I used to walk three miles, each way, down to Lake Harbor Park several times a week. Rain, snow, sunny, hot, cold, drizzly, day or night. I'd do it all the time. It was my refuge. When I got there I'd walk one trail or another down to Lake Michigan, taking the high, wooded ridge of a dune. Or I'd walk in the valley between dune ridges, ducking under and hopping over moss covered fallen trees. I'd go there just to smell and see and hear good things. Or walk down with a friend in the winter and sled the 100 foot treeless dunes.
This is the place I think of when I hear of ecological trauma to the lakes. This place that has never asked anything of me, but has soothed me hundreds of times over. I'd imagine stealing away into the comfort of the woods like a caring embrace, and time would stand still, and my mind was clear and calm.
What's your place of refuge?
As we speak, seven Great Lakes states have banded together in an emergency, last chance bid to keep Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes from the Chicago Sanitary and Ship canal. They have sent experts and their stockpiles of the fish poison Rotenone to clear a six mile stretch of the canal of the invader. The massive effort took place today. A final bid to save the Great Lakes ecosystems and the people and wildlife that rely on it as a way of life.
There is now serious talk of closing up the canal.
That's a source of considerable debate among biologists and has sparked concern among officials elsewhere that Illinois and the Army Corps of Engineers have been too lax in battling the Asian carp. Also on Wednesday, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm wrote a letter to the state's attorney general urging him to pursue every legal tool to force Illinois to step up its defense of Lake Michigan. Granholm raised the possibility of closing portions of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal by locking various dams that remain open to give passing barges access to the Mississippi.
Others have asked the state to do the same, arguing that toxins and electric barriers are insufficient.
"The problem does not go away after the poison has floated down the canal," said Henry Henderson, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Midwest Program. "It will require proactive and thoughtful action, two things that have been scarce during this slow-motion disaster."
Rogner said locking of the dams might ultimately happen, despite the harm that would cause the region's shipping traffic.
"All options are on the table," he said.