Whether you have visited the Upper Mississippi River once, or lived next to it all your life,

we invite you to enter an essay contest: “Our Upper Mississippi River: Connection, Inspiration, Transformation.”

Share your experiences with, and connection to, this natural wonder. How has the river inspired you? How has the Upper Mississippi River changed your life? How do you protect this river you love?

by Robert Hirschfeld,  Coalition Organizer – Invasive Species

In the three weeks since the Illinois Department of Natural Resources announced its plan to fight hunger and Asian carp in one fell swoop, my Asian carp twitter feed has seen more action than in the previous two months combined. #AsianCarp is trending, largely due to the initial disgust* that greets a suggestion of eating river monsters.

Asian carp steaks with Cajun remolade at the Heaven City Restaurant in Mukwonago, WI. Photo courtesy of Gary Porter / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

(I’ve yet to collect the full set of relevant data on what percentage of those adamantly refusing to eat carp don’t think twice about hot dogs. Didn’t your parents ever tell you, “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it”?)

Chicago Tribune columnist Dennis Byrne gets it right when he describes lobsters as “the 19th century equivalent of bigheads.” It has also been said that lobsters are the cockroaches of the sea, and yet it’s a sign of refinement and taste to drop a few bills to rip open their exoskeletons and devour the tasty innards. The superior marketing wizards of the Northeast knew that demand is created from the top down, so you sell it as a delicacy, not some kind of “soylent marine” to be pushed on the masses.

Of course, Mr. Byrne’s ultimate answer is to throw up his arms in disgust at the likely series of unintended consequences that would follow from creating a market for Asian carp. While I take issue with cynicism as the basis for (a lack of) public policy (even in Illinois!), Mr. Byrne is right to be thinking about the logical extension of marketing an invasive species as food.

While humans have driven some species to extinction or endangerment, we have also propped up populations of others to artificially high levels—see chickens, pigs, and cows. Once a profitable industry is established, all the incentives are in place to continue the existence of that industry, even if it trades in a troublesome product. Even if the original purpose of the industry was to exterminate the product. Who will want to end a profitable business—especially in this economy?

Personally, I don’t care if Asian carp are eaten or made into fertilizer for your garden. I’m happy to see them pulled out of the rivers they currently infest, and I’m thrilled to decrease the pressure on the experimental electric “barrier” which is currently serving as the last line of defense against a full-scale Asian carp invasion in the Great Lakes.

Still, Illinois needs to think carefully about its approach on this issue. If the state can successfully sell Asian carp as a healthy, protein-rich, and delicious food, then it should do so. But it should not forget that this is a means to an end—removing the threat of Asian carp.

Which brings me to the deeply buried lead. Asian carp represents only the most visible invasive species threatening our rivers and lakes.  The US Army Corps of Engineers has identified 39 (yes 39!) high-risk invasive species poised to use the Chicago Waterway System to infest the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins. You can eat all the carp you want (and as they are delicious, I encourage you to do so), but that will not end the threat of invasive species. A real solution can only take the shape of a permanent, physical barrier separating the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds.

Fish infected with VHS. Photo courtesy of WI DNR.

As for the dozens of other invasive species, they’re unlikely to have a place at the table. I assure you, no one is going to want to eat Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia. And unlike the initial aversion to carp, that is a very rational response.

* The reaction to Asian carp appears to be based on association with the “trash fish” Common carp. Unlike Common carp, Asian carp feed on plankton from the middle of the water column, making them a cleaner-tasting fish and keeping them low in toxins like mercury that can bioaccumulate in fish like tuna.

Photo credit: NASA

American Rivers, a national river conservation organization, named both the Chicago and Mississippi Rivers in its 2011 “America’s Most Endangered Rivers” report issued earlier this week. The list “…is a call to action for rivers at a crossroads, whose fates will be determined in the coming year.”

For the Chicago River, the report highlights the 1.2 billion gallons of sewage effluent released daily into the Chicago River that has not been disinfected. This polluted water creates threats to public health that could be alleviated if Chicago’s Metropolitan Water Reclamation District fully treated its sewage. In positive news, federal officials have stated that the current situation will not be allowed to continue.

The Mississippi River’s current record water levels and resulting unprecedented flooding caused American Rivers to give it the unusual designation of a “Special Mention” in its report. The economic damage from the flooding, the displacement of people and wildlife, and the impacts on water quality from sewage, excess nutrients and other pollution in the  flood waters underscore the need to rethink, recreate and adapt our flood prevention strategies and restoration efforts to work with, not against, the river. Read more about this issue.

Some thoughts on blasting a levee to restore a floodplain

On May 2, 2011, websites and newspapers across the nation featured the image of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ blasting a levee to activate the Mississippi River’s New Madrid Floodway, located between the borders of southern Illinois and Missouri. Against the night sky, the blast’s leaping flames and billowing smoke were a sobering symbol of a “grave decision” made in response to one of the area’s worst flooding events in history. In the end, the decision to blast the levee prevented the flooding of Cairo, Illinois, a town with 3,000 residents; the diverted waters have flooded approximately 130,000 of acres of agricultural land and 100 residences in Missouri.

There is a fascinating backstory to this event, and George Sorvalis of the Water Protection Network has outlined it beautifully in a commentary called “Grave Decisions.” We are reposting it in its entirety here. Prairie Rivers Network, along with the Water Protection Network and other organizations concerned with protecting our rivers and water, believes that we must work to adopt growth and development policies that work with natural river dynamics. We must “make room” for our rivers, both for their protection and for our own.

Grave Decisions
By George Sorvalis
Water Protection Network, Coordinator
 
The Corps of Engineers last night activated the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway – a roughly 130,000 acre, 3 to 10 mile-wide, floodway inside a 56-mile-long ‘frontline’ levee along the Mississippi River and a 36-mile long setback levee.  There is a 1,500-foot gap where the 2 levees would come together down river, to allow the floodway to drain back into the Mississippi River.  This gap also allows the Mississippi River to back into its floodplain providing exceptional (and now unfortunately rare) wildlife habit. {Continue Reading »}

Immediate Release:
August 3, 2010

CHAMPAIGN, IL — Long before the BP oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico suffered from a chronic spill of chemicals that rush down the Mississippi River from Illinois and other Midwestern states. The influx of pollution results in an area appropriately known as the Dead Zone. Scientists from Louisiana just finished their annual research cruise of the Gulf and determined that this year the Dead Zone was 7,722 square miles, one of the largest since the cruises began in 1985 and almost the size of Massachusetts.

The Dead Zone is characterized by water so low in dissolved oxygen (<2 mg/L) that animals suffocate. When shrimp, crab, and other relatively immobile species cannot escape, fishermen must move to cleaner waters.

The primary cause of the Dead Zone is too many nutrients. According to recent studies by the U.S. Geological Survey, Illinois is the number one contributor of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution to the Gulf of Mexico. {Continue Reading »}

Laura Kammin, PRN’s Habitat conservation Specialist, was interviewd on GLT as a result of our press release about how Prairie Rivers Network and other conservation groups reject the barge industry-promoted proposal that will increase the taxpayer burden for constructing barge transportation network.