ALMOST 80 YEARS AGO!!! In 1930 the Supreme Court Declared the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal unlawful.
Michigan, and now Minnesota and Ohio are going to the Supreme Court to force Chicago to shut the locks of the Sanitary and Ship Canal in an attempt to keep the Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes. As it turns out they're doing it by trying to re-open and enforce a supreme court decision made almost 80 years ago. (Let me be clear, this won't affect the water treatment or sanitation functions for the city of Chicago).
Here's a funny bit of history.
Once upon a time Chicago, like all other cities around the Great Lakes at the time, made use of its easy access to fresh water to dispose of sewage and keep its citizens hydrated. It had a water intake far out into Lake Michigan, and closer to land it just dumped its sewage. It was the Thing To Do at the time.
Everybody did it. Yes it was bad. But don't blame Chicago particularly. They were a unique case though...
...because Chicago suddenly started to grow. And fast. And soon the field of raw sewage and contaminated water started reaching the water intake before dissipating. And people found themselves literally drinking their own shit. As you can imagine that made everybody sick.
So...Chicago did, again, what was the style at the time: Making a monumental change to the natural order. The solution to raw sewage reaching the water intake?
"Lets make the rivers flow backwards, and then connect them to the Mississippi!"
So! They did.
But in 1929 Wisconsin, Michigan, and New York file a Supreme Court lawsuit against Chicago for diverting MASSIVE amounts of a commonly shared resource, fresh water, from a lake system bordered by 7 other states.
And guess what?
They won!
The Supreme Court, in 1930, said "Yeah! That thing is way unlawful!" But it was never ordered shut.
The lawsuit grounds its case on three 1929 complaints pitting Wisconsin, Michigan and New York against Illinois. Those complaints charged that the canal’s reversal of the water flow away from Lake Michigan was illegal. The Supreme Court declared the canal unlawful one year later in 1930, but never ordered it shut over the following years but only sought to regulate it.
--Article
Now.
You may have read some of my recent articles about the threat of the Asian Carp to the Great Lakes.
Four species of carp, known collective as The Asian Carp, or as I like to call them, the Four Fishmen of the Apolcalypse...four species of carp were used in the 1970s to keep fish farms clean, and a great big flood came along in the 1990s and the Asian Carp got out in breeding populations and entered the Mississippi. From there the Asian Carp headed North for 15 years infesting the Mississippi and its tributaries and wiping out native species and ecosystems in its wake.
Now the Asian Carp have made their way ALL the way up the Mississippi and ALL the way through the Sanitary and Ship Canal and DNA samples of the fish has been found in the water beyond electrified barriers intended to keep the fish out of Lake Michigan.
Why don't we want the fish in Lake Michigan? Because from there they'd infest all the Great Lakes and destroy the eco-system. But what's really lighgting a fire under peoples' butts is they also stand to destroy the $7 BILLION dollar commercial fishing industry in the Great Lakes. SEVEN B-B-B-BILLION dollar industry. With a B.
Last month, in a panicked move to keep the Fish out of the Great Lakes, all the Rotenone (fish toxin) in the country was dumped into a 6 mile stretch of the sanitary canal so the Army Corps of Engineers could fix the electrified barrier without risking letting any Asian Carp through.
Phew...
So now where are we?
Well...ONE (1) bighead Asian Carp was found among the fish kill.
1.
That's great news! It means the Asian Carp may not already be in the Great Lakes.
Excellent.
The folks minding the Chicago Locks wiped their foreheads and said "That was lucky! Well...let's open the locks again! Back to business folks!"
And the locks were re-opened.
But the rest of the states said "WHOA! WHOA WHOA WHOA! This was one hell of a warning shot. How about NOT back to business as usual. Let's end this once and for all."
The Illinois Governor was all like "Well, let's not be too hasty!"
And Everybody Else said "How about we DO be hasty"
And Michigan's Attorney General, on request from Governor Granholm, filed suit in the Supreme Court against the US Army Corps of Engineers to close the Chicago Locks.
AHA!
But it didn't stop there.
Now Minnesota and Ohio are joining the lawsuit. And Indiana may be soon to follow.
The argument...These locks were ruled unlawful almost 80 years ago. And they're NOT part of the Sanitary system. I need to make that clear, closing the locks will not affect Chicago's sanitary system.
Mr. Cox says if the court will not reopen the old case, he will file a new case charging the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources with allowing pollutants to contaminate the Great Lakes system. The lawsuit is on the high court’s agenda Jan. 8.
We're closing those locks, dammit. And we're closing them forever. They are a revolving door for invasive species to travel from the Great Lakes (via the St. Lawrence Seaway) to the Mississippi and vice versa.
It ends now.