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Managing Aquatic Invasive Species in the Great Lakes: An Analysis of Policies, Politics, and Stakeholders
Jerald C. Mast, Ph.D.
An Occasional Paper of the A. W. Clausen Center for World Business
Carthage College
June 2010
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A Clausen Center for World Business Occasional Paper “Managing Aquatic Invasive Species in the Great Lakes: An Analysis of Policies, Politics, and Stakeholders” Jerald C. Mast, Ph.D. Carthage College, 2001 Alford Park Drive, Kenosha WI, 53140-1994, USA, (262) 551-5397 Abstract Aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes represent a significant public policy problem that has for nearly two decades confounded effective policy responses. The nature of the problem is increasingly well understood at elite levels, and an emerging consensus about the need for improved regulation exists among stakeholders. Failure to adopt those effective regulations reflects: a) absence of an adequately centralized authority to impose a solution on multiple political jurisdictions fractured by international and federal lines, and b) inadequate collaboration among de-centralized stakeholders. Effective regulatory responses to the problems associated with aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes will certainly involve addressing one or the other, and probably both.
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Introduction
Aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes of North America threaten the health
of critical natural resources and impose dramatic ecological and economic costs on the
region. Efforts to manage biological invaders in an ecosystem involving multiple levels
of government reflect, to a limited degree, important changes in theoretical understanding
of environmental and natural resource policies and management that emphasize
collaborative decision-making among a variety of stakeholders (Durrant et. al. 2005). Yet
despite this partial adherence to prescriptive theory, invasive species remain a significant
threat to the ecological integrity and economic welfare of the Great Lakes region.
The failure to achieve effective, centralized policy solutions to the aquatic
invasive species threat can be understood first and foremost as a function of classic
incentive problems associated with a significant common pool resource – a complex
ecosystem fractured into multiple jurisdictions that create a disjunction between the
benefits and costs associated with management decisions. But this failure to adequately
address invasive species can also be blamed on the failure to fully overcome these
perverse incentives by realizing the requirements of genuine, collaborative decision-
making as called for by various leading theorists. This inadequate collaboration, coupled
with a larger political context reflective of bureaucratic regulatory politics, interest group
competition, and an uninformed public leaves the Great Lakes vulnerable to more
harmful biotic invasions in the near and long-term future. The Bush Administration was
notably disinterested in investing significant political capital in Great Lakes issues, and
the U.S. Congress has also proven insufficiently effective on these matters. Although
early signs of greater commitment by President Barack Obama to environmental
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stewardship are promising, it remains to be seen how vigorously the current
administration will pursue effective solutions to the invasive-species problem on the
Great Lakes.
In the absence of adequate regulatory problem-solving from the national
governments of the United States and Canada, addressing this vulnerability will involve
three factors: one) better adherence to theoretical prescriptions for sustainable resource
management – in particular, more meaningful collaboration that moves beyond an
advisory capacity to a more decisive one and involves a broader array of stakeholders;
two) a better informed and more involved public; and three) expanded regulatory efforts
by individual states. The combination of these factors would have the likely beneficial
consequences of overcoming dysfunctions in the institutions of national government,
while making management of the Great Lakes less reliant on them in the first place.
The Great Lakes Resource and the Threat of Invasive Species
The Great Lakes of North America – Lakes Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and
Superior – provide a classic example of a critical natural resource upon which millions of
people depend. These five lakes and their connecting waterways constitute the largest
freshwater system on Earth, fully one fifth of the planet’s supply of surface freshwater,
and no less than nine tenths of the United States’ supply (Fuller and Shear, 2008). Forty
million people in the U.S. and Canada use the Great Lakes as their primary source of
drinking water.
Over $200 billion of economic activity occurs within the Great Lakes basin, and a
third of U.S. Gross Domestic Product is generated within the region, making the larger
area a critical center for manufacturing and agricultural industries of North America
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(Austin and Affolter-Caine, 2006). Sport and commercial fishing industries on the lakes
have been valued at approximately seven billion dollars a year (Gillies, 2010). With over
a thousand beaches, five thousand miles of coastline and hundreds of public parks, the
Great Lakes provide enormous recreational value to the nation and indeed the global
economy.
Much of the economic and recreational values provided by the Great Lakes
depend on their integrity as an ecosystem. Ecologically, this ecosystem is composed of
evergreen and deciduous forests, grasslands and prairies, sandy barrens and dunes, and
coastal wetlands, as well as the aquatic environments of the lakes themselves. More than
30 biological communities and over 100 species are globally rare or exist only in the
Great Lakes ecosystem (Fuller and Shear, 2008).
Many threats to the environmental health of the Great Lakes exist, including over-
consumption of water, water pollution from industrial point sources, municipal sewage
releases, as well as from urban and agricultural run-off. Air pollution poses a threat as
well from multiple toxic substances such as pesticides, metal compounds and chlorinated
organic compounds, and nitrogen compounds that enter into the lakes through
atmospheric deposition. These are some of the same environmental threats to the Great
Lakes that motivated environmental statutes such as the Clean Air and Water Acts at the
end the 1960s and early 1970s. While dramatic improvements in water quality in the
Great Lakes have since been attained, much work in these areas remains to be done.
There are 43 “areas of concern” where environmental quality has been severely degraded
by mercury, lead, PCBs and other toxic material. In consequence, the areas’ beneficial
uses, depending on their ability to support aquatic life, have been seriously impaired.
Concern among public and politicians alike for holding the line on water quality was
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illustrated during the summer of 2007 in the outcry generated by a permit from the state
of Indiana, later withdrawn, to increase discharges by British Petroleum. Although
problems such as water quality and conservation deserve increased attention in their own
right, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged invasive species to
be one of the greatest current threats to the Great Lakes ecosystem.
Non-indigenous invasive species disrupt ecosystems by exploiting opportunities
in their new environment. The absence of natural predators, competitors and pathogens
often allow invasive alien species to proliferate, out-competing natives and destabilizing
the ecosystem. There are 183 known aquatic invasive species, and 124 known terrestrial
invasive species in the Great Lakes basin (Environment Canada and U.S. EPA, 2007).
Just a few of the most prominent are described below.
The earliest recorded invasive species on the Great Lakes was the sea lamprey
which arrived in Lake Ontario from the Atlantic Ocean through the Erie Canal in the
1820s. Construction and development of the Welland Canal around Niagara Falls
eventually provided the sea lamprey a route to the rest of the Great Lakes by the 1920s.
Attaching themselves to the sides of fish with a sucker-like mouth, adult sea lampreys
feed on the bodily fluids of their prey, and destroy an average of 90 kilograms of fish
each. Enormous damage to the Great Lakes fisheries ensued, as sea lampreys decimated
the commercially valuable lake trout stocks on all five lakes (Toledo, 2001).
Alewives arrived in the Great Lakes by mid-century, and with the lake trout
population decimated, found little to impede their proliferation. Population explosions
have been particularly prevalent on Lakes Michigan and Huron. Alewives compete with
chubs, herring, perch and whitefish. As they are salt-water fish, they are poorly adapted
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to freshwater, and large die-offs often occur in early summer fouling lakeshores with
thousands of rotting fish (White, 2000).
Much attention has been paid to the zebra mussel, which arrived in the Great
Lakes from the Black Sea in the 1980s. The mussel colonizes on the surfaces of docks,
boat hulls, commercial fishing nets and water intake pipes and valves of hydroelectric
and nuclear power plants, municipal water plants, and industrial facilities. By reducing
the intake flow of water needed for heat exchangers, condensers, firefighting equipment
and cooling systems, undermining the structural integrity of piers and reducing the
efficiency of ships and boats by increased drag, the zebra mussel has created significant
costs to the public and private sectors.
Ecologically, zebra mussels feed on phytoplankton and other suspended organic
material. Biomass of phytoplankton and microzooplankton has steeply declined in large
sections of the Great Lakes since the zebra mussel has become established. This also has
consequences for the aquatic environment, such as increased levels of water
transparency, which in turn affects organisms adapted to lower light and temperature
conditions. Effects on the food web include decreasing populations of planktivorous fish
from competition. Larval fish dependent upon microzooplankton may be negatively
impacted, and extirpation of native unionid clams has been documented in Lake St. Clair
and parts of Lake Erie (Benson and Raicow, 2009).
Continuing concern about the zebra mussels has been joined by concern over the
quagga mussel, which, according to recent evidence, is dramatically out-competing its
relative. Similar to zebra mussels in size and appearance, quaggas are more tolerant of
colder water and the types of substrate to which they affix themselves. Whereas zebra
mussels are generally limited to hard-surfaces in shallow water, quaggas’ range extends
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to the deeper, colder waters throughout the Great Lakes, including sandy and gravely
conditions. Prodigious filter-feeders in their own right, their greater adaptability means
that their impacts on phytoplankton and other suspended organic material, the numerous
species indirectly dependent on them, will potentially be exponentially greater than the
zebras (Egan, 2008).
