Institute critical of calls to ban foreign ships

[GLF]

Legislation proposed by several Great Lakes states including Wisconsin to fight the spread of invasive species is not realistic. That's the opinion of the new Great Lakes Maritime Research Institute at UW-Superior.

The Institute claims such laws won't allow ocean-going ships with ballast water that aren't free of invasive species to sail on the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Maritime Research Institute has almost $3-million in federal money, charging the Institute to come up with alternatives that will ease the invasion of foreign organisms plaguing the Great Lakes.

Co-Director Richard Stewart says the solution is not for states to ban international shipping. "Because interstate and international transportation is a regulation of the federal government, not state entities. But that will be decided in the courts as it has been decided before." Universities of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin have a hand in this Institute's research. Stewart says already they're looking at ships that do not hold ballast water. "Using a flow-through ballast system. The Europeans who are much more advanced in shipbuilding, especially in the area of green shipbuilding than we are as a nation, have devised a treatable ballast system, very green ships. These are already being built and used in the Baltic and other regions."

Stewart says preventing invasive species such as zebra mussels and sea lamprey is everybody's problem and not one left to the shipping industry. "The option of not having a transportation network because of invasive species is not a viable option. So we have to address it." This collaboration gives the Research Institute three years to come up with some alternatives to make shipping less invasive to the Great Lakes.