On July 19th, the National Ocean Council released a Marine Planning Handbook to support interested regional planning bodies. The handbook provides national guidelines within a flexible and collaborative regional planning approach. 

For more information, contact Meghana Desai, Senior Scientist at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced regulatory changes that will ban the importation, possession and sale of live bighead carp in all of New York State. The change eliminates an exception for sale and possession in the five boroughs of the City of New York (Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island) and the Westchester County towns of Rye, Harrison, and Mamaronek and their incorporated cities or villages. The ban responds to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's action to place Asian carp, specifically bighead carp, on the list of injurious wildlife prohibited from interstate transport by the Lacey Act. Asian carp have invaded the Mississippi River, causing declines in native species. One Asian carp species, the silver carp, is known for its "acrobatics" of jumping, causing potentially hazardous situations for boaters. Through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and base budgets, federal agencies--including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey--have funded federal and local government efforts to prevent Asian carp from moving into the Great Lakes, averaging just over $50 million per year since 2010.

For more information, contact Colleen Cain, Senior Policy Analyst at the Northeast-Midwest Institute. 

Last month the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a long-awaited draft St. John's Bayou-New Madrid Floodway project environmental impact statement concerning its controversial plan to close a gap in the Mississippi River levee system in southern Missouri. On August 6, the Corps of Engineers announced that it will provide opportunities for public comment on the project at two public meetings on August 27 and 28, in East Prairie, Missouri and Cairo, Illinois, respectively. The flood control project is designed to reduce flood impacts on small communities and a large area of agricultural land behind the levee system by cutting off the Mississippi River from the only area in Missouri where the River has significant connection with its natural floodplain. Initially proposed in the 1950s, the project has been consistently opposed by environmental and natural resource agencies, who contend that the River-floodplain connection is essential to maintain storage for flood waters, trap and filter River sediment and nutrients, and support regional and migratory wildlife and waterfowl. The Army Corps maintains that the current project is based upon "more accurate environmental methodologies, analyses and results" than an earlier proposal that was effectively halted in 2007 by federal judge's ruling. In addition to providing comments during the public meetings, written comments regarding the project may be submitted to the Army Corps by September 9, 2013. To read more details on the project and public comment opportunities, go to the Army Corps' project web site or see this summary article.

For more information, contact Mark Gorman, Policy Analyst at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.