"Seaway Scott" Walker: Little To Say About Role In Great Lakes, But Why?

Raise your hands if you knew that Scott Walker is the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation (SLSDC)?

Since 2004?

Wonder why Walker has not been touting this appointment, and all the good things he's been learning, and doing there for the public for six years.

Talk about a lost opportunity, but a vivid illumination into Walker's absentee leadership (sic) style.

The US corporation whose board Walker chairs is a creation of Congress and an arm of the US Department of Transportation; with a Canadian counterpart, it manages the St. Lawrence Seaway, operates locks (two are in the US), issues regulations, spends federal funds and carries out other financial, environmental and economic duties, according to a 2008 study.

The Corporation has a five-member board; its website is here, and from the website is makeup of the current board:

SLSDC Advisory Board

Scott K. Walker, Chairman
Milwaukee County Executive
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
2004-present

Charles E. "Trip" Dorkey III, Member
Attorney, McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP
New York, New York
2006-present

Jack E. McGregor, Member
Attorney, Cohen and Wolf, P.C.
Bridgeport, Connecticut
2004-present

William L. Wilson, Member
Research Fellow, University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
1996-present

The Corporation and board mission and work, laid out in its 2009 annual report here - - show that it has a role in current Seaway issues:

Invasive species prevention, freighter ballast water control and other important matters that directly impact the Great Lakes regional economy, the relative value of the Seaway, and the overall health and vitality of the Great Lakes - - issues on the front-burner in Wisconsin, a Great Lakes state, but from which Walker is oddly absent.

The Journal Sentinel has been pounding away on these issues for years - - and as recently as ten days ago, the paper's expert Dan Egan, framed some of the Seaway issues - - including its possible closure - - in a story October 3rd this way:

"And the volume of cargo carried by the Seaway's overseas vessels - mostly inbound steel and outbound grain - has been in decline for years, tumbling last year to just over 5 million tons. 

"How little cargo is that?

"Less than what could be carried annually by a single daily inbound and outbound train...

"Door still open

"Ballast discharges are blamed for the majority of invasions since the Seaway opened, including zebra mussels, quagga mussels, round gobies, spiny water fleas and, most recently, the bloody red shrimp. Ships take in ballast to steady less-than-full vessels on the high seas, and then that water - and whatever life is lurking in it - can get discharged as cargo is loaded at port.

"By 2006, a new species was being discovered in the lakes, on average, every 28 weeks, according to Great Lakes invasive species expert and McGill University professor Anthony Ricciardi.

"Since then, the U.S. and Canada have begun requiring all overseas ships bound for the Great Lakes to flush their ballast tanks with mid-ocean saltwater in an attempt to kill or expel unwanted species.

"Seaway operators say the rule to flush tanks with saltwater has reduced the risk of new ballast invasions "to extremely low levels."

"But Ricciardi says it would be "premature and foolhardy" to think the ballast problem has been solved. While he calls the new saltwater flush rules "very promising," he says it will take several years before their effectiveness can be assessed...

"Even if a saltwater flush kills or expels over 90% of a ship's ballast tank dwellers, it doesn't eliminate them all - and it only takes a couple of survivors to ignite an invasion."

I see a mention of an appointed Seaway position in a 2006 Journal Sentinel Walker County Exec re-election bio accompanying a campaign story, but it misidentifies the name of the board without further explanation.

I do not see on Walker's online campaign bio any mention of the board chairmanship - - held since George W. Bush gave it to Walker in 2004.

My assumption is that Bush and the GOP did this to boost Walker's executive profile in his short-lived 2005-2006 campaign for Governor against incumbent Jim Doyle - -  and to neutralize Gov. Jim Doyle's role on the Great Lakes Council of Governors - - but Walker didn't make the run in '06,  and Doyle is not running in 2010.

So Walker's still there as Seaway board Chairman, doing who knows what, and why, but hasn't drawn any attention to it - - though two years ago, the Journal Sentinel editorial board concluded that the harm caused by the invasives outweighed benefits from international shipping and urged that the Seaway be closed to the ocean-going freighters.

So Walker has not been dragged into to theses thorny issues and debates about the damage done to the Great Lakes by the Seaway's international freighters, in whose ballast water more than 180 invasive species have hitch-hiked in, says the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, which advocates for tough ballast-water management regulations.

Here's an irony, and probably not a good issue for Walker: the invasive Zebra Mussel, which is at the root of the stench along the Lake Michigan shoreline near and north of the County-owned Bradford Beach.

(And please, Walker partisans: do not send me comments about the MMSD: the stench along the lakefront is from dead algae - - not sewage-and-stormwater overflows - - and it has been the MMSD that has helped provide Walker's near-bankrupt operation with money and equipment to collect the algae and give new life to the Beach. Really.)

These tiny mussels in huge numbers filter the water, then sunlight hits the shallow bottom near the shoreline and grows the algae that rots in abundance and stinks up the Beach.

Another invasive, the Quagga Mussel, is clogging water intake pipes that cool power plants across the Great Lakes - - again having entered in ocean-going freighters' ballast water.

It costs industry big bucks to keep those pipes mussel-free.

All these and scores of others invasive species sneak in on ships whose declining cargo are worth far less than the damage to Great Lakes industries and fisheries.

This is controversial stuff.  Everyday anglers - - regardless of party - - plain hate the Seaway. The fight does not easily reduce to talking point.

And "Stop Seaway Scott" is not the bumper sticker that Walker is looking for.

More questions:

Does Walker go the meetings the Corporation board is supposed to have at least quarterly? I haven't yet spotted the meetings online.

Does he help set policy - - and are there examples?

Does he stick up for Wisconsin's recreational and commercial interests whose prized native fish are being driven out by invaders?

Or is he taking the side of the big international shippers and their freighters (and I'm not talking about the inter-lake ships that go from Milwaukee to Superior)?

Or is this more political place-holding, where an elected official hangs onto a position for the symbolic or stepping-stone opportunities, but evades the tough work and the responsibility that comes with it.

That sounds familiar.