Another invasive species from the Black and Caspian Seas regions, the round
goby is a soft-bodied bottom-dwelling fish growing to 10 inches in length. Their
aggressive behavior allows them to out-compete native fish for food and spawning
habitat; moreover, they prey upon small native fishes and the eggs and fry of larger native
fish species.
While 130 of the 160 fish species in the Great Lakes are non-natives, a large
amount of recent attention has focused on several subspecies of Asian carp, the silver
carp and the bighead carp, that have reached but not yet established themselves in the
Great Lakes. It is not surprising that Asian carp attract attention, given that they can grow
to 100 pounds and can leap up to 10 feet in the air above the water’s surface. Voracious
bottom-feeders, each day they filter up to 40% of their body weight in microscopic plant
and animal life upon which the rest of the food chain depends. Not only do Asian carp
threaten to out-compete native fish and (indirectly) economically valuable sport fish for
food, this species tends, like the zebra mussel, to increase the clarity of the water, which
in turn can lead to harmful algal blooms (Mills 2002). Because silver carp launch
themselves above the surface of the water when agitated by motors, they pose a serious
threat to boaters, skiers, and operators of personal watercraft, which would create serious
costs to recreational values of the Great Lakes.
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While not as dramatic as images of giant carp flying through the air, Viral
Hemorrhagic Septicemia Virus (VHSV) has already killed several hundred tons of fish in
the Great Lakes according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Grant 2007). Non-
native to the Great Lakes, it appears especially virulent there, and has been documented
to have spread to lakes in northeastern Wisconsin and Lower Michigan. The World
Organization for Animal Health has identified at least 37 fish species that are susceptible
to the highly contagious virus, which attacks endothelial tissues in the host fish, leading
to excessive bleeding from blood vessels, internal organs and the eyes (Grant 2007). In
September 2007, National Park Service authorities at Isle Royale issued regulations
preventing the release of ballast water in park service waters, and instituted a ballast
water treatment regimen consisting of bleach and ascorbic acid for their own ferry
(Meyers, 2007).
Invasive species also include non-native vegetation such as the flowering rush and
the purple loosestrife, a prolific wetlands species that out-competes native plants and
compromises the biodiversity of up to 190,000 hectares of wetland, marshes and riparian
meadows across the U.S. each year (Woodburn and Glasner-Shwayder, 2007). Problems
with Eurasian watermilfoil, curly-leaf pondweed and potentially hydrilla include the
species’ abilities to grow into thick floating mats that crowd out native species, and clog
recreational and commercial navigation.
Magnitude of the Costs of Invasive Species
Altogether there are over 183 non-indigenous species of aquatic plants and
animals that have established themselves in the Great Lakes ecosystem. New species are
being discovered at a rate of one per eight months. The consequences of these invasive
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species are significant and far-reaching. They constitute negative impacts on recreation,
commerce, aesthetics, and the ecological health of a natural system of tremendous
importance. The value of goods and services provided by the Great Lakes that will be
degraded or lost in the absence of effective management constitutes a dramatic
justification for crafting effective policy. Research conducted by economists at the
Michigan Sea Grant program at the University of Michigan has concluded that investing
$26 billion in Great Lakes ecosystem protection and restoration programs would by
conservative estimates yield over $50 billion in economic benefits (Austin et. al., 2007).
Invasive species play a significant role in this picture; the total cost to the region of
aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes has been estimated at $5 billion per year
according to the inter-agency initiative, Great Lakes Regional Collaboration (Great Lakes
Regional Collaboration, 2005). Other scientific research puts the economic costs of
aquatic invasive species at $5.7 billion per year, with the fishing industry bearing the
largest share, currently $4.5 billion per year (Pimentel, 2005).
Stemming the enormous ecological and economic damage associated with aquatic
invasive species on the Great Lakes requires identifying the vectors through which they
are introduced. The principal means of introduction are species migration through
connecting waterways, release of individual organisms by aqua-culturalists, vegetation
and some species of animals that attach themselves to boat trailers, and through the
release of ballast water by large ocean-going freight ships. The first vector was made
possible by the construction of canals. The Welland Canal in the east is responsible for
allowing the sea lamprey in, and the Sanitary-Ship Canal in the west, which threatens to
allow the Asian carp entrance to Lake Michigan.
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In the fall of 2009, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that Asian carp DNA
had been detected in the Sanitary-Ship Canal past an electric fence barrier the Corps
operates to deter migration of Asian carp to Lake Michigan (Egan, 2009b). In January
2010, DNA evidence of Asian carp was detected in along the Chicago shoreline of Lake
Michigan itself (Egan, 2010a). It is likely that the electric barrier failed to prevent
juvenile carp more tolerant of the electric field from swimming through. The Army Corps
has been criticized for knowingly operating the electric fence at a voltage too low to stop
younger Asian carp out of concerns for possible harmful effects on boats in the canal.
And in the fall of 2008, the electric barrier was shut down altogether for a week of
maintenance. Additionally, fears surfaced in the fall of 2009 that Asian carp migrating up
the Des Plaines River (which does not physically connect to Lake Michigan) may be able
to move from the Des Plaines River to the Sanitary-Ship Canal at points where the two
bodies of water are adjacent to each other during times of flooding. The prospect that
Asian carp are beginning to enter Lake Michigan via the Sanitary-Ship Canal have
prompted calls to close the locks where the canal enters the lake in the immediate term,
and to physically sever the connection between Lake Michigan and Illinois River system
in the long term. This has generated a good deal of controversy given potential impacts
on Chicago barge and tourism industries, which will be discussed later.
Boat trailers are the likely culprits behind the spread of Eurasian milfoil and
loosestrife, and for spreading zebra mussels whose eggs attach themselves to boats and
trailers from the Great Lakes to inland lakes. Of the 4.3 million registered boats in the
Great Lakes states (more than a third of the national total), over 900 thousand are used on
the Great Lakes, creating numerous opportunities for the inadvertent introduction of alien
species (U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, 2008). Despite the fact that multiple vectors exist
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for the introduction of alien species, ballast water bears the greatest responsibility for the
invasive species problem and so warrants a closer look at the trans-oceanic shipping on
the Great Lakes.
Shipping on the Great Lakes contributes approximately $6 billion a year to the
regional economy and approximately 44,000 individuals are employed in associated
activities (Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). While trans-oceanic ships are the smallest
commercial freighters on the Lakes in terms of numbers and size, their overall
contribution to the economy is disproportionately large. The general pattern of shipping
is for trans-oceanic ships, termed ‘salties,’ to bring steel from Eastern European ports
through the St. Lawrence Seaway to ports on the southern, industrial regions of the Great
Lakes. The salties head north, where they take on grain in Duluth, Superior and Thunder
Bay for export to foreign destinations. It is this process of loading and unloading cargo in
different locations that creates the need for ballast water.
Large cargo ships are very top-heavy when empty, and thus unstable. To ensure
the safety of ship and crew, weight must be kept in the ships’ lower regions. This weight
can take the form of cargo, but as cargo is off-loaded new weight must be added to
replace the weight loss. This new weight (as much as 100,000 tons) is added in the form
of ballast water. As ships move to new ports and add new cargo (and weight), ballast
water - and invasive species - are dumped. Nearly all major phyla occur in ballast water;
ocean going ships are estimated to transport at least 7,000 species between continents
daily (Carlton 1999). European studies have uncovered over 990 different taxonomic
groups – the most common of which are algae, crustacean, molluscan, polycheate
invertebrates; ships on the eastern coast of the U.S. have been found to contain between
3,800 and 39,000 live organisms per cubic meter of ballast water (Cangelosi and Mays,
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2006). Clearly, the ballast water on ocean-going ships represents a potential source of an
enormous number on non-native species that may be introduced in environments in
which they travel. No effective regulatory approach to invasive species prevention can
ignore the ballast water vector.
Given the enormous value of the Great Lakes and significant harm that aquatic
invasive species currently and potentially represent, it should be little surprise that
governments responsible to the region have for decades sought to collectively manage the
Great Lakes resources for environmental health generally, and for protection from
biological invaders. Before addressing specific efforts to prevent the arrival and mitigate
the effects of invasive species, it will be useful to review the academic arguments that
have explained and justified environmental protection over the 20th century, so as to
provide theoretical context.
Theoretical Basis of Environmental Policy
Environmental problems are frequently cast as forms of classic market failure
such as public goods problems, where benefits that flow from a particular environmental
good or service are widely enjoyed regardless of any given individual’s contribution to
the costs associated with creating or maintaining that good or service, or conversely as
negative externalities that are generated when the costs of a particular activity are passed
along to others not otherwise engaged in the activity in question. In the environmental
literature this idea was most famously articulated as the “tragedy of the commons” where
incentive structures lead self-interested resource consumers to make resource
management choices that maximize their own short-term economic benefits, while
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generating costs in the form of environmental degradation that are born collectively
(Hardin 1968).
