Managing Aquatic Invasive Species in the Great Lakes: An Analysis of Policies, Politics, and Stakeholders

Jerald C. Mast, Ph.D.

An Occasional Paper of the A. W. Clausen Center for World Business

Carthage College

June 2010

1

A Clausen Center for World Business Occasional Paper “Managing Aquatic Invasive Species in the Great Lakes: An Analysis of Policies, Politics, and Stakeholders” Jerald C. Mast, Ph.D. Carthage College, 2001 Alford Park Drive, Kenosha WI, 53140-1994, USA, (262) 551-5397 Abstract Aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes represent a significant public policy problem that has for nearly two decades confounded effective policy responses. The nature of the problem is increasingly well understood at elite levels, and an emerging consensus about the need for improved regulation exists among stakeholders. Failure to adopt those effective regulations reflects: a) absence of an adequately centralized authority to impose a solution on multiple political jurisdictions fractured by international and federal lines, and b) inadequate collaboration among de-centralized stakeholders. Effective regulatory responses to the problems associated with aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes will certainly involve addressing one or the other, and probably both.

2

Introduction

Aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes of North America threaten the health

of critical natural resources and impose dramatic ecological and economic costs on the

region. Efforts to manage biological invaders in an ecosystem involving multiple levels

of government reflect, to a limited degree, important changes in theoretical understanding

of environmental and natural resource policies and management that emphasize

collaborative decision-making among a variety of stakeholders (Durrant et. al. 2005). Yet

despite this partial adherence to prescriptive theory, invasive species remain a significant

threat to the ecological integrity and economic welfare of the Great Lakes region.

The failure to achieve effective, centralized policy solutions to the aquatic

invasive species threat can be understood first and foremost as a function of classic

incentive problems associated with a significant common pool resource – a complex

ecosystem fractured into multiple jurisdictions that create a disjunction between the

benefits and costs associated with management decisions. But this failure to adequately

address invasive species can also be blamed on the failure to fully overcome these

perverse incentives by realizing the requirements of genuine, collaborative decision-

making as called for by various leading theorists. This inadequate collaboration, coupled

with a larger political context reflective of bureaucratic regulatory politics, interest group

competition, and an uninformed public leaves the Great Lakes vulnerable to more

harmful biotic invasions in the near and long-term future. The Bush Administration was

notably disinterested in investing significant political capital in Great Lakes issues, and

the U.S. Congress has also proven insufficiently effective on these matters. Although

early signs of greater commitment by President Barack Obama to environmental

3

stewardship are promising, it remains to be seen how vigorously the current

administration will pursue effective solutions to the invasive-species problem on the

Great Lakes.

In the absence of adequate regulatory problem-solving from the national

governments of the United States and Canada, addressing this vulnerability will involve

three factors: one) better adherence to theoretical prescriptions for sustainable resource

management – in particular, more meaningful collaboration that moves beyond an

advisory capacity to a more decisive one and involves a broader array of stakeholders;

two) a better informed and more involved public; and three) expanded regulatory efforts

by individual states. The combination of these factors would have the likely beneficial

consequences of overcoming dysfunctions in the institutions of national government,

while making management of the Great Lakes less reliant on them in the first place.

The Great Lakes Resource and the Threat of Invasive Species

The Great Lakes of North America – Lakes Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and

Superior – provide a classic example of a critical natural resource upon which millions of

people depend. These five lakes and their connecting waterways constitute the largest

freshwater system on Earth, fully one fifth of the planet’s supply of surface freshwater,

and no less than nine tenths of the United States’ supply (Fuller and Shear, 2008). Forty

million people in the U.S. and Canada use the Great Lakes as their primary source of

drinking water.

Over $200 billion of economic activity occurs within the Great Lakes basin, and a

third of U.S. Gross Domestic Product is generated within the region, making the larger

area a critical center for manufacturing and agricultural industries of North America

4

(Austin and Affolter-Caine, 2006). Sport and commercial fishing industries on the lakes

have been valued at approximately seven billion dollars a year (Gillies, 2010). With over

a thousand beaches, five thousand miles of coastline and hundreds of public parks, the

Great Lakes provide enormous recreational value to the nation and indeed the global

economy.

Much of the economic and recreational values provided by the Great Lakes

depend on their integrity as an ecosystem. Ecologically, this ecosystem is composed of

evergreen and deciduous forests, grasslands and prairies, sandy barrens and dunes, and

coastal wetlands, as well as the aquatic environments of the lakes themselves. More than

30 biological communities and over 100 species are globally rare or exist only in the

Great Lakes ecosystem (Fuller and Shear, 2008).

Many threats to the environmental health of the Great Lakes exist, including over-

consumption of water, water pollution from industrial point sources, municipal sewage

releases, as well as from urban and agricultural run-off. Air pollution poses a threat as

well from multiple toxic substances such as pesticides, metal compounds and chlorinated

organic compounds, and nitrogen compounds that enter into the lakes through

atmospheric deposition. These are some of the same environmental threats to the Great

Lakes that motivated environmental statutes such as the Clean Air and Water Acts at the

end the 1960s and early 1970s. While dramatic improvements in water quality in the

Great Lakes have since been attained, much work in these areas remains to be done.

There are 43 “areas of concern” where environmental quality has been severely degraded

by mercury, lead, PCBs and other toxic material. In consequence, the areas’ beneficial

uses, depending on their ability to support aquatic life, have been seriously impaired.

Concern among public and politicians alike for holding the line on water quality was

5

illustrated during the summer of 2007 in the outcry generated by a permit from the state

of Indiana, later withdrawn, to increase discharges by British Petroleum. Although

problems such as water quality and conservation deserve increased attention in their own

right, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged invasive species to

be one of the greatest current threats to the Great Lakes ecosystem.

Non-indigenous invasive species disrupt ecosystems by exploiting opportunities

in their new environment. The absence of natural predators, competitors and pathogens

often allow invasive alien species to proliferate, out-competing natives and destabilizing

the ecosystem. There are 183 known aquatic invasive species, and 124 known terrestrial

invasive species in the Great Lakes basin (Environment Canada and U.S. EPA, 2007).

Just a few of the most prominent are described below.

The earliest recorded invasive species on the Great Lakes was the sea lamprey

which arrived in Lake Ontario from the Atlantic Ocean through the Erie Canal in the

1820s. Construction and development of the Welland Canal around Niagara Falls

eventually provided the sea lamprey a route to the rest of the Great Lakes by the 1920s.

Attaching themselves to the sides of fish with a sucker-like mouth, adult sea lampreys

feed on the bodily fluids of their prey, and destroy an average of 90 kilograms of fish

each. Enormous damage to the Great Lakes fisheries ensued, as sea lampreys decimated

the commercially valuable lake trout stocks on all five lakes (Toledo, 2001).

Alewives arrived in the Great Lakes by mid-century, and with the lake trout

population decimated, found little to impede their proliferation. Population explosions

have been particularly prevalent on Lakes Michigan and Huron. Alewives compete with

chubs, herring, perch and whitefish. As they are salt-water fish, they are poorly adapted

6

to freshwater, and large die-offs often occur in early summer fouling lakeshores with

thousands of rotting fish (White, 2000).

Much attention has been paid to the zebra mussel, which arrived in the Great

Lakes from the Black Sea in the 1980s. The mussel colonizes on the surfaces of docks,

boat hulls, commercial fishing nets and water intake pipes and valves of hydroelectric

and nuclear power plants, municipal water plants, and industrial facilities. By reducing

the intake flow of water needed for heat exchangers, condensers, firefighting equipment

and cooling systems, undermining the structural integrity of piers and reducing the

efficiency of ships and boats by increased drag, the zebra mussel has created significant

costs to the public and private sectors.

Ecologically, zebra mussels feed on phytoplankton and other suspended organic

material. Biomass of phytoplankton and microzooplankton has steeply declined in large

sections of the Great Lakes since the zebra mussel has become established. This also has

consequences for the aquatic environment, such as increased levels of water

transparency, which in turn affects organisms adapted to lower light and temperature

conditions. Effects on the food web include decreasing populations of planktivorous fish

from competition. Larval fish dependent upon microzooplankton may be negatively

impacted, and extirpation of native unionid clams has been documented in Lake St. Clair

and parts of Lake Erie (Benson and Raicow, 2009).

Continuing concern about the zebra mussels has been joined by concern over the

quagga mussel, which, according to recent evidence, is dramatically out-competing its

relative. Similar to zebra mussels in size and appearance, quaggas are more tolerant of

colder water and the types of substrate to which they affix themselves. Whereas zebra

mussels are generally limited to hard-surfaces in shallow water, quaggas’ range extends

7

to the deeper, colder waters throughout the Great Lakes, including sandy and gravely

conditions. Prodigious filter-feeders in their own right, their greater adaptability means

that their impacts on phytoplankton and other suspended organic material, the numerous

species indirectly dependent on them, will potentially be exponentially greater than the

zebras (Egan, 2008).

Another invasive species from the Black and Caspian Seas regions, the round

goby is a soft-bodied bottom-dwelling fish growing to 10 inches in length. Their

aggressive behavior allows them to out-compete native fish for food and spawning

habitat; moreover, they prey upon small native fishes and the eggs and fry of larger native

fish species.

While 130 of the 160 fish species in the Great Lakes are non-natives, a large

amount of recent attention has focused on several subspecies of Asian carp, the silver

carp and the bighead carp, that have reached but not yet established themselves in the

Great Lakes. It is not surprising that Asian carp attract attention, given that they can grow

to 100 pounds and can leap up to 10 feet in the air above the water’s surface. Voracious

bottom-feeders, each day they filter up to 40% of their body weight in microscopic plant

and animal life upon which the rest of the food chain depends. Not only do Asian carp

threaten to out-compete native fish and (indirectly) economically valuable sport fish for

food, this species tends, like the zebra mussel, to increase the clarity of the water, which

in turn can lead to harmful algal blooms (Mills 2002). Because silver carp launch

themselves above the surface of the water when agitated by motors, they pose a serious

threat to boaters, skiers, and operators of personal watercraft, which would create serious

costs to recreational values of the Great Lakes.

