Senate Blocks Great Lakes Ballast Water Bill -- For Now

"CLEVELAND, Ohio - The U.S. Senate today blocked a procedural vote that would have removed Clean Water Act protection and U.S. EPA oversight of ballast water brought into the Great Lakes aboard ocean-going ships.

Environmental and conservation groups had opposed the measure as a 'poison pill' contained in a larger U.S. Coast Guard bill. They maintain the ballast provision would have threatened Lake Erie and all the Great Lakes with more invasive species such as zebra and quagga mussels.

'This means Clean Water Act protections will continue to apply to ballast water discharges, which are the main pathway for aquatic invasive species introductions into the Great Lakes,' Jennifer Caddick of the Alliance for the Great Lakes said in a prepared statement.

Such foreign invaders "have cost the region billions of dollars since the late 1980s," she said."

James F. McCarty reports for the Plain DeCleveland Plain Dealer April 18, 2018.