Three environmental groups filed a friend of the court brief today urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a Michigan lawsuit that aims for a long-term permanent solution to keep the destructive Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan through Chicago’s artificial navigational channels.

Filed by the Alliance for the Great Lakes, the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the brief says the nation’s highest court is the proper venue for deciding a dispute that affects everyone who lives in a Great Lakes state.

“An issue of this magnitude and consequence for all of the Great Lakes states should land squarely in the Supreme Court,” said Lyman Welch, attorney and Alliance Water Quality Program manager. “We’re asking the Court to intervene in an unprecedented crisis that, left unchecked, will impact the livelihoods of all who depend on a healthy Great Lakes.”

Built to divert Chicago's wastewater away from Lake Michigan and into the Illinois River, the city’s complex system of rivers and canals creates an aquatic superhighway for the jumbo-sized Asian carp and other invasives to travel between the Lake Michigan and Mississippi watersheds.

The environmental groups have called for a physical separation of the two watersheds – essentially returning them to their natural status – as the only permanent way to protect both basins.

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