[House Hearing, 111 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] ASIAN CARP AND THE GREAT LAKES ======================================================================= (111-87) HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT OF THE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ February 9, 2010 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 54-813 WASHINGTON : 2010 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800 Fax: (202) 512�092104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402�090001 ? COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, JOHN L. MICA, Florida Vice Chair DON YOUNG, Alaska PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee Columbia VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan JERROLD NADLER, New York FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey CORRINE BROWN, Florida JERRY MORAN, Kansas BOB FILNER, California GARY G. MILLER, California EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi Carolina ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania SAM GRAVES, Missouri BRIAN BAIRD, Washington BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania RICK LARSEN, Washington JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York Virginia MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois CONNIE MACK, Florida MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan HEATH SHULER, North Carolina MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York VERN BUCHANAN, Florida HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky JOHN J. HALL, New York ANH ``JOSEPH'' CAO, Louisiana STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin AARON SCHOCK, Illinois STEVE COHEN, Tennessee PETE OLSON, Texas LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas PHIL HARE, Illinois JOHN A. BOCCIERI, Ohio MARK H. SCHAUER, Michigan BETSY MARKEY, Colorado PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York THOMAS S. P. PERRIELLO, Virginia DINA TITUS, Nevada HARRY TEAGUE, New Mexico JOHN GARAMENDI, California VACANCY (ii) ? Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman THOMAS S. P. PERRIELLO, Virginia JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois DON YOUNG, Alaska GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee BRIAN BAIRD, Washington VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri GARY G. MILLER, California STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland Vice Carolina Chair TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania PHIL HARE, Illinois MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida DINA TITUS, Nevada CONNIE MACK, Florida HARRY TEAGUE, New Mexico LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan Columbia ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts ANH ``JOSEPH'' CAO, Louisiana GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California PETE OLSON, Texas MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizaon JOHN J. HALL, New York PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama BOB FILNER, California CORRINE BROWN, Florida VACANCY JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota (Ex Officio) (iii) CONTENTS Page Summary of Subject Matter........................................ vii TESTIMONY Brammeier, Joel, President and CEO, Alliance for the Great Lakes, Chicago, Illinois.............................................. 9 Davis, Cameron, Senior Adviser to the Administrator, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Chicago, Illinois...... 9 Frank, Matt, Secretary, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Madison, Wisconsin.................................. 9 Hansen, Michael, Chair, Great Lakes Fishery Commission, Ann Arbor, Michigan................................................ 9 Humphries, Rebecca, Director, Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment, Lansing, Michigan................... 9 Lodge, David, Director, Center for Aquatic Conservation, Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana............................................ 9 Peabody, Major General John W., Commander, the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division, United States Army Corps of Engineers, Cincinnati, Ohio............................................... 9 Rogner, John, Assistant Director, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Springfield, Illinois............................... 9 Wilkins, Del, Vice President of Terminal Operations and Business Development, Canal Barge Company, Inc., Channahon, Illinois, testifying on behalf of The American Waterways Operators....... 9 PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS Boozman, Hon. John, of Arkansas.................................. 51 Latta, Hon. Robert E., of Ohio................................... 54 PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES Brammeier, Joel.................................................. 58 Davis, Cameron................................................... 68 Frank, Matt...................................................... 72 Hansen, Michael.................................................. 91 Humphries, Rebecca............................................... 99 Lodge, David..................................................... 112 Peabody, Major General John W.................................... 172 Rogner, John, on behalf of Marc Miller........................... 179 Wilkins, Del..................................................... 182 SUBMISSION FOR THE RECORD Edwards, Hon. Donna F., a Representative in Congress from the State of Maryland:............................................. Letter, John R. Groundwater, Executive Director, Passenger Vessel Association....................................... 2 Letter, Conservation Coalition............................. 4 Rogner, John, Assistant Director, on behalf of Marc Miller, Director, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Springfield, Illinois, ``Management and Control Plan for Bighead, Black Grass, and Silver Carps in the United States''.. 19 ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD Biggert, Hon. Judy, a Representative in Congress from the State of Illinois.................................................... 187 Clean Wisconsin, Melissa Malott, Attorney, written testimony..... 189 Natural Resources Defense Council, Henry Henderson, Director, Midwest Program, letter........................................ 192 Watershed Council, Jennifer McKay, Policy Specialist, written testimony...................................................... 197 Wendella Boats, Captain Ragna Russo and Captain Robert Davis, letter......................................................... 203 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.006 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.007 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.008 ASIAN CARP AND THE GREAT LAKES ---------- Tuesday, February 9, 2010 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Washington, DC. The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:30 p.m., in Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Donna F. Edwards presiding. Ms. Edwards. Good afternoon. I would like to welcome everyone to today's hearing. Thank you for braving the snow this afternoon. As we get started, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Petri, be permitted to participate in today's hearing of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. Without objection. Thank you, Mr. Petri. I would also like to ask unanimous consent that the following testimony be made part of the record: a statement from the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Mr. Boozman; a letter from the Passenger Vessel Association, dated February 5, 2010; and a letter from the Conservation Coalition, dated February 5, 2010, that was to be submitted by our Committee colleague Representative Ehlers. [The information follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.009 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.010 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.011 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.012 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.013 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.014 Ms. Edwards. The Chair does not have an opening statement. With that, I would like to ask Mr. Petri if you have an opening statement. Mr. Petri. I have a brief one. I really want to thank you, Representative Edwards, for pinch-hitting so that we can get this moving forward. I suspect that we will be joined in a few minutes by the Chairman of the Full Committee, and we look forward to that. I would also like to thank our witnesses, particularly those from out of town, for being here; and I hope you don't have to stay longer than you originally planned. I know you are all working on that. I want to add that I was particularly happy that the panel includes Matt Frank, who has been our hardworking Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources secretary; and we very much appreciate your being a part of the panel as well. It is no exaggeration to say the issue of the Asian carp entry into the Great Lakes is one that has raised great fears on the part of our States surrounding the Great Lakes. Some predict that the carp population has the potential to disrupt the fundamental ecology of the Great Lakes, resulting in tremendous economic damage to our States and particularly our fishing industry. Yesterday, the Asian Carp Workgroup, a collection of State and Federal agencies, released their Control Strategy Framework. We all agree, and I would note that the Framework specifically states, that the goal is to prevent the introduction of carp into the lakes. Under this plan released yesterday, the opening of the locks would be minimized while a range of approaches are used to attack the carp population and prevent them from entering Lake Michigan. Much attention has been focused on a proposal originally from the State of Michigan to close the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal. I am looking forward to hearing the views of the representatives from Michigan, Illinois, and my own State of Wisconsin on this issue. It seems to me that we do want to keep the carp from entering the Great Lakes, but there must be a way to do it that does not hurt the economy of one of our Great Lake State neighbors. If a lock is left open, however, we have to proceed with great urgency to find effective and permanent solutions to keep the carp out. I am interested in hearing both the short- and long-term strategies to prevent the introduction of the carp. We must have a coordinated response and a strong Federal-State partnership to combat this threat. So I would hope that this hearing would examine a range of options to keep the carp out. Certainly with our human ingenuity and know-how, we should be able to outsmart this fish. Given the interest in moving this hearing forward, I will end my statement here and express my appreciation once again to the witnesses for appearing before the Subcommittee under such trying weather circumstances. Thank you for your work to protect the Great Lakes, and I yield back the balance of my time. Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Petri. With that, I will introduce the witnesses in the order in which we will hear your testimony. Again, thank you very much for being here today, and we look forward to hearing your testimony. We will begin with Mr. Cameron Davis, who is the Senior Adviser to the Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, based in Chicago, Illinois. Major General John W. Peabody is the Commander of the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division of the United States Army Corps of Engineers in Cincinnati, Ohio. Assistant Director John Rogner, Illinois Department of Natural Resources in Springfield, Illinois. Director Rebecca Humphries, Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Environment from Lansing, Michigan. Secretary Matt Frank, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in Madison, Wisconsin. Professor David Lodge, Director, Center for Aquatic Conservation, and Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Dr. Michael Hansen, Chair of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, Ann Arbor, Michigan. And Mr. Del Wilkins, Vice President of Terminal Operations and Business Development at Canal Barge Company in Channahon, Illinois--I hope that is correct--and you are testifying on behalf of the American Waterways Operators. And, finally, Mr. Joe Brammeier, President and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes in Chicago, Illinois. We will begin our testimony today with Mr. Davis. TESTIMONY OF CAMERON DAVIS, SENIOR ADVISER TO THE ADMINISTRATOR, UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS; MAJOR GENERAL JOHN W. PEABODY, COMMANDER, THE GREAT LAKES AND OHIO RIVER DIVISION, UNITED STATES ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS, CINCINNATI, OHIO; JOHN ROGNER, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS; REBECCA HUMPHRIES, DIRECTOR, MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, LANSING, MICHIGAN; MATT FRANK, SECRETARY, WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, MADISON, WISCONSIN; DAVID LODGE, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR AQUATIC CONSERVATION, PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME, NOTRE DAME, INDIANA; MICHAEL HANSEN, CHAIR, GREAT LAKES FISHERY COMMISSION, ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN; DEL WILKINS, VICE PRESIDENT OF TERMINAL OPERATIONS AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, CANAL BARGE COMPANY, INC., CHANNAHON, ILLINOIS, TESTIFYING ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN WATERWAYS OPERATORS; AND JOEL BRAMMEIER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, ALLIANCE FOR THE GREAT LAKES, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Mr. Davis. Thank you, Chairman Oberstar, Chairwoman Edwards, Representative Petri. Thank you very much, Members of the Subcommittee, for the opportunity to speak today on behalf of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson. Thank you for the opportunity to provide the agency's perspective on efforts to prevent Asian carp from becoming established in the Great Lakes. I would also like to recognize that Bill Bolen with EPA is here with me who has put in significant work on behalf of EPA on this issue. The administration continues to make restoration and protection of the Great Lakes a national priority, as evidenced by President Obama's significant investment in the ecosystem under his Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. EPA understands the extreme level of concern by the public and that the public feels for the Great Lakes ecosystem. We understand the concern that the public feels for their safety while recreating and concern for their jobs. We also have an urgent need to keep Asian carp from becoming established in the Great Lakes. As we move forward, we are working to keep Asian carp from becoming established in self-sustaining populations in the ecosystem. But to do that we require a coordinated, cooperative approach. I will address EPA's role first and the efforts in recent past and multi-stakeholder plans moving forward second in my testimony. First, EPA is tasked with coordinating Federal Great Lakes protection and restoration policies and efforts under Clean Water Act section 118 and Presidential Executive Order 13340. EPA has been doing this and will facilitate the integration of efforts by participating agencies and stakeholders moving forward. One of the best weapons we have against Asian carp is this coordinated, cooperative approach through which each agency remains accountable for the work under its authorities in order to ensure the most effective efforts possible. We will undercut ourselves if we inhibit such accountability and integration. This team approach has been successful and will continue to be successful if we give it a chance. It was successful in December when you saw participating agencies come together under the leadership of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to undertake a rapid response action. The action was needed to defend the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal against Asian carp migration while the Corps of Engineers' electric fences were down for maintenance. During that rapid response action, we saw Federal, Canadian, municipal, State, Provincial, binational, and municipal agencies, all of whom provided people, funding, and equipment, come together in what was by all accounts a highly successful effort despite numerous obstacles. This team approach also led to the draft Framework that was released this week, and I will talk about that in just a moment. That was the first role of EPA, coordination. The second role of EPA is that of funding. Nearly a year ago, President Obama proposed and, thanks to your help in Congress, passed