Standards need to be international
November 16, 2006
It's bad enough that VHS could be spread around the Great Lakes by ships taking up and releasing their ballast water. Equally unnerving is that it's quite likely VHS also arrived via ballast water.
The damage being done to the Great Lakes by foreign organisms keeps mounting. But VHS may be the biggest indication yet that diseases -- in addition to the much more visible examples such as zebra mussels and round gobies -- can travel the globe in ballast water and survive or mutate in their new locations. How long before a disease that afflicts people, as opposed to fish, shows up on our shores?
Michigan has taken a small step in the right direction by requiring disinfection of ballast water discharges, starting Jan. 1, by any foreign ship coming into port here. But one state cannot fight this alone and, in the case of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, two Canadian provinces also need to join in. The rules also need to enforce treatment of ballast water that is released en route.
The proper place to address this is at the national level, but both countries have proved incapable of action. The states and provinces, through one binational group or another, ought to draft a single model rule and get it in place throughout the Great Lakes basin.
Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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