Muskegon Chronicle:
http://www.mlive.com/news/chronicle/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1175091315144900.xml&coll=8
Ballast water law will help protect our Great Lakes
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Michigan's new law designed to stop invasive species from contaminating the Great Lakes has inaugurated an epic battle with the shipping industry. Our state must win this fight.
State leaders on both sides of the aisle, to their credit, rose to the challenge of preventing further damage to the world's largest freshwater reserve following continuing failure by
the U.S. and Canadian governments to take the necessary steps for protection.
The shipping industry has reacted with howls of outrage at restrictions forcing companies to require their ocean-going freighters to obtain a permit to conduct port operations within our state. The new law also requires them to avoid discharging ballast water in the lakes, or to sanitize their holding tanks before dumping.
As we have predicted so often when writing about this and related Great Lakes water issues, the nine industry groups joining suit against the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality have raised the "interstate commerce" clause of the U.S. Constitution as their primary weapon against state regulation.
The Chronicle has warned that this legal mechanism for denying states the right to take protective measures to preserve their resources could result in a devastating legal loss unless there is a clear and consistent history of law behind every legislative move. For instance, recent state moves to keep open a loophole for bottling water operators to sell their product outside of the Great Lakes Basin could conceivably open the doors to a very adverse ruling from, say, a scenario involving another state, or a corporate entity acting on behalf of some state, seeking water use rights.
Our belief is that Michigan stands on firmer ground with the ballast law it has enacted. However, if Michigan loses this fight, the floodgates may open for a worse tide of lawsuits aimed at the Great Lakes themselves.
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Distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving aquatic invasive species information for research and educational purposes.
