MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has delayed a $1.2 billion project meant to keep invasive carp from reaching the Great Lakes by at least several months, saying he’s worried President Donald Trump might not cover the federal government’s share of the costs and that it would leave his state on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Here’s what to know:
States, federal government have been planning the project for years
Illinois, Michigan and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been planning since 2020 to install a gantlet of technologies in the Des Plaines River near Joliet, Illinois, to deter carp from entering Lake Michigan.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated nearly $226 million in federal spending for the project and last year Illinois and Michigan’s congressional delegations secured provisions in the Water Resources Development Act calling for the federal government to pay 90% of operation and maintenance costs following completion.
Pritzker shelves the project
A groundbreaking ceremony had been scheduled for Tuesday. But Illinois Department of Natural Resources Director Natalie Phelps Finnie, a Pritzker appointee, sent the Corps a letter on Monday saying that the agency will delay turning over property for the project to the Corps until May at the earliest while state officials seek written assurances that the federal funding will materialize as promised.
The Trump administration issued a memo in late January freezing federal grants and loans. Administration officials said the pause was necessary to review whether spending aligned with Trump’s executive orders on issues such as climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
The freeze caused widespread chaos. The administration rescinded the memo less than two days later, but money for things such as early childhood education, pollution reduction and HIV prevention research has remained tied up, nearly two dozen Democratic states, including Illinois and Michigan, allege in a federal lawsuit. A judge ordered the administration on Monday to “immediately take every step necessary” to unfreeze all federal grants and loans.
Pritzker, a Democrat and one of Trump’s most vocal critics, said the Trump administration has withheld $117 million in federal grants for the Illinois DNR, forcing the state to put 70 infrastructure projects on hold and raising questions about whether the money for the carp project will be there.
“I have a responsibility to protect Illinois taxpayers,” Pritzker said in a statement. “If the federal government does not live up to its obligations, Illinois could suffer the burden of hundreds of millions of dollars of liability.”
Prolonged delay could kill the project
Pritzker’s stance doesn’t mean all work on the project will stop. Allen Marshall, a spokesperson for the Army Corps of Engineers, said site preparation work will continue. But substantial technology installation work will be halted.
Don Jodrey, federal affairs director for the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a nonpartisan group that works to protect the lakes, said a delay of only a few months means little. Work isn’t slated to be completed until 2032, he noted.
Still, he said that he’s concerned the dust-up might escalate into a protracted political battle that could kill the project.
Invasive carp could devastate the Great Lakes
Four species of carp were imported from Asia in the 1960s and 1970s to clear algae from Deep South sewage ponds and fish farms. They escaped into the Mississippi River and have moved north into dozens of tributaries in the central U.S.
Government agencies, advocacy groups and others have long debated how to prevent them from reaching the Great Lakes, where scientists say they could out-compete native species for food and habitat. The lakes region has a fishing industry valued at $7 billion.
The project calls for bubble, sound and electric barriers
A shipping canal that forms part of the link between the Mississippi and Lake Michigan has a network of fish-repelling barriers, which the Corps says is effective but critics consider inadequate.
The new project at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam on the Des Plaines River near Joliet will provide another layer of protection further downstream.
The structure is a choke point between the Illinois River, which is infested with invasive carp, and Lake Michigan. Plans call for installing equipment there that can generate bubble curtains and electric fields to deter and stun carp; play sound frequencies that can disorient fish; and clear nuisance species from barge hulls using bubbles.
Michigan Department of Natural Resources Director Scott Bowen said in a statement to The Associated Press that it’s imperative that work on the project continue to protect Great Lakes fishing.
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