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By guest editor Billy Joe Redeux

This is a picture of the fish took by the truck driver after they nailed him. One thing I never knew is them live asians swim upside down - but then, they is from the other side of the world

It’s a ill wind that blows no good, and when the Sweetwater Springs Fish Farm of Indiana was fined last week in Sarnia, Ontario, for bringin’ living Bighead and Silver Asian carp into Canada without a permit, we American’s didn’t react the way we shoulda.

Wake up, boys ‘n girls! Those were American Asian carp one of our own peoples was trying to sneak into Canada. Never mind taking his truck. They shoulda zero toleranced his house, kids and the dog and cat too.

Draining our natural resources for the benefit of foreigners! Those Asian carp are ours, and they ought to be protected by the same conservation laws that sets seasons for our other game fishes.

And what did the Canadian government do with the 6000 pounds of carp? They turned around and sold ‘em and kept the profit for themselves. That’s what that is.

So what, if in the province of Ontario possession of live bighead carp has been illegal since ‘05? (after they confiscated the fish load, weren’t they in possession?)

Sure, but hey, don’t you know by now? Governments rules never applies to them. There’s another rule they snuck into the small print. That one lets them do whatever the hell they want.

We oughta’ be ashamed. Trash talking ways to keep carp out of the Great Lakes while at the same time secretly cashin’ in on ‘em. How good do they taste? Ain’t quite sure, but there is them that likes Chineese cookin’ And we hear carp is a delicacy in parts of China. Course over there they got so many peoples to feed, they don't care how many bones it has. If it can move, they eat it and go “yum!”

To paraphrase Ontario Conservation officer Bill Ingham, “Invasive species have to be dead before you can freely bring them into Ontario.”

I’m glad to know that, Bill. But, could you run that by me again? Are you sayin’ invasive species are OK long as they’re dead? You ever hear of fish eggs, Bill?

Back to our American entre-prener: Sweetwater Springs was fined $20,000 after pleading guilty. “It was either that or lose my truck too.” Sweetwater Springs Fish Farm owner Mark Eikenberry griped, while pointing at other American companies that are actively scooping millions of pounds of American Asian carp outta the Illinois River. Where them fish is goin, nobody knows, but I bet a lot of cats and dogs can speak Chinee pretty good these days.

What're we missin' here? People will pay for these things we’re being brainwashed to hate? They taste good deepfried?

Instead of doling out food stamps to everybody who’s figured out they don’t need to work to still eat, why aren’t we handing them fishing poles and a box of doughballs instead? Cut out the middle man, let the end users catch the carp.

Now that I think of it, why should we listen to the six billion dollar industry they call sport fishing? Far as I can see, most of the six bil, goes to LaBatts and Exxon. I say bring them carp on, and let them fisheads study up on how to catch ‘em.

The waste dump outside Baotou, China, one of the most polluted cities in the world. Courtesy DailyMail

Last year, encouraged by the federal government, New York and other Great Lakes states came up with an initiative they call G.L.O.W. (Great Lakes Offshore Wind). In New York, the plan calls for hundreds (and eventually thousands) of new wind towers to be erected in Lake Ontario’s nearshore waters.

New York Power Authority (NYPA) President Bernard Kessel has promised to name developers this spring and to also announce the proposed locations of the projects to be built in Lakes Ontario and Erie.

However, as first reported in The London Daily Mail on January 29, 2011, there’s an ugly side to this so-called "green" energy. Industrial wind turbines rely on gigantic magnets, and magnets require rare earth metals.  The mining of these metals has had a disastrous and ever-widening impact in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, site of 90 percent of the world’s reserves of rare earth metals.

The principal culprit is Neodymium, an element that when alloyed with Iron and Boron, has a crystalline structure critical to the forming of the giant magnets. A single permanent magnet generator would require more than 4000 pounds of this alloy.

