A hearing in Chicago Wednesday on the viability of the current Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system, co-sponsored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Transport Canada, closed a public comment process. It was also an instructive lesson in the "iron triangle" of 'regulated' industries, bureaucracies and their friends in Congress.
The "listening session" began with 45 minutes of talk by agency staff, including suggestions that "misinformation" was circulating in environmental circles that the Corps-Transport Canada study was just a prelude to a bigger study of how to manipulate the Great Lakes to permit gigantic ships, and even more alien species, to invade the system.
It's not misinformation, it's fact -- unless the public rises up and stops it.
While environmental groups solidly opposed even considering Seaway system expansion, the port and shipping lobbies spoke up in favor of it, and scarcely acknowledged the alien species problem they have contributed to.
All this is happening largely outside the public eye. But the results could be hugely important. They would include perhaps $10 billion of taxpayer money spent on dredging, blasting and scouring connecting channels and building new locks; and the final demise of the biological integrity of the Great Lakes.