8

While not as dramatic as images of giant carp flying through the air, Viral

Hemorrhagic Septicemia Virus (VHSV) has already killed several hundred tons of fish in

the Great Lakes according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Grant 2007). Non-

native to the Great Lakes, it appears especially virulent there, and has been documented

to have spread to lakes in northeastern Wisconsin and Lower Michigan. The World

Organization for Animal Health has identified at least 37 fish species that are susceptible

to the highly contagious virus, which attacks endothelial tissues in the host fish, leading

to excessive bleeding from blood vessels, internal organs and the eyes (Grant 2007). In

September 2007, National Park Service authorities at Isle Royale issued regulations

preventing the release of ballast water in park service waters, and instituted a ballast

water treatment regimen consisting of bleach and ascorbic acid for their own ferry

(Meyers, 2007).

Invasive species also include non-native vegetation such as the flowering rush and

the purple loosestrife, a prolific wetlands species that out-competes native plants and

compromises the biodiversity of up to 190,000 hectares of wetland, marshes and riparian

meadows across the U.S. each year (Woodburn and Glasner-Shwayder, 2007). Problems

with Eurasian watermilfoil, curly-leaf pondweed and potentially hydrilla include the

species’ abilities to grow into thick floating mats that crowd out native species, and clog

recreational and commercial navigation.

Magnitude of the Costs of Invasive Species

Altogether there are over 183 non-indigenous species of aquatic plants and

animals that have established themselves in the Great Lakes ecosystem. New species are

being discovered at a rate of one per eight months. The consequences of these invasive

9

species are significant and far-reaching. They constitute negative impacts on recreation,

commerce, aesthetics, and the ecological health of a natural system of tremendous

importance. The value of goods and services provided by the Great Lakes that will be

degraded or lost in the absence of effective management constitutes a dramatic

justification for crafting effective policy. Research conducted by economists at the

Michigan Sea Grant program at the University of Michigan has concluded that investing

$26 billion in Great Lakes ecosystem protection and restoration programs would by

conservative estimates yield over $50 billion in economic benefits (Austin et. al., 2007).

Invasive species play a significant role in this picture; the total cost to the region of

aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes has been estimated at $5 billion per year

according to the inter-agency initiative, Great Lakes Regional Collaboration (Great Lakes

Regional Collaboration, 2005). Other scientific research puts the economic costs of

aquatic invasive species at $5.7 billion per year, with the fishing industry bearing the

largest share, currently $4.5 billion per year (Pimentel, 2005).

Stemming the enormous ecological and economic damage associated with aquatic

invasive species on the Great Lakes requires identifying the vectors through which they

are introduced. The principal means of introduction are species migration through

connecting waterways, release of individual organisms by aqua-culturalists, vegetation

and some species of animals that attach themselves to boat trailers, and through the

release of ballast water by large ocean-going freight ships. The first vector was made

possible by the construction of canals. The Welland Canal in the east is responsible for

allowing the sea lamprey in, and the Sanitary-Ship Canal in the west, which threatens to

allow the Asian carp entrance to Lake Michigan.

10

In the fall of 2009, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that Asian carp DNA

had been detected in the Sanitary-Ship Canal past an electric fence barrier the Corps

operates to deter migration of Asian carp to Lake Michigan (Egan, 2009b). In January

2010, DNA evidence of Asian carp was detected in along the Chicago shoreline of Lake

Michigan itself (Egan, 2010a). It is likely that the electric barrier failed to prevent

juvenile carp more tolerant of the electric field from swimming through. The Army Corps

has been criticized for knowingly operating the electric fence at a voltage too low to stop

younger Asian carp out of concerns for possible harmful effects on boats in the canal.

And in the fall of 2008, the electric barrier was shut down altogether for a week of

maintenance. Additionally, fears surfaced in the fall of 2009 that Asian carp migrating up

the Des Plaines River (which does not physically connect to Lake Michigan) may be able

to move from the Des Plaines River to the Sanitary-Ship Canal at points where the two

bodies of water are adjacent to each other during times of flooding. The prospect that

Asian carp are beginning to enter Lake Michigan via the Sanitary-Ship Canal have

prompted calls to close the locks where the canal enters the lake in the immediate term,

and to physically sever the connection between Lake Michigan and Illinois River system

in the long term. This has generated a good deal of controversy given potential impacts

on Chicago barge and tourism industries, which will be discussed later.

Boat trailers are the likely culprits behind the spread of Eurasian milfoil and

loosestrife, and for spreading zebra mussels whose eggs attach themselves to boats and

trailers from the Great Lakes to inland lakes. Of the 4.3 million registered boats in the

Great Lakes states (more than a third of the national total), over 900 thousand are used on

the Great Lakes, creating numerous opportunities for the inadvertent introduction of alien

species (U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, 2008). Despite the fact that multiple vectors exist

11

for the introduction of alien species, ballast water bears the greatest responsibility for the

invasive species problem and so warrants a closer look at the trans-oceanic shipping on

the Great Lakes.

Shipping on the Great Lakes contributes approximately $6 billion a year to the

regional economy and approximately 44,000 individuals are employed in associated

activities (Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). While trans-oceanic ships are the smallest

commercial freighters on the Lakes in terms of numbers and size, their overall

contribution to the economy is disproportionately large. The general pattern of shipping

is for trans-oceanic ships, termed ‘salties,’ to bring steel from Eastern European ports

through the St. Lawrence Seaway to ports on the southern, industrial regions of the Great

Lakes. The salties head north, where they take on grain in Duluth, Superior and Thunder

Bay for export to foreign destinations. It is this process of loading and unloading cargo in

different locations that creates the need for ballast water.

Large cargo ships are very top-heavy when empty, and thus unstable. To ensure

the safety of ship and crew, weight must be kept in the ships’ lower regions. This weight

can take the form of cargo, but as cargo is off-loaded new weight must be added to

replace the weight loss. This new weight (as much as 100,000 tons) is added in the form

of ballast water. As ships move to new ports and add new cargo (and weight), ballast

water - and invasive species - are dumped. Nearly all major phyla occur in ballast water;

ocean going ships are estimated to transport at least 7,000 species between continents

daily (Carlton 1999). European studies have uncovered over 990 different taxonomic

groups – the most common of which are algae, crustacean, molluscan, polycheate

invertebrates; ships on the eastern coast of the U.S. have been found to contain between

3,800 and 39,000 live organisms per cubic meter of ballast water (Cangelosi and Mays,

12

2006). Clearly, the ballast water on ocean-going ships represents a potential source of an

enormous number on non-native species that may be introduced in environments in

which they travel. No effective regulatory approach to invasive species prevention can

ignore the ballast water vector.

Given the enormous value of the Great Lakes and significant harm that aquatic

invasive species currently and potentially represent, it should be little surprise that

governments responsible to the region have for decades sought to collectively manage the

Great Lakes resources for environmental health generally, and for protection from

biological invaders. Before addressing specific efforts to prevent the arrival and mitigate

the effects of invasive species, it will be useful to review the academic arguments that

have explained and justified environmental protection over the 20th century, so as to

provide theoretical context.

Theoretical Basis of Environmental Policy

Environmental problems are frequently cast as forms of classic market failure

such as public goods problems, where benefits that flow from a particular environmental

good or service are widely enjoyed regardless of any given individual’s contribution to

the costs associated with creating or maintaining that good or service, or conversely as

negative externalities that are generated when the costs of a particular activity are passed

along to others not otherwise engaged in the activity in question. In the environmental

literature this idea was most famously articulated as the “tragedy of the commons” where

incentive structures lead self-interested resource consumers to make resource

management choices that maximize their own short-term economic benefits, while

13

generating costs in the form of environmental degradation that are born collectively

(Hardin 1968).

Any enlightened individual resource consumer who chooses to reduce personal

exploitation of the environmental commons opens up opportunities for less scrupulous or

more desperate competitors to ramp up their own exploitative actions. Garret Hardin’s

influential argument about the “tragedy of the commons” concludes that perverse

incentive structures of common-pool resources invariably preclude cooperative behavior

and require the imposition of either the privatization of the commons, or a centralized,

collective decision-making apparatus, typically understood to come in the form of a state

capable of overcoming the political opposition of short-sighted, self-interested actors.

Common-pool resource theory has evolved since Hardin’s paper. Elinor Ostrom

identifies particular conditions involving social and institutional capital in which

sustainable resource management decisions can be cooperatively arrived at by

stakeholders without the imposition of rules by a centralized authority (Ostrom, 1990).

These conditions crucial to the emergence of sustainable management regimes apply to

the resource context itself, and to the users of that resource. As to the former, the resource

should: 1) be in such a condition that sustainable management is still feasible; 2) possess

reliable and valid indicators of the health of the resource; 3) possess reasonably

predictable conditions; and 4) exist on a scale that allows for successful understanding of

the conditions necessary for sustainable management (Schlager, 2004).

Regarding the conditions associated with the resource stakeholders that are

important to their ability to generate sustainable management rules, they should possess:

1) adequate sense of salience in the resource’s successful stewardship; 2) common

understanding of the natural resource and the effects of stakeholder actions on it; 3) low

14

discount rates associated with concern for long-term health of the resource; 4) a shared

sense of reciprocity and trust in the various fellow stakeholders to bargain in good faith

and adhere to the agreed upon rules; 5) autonomy to make and enforce resource

management rules without being countermanded by external authority; and 6) the

prerequisite organizational and leadership skills to create and implement the management

regime (Schlager, 2004). Common cultural values and approximately equal amounts of

power increase the likelihood that these conditions will result in the creation of a

sustainable resource management regime.

The development of common-pool resource theory can be usefully applied to

better understand the evolution of environmental policy and their intellectual rationales

through successive generations of governance (Durant, 2005). The first generation of

environmental policies began to emerge in the late 1960s and is reflective of Hardin’s

view of the dynamics of tragic commons. This generation of policies relies of a

regulatory state that crafts command-and-control responses at the national level that

prescribe and enforce limits on pollution and unsustainable resource consumption.

Through the use of scientific expertise within bureaucratic agencies, a centralized

government authority identifies ostensibly safe levels of emissions, or sustainable yields,

and on the basis of that information sets a rule and enforces compliance. This regulatory

approach characterizes key environmental statutes of the U.S. federal code, notably the

Clean Air and Water Acts.

The second generation of environmental policy is composed of two types of

distinct (though not entirely dissimilar) criticism of the first generation’s reliance on the

heavy-handedness of a centralized regulatory state. The first critique is based on free-

market ideas that focus on the potential dangers of government failure in the attempt to

15

remedy market-failure, largely due to the inefficiency of command-and-control

regulations, and the perverse incentives they often create. This first form of critique

offers policy options involving partial to wholesale privatization of environmental

resources to create property rights that would create the incentive structures that would

punish unsustainable exploitation of resources, and reward responsible stewardship.

