Environment & Outdoors

Green Visions: invasive species cost Great Lakes $200 million a year-why won't the EPA do something?

The North 103.3 | By Lisa Johnson

Published December 16, 2020 at 11:05 AM CST

Invasive species are particularly hard on Minnesota, wreaking havoc on outdoor recreation, pumping stations and other infrastructure, and costing the Great Lakes $200 million a year.

But the EPA's proposed new ballast water standards, intended to limit the damage of invasive species but released in October to a mere 30 day public comment period, give lakers a free pass from having to treat ballast water.

No, says Marc Smith, the policy director of the National Wildlife Federation, lakers aren't responsible for bringing invasive species to the Great Lakes; it's the salties that do that. But the lakers do move the invasives around.

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Lisa Johnson

Lisa Johnson started her broadcast career anchoring the television news at her high school and spinning country music at KWWK/KOLM Radio in Rochester, Minnesota. She was a reporter and news anchor at KTHI in Fargo, ND (not to mention the host of a children's program called "Lisa's Lane") and a radio reporter and anchor in Moorhead, Bismarck, Wahpeton and Fergus Falls.Since 1991, she has hosted Northland Morning on KUMD. One of the best parts of her job includes "paying it forward" by mentoring upcoming journalists and broadcasters on the student news team that helps produce Northland Morning. She also loves introducing the different people she meets in her job to one another, helping to forge new "community connections" and partnerships.Lisa has amassed a book collection weighing over two tons, and she enjoys reading, photography, volunteering with Animal Allies Humane Society and fantasizing about farmland. She goes to bed at 8pm, long before her daughter, two cats, or three dogs.

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