the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, an unprecedented investment for rehabilitating the Nation's largest fresh surface water system. EPA is stepping up its use of its funding authority, as evidenced in December when we announced that we were working with the Corps of Engineers to use $13-plus million for the Corps of Engineers to accelerate its work to help defend the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal against carp migration. That work, as I am sure you will hear about from General Peabody, addresses bypasses and other ways in which carp can get into the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal from adjacent waterways. And currently we are working with the other Federal agencies in Illinois to fast-track additional investments under the initiative that will address Asian carp populations that may be upstream of the electric barriers. I thought it was very important to talk a little bit about the EPA's role. Let me turn now to the next steps, because using that coordinated approach that I just talked about is so incredibly important. By using the coordinated team approach, participating agencies have come together to produce this draft Asian Carp Control Strategy Framework this week. We want to accomplish several things with this document. First, we want to provide direction without restricting ideas and initiatives. As we have learned over and over again in this situation the carp are not staying still. The circumstances underlying the carp migration continues to evolve. Likewise, we need to evolve with the situation. So one of the great benefits of this Framework is that it provides a unified direction for the agencies while not straitjacketing them so that they can remain deft in their responses. Second, with the Framework, we want to establish a multi- teared defense. I cannot overstate just how important this is. I believe we cannot fight biology with engineering alone. I don't believe we can fight biology with any other mechanism alone. What this Framework does is establish a multi- dimensional defense for the Great Lakes. So, rather than just use one tool in the toolbox, the Framework relies on engineering approaches, relies on chemical approaches, biological, managerial, and operational approaches so that we have a strong, vibrant effort that we are deploying to help prevent Asian carp migration. Third, we want to create space for every player to be involved in the effort. It is so incredibly important to understand that no one agency has all the answers here. What we have tried to do is essentially create a table around which everybody can sit and offer their most constructive recommendations and ways in which they can be part of the solution. In other words, this Framework belongs to everybody. It does not just belong to the agencies at this table and beyond. The Great Lakes region must unite in this effort. The December rapid response action illustrates just what we can achieve when we are working together. And the Framework is not intended to be final. It is intended to be continually improved upon. The first step is for everyone to have a hand in its development and its execution. I want to thank you, Members of the congressional delegation, for your concern, your compassion for protecting and restoring the Great Lakes. Administrator Jackson, our partner agencies, the States, and delegation all share one overriding imperative and that is to keep Asian carp from becoming established in the Great Lakes. Thank you. Mr. Oberstar. [presiding.] Thank you very much, Mr. Davis. I remember you well from your many years of engagement and involvement in Great Lakes water quality issues. You have been a real leader, a practitioner, feet on the ground, and you have given an excellent presentation this morning. I apologize to all the panels for being delayed. I had a number of other Full Committee activities that had been delayed because of the Washington snowfall, so I was attending to those. I want to thank Ms. Edwards for standing in as Chair as we began and Mr. Petri whose long-standing engagement in and contribution to issues in water quality on the Great Lakes is very well grounded and well informed and he is very much actively engaged. Also, on the Republican side, Mr. Ehlers, Mrs. Miller, who are long-time advocates for the quality of the Great Lakes water and protecting and enhancing that water quality out into the future. Members on the Democratic side, Mr. Hare, Mark Schauer, our newest Member from Michigan, who was active in the State legislature on water quality issues, all of those bring very great commitments and understanding to this issue. Mr. Costello, though he is not right on Lake Michigan or the Great Lakes, his district borders on the Mississippi River. He understands these issues directly. Before I go further, I would just like to make an observation. In 1953, 3 million pounds of lake trout were caught by sport fisherman and also commercial fishermen on the Great Lakes and 2.5 million pounds of white fish. The next year, 1954, that fishery crashed to 300,000 pounds of lake trout and 250,000 pounds of white fish in 1 year because of the lamprey eel. That was before the St. Lawrence Seaway was opened. That was due to vessels coming in the Welland Canal and discharging this creature that came from--most people suspect-- from the Black Sea. And it multiplied. It found a happy home. It adapted to freshwater and migrated all by itself without being transported by vessels from the Welland Canal segment, what is now the St. Lawrence Seaway, to the upper lakes. We said then, we have learned our lesson. My predecessor, John Blatnik, who was a Member of Congress at that time, was Chair of the Rivers and Harbors Subcommittee, a microbiologist himself by training. And as the Seaway opened he said, we need to prevent ballast water from transporting species into the lakes which are not native to the lakes or which can adapt to freshwater. We, the U.S., and the Canadians are now spending upwards of $6 to $10 million a year and will do so forever to contain the lamprey eel, spraying lampricide in their spawning beds where rivers discharge into the Great Lakes from both Canada and the U.S. side. For a while, pollution of those rivers dampened the population growth of the lamprey eel and the numbers declined, but that is not an adequate solution. We don't want polluted rivers dumping into our freshwater lakes and spreading the damage. So when the billions of dollars are spent on Lake Erie, $5 million to clean up discharges into the Lake, dig up the bottom sediments, stop the toxins from coming in, airborne from as far away as Central America, DDT coming into the Great Lakes, having adverse effects on bald eagles, then the lamprey came back. And then we had relaxed our vigilance on inbound cargoes coming in on the salties, and we had the zebra mussel and the round-eyed goby and spiny akinoderm, and a host of other aquatic species and aquatic plants have taken up the water column in the Great Lakes. Now we have this huge threat that did not come into the lakes but may well find its way in. Those specimens provided by Dr. Ehlers give you an idea of how terrifying it is to be out on a boat amongst those carp thrashing about and actually jumping into boats. Now when I first heard about the carp, I said, well, maybe they will eat the lamprey, or maybe they will eat the zebra mussels. No, they don't. They filter all the food chain out of the water column; and one species has no stomach, so it must continuously feed. There is just a slipstream going right through the fish of all the water column. So it is taking away the food chain from the rest of the species in the water column. It is a treacherous, dangerous species that we cannot allow into the lakes. And Mr. Petri and I were exchanging notes that maybe the cold freshwater will inhibit the species. I have seen so many species adapt to the Great Lakes that I don't want to take that chance. No one wants to take that chance. And this has to be a Federal response. We cannot allow eight Great Lake States and the Province of Ontario to pass separate, disparate laws that may conflict with each other and work against each other. We have to have a national response. It has to be a unified response, and we have not had that in the past in reaction to other invasive species. So, Mr. Davis, I greatly appreciate your comments. You can't fight biology with engineering alone. This is not a final action taken by EPA but will continually be improved upon. That is the mind-set that each one of our presenters today needs to keep in mind. As for this committee, I know the lessons of the past. I know the treacherous fate that awaits the movement of those ugly critters into--they really are. I am not hurting their feelings, am I? But, some years ago, scientists from the Great Lakes and Russian scientists who have been studying Lake Baikal for decades met in Duluth; and we had presenters from the University of Wisconsin, Mr. Petri, and scientists from throughout the United States sharing information. Lake Baikal has about the volume of Lake Superior, except that it is deeper. It is a mile deep. Lake Superior is deep, 1,735 feet at its lowest point, which is 125 feet below sea level. But each is a unique specimen in the world of freshwater. And you think of freshwater, it is 1 percent of all the water on the face of the Earth. We have 20 percent of that freshwater in the Great Lakes. Lake Superior is half of the total Great Lakes' volume. So we have a unique responsibility here. We have got to marshal all the resources, all the brain power, all the technology we can, not only to prevent Asian carp from--and all their varieties--from getting into that freshwater treasure but to get the others out. General Peabody, thank you very much for being with us. General Peabody. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. Congresswoman Edwards, Congressman Petri, I am here to testify about the Corps of Engineers' efforts to defeat the risk to the Great Lakes posed by the migration of Asian carp through the Chicago area waterway system. The Army Corps of Engineers is committed to using all available authorities, capabilities, and resources to combat this invasive species. Because the Corps cannot do this alone, we are working intensively as part of the Federal, State, Provincial, binational, and municipal agency team through the Asian Carp Workgroup. We are actively exploring all options to defeat the threat, working within the Asian Carp Control Framework and using a strategy that has four prongs to it for the Corps of Engineers. The Corps' principal role has been to prevent or reduce migration of Asian carp by building, operating, maintaining, and improving the electrical dispersal barrier system in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The fish barrier is the largest fielded operational electrical dispersal barrier in the world and constitutes a dynamic project with significant research and development components. Any assertions that the barrier system is or has been ineffective in restricting upstream movement of bighead and silver carp are speculative. The facts are that the fish barrier system has been in continuous operation since 2002 and has performed as designed, as far as we can tell. Monitoring Asian carp migration is an essential second part of the interagency effort. As part of a comprehensive review of the fish barrier's effectiveness in late 2008, the Corps recognized that we did not have adequate information about the location of Asian carp migration. As a result of canvassing academic and scientific communities, we learned of the environmental DNA research being conducted by the University of Notre Dame's Dr. David Lodge in association with The Nature Conservancy. We have been actively collaborating with him and his team ever since. Environmental DNA is an important emerging technology that is providing additional information to indicate the possible presence of Asian carp, but because Asian carp eDNA has not yet undergone complete, scientific, independent peer review, the results should be considered preliminary at this time. We are coordinating with Dr. Lodge and his team to execute the needed independent external peer review, which we hope to complete by June. This approach is consistent with the Corps' policy of ensuring that its technical, engineering, and scientific work undergoes an open, dynamic, and rigorous review process to ensure confidence in our decisions and policy recommendations. However, we are not waiting to take action even in the face of these uncertainties. Along with our partner agencies, the Corps is working to address the potential threat in a variety of ways. Using the efficacy study authorized in WRDA 2007, we are constructing emergency measures recommended and approved through an interim report that will be initiated this spring and completed this fall. These measures are designed to prevent fish bypasses via the flanking waterways of the Des Plaines River and the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The Corps is also working to develop additional measures to apply in the Chicago Area Waterways System this spring once warmer weather prompts increased fish activity. These measures are under study so have not been defined but may include modified operations at existing locks and controlling works, installing other types of barriers near the locks, controlling ballast water, and assessing options to block the alternate pathways of the Grand and Little Calumet Rivers. To be effective, any measures we take would have to be done in concert with the actions by other agencies on matters within their expertise or authority to eliminate or reduce the numbers of any Asian carp that may be in the vicinity. The fourth element of our strategy is to build on all these efforts with a long-term focus on the Interbasin Control Study. The Corps is undertaking this congressionally authorized study, formally called the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Interbasin study, to explore options and technologies that could be applied to reduce the risk of aquatic invasive species of any type that might transfer along multiple points between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins. This study would be developed in coordination with all interested stakeholders and will be based on science, leveraging the latest technology and the best available information. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks. I look forward to answering the committee's questions. Thank you. Mr. Oberstar. I especially want to thank you, General Peabody, for coming such a great distance by car. General Peabody. Yes, sir. Mr. Oberstar. Seventeen hours? General Peabody. Sir, it was only 10. The view was nice. It was covered in snow. But this is an important hearing, sir, and I felt a compelling requirement to be here. Mr. Oberstar. I must say Mr. Petri and I chose a different route. Rather than going back to the safety of Minnesota and Wisconsin, where it is only below zero, we chose to stay here in Washington and risk life and limb in the snow, where they don't know how to remove it. They don't know what to do with it. They just walk on it. They count on the sun to melt it. They are counting on global climate change to melt this down. It is not happening. I have seen this for 40 years out here. They just don't know what to do with snow. Hell, when I grew up, we had a sidewalk snowplow because people didn't have cars in my day. But we know how to handle it. You are awfully good to make this journey. And, all of you, I thank you very much for making the effort to be here with us. Ms. Edwards, thank you. This is not the Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes, but your concern for both the Bay and its good health and your efforts over many years in the State legislature and elsewhere now as a Member of this Committee have marked you as an advocate for the environment, wherever it happens to be. Thank you. Mr. Rogner, give us the Illinois viewpoint. Mr. Rogner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Petri, Congresswoman Edwards, for this opportunity to testify on behalf of Director Marc Miller, Director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, on the role of the Illinois DNR in battling the Asian carp invasion. Since the early 1990s, we have been fully engaged in this effort. I will first mention a couple of the recent actions we have taken and then outline our action plans for the immediate future as we work with our Federal, State, and local partners to prevent the spread of Asian carp into the Great Lakes. But, first, I want to be absolutely clear on one important point. The Illinois DNR has a firm commitment to this task, and we remain unwavering in that regard. We have been working very closely with our partner States, including Michigan and Wisconsin, and also the Federal agencies to develop effective control strategies. Illinois has also contributed significant resources