Bill Offered to Curb Tiny Mussel Threatening Great Lakes, Rivers

Members of Congress from Great Lakes states Wednesday introduced legislation to curb or eradicate the zebra mussel, a tiny shellfish that has infested Lake Erie and threatens to cause damage in other lakes and rivers.

“The experts seem to think that this can spread very rapidly, just as it has in Lake Erie,” said Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), a co-sponsor of the measure, which would authorize spending $4 million a year for five years for prevention programs and the same amount on eradication.

The legislation would require freighters to dump their ballast water in the ocean at least 200 miles from the U.S. coast.

The striped zebra mussel, usually no more than 1 1/2 inches long, is believed to have arrived in North America in 1986, when a freighter from eastern Europe flushed its ballast water into Lake St. Clair or in the St. Clair River near Detroit. The mussels have since spread down the length of the Detroit River and into Lake Erie, moving at about 160 miles a year.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said that the mussels forced Monroe, Mich., to ration water for several days because they had clogged drinking water intake pipes.

“Over 50 other major municipal intake pipes in Michigan, not to mention industry users, are at risk from this same type of fouling,” Levin said. “They threaten the Great Lakes’ $4-billion sports fish industry by robbing the fish and other aquatic species of essential food sources such as algae and plankton.”

Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.) warned that the inedible shellfish can easily migrate into the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio river systems, which “could become literally mussel-bound.”

A female zebra mussel lays up to 40,000 microscopic eggs in a year.

An expert who investigated the problem for the Congressional Research Service found evidence that diving ducks and crawfish eat zebra mussels, but he warned that there may not be enough intact wetlands to provide habitat for more of the natural predators.