Less dramatic forms of market-oriented policy approaches reserve a role for

government beyond mere enforcement of property rights such as issuance of tradable

permits for environmentally damaging actions. These would allow for the most

productive forms of polluting activity (as measured by willingness to pay for permits) to

continue to create economic benefits, while more efficiently reducing pollution overall by

creating a financial incentive for firms to reduce pollution. By either internalizing

environmental harm into the overall cost of production, or allowing producers of

environmental goods to capture the benefits associated with sustainable use of these

goods, producers are encouraged, rather than directly compelled, to develop processes

that involve fewer environmental costs, or conversely, that generate more environmental

benefits (Anderson and Leal 2001). Thus those with the most knowledge of the processes

involved are set to identify the solutions themselves rather than adhere to some

standardized prescript applied in a variety of diverse contexts that may make little sense

depending on circumstances.

The other dimension of second generation of environmental policy is championed

by theorists of participatory democracy critical of captured governmental agencies

catering to powerful political interests, or, when agencies possess the clout to resist such

interests, the instrumental reasoning of bureaucrats (Dryzek, 1987). The disaggregation

of complex, inter-related environmental problems, the assignment of responsibility for

16

the disaggregated parts to individual bureaus or offices within various competitive

departments of a centralized government means they are addressed as scientifically

understandable problems with scientifically derivable solutions. This results in disjointed,

poorly coordinated, and ultimately ineffective policies (Dryzek, 1987). Rendered into

technical and legalistic language, crafted within Byzantine administrative structures and

procedures, average citizens find participation uninviting. The failure of centralized

legislative and bureaucratic decision-making to account for unique local or regional

conditions, or to anticipate cross-media problem displacement, leads to poorly solved

environmental problems and marginalizes multiple stakeholders with both useful

knowledge of and values in the resources in question yet without access to traditional

political resources such as lawyers, lobbyists, and media consultants. This leads

proponents of participatory democracy to proffer localized discourse as the means to

environmental problem-solving (Torgerson, 2006).

Both of these second generation critiques view bureaucratic expertise with

suspicion. Their proponents seek to replace the judgment of experts trapped by either

powerful interest groups or by rigid, organizational limitations and the narrowness of

scientific perspectives, with either the efficiency of incentive structures that reward

desired behavior on the one hand or the collective wisdom of deliberating stakeholders

who best understand their individual and mutual interests on the other. Neither

proponents of market-oriented solutions nor proponents of participatory discourse are

satisfied with centralized state called for by the tragedy of the commons metaphor of

environmental problem-solving. But neither has been able to prescribe a successful

policy-making strategy that does away with the administrative state either.

17

The third generation of environmental policy is characterized by a pragmatic

approach that eschews ideological commitments to state or market, but borrows from

both as needed (Durant, 2005). Rather than replacing bureaucratic regulatory problem-

solving altogether, third generation environmental policy approaches seek to augment it

with various reforms based on market mechanisms and discursive, and/or collaborative,

interaction among local stakeholders to reduce the zero-sum nature typical of the

competitive interest-group politics associated with traditional regulatory approaches.

By forging compromises among key stakeholders associated with an

environmental issue rather than among their representatives within a distant legislature,

the collaborative dimension of the third generation approaches expects to better build

broad-based support for policy solutions, particularly crucial for complex problems

which beg for on-going adjustments during the process of implementation. This

theoretical perspective on policy normatively condemns the importance of political

victories for self-interested groups or parties and condones results-based (as defined by

problem-solving) management. As will be shown in the following pages, aspects of this

evolution in environmental policy generally can be seen in the emerging approaches to

aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes in particular.

Policy Approaches to Invasive Species Management on the Great Lakes

The Great Lakes ecosystem intersects the political jurisdictions of no less than

two countries, eight states, one province, multiple major municipalities, and many Native

tribes, so governance problems associated with the tragedy of the commons are clearly

central and complex. As the resource is enjoyed in common, actions taken to improve the

health of the ecosystem generate benefits for all Great Lakes users, but involve costs paid

18

by the jurisdiction taking action. Conversely, extractive or exploitative actions may

directly reward the action-taker, but distribute harm to all resource users. To avoid an

inefficient under-allocation of resources for actions benefiting the Great Lakes, and

prevent an over-allocation of resources for actions harming them, Hardin’s thesis neatly

explains the necessity of government regulations. This means that in the United States,

achieving effective, centralized collaboration with Canada has had to contend with two

principled positions: federalist commitments to states’ rights, and a laissez-faire

philosophy of political-economy (Bogue, 2000). These obstacles proved an effective

barrier to bi-national regulatory efforts on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes Basin

throughout much of the 19th century.

Formal international efforts to manage the Great Lakes as a common pool

resource began when the United States agreed to long-standing Canadian requests to

establish a commission to address problems associated with fisheries in 1892 (Bogue,

2000). While the Canadian-American Joint Commission of 1892 proved ineffectual at

promoting uniform fishing regulations, it laid the foundation for the more fruitful

international Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. Recognizing the perverse incentives

associated with limiting their own consumptive uses of the lakes unilaterally, the United

States and Canada each acknowledged that rapid industrial development, as well as

increasing technical capacity to harvest fish, required mutual agreement not to pollute the

lakes to the detriment of the other.

The Boundary Waters Treaty established the International Joint Commission

(IJC) to negotiate between the two countries, prevent and resolve disputes, investigate

resource problems, recommend policy solutions and manage water levels on all boundary

waters. Although not authorized to regulate water quality, the IJC began calling for

19

reduced pollution on the Great Lakes as early as 1918. Limited to an advisory role,

however, the IJC’s calls went largely unheeded until the U.S. and Canada agreed to the

Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1972, which seriously took on problems

associated with non-biological forms of pollution (Karkkainen, 2006).

Decades before the two countries finally tackled conventional pollution problems,

they belatedly acted in concert to address biological threats to the Great Lakes fisheries,

largely in response to a particular invasive species – the sea lamprey. Multiple attempts in

the late 19th and early 20th centuries to establish a functional organ to co-manage the

fisheries sustainably failed in the face of anti-regulatory sentiments in the fishing industry

and their representatives at the state and provincial level.

Not until 1954, with the commercially valuable herring, lake trout, sturgeon and

whitefish stocks facing collapse as a result of over-fishing, pollution and sea lamprey

predation did the two national governments receive necessary political support to pass the

Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries (Bogue, 2000). This treaty established the Great

Lakes Fisheries Commission, composed of representatives from both countries, which

oversees and publishes research on fish populations and habitat, recommends policy, and

implements a lamprey mitigation program. Given the central role of controlling the

lamprey population, the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission plays an important, but

limited, role in the larger campaign to address invasive species.

In 1968 the United States and Canada agreed to the Great Lakes Basin Compact

that created the Great Lakes Commission. The Commission oversees and promotes

research into problems associated with Great Lakes uses, and makes recommendations to

states and provincial authorities. The Great Lakes Commission supports rigorous

regulatory responses to the invasive species problem, particularly uniform ballast water

20

treatment rules with the eventual goal of zero invasive species discharge, and it has

endorsed various bills in Congress that would achieve these ends (Great Lakes

Commission, 2007). The Commission has been active in promoting collaboration

between stakeholders to achieve political consensus on such policy goals. One example is

its role in the Great Ships Initiative discussed later.

Unilateral efforts by the United States federal government to address invasive

species began as early as 1900 with passage of the Lacey Act. The Lacey Act was

primarily concerned with protecting wildlife against unlawful trafficking, but also

specifically prohibited the introduction of harmful exotic avian species (Anderson, 1995).

In its current form, the Lacey Act has been used to prevent shipments of Asian carp,

deemed an injurious species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Much of U.S. federal policy dealing with invasive species has focused on pests

that pose threats to agriculture. The Plant Quarantine Act of 1912, Animal Damage

Control Act of 1931, Federal Seed Act of 1939, Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and

Rodenticide Act of 1947, and Federal Noxious Weed Act of 1974 are all specifically

designed to regulate non-native species that pose potential harm to commercial crops.

Thus the idea of new, non-native species creating ecological and economic problems is

well established throughout the 20th century. What likely explains the long history of

regulation in this instance is the lobbying strength of the agriculture industry eager to

prevent the arrival of such species as noxious weeds.

Aside from regulation of the commercial transportation of species potentially

harmful to agriculture, there are several important federal statutes addressing more

general environmental problems, but that bear on invasive species in indirect ways. The

National Environmental Policy Act seeks to provide umbrella protections to the

21

environment in the form of harmful consequences of federal actions by requiring

environmental impact analyses. The Endangered Species Act would require the

eradication of invasive species should they pose threats to a listed endangered species.

And the Clean Water Act seeks “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and

biological integrity of the nation’s waters” which provides a logical connection between

this statute and actions that introduce aquatic invasive species.

Despite this logical connection, the Clean Water Act traditionally has not been

applied to the regulation of ballast water as per the EPA’s interpretation of the CWA

(Mah, 2004). In 1973 the EPA exempted “discharge incidental to the normal operation of

a vessel” from Clean Water Act permits requirements (Mah, 2004). In September 2006 a

U.S. District Court held this administrative rule to be inconsistent with requirements of

the CWA, a ruling upheld in by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in July 2008; and the

EPA is in the process of creating a permit system for the regulation of all ships that

release ballast water (Northwest Environmental Advocates et al. vs. EPA, No. CV 03-

05760 SI).

To comply with 9th Circuit’s order, in December 2008 the EPA issued a general

permit under the CWA that allows ships to continue to discharge ballast water as

currently practiced. Implementation of this permit was placed on hold by the 9th Circuit

Court until February 2009. Barack Obama’s administration seems prepared to head in a

different direction as EPA Director Lisa Jackson announced on February 25th, 2009 that

the agency would review the permit affirming status quo ballast water regulations issued

during the previous administration.