to controlling Asian carp. A premiere example is that we served as the local sponsor for the Corps of Engineers' electric barrier system, contributing $1.8 million to this effort. Most recently, Illinois DNR served as the lead agency for the successful, rapid response effort last December to prevent the upstream movement of Asian carp when the electric barrier system was shut down for maintenance. The unified response of the Great Lakes States and Provinces I believe was a shining leadership moment for our region and a prime example of how a small group of committed people can really make a difference. This unparalleled effort demonstrated that Federal, Provincial, State, and local partners can work together to help ensure that this invasive species does not establish sustainable populations in the Great Lakes and threaten this globally important ecosystem. Over 400 people worked together with contributions of supplies, equipment, and crews from partners throughout the basin. The rapid response team safely applied Rotenone to a 6- mile stretch of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The Corps of Engineers performed critical maintenance on the electric barrier system, and then we led the cleanup and removal of 18,000 fish, including one Big Head carp. That one fish documented that Asian carp were at the barrier and could have moved past the barrier in potentially large numbers had we not conducted this action. It is important to note that, as we consider additional operations, the cost of this single action was over $3 million and would not have been possible without the substantial donations of equipment and labor from the other States and Provinces and financial support of our Federal partners. I want to thank everyone here at this table today for that critical support. There are several lessons that we have learned from this experience that I would lake to share with the committee: First, meeting this challenge will require even greater collaboration and levels of partnership. We must enlist the scientific and communication resources as well as the political leadership of every State and Province in the basin to join in this effort. Second, early and sustained outreach to key stakeholders, proactive communication strategies, and operational transparency must continue to be maintained as we move forward with our Framework strategy and operations. Finally, the collaborative approach that has been developed with our local, State, and Federal partners is working very well and we believe represents the best model for future efforts. I now wish to outline the actions to control Asian carp that the Illinois DNR proposes to begin immediately or as soon as funding can be secured. These actions will be conducted as part of the Asian Carp Workgroup that is already firmly in place. First, we will conduct a targeted Asian carp removal operation throughout the entire Chicago Area Waterways System. This includes the identification, containment, and removal of carp using standard fisheries gear, including netting, electro fishing, contract commercial fishing, and the use of toxicants such as Rotenone. These priority actions will be focused above the barrier in locations most likely to hold carp. We propose to begin these operations next week. The Illinois DNR will contract with commercial fishermen to operate below the barrier system to reduce populations and propagule pressure on the barrier system below it. Third, informed by Corps of Engineers' eDNA monitoring, we will conduct sampling and removal in hot spots of the Cal-Sag Channel. This includes the entire length of the Cal-Sag below the O'Brien lock and dam as well as the North Shore Channel below the Wilmette Pumping Station. We will participate with the Corps of Engineers' efforts to refine the eDNA technology so that it is a better predictor of both location and population size of Asian carp. In the next 90 days, the Illinois DNR will conduct a survey of all retail live bait locations to ensure that Asian carp minnows are not being sold in Chicago-area bait shops, something that is currently unlawful in Illinois. This effort is already under way. We have also identified several longer-term actions that we are proposing. We will prepare for rapid response contingency operations, including training, advanced procurement of supplies and necessary equipment. We will lead the Asian Carp Management and Control Implementation Task Force along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This plan outlines 133 different actions that will be deployed nationally in all watersheds where Asian carp are a problem. We will participate in additional research into barrier effectiveness using tagged fish and advanced sonar technology. And then, finally, we propose to work with our sister State agency, the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, to enhance commercial markets for Asian carp and investigate requirements for the use of Asian carp products for humanitarian relief purposes. These efforts will promote commercial fishing on the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers and help reduce population pressures on the electric barrier system. This is a problem that is not going to be solved by one State or one agency. As a region, we have a long and established history of using a proactive and collaborative approach. When we are divided, solutions to our problems can remain elusive. We believe our Great Lakes region is stronger when we work together in partnership to solve common problems, and Asian carp will not be an exception to this. The Illinois DNR looks forward to working with the other Great Lake States and Federal agencies in preventing Asian carp from establishing sustainable populations in the Great Lakes and in the larger problem of the exchange of invasives between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins. Thank you again for the opportunity to share our views. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you for that splendid presentation. I will have a couple of questions and comments later, but I think it is a well-thought-out approach, and your emphasis on the multi-disciplinary approach to the issue, that is what I am looking for. I think that is what people all throughout the lakes are looking for. The Carp Management and Control Implementation Task Force plan of 133 different actions, is that available to the committee? Mr. Rogner. Yes, it is. We can make it available. [The information follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4813.169 Mr. Oberstar. Thank you. Director Humphries, thank you very much for being with us. Ms. Humphries. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Congresswoman Edwards. Mr. Oberstar. Did you drive here too? Mr. Humphries. No, I did not. Mr. Oberstar. You caught the last Northwest Airlines flight out? Ms. Humphries. I did. I arrived yesterday. However, getting home might be much more difficult than it was getting here. Mr. Oberstar. Yes, leave quickly before they shut everything down. Ms. Humphries. I think that might be the game plan. Mr. Oberstar. It is much safer out there than it is here, believe me. Ms. Humphries. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today about the looming catastrophe that we face if Asian carp become established in the Great Lakes. I also appreciate the Members in the Michigan congressional delegation for their past work on this and other Great Lakes issues. I have been a conservation professional for over 30 years, and my role with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment is to protect our resources while maximizing recreational opportunities. Allowing Asian carp to populate our Great Lakes will destroy the resource as well as recreational opportunities, and we must act swiftly, collaboratively and wisely to address the crisis. Invasive species have already created havoc, as you have so aptly described earlier. Reports indicate that the cost of biological pollution from invasive species is both massive and it is rising. In the Great Lakes, total cost for treatment and control of zebra mussels alone reaches $100 million each year. The Great Lakes Fisheries Commission reports that for sea lamprey, program requirements are on the order of $30 million per year. Invasive species have profoundly changed the ecosystem of the Great Lakes, significantly impacted the Great Lakes sport and commercial fisheries and have hampered recreation, all of which have a negative effect on Michigan's economy. Let me give you one example, a little more recent example than we heard earlier. Lake Huron once had a vibrant salmon sport fishery with hundreds of charter boats attracting thousands of anglers each year to ports up and down its long coastline. Fishing derbies attracted additional anglers who launched their boats and kept their boats at local marinas, but invasive zebra and quagga mussels, which are Eurasian invaders, have caused the collapse of the salmon population and thus the sport fishery. This was a several million dollar industry, and it is gone. Michigan has taken aggressive steps to stop the further spread of these foreign invaders, including requiring Great Lakes ships to adhere to ballast water management practices, enacting legislation requiring all oceangoing ships to obtain a permit for ballast water discharges, taking legal action to address ballast water issues, including successfully defending our State laws in Federal court and challenging Federal agencies for their failure to appropriately use existing regulatory authority to act, and by administering State regulatory programs to control aquatic nuisance species in our lakes and our rivers, including restrictions on the transport of invasive species of fish, establishment of a list of invasive species prohibited in Michigan and participation and actions to control sea lamprey in the Great Lakes and its tributaries. Despite our best efforts, Asian carp are now at our doorstep. Michigan has its own steps and has taken those steps to prevent Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes. We have contributed financially to the construction of the electrical barrier in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and we have prohibited the possession of live Asian carp in the State. We also participated in the actions this past December that treated the canal to remove Asian carp prior to the maintenance of the second electrical barrier. I cannot stress the following in simpler terms. Once an invasive species gets established in the lakes, we cannot eradicate it. The threat of Asian carp must be treated as a crisis and steps must be implemented immediately to address them. As early as 2003, scientists, government officials and stakeholders were calling for ecological separation to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed, but we did not act quickly enough. Short-term fixes have become long-term projects. For example, the installation of the second electrical barrier took over 6 years and is still not fully operational. It took several years to ban the importation of black carp and silver carp under the Lacey Act and bighead carp are still not covered under that Act. I started by saying that we must act swiftly, cooperatively and wisely to address the threat posed by Asian carp. Here are my recommendations to meet those objectives. We must immediately take all available measures, consistent with protection of public health and safety, to prevent the migration of bighead and silver carp into Lake Michigan, including closing and ceasing operation of the O'Brien lock and the Chicago lock until a permanent ecological barrier is constructed between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Watersheds. The Army Corps of Engineers must have the authority to close the locks on the emergency basis and also a permanent basis if necessary. We must initiate studies to be completed by the end of this year to examine the feasibility of transferring cargo via other transportation systems. We must operate other water control structures near Lake Michigan, the O'Brien lock, the Chicago controlling works and the Wilmette Pumping Station in a manner that will not allow fish to pass into the lake. We must install inner barriers at other locations this year, including barriers between the Des Plaines River and the canal and the Indiana Harbor and Burns Ditch from the Grand Calumet and Little Calumet Rivers to eliminate the potential for flooding between these two watersheds. We need to complete additional studies related to the biology and the ecology of carp and predictive models to determine the areas at highest risk for colonization within the Great Lakes. We need to provide additional dollars for continuous monitoring of carp based on risk analysis with funding on reserve for chemical treatment as a rapid response mechanism is warranted, and we must communicate with the States any actions and data in a timely manner. Operating electrical barrier 2a at optimum voltage and completing electrical barrier 2b this year is important. In developing and implementing plans for a permanent solution to the problems that would ecologically and physically separate the carp-infested waters of the Mississippi watershed from the Great Lakes. We also have to be very proactive with our citizens so that they don't knowingly or unknowingly move these fish into waters where they are not found now. We all treasure the Great Lakes, and we all share a commitment to its continued vitality. Now we must share in a similar commitment to more aggressively move forward and stop the spread of Asian carp. I have additional attachments that I have included in my testimony. I would like to thank you, and I am available to take any questions you might have. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you very much for the wide-ranging statement. Now we will proceed with Secretary Frank. Mr. Frank. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding this hearing, Representative Petri and Representative Edwards. We really appreciate you bringing the attention to this issue that it truly deserves. I want to start off by thanking this Committee and acknowledging the Congress and the President's initiative on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. I can't tell you how excited we are by that initiative. You know, we have been talking about these issues, as you have pointed out, Mr. Chairman, for a long time. This unprecedented opportunity we have, I want to let you know that we are all working hard together to make sure that that money is put to good use. It is long overdue, and we are committed to improving the Great Lakes with the resources that Congress and the President have set aside. So that is a very positive thing. You eloquently set forth the history of how we have been dealing with invasives in the Great Lakes, from the lamprey eel to zebra and quagga mussels to the round goby to VHS. I can tell you, all of our agencies have been struggling with these issues for some time, and there is a great deal of frustration that we all have and that the people of our States have to cut off the flow of these invasives into the Great Lakes. This is a threat not only to our Great Lakes, but it is a threat to all our inland waters. Once they are in the Great Lakes, they move inland, and this becomes a problem not just in our States, but then throughout the United States. Whether it is the vector in the Mississippi River or the Great Lakes, this truly is a national issue. Before I talk about the specific issue at hand, I do want to follow up on Director Humphries' comments about ballast water because this is an incredible opportunity, I think, to really reemphasize how important it is to deal with that issue as well. The Congress last year, the House of Representatives passed a strong ballast water measure. It passed overwhelmingly in the House. It did not get passed through the Senate. And that was following on years of inaction by Federal agencies. A new administration is in town. The Coast Guard is taking a close look at this issue. Wisconsin and some other States have submitted comments to the Coast Guard about regulation. We are glad to see that the Coast Guard is taking this issue more seriously, but we are concerned that we need to get strong action on ballast water. We would welcome this committee's oversight of what is going on with the ballast water issue so that we can finally move on that issue. We know that ballast water continues to dump new invasives into our waterways, and we need to deal with it. We need to deal with it effectively. Wisconsin passed a very strong ballast water permit recently, but we still think the best solution is a strong Federal standard that goes beyond IMO to make sure that we are treating this ballast water so we are not continuing to dump new invasives. It is a critical issue, and I appreciate having the opportunity just to raise that as another important issue we are dealing with right now. Now as to Asian carp, there is a lot that has been said. I will try not to replow ground. A lot of important points have been made. We do think it is important that there is Federal agency coordination, and again, I applaud the White House for their leadership. We had a summit yesterday. The Governors came in to meet with Federal agencies. We are encouraged that this is being taken seriously. We are encouraged that there are resources being devoted to this serious issue. Having said all that, we have a sense of real urgency and concern about where this is all going. We can all think that we are doing as much as we can, but the fact is, we may not have much time, and we really need to make sure that we are looking at all alternatives. I think an immediate expansion of monitoring and fish control efforts in the Chicago waterways system are absolutely critical. We need, as has been said, to get the second barrier up. We share Michigan's frustration that we have a little different perspective on that issue than some other folks do. It is long overdue. It has taken too long, and we were pleased to hear yesterday that the Corps said that it would be up and running this year. That needs to get done. But having said all that, we need to look at the ecological separation between the Chicago waterway and the Great Lakes. There are a number of vectors. We agree it is a complex issue. There is another number of vectors that have to be closed off. We think there is good initial work that is being done. But we need to move faster, and the issue of the locks, what to do with the locks is certainly out there. It is an easy call from Wisconsin's perspective. We are concerned about commerce and the health of the Great Lakes. We think the lock should be closed. We hope that people don't see that as some sort of simplistic answer, that even in closing the locks, you don't guarantee that fish don't get through there. They were designed for navigation, not as a fish barrier. Also there are other vectors that have to be dealt with. So in advocating for that, we do not mean to demean all of the other things that are in some of the Federal planning that we have seen so far. We really have to work together on this, and I can't stress enough how urgent this is and that we need to move from talk to action. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you very much, Mr. Frank, Mr. Secretary, for your splendid presentation and your broad view of the issue and the approaches. Professor Lodge, I want to say, I read with great interest the release of your research work on DNA. I look forward with great interest to your testimony. Mr. Lodge. Thank you very much. I will draw your attention to the PowerPoint that I will use this afternoon. Chairman Oberstar, Ms. Edwards, Mr. Petri, thank you very much for the opportunity to talk about what my collaborative team and I have learned in the last few months about Asian carp in the Chicago waterway and for the opportunity to share our perspectives on what that means. I was last before this Subcommittee about 2 years ago to testify about the impact of ship-borne invasions, the ballast water issue that Mr. Frank was just talking about. And in that testimony, I pointed out to the Subcommittee that while ships were a major contributor of alien species to the Great Lakes, they were not the only one. And in fact, that canals, like the one that we are here to talk about today, are a major pathway by which harmful alien species gain access to the Great Lakes and, indeed, by which other species leave the Great Lakes. In my written testimony, I outlined answers to six questions, and for the sake of brevity, I am going to focus only on four questions in my verbal testimony this afternoon. The first question I want to answer, which stems directly from the work that the Army Corps has supported and that General Peabody referred to, is our work in the canal in the last few months on how close are the carp to Lake Michigan. Now before I really answer that question, I need to say a few things about the method by which we have learned where silver and bighead carp are in the canal system. We have used some very standard technologies from molecular genetics but we have combined those protocols into an unusual combination and a new application to surveillance of Asian carps in the canal. You can think about what we have done as the environmental protection equivalent of what forensic experts do every day and what our justice system has in many ways come to rely on, for example, to determine whether a suspect was at a crime scene. We and Asian carps leave a trail of DNA behind us, and it is that trail that we have been detecting in the Chicago waterway. We have invited an audit, a review, which is in many ways a more rigorous peer review than is typical for scientific work. That review was completed by the EPA, an independent audit team. They issued their final report on our work this past week, and I have provided that to the Committee to become part of the permanent record of this hearing. The conclusion of the EPA audit team--I have put one summary statement up here on this slide--the bottom line is that it is uncontroversial that we are detecting the DNA of only silver and bighead carp and secondly, this EPA audit team, including experts in molecular genetics, concluded that our results are actionable in a management context. So with that as a background--and I am happy to address any questions you may have in a more detailed nature about that-- what we have discovered, unfortunately, in recent months is that both silver and bighead carp are in the waterway north of the electric barrier. I have just indicated with these red blobs on that map where we have detected either silver or bighead carp, and you have received a more detailed map in my written testimony. The most troubling result is that silver carp are not only at the doorstep of the lake up in Wilmette in northern Chicago, but, in fact, appear to be in Lake Michigan or at least in Calumet Harbor opening to Lake Michigan. Bighead carp are not yet--at least we have not yet detected, and I hope we do not detect bighead carp DNA in the lake. However, my conclusion from these data is that it is not inevitable that an invasion of these species--either species is underway, and I believe that an invasion, that is establishment of a self-sustaining, reproducing and spreading population, is still possible to prevent. That begs a question, however, about how many carp will it take to launch an invasion? The short answer is, I don't know, and no one knows. The slightly longer and more helpful answer is that it is a numbers game. If the goal is to prevent invasions in Lake Michigan, then the proximate management goal has to be to prevent additional individual fish of either species from entering Lake Michigan. It is not inevitable that an invasion by either one of these fishes will occur, and our most recent results finding silver carp in the lake make it even more urgent that steps are taken to prevent additional fishes from entering the lake. The third question I want to address is, Is this issue only about Asian carps? And the answer to that is no. I think that is a very important point for the Committee to consider. This canal has already been a pathway by which very harmful species which Chairman Oberstar referred to earlier on--zebra mussels and quagga mussels--this canal is how those species have gotten, for example, to California. It is how they first escaped the Great Lakes and then made their way across the country by other means. But their escape of the Great Lakes was made possible by this canal. This canal is a two-way highway for many species. So these species that I am picturing have already used it. There are many other species poised to use the canal. They either have or are poised to do so. And I will highlight just a few of those on this slide. Spiny water flea, already mentioned by Chairman Oberstar. Water chestnut, a highly damaging aquatic weed. A variety of parasites and pathogens that can be deadly to a variety of fish species. New Zealand mud snail, the bloody red shrimp. All of these species are in the Great Lakes but not yet in the Mississippi River Basin. And, of course, going the other way, I don't need to tell you about bighead and silver carp but don't forget there are other species waiting to go in the same direction. Brazilian water weed, a very expensive water weed further south could use the canal to go north. And then a final example would be the northern snakehead, present in the Mississippi River basin but not yet present in the Great Lakes. So it is very important that you look at this canal and not just as a conduit for Asian carps, but as a conduit for many species, past and future. Therefore, any management actions will bring benefits far beyond the benefits of preventing damages by the Asian carps. I will just finish by suggesting what I believe are some of the management implications of this, and I won't go through all of this. In fact, many of the previous speakers have already addressed these and the new framework that came from the administration yesterday includes many, but not all of, these points. I draw your attention in particular to the last one which I think Mr. Brammeier will also address, which is that especially when you consider this whole suite of species that I mentioned, it is very important to think about the benefits of the canal being far beyond management taken with respect to Asian carps. Thank you. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you very, very much, Dr. Lodge, for that excellent presentation. And all your accompanying data will be concluded in the Committee record, in the hearing record. And now Dr. Hansen. Welcome, and thank you for joining us. Mr. Hansen. Mr. Chair and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to discuss Asian carp and the threat they pose to the Great Lakes. I am Mike Hansen, Chair of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. I am also a professor of fisheries at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. The commission understands the destruction that invasive species cause to ecosystems. Since the 1950s, the commission has been responsible under a treaty between the U.S. and Canada to control the sea lamprey, an invasive species that destroyed fisheries after invading the upper Great Lakes in the 1920s. The Great Lakes are tremendously valuable and worth protecting. Annually, Great Lakes fisheries are worth more than $7 billion and have enormous cultural value to the diverse peoples who live and fish in the region. Globalization and trade have provided more species more opportunities than ever to invade waters of the United States. Currently, more than 180 non-native species have entered the Great Lakes, and harmful species have cost the region billions of dollars. Permanent impacts on the environment and benefits our children will never see are unquantifiable. We are concerned about Asian carp because we have seen what these fish have done to the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. Asian carp spread rapidly by reproducing in large numbers to become the predominant species in an ecosystem. Asian carp eat plankton that is the foundation of food webs. Once loose in the wild, where plankton is abundant but predators are few, Asian carp have proliferated. Strong dietary overlap between Asian carp and native fishes suggest that Asian carp could outcompete native fish for food, especially because an Asian carp can eat 40 percent of its body weight each day. Between 1991 and 2000, bighead carp increased exponentially in the Illinois River. So, by fall 1999, Asian carp made up 97 percent of the biomass of a fish kill in a national wildlife refugee near St. Louis. Today, commercial fishers in the Illinois River regularly catch more than 25,000 pounds of bighead and silver carp each day--an amazing amount of fish. The silver carp has a unique characteristic that makes it particularly dangerous to humans. The sound of a motorboat startles the fish into leaping up to 10 feet out of the water. These flying fish, some weighing more than 20 pounds, are projectiles that land in boats, damage property, and injure people. To understand potential risks of Asian carp to the Great Lakes, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans-Canada and the U.S. Geological Survey assessed the risk of invasion by Asian carp. Specifically, these risk assessments tell us the following: First, Asian carp are likely to tolerate the climate of the Great Lakes because the basin's climate is within the fish's natural rage. Second, Asian carp feed on plankton, the low end of the food web, so they eat the same food that most other fish eat for their own growth and survival. Third, the Great Lakes Basin contains numerous tributaries with suitable spawning habitat and large areas of vegetative shorelines, which they need, particularly in large bays, river mouths, connecting channels, and wetlands. Silver carp will likely be harmful because nearly 1 million boats and personal watercraft operate in the lakes, placing millions of people in potential contact with silver carp. Overall, people of the Great Lakes Basin should be deeply concerned about the possible negative effects of Asian carp. Let me conclude with some thoughts about policy responses. Other witnesses during today's hearing described actions to prevent Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Fishery Commission has been a supportive partner in all of these efforts. I would like to especially thank Cameron Davis for his determination to coordinate a multi-agency response. The question remains, however, what can be done if Asian carp enter the Great Lakes? Unfortunately, the answer is not much, at least not much at the moment, because control mechanisms do not currently exist for Asian carp. While current work to prevent Asian carp migration is appropriate, the only solution to this problem is to achieve what is called "ecological separation" by altering the canal system to prevent species of any kind from moving between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes Basins. We appreciate the work, which we cofunded, that Mr. Brammeier and his colleagues conducted to take a good, hard first look at ecological separation. He will describe that in more detail shortly. But this is just the start. The Water Resources Development Act of 2007 authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a full-scale engineering analysis to identify and propose ways to achieve ecological separation. We urge Congress to clearly express that the end objective is ecological separation, not to reduce the risk or try to achieve separation while maintaining the status quo. The goal must be ecological separation. We also urge Congress to provide the Corps with adequate resources and authority to accelerate development and implementation of solutions to achieve ecological separation. The Great Lakes cannot wait. Mr. Chair, I again thank you for holding this important hearing. I appreciate the committee's interest in taking steps necessary to protect the Great Lakes from Asian carp and other invasive species. Mr. Oberstar. Well, you are so right, Dr. Hansen; the Great Lakes can't wait. And, as I said at the outset, we thought we learned that lesson 50 years ago. We are learning it all over again with every one of these new species that come into the Great Lakes. This is not an inexhaustible resource. Mr. Wilkins, thank you for being with us. You may proceed with your testimony. Mr. Wilkins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Mr. Petri. