Poison: The green way to flush Asian carp out

Who ever would have thought dumping poison in a river would actually be considered the green way to go?

It’s pretty obvious something is wrong with the way we’re taking care of the world when dumping poison into the water supply is the solution to an environmental problem.

But that’s exactly what’s happened this week in Chicago as the invasive species Asian carp were a splash away from entering the Great Lakes – widely thought to be an environmental disaster. Not to mention the voracious carp could potentially swallow up a multibillion-dollar fishing industry at the same time.

So why the poison? Well, the poison was necessary to repair the electric barriers now halting fish from swimming up the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

So far, news outlets report no Asian carp have been found amongst the ridiculous amount of dead fish. Reuters reports 200,000 pounds of fish are expected to be poisoned, and then examined and dumped into a landfill. Now that’s what I call green!

Let’s hope world governments will have a little more foresight in the future before allowing fish to be transported across the ocean. In this case, Asian carp were brought to the states to eat the nasty stuff collecting at the bottom of commercial fish farms – where thousands of fish are grown in ponds as a way to cut out any sort of actual fishing.

Not surprisingly, the large fish ended up in the southern watershed after flooding in the 1990s and swam up the Mississippi River to where they now wait for a chance to jump into the largest system of fresh surface water in the world, according to the EPA.

The carp have already done their damage in the Illinois River, where they now account for 95 percent of the biomass.

Their is some good news about the 2,000 pounds of poison used in this operation. Although it kills fish and freshwater snails, it doesn’t contaminate for long. After just a few days, it should be completely neutralized.