Part of the EPA’s argument for resisting use of the Clean Water Act to regulate

ballast water has rested on Congressional efforts to regulate invasive species on the Great

22

Lakes through separate federal actions. The U.S. Congress passed the Non-indigenous

Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act (NANPCA) of 1990. Just as the sea

lamprey served a catalytic event by providing the necessary impetus to enact the

Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries, the Non-indigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention

and Control Act was a belated response to another high-profile, costly invader on the

Great Lakes – the zebra mussel. This act identified ballast water as a key vector for

invasive species introduction and called for ballast water exchange (BWE) regulations –

the first such regulations in the world (Ballast Water Working Group, 1995). NANPCA

also established an Invasive Species Task Force to develop and coordinate with state

governments plans to prevent introduction of new and spread of current invasive species

in U.S. waters, and study impacts of these biological invaders on economies and

ecosystems.

In 1996 Congress re-authorized and amended NANPCA in the form of National

Invasive Species Act of 1996 (NISA). NISA reaffirmed ballast water exchange

regulations as the preventative mechanism to protect the Great Lakes from aquatic

invasive species brought via ballast water. These regulations require ships – weather

permitting – to flush their ballast tanks while on the open ocean, replacing the ballast

water acquired in foreign ports with marine water that is less likely to contain organisms,

in particular organisms capable of adapting to the freshwater of the Great Lakes. Ships

are not required to exchange ballast water if conditions make it risky. More problematic,

even when ships do conduct ballast water exchange, full replacement of water in the

ballast tanks does not occur. This incomplete replacement leaves biological stowaways in

the ballast water. Moreover, ships filled to or near capacity with cargo have little need of

ballast water, and can declare no ballast on board. But ballast tanks in such situations are

23

never empty, residual water and large amounts of sediment remain at the bottom of the

tanks. When the ships off load cargo, typically in southern industrial port cities, they take

on ballast water which mixes with the residual water and sediment. In consequence,

invasive organisms become once again suspended and ready to be expelled when new

cargo is loaded for instance when grain and ore are loaded in northern ports.

Responsibility for implementing effective ballast water regulations under NISA

falls upon the U.S. Coast Guard. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001,

however, the Coast Guard’s mission has undergone revisions that have increased the

emphasis placed upon national security dimensions of the agency’s duties, a development

exemplified by moving to the new Department of Homeland Security (Mah, 2004).

According to testimony offered by the General Accounting Office in 2003, these new

responsibilities have not resulted in commensurate increases in budgetary resources,

placing increased strains on the Coast Guard’s abilities to effectively carry out its

traditional regulatory responsibilities (Mah, 2004). Under NISA, the Coast Guard has

responsibility for monitoring and enforcing ships’ compliance with BWE regulations. But

by 2001 the National Ballast Water Clearinghouse concluded that only about half the

ships actually engaged in required BWE (Ruiz, et. al., 2001). The Coast Guard itself

acknowledged the inadequacy of ships’ compliance in reporting to adequately determine

effectiveness of BWE in its report to Congress the same year (U.S. Coast Guard, 2001).

Despite increased efforts by the Coast Guard to monitor compliance with BWE

regulations and increased fines for non-compliance, these shortcomings in ballast water

exchange as a remedy to the invasive species threat remain today. They have also over

the last one and a half decades spurred much research and conference activity to identify

effective methods of ballast water treatment (BWT) to kill the organisms within the

24

ballast water tanks. A number of potential methods to sterilize water in ballast tanks have

been investigated and are in various stages of commercial development. They range from

such ship-board methods as filtration, to irradiation of ballast water, to the application of

various forms of biocide, to heating ballast water to temperatures unsuitable for life

(Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). In addition to on-ship technology, shore-based ballast water

treatment facilities are another alternative currently being investigated and proposed.

Ships would pump their ballast water into the on-shore facility where it would be treated.

The shipping industry has claimed that uncertainty about the necessary standards

that ballast water will need to meet has precluded necessary investment in fitting ships

with ballast water treatment equipment. Without knowing how ‘clean’ is ‘clean’, the

representatives argue, they cannot wisely purchase the necessary technology. Debate has

ensued over costs associated with fitting ships with the necessary equipment as well.

Some note figures of $210,000 and $300,000 per ship for mechanical modes of treatment

and $300,000 per ship for chemical treatment (Buck, 2007).

The plausibility of this argument aside, it is clear Congress has failed to move

forward with effective standards. Much has been made of polarization and gridlock in

Washington. Moreover, the decentralized nature of Congressional policy-making can be

seen in the fact that over seventy Congressional committees have at least some

jurisdiction over federal water policy (Rosenbaum, 2005). Whatever else can be said

about these factors, they have not helped Congress achieve effective BWT regulations,

despite significant bi-partisan support for such measures from the Great Lakes

Congressional delegations.

Bi-partisan bills introduced in the recent 110th Congress that would address

invasive species on the Great Lakes include Senate Bill 725, the National Aquatic

25

Invasive Species Act introduced by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Susan Collins (R-

ME). This bill is the latest in a long line of heretofore unsuccessful attempts to

reauthorize NISA in a manner that would effectively treat ballast water to kill would-be

invasive species. Republican Representatives in the House have introduced the

Prevention of Aquatic Invasive Species Act (Candice Miller, R-MI) and the Ballast

Water Management Act of 2007 (Steven La Tourette, R-OH) would do much the same.

Democratic sponsored bills addressing invasive species on the Great Lakes include

provisions for ballast water regulation introduced by Jim Oberstar (D-MN) as part of the

larger Coast Guard Authorization bill H.R. 2830. This measure passed the House in April

2008. Supported by both regional environmental organizations and the Great Lakes

shipping industry, the bill would set a national ballast water standard, require salt-water

BWE, close the NOBOB loophole, and require on-ship BWT technology within several

years.

Elements of the bill have generated controversy with certain environmental

organizations; in particular language in the bill that would preclude states’ abilities to set

standards more stringent than the federal standard, or require implementation of treatment

technology sooner than would federal law, and language that would exclude application

of the Clean Water Act for purposes of ballast water regulation (Egan, 2008 a). This last

point also means that primary responsibility for implementation would rest with the U.S.

Coast Guard rather the Environmental Protection Agency. Opposition to these aspects of

the Coast Guard Authorization Act is being mustered in the Senate.

Objections to the Coast Guard Authorization bill H.R. 2830 have been raised by

the Coast Guard itself and center on issues both related and unrelated to its ballast water

regulation provisions (Peters, 2008). The former center on the technology-forcing

26

dimension of the ballast water treatment requirements; the latter objections are

principally concerned with new security obligations for liquefied natural gas terminals

and tankers. Given pre-existing criticisms of the scope of Coast Guard responsibilities in

the post 9-11 era, concerns about the Coast Guard’s abilities to adequately implement

new ballast water regulations may be valid (Mah, 2004). In addition to the Coast Guard’s

objections, the Bush White House expressed its opposition and threatened a presidential

veto (Peters, 2008).

The most comprehensive recent legislative attempt address invasive species as

part of the larger project of ecosystem restoration is the Great Lakes Restoration

Initiative. Several bi-partisan attempts from legislators from the Great Lakes region to

fund the implementation of a plan crafted by the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration

(described below) have failed in recent years. With the support of the Obama

administration, however, $475 million was procured for Great Lakes restoration projects

for the fiscal year 2010, with an additional $300 million proposed for 2011. Of the $475

million in 2010, $60 million is targeted towards ballast water treatment research and

invasive species prevention. These steps represent down payments on President Obama’s

2008 campaign pledge to spend $5 billion on Great Lakes protection and restoration.

These recent budgetary accomplishments notwithstanding, the overall record of

federal efforts to regulate activity responsible for the introduction of invasive species into

the Great Lakes is one of hesitation and reluctance to act forcefully. Neither the Bush

administration nor Congress has been willing to impose a top-down, national standard for

ballast water discharge, despite significant support from the scientific community and

both sides of the aisle among the Congressional delegation of the Great Lakes states. The

funds procured by the Obama administration are useful and an improvement in terms of

27

environmental protection, but in the absence of a vigorous ballast water standard may

ultimately prove ineffective. While the Bush administration refused to promote an

effective regulatory standard, it did pursue an approach consistent with theoretical

prescriptions of the third generation of environmental policy.

The Great Lakes Regional Collaboration

In 2004, in response to political pressure to move forward more effectively in

addressing environmental problems on the Great Lakes, President Bush signed Executive

Order 13340 creating the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration (GLRC). Recognizing that

multiple efforts, comprising over 140 programs, by various levels of government working

through numerous agencies were engaged in environmental management of the Great

Lakes, the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration was intended to add coherence of

perspective and coordination of response to the ecosystem’s major environmental

challenges.

The members of the GLRC include the Great Lakes Interagency Task Force (10

cabinet-level federal agencies that administer programs affecting the Lakes), the Council

of Great Lakes Governors, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, Great Lakes

Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, and the Great Lakes Congressional Task Force.

The GLRC’s Conveners Meeting and executive meetings to propose a draft plan and then

adopt a final strategy were all open to the public. Additionally, the plan to protect and

restore the Great Lakes was developed through a process of individual issue-specific

strategy teams that included an array of non-governmental stakeholders, and for which

public comment was also solicited.

28

The signature product of the GLRC was the document entitled Great Lakes

Regional Collaboration Strategy to Restore and Protect the Great Lakes, released in

December 2005. The Strategy sets a wide array of goals to address needs of the Great

Lakes ecosystem comprehensively, confronting such problems as habitat loss, coastal

health, Areas of Concern and toxic pollution, non-point source pollution, sustainable

development and invasive species. The goals set for invasive species center on stopping

their introduction through ballast water and other means, and support for the passage of

federal legislation to achieve this.

The Great Lakes Regional Collaboration demonstrates elements of the pragmatic,

problem-solving approach of the third generation of environmental policies, yet also

possesses significant flaws that make it unlikely to succeed as fully as its membership

would like. While the GLRC has articulated an admirable vision of ecosystem

management, it lacks the institutional authority to see its central elements implemented.

This lack of authority is most obviously reflected in the continued absence of federal

ballast water regulations that set standards for effective treatment. Despite the multitude

of measures in Congress designed to achieve these standards, the prospect of passage for

any of them in this session appears poor. Moreover, the GLRC itself is aware of the

difficulties created by its limitations related to implementation. In a series of public

conference phone calls intended to review progress and points of concern, the GLRC

Executive Subcommittee decided in the spring of 2008 not to adopt a proposed GLRC

Strategy Implementation Plan, noting that such an initiative was “not the best use of

everyone’s time” and instead chose to focus on implementation of a few very modest

proposals unlikely to elicit much political opposition (Great Lakes Regional

Collaboration, 2008).