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the American Waterways Operators, the national trade association for the tugboat and barge industry. I am vice president for Canal Barge Company, a family-owned business headquartered in New Orleans that has been in business for 76 years. Canal operates throughout the inland waterway system and also owns Illinois Marine Towing Corporation, a Chicago-area towing and barge fleeting company. I would like the Subcommittee to know, first and foremost, that the members of AWO fully support robust measures to protect the Great Lakes from the spread of Asian carp. As we put these protections into place, we must also protect human health and safety and maintain the free flow of waterborne commerce that is critical to our economy. Our fundamental message is this: The choice whether to protect the environment or ensure the continued flow of vital maritime commerce is an unnecessary one and, quite frankly, a choice our Nation cannot afford to make. We are confident that congressional leadership, coupled with Administration and stakeholder cooperation, will lead to us a sustainable long- term solution that protects the Great Lakes ecosystem without sacrificing critical jobs and the environmental and economic benefits of barge transportation. Mr. Chairman, finding such a solution is critical because inland waterways navigation is essential to our economy, and it is the safest, most economical mode of domestic freight transportation with the smallest carbon footprint of any mode. Barging plays a key role in the transportation system by reducing congestion on our overcrowded highways and rails. And as commercial users of the inland waterway rivers, coastal waterways, and Great Lakes, our industry has a deep commitment to environmental stewardship. Since 2004, our industry has cooperated with Federal and State agencies concerning the safe operations of the electric fish barriers currently on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. Our industry has also promoted the recovery of threatened and endangered species and established practices to reduce emissions from tank barges. Cooperative and balanced solutions to the problems of invasive species are, in fact, achievable. An integrated approach can arrest the advance of the Asian carp, protect the Great Lakes ecosystem, and maintain safe, efficient, and reliable navigation on vital commercial waterways. My testimony will now address what we feel are nine specific actions as part of that integrated strategy. First, expedite construction of the Barrier 2-B, which is on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. Secondly, design and implement bubble and acoustic fish barriers to prevent Asian carp from moving into the Great Lakes, as commonly done in Europe. Thirdly, immediately complete structures to stop carp from entering the Great Lakes during floods. Fourth, conduct tag-fish research to validate the effectiveness of all primary and secondary barriers, including electric, bubble, and acoustic barriers. Fifth, employ consistent measures to identify the location of this invasive species, such as electric fishing or electrofishing, netting, and commercial fishing that do not delay the movement of commerce. Sixth, fund research on Asian carp specific biological control agents, which has proven to be an effective strategy with other invasive species on the Great Lakes. Seventh, sample barges and other vessels for juvenile carp and their eggs. We are currently serving on a public-private- sector working group to conduct such sampling and ensure our that our industry is not a vector to move this invasive species. Eighth, impose further restrictions on the importation of aquatic invasive species. And, finally, conduct more scientific studies about the ability of carp to survive within the Great Lakes ecosystem. Mr. Chairman, proposals have been made recently in both legislation and litigation to permanently close the locks on the Chicago Waterway System. We strongly oppose lock closures. Recent proposals by Federal agencies to implement a program of scheduled lock closures are equally troubling because they will impede essential commerce without stopping the advance of the carp. Let me repeat that and underscore that: Closing the locks just will not stop carp. Speaking personally, closing the locks would also be devastating to Illinois Marine Towing Company and may even put that company out of business, with a loss of a hundred or more jobs for our shore-side and vessel operations. Other vessel operators who work in the same Illinois waterway in the same region who provide family-wage employment to hardworking Americans would likely suffer the same fate. Together with State, Federal Government agencies, and concerned stakeholders, we feel that we can develop effective solutions to stop the Asian carp in a way that doesn't sacrifice jobs at a time when jobs are on such short supply. Mr. Chairman, this prestigious Committee has a history of leadership and finding solutions to complex and challenging public policies without framing them as an either/or decision. The American Waterways Operators has committed to working cooperatively to ensure a balanced approach to environmental stewardship and economic sustainability for the Great Lakes and the western rivers. We are convinced that both goals can be realized. We thank you for the opportunity to present today, and we certainly are here to answer any of your questions and concerns. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you very much for testifying on behalf of the waterways users. I will come back to you with some further questions and comments after we hear all the testimony. Mr. Brammeier, Alliance for the Great Lakes, please proceed. Mr. Brammeier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Congresswoman Edwards and Congressman Petri, for hosting the hearing today. My name is Joel Brammeier, and I am the president and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. I am also a steering committee member of the Healing Our Waters Coalition. I and dozens of dedicated citizens and experts have, for more than a decade, advised Federal agencies and the State of Illinois on how to stop Asian carp from establishing in the Great Lakes. And many of those folks are in this room today. As Dr. Lodge said, we can accomplish that task, but only if every choice we make today is dedicated to the permanent prevention of Asian carp invasion. Behind nearly every invasive species are the hands of human intervention. The noble intent for the artificial connection to the Mississippi River at Chicago was protection of the city's drinking water. As the 19th-century city grew, sewage-laden rivers flowed into Lake Michigan. The State of Illinois reversed the rivers, binding the ecology of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River and ultimately leading this potentially devastating invader to the shores of Lake Michigan. Now, 120 years on, we have added layers of complexity to that system. 2.1 billion gallons of water streams past those channel walls every day. The system allows more than 35,000 recreational boat movements and supports a slowly declining traffic of 20 to 25 million tons of bulk commodity movements every year. The city has built itself with pride on this backbone of a 19th-century engineering marvel. This connection opened the continent to trade, and it kept the city's rivers from reverting to open sewers. But the stark reality that the system created an aquatic superhighway for Asian carp and other invaders calls the question of whether it is as critical today as it seemed 120 years ago. On the threat itself, others have spoken to that, and I will only say that the only reasonable response to the biological pollution of invasive species is zero tolerance. There is no diluting their impacts to some unnoticed background level. And even if the electrical barriers operate as designed, they will not last forever and they will not achieve 100 percent effectiveness. The permanent solution is not technology but what we call "ecological separation" or, simply, no movement of live organisms between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River via the canals, up to and including permanent physical barriers. Now, this simple idea seems audacious. A close look illuminates that sewerage treatment operations over 30 years have dramatically reduced the need for a direct connection between Chicago and Lake Michigan. Commodity deliveries and loading are clustered at specific parts of the waterways with comparatively little traffic moving through downtown Chicago or into Lake Michigan itself. In fact, less than 1 percent of freight movement in metro Chicago moves between the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan. Barely more than a thousand recreational boats move through Lockport Lock annually. We can simply no longer afford to assume that 71 miles of century-old canals are required to get the job done if the job creates a massive liability for the Great Lakes. Now, a feasible separation scenario can accommodate the vast majority of commodity traffic. It can provide new methods of moving recreational boaters. And, most importantly to this committee, it can serve as a one-time payment for 100-percent effective permanent protection. Now, this is not a new concept. A 2003 gathering of experts from around the world in Chicago set an agenda beyond the electrical barriers and agreed that stopping water was the only way to stop the stream of invaders. Now, we are encouraged that the Corps has committed to an interbasin feasibility study, but we are concerned that few steps have been taken besides agency coordination nearly 2 years after original authorization. The unclear analysis by the Corps of the economic impact of short-term changes to the waterway does not herald a good start to this process. A rapid, transparent process that stands up to citizen and expert scrutiny is the only way to yield meaningful results. To that end, Federal agencies should do three things: immediately execute a short-term contingency plan with a clear and singular goal of no establishment of Asian carp; take all action necessary, including temporarily altering navigation, to prevent movement of existing carp populations; and, probably most importantly, expedite the Chicago portion of the authorized Interbasin Transfer Study to be completed by September 30, 2011, with a clear goal of 100 percent prevention. We understand the damage that has already occurred. We can predict irreparable harm to the Great Lakes if we fail. We have the tools and the knowledge in hand to stop this problem before it starts. But a solution is being held hostage by outmoded infrastructure and assumptions that how business has been done is the way business has to be done. The engineering feat of the Chicago waterway protected Lake Michigan, but it transferred costs to others, costs that were not apparent in 1890 but are a hole in the wallet today. This backbone of the largest Great Lake's city must either stretch and strengthen with time or it will collapse under its own weight. I look forward to working with this Subcommittee and everyone engaged on this matter to create a legacy for the waterway that outlasts both me and the original projects. Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing, and I look forward to assisting on any actions the Committee can take to support this effort. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you very much, Mr. Brammeier. And to all of the witnesses this afternoon, I would say that, were it not for the storm of the half-century, most of the chairs here would be filled. The level of Member interest and concern about this issue of the Asian carp in the Great Lakes is very high. I had numerous requests from Members, nearly everybody in the Subcommittee. And those who are not on our committee, those who serve on other committees are very, very deeply concerned. They are hearing from their constituents. They are seeing the news reports. This carp has galvanized public concern like no other such issue except, perhaps, for the 1968 fire on the Cuyahoga River that moved the Nation and the Congress eventually to pass the Clean Water Act of 1972. Coleridge, in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," describes the ocean as dark, endless, heaving, and mysterious. Dark it certainly is. So is Lake Superior on its worst days. Heaving in the midst of storms, typhoons, hurricanes. We are beginning to unlock the mystery of the oceans, going deeper than ever before, going down to the bottom of the Marianas trough, finding vents in the ocean that have temperatures of 700 degrees-plus with creatures still living there. But endless the oceans are not. It was a form of image by Coleridge. And neither are the Great Lakes endless. We haven't unlocked all of their mysteries, but we are getting there. But faster than we can address those mysteries, the species that don't belong there, that were not there to begin with, are getting ahead of us. And the lakes can't heal themselves. The native species can't protect themselves against these invasive predators or plants, like purple loosestrife and others. It is only us, who are the custodians, who can take these actions. And I cited earlier the lamprey eel. So many efforts were made to find something to do with the lamprey--catch them, smoke them, export them to Sweden. The Swedes had an appetite for them for a while, and then that waned. Norwegians thought that might be a delicacy, but soon they abandoned it in favor of lefse. And there just isn't anything you can do with these species. I mentioned the DDT. I held hearings on the U.S.-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1985, and we found that the United States had banned DDT after Rachel Carson, and yet it was being exported to Central America, sprayed on banana plantations and the aerosols were caught in the upper atmosphere. And in 14 days, faster than President Reagan said the Sandinistas could reach the U.S. border, DDT was in the Great Lakes. And bald eagles were eating the fish that absorbed the DDT, and the bald eagle eggs weren't forming and the hatchlings died. And something was happening far from our shores that we had no way of controlling, except prevent the exportation of DDT. Dr. Humphries, you said the carp are at our doorstep. It reminds me of an image in the language of my ancestors, the Slovenes: [Speaking in foreign language.] "We just think about the wolf, and it is at our doors." And that is what the carp is; it is at our doors. And the Great Lakes can't wait, said Secretary Frank, which I thought was so compelling. So what I want all of you to discuss now is we have this draft, Asian Carp Control Strategy Framework. We have the language of the Water Resources Development Act of 2007, which took a great deal of bipartisan effort, I must say. And in so expressing, I want to once again express my great appreciation for the splendid work of Mr. Mica, the Ranking Member on the Republican side, to bring a bill forward in a way that had never been done before, open this transparency and bipartisanship. And we overrode a presidential veto to get that bill passed. But it had this particular language, the interbasin study, a long-term action to address the problem of the Asian carp. So all the authority necessary exists to bring all of you and all of the other entities together. Now, I want your commitment and your expression of how you are going to do this, both in the short term and the long term. We have an immediate issue to be addressed; we have a longer- term issue. We have the invasive species that come in through ballast water. We have this species that is moving up-lake. And, by the way, Mr. Wilkins, that didn't come in any ballast water. The waterway users, the barge operators, they didn't bring this in. It escaped, as we all know, from a fish farm, a catfish farm, and didn't belong there in the first place. The Lacey Act is good law, but if it isn't enforced--just as in the late 1970s we passed legislation to outlaw scrimshaw and impose enormous penalties to save African elephants and save whales. And yet, if you don't enforce the act, you don't impose the penalties. We have penalties on whaling in our territorial waters, but if it isn't enforced, the whaling continues. Same here, if these laws aren't enforced, if we don't have multidisciplinary strategies, we don't engage the province of Ontario, the Canadian National Government and all the States and the Federal agencies together, we are not going to be effective. So, first of all, while you are thinking about that, about what you are going to do and how you are going to continue and how you are really going to vigorously implement the authorities available, General Peabody, tell me--and thank you again for making the long journey, for each of you, for making the extraordinary effort to be here. We worked out the funding, the shift of authorities and the availability of funds, both under the stimulus program and under the regular programs. So describe the work under way now and your timeline to meet the completion goal of fall 2010 for this second, bigger, more robust electric barrier. General Peabody. Yes, sir. Thank you. Sir, originally, Barrier 2-B, which, the way I think of it, is effectively a better-looking twin to Barrier 2-A will be executed, thanks to $7 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by September of this year. If we can pull that to the left once the final design for all the electronic components, which is under way right now is complete and we have awarded the contract and examined the schedule, we will do that. This barrier gives us redundancy in the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which, although there are other vectors, remains the primary avenue of approach for Asian carp up into the Chicago Area Waterway System. Barrier 1, as a reminder, is a demonstration barrier, which has lower operating parameters than Barrier 2-A. Barrier 2-A, as a result of the information that Dr. Lodge and his team provided to us this past summer, was taken to higher operating parameters, which we know to be, based on laboratory testing of Asian carp of all sizes, juvenile and adult, in tanks, to be the optimal parameters for the barrier. So the barrier is operating today at its optimal parameters. Barrier 2-B will