5 Great Lakes states sue feds over Asian carp

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Despite being rebuffed twice by the U.S. Supreme Court, five states filed suit Monday with a lower court demanding tougher federal and municipal action to prevent Asian carp from overrunning the Great Lakes and decimating their fishing industry.

Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and Pennsylvania said in their complaint the situation had become more dire since a live bighead carp was found last month in a Chicago-area waterway only six miles from where it meets Lake Michigan — well past an electric barrier designed to block the voracious fish's path.

"Asian carp will kill jobs and ruin our way of life," Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said in a statement. "We cannot afford more bureaucratic delays — every action must be taken to protect the Great Lakes."

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in northern Illinois. It accuses the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago of creating a public nuisance by operating locks, gates and other infrastructure through which the carp could enter the lakes.

That argument didn't convince the nation's highest court to order the locks closed earlier this year, despite two requests from Michigan and other states. But the justices' rulings were procedural and did not deal with the merits of the case, Cox's spokeswoman Joy Yearout said.

The discovery of a 20-pound carp in Lake Calumet on Chicago's South Side might make a federal judge more inclined to rule favorably, said Nick Schroeck, executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center at Wayne State University. Previously, Michigan and the other states based their request largely on DNA evidence that critics dismissed as unreliable.

"It's easier to make the case that there's a public nuisance when you have this actual, live fish," Schroeck said.

The states also have had more time to develop evidence that the federal government is handling the situation so poorly it violates laws prohibiting interstate movement of harmful species, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which represents the Army Corps, is reviewing the lawsuit and will file a response later, spokesman Charles Miller said. The Chicago water district also was studying the lawsuit and had no immediate comment, said its attorney, Frederick Feldman.