LETTER: Citizens must tell Congress to protect lakes before it’s too late

To Ozaukee Press:

The Great Lakes, the largest body of fresh water in the world, should not be a part of partisan politics.

The Great Lakes deserve better than this.

In a recent vote in the U.S. Senate, the federal government almost shifted the control of the regulation of ocean-going vessels regulations concerning dumping their saltwater ballast in the Great Lakes from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Coast Guard.

Say what you want about the EPA, but before the EPA we had tributaries of the Great Lakes on fire.

The Coast Guard, I am sure, does not care what gets dumped into our Great Lakes, but citizens certainly should. Wisconsin’s Sen.

Tammy Baldwin voted against this change. The state’s other senator, Ron Johnson, voted for it.

Port Washington recently sponsored a one-day seminar on the condition of the Great Lakes to a full house. The only politician who was represented was again, Tammy Baldwin.

I was very disappointed that our other representatives were not there.

Seafood is our number one trade deficit, and yet Ewig Bros., in business since 1932, mainly gets only chubs from Lake Michigan, whereas they used to get almost all of their fish from Lake Michigan.

I should think enough is enough.

The Great Lakes used to have room for commercial and sport fishing but now, primarily because invasive species, the commercial fishing is gone.

Before long, if the Corps of Engineers keeps sitting on its hands, the lake will be full of Asian carp.

Please call or write your members of Congress and tell them we don’t need more studies or more partisan politics—we need action and our Democrat and Republican representatives need to join together and fund what needs to be done so that our future generations will have beaches they can use, water they can drink and commercial and sports fishing side by side.

Burt Babcock
Port Washington