Rotenone & The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal

Jase, here's a better map but not with all of the data you want. http://graphics.json..._100508_big.jpg
They applied rotenone 7 miles or greater upstream from the barrier and sampled water with Asian carp DNA from several points above the shock barrier (including from Lake Michigan). They did find one Asian carp above the barrier when they applied rotenone (but I still can't be sure if it's a silver or a bighead as reports vary).

As far as boat traffic from my first hand perspective: At this time it's pretty light volume due to the economy. When the economy was robust, I saw pretty decent volume in the Cal-Sag when I crossed it at least twice daily. Usually barge traffic and occasional recreational boats. The tour boats are usually sightseeing and often architectural in nature and close to Chicago city limits (at least I don't know of any tour boats that operate far outside city limits). From the looks of the traffic most seem to originate or has a local business as it'd destination. I could be wrong but I don't think many (if any) of these barges are bound for the great lakes and beyond. I don't have data to support my observations.

Bruce, from my experience freight on the water is a significant savings over rail if you don't mind waiting. I use ocean and water freight as well as rail, truck and air. Nothing is cheaper or slower than putting it on a boat. I don't want to sound as though I support this or any canal/dam for commercial vessels (I don't) but I thought I'd tell you my experiences first hand.

From my perspective...Chicago is a union town and I would have thought filling in the canal and setting up a small port type of operation would have pleased the unions quite a bit. Dock the boat, unload it and put it on a new vessel, rail, truck etc. Seems like it would add a bit to the freight cost but I would have thought it a perfect mate for the politics of Chicago.

Jase, here's a better map but not with all of the data you want. http://graphics.json..._100508_big.jpg

Thanks, Uland. That's the best map I've seen yet.

When I was looking at this earlier, I found that the Wikipedia article indicates there may be more complexity than would be expected to the flow of the Chicago River. My guess is that this is only talking about the Chicago River proper right near the lake, but still interesting.

Recently, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign built a numerical model of the Chicago River system. The resulting three-dimensional, hydrodynamic simulation suggested that density currents may be causing a bi-directional flow in the Chicago River during winter seasons. In the model, at the surface, the river was flowing east to west, away from Lake Michigan, as expected. But deep below, near the riverbed, water was traveling west to east, toward the lake. This flow could be pulling some water out of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

Unfortunately the original source is no longer available. I would assume people currently looking at the carp issue have ruled out any flow in the opposite direction as a possible source of the upstream carp DNA finds.

A speaker this weekend at a local conference cite an Economics paper that said that by closing the Great Lakes to "salties" (ie the lock system on the St. Lawrence River), there would be a net gain of ~1,400. I can only imagine a similar situation for the Chicago SSC.

This was the speaker:

http://msupress.msu....php?bookID=3636

I think this is worth a read for anyone interested in this topic.

I wish I'd written down the authors.

Ohio DNR also pointed out something that slipped my radar. There are 3 bighead carp records in the Ohio waters of Lake Erie that are well documented (look at the NAS site Jase post yesterday). There's actually 5, but two of them don't have the vouchers. They're believed to have been released as part of a tradition where two are purchased, one is eaten, the other is released. This tradition was discovered when someone was trying to release on into a fountain in Toronto. Wow.

Todd

A speaker this weekend at a local conference cite an Economics paper that said that by closing the Great Lakes to "salties" (ie the lock system on the St. Lawrence River), there would be a net gain of ~1,400.

1,400 jobs, I assume?

Yes, sorry I didn't make that clear.

Todd