Any enlightened individual resource consumer who chooses to reduce personal
exploitation of the environmental commons opens up opportunities for less scrupulous or
more desperate competitors to ramp up their own exploitative actions. Garret Hardin’s
influential argument about the “tragedy of the commons” concludes that perverse
incentive structures of common-pool resources invariably preclude cooperative behavior
and require the imposition of either the privatization of the commons, or a centralized,
collective decision-making apparatus, typically understood to come in the form of a state
capable of overcoming the political opposition of short-sighted, self-interested actors.
Common-pool resource theory has evolved since Hardin’s paper. Elinor Ostrom
identifies particular conditions involving social and institutional capital in which
sustainable resource management decisions can be cooperatively arrived at by
stakeholders without the imposition of rules by a centralized authority (Ostrom, 1990).
These conditions crucial to the emergence of sustainable management regimes apply to
the resource context itself, and to the users of that resource. As to the former, the resource
should: 1) be in such a condition that sustainable management is still feasible; 2) possess
reliable and valid indicators of the health of the resource; 3) possess reasonably
predictable conditions; and 4) exist on a scale that allows for successful understanding of
the conditions necessary for sustainable management (Schlager, 2004).
Regarding the conditions associated with the resource stakeholders that are
important to their ability to generate sustainable management rules, they should possess:
1) adequate sense of salience in the resource’s successful stewardship; 2) common
understanding of the natural resource and the effects of stakeholder actions on it; 3) low
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discount rates associated with concern for long-term health of the resource; 4) a shared
sense of reciprocity and trust in the various fellow stakeholders to bargain in good faith
and adhere to the agreed upon rules; 5) autonomy to make and enforce resource
management rules without being countermanded by external authority; and 6) the
prerequisite organizational and leadership skills to create and implement the management
regime (Schlager, 2004). Common cultural values and approximately equal amounts of
power increase the likelihood that these conditions will result in the creation of a
sustainable resource management regime.
The development of common-pool resource theory can be usefully applied to
better understand the evolution of environmental policy and their intellectual rationales
through successive generations of governance (Durant, 2005). The first generation of
environmental policies began to emerge in the late 1960s and is reflective of Hardin’s
view of the dynamics of tragic commons. This generation of policies relies of a
regulatory state that crafts command-and-control responses at the national level that
prescribe and enforce limits on pollution and unsustainable resource consumption.
Through the use of scientific expertise within bureaucratic agencies, a centralized
government authority identifies ostensibly safe levels of emissions, or sustainable yields,
and on the basis of that information sets a rule and enforces compliance. This regulatory
approach characterizes key environmental statutes of the U.S. federal code, notably the
Clean Air and Water Acts.
The second generation of environmental policy is composed of two types of
distinct (though not entirely dissimilar) criticism of the first generation’s reliance on the
heavy-handedness of a centralized regulatory state. The first critique is based on free-
market ideas that focus on the potential dangers of government failure in the attempt to
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remedy market-failure, largely due to the inefficiency of command-and-control
regulations, and the perverse incentives they often create. This first form of critique
offers policy options involving partial to wholesale privatization of environmental
resources to create property rights that would create the incentive structures that would
punish unsustainable exploitation of resources, and reward responsible stewardship.
Less dramatic forms of market-oriented policy approaches reserve a role for
government beyond mere enforcement of property rights such as issuance of tradable
permits for environmentally damaging actions. These would allow for the most
productive forms of polluting activity (as measured by willingness to pay for permits) to
continue to create economic benefits, while more efficiently reducing pollution overall by
creating a financial incentive for firms to reduce pollution. By either internalizing
environmental harm into the overall cost of production, or allowing producers of
environmental goods to capture the benefits associated with sustainable use of these
goods, producers are encouraged, rather than directly compelled, to develop processes
that involve fewer environmental costs, or conversely, that generate more environmental
benefits (Anderson and Leal 2001). Thus those with the most knowledge of the processes
involved are set to identify the solutions themselves rather than adhere to some
standardized prescript applied in a variety of diverse contexts that may make little sense
depending on circumstances.
The other dimension of second generation of environmental policy is championed
by theorists of participatory democracy critical of captured governmental agencies
catering to powerful political interests, or, when agencies possess the clout to resist such
interests, the instrumental reasoning of bureaucrats (Dryzek, 1987). The disaggregation
of complex, inter-related environmental problems, the assignment of responsibility for
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the disaggregated parts to individual bureaus or offices within various competitive
departments of a centralized government means they are addressed as scientifically
understandable problems with scientifically derivable solutions. This results in disjointed,
poorly coordinated, and ultimately ineffective policies (Dryzek, 1987). Rendered into
technical and legalistic language, crafted within Byzantine administrative structures and
procedures, average citizens find participation uninviting. The failure of centralized
legislative and bureaucratic decision-making to account for unique local or regional
conditions, or to anticipate cross-media problem displacement, leads to poorly solved
environmental problems and marginalizes multiple stakeholders with both useful
knowledge of and values in the resources in question yet without access to traditional
political resources such as lawyers, lobbyists, and media consultants. This leads
proponents of participatory democracy to proffer localized discourse as the means to
environmental problem-solving (Torgerson, 2006).
Both of these second generation critiques view bureaucratic expertise with
suspicion. Their proponents seek to replace the judgment of experts trapped by either
powerful interest groups or by rigid, organizational limitations and the narrowness of
scientific perspectives, with either the efficiency of incentive structures that reward
desired behavior on the one hand or the collective wisdom of deliberating stakeholders
who best understand their individual and mutual interests on the other. Neither
proponents of market-oriented solutions nor proponents of participatory discourse are
satisfied with centralized state called for by the tragedy of the commons metaphor of
environmental problem-solving. But neither has been able to prescribe a successful
policy-making strategy that does away with the administrative state either.
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The third generation of environmental policy is characterized by a pragmatic
approach that eschews ideological commitments to state or market, but borrows from
both as needed (Durant, 2005). Rather than replacing bureaucratic regulatory problem-
solving altogether, third generation environmental policy approaches seek to augment it
with various reforms based on market mechanisms and discursive, and/or collaborative,
interaction among local stakeholders to reduce the zero-sum nature typical of the
competitive interest-group politics associated with traditional regulatory approaches.
By forging compromises among key stakeholders associated with an
environmental issue rather than among their representatives within a distant legislature,
the collaborative dimension of the third generation approaches expects to better build
broad-based support for policy solutions, particularly crucial for complex problems
which beg for on-going adjustments during the process of implementation. This
theoretical perspective on policy normatively condemns the importance of political
victories for self-interested groups or parties and condones results-based (as defined by
problem-solving) management. As will be shown in the following pages, aspects of this
evolution in environmental policy generally can be seen in the emerging approaches to
aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes in particular.
Policy Approaches to Invasive Species Management on the Great Lakes
The Great Lakes ecosystem intersects the political jurisdictions of no less than
two countries, eight states, one province, multiple major municipalities, and many Native
tribes, so governance problems associated with the tragedy of the commons are clearly
central and complex. As the resource is enjoyed in common, actions taken to improve the
health of the ecosystem generate benefits for all Great Lakes users, but involve costs paid
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by the jurisdiction taking action. Conversely, extractive or exploitative actions may
directly reward the action-taker, but distribute harm to all resource users. To avoid an
inefficient under-allocation of resources for actions benefiting the Great Lakes, and
prevent an over-allocation of resources for actions harming them, Hardin’s thesis neatly
explains the necessity of government regulations. This means that in the United States,
achieving effective, centralized collaboration with Canada has had to contend with two
principled positions: federalist commitments to states’ rights, and a laissez-faire
philosophy of political-economy (Bogue, 2000). These obstacles proved an effective
barrier to bi-national regulatory efforts on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes Basin
throughout much of the 19th century.
Formal international efforts to manage the Great Lakes as a common pool
resource began when the United States agreed to long-standing Canadian requests to
establish a commission to address problems associated with fisheries in 1892 (Bogue,
2000). While the Canadian-American Joint Commission of 1892 proved ineffectual at
promoting uniform fishing regulations, it laid the foundation for the more fruitful
international Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. Recognizing the perverse incentives
associated with limiting their own consumptive uses of the lakes unilaterally, the United
States and Canada each acknowledged that rapid industrial development, as well as
increasing technical capacity to harvest fish, required mutual agreement not to pollute the
lakes to the detriment of the other.
The Boundary Waters Treaty established the International Joint Commission
(IJC) to negotiate between the two countries, prevent and resolve disputes, investigate
resource problems, recommend policy solutions and manage water levels on all boundary
waters. Although not authorized to regulate water quality, the IJC began calling for
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reduced pollution on the Great Lakes as early as 1918. Limited to an advisory role,
however, the IJC’s calls went largely unheeded until the U.S. and Canada agreed to the
Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1972, which seriously took on problems
associated with non-biological forms of pollution (Karkkainen, 2006).
Decades before the two countries finally tackled conventional pollution problems,
they belatedly acted in concert to address biological threats to the Great Lakes fisheries,
largely in response to a particular invasive species – the sea lamprey. Multiple attempts in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries to establish a functional organ to co-manage the
fisheries sustainably failed in the face of anti-regulatory sentiments in the fishing industry
and their representatives at the state and provincial level.