give us that redundancy so we don't have to go through the intensive rotenone application that Mr. Davis talked about during his testimony ever again. We would probably have to do a minor application, but it would be in a very short, narrow stretch of the canal, just a few hundred feet, as opposed to nearly six miles. Mr. Oberstar. Does that mean September of this year? General Peabody. Sir, the construction will be done in September. It will take about a month for us to do the operational testing that we need to do to turn it on and make it effective. We expect by the end of October that it will be operating as an effective barrier. Again, sir, I want to emphasize, once I have a construction schedule, I can put that schedule under a microscope, and if there is a way for us to accelerate that in any way, we will do so. But we have to get the design pieces right now. Mr. Oberstar. Has the electrical current power of the stepped-up version been tested on critters that size? General Peabody. I don't know if they were that large, sir. But I think they were as large as a foot and a half in length. I can get you the exact dimensions. Mr. Oberstar. Well, if the sound of a motorboat can stimulate those size fish that are on display here--and I realize the record can't see my finger pointing over to these models--but if it can scare them to jump out of the water, then how much electrical current is needed to do that? General Peabody. Yes, sir. Great question. The original dispersal barrier, the demonstration barrier, was built based on information generally available at the time about other dispersal barriers that had been built. And the information indicated that fish responded to one volt per inch, which is the primary, but not the only parameter. As a result of studies Dr. Mark Pegg did in 2004, he indicated that the voltage required to repel the specific species of Asian carp could be as high as four volts per inch. Subsequently, we conducted (or ``ran'') additional studies, and what we found was Dr. Pegg had it at least partly right. One volt per inch did not seem to be adequate, but, in fact, it was a combination of three variables: the voltage, in this case two volts per inch; the frequency, or how fast this pulse rate goes out, because it is not a constant current, it is a pulsing DC current that goes out, and 15 hertz is the frequency; and then the periodicity of the pulse, which is 6.5 milliseconds, in other words, the duration of the pulse. Those are the parameters that we are currently applying in Barrier 2-A. I want to caution: These are parameters that have shown to be effective in laboratory tank tests, where fish cannot escape the electricity. One of two things happens. The fish either attempt to swim away, or they swim into the current at these parameters and they are rendered unconscious, they are stunned, they float to the surface, and they flow away. We need to do additional testing using flume tests, with our Engineer Research and Development Center, that will replicate field conditions. Right now we don't have flumes that are large enough to replicate those conditions. This is being built this spring. Over the course of the summer, we will execute those additional tests, and that will further inform our optimal parameters research. Mr. Oberstar. Will that include testing this volume of current against juvenile fish, as well? General Peabody. Yes, sir, all size fish. It is interesting, we were going to start testing in smaller flumes this week, and we were unable to do so because when our research and development lab folks went out to the laboratories that farm these fish for testing purposes, there were not enough fish available to do the tests. So we have had to go to alternative sources. But we will start that next week, the small flume test. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you. Cam Davis, what about my question? Speak for the whole group here. What is it going to take to keep this group together under the existing legislative authorities provided? And what about funding to sustain this effort in the short term and the long term? Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What is it going to take to keep this group together? I have been so impressed by how it actually hasn't taken much. Every single agency around this table has come willingly and very helpfully, in terms of helping with the rapid response action that we saw in December, in terms of the drafting of this framework. We have seen everybody drop everything and push really hard to get this document in front of you that you see now. So I don't see any of that commitment wavering, from where I sit. And that is something I can say for the whole group. There is not a lot I can say for all other agencies because I don't represent them, but that is one thing I can say absolutely. Mr. Oberstar. Are EPA and the Corps the lead agencies here? Mr. Davis. The EPA has a coordination role. We facilitate the integration of the various steps and actions that you see in this document. We, for example, at EPA do not have authority over the locks. We do not have fishery management authority with any one of these States, certainly Illinois. And, in terms of the lead, we consider ourselves the lead for purposes of making sure that our actions are integrated, that we are taking a coordinated approach to solving this problem. Mr. Oberstar. General Peabody, how is this going to work now? Do we have a two-headed leadership here, or do we have one single source of direction? And I say, the opportunity is greater than we have ever had before. We have a President from the Great Lakes who understands the value of this great resource. We have the funding in place, we have mechanisms available to us, the scientific community alerted, the public is anxious. There has never been a better time than now. So I don't want to lose this momentum by a lack of central leadership. General Peabody. Mr. Chairman, I agree with Mr. Davis's remarks. I think the team is united in its intent to come to solutions that are effective. The challenges that we have going forward are, can we get adequate information upon which to make the best informed and reasoned decisions in a timely manner? That is the fundamental challenge. I will give you an example. One of the things that we are examining is whether we can apply acoustic and bubble barriers and whether we can apply CO2 in or near the locks, to use the locks as an effective barrier to the migration of Asian carp. But this is just a concept. These are just ideas. We need to go from ideas to drawing board to execution. And so we don't know all the stumbling blocks that we may encounter to execute the engineering that will take these ideas and implement them. But I can assure you that we intend to implement them as fast as possible and that, in coordination with EPA and our other agency partners, we will try to make these measures as effective as possible, as well. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you. I can assure you that there will be vigilance from this committee, beginning with Mr. Petri, who has long been a protector of the Great Lakes. Mr. Petri. May I ask a question? Mr. Oberstar. Such time as the gentleman may consume. Mr. Petri. Okay, I do have a couple of questions. First of all, I wondered if I could provide Mr. Wilkins an opportunity to respond to Mr. Brammeier's testimony about the locks. It didn't sound like you were talking about the same world, because you were talking about the tremendous volume of commerce going through the locks and the importance to the local community, and he was saying it is only 1 percent that goes all the way through, and, really, it would not be particularly disruptive to figure out strategies to put in a physical barrier between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Mr. Wilkins. Well, sir, I cannot speak to Mr. Brammeier's data, so I will not. But I can say to you is that, when I hear the statement about the lock closure, basically what it says to me is that the U.S. Solicitor General has already stated that the locks themselves are not watertight. I can tell you that in my previous life prior to be an administrator, I was a former captain on the inland waterway system, and they leaked and they permit the escape of water. I guess my short answer is that the locks just won't be a permanent barrier because there is no type of bulkhead in the chamber. Given what the major general was saying, how can we use other resources to come to a final means of trying to control, because I can tell you that we, as AWO, certainly are excited and want to continue working with the full team with rational outcomes. Mr. Petri. But could you elaborate on your testimony? I think you were talking about a physical barrier, not necessarily relying on the locks. Mr. Brammeier. Certainly, Mr. Petri. I do want to be clear that there are two questions at hand today. One is the short term, and the other is the long term. And, in my comments, I am speaking to the long-term need to separate the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes, which is going to require significant investment, new authority, and a change in the way we think about the system. Just to clarify the data, the numbers that I cited were reflective of the volume of commodities moving through the O'Brien Lock on the south side of Chicago relative to the total volume of freight moving in the Chicago metropolitan area annually. Mr. Petri. And that is--well, you said it was 1 percent of the total movement or something? Mr. Brammeier. Less than 1 percent, yes. And those are the best numbers we have, reflective of how much of that cargo actually moves from the Mississippi River into the Lake Michigan Basin. Now, to be frank, even less of that actually requires a trip into Lake Michigan. And so my point here is that the volume of traffic that needs to move from the Mississippi River to the Great Lakes on the waterway is a very small number relative to the total amount of movement on the waterways and, certainly, to the total volume moving through the Chicago metro area. Mr. Petri. So most of the movement is going to depots or other destinations within the Chicago area but not in Lake Michigan? Mr. Brammeier. Most but not all, certainly. Mr. Petri. You are saying it is only 1 percent? Mr. Brammeier. Of the total volume of cargo moving on all modes, through all mechanisms through the Chicago metro area, yes. Mr. Petri. Mr. Wilkins? Mr. Wilkins. Well, first, I would say ecological separation is a huge game changer. Nationally, the policy--that would become a policy judgment which says navigation may not be important, and I don't think that is the answer. And regionally, it would eliminate a lot of jobs, not just jobs for us in the barge industry, but all the subsequent services that rely on that, which is manufacturing, terminals, docks, all of the above. As far as the tons that move through the system, it is certainly a viable system. It is certainly a system that is continuing to grow. We look at the inland waterways system as the most economical means of transporting on a cost-per-ton basis when compared to other modes. It is very green, very environmentally friendly. So I don't look at it as a dying business or a business that is still not viable today and in the future. Mr. Petri. I wish I had more time to go further, but this is an area that I think will be of considerable discussion, and we will try to come up with a permanent solution, not just for this problem but for other invasive species moving both ways through the area. And I guess I wanted to ask Mr. Lodge about that. You indicated that DNA testing indicates that these Asian carp are already in the Great Lakes. And I wanted to ask General Peabody, finally, about other vectors. Because in some of the information the Chairman has, there is an indication that people may be buying minnows or something for fishing, and they could be Asian carp minnows. And the next thing you know, the sports fisherman or others are--they don't all get eaten by another fish. Some of them might wiggle off, and the next thing you know, they are living in the Great Lakes. A lot of different ways that these creatures can get into the lakes. People might even inadvertently move them, or intentionally, thinking it is a cool thing to do, discharge them into the Great Lakes. So I guess I wonder if there is no magic bullet, probably, in dealing with the range of possibilities for species getting from the Mississippi Basin into Lake Michigan. But I just wondered if you could comment on that a little bit. And then, secondly, talk about the habitat in the Great Lakes. Is it really conducive to these fish? I mean, there seem to be bottom feeders and, sort of, river and pond type fish. The Great Lakes are colder and vast. How realistic is the possibility that they will, in fact--I mean, maybe a few--but really multiply and dominate the food chain, given the different natures of the habitat? Mr. Lodge. Thank you, Mr. Petri. I think what I hear is two different questions. One is about what are the pathways and the relative importance of the pathways by which fish might get into the canal system above the electric barrier. And the second is about potential impact in the Great Lakes. So let me take those one at a time. It seems quite clear that the largest potential source of individual Asian carps into the canal system close to Lake Michigan is via the canal. We know from lots of lines of evidence, from many State and Federal agencies now, that the silver and bighead carps are both very abundant south of the electric barrier. So those fish are, if you will, stacked up down there, spreading and pushing, if you will, against the electric barrier. If the electric barrier is less than 100 percent effective or fails on occasion or can be circumvented during floods that unite the Des Plaines and I&M canal with the Chicago canal, then that is a large potential source. So it is reasonable to put the greatest attention on the canal and the barrier system and the steps that have already been outlined in the framework for preventing additional fish from south of the barrier from joining those north of the barrier. Having said that, there clearly are other potential pathways. And you have mentioned both, both of the ones that I see as being potentially important. Bait--and Mr. Rogner has already talked about a survey the Illinois DNR is going to do to try to assess that. I think that is possible. I think that is probably--I mean, we will have to see what the data say, but I think these fish, I think particularly the juveniles, are unlikely to do very well in a bait store kind of setting. So I doubt that is going to be particularly important, but it could be of some importance. The thing that I think has, in the past at least, been clearly more important is the intentional release of adult carp. There are several, if not many, ponds in the Chicago metropolitan area that we know are inhabited by bighead and/or silver carp. Those carp didn't get there from the canal. They got there because individuals bought them and released them. There are some cultural practices that have encouraged people to do that in the past. Now, in Chicago, in the last few years, that was outlawed, and I think Ms. Humphries suggested that is not legal in Michigan anymore. But it could be that that is still happening illegally. It could also be that some of those fish north of the barrier have been there for a long time. They live 10 years or more. So that was perhaps a too-long answer to your first question. The second question was about impact to the Great Lakes. I think none of us know for certain what the impact would be in the Great Lakes. There is only one way to find out, and I don't think any of us want to try that way. I think what I would say is that it is very hard to imagine the result of an invasion by either silver or bighead carp being positive; very difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a net positive outcome. And, on the other hand, it is very easy to imagine a catastrophic outcome. So somewhere in between those two perhaps is the most likely outcome if either silver or bighead were to invade. I would offer you a metaphor. We are playing Russian roulette with the environment and the economy of the Great Lakes systems when we allow access to those species and the other ones that I outlined. And, in fact, probably Russian roulette isn't a very good metaphor because it is not like there is only one chamber loaded. We have it loaded with two chambers full of Asian carp, silver and bighead, and then we have all those other species. So it is not even a good metaphor. We know that these invasions will happen if additional management steps are not taken to make the canal less permeable to organisms. And, of course, while we are all sitting here talking, the fish are swimming. