Crazy Carp Spark Great Lakes Brouhaha

Michigan sued neighboring Illinois last week, a most un-neighborly move aimed at blocking the invasive Asian carp from the Great Lakes—and re-reversing the flow of the Chicago River. The case is likely to end up in the Supreme Court, notes the Washington Post, and resurrects another from 1922 over Chicago's right to draw water from lakes, as well as pitting commercial and environmental interests against each other.

The Chicago River was originally reversed to prevent Chicago from dumping sewage into the Great Lake—a problem made irrelevant by modern sewage-cleaning technology. But if the series of canals is shuttered to protect the Great Lakes ecosystem and the $7 billion fishing industry therein, Illinois' thriving barge commerce will be forced to find an expensive over-land alternative. Suck it up, says one environmentalist: "Instead of protecting Lake Michigan, the system is now the primary vector for the biggest pollution threat the Great Lakes have faced: invasive species." (More Asian carp stories.)