Column from Door County Environmental Council

Bullets

A lawsuit is targeting the FBI’s shooting range in North Chicago, seeking to halt the discharge of lead bullets into Lake Michigan over pollution concerns. The lawsuit accuses them of damage to natural resources and causing a government-created public nuisance. The U.S. Justice Department, Coast Guard, Navy, Marines and Department of Defense were named as defendants in the lawsuit, filed Monday, January 14th, in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

Steven Pollack, attorney and executive director of Blue Eco Legal Council in Northbrook, Illinois, who filed the suit, said the lawsuit seeks a court order barring the FBI from firing the ammunition into Lake Michigan because of possible environmental contamination, especially to North Chicago’s water supply. The city’s public water intake pipe is within the 2,900 acres of Lake Michigan assigned to the firing range. The lawsuit also asks the court to order a cleanup of spent shells possibly costing more than $35 million.

The military used this firing range as a training facility before World War I. At the end of World War II, the range was deeded to the FBI to train agents and local police officers. The practice, according to the lawsuit, violates federal and state laws set out in the Clean Water Act and other statutes designed to protect environmental and human health.

Information received from the Justice Department, through the Freedom of Information Act, indicated the North Chicago firing range was designed to use 2,900 acres of Lake Michigan for its facility. (Officials also estimated 650,000 rounds of ammunition are fired at the range each year by approximately 2,500 law-enforcement agents.)

Invasive species, like the gobie pictured here, threaten the health of the Great Lakes.

Gobies

Invasive species have become a huge problem for the Great Lakes. A new one is discovered, on average, about every six months. Research shows that the overwhelming majority of invasions in the past few decades have come via ocean-going vessels. They include zebra and quagga mussels, as well as round gobies—a bug-eyed fish that feasts on the eggs of native Great Lakes fish species

The United States requires seaway-bound oceangoing vessels to exchange their ballast water in mid-sea. But most ships are exempt from these regulations because they are loaded with cargo and do not officially carry ballast water in their tanks. These tanks, though technically empty, can still carry residual amounts of water and muck, both having been found to support foreign creatures.

To curtail the influx of invasive species into the Great Lakes, the federal government wants ocean-going ships using the St. Lawrence Seaway to flush even empty ballast tanks with saltwater to kill stowaway organisms. The tank cleanout would have to take place 200 nautical miles from any North American shore. (U.S. and Canadian ships would not be affected by the rule.)

Disinfecting ballast water in ocean freighters may not keep the ships from importing more foreign species into the Great Lakes, according to a new study. The reason: Some foreign species enter the lakes on hulls of ocean freighters, according to a study by University of Notre Dame biologists John Drake and David Lodge.

The scientists claim the problem, called “hull fouling” or “biofouling,” may pose as serious a threat to the Great Lakes as exotic species imported in a freighter’s ballast water tank. “Overall invasion risk from biofouling may be comparable or exceed that of ballast water discharge,” Drake and Lodge said in an article published recently in the scientific journal Aquatic Invasions.

There is no easy solution to either of these problems. The approved way of conducting training operations in the past has been negated by current technology and must be changed for reasons of water resource protection. Shipping interests also need to be brought into compliance with common sense practices, to preclude further degradation of our precious Great Lakes resource base. These are both urgent issues and immediate action is a mandate.