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you for that very thoughtful response and for those very thoughtful questions. I will come back to Mr. Petri in a bit. Now I want to recognize Ms. Edwards and thank her again for beginning the hearing and for being here today. Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, as always, when I show up at the hearing, I learn something, and then I end up with questions. So I appreciate the opportunity. Since I do come from the Chesapeake Bay region, I mean, one of the things that I have been, you know, trying to focus on in this hearing are areas of coordination and collaboration among the States and Federal agencies. And so, Mr. Davis and General Peabody, I appreciate your indicating the level of enthusiasm that the various partners have shown, at least at this stage, in working together and coordinating. But some of the experience that I think we have here with the Chesapeake Bay and the restoration of the bay and the coordination of efforts within the Chesapeake Bay watershed is that it really does require both presidential leadership, an agency that is really designated to coordinate, and, of course, a Congress that commits the resources that it takes to match the enthusiasm of the participating States. And there is a piece of that that seems lacking here, in terms of really designated coordination. And, Mr. Davis, I would appreciate your commenting on that. Because some of the things that we learn about the bay and our other regions with invasive species, you know, are transferable, and we don't always have to start from scratch. And I wonder if EPA has some thoughts about that and what we might gain in terms of its application with the Great Lakes region. Mr. Davis. Sure. Thank you very much, Congresswoman. I think you have pointed out a good trifecta. Presidential leadership: check, we have it. Agency coordination: check, we have it. Funding: check, we have it. What we haven't had, to me, in the past is a roadmap that clearly tells the public who has to do what by when using which sources of funding. There hasn't been any one place that people can go to say, okay, if I am interested in the locks issue, here is where I go to find out about it. If I am interested in fishery carp suppression, population suppression measures, here is where I go to find out who is in charge of that, when are they going to act, how are they going to fund those efforts. That is why the release of this yesterday is so absolutely critical. Because, for the first time ever, what we have done is we have pulled together those answers, in terms of what actions are going to be taken, by whom, when, and what the funding sources are. So there is nothing about this situation where, as much as we all would love to see this, where any one person or any one agency can simply pull a lever and this problem goes away or mitigates itself in some way. But what we can do is clearly articulate what the authorities are, which agencies are undertaking which actions, and what the expectations are for when those actions will be started and completed so there is some sense of accountability. I think communicating that accountability structure has been something that we have desperately needed. And I think we have, with this framework, a very good tool for ensuring that accountability. Ms. Edwards. And do you have any thoughts as to whether you have the tools that will be applicable across administrations and across Congresses? Mr. Davis. Well, I wish I could predict the future with a lot more clarity than I have been able to do so far. So it is a great question, and it is a tough question to answer. I do think that it is worth a try to see this. This framework just came out yesterday, and I think we need to give it some time to bake and for us to take action with it. Ms. Edwards. But you don't have a statutory tool? Mr. Davis. For coordinating? Ms. Edwards. That is right. Mr. Davis. Under Clean Water Act Section 118, the EPA does have authority to coordinate actions among the Federal agencies. So I think that that is clear. We have invoked that authority for purposes of this particular issue. I think the real question on the table is, have we been able to act fast enough? And I think the clear answer is, no, we haven't. I know I have been mindful of and trying to draw attention to this issue for more than a half a decade. And now that I am in the job, now that we have invoked that authority, I think we are getting some traction here. Ms. Edwards. Do any of our other witnesses have a comment about the need for that authority more directly than through the Clean Water Act? General Peabody? General Peabody. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Congresswoman. Let me just make clear what I understand the Corps' authorities to be and their duration. The authorities that we have specifically related to this issue are derived from the authorities to build, operate, and maintain the fish barriers, first of all. Second, the study authorities that we have, which are two- fold--one is the so-called efficacy study, again authorized in WRDA 2007, which tells us to find out whether the fish barrier is effective, one of the issues that people have articulated here. We have a variety of things that we are doing to address that, to include an interim report (approved by Secretary Darcy last month) to go ahead and work on these flood bypass potential avenues that Dr. Lodge talked about along the Des Plaines River and the Illinois-Michigan canal during flood events. The third authority is the Great Lakes/Mississippi River Interbasin Study, which is the long-term part of the strategy that both Mr. Davis and I talked about in our testimony. What we don't have is authority for execution in all cases. We have a stop-gap authority that was in the 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations Act, Section 126, which gives the Secretary of the Army emergency authority to take unspecified measures to prevent Asian carp from dispersing northward of the barriers and into Lake Michigan. That is a 1-year authority that expires a year from the enactment, which I believe is October 28th of this year. We have used that authority to execute the construction of these flanking waterway barriers that I just referred to. We will continue to use that authority going forward through the rest of the year to execute some of the ideas in our modified lock operations concept. But we lose that execution authority when it expires at the end of this fiscal year. Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have additional questions, but if we are going to go back around, I will save them. Mr. Oberstar. Before I go to Mr. Petri, I think we need a midcourse review. And I would suggest that we convene, optimally this panel again, not necessarily in a hearing, but in a roundtable discussion that would be public, and get your assessment of where matters stand, where progress is being made by the Corps, by this interagency group on the control strategy, so that, as I have discussed informally with Mr. Petri, that is sort of a point of importance for the appropriations cycle. If we need to do something further, appropriations measures are an effective means of doing so. If we need more funding or we need additional authority that we can include in an appropriations bill, that all would be agreed upon, that would be a legislative action, that would be the time to do it. So we will share our thoughts on what might be an optimal time to do that, and we will notify you. But I want all of you to be thinking about early to mid May. General Peabody. When it is warm, that would be preferable, so that it is not snowing. Mr. Oberstar. Ahead of the hurricane season and after the snow melts, and come together to discuss where we are, where we are going, where we need to go. Mr. Petri? Mr. Petri. Well, we are going to be having other meetings, I guess, so I just had one quick question that I--do these carp have any natural predator in our system or where they come from--I guess it must be somewhere in Asia, southeast Asia or wherever--in their own habitat? Or are they at the top of their particular situation? Yeah, Dr. Hansen? Mr. Hansen. I think we should assume that they have no natural predators here, but neither did the common carp. And if you give almost any of our native predators a choice, they seem to like common carp. So they do tend to select fish with soft rays. I don't think we should persuade ourselves that the fact that other fish will eat them will actually impede them from colonizing these Great Lakes and doing great harm. We should be pleasantly surprised that they are feeding some of our native fishes, but that is not really the point, is it? Because they are likely to do their damage in the way that they interact in the food web. And because they interact in the food web at a low level, they could well have the same sort of catastrophic effects that we have seen from zebra mussels, where they have essentially rerouted the food chain and led to wholesale changes. And our secretary from the State of Michigan pointed out that Lake Heron just recently underwent a dramatic shift in how that whole ecosystem was structured, probably owing to how zebra mussels restructured things. So the Asian carp is a very different animal but in the same position, and almost certainly its damage will be caused through that mechanism. And I would also like to say that I agree completely with Dr. Lodge. These animals will almost certainly be harmful, not helpful. So we probably could see some benefits because something will eat them, but it is more likely they will be very, very damaging. And another point probably needs to be made. The deep cold portions of the Great Lakes probably aren't where these animals are going to be happiest. They are going to be happiest in the near-shore waters, where we have an abundance of streams they can swim into to spawn, where we have warmer waters that will be more suitable. But those are also some of the most productive systems in the Great Lakes. And history would already show us that, at the peak of their productive potential, Lake Erie outproduced all the Great Lakes combined. And one species, the cisco, produced more fish production than all of the rest of all the species in the rest of the lakes combined. So Lake Erie is probably the one at greatest risk, and the near-shore waters of Saginaw Bay and Green Bay, where we have extremely valuable fisheries. Those are probably the places where this animal will do its greatest damage. Thank you. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Mr. Petri. Just to supplement that, so eagles, fish hawks, osprey have no interest in the carp? Mr. Hansen. I certainly didn't mean to say that. Carp are probably---- Mr. Oberstar. No, you didn't, I know. But you say they really don't have much challenge from predators. Given the abundance in the Illinois River---- Mr. Hansen. They are almost certainly being eaten by things. Mr. Oberstar. An eagle is not going to pick up a forty- pounder. Mr. Hansen. Oh, right. Mr. Oberstar. Yes, Dr. Lodge? Mr. Lodge. If I can just add and build on your point, even if juvenile silver or bighead carp provide food for native fishes, the problem is the size of those specimens over there. And those are perhaps average size, not even big ones. There is no predator that is going to be able to consume an adult. So, from a biological perspective, we refer to that as a size refuge. These fish grow very quickly to a size where there will be no predator where they can be consumed. Mr. Oberstar. Yes, the idea of a fish that has no stomach and must continually process water is astounding. And, Dr. Hansen, I understand they can be smoked and some people might eat them, but they are rather bony, aren't they? Mr. Hansen. They do support native fisheries in their native range. And I guess you could always say, well, that would be a benefit. But, gosh, I hope we don't go there. So they are probably perfectly suitable in some forms for food. And obviously they could support the same kind of economies here if we let them loose, but hopefully we wouldn't. One more point about their colonization ability, it seems to me this animal is built to colonize new habitats. These fish grow very fast, and you can see how big they get. Those fish are probably--you would need to look at their ear bones to figure out how old they are, but they are probably only 7 or 8 years old. They mature at a very young age, and they produce lots of eggs. So they are built to colonize these habitats. So if you let too many out, the odds are much, much better that they will get a foothold. So I think you can probably rest assured that Dr. Lodge detected fish upstream of that barrier. His methods are convincing and proven. The idea now is, is it enough? Are there enough up there to start this off? We should hope there are not. And we should probably try at least to get rid of the ones that have gotten above there. Mr. Oberstar. I think we are all agreed on that point. General Peabody, what is the rate of flow of the current through the ship canal? And it is from Lake Michigan into the Illinois River; therefore, fish have to swim against that current. So a large fish can do that rather readily, I suspect. What is the smallest size? And then, Dr. Lodge, if one of these carp females can produce 50,000 to a million eggs, can those eggs make their way all by themselves against the current? General Peabody. Sir, with reference to the current, it is very slow in the Chicago Area Waterway System. As Mr. Davis talked about, it is very flat topography. And even though 1 billion gallons of water sounds like a lot, it is not a lot when you consider the web of canals and rivers that---- Mr. Oberstar. Well, in cubic feet per second, what is the rate? General Peabody. It is less than a foot per second, generally, sir. Now, that varies with whether or not you have rains, and it picks up during that period. But in terms of how the fish behaves, I would defer to the fish experts on the panel. Mr. Oberstar. Dr. Lodge? Mr. Lodge. I think you asked specifically if the egg could go upstream, and the answer to that is clearly no. But what is clear from the studies that many other biologists have done--I am thinking of Duane Chapman at USGS and the book produced by Cindy Kolar at the USGS which reviews work from around the globe--it is clear that adult Asian carps of both species are oriented toward swimming upstream, particularly in search of spawning areas. And that is what you see in the canal, both from traditional work and from our work. They seem to stack up below barriers, below structures. And when they are in the spawning mood, they are swimming upstream and can readily do so against substantial currents. Mr. Oberstar. Well, the experience with salmon, which have to swim against tremendous currents in the Fraser River and in the Yukon and elsewhere on the west coast, you see them going against the falls, and the drive to spawn is just so powerful. And those are much smaller than these large-scale carps, so they have huge power. Director Humphries, it was the State of Michigan that initiated legal action, and that action was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court, but the underlying issue of authority to act was not addressed by the Court. What motivated the State of Michigan to initiate the lawsuit? Will the State be satisfied now that there is enough Federal-State multi-agency coordination, a concentrated program, a clear strategy to attack this issue? Will they be satisfied now to continue cooperating, coordinating? Ms. Humphries. We will continue to cooperate and coordinate with our sister States. We have been an active participant despite the lawsuit. We worked as part of the rotenone treatments that were done last December with our sister agencies, and we will continue to do that. Will it satisfy our legal challenges? No. I will tell you, our attorney general office refiled this case last week. The decision was made before the latest DNA information was made public, and so they have refiled. What is at the crux of this is really where we are going with this long term. Is our goal to biologically, ecologically, and physically separate these watersheds or is it not? And that is what, in our conversations with our other agencies and with the Federal Government, we have tried to ascertain, is what is our long-term goal here. Because it does make a difference in terms of how we approach the short-term strategies. We applaud the efforts that have been done to coordinate activities. We applaud the effort that has been done by the Federal agencies to bring funding to this and to Congress. But, quite frankly, we need to do more. And we do not feel that continuing to operate the lock structure and the opening waterways that are in place and poisoning off those waters on a regular basis in order to facilitate that is a sustainable strategy. Mr. Oberstar. So, in short, the State of Michigan welcomes the efforts under way but does not consider them to be sufficient. Ms. Humphries. That is correct, at this point in