29

The difficulty of implementing the GLRC Strategy is a function of the absence of

a governing institutional framework to allocate necessary resources or to make its

decisions binding, but is also, in part, a function of its comprehensive vision of ecosystem

management. The GLRC Strategy symbolizes a departure from the conventional, piece-

meal approach of the first generation of environmental policy to environmental problem-

solving that typically tackled individual problems in sequence. As responsibility for

implementing such focused, issue-specific policies rests with particular agencies, or even

with particular divisions within particular agencies, developing the comprehensive vision

to understand complex ecosystems and generating cooperative behavior within a broad

base of support necessary for successful problem solving often fails to occur.

The GLRC is a worthwhile attempt to force agencies often indifferent, or worse,

opposed, to the success of their fellow agencies to work together to create a holistic

approach to sustainable management of the Great Lakes. More than that, however, the

GLRC attempts to bring different levels of government that operate in arenas with

different lines of accountability on the same page so that the conflicting as well as

common interests involved might be made clearer. This point is particularly highlighted

by the prominent role played in the GLRC by the Great Lakes Cities Initiative, an

instrument that gives voice to municipalities within the Great Lakes basin and their

constituents. Ultimately, however, the effectiveness of the GLRC is dependent on the

willingness at the federal level of Congress to adopt the GLRC Strategy as official policy,

and to allocate sufficient funding to carry it out.

Based on the literature devoted to the third generation of environmental policy,

one can find at least one more flaw in the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration hindering

greater success; that would be the inadequate breadth of stakeholder participation. The

30

GLRC is predominantly composed of representatives of governmental agencies. As an

antidote to the administrative rationality that plagues bureaucratic problem-solving,

proponents of the third generation of environmental policy call in varying degrees for

market-oriented policy mechanisms and discourse amongst citizens. To the extent that

citizens have been involved, it has mostly been indirect involvement through interest

group proxies representing industrial and environmental interests. Interest group politics

is itself problematic from theoretical perspectives of democratic discourse. However, in

the absence of greater involvement of average citizens (a prospect discussed later) more

involvement by interest groups may be the best available option for adding to the chorus

of government agency perspectives (Healthy Lakes, 2007). The GLRC itself

acknowledges the importance of involving more public input in its processes and more

effectively communicating its positions and actions (GLRC, 2007).

The long delay in passage of adequate federal ballast water regulations given the

great need for effective invasive species policy on the Great Lakes is a curious, and for

many, frustrating development. This is particularly so as the stakeholder that would be

most affected by ballast water regulations – shipping – has publicly called for Congress

to set standards. Attempting to explain this discrepancy between the need for action and

the lack of action requires taking a closer look at the interests of various stakeholders

involved.

Although Ostrom’s stakeholder criteria for sustainable common-pool resource

management is intended to apply to stakeholders operating independent of a centralized

state context, it offers interesting and relevant concepts that can be used to assess the

positions of stakeholders in situations like Great Lakes management. This is especially so

given the development of the GLRC that explicitly seeks to broaden the pool of actors in

31

natural resource planning and management. For this reason, Ostrom’s criteria will be

used as a general framework to assess three important, non-governmental stakeholders in

the issue of aquatic invasive species on the Great Lakes: shipping, environmental

organizations and the general public. As mentioned earlier, these criteria are: 1) adequate

sense of salience in the resource’s successful stewardship; 2) common understanding of

the natural resource and the effects of stakeholder actions on it; 3) low discount rates

associated with concern for long-term health of the resource; 4) a shared sense of

reciprocity and trust in the various fellow stakeholders to bargain in good faith and

adhere to the agreed upon rules; 5) autonomy to make and enforce resource management

rules without being countermanded by external authority; and 6) the prerequisite

organizational and leadership skills to create and implement the management regime

(Schlager, 2005).

Great Lakes Invasive Species Stakeholders: States

Lack of such progress on the federal level has prompted political action at the

state level, and in several cases, with significant policy results. The state of Michigan

passed ballast water regulations in 2005 which require ships from international ports of

call to acquire special permits contingent upon the presence of approved equipment to

treat ballast water to eradicate any invasive species aboard or face fines of up to $25,000

(Lam, 2007).

Exact cost projections of this equipment are contentious – the Michigan

Department of Environmental Quality contends the costs would run several hundred

thousand dollars, while shipping representatives claim the figure is at least one million

dollars (Lam, 2007). This, according to industry representatives, has led to ships avoiding

32

Michigan ports, and will limit the state’s ability to export goods via sea lanes transport.

The extent to which this claim is true is unclear. Federal courts have upheld Michigan’s

regulations (FedNav v. Chester 505 F. Supp. 2d 381 E.D. Mich. 2007).

Regulations aimed at minimizing the invasive species threat from ballast water

have been passed in Minnesota, New York and Wisconsin, but they impose different

standards on the shipping industry. The Wisconsin regulations require new ocean-going

ships entering Wisconsin waters by 2012 to achieve a level of ballast water purity that is

one hundred times more stringent than the standard currently proposed by the

International Maritime Organization within the United Nations (Wisconsin Department

of Natural Resources, 2009). Pre-existing ships will be required to meet these ballast

water standards by 2014. However, if the technology needed to meet these more stringent

standards is unavailable then ships will be required only to meet to the UN standard.

These standards reflect a much less stringent approach than the Wisconsin DNR

originally proposed and subsequent to its announcement the National Wildlife Federation

and the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation have declared their intention to sue the state.

Minnesota’s ballast water regulations are even less stringent; they only require the

UN standard be met by 2016. Where they surpass the Wisconsin rules, however, is in

requiring the lake-bound ships – lakers – to also meet the same standards. This measure is

intended to reduce the intra-lakes spread of invasive species already present within the

Great Lakes ecosystem, but has come under fierce criticism of representatives of the

intra-lakes shipping industry (Meyers, 2009). Because the cities of Duluth Minnesota and

Superior Wisconsin essentially share the same bay, the different standards have been

criticized as being unreasonable (Egan, 2009c).

33

The state of New York has adopted the region’s toughest regulations, similar to

those originally proposed by Wisconsin, treatment of ballast water to a standard one

thousand times the International Maritime Organization’s. New York was sued by the

shipping industry over these regulations, but in February 2010, the New York Appellate

Court upheld them (Egan, 2010c).

These state-level actions represent a form of bottom-up federalism similar to what

is developing with regional accords between states to regulate carbon-emissions to

mitigate global climate change. Whether such efforts generally, and with regards to

invasive species particularly, can be successful remains to be seen. A promising and

relevant example may be what Noah Hall calls “cooperative horizontal federalism” as

occurred in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact (Hall

2006). Neither purely bottom-up, nor entirely top-down, the Great Lakes Compact

represents a third alternative, where states initiate an agreement on minimum standards of

water-use that is ratified by the Congress and therefore binding to all parties. Individual

states are responsible for implementing the agreement where water uses occur within the

Great Lakes basin, and are subject to inter-state consensual approval when overseeing

new water uses that involve diverting Great Lakes water outside the basin.

State efforts to regulate ballast water could eventually represent the emergence of

collaborative behavior between actors to avoid tragedy of the commons as suggested by

Ostrom’s theories of common pool resources. Yet the difficulties of achieving adequate

mutual agreements given the potential for free-riding are also clear. Tougher stances like

New York’s, or to a much lesser degree Wisconsin’s, make a state vulnerable in that they

potentially drive shipping to the ports of neighboring states, and yet are no less

vulnerable to new invasive species than the standards of the most lenient state make

34

them. Political pressure from the shipping industry will rise in states with rigorous

standards, and political pressure from environmental groups will rise in states with less

rigorous standards. Pressure will also mount on Congress to enact uniform rules until

either it does so, or until the states standardize their rules themselves through negotiations

consistent with cooperative horizontal federalism. Hall identifies benefits in the latter

approach that are consistent with advantages associated with third generation

environmental policies (2006). Under such an approach, a consistent, uniform and

enforceable minimum standard would be identified to prevent a race to the bottom typical

of unregulated common pool resources, but such a standard would be identified by

regional authorities most directly involved rather than imposed from a central

government less aware of relevant considerations.

Recent conflict among Great Lakes states over the threat of Asian carp illustrates

the difficulty, however, of achieving consensus over policy solutions when the costs of

such solutions are unevenly shared. As mentioned earlier in the paper, DNA evidence of

Asian carp has not only been detected in the Chicago Sanitary-Ship canal past the electric

fence barrier created to deter their migration to Lake Michigan, but also in Lake

Michigan itself. The states of Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin have

joined in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois and the Army Corps of Engineers to seek

injunctive relief in the form of lock closure to prevent any Asian Carp in the canal from

entering Lake Michigan. Illinois, concerned about flooding if the locks cannot be used to

divert excess water and under pressure from local barge and tourism interests, contends

the locks should remain open. Although injunctive relief was denied by the Supreme

Court, the plaintiff states’ case will proceed.

35

President Obama, who claimed he would take a “zero tolerance” approach to

invasive species, convened an “Asian Carp Summit” in February 2010 in an attempt to

defuse some of the inter-state conflict. At the summit, which included representatives

from various federal and states agencies as well as the attorneys general of the states

involved in litigation, the administration announced a plan to spend tens of millions of

dollars on a new electric fish barrier, more poison to kill fish in the canal between the

barrier and Lake Michigan, and for research on dealing with the Asian carp threat (Egan

2010b). The plan also allows for temporary, periodic closures of the locks. Predictably,

few of the interested parties have expressed satisfaction with this compromise.

Great Lakes Invasive Species Stakeholders: Shipping

An obvious stakeholder in this issue is shipping, which bears primary

responsibility for the ballast water vector. The ecological damage created by invasive

species introduced by ballast water, as well as the associated economic impacts, are

neither felt nor paid for by shipping interests. Hence, these impacts are a form of negative

externality. As firms in a competitive marketplace have clear incentives to keep costs

low, there is an obvious interest on the part of shipping to avoid financial burdens that

regulations would create. Identifying the parties interested in keeping these costs

externalized, however, involves looking beyond the ships themselves.

