Will Asian Carp assault Chicago, Lake Michigan similar to the way Godzilla terrorized Tokyo in the movies?

It has long been the fear of environmentalists that Asian Carp, a breed of fish considered particularly devastating to our ecology, is someday going to manage to work its way into Lake Michigan and the surrounding of the Great Lakes.

Have Asian Carp arrived at Lake Calumet? Photos by Gregory Tejeda

So it is with much trepidation that there is now evidence indicating that the Carp have made it past the electronic barricades further south near Romeoville (which the Army Corps of Engineers installed thinking that was the absolute solution to keep the Carp out of Chicago) and are now in existence in Lake Calumet.

FROM WHICH, IF they really have made it that far along the path, only now have to swim upstream through the Calumet River for about seven miles through Chicago’s South Side and will then be in Lake Michigan proper.

The Asian Carp, who initially were released accidentally into the Mississippi River somewhere down near New Orleans have managed to make it up across the nation, and across our state through the Illinois River and could now be about to take over the lake that is pride and joy to our Chicago.

Which, of course, will have many people eager to blame Chicago for letting the Asian Carp loose – even though one could claim it was the ineptitude of those who initially let the Carp loose down south who are truly to blame.

From Lake Calumet mouth to Calumet River … 

But the reality is that there’s nothing that can be done to undo the damage in the mighty Mississippi. But we can still hope that our officials can act in ways to bar them from Lake Michigan.

SO WHAT’S THE big deal about the Asian Carp? The fact is that the Asian Carp feed on anything and everything in their paths.

In doing so, they’ll devastate the ecosystems of whatever water supply they manage to get to. In a sense, everything that is alive and thriving now in Lake Michigan could wind up becoming barren, if the Carp make it that far.

And the reality is, we may well find there’s nothing we really can do to stop the Asian Carp from making the final stretch of their journey to Lake Michigan and all the other Great Lakes.

and up the river, past the Chicago Skyway bridge

If they’ve managed to work their way north from New Orleans to Chicago this far, what’s to make us think there’s anything that can be placed in their way during the final seven-mile stretch of the Calumet River?

NOW IT SHOULD be noted that the Asian Carp proper have not been found in Lake Calumet itself. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said last week that traces of DNA from Asian Carp have been found in the lake’s water.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the DNA could consist of evidence of skin cells, secretions and feces (just think, fish poop), and that those substances could well have been in the bilge water of the ships that pass through the area – if not the Asian Carp themselves.

Too bad the Asian Carp can't read signs!

It could be just genetic junk, and not the fish themselves that have made the lengthy journey from down south. Which means that rather than blaming Chicago for letting the Carp into the Great Lakes, we ought to be thinking in terms of whether or not Chicago will be “heroic” enough to prevent the trip from being completed.

I suppose we’re now on the lookout for the Asian Carp, which have been sited by the T.J. O’Brien Lock and Dam – located just south of the lake – to see if they’ve made it a few miles farther north to the lake proper, then well on their way to the “big” lake itself.

IT WILL BE intriguing to see what kind of last-ditch measures our federal and state officials (Gov. J.B. Pritzker has written to the Army Corps of Engineers offering whatever assistance the state can provide) can concoct to try to keep the Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes.

Will we see some new sort of technology devised to try to barricade off Lake Michigan? Or are we destined to see the same kind of electronic barricades erected at the mouth of the Calumet River headed into the lake as one last-ditch attempt to kill off any sort of creatures?

Will the Asian Carp be reminiscent of Godzilla films?

Is it inevitable that Lake Michigan (and the other Great Lakes) as we now know them are doomed? Or can they be saved?

It makes me wonder if we’re destined for some sort of story in our future resembling the old Godzilla movies – with the Asian Carp being a threat to our ecological well-being and threatening Chicago similar to the way the cinematic dragon-like creature used to terrorize Tokyo!

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Is Oprah an adequate substitute for Obama in touting Chicago Olympics bid?

There is a part of me that has never understood why the presence of certain people should have an influence on the outcome of events.

Why should it matter whether or not Barack Obama physically shows up in Copenhagen next month when the International Olympic Committee makes public its decision on where the summer Olympic Games are held in 2016?

