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Legislating Away Aquatic Invaders
Though alien invasions is the topic of a Washington DC conference planned for March 22, the experts flown in from the far corners of the nation won't be discussing green men and flying saucers. Mitten crabs from China, zebra mussels from Europe - these are the aliens invading the nation's coastal waters and inland lakes and wreaking havoc on estuarine ecosystems. The extent of this havoc, and how to stop it, will be the subject of several coordinated events in late March - the conference, introduction of the reauthorization proposal for the Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act of 1990, and release of a definitive new U.S. Fish & Wildlife study on Bay Area invasions. Indeed Bay Area invasions have become such a big concern that California water and environmental activists are now lobbying to amend the act to include prevention measures for the entire Pacific Coast.
The 1990 act focused prevention measures on one region whose fisheries and water supply infrastructure were hard hit by invasions - the Great Lakes. It established, among other things, a Coast Guard-enforced program requiring ships to replace their ballast water out in the ocean before entering the lakes region. The theory was that ocean organisms were unlikely to survive when subsequently discharged in coastal or lake waters. (Ships take on and discharge ballast from port to port to balance shifting cargo loads.) The Great Lakes program has been quite successful, according to Allegra Cangelosi of the Great Lakes Task Force, which authored the 1990 bill. Meanwhile, studies Down Under confirm the effectiveness of such prevention measures. These found that the ballast water in Japanese ships coming into Australian mainland ports often contains several species of endemic Japanese copepods - a kind of planktonic crustacean - while ballast arriving at Tasmanian ports, which require mid-ocean replacement, contains none.
The new U.S. bill is likely to take a "middle ground," says Cangelosi. Rather than establishing mandatory programs on the Great Lakes model for the entire nation, she thinks it will include voluntary national guidelines for at-sea ballast exchange with mandatory reporting requirements - ships must report whether and how they have followed the guidelines. If ports and estuaries don't fall into line, however, the new bill should give the Coast Guard the clout to impose mandatory programs, she says.
In the Bay Area, there is widespread support for ballast exchange-based prevention measures. "It's easier to balance the needs of the Estuary and its endangered species with our needs for water supply if these exotics aren't in there competing," says Steve Hall of the Association of California Water Agencies, whose group will be working to make sure that better ballast management for California and, if possible, for the entire Pacific Coast, gets into the new bill.
Environmentalists are joining the water agencies in supporting the California push. Exotics control also has the backing of the CALFED Bay-Delta Program. Those interested in commenting on the bill reauthorization can write their members of Congress.
Contact: Allegra Cangelosi (202) 544-5200 or Andy Cohen (510)848-1029
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