As stated earlier shipping is a $6 billion industry employing 44,000 workers in the

region. Port authorities and marine terminals have direct interests in shipping activities. A

significant portion of the value of this activity stems from the intra-lake shipping

conducted by lake-bound ships. Nonetheless, the extent of the inter-national dimension of

Great Lakes’ shipping and its economic value is considerable; so too, however, are the

36

costs of invasive species (Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). Identifying accountability within

this industry for the problem is complicated, for although the number of international

shippers is relatively few, the ownership structure is a complex arrangement of

relationships including ship owners, ship operators, and charterers who handle the

contracting and scheduling of shipments, each of which is generally a separate legal

entity (Cangelosi and Mays, 2006).

Other interested parties include firms in the import supply chain such as suppliers,

the majority of which are European corporations such as Arcelor, Duferco, Theis, and

Thyssen-Krupp, and receivers in the U.S. such as Inland Steel, International Steel, and

USX (Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). End users of the products (mostly steel) include auto

and appliance manufacturers and the construction industry. Other parties with a direct

interest in keeping shipping costs low include firms in the export chain, predominantly

agricultural firms like Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, CHS, and General Mills, which

ship their commodities to destinations mostly in Europe but also significantly to Africa

(Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). All these parties benefit through the externalization of costs

associated with shipping-introduced invasive species, and therefore would likely see

costs passed along to them in the event of regulatory action.

Yet as information about the impacts of invasive species grows, so does

increasing political pressure for regulatory action to address these negative externalities.

An interesting irony of the invasive species problem is that shipping itself has come to

acknowledge that invasive species in the Great Lakes are a problem, and that given

ballast water’s role in introducing them, regulations are needed. Evidence of this is

industry support for a certain level of ballast water regulations such as those in H.R.

2830, Coast Guard Authorization bill of 2008 (Egan, 2008a). Factors preventing industry

37

support for more stringent regulations, and potentially presenting problems with industry

support or compliance at crucial later stages of the policy process, center on the degree of

uniformity of standards to be met, timelines for meeting those standards, the magnitude

of the costs involved, and in allocating responsibility for payment of those costs. These

concerns notwithstanding, other evidence of industry willingness to address the ballast

water vector for aquatic invasive species exists.

To identify best practices in treating ballast water, and perhaps head off political

heat and potentially more costly regulatory options, a number of stakeholders associated

with the shipping industry have, with the guidance of the Northeast-Midwest Institute,

entered into a collaborative research effort with state agencies and universities called the

Great Ships Initiative (Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). In addition to the goal of researching

and developing cost-effective technologies to treat ballast water, the Great Ships

Initiative is committed to promoting incentive mechanisms to facilitate installation and

enforcement of the operation of such technologies. Made up of port authorities, shipping

carriers, representatives from government and environmental organizations, the Great

Ships Initiative is another example of cooperative interaction amongst stakeholders for

purposes of policy-making that has moved beyond the competitive first generation

command-and-control regulatory approach, and is consistent with the collaborative, de-

centralized, flexible pragmatism called for by the third generation of environmental

policy.

Employing Ostrom’s criteria to the shipping industry, we can find evidence that

they are, at least to a degree, a willing participant in the design of a sustainable natural

resource regime. With regards to the first two criteria, salience and knowledge, there has

been publicly stated acceptance by shipping representatives of the ecological and

38

economic harm created by aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes, and of the role of

ballast water in introducing them. There is uncertainty over best means to achieve the end

of clean ballast water, but the shipping industry has been willing to contribute to the

resolution of this uncertainty. Disagreements on the part of shipping seem to be how and

when and at what level to regulate, not whether to regulate in the first place. In this sense,

we can infer they have a higher discount rate when valuing ecological health of the Great

Lakes than those advocating the quicker application of more stringent regulations. But

these differences should not be seen as insurmountable.

Efforts such as the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration and the Great Ships

Initiative should been seen as useful for promoting the shared sense of reciprocity and

trust called for by Ostrom’s fourth criterion, and for the development of organizational

and leadership skills associated with the sixth criterion. That the Great Ships Initiative

Board of Advisors includes Jennifer Nalbonne, the Invasive Species Director for the

environmental coalition Great Lakes United, as well as George Robichon of the shipping

corporation FedNav Limited is indicative of the kind of partnerships necessary to

overcome the competitive interest group conflict long-associated with the first generation

of environmental policy. Trust engendered by such partnerships would constitute a form

of social capital that, when coupled with the organizational and leadership skills

developed via participation in these collaborative efforts, should prove useful in resolving

the inevitable conflicts that will emerge during the implementation of standards once

they’re adopted.

The fifth criteria of Ostrom, the autonomy to make and enforce resource

management rules without being countermanded by external authority, is clearly not

present in the context of this issue. As has been noted before, all of the collaborative

39

efforts, the initiatives and committees, councils and partnerships that have emerged

around Great Lakes governance ultimately lack institutional governing power, and thus

are dependent on the authority of the federal governments of the United States and

Canada.

Great Lakes Invasive Species Stakeholders: Environmental Organizations

A wide array of environmental interest groups has been involved in Great Lakes

policy and politics for several decades. A number of them have formed environmental

coalitions; prominent examples include Great Lakes United formed in 1982 to promote

public awareness of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and participation in the

processes overseen by the International Joint Commission. It remains an active entity

engaged in public education and in lobbying for legislation protective of the Great Lakes

ecosystem. The Lake Michigan Federation was formed in 1970; renamed Alliance for the

Great Lakes in 2005, the organization coordinates over 100 community based groups to

conduct public outreach, and promote conservation and restoration, generally with local

emphases. The Sierra Club maintains a Great Lakes Program with an office in Madison

Wisconsin, as well as multiple local chapters throughout the region, as does the Audubon

Society.

In 2005, over 100 largely mainstream environmental organizations came together

to form the Healing Our Waters Coalition to pool resources, collaborate on goals and

strategy, and coordinate efforts to promote environmental protection and restoration of

the Great Lakes ecosystem. The National Federation of Wildlife and the National Parks

Conservation Association are the lead organizations, but member organizations also

include local environmentalist organizations throughout the region, a number of hunting

40

and fishing organizations such as Minnesota Conservation Federation, Ohio Sportsmen

Association, and multiple regional chapters of Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited,

scientific and academic organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, the

International Association for Great Lakes Research, and the University of Michigan’s

School of Natural Resources and Environment, as well as a number museums, zoos,

aquariums and zoological and botanical gardens.

The stated goal of the Healing Our Waters Coalition is help facilitate passage of

the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Implementation Act, which would mandate

ballast water treatment for ocean-going ships on the Great Lakes. They have further taken

the position that until effective ballast water regulation is in place, a moratorium on

ocean-going shipping on the Great Lakes should be instituted (Healing Our Waters,

2007). Given that many cost estimates put the annual damages from invasive species at

about two-thirds of the annual value of the entire shipping industry (of which ocean-

going shipping is but a part), the position taken seems politically radical, but may well be

economically justified. An economic analysis of the costs of ending trans-oceanic

shipping on the Lakes and replacing it with rail and ground transportation concludes that

the cost would be about $55 million (Taylor and Roach, 2009). Considering the much

greater costs associated with dealing with invasive species, this data is compelling.

Lending political credibility to the call for a moratorium on trans-oceanic shipping on the

Great Lakes, moreover, the U.S. and Canadian Advisors to the Great Lakes Fisheries

Commission urged the Commission to adopt a similar position in 2007.

The environmental stakeholders in the Great Lakes ecosystem are reasonably well

organized and muster significant resources. Their influence can be seen in the outcome of

the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, and in the introduction of multiple bills in

41

Congress aimed at achieving the ends of the GLRC. Yet their influence has yet to

successfully procure passage of ballast water treatment regulations designed to prevent

invasive species introductions on the Great Lakes.

If we treat these environmental organizations as a single stakeholder and apply

Ostrom’s criteria we again find the potential for useful participation in the design and

implementation of a sustainable resource management regime. The first criteria – issue

salience – is easily met as the principal organizations have been pushing for effective

invasive species policy for well over a decade. The knowledge of resources and the

effects of actions are fairly well-understood. Uncertainty over cost-effectiveness

associated with technological options is unsurprisingly less a concern for environmental

organizations than it is shipping. It is also reasonable to assume that the discount rate that

environmental organizations place on the value of the Great Lakes ecosystem is lower

than it is for shipping, yet is certainly low enough to justify their support for policies

promoting sustainable use of the resource.

As is the case for shipping, participation in the collaborative efforts of such

enterprises as the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration and the Great Ships Initiative

should contribute to the development of mutual understanding necessary for trust and

thus satisfactory compromise, and to the development of organizational and leadership

skills useful to effective participation in implementation of eventual standards. While

critical of elements of the GLRC, the environmental coalition Healing Our Waters has

officially endorsed and been active within the effort. That Healing Our Waters has chosen

to support Coast Guard Authorization bill H.R. 2830, when other environmental

organizations both within and outside the region have criticized it as too industry-

42

friendly, may be an indication that a measure of trust and reciprocity has emerged

amongst the otherwise competitive stakeholders (Egan, 2008 b).

43

Great Lakes Invasive Species Stakeholders: The Public

The public has a dramatic interest in the health of the Great Lakes ecosystems as

indicated by the previously cited studies of the economic values associated with them.

Politically and culturally, public concern for the environmental health of the Great Lakes

has played an important role in the emergence of modern environmentalism. Algal-

blooms, waves of soap suds, and beaches strewn with dead fish made Erie and the other

Lakes icons of the collateral damage of industrialism and consumerism that fueled

environmental activism in the 1960s (Steinberg, 2002). Yet today, the public’s

understanding of the values associated with the Great Lakes ecosystem remains relatively

low. Too many people retain out-dated images of the 1960s as the basis of their concerns

about Great Lakes problems.

In 2002 The Bio-Diversity Project, in partnership with the Joyce Foundation,

studied the levels of environmental awareness and political perspectives amongst the

public of the Great Lakes region (Bio-Diversity Project, 2004). They found that large

majorities of Great Lakes residents identify industrial point sources (86%) and municipal

sewage releases (79%) as threats that “hurt the Lakes a great deal” but only 41% of the

public identify invasive species as a comparable threat and even less (34%) identify

agricultural run-off as a threat in this way (Belden, Russonello, and Stewart, 2003).

While point sources of pollution remain a problem, they are widely seen in the scientific

community as far less problematic than invasive species or non-point sources of pollution

such as agricultural run-off. For the public to more accurately order priorities, they need

to be made more aware of the growing threat of invasive species.