time. Mr. Oberstar. General Peabody, in Louisiana, many, many years ago, it was believed to be a great benefit to shipping to dig an additional channel to New Orleans from the Gulf, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, commonly known as "Mr. Go." On the order of six or so freighters use that waterway annually. What was perhaps not anticipated--or if it was, it was dismissed--was that the waterway would allow saltwater to penetrate all the way up to New Orleans. In that action, the area between Lake Borgne and the Mississippi River was destroyed, the wetlands with huge reeds and plant growth that proved to be the barrier against surges in storms and in hurricanes from Lake Borgne, such that St. Bernard Parish in Hurricane Katrina was not just hit by water, it was washed away. The force of the surge from Lake Borgne, with nothing standing in its way, swept away--I was there just 6, 7 months after Katrina and took a photograph of the first home that bore the brunt of that storm. All that was left was a commode. That porcelain piece dominated the landscape. It was the only thing that was left. There were no watermarks on the homes of St. Bernard Parish because they were all overtopped. And several I saw were lifted up with their concrete base and floated as much as three blocks away from home until they ran into another object that didn't move. And this is all, sort of, parenthetical. But the owner of the home that didn't move and was struck by a moving home sued the intruder for collision damage. And I asked him why. He said, "Well, there is nothing else for us to do. No one is fixing our problem here." So we moved, in the Water Resources Development Act of 2007, to close off--give the court authority to close off "Mr. Go" and divert the Mississippi River, reintroduce fresh water and sediment, and to hopefully in time restore the wetland that once was the buffer for St. Bernard Parish, which is the home of the Islenos people, the Canary Islanders who came to that area in the 16th and 17th century. So is it possible that closing off navigation, closing off the outlet from Lake Michigan would be the definitive answer to movement of carp into Lake Michigan and the rest of the Great Lakes? General Peabody. I think your question gets to the heart of the matter, sir. If I could get the topography slide up, not the structural operations. Great. Thank you. Sir, as Mr. Davis indicated in his testimony, this is relatively flat topography. If you look, it is a little bit hard to see on the slide, but there are some green dots along the edge of Lake Michigan in the Chicago area. Starting from north to south, you have the Wilmette Pumping Station. And then in the heart of Chicago, you have the Chicago locks and controlling works. And then a little bit further to the south of that, near the bottom of the dark yellow aspect of the slide, is the O'Brien Lock, a little bit inland, about eight miles inland from the lake. Those are the only potential physical obstacles, for aquatic species to move between Lake Michigan and the Chicago Area Waterway System above the fish barrier. If you will notice, to the south and east of the O'Brien Lock and Dam, there are two waterways--and it appears there are three egress points into Lake Michigan; there are actually only two: the Grand Calumet River to the north and the Little Calumet River to the south. You are familiar with them, sir, I know. And both of those egress into Lake Michigan through the Indiana and the Burns Harbor, respectively. So one of the challenges that we have is, in addition to the authority that the Corps has to operate those locks and dams for purposes of navigation--and there are some other associated purposes, such as water flow management and flood damage reduction--if we were to close the locks, this would need to be shown to be effective as impediments to Asian carp migration. We are actively studying--I want to emphasize this-- actively studying whether or not we should close the locks, but we need a vast amount of information to assess impacts and consequences on both sides of the equation; not just impacts and consequences to the Great Lakes but the impacts and consequences to commerce, transportation, flood damage reduction, and so forth in the Chicago area system. This is a very complex issue. There are orders of magnitude impacts, second- and perhaps third-order impacts, that we cannot yet understand until we complete our studies, and we are going forward with our studies to do that. In the meantime, we are actively studying this concept of modified lock operations, which would envision operating the locks differently than we do today. This concept is just an idea that we are still considering. I hope to give Secretary Darcy a recommendation early next month, about a month from now. But the concept would be, instead of just operating the locks so whenever traffic shows up we allow it through, we could do a variety of things to impede, not prevent, not stop, but impede Asian carp migration through those structures. They could include such things as maximizing traffic through the locks so we reduce the total number of openings and closings of the lock gates. They could include taking actions in areas near the locks that would attack the Asian carp populations that might be present so that, when we do have periods where the locks are open for navigation traffic, there is a lower or reduced likelihood that the Asian carp might pass through. And they could include putting screens during flooding events in the locks, as well as the sluice gates, which need to be open for reverse flows to prevent really massive flooding in the Chicagoland area. The bottom line is, whatever measures we take, they need to be effective. And we definitely need to take actions along the Little Cal and the Grand Calumet Rivers in association with any actions we are considering to take along the locks. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you for that thorough and complex response. I appreciate it very much. The question is a hard one. It has to be asked, and I asked it in the context that I did because I think it is very instructive for us to learn from the experience of the lower Mississippi River. And I appreciate very much, also, your attention, attentiveness to the consequences for navigation or shipping for commerce as well as the environmental importance of this. We cannot have one instead of the other or say they cancel each other out. I think we have to do this in the context of the way you presented it. I think that is well thought out. Mr. Petri? Mr. Petri. No, I am fine. Mr. Oberstar. Ms. Edwards? Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of questions for you, Professor Lodge and Dr. Hansen, about biology. Can you tell me, Professor Lodge, what a positive test for Asian carp DNA means on the likelihood that a live carp has passed by the location where the sample is taken? And I think that there is some variation in terms of how long that sample lasts to show presence. And, also, if you could answer for me whether there is some entity that coordinates research about the biology of the carp, its habitat, et cetera, and who pulls all that together. Mr. Lodge. Thank you, Congresswoman Edwards. Your first question, what does a positive DNA result mean? With a very high probability, it means that a live carp has been or is close by or close upstream within the last 6 to 48 hours. That is what I believe it means. While it is possible that--I mean, you can imagine a number of scenarios by which DNA might be present without a live carp being present, while there are possibilities, they are not very plausible. And they are certainly insufficient to explain the overall repeated spatial pattern that I showed you in the canal. So when we have been back to places three or four times, the result is the same. So, while there are other possibilities, they are not a plausible explanation for the overall pattern. So the short answer is, it means there is a live fish close by, and it has been there in the not-very-distant past. Your second question is about---- Ms. Edwards. About coordination of research. Mr. Lodge. I think there is no entity. There may be other panel members who can speak to that better. I think perhaps the framework document and the plans that were put out yesterday may be the closest thing that exists to a coordinated plan of study of Asian carps. But others may have a more informed answer than mine. Ms. Edwards. If not, I mean, I guess my question goes to whether, for example, we know enough about the reproductive cycle to begin to interfere with that? And what research is available, for example, that might tell us whether we could perhaps pretreat vessels coming through so that it would potentially kill eggs passing through? Things like that. Because, I mean, there must be some way that, either through your university research or other research, that the participating States are able to identify the need-to-know list and then check that off to get to some of the prevention efforts that I think, Dr. Hansen, in your testimony, you indicated a need to focus more on that prevention. And I don't know how you do that without identifying and coordinating research. Mr. Hansen. I agree with Dr. Lodge, I don't think any single entity coordinates all the research. But the thing to remember about these animals is that they have been fairly well studied in their native range, so the overall biological attributes that they have are fairly well understood. And that information was essentially assembled in the two risk analyses that were done, one in the U.S. by the people that Dr. Lodge mentioned and there was a companion or similar piece done in Canada. So we know quite a bit about their biology. And the studies that have been done on the Illinois River by researchers in Illinois basically converge on the same sort of information. Hence, we know that they have a fundamental ability to grow fast, get large, have lots of eggs. We know approximately when you would expect them to spawn, what they look for. And those elements of their biology were used in the risk analysis to essentially say, we think we know where they will live, like these near-shore waters or shallower, cooler habitats, and they are probably not going to like the really open, colder waters. They would likely want to spawn in streams. So we would find them in those areas. I think many of the things we would want to know from a control perspective we probably already know. The question is, what tools do we have to bring to bear on some of those control methods? We studied the lamprey very hard to find a very specific toxicant that would target its juveniles when they were living in streams. And we got maybe lucky or not, but we have found a chemical that has worked and is the primary thing that we fire against them. We don't have that same sort of technology sitting there waiting for the Asian carp, so we would have to think about this more broadly and employ some of the things we can do, like catch them. We now apparently can detect them at fairly low numbers using Dr. Lodge's technology, but what do we do to control them? That is what I meant about we don't have a lot that we have in the gun right now that we could shoot that specifically aims at these species. The things we do know are more general, like rotenone, like fishing, and those sorts of things. Ms. Edwards. But rotenone just kills everything. Mr. Hansen. Oh, absolutely. It is not specific like the chemical we deploy for lampreys. And that is obviously what the best thing would be. If we had a chemical you could throw into the river and it only killed carp, that would be great. Ms. Edwards. Thank you. Mr. Oberstar. Yes, this idea of biological control, I remember at the height of the zebra mussel concern, some researcher said, "Oh, we have found a diving duck in the Black Sea that eats the zebra mussels, and maybe we could bring that over here." My first question was, who is its control? There are so many of these control mechanisms in species that we have brought in to control a runaway creature or plant that then become runaway on their own. Whoever or whatever that creature is, let's not bring it in, because they will become a menace on its own. Well, before I close, I want to ask unanimous consent for Members who were not able to be present today to submit questions in writing to members of the panel and for you to submit responses for the record. And, secondly, I will ask staff to work with the stenographer team to produce the transcript as soon as possible so we can distribute it to Members who were not able to be here, for them to review and upon which to ask for their questions. But now we have been firing at you. Do you have any questions for each other or for us? It is not like church, you know. You don't have to pray about this. Mr. Wilkins? Mr. Wilkins. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would just come back to underscore one point around the sense of urgency. And the Federal framework currently in place, I mean, it has promising measures that we all support. And I think that if it comes down to looking at modified lock schedules or something of this sort, we would highly recommend that we exhaust every other option to stop the carp or impede the carp before we look at the effectiveness of closing the locks, and certainly take time to understand that. We work closely with the Corps of Engineers and with the Coast Guard. AWO has had a long history of that type of collaboration and working-togetherness, and we think we can apply that to this measure, as well. Mr. Oberstar. All right. No question about the AWO and their participation and their cooperation. It is a great organization, and they have a very balanced view on matters of this kind, and I appreciate it. Mr. Brammeier? Mr. Brammeier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to draw some attention to something you noted earlier, which is that these next few years are a tremendous opportunity. You pointed out that we have a Great Lakes President who understands what the lakes means to the region. This is a great time to be thinking about thinking big and what we need to do, not just in the short term to stop these fish from getting in tomorrow, but how we can make changes for the long term so we don't have to be here 5 or 10 years from now, having this same discussion. So now is certainly the time, and this is a tremendous opportunity to think big about solving this problem. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you. And the Chair intends to seize this opportunity and pursue it, as we did in the Water Resources Development Act and in the Coast Guard authorization bill that has passed the House twice and is languishing over in the place I affectionately called the black hole, the other body. It is a galactic black hole. You know what happens in outer space? Stars become bigger and bigger, and finally they condense and collapse upon themselves, becoming enormous powers and suck everything else into it, from which not even light can escape. That is what is happening in the other body. None of you need comment, but that is the way I feel about them. This Committee has sent them a lot of legislative authority; they just haven't acted on it. So we are hoping that maybe some light will escape from the other body and we will see something happen. But we have put in place a framework within which EPA for ballast water will set the standard and the U.S. Coast Guard will be the implementing agency, drawing upon all other authorities and resources from the Great Lakes and the universities, the intellectual capabilities that we have. And we had in place a protocol and an agreement with one of the lake carriers on the Great Lakes and Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory to test various methods of treating ballast water, both for the lakers and for the salties. And something fell apart. We just couldn't get it together at the right time. Actually, we needed further authority in the Coast Guard bill that we passed; the Senate never acted on it. Those are the kinds of missed opportunities. Let's not miss that opportunity here. So we will convene this group again in May in the understanding that this is a continuing effort. Today's hearing is not definitive. Your work is much appreciated. I know that my colleagues on the Committee were very much looking forward to this testimony, to this day. And I know that Mr. Petri will continue to support the effort and lead, as he has done, in cooperation with Mr. Ehlers, Mrs. Miller, and others on our committee. Mr. Petri, any final comment? Mr. Petri. No, just thank you, and thank all of you for the time that you have put in preparing this testimony. And we hope you make it safely back whence you came. Mr. Oberstar. Yes, we wish you all a safe journey home, despite the Washington snows. The Committee is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 4:58 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]