Not until 1954, with the commercially valuable herring, lake trout, sturgeon and
whitefish stocks facing collapse as a result of over-fishing, pollution and sea lamprey
predation did the two national governments receive necessary political support to pass the
Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries (Bogue, 2000). This treaty established the Great
Lakes Fisheries Commission, composed of representatives from both countries, which
oversees and publishes research on fish populations and habitat, recommends policy, and
implements a lamprey mitigation program. Given the central role of controlling the
lamprey population, the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission plays an important, but
limited, role in the larger campaign to address invasive species.
In 1968 the United States and Canada agreed to the Great Lakes Basin Compact
that created the Great Lakes Commission. The Commission oversees and promotes
research into problems associated with Great Lakes uses, and makes recommendations to
states and provincial authorities. The Great Lakes Commission supports rigorous
regulatory responses to the invasive species problem, particularly uniform ballast water
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treatment rules with the eventual goal of zero invasive species discharge, and it has
endorsed various bills in Congress that would achieve these ends (Great Lakes
Commission, 2007). The Commission has been active in promoting collaboration
between stakeholders to achieve political consensus on such policy goals. One example is
its role in the Great Ships Initiative discussed later.
Unilateral efforts by the United States federal government to address invasive
species began as early as 1900 with passage of the Lacey Act. The Lacey Act was
primarily concerned with protecting wildlife against unlawful trafficking, but also
specifically prohibited the introduction of harmful exotic avian species (Anderson, 1995).
In its current form, the Lacey Act has been used to prevent shipments of Asian carp,
deemed an injurious species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Much of U.S. federal policy dealing with invasive species has focused on pests
that pose threats to agriculture. The Plant Quarantine Act of 1912, Animal Damage
Control Act of 1931, Federal Seed Act of 1939, Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and
Rodenticide Act of 1947, and Federal Noxious Weed Act of 1974 are all specifically
designed to regulate non-native species that pose potential harm to commercial crops.
Thus the idea of new, non-native species creating ecological and economic problems is
well established throughout the 20th century. What likely explains the long history of
regulation in this instance is the lobbying strength of the agriculture industry eager to
prevent the arrival of such species as noxious weeds.
Aside from regulation of the commercial transportation of species potentially
harmful to agriculture, there are several important federal statutes addressing more
general environmental problems, but that bear on invasive species in indirect ways. The
National Environmental Policy Act seeks to provide umbrella protections to the
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environment in the form of harmful consequences of federal actions by requiring
environmental impact analyses. The Endangered Species Act would require the
eradication of invasive species should they pose threats to a listed endangered species.
And the Clean Water Act seeks “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and
biological integrity of the nation’s waters” which provides a logical connection between
this statute and actions that introduce aquatic invasive species.
Despite this logical connection, the Clean Water Act traditionally has not been
applied to the regulation of ballast water as per the EPA’s interpretation of the CWA
(Mah, 2004). In 1973 the EPA exempted “discharge incidental to the normal operation of
a vessel” from Clean Water Act permits requirements (Mah, 2004). In September 2006 a
U.S. District Court held this administrative rule to be inconsistent with requirements of
the CWA, a ruling upheld in by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in July 2008; and the
EPA is in the process of creating a permit system for the regulation of all ships that
release ballast water (Northwest Environmental Advocates et al. vs. EPA, No. CV 03-
05760 SI).
To comply with 9th Circuit’s order, in December 2008 the EPA issued a general
permit under the CWA that allows ships to continue to discharge ballast water as
currently practiced. Implementation of this permit was placed on hold by the 9th Circuit
Court until February 2009. Barack Obama’s administration seems prepared to head in a
different direction as EPA Director Lisa Jackson announced on February 25th, 2009 that
the agency would review the permit affirming status quo ballast water regulations issued
during the previous administration.
Part of the EPA’s argument for resisting use of the Clean Water Act to regulate
ballast water has rested on Congressional efforts to regulate invasive species on the Great
22
Lakes through separate federal actions. The U.S. Congress passed the Non-indigenous
Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act (NANPCA) of 1990. Just as the sea
lamprey served a catalytic event by providing the necessary impetus to enact the
Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries, the Non-indigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention
and Control Act was a belated response to another high-profile, costly invader on the
Great Lakes – the zebra mussel. This act identified ballast water as a key vector for
invasive species introduction and called for ballast water exchange (BWE) regulations –
the first such regulations in the world (Ballast Water Working Group, 1995). NANPCA
also established an Invasive Species Task Force to develop and coordinate with state
governments plans to prevent introduction of new and spread of current invasive species
in U.S. waters, and study impacts of these biological invaders on economies and
ecosystems.
In 1996 Congress re-authorized and amended NANPCA in the form of National
Invasive Species Act of 1996 (NISA). NISA reaffirmed ballast water exchange
regulations as the preventative mechanism to protect the Great Lakes from aquatic
invasive species brought via ballast water. These regulations require ships – weather
permitting – to flush their ballast tanks while on the open ocean, replacing the ballast
water acquired in foreign ports with marine water that is less likely to contain organisms,
in particular organisms capable of adapting to the freshwater of the Great Lakes. Ships
are not required to exchange ballast water if conditions make it risky. More problematic,
even when ships do conduct ballast water exchange, full replacement of water in the
ballast tanks does not occur. This incomplete replacement leaves biological stowaways in
the ballast water. Moreover, ships filled to or near capacity with cargo have little need of
ballast water, and can declare no ballast on board. But ballast tanks in such situations are
23
never empty, residual water and large amounts of sediment remain at the bottom of the
tanks. When the ships off load cargo, typically in southern industrial port cities, they take
on ballast water which mixes with the residual water and sediment. In consequence,
invasive organisms become once again suspended and ready to be expelled when new
cargo is loaded for instance when grain and ore are loaded in northern ports.
Responsibility for implementing effective ballast water regulations under NISA
falls upon the U.S. Coast Guard. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001,
however, the Coast Guard’s mission has undergone revisions that have increased the
emphasis placed upon national security dimensions of the agency’s duties, a development
exemplified by moving to the new Department of Homeland Security (Mah, 2004).
According to testimony offered by the General Accounting Office in 2003, these new
responsibilities have not resulted in commensurate increases in budgetary resources,
placing increased strains on the Coast Guard’s abilities to effectively carry out its
traditional regulatory responsibilities (Mah, 2004). Under NISA, the Coast Guard has
responsibility for monitoring and enforcing ships’ compliance with BWE regulations. But
by 2001 the National Ballast Water Clearinghouse concluded that only about half the
ships actually engaged in required BWE (Ruiz, et. al., 2001). The Coast Guard itself
acknowledged the inadequacy of ships’ compliance in reporting to adequately determine
effectiveness of BWE in its report to Congress the same year (U.S. Coast Guard, 2001).
Despite increased efforts by the Coast Guard to monitor compliance with BWE
regulations and increased fines for non-compliance, these shortcomings in ballast water
exchange as a remedy to the invasive species threat remain today. They have also over
the last one and a half decades spurred much research and conference activity to identify
effective methods of ballast water treatment (BWT) to kill the organisms within the
24
ballast water tanks. A number of potential methods to sterilize water in ballast tanks have
been investigated and are in various stages of commercial development. They range from
such ship-board methods as filtration, to irradiation of ballast water, to the application of
various forms of biocide, to heating ballast water to temperatures unsuitable for life
(Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). In addition to on-ship technology, shore-based ballast water
treatment facilities are another alternative currently being investigated and proposed.
Ships would pump their ballast water into the on-shore facility where it would be treated.
The shipping industry has claimed that uncertainty about the necessary standards
that ballast water will need to meet has precluded necessary investment in fitting ships
with ballast water treatment equipment. Without knowing how ‘clean’ is ‘clean’, the
representatives argue, they cannot wisely purchase the necessary technology. Debate has
ensued over costs associated with fitting ships with the necessary equipment as well.
Some note figures of $210,000 and $300,000 per ship for mechanical modes of treatment
and $300,000 per ship for chemical treatment (Buck, 2007).
The plausibility of this argument aside, it is clear Congress has failed to move
forward with effective standards. Much has been made of polarization and gridlock in
Washington. Moreover, the decentralized nature of Congressional policy-making can be
seen in the fact that over seventy Congressional committees have at least some
jurisdiction over federal water policy (Rosenbaum, 2005). Whatever else can be said
about these factors, they have not helped Congress achieve effective BWT regulations,
despite significant bi-partisan support for such measures from the Great Lakes
Congressional delegations.
Bi-partisan bills introduced in the recent 110th Congress that would address
invasive species on the Great Lakes include Senate Bill 725, the National Aquatic
25
Invasive Species Act introduced by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Susan Collins (R-
ME). This bill is the latest in a long line of heretofore unsuccessful attempts to
reauthorize NISA in a manner that would effectively treat ballast water to kill would-be
invasive species. Republican Representatives in the House have introduced the
Prevention of Aquatic Invasive Species Act (Candice Miller, R-MI) and the Ballast
Water Management Act of 2007 (Steven La Tourette, R-OH) would do much the same.