44

The Bio-diversity Project’s research did, however, find that the public maintains a

significant sense of concern for and obligation to the Great Lakes, with 94% agreeing

(67% strongly so) that each individual has a personal responsibility to protect the Lakes.

Fully 96% agree (77% strongly so) that we “need to do more to protect the Great Lakes

habitats from pollution (Belden, Russonello, and Stewart, 2003).” So while the public’s

priorities may be questioned in regards to what they think are threats to the Great Lakes,

they do express a significantly high level of support, however generalized, for protecting

the Lakes.

Data that would place this level of concern for the Great Lakes within a broader

context of policy priorities generally would be useful. At a national level, the public

consistently ranks environmental quality as a concern, but at a frequency that is beneath

the levels expressed about such issues as the economy and healthcare (Gallop 2008).

There are several interesting issues associated with the priority of environmental

concerns relative to economic concerns, reflecting the motivating factors behind public

beliefs about personal environmental responsibility in the Great Lakes region. While 94%

of the Great Lakes regional public feels a personal responsibility for the Lakes, when

asked the reasons why, they are more likely to identify an obligation to future

generations, religious and aesthetic values, ecological functions and regional identity as

justifying a sense of responsibility than they are to identify economic vitality as an

outcome of protecting the Lakes (Belden, Russonello, and Stewart, 2003).

This suggests several things: too few of the public adequately understand the

economic benefits of healthy ecosystems or the economic costs of degraded ecosystems;

and too many see ecological health and economic health as zero-sum trade-offs.

Moreover, given the propensity for the public to value economic health, then the potential

45

to magnify public concern for the environment by educating them about the relationships

between ecosystems and economies is clear. In the absence of any improvement in this

awareness, however, it is unlikely that government representatives will feel any added

pressure to allocate time or, more importantly, budgetary resources to environmental

protection.

So when we apply Ostrom’s criteria for stakeholder propensity for productive

engagement in the design and implementation of sustainable resource regimes, we see

that the public is potentially, but not yet likely, to be a useful participant. The invasive

species problem is insufficiently salient for the region’s public, probably because the

public poorly understands the nature of ecological threats facing the Great Lakes, or the

relationship between environmental and economic benefits. It is not clear whether or not

the public sets a discount rate on the ecological health of the Great Lakes too high to

make them a useful contributor in the design and implementation of a sustainable

management policy. They do express general concern for the future of the Great Lakes’

health, but do not have a full grasp of what it is that should concern them, or a

comprehensive understanding of why. That the general public lacks organizational and

leadership skills to effectively participate in governing activities has long been used as a

justification for reliance on liberal representative institutions and interest groups.

Whether this pessimistic vision of average citizens is warranted has also been a long-

standing issue of debate amongst political theorists. Certainly proponents of participatory

democratic problem-solving in the second generation of environmental policy feel such

capabilities can be developed. In many respects, the question misses the larger, more

pragmatic point that neither liberal representation nor interest group activities are going

away any time soon. So the more useful but related question is whether a more useful

46

role cannot be created for the public at large within some modification of pre-existing

institutional arrangements. That the public is concerned and capable of learning suggests

that efforts to create such a role are plausible and desirable.

Conclusions:

Collaborative action to stem aquatic invasive species on the Great Lakes as a

central part of broader ecosystem restoration and management has occurred and is

occurring on a variety of different levels, including multiple layers of government, as

well as among various camps of interest groups. The region’s states have through the

creation of such entities as the Great Lakes Commission in 1955, the Council of Great

Lakes Governors in 1983, and agreements like the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence River Basin

Water Resources Compact of 2008, recognized the collective action problem associated

with common pool resources and have begun to collaborate to avoid the tragedy of the

commons associated with the assumptions of self-interested behavior of competitive

actors predicted by Hardin and other perspectives consistent with the first generation of

environmental policy. These events are evidence that theoretical revisions by scholars

such as Elinor Ostrom that sustainable common pool resource management regimes can

emerge bottom-up from among otherwise competitive stakeholders, may be applicable in

the Great Lakes context to the extent such notions can be applied to the states themselves.

While this bottom-up strategy has occurred with respect to sustainable water

consumption, no action similar to this has yet taken place to adequately address the

invasive species problem. The Council of Great Lakes Governors and state legislatures

would be potentially useful vehicles to promote a bottom-up approach to invasive species

consistent with horizontal, cooperative federalism.

47

Beneath the state level we have seen the emergence of collaborative action among

municipal governments in the Great Lakes Basin. The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence

Cities Initiative was created in 2003 through efforts of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and

David Ullrich, who became the Initiative’s Executive Director. Designed to share

information about problems and best management practices, and to coordinate political

action to advocate for local interests, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative is

another example of the emergence of collective action of actors from the bottom-up to

promote sustainable resource use that would seem to complicate predictions of behavior

associated with Hardin’s vision of a “Tragedy of the Commons”. Yet actions of this

Initiative by itself are insufficient to achieve to sustainable management regimes.

At the federal level, the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration also demonstrates an

awareness of the potential for interaction among cooperative actors to identify sustainable

approaches to common pool resources, and the outcomes of those collaborative efforts

include a defendable plan of action from the perspective of sustainable environmental

stewardship. Yet here too we see failure to fully realize sustainable management in that,

while the plan itself does a laudable job of articulating goals, we have not seen

appreciable progress in implementing important elements of the plan requiring the

exercise of authoritative discretion or the allocation of significant resources.

All this suggests several necessary changes to policy approach. It may be that the

collaboration that has been occurring as called for by recent theorists of the third

generation of environmental policy has been inadequately carried out, and that what is

necessary for adequate problem solving in this instance is more or better collaboration.

Another possibility involves recognizing that there are limits to pragmatic, collaborative

48

grass-roots level problem-solving, and that at some point coercive, centralized regulatory

decisions might need to be imposed on stakeholders in a top-down fashion.

What should be eschewed is the assumption that these possibilities are mutually

exclusive. More and better collaboration may be helpful at generating more political

support to finally achieve adequate ballast water treatment regulations that have eluded

its supporters for years. If we take a cue from Harold Lasswell’s famous definition of

politics as the determination of who gets what, we might usefully find a solution by

focusing on how benefits and costs are allocated by the various approaches to the

invasive species problem. The shipping industry and other stakeholders benefiting from

the less rigorous, less effective, and less costly status-quo regulatory regime may be

persuaded to become fully supportive if collaboration could identify some cost-sharing

compromise. A close look at the stakeholders suggests that disagreements are not

primarily about fundamental goals, but are instead about secondary issues of cost

allocation and timeframes.

James Q. Wilson’s policy typology based on the dispersion-concentration of costs

and benefits can be usefully applied in this situation (Wilson, 1980). Wilson categorizes

policies into combinations where benefits and costs are either dispersed widely or

concentrated narrowly. The current lack of adequate policy preventing aquatic invasive

species externalizes considerable ecological and economic costs to the environment and

other third parties. This is an example of a category of policies that have costs that are

widely dispersed due to externalities, while creating benefits that are concentrated

narrowly (in this case on the shipping industry and associated stakeholders in the supply

chain).

49

Wilson says the incentive structures of the policy-making environment are such

that these kinds of policy (concentrated benefits and dispersed costs) are typical, given

that they promise adequate return on investment for a dedicated handful of supporters,

while none (or few) have adequate incentive to oppose them given the dispersed nature of

their costs. However, given enough attention, growing political pressure can make

remaining in these policy situations untenable, so removing the externalities (the

dispersed costs) seems at some point to be inevitable.

Rigorously regulating ballast water would create economic and environmental

benefits that would be widely dispersed in that the prevention of ecological harms and

economic costs associated with mitigating those harms would be reduced, providing

relief not just to the environment but to the public as well. The key point of political

conflict would lie in determining who pays the costs of these dispersed, environmental

and economic benefits.

On Table 1 this question is represented in whether the shift rightward from the

lower left-hand quadrant would be horizontal – where benefits are dispersed, and costs

are dispersed as well, in this case government providing some form of subsidy to

Table 1. Benefit-Cost Typology for Invasive Species Regulation

Concentrated Economic Benefits

Dispersed

Ecological Benefits

Concentrated

Costs on Shipping

Preferred policy

of environmental organizations & allies in government

Dispersed Costs on the Public

Status Quo -

no ballast water treatment regulation

Preferred policy of shipping industry

& allies in government

50

shipping to install and operate ballast water treatment equipment – or whether the shift

would be rightward and upward – where the benefits are dispersed, and the costs are

concentrated on the shipping industry and its consumers.

Several arguments can be made to justify either scenario. But much current

research into the economic benefits and costs associated with the ecological goods and

services created by the Great Lakes ecosystem suggests that the shift should occur.

Disagreements among industry and certain environmental organizations of stringency of

technological requirements, the speed with which industry must meet them, which federal

laws will apply and which agency will enforce them, and whether state regulations will or

will not be preempted, suggests that a number of bargaining points exist to achieve some

form of mutually satisfying compromise might be arrived at via further, more meaningful

collaboration amongst stakeholders. Given the current states of the economy and public

opinion, the case for public subsidy of the costs seems difficult to make, but potentially

possible. Of course, the question of public subsidy isn’t an either – or issue, as partial

subsidies are always possible. If in the bargain, quicker, more stringent regulations are

achieved at a uniform level throughout the region, some sort of compromise might be

palatable to a wide spectrum of Great Lakes stakeholders.

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Dr. Arthur I. Cyr for his assistance in the procurement of funding and in the preparation of this paper. Role of the funding sources: This paper was funded by the Wisconsin Sea Grant and Root-Pike Watershed Trust. Support from these organizations facilitated a colloquium series on invasive species in the Great Lakes, as well as community outreach on the issue, and had no role in the collection or analysis of data, or in the writing of the paper itself.