On the outskirts of the Chinese city of Baotou, the dumping of toxic tailings from the extraction and refining processes have resulted in a five mile wide lake of foaming, simmering toxic sludge covered by a crust of black dust. In nearby villages, residents wear face masks when outside.  Animals sicken and die. Teeth fall out and hair turns white. Children are born with soft bones and cancer rates skyrocketed. Official studies confirmed unusually high cancer rates, osteoporosis, skin and respiratory diseases, and revealed that the lake’s radiation levels were ten times higher than the surrounding countryside.

That was five years ago. Ongoing tests have been kept secret and Chinese officials, calling the tailing piles "a national resource," refuse to acknowledge any health risks to the surrounding villages.

If it’s true that - as one Jamie Choi, an expert on toxics for Greenpeace China said (as reported by the DM), “There’s not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not disastrous for the environment. Ores are being extracted by pumping acid into the ground and then they are processed using more acid and other chemicals,” - and also true that these unregulated tailing dumps are destroying communities and killing people. If we are unable to build these wind towers without knowingly taking part in the government of China’s inhuman, deliberate and cynical degradation of the environment, there is only one ethical and moral way to respond: stop erecting them at once.

What we need and want to know right now, New York officials, is this: what percent of that waste in China is *already* on us because of the unworldly wind monsters you’ve permitted to date, and if we allow you to build a thousand more, how much more death and destruction will we have become responsible for then?

In a state (New York) that could meet its renewable energy goal for 2020 by merely closing one of its oil fired generating plants, the price of wind seems too high a price to pay, both in dollars and in human terms, for energy that at best is of questionable value.

What do we mean by questionable value? Credit the London DM again for this example. Citing energy use figures in the UK for December 2010, an unusually cold month with sub-zero temperatures, peak electricity demand for any day was just over 60,000 megawatts. Maximum capacity for wind turbines in the UK is 5,900 megawatts, or almost ten percent of the peak demand figure.

How did wind power do? On December 20, wind energy contributed 140 megawatts – 2.43 percent of its own capacity, and only 0.2 percent of what was actually needed that day.

And this is what the citizens of the UK get after billions of pounds of investment and subsidies?

Let’s not make any of the same mistakes here.

Months ago, DNA evidence from Indiana University said Asian carp had breached the stopgap barriers set up in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. Nothing was done, and now it may be too late. An adult Asian Carp has been captured on the doorstep of Lake Michigan, far beyond electric barriers meant to keep it and millions of others like it out of the Great Lakes.

According to the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee,  on Tuesday June 22, a 19.6 pound, 34.6-inch male bighead carp became entangled in a fishing net in Lake Calumet on Chicago’s South Side, a waterway that connncects directly to Lake Michigan about six miles away, marking this date as possibly the first ever time the actual first stroke of a major ecological disaster has been recognized and documented as it occurred.

photo by www.bringbackthesalmon.caAfter an absence of more than 100 years, landlocked Atlantic Salmon, once the undisputed king of

During the 1980's, NYSDEC efforts to re-introduce the species failed - an enzyme present in alewives, a non-native species that then was the primary food source - made it difficult for Atlantic's to spawn. Chinook, introduced to the lake in the 70's have no such difficulty, but unlike Atlantic Salmon, which return to the lake after spawning, Chinooks die after spawning and the population must be supported by stocking.

The Canadian effort seems to have sidestepped the enzyme problem, attributing improved spawning success to much improved water quality in the lake and the subsequent revitalization of benthoic species such as sculpin not previously available to offer a "balanced" diet. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle has a nice story on the subject today, which includes news that spawning salmon have been found in the Salmon River near Pulaski, NY.

Dr. Martin A. Stapanian, author of "Burbot: Ecology, Management, and Culture," and research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Lake Erie Biological Station, was joking, but as he reported on the resurgence of this long endangered species, some interesting facts about the Burbot emerged. Here's the full interview, which appeared yesterday in GREAT LAKES ECHO.