Democratic sponsored bills addressing invasive species on the Great Lakes include
provisions for ballast water regulation introduced by Jim Oberstar (D-MN) as part of the
larger Coast Guard Authorization bill H.R. 2830. This measure passed the House in April
2008. Supported by both regional environmental organizations and the Great Lakes
shipping industry, the bill would set a national ballast water standard, require salt-water
BWE, close the NOBOB loophole, and require on-ship BWT technology within several
years.
Elements of the bill have generated controversy with certain environmental
organizations; in particular language in the bill that would preclude states’ abilities to set
standards more stringent than the federal standard, or require implementation of treatment
technology sooner than would federal law, and language that would exclude application
of the Clean Water Act for purposes of ballast water regulation (Egan, 2008 a). This last
point also means that primary responsibility for implementation would rest with the U.S.
Coast Guard rather the Environmental Protection Agency. Opposition to these aspects of
the Coast Guard Authorization Act is being mustered in the Senate.
Objections to the Coast Guard Authorization bill H.R. 2830 have been raised by
the Coast Guard itself and center on issues both related and unrelated to its ballast water
regulation provisions (Peters, 2008). The former center on the technology-forcing
26
dimension of the ballast water treatment requirements; the latter objections are
principally concerned with new security obligations for liquefied natural gas terminals
and tankers. Given pre-existing criticisms of the scope of Coast Guard responsibilities in
the post 9-11 era, concerns about the Coast Guard’s abilities to adequately implement
new ballast water regulations may be valid (Mah, 2004). In addition to the Coast Guard’s
objections, the Bush White House expressed its opposition and threatened a presidential
veto (Peters, 2008).
The most comprehensive recent legislative attempt address invasive species as
part of the larger project of ecosystem restoration is the Great Lakes Restoration
Initiative. Several bi-partisan attempts from legislators from the Great Lakes region to
fund the implementation of a plan crafted by the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration
(described below) have failed in recent years. With the support of the Obama
administration, however, $475 million was procured for Great Lakes restoration projects
for the fiscal year 2010, with an additional $300 million proposed for 2011. Of the $475
million in 2010, $60 million is targeted towards ballast water treatment research and
invasive species prevention. These steps represent down payments on President Obama’s
2008 campaign pledge to spend $5 billion on Great Lakes protection and restoration.
These recent budgetary accomplishments notwithstanding, the overall record of
federal efforts to regulate activity responsible for the introduction of invasive species into
the Great Lakes is one of hesitation and reluctance to act forcefully. Neither the Bush
administration nor Congress has been willing to impose a top-down, national standard for
ballast water discharge, despite significant support from the scientific community and
both sides of the aisle among the Congressional delegation of the Great Lakes states. The
funds procured by the Obama administration are useful and an improvement in terms of
27
environmental protection, but in the absence of a vigorous ballast water standard may
ultimately prove ineffective. While the Bush administration refused to promote an
effective regulatory standard, it did pursue an approach consistent with theoretical
prescriptions of the third generation of environmental policy.
The Great Lakes Regional Collaboration
In 2004, in response to political pressure to move forward more effectively in
addressing environmental problems on the Great Lakes, President Bush signed Executive
Order 13340 creating the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration (GLRC). Recognizing that
multiple efforts, comprising over 140 programs, by various levels of government working
through numerous agencies were engaged in environmental management of the Great
Lakes, the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration was intended to add coherence of
perspective and coordination of response to the ecosystem’s major environmental
challenges.
The members of the GLRC include the Great Lakes Interagency Task Force (10
cabinet-level federal agencies that administer programs affecting the Lakes), the Council
of Great Lakes Governors, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, Great Lakes
Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, and the Great Lakes Congressional Task Force.
The GLRC’s Conveners Meeting and executive meetings to propose a draft plan and then
adopt a final strategy were all open to the public. Additionally, the plan to protect and
restore the Great Lakes was developed through a process of individual issue-specific
strategy teams that included an array of non-governmental stakeholders, and for which
public comment was also solicited.
28
The signature product of the GLRC was the document entitled Great Lakes
Regional Collaboration Strategy to Restore and Protect the Great Lakes, released in
December 2005. The Strategy sets a wide array of goals to address needs of the Great
Lakes ecosystem comprehensively, confronting such problems as habitat loss, coastal
health, Areas of Concern and toxic pollution, non-point source pollution, sustainable
development and invasive species. The goals set for invasive species center on stopping
their introduction through ballast water and other means, and support for the passage of
federal legislation to achieve this.
The Great Lakes Regional Collaboration demonstrates elements of the pragmatic,
problem-solving approach of the third generation of environmental policies, yet also
possesses significant flaws that make it unlikely to succeed as fully as its membership
would like. While the GLRC has articulated an admirable vision of ecosystem
management, it lacks the institutional authority to see its central elements implemented.
This lack of authority is most obviously reflected in the continued absence of federal
ballast water regulations that set standards for effective treatment. Despite the multitude
of measures in Congress designed to achieve these standards, the prospect of passage for
any of them in this session appears poor. Moreover, the GLRC itself is aware of the
difficulties created by its limitations related to implementation. In a series of public
conference phone calls intended to review progress and points of concern, the GLRC
Executive Subcommittee decided in the spring of 2008 not to adopt a proposed GLRC
Strategy Implementation Plan, noting that such an initiative was “not the best use of
everyone’s time” and instead chose to focus on implementation of a few very modest
proposals unlikely to elicit much political opposition (Great Lakes Regional
Collaboration, 2008).
29
The difficulty of implementing the GLRC Strategy is a function of the absence of
a governing institutional framework to allocate necessary resources or to make its
decisions binding, but is also, in part, a function of its comprehensive vision of ecosystem
management. The GLRC Strategy symbolizes a departure from the conventional, piece-
meal approach of the first generation of environmental policy to environmental problem-
solving that typically tackled individual problems in sequence. As responsibility for
implementing such focused, issue-specific policies rests with particular agencies, or even
with particular divisions within particular agencies, developing the comprehensive vision
to understand complex ecosystems and generating cooperative behavior within a broad
base of support necessary for successful problem solving often fails to occur.
The GLRC is a worthwhile attempt to force agencies often indifferent, or worse,
opposed, to the success of their fellow agencies to work together to create a holistic
approach to sustainable management of the Great Lakes. More than that, however, the
GLRC attempts to bring different levels of government that operate in arenas with
different lines of accountability on the same page so that the conflicting as well as
common interests involved might be made clearer. This point is particularly highlighted
by the prominent role played in the GLRC by the Great Lakes Cities Initiative, an
instrument that gives voice to municipalities within the Great Lakes basin and their
constituents. Ultimately, however, the effectiveness of the GLRC is dependent on the
willingness at the federal level of Congress to adopt the GLRC Strategy as official policy,
and to allocate sufficient funding to carry it out.
Based on the literature devoted to the third generation of environmental policy,
one can find at least one more flaw in the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration hindering
greater success; that would be the inadequate breadth of stakeholder participation. The
30
GLRC is predominantly composed of representatives of governmental agencies. As an
antidote to the administrative rationality that plagues bureaucratic problem-solving,
proponents of the third generation of environmental policy call in varying degrees for
market-oriented policy mechanisms and discourse amongst citizens. To the extent that
citizens have been involved, it has mostly been indirect involvement through interest
group proxies representing industrial and environmental interests. Interest group politics
is itself problematic from theoretical perspectives of democratic discourse. However, in
the absence of greater involvement of average citizens (a prospect discussed later) more
involvement by interest groups may be the best available option for adding to the chorus
of government agency perspectives (Healthy Lakes, 2007). The GLRC itself
acknowledges the importance of involving more public input in its processes and more
effectively communicating its positions and actions (GLRC, 2007).
The long delay in passage of adequate federal ballast water regulations given the
great need for effective invasive species policy on the Great Lakes is a curious, and for
many, frustrating development. This is particularly so as the stakeholder that would be
most affected by ballast water regulations – shipping – has publicly called for Congress
to set standards. Attempting to explain this discrepancy between the need for action and
the lack of action requires taking a closer look at the interests of various stakeholders
involved.
Although Ostrom’s stakeholder criteria for sustainable common-pool resource
management is intended to apply to stakeholders operating independent of a centralized
state context, it offers interesting and relevant concepts that can be used to assess the
positions of stakeholders in situations like Great Lakes management. This is especially so
given the development of the GLRC that explicitly seeks to broaden the pool of actors in
31
natural resource planning and management. For this reason, Ostrom’s criteria will be
used as a general framework to assess three important, non-governmental stakeholders in
the issue of aquatic invasive species on the Great Lakes: shipping, environmental
organizations and the general public. As mentioned earlier, these criteria are: 1) adequate
sense of salience in the resource’s successful stewardship; 2) common understanding of
the natural resource and the effects of stakeholder actions on it; 3) low discount rates
associated with concern for long-term health of the resource; 4) a shared sense of
reciprocity and trust in the various fellow stakeholders to bargain in good faith and
adhere to the agreed upon rules; 5) autonomy to make and enforce resource management
rules without being countermanded by external authority; and 6) the prerequisite
organizational and leadership skills to create and implement the management regime
(Schlager, 2005).