51

Bibliography

Anderson, Robert S. (1995) “The Lacey Act: America’s Premier Weapon Against Unlawful Wildlife Trafficking” in Public Land Law Review, Vol. 16 No. 27. Anderson, Terry and Donald Leal, (2001) Free Market Environmentalism. Palgrave MacMillen. Austin, John and Brittany Affolter-Caine, (2006) The Vital Center: A Federal-State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution. Austin, John, Soren Anderson, Paul Courant, and Robert Litan (2007) “America’s North Coast: A Benefit-Cost Analysis of a Program to Protect and Restore the Great Lakes” Brookings Institution, Washington D.C. Ballast Water Working Group. 1995. “The Introduction of Non-Indigenous Species to the Chesapeake Bay via Ballast Water.” Annapolis Maryland. Chesapeake Bay Commission. Belden, Russonello & Stewart. January 2003. “Great Lakes: Responsibility and Awareness About a Vital Resource: Summary analysis of public opinion in Great Lakes States” http://www.joycefdn.org/news/content/downloads/surveyresults.doc Benson, A.J. and D. Raicow (2009) Dreissena polymorpha. USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database. Gainesville FL. http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/FactSheet.asp?speciesID=5 Bio-Diversity Project (2004) Great Lakes Forever, 2004 Wisconsin Pilot Project Evaluation Report http://www.biodiversityproject.org/docs/publicationsandtipsheets/greatlakesforev erevaluation2004.pdf Bogue, Margaret Beattie (2000) Fishing the Great Lakes: An Environmental History 1783-1933. University of Wisconsin Press. Buck, Eugene 2007. CRS Report to Congress: Ballast Water Management to Combat Invasive Species. Congressional Research Services. June 20, 2007. 3-4 Cangelosi, Allegra and Nicole Mays (2006) “Great Ships for the Great Lakes? Commercial Vessels Free of Invasive Species in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System: A Scoping Report for the Great Ships Initiative” Northeast Midwest Institute.

52

Carlton James 1999. “The Scale and Ecological Consequences of Biological Invasions in the World’s Oceans” in Invasive Species and Biodiversity Management. Schie and Viken Eds. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Ciesla, David (2003) “Developments in Vessel-Based Pollution: The International Maritime Organization’s Ballast Water Convention and the European Union’s Regulation to Phase Out Single Hulled Oil Tankers” in Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy No. 107

Dryzek, John (2006) “Designs for Environmental Discourse Revisited: A Greener Administrative State?” in Managing Leviathan: Environmental Politics and the Administrative State. second Edition. Paelke, Robert and Douglas Torgerson Editors. Broadview Press.

Durrant, Robert (2005) “Reconceptualizing Purpose” in Environmental Governance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices and Opportunities. Durant, Robert, Daniel Fiorino and Rosemary O’Leary, editors. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Durrant, Robert (2005) “Reconnecting with Stakeholders” in Environmental Governance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices and Opportunities. Durant, Robert, Daniel Fiorino and Rosemary O’Leary, editors. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Dryzek, John (1987) Rational Ecology, Blackwell Publishing. Egan, Dan (2008 a) “Prey fish dwindling in Lake Michigan: population halved as invasive mussels rule” in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Jan. 12, 2008. http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=706464 Egan, Dan (2008b) “Conservation groups warn of hole in ballast water bill” in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 26, 2008. http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=776605 Egan, Dan (2009a) “Patchwork ballast rules emerging to battle invaders” in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel March1, 2009. http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/40490242.html Egan, Dan (2009b) “32 DNA samples for Asian carp found past barrier” in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel November 20, 2009. Egan, Dan (2009c) “State to get tough with ballast treatment” in Milwaukee Journal

Sentinel December 5, 2009. Egan, Dan (2010a) “Asian carp DNA found as closure rejected” in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel January 19, 2010. Egan, Dan (2010 b) “States attorneys general request presence at Obama carp summit” in

53

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel January 25, 2010. Egan, Dan (2010 c) “Court tosses industry’s suit over New York ballast rules” in

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel February 4, 2010. Environment Canada and United States Environmental Protection Agency (2007) State of the Great of the Great Lakes 2007 http://www.epa.gov/greatlakes/solec/sogl2007/S3_CategoryAssessments.pdf#pag e=7 Fuller, Kent and Harvey Shear, Eds. in “Great Lakes: An Environmental Atlas and Resource Book” at http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/atlas/index.html. General Accounting Office (2003) “Great Lakes: An Overall Strategy and Indicators for Measuring Progress Are Needed to Better Achieve Restoration Goals” Gillies, Jeff (2010) “Asian carp and the Great Lakes fishery: How much is at risk?” Great

Lakes Echo. http://greatlakesecho.org/2010/02/18/asian-carp-and-the-great-lakes-fishery-how-much-is-at-risk/

Grant, Robert (2007) “Fish Virus Hits Great Lakes” The Scientist.com May 24, 2007. http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/53252/ Great Lakes Commission, (2007) “Great Lakes Commission Policy Positions” http://www.glc.org/policy/documents/GLCPolicyPositions.pdf#page=25 Great Lakes Regional Collaboration (2005) “Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Strategy to Restore and Protect the Great Lakes” http://glrc.us/documents/strategy/GLRC_Strategy.pdf Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, (2007) “NOVEMBER 27, 2007 FOLLOW-UP STAKEHOLDER CALL SUMMARY” http://glrc.us/meetings/teleconferences/GLRCTeleconference11-27-2007.pdf Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, (2008) “Public Call Summary”, page 4,

http://www.glrc.us/meetings/teleconferences/GLRCTeleconference05-13-2008.pdf

Hall, Noah. (2006) “Toward a New Horizontal Federalism: Interstate Water Management

in the Great Lakes Region” in 77 Colorado Law Review 405. Hardin, Garrett, (1968) “Tragedy of the Commons” in Science 162:1243-1248. Healing Our Waters, (2007) Letter to Senators Daniel Inouye and Ted Stevens and U.S. Representatives James Oberstar and John Mica

54

http://www.healthylakes.org/wordpress/wpcontent/uploads/2007/05/moratoriumle ttercongress.pdf Healthy Lakes, (2007) “Coalition Comments on Federal Efforts to Restore Great Lakes”

http://www.healthylakes.org/policy/great-lakes-collaboration-implementation-act/2007/10/02/coalition-comments-on-federal-efforts-to-restore-great-lakes

Henry, Tom (6/24/2007) “Feds Failing to Fight Off Invasion of Great Lakes” Toledo Blade. International Joint Commission. (2006) “Advice to Governments on their Review of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement: A Special Report to the Governments of Canada and the United States.” Karkkainen, Bradley C. (2006) “Managing Transboundary Aquatic Ecosystems: Lessons from the Great Lakes” in Pacific McGeorge Global Business & Development Law Journal Vol. 19 No. 209. Lam, Tina (2007) “Groups: Ballast bill will miss boat” in Detroit Free Press June 30, 2007. Mah, Liwen A. (2004) “Sailing by Looking into the Rearview Mirror: EPA;s Unreasonable Deferral of Ballast Water Regulation to a Now Ineffective Coast Guard” in Ecology Law Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 665. Mah, Liwen A. (2005) “Environmental Protection Agency Cannot Exempt Discharges of Ballast Water from the Clean Water Act’s Permit Requirements” in Ecology Law Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 757. Meyers, John (2009) “Lawsuits, legislation, aim to regulate ships ballast” Duluth News Tribune. March 10, 2009. Mills, John (2002) “Great Lakes: A Report Card” in Canada – United States Law Journal Vol. 28 No. 465. Ostrom, Elinor (1990) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. University of Cambridge Press. Paelke, Robert (2006) “Democracy and Environmentalism: Opening a Door to the Administrative State” in Managing Leviathan: Environmental Politics and the Administrative State. Second Edition. Paelke, Robert and Douglas Torgerson Editors. Broadview Press. Peters, Katherine. (2008) “Coast Guard protests authorization bill maneuver” April 24. Government Executive.com, http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=39852&dcn=todaysnews

55

Pimental, David (2005) “Aquatic Nuisance Species in the New York State Canal and Hudson River Systems and the Great Lakes Basin: An Economic and Environmental Assessment” in Environmental Management Volume 35, No. 5, 692-702. Riuz G.M., Miller A.W., Lion K., Steves B., Arnwine A., Colinetti E., 2001. “Status and Trends of Ballast Water Management in the United States. First Biennial Report of the National Ballast Water Clearinghouse.” Edgewater, MD. Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Rosenbaum, Walter (2005). Environmental Politics and Policy. CQ Press. Scheberle, Denise (2005) “Devolution” in Environmental Governance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices and Opportunities. Durant, Robert, Daniel Fiorino and Rosemary O’Leary, editors. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Schlager, Edella (2005) “Common Pool Resource Theory” in Environmental Governance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices and Opportunities. Durant, Robert, Daniel Fiorino and Rosemary O’Leary, editors. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Schrecker, Ted (2006) “Class, Place and Citizenship: The Changing Dynamics of Environmental Protection” in Managing Leviathan: Environmental Politics and the Administrative State. Second Edition. Paelke, Robert and Douglas Torgerson, editors. Broadview Press. Taylor, John C., and James L. Roach. (2009) “Ocean Shipping in the Great Lakes:

An Analysis of Industry Transportation Cost Savings,” Transportation Journal, Volume 48, No. 1, pp. 53-67.

Toledo, Dawn P. (2001) “Introduced Species Summary Project: sea lamprey (petromyzon marinus)” Columbia University. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc/danoff- burg/invasion_bio/inv_spp_summ/petromyzon_marinus.html Torgerson, Douglas (2006) “Obsolescent Leviathan: Problems of Order in Administrative Thought” in Managing Leviathan: Environmental Politics and the Administrative State. Second Edition. Paelke, Robert and Douglas Torgerson, editors. Broadview Press. United States Army Corps of Engineers. “Great Lakes Recreational Boating: In response

to Public Law 106-53, Water Resources Development Act of 1999, section 455(c), John Glenn Great Lakes Basin Program, Great Lakes Recreational Boating” http://www.lre.usace.army.mil/_kd/Items/actions.cfm?action=Show&item_id=6197&destination=ShowItem

56

United States Coast Guard. (2001). “Report to the Congress on Voluntary National Guidelines on Ballast Water Management.” Washington D.C., U.S. Department of Transportation. United States Geological Survey. “Nonindigenous Aquatic Species: Dreissena polymorpha” http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/FactSheet.asp?speciesID=5 White, Elizabeth, editor. (2000) “Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute Fish of the Great Lakes” http://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/greatlakesfish/falewife1.html Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. (2009) “DNR announces start of state

ballast water regulation of Great Lakes ships.” http://dnr.wi.gov/news/BreakingNews_Lookup.asp?id=1500

Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute Fish of the Great Lakes (2000) White, Elizabeth, editor. http://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/greatlakesfish/falewife1.html Woodburn, Marcia and Katherine Gallsner-Shwayder (2007) Great Lakes Aquatic Invasions. Great Lakes Commission