University of Wisconsin-Superior researchers are testing systems to kill invasive species in Great Lakes ships' hulls. Photo: Jerry Bielicki, US Army Corps of Engineers

By Jeff Gillies, jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
July 13, 2009

Associated Press reporter Elizabeth Dunbar recently wrote this story that checks in with researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Superior who are testing systems to kill aquatic organisms hiding in the ballast water inside of ships. They’re using a system of tanks and pumps to replicate the innards of a ship navigating freshwater — the only such facility the world.

Treatment systems have to eliminate foreign organisms that wreak ecological havoc on the Great Lakes while leaving the water clean enough to return to the lakes.  The systems are one element of the patchwork of ballast regulations passed and proposed by Great Lakes states.  The confusion of following different rules in different states has shippers and environmentalists calling on Congress to pass a unified set of federal ballast rules.