Great Lakes Invasive Species Stakeholders: States
Lack of such progress on the federal level has prompted political action at the
state level, and in several cases, with significant policy results. The state of Michigan
passed ballast water regulations in 2005 which require ships from international ports of
call to acquire special permits contingent upon the presence of approved equipment to
treat ballast water to eradicate any invasive species aboard or face fines of up to $25,000
(Lam, 2007).
Exact cost projections of this equipment are contentious – the Michigan
Department of Environmental Quality contends the costs would run several hundred
thousand dollars, while shipping representatives claim the figure is at least one million
dollars (Lam, 2007). This, according to industry representatives, has led to ships avoiding
32
Michigan ports, and will limit the state’s ability to export goods via sea lanes transport.
The extent to which this claim is true is unclear. Federal courts have upheld Michigan’s
regulations (FedNav v. Chester 505 F. Supp. 2d 381 E.D. Mich. 2007).
Regulations aimed at minimizing the invasive species threat from ballast water
have been passed in Minnesota, New York and Wisconsin, but they impose different
standards on the shipping industry. The Wisconsin regulations require new ocean-going
ships entering Wisconsin waters by 2012 to achieve a level of ballast water purity that is
one hundred times more stringent than the standard currently proposed by the
International Maritime Organization within the United Nations (Wisconsin Department
of Natural Resources, 2009). Pre-existing ships will be required to meet these ballast
water standards by 2014. However, if the technology needed to meet these more stringent
standards is unavailable then ships will be required only to meet to the UN standard.
These standards reflect a much less stringent approach than the Wisconsin DNR
originally proposed and subsequent to its announcement the National Wildlife Federation
and the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation have declared their intention to sue the state.
Minnesota’s ballast water regulations are even less stringent; they only require the
UN standard be met by 2016. Where they surpass the Wisconsin rules, however, is in
requiring the lake-bound ships – lakers – to also meet the same standards. This measure is
intended to reduce the intra-lakes spread of invasive species already present within the
Great Lakes ecosystem, but has come under fierce criticism of representatives of the
intra-lakes shipping industry (Meyers, 2009). Because the cities of Duluth Minnesota and
Superior Wisconsin essentially share the same bay, the different standards have been
criticized as being unreasonable (Egan, 2009c).
33
The state of New York has adopted the region’s toughest regulations, similar to
those originally proposed by Wisconsin, treatment of ballast water to a standard one
thousand times the International Maritime Organization’s. New York was sued by the
shipping industry over these regulations, but in February 2010, the New York Appellate
Court upheld them (Egan, 2010c).
These state-level actions represent a form of bottom-up federalism similar to what
is developing with regional accords between states to regulate carbon-emissions to
mitigate global climate change. Whether such efforts generally, and with regards to
invasive species particularly, can be successful remains to be seen. A promising and
relevant example may be what Noah Hall calls “cooperative horizontal federalism” as
occurred in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact (Hall
2006). Neither purely bottom-up, nor entirely top-down, the Great Lakes Compact
represents a third alternative, where states initiate an agreement on minimum standards of
water-use that is ratified by the Congress and therefore binding to all parties. Individual
states are responsible for implementing the agreement where water uses occur within the
Great Lakes basin, and are subject to inter-state consensual approval when overseeing
new water uses that involve diverting Great Lakes water outside the basin.
State efforts to regulate ballast water could eventually represent the emergence of
collaborative behavior between actors to avoid tragedy of the commons as suggested by
Ostrom’s theories of common pool resources. Yet the difficulties of achieving adequate
mutual agreements given the potential for free-riding are also clear. Tougher stances like
New York’s, or to a much lesser degree Wisconsin’s, make a state vulnerable in that they
potentially drive shipping to the ports of neighboring states, and yet are no less
vulnerable to new invasive species than the standards of the most lenient state make
34
them. Political pressure from the shipping industry will rise in states with rigorous
standards, and political pressure from environmental groups will rise in states with less
rigorous standards. Pressure will also mount on Congress to enact uniform rules until
either it does so, or until the states standardize their rules themselves through negotiations
consistent with cooperative horizontal federalism. Hall identifies benefits in the latter
approach that are consistent with advantages associated with third generation
environmental policies (2006). Under such an approach, a consistent, uniform and
enforceable minimum standard would be identified to prevent a race to the bottom typical
of unregulated common pool resources, but such a standard would be identified by
regional authorities most directly involved rather than imposed from a central
government less aware of relevant considerations.
Recent conflict among Great Lakes states over the threat of Asian carp illustrates
the difficulty, however, of achieving consensus over policy solutions when the costs of
such solutions are unevenly shared. As mentioned earlier in the paper, DNA evidence of
Asian carp has not only been detected in the Chicago Sanitary-Ship canal past the electric
fence barrier created to deter their migration to Lake Michigan, but also in Lake
Michigan itself. The states of Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin have
joined in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois and the Army Corps of Engineers to seek
injunctive relief in the form of lock closure to prevent any Asian Carp in the canal from
entering Lake Michigan. Illinois, concerned about flooding if the locks cannot be used to
divert excess water and under pressure from local barge and tourism interests, contends
the locks should remain open. Although injunctive relief was denied by the Supreme
Court, the plaintiff states’ case will proceed.
35
President Obama, who claimed he would take a “zero tolerance” approach to
invasive species, convened an “Asian Carp Summit” in February 2010 in an attempt to
defuse some of the inter-state conflict. At the summit, which included representatives
from various federal and states agencies as well as the attorneys general of the states
involved in litigation, the administration announced a plan to spend tens of millions of
dollars on a new electric fish barrier, more poison to kill fish in the canal between the
barrier and Lake Michigan, and for research on dealing with the Asian carp threat (Egan
2010b). The plan also allows for temporary, periodic closures of the locks. Predictably,
few of the interested parties have expressed satisfaction with this compromise.
Great Lakes Invasive Species Stakeholders: Shipping
An obvious stakeholder in this issue is shipping, which bears primary
responsibility for the ballast water vector. The ecological damage created by invasive
species introduced by ballast water, as well as the associated economic impacts, are
neither felt nor paid for by shipping interests. Hence, these impacts are a form of negative
externality. As firms in a competitive marketplace have clear incentives to keep costs
low, there is an obvious interest on the part of shipping to avoid financial burdens that
regulations would create. Identifying the parties interested in keeping these costs
externalized, however, involves looking beyond the ships themselves.
As stated earlier shipping is a $6 billion industry employing 44,000 workers in the
region. Port authorities and marine terminals have direct interests in shipping activities. A
significant portion of the value of this activity stems from the intra-lake shipping
conducted by lake-bound ships. Nonetheless, the extent of the inter-national dimension of
Great Lakes’ shipping and its economic value is considerable; so too, however, are the
36
costs of invasive species (Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). Identifying accountability within
this industry for the problem is complicated, for although the number of international
shippers is relatively few, the ownership structure is a complex arrangement of
relationships including ship owners, ship operators, and charterers who handle the
contracting and scheduling of shipments, each of which is generally a separate legal
entity (Cangelosi and Mays, 2006).
Other interested parties include firms in the import supply chain such as suppliers,
the majority of which are European corporations such as Arcelor, Duferco, Theis, and
Thyssen-Krupp, and receivers in the U.S. such as Inland Steel, International Steel, and
USX (Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). End users of the products (mostly steel) include auto
and appliance manufacturers and the construction industry. Other parties with a direct
interest in keeping shipping costs low include firms in the export chain, predominantly
agricultural firms like Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, CHS, and General Mills, which
ship their commodities to destinations mostly in Europe but also significantly to Africa
(Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). All these parties benefit through the externalization of costs
associated with shipping-introduced invasive species, and therefore would likely see
costs passed along to them in the event of regulatory action.
Yet as information about the impacts of invasive species grows, so does
increasing political pressure for regulatory action to address these negative externalities.
An interesting irony of the invasive species problem is that shipping itself has come to
acknowledge that invasive species in the Great Lakes are a problem, and that given
ballast water’s role in introducing them, regulations are needed. Evidence of this is
industry support for a certain level of ballast water regulations such as those in H.R.
2830, Coast Guard Authorization bill of 2008 (Egan, 2008a). Factors preventing industry
37
support for more stringent regulations, and potentially presenting problems with industry
support or compliance at crucial later stages of the policy process, center on the degree of
uniformity of standards to be met, timelines for meeting those standards, the magnitude
of the costs involved, and in allocating responsibility for payment of those costs. These
concerns notwithstanding, other evidence of industry willingness to address the ballast
water vector for aquatic invasive species exists.
