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Granholm calls for carp summit

By Rick Pluta, Michigan Public Radio Network

LANSING, MI –

Governor Granholm is calling for a White House summit of Great Lakes governors to try and hammer out a solution that would ensure the Asian carp does not reach Lake Michigan. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused Michigan's emergency request to close the Chicago shipping canal to keep the carp out of the Great Lakes.

The Asian carp can grow to four-feet long and 100 pounds. It crowds out other species by devouring all the food.

The Obama administration opposed Michigan's request to the Supreme Court, but the governor says the White House has no interest in seeing an ecological disaster strike the Great Lakes.

"They don't want to see the carp in the Great Lakes either," she says. "They understand the significance of that for our eco-system. The question is, how do we quickly get a solution and that means immediately to the carp coming into Lake Michigan."

Granholm says the only way to do that is to shut down the canal while a permanent separation of the Great Lakes from the Mississippi water system is devised.

Shipping companies oppose closing the canal. They say it would cost millions of dollars and create more pollution by forcing freight to be carried overland on trucks.

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