helped doom Michigan\u2019s motion to reopen the Illinois lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal government weighing in on Illinois side was a very big hurdle to overcome,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the other hand, the federal government\u2019s got ownership of the issue now,\u201d Schroeck said. \u201cIf the carp get in and there\u2019s a reproducing population of Asian carp in Lake Michigan, the feds are going to have to answer for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cox is just one of several Michigan politicians seeking to block the carp from getting into Lake Michigan. U.S. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich) has sponsored a bill called the CARP ACT (Close All Routes and Prevent Asian Carp Today) that would close the locks, erect barriers in channels and rivers keep carp out of Lake Michigan during floods, and reinforce the current carp blocking and monitoring efforts. He introduced the bill following the Supreme Court\u2019s first rejection of Cox\u2019s preliminary injunction request.<\/p>\n

The bill has won nine co-sponsors: from Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio, and is now before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.<\/p>\n

U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich) introduced a version of Camp\u2019s CARP ACT in the Senate, where it has garnered six co-sponsors and been referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the day before the opening day of fishing season in Michigan, Camp sent out an e-newsletter to his supporters seeking signatures on a petition supporting his bill.<\/p>\n

Cox, who is running on the Republican ticket for governor, praised current Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm and the state\u2019s Department of Natural Resources & Environment for their efforts to block Asian carp in his statement on Monday. He also called on Congress to pass the CARP ACT while urging concerned citizens to call the White House, sign the online petition he posted on his StopAsianCarp.com website, and post comments on the campaign’s Facebook page.<\/p>\n

Cox spoke with Circle of Blue during a public rally in Traverse City in February, noting that 80,000 people had signed the petition at stopasiancarp.com.<\/p>\n

Steve Kellman is a reporter for Circle of Blue. Reach Kellman at steve@circleofblue.org and check out more of our Asian carp coverage here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michigan’s Attorney General Mike Cox is \u201clooking at other legal avenues\u201d to pursue the carp battle. Photo by Jason Lindsey By Steve Kellman Circle of Blue Michigan\u2019s effort to bring the Asian carp fight to the U.S. Supreme Court came to an abrupt end Monday with a terse two-sentence denial from the court. The ruling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4010,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4010"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}