To identify best practices in treating ballast water, and perhaps head off political
heat and potentially more costly regulatory options, a number of stakeholders associated
with the shipping industry have, with the guidance of the Northeast-Midwest Institute,
entered into a collaborative research effort with state agencies and universities called the
Great Ships Initiative (Cangelosi and Mays, 2006). In addition to the goal of researching
and developing cost-effective technologies to treat ballast water, the Great Ships
Initiative is committed to promoting incentive mechanisms to facilitate installation and
enforcement of the operation of such technologies. Made up of port authorities, shipping
carriers, representatives from government and environmental organizations, the Great
Ships Initiative is another example of cooperative interaction amongst stakeholders for
purposes of policy-making that has moved beyond the competitive first generation
command-and-control regulatory approach, and is consistent with the collaborative, de-
centralized, flexible pragmatism called for by the third generation of environmental
policy.
Employing Ostrom’s criteria to the shipping industry, we can find evidence that
they are, at least to a degree, a willing participant in the design of a sustainable natural
resource regime. With regards to the first two criteria, salience and knowledge, there has
been publicly stated acceptance by shipping representatives of the ecological and
38
economic harm created by aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes, and of the role of
ballast water in introducing them. There is uncertainty over best means to achieve the end
of clean ballast water, but the shipping industry has been willing to contribute to the
resolution of this uncertainty. Disagreements on the part of shipping seem to be how and
when and at what level to regulate, not whether to regulate in the first place. In this sense,
we can infer they have a higher discount rate when valuing ecological health of the Great
Lakes than those advocating the quicker application of more stringent regulations. But
these differences should not be seen as insurmountable.
Efforts such as the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration and the Great Ships
Initiative should been seen as useful for promoting the shared sense of reciprocity and
trust called for by Ostrom’s fourth criterion, and for the development of organizational
and leadership skills associated with the sixth criterion. That the Great Ships Initiative
Board of Advisors includes Jennifer Nalbonne, the Invasive Species Director for the
environmental coalition Great Lakes United, as well as George Robichon of the shipping
corporation FedNav Limited is indicative of the kind of partnerships necessary to
overcome the competitive interest group conflict long-associated with the first generation
of environmental policy. Trust engendered by such partnerships would constitute a form
of social capital that, when coupled with the organizational and leadership skills
developed via participation in these collaborative efforts, should prove useful in resolving
the inevitable conflicts that will emerge during the implementation of standards once
they’re adopted.
The fifth criteria of Ostrom, the autonomy to make and enforce resource
management rules without being countermanded by external authority, is clearly not
present in the context of this issue. As has been noted before, all of the collaborative
39
efforts, the initiatives and committees, councils and partnerships that have emerged
around Great Lakes governance ultimately lack institutional governing power, and thus
are dependent on the authority of the federal governments of the United States and
Canada.
Great Lakes Invasive Species Stakeholders: Environmental Organizations
A wide array of environmental interest groups has been involved in Great Lakes
policy and politics for several decades. A number of them have formed environmental
coalitions; prominent examples include Great Lakes United formed in 1982 to promote
public awareness of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and participation in the
processes overseen by the International Joint Commission. It remains an active entity
engaged in public education and in lobbying for legislation protective of the Great Lakes
ecosystem. The Lake Michigan Federation was formed in 1970; renamed Alliance for the
Great Lakes in 2005, the organization coordinates over 100 community based groups to
conduct public outreach, and promote conservation and restoration, generally with local
emphases. The Sierra Club maintains a Great Lakes Program with an office in Madison
Wisconsin, as well as multiple local chapters throughout the region, as does the Audubon
Society.
In 2005, over 100 largely mainstream environmental organizations came together
to form the Healing Our Waters Coalition to pool resources, collaborate on goals and
strategy, and coordinate efforts to promote environmental protection and restoration of
the Great Lakes ecosystem. The National Federation of Wildlife and the National Parks
Conservation Association are the lead organizations, but member organizations also
include local environmentalist organizations throughout the region, a number of hunting
40
and fishing organizations such as Minnesota Conservation Federation, Ohio Sportsmen
Association, and multiple regional chapters of Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited,
scientific and academic organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, the
International Association for Great Lakes Research, and the University of Michigan’s
School of Natural Resources and Environment, as well as a number museums, zoos,
aquariums and zoological and botanical gardens.
The stated goal of the Healing Our Waters Coalition is help facilitate passage of
the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Implementation Act, which would mandate
ballast water treatment for ocean-going ships on the Great Lakes. They have further taken
the position that until effective ballast water regulation is in place, a moratorium on
ocean-going shipping on the Great Lakes should be instituted (Healing Our Waters,
2007). Given that many cost estimates put the annual damages from invasive species at
about two-thirds of the annual value of the entire shipping industry (of which ocean-
going shipping is but a part), the position taken seems politically radical, but may well be
economically justified. An economic analysis of the costs of ending trans-oceanic
shipping on the Lakes and replacing it with rail and ground transportation concludes that
the cost would be about $55 million (Taylor and Roach, 2009). Considering the much
greater costs associated with dealing with invasive species, this data is compelling.
Lending political credibility to the call for a moratorium on trans-oceanic shipping on the
Great Lakes, moreover, the U.S. and Canadian Advisors to the Great Lakes Fisheries
Commission urged the Commission to adopt a similar position in 2007.
The environmental stakeholders in the Great Lakes ecosystem are reasonably well
organized and muster significant resources. Their influence can be seen in the outcome of
the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, and in the introduction of multiple bills in
41
Congress aimed at achieving the ends of the GLRC. Yet their influence has yet to
successfully procure passage of ballast water treatment regulations designed to prevent
invasive species introductions on the Great Lakes.
If we treat these environmental organizations as a single stakeholder and apply
Ostrom’s criteria we again find the potential for useful participation in the design and
implementation of a sustainable resource management regime. The first criteria – issue
salience – is easily met as the principal organizations have been pushing for effective
invasive species policy for well over a decade. The knowledge of resources and the
effects of actions are fairly well-understood. Uncertainty over cost-effectiveness
associated with technological options is unsurprisingly less a concern for environmental
organizations than it is shipping. It is also reasonable to assume that the discount rate that
environmental organizations place on the value of the Great Lakes ecosystem is lower
than it is for shipping, yet is certainly low enough to justify their support for policies
promoting sustainable use of the resource.
As is the case for shipping, participation in the collaborative efforts of such
enterprises as the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration and the Great Ships Initiative
should contribute to the development of mutual understanding necessary for trust and
thus satisfactory compromise, and to the development of organizational and leadership
skills useful to effective participation in implementation of eventual standards. While
critical of elements of the GLRC, the environmental coalition Healing Our Waters has
officially endorsed and been active within the effort. That Healing Our Waters has chosen
to support Coast Guard Authorization bill H.R. 2830, when other environmental
organizations both within and outside the region have criticized it as too industry-
42
friendly, may be an indication that a measure of trust and reciprocity has emerged
amongst the otherwise competitive stakeholders (Egan, 2008 b).
43
Great Lakes Invasive Species Stakeholders: The Public
The public has a dramatic interest in the health of the Great Lakes ecosystems as
indicated by the previously cited studies of the economic values associated with them.
Politically and culturally, public concern for the environmental health of the Great Lakes
has played an important role in the emergence of modern environmentalism. Algal-
blooms, waves of soap suds, and beaches strewn with dead fish made Erie and the other
Lakes icons of the collateral damage of industrialism and consumerism that fueled
environmental activism in the 1960s (Steinberg, 2002). Yet today, the public’s
understanding of the values associated with the Great Lakes ecosystem remains relatively
low. Too many people retain out-dated images of the 1960s as the basis of their concerns
about Great Lakes problems.
In 2002 The Bio-Diversity Project, in partnership with the Joyce Foundation,
studied the levels of environmental awareness and political perspectives amongst the
public of the Great Lakes region (Bio-Diversity Project, 2004). They found that large
majorities of Great Lakes residents identify industrial point sources (86%) and municipal
sewage releases (79%) as threats that “hurt the Lakes a great deal” but only 41% of the
public identify invasive species as a comparable threat and even less (34%) identify
agricultural run-off as a threat in this way (Belden, Russonello, and Stewart, 2003).
While point sources of pollution remain a problem, they are widely seen in the scientific
community as far less problematic than invasive species or non-point sources of pollution
such as agricultural run-off. For the public to more accurately order priorities, they need
to be made more aware of the growing threat of invasive species.
44
The Bio-diversity Project’s research did, however, find that the public maintains a
significant sense of concern for and obligation to the Great Lakes, with 94% agreeing
(67% strongly so) that each individual has a personal responsibility to protect the Lakes.
Fully 96% agree (77% strongly so) that we “need to do more to protect the Great Lakes
habitats from pollution (Belden, Russonello, and Stewart, 2003).” So while the public’s
priorities may be questioned in regards to what they think are threats to the Great Lakes,
they do express a significantly high level of support, however generalized, for protecting
the Lakes.
Data that would place this level of concern for the Great Lakes within a broader
context of policy priorities generally would be useful. At a national level, the public
consistently ranks environmental quality as a concern, but at a frequency that is beneath
the levels expressed about such issues as the economy and healthcare (Gallop 2008).
There are several interesting issues associated with the priority of environmental
concerns relative to economic concerns, reflecting the motivating factors behind public
beliefs about personal environmental responsibility in the Great Lakes region. While 94%
of the Great Lakes regional public feels a personal responsibility for the Lakes, when
asked the reasons why, they are more likely to identify an obligation to future
generations, religious and aesthetic values, ecological functions and regional identity as
justifying a sense of responsibility than they are to identify economic vitality as an
outcome of protecting the Lakes (Belden, Russonello, and Stewart, 2003).
This suggests several things: too few of the public adequately understand the
economic benefits of healthy ecosystems or the economic costs of degraded ecosystems;
and too many see ecological health and economic health as zero-sum trade-offs.
Moreover, given the propensity for the public to value economic health, then the potential
45
to magnify public concern for the environment by educating them about the relationships
between ecosystems and economies is clear. In the absence of any improvement in this
awareness, however, it is unlikely that government representatives will feel any added
pressure to allocate time or, more importantly, budgetary resources to environmental
protection.
So when we apply Ostrom’s criteria for stakeholder propensity for productive
engagement in the design and implementation of sustainable resource regimes, we see
that the public is potentially, but not yet likely, to be a useful participant. The invasive
species problem is insufficiently salient for the region’s public, probably because the
public poorly understands the nature of ecological threats facing the Great Lakes, or the
relationship between environmental and economic benefits. It is not clear whether or not
the public sets a discount rate on the ecological health of the Great Lakes too high to
make them a useful contributor in the design and implementation of a sustainable
management policy. They do express general concern for the future of the Great Lakes’
health, but do not have a full grasp of what it is that should concern them, or a
comprehensive understanding of why. That the general public lacks organizational and
leadership skills to effectively participate in governing activities has long been used as a
justification for reliance on liberal representative institutions and interest groups.
Whether this pessimistic vision of average citizens is warranted has also been a long-
standing issue of debate amongst political theorists. Certainly proponents of participatory
democratic problem-solving in the second generation of environmental policy feel such
capabilities can be developed. In many respects, the question misses the larger, more
pragmatic point that neither liberal representation nor interest group activities are going
away any time soon. So the more useful but related question is whether a more useful
46
role cannot be created for the public at large within some modification of pre-existing
institutional arrangements. That the public is concerned and capable of learning suggests
that efforts to create such a role are plausible and desirable.
Conclusions:
Collaborative action to stem aquatic invasive species on the Great Lakes as a
central part of broader ecosystem restoration and management has occurred and is
occurring on a variety of different levels, including multiple layers of government, as
well as among various camps of interest groups. The region’s states have through the
creation of such entities as the Great Lakes Commission in 1955, the Council of Great
Lakes Governors in 1983, and agreements like the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence River Basin
Water Resources Compact of 2008, recognized the collective action problem associated
with common pool resources and have begun to collaborate to avoid the tragedy of the
commons associated with the assumptions of self-interested behavior of competitive
actors predicted by Hardin and other perspectives consistent with the first generation of
environmental policy. These events are evidence that theoretical revisions by scholars
such as Elinor Ostrom that sustainable common pool resource management regimes can
emerge bottom-up from among otherwise competitive stakeholders, may be applicable in
the Great Lakes context to the extent such notions can be applied to the states themselves.
While this bottom-up strategy has occurred with respect to sustainable water
consumption, no action similar to this has yet taken place to adequately address the
invasive species problem. The Council of Great Lakes Governors and state legislatures
would be potentially useful vehicles to promote a bottom-up approach to invasive species
consistent with horizontal, cooperative federalism.
47
Beneath the state level we have seen the emergence of collaborative action among
municipal governments in the Great Lakes Basin. The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence
Cities Initiative was created in 2003 through efforts of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and
David Ullrich, who became the Initiative’s Executive Director. Designed to share
information about problems and best management practices, and to coordinate political
action to advocate for local interests, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative is
another example of the emergence of collective action of actors from the bottom-up to
promote sustainable resource use that would seem to complicate predictions of behavior
associated with Hardin’s vision of a “Tragedy of the Commons”. Yet actions of this
Initiative by itself are insufficient to achieve to sustainable management regimes.
At the federal level, the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration also demonstrates an
awareness of the potential for interaction among cooperative actors to identify sustainable
approaches to common pool resources, and the outcomes of those collaborative efforts
include a defendable plan of action from the perspective of sustainable environmental
stewardship. Yet here too we see failure to fully realize sustainable management in that,
while the plan itself does a laudable job of articulating goals, we have not seen
appreciable progress in implementing important elements of the plan requiring the
exercise of authoritative discretion or the allocation of significant resources.
All this suggests several necessary changes to policy approach. It may be that the
collaboration that has been occurring as called for by recent theorists of the third
generation of environmental policy has been inadequately carried out, and that what is
necessary for adequate problem solving in this instance is more or better collaboration.
Another possibility involves recognizing that there are limits to pragmatic, collaborative
48
grass-roots level problem-solving, and that at some point coercive, centralized regulatory
decisions might need to be imposed on stakeholders in a top-down fashion.
What should be eschewed is the assumption that these possibilities are mutually
exclusive. More and better collaboration may be helpful at generating more political
support to finally achieve adequate ballast water treatment regulations that have eluded
its supporters for years. If we take a cue from Harold Lasswell’s famous definition of
politics as the determination of who gets what, we might usefully find a solution by
focusing on how benefits and costs are allocated by the various approaches to the
invasive species problem. The shipping industry and other stakeholders benefiting from
the less rigorous, less effective, and less costly status-quo regulatory regime may be
persuaded to become fully supportive if collaboration could identify some cost-sharing
compromise. A close look at the stakeholders suggests that disagreements are not
primarily about fundamental goals, but are instead about secondary issues of cost
allocation and timeframes.
James Q. Wilson’s policy typology based on the dispersion-concentration of costs
and benefits can be usefully applied in this situation (Wilson, 1980). Wilson categorizes
policies into combinations where benefits and costs are either dispersed widely or
concentrated narrowly. The current lack of adequate policy preventing aquatic invasive
species externalizes considerable ecological and economic costs to the environment and
other third parties. This is an example of a category of policies that have costs that are
widely dispersed due to externalities, while creating benefits that are concentrated
narrowly (in this case on the shipping industry and associated stakeholders in the supply
chain).
49
Wilson says the incentive structures of the policy-making environment are such
that these kinds of policy (concentrated benefits and dispersed costs) are typical, given
that they promise adequate return on investment for a dedicated handful of supporters,
while none (or few) have adequate incentive to oppose them given the dispersed nature of
their costs. However, given enough attention, growing political pressure can make
remaining in these policy situations untenable, so removing the externalities (the
dispersed costs) seems at some point to be inevitable.
Rigorously regulating ballast water would create economic and environmental
benefits that would be widely dispersed in that the prevention of ecological harms and
economic costs associated with mitigating those harms would be reduced, providing
relief not just to the environment but to the public as well. The key point of political
conflict would lie in determining who pays the costs of these dispersed, environmental
and economic benefits.
On Table 1 this question is represented in whether the shift rightward from the
lower left-hand quadrant would be horizontal – where benefits are dispersed, and costs
are dispersed as well, in this case government providing some form of subsidy to
Table 1. Benefit-Cost Typology for Invasive Species Regulation
Concentrated Economic Benefits
Dispersed
Ecological Benefits
Concentrated
Costs on Shipping
Preferred policy
of environmental organizations & allies in government
Dispersed Costs on the Public
Status Quo -
no ballast water treatment regulation
Preferred policy of shipping industry
& allies in government
50
shipping to install and operate ballast water treatment equipment – or whether the shift
would be rightward and upward – where the benefits are dispersed, and the costs are
concentrated on the shipping industry and its consumers.
Several arguments can be made to justify either scenario. But much current
research into the economic benefits and costs associated with the ecological goods and
services created by the Great Lakes ecosystem suggests that the shift should occur.
Disagreements among industry and certain environmental organizations of stringency of
technological requirements, the speed with which industry must meet them, which federal
laws will apply and which agency will enforce them, and whether state regulations will or
will not be preempted, suggests that a number of bargaining points exist to achieve some
form of mutually satisfying compromise might be arrived at via further, more meaningful
collaboration amongst stakeholders. Given the current states of the economy and public
opinion, the case for public subsidy of the costs seems difficult to make, but potentially
possible. Of course, the question of public subsidy isn’t an either – or issue, as partial
subsidies are always possible. If in the bargain, quicker, more stringent regulations are
achieved at a uniform level throughout the region, some sort of compromise might be
palatable to a wide spectrum of Great Lakes stakeholders.
Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Dr. Arthur I. Cyr for his assistance in the procurement of funding and in the preparation of this paper. Role of the funding sources: This paper was funded by the Wisconsin Sea Grant and Root-Pike Watershed Trust. Support from these organizations facilitated a colloquium series on invasive species in the Great Lakes, as well as community outreach on the issue, and had no role in the collection or analysis of data, or in the writing of the paper itself.
51
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