DO WE REALLY believe the IOC is so lame-brained that they will go “ga ga” at the mere sight of Barack? Or are they so venal as to demand that a chief executive take time out of his schedule to “kiss the ring,” so to speak, of the president?

The logical part of my mind thinks it ought to be irrelevant to the process of picking a site for an Olympic games to be held seven years from now what Obama chooses to do with his public schedule on Oct. 2, 2009.

Yet already, we’re getting the Olympics prognosticators trying to make something out of the fact that Obama is not in Europe these days sucking up to IOC officials. He sent his wife, instead.

Personally, I’d find some face time with Michelle Obama to be more enjoyable than the president. For all I know, many IOC members may feel the same way.

YET ALREADY WE’RE getting the speculation that strikes me as being over the top.

Is Obama’s refusal to go to the IOC in recent days evidence that maybe he knows something to the effect that Chicago’s bid for the Olympics in ’16 is doomed? So his refusal to go is a way of distancing himself from the whole effort.

After all, Obama has publicly said he’d enjoy being president at a time when the Olympics came not only to his home nation, but to his home city – literally just a few blocks from that mini-mansion in the area where the Kenwood and Hyde Park neighborhoods converge.

Would it be a blot on his legacy if the IOC chose some place other than Chicago for 2016? Or could it be that the IOC is in awe of the idea of a South American Olympics – making Rio de Janeiro their favorite site?

PERSONALLY, I WOULD think it would be more of a blot on his legacy if he let Michelle Obama’s presence in Europe these days be seen as the reason for the Olympics not coming to Chicago.

Or could the pundits who predict that Obama will make a last-minute change in his schedule so he can be on hand Oct. 2 in Copenhagen. The chance to be seen at the moment of what could be one of Chicago’s greatest glories would be too much for Obama to resist.

There also are those people who think Obama will find a substitute to pitch Chicago – and some of that speculation is centering on the woman whom some like to credit with giving us the concept of Barack Obama as a U.S. president to begin with.

Will we get Oprah Winfrey trying to use her charm to sway the IOC to bring the Olympic games to the city where her production company and famed television talk show are based (even though she hasn’t really lived among us in years)?

WINFREY HERSELF MADE the comment to the Chicago Tribune, which had a reporter-type person in Toronto to cover the opening of “Precious,” a film of which she is an executive producer.

“If I feel I can be useful there, then that’s what I will do,” she told the newspaper. Of course, she also told other reporter-types that she does not see herself as needing to get politically involved, saying she thinks helping to get Obama elected was significant enough.

So who knows what she will actually do? A live version of the “Oprah Winfrey Show” from Copenhagen on Oct. 2? It makes as much sense as anything else that will be proposed in coming weeks.

I suppose in the superficial sense of needing a “big name” in Copenhagen, “Oprah” could substitute for “Obama” in terms of trying to draw attention to the merits of holding an Olympic games in the United States and in Chicago specifically.

BUT WHY SHOULD it really matter which “big name” is on hand to hear the announcement, since I’m sure that the officials from Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo and Madrid will come up with names their consider equally big.

Does Chicago’s merits to host an international spectacle really decline significantly just because Obama chooses to not have Air Force One take him to Copenhagen?

It almost makes me wonder if the Chicago 2016 officials did a weak job on promoting Chicago’s merits for hosting such an event, if so much attention is being paid on whether or not Obama will show up – or whether he gets an adequate substitute.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Of course Chicago 2016 would like to have Oprah Winfrey (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-oprah-chicago-olympics-14-sep14,0,4563629.story) on board in support of their work.

Olympics could motivate Chicago to upgrade mass transit system, facilities

It’s a shame that Bill Veeck is not still alive. If he were, he’d be the man whom I would want Chicago to put in charge of the efforts to bring the 2016 Olympic Games to the Second City.

It’s not because I would want midgets or fireworks or any spectacles to be used to entice the International Olympic Committee to realize that Chicago is a much nicer place (in my totally biased opinion) than Tokyo, Madrid or Rio de Janeiro (which my gut says is the front-runner).

BUT VEECK HAD an attitude toward his management of professional baseball clubs that I think would be totally appropriate in trying to persuade the thousands of Chicagoans who are somehow convinced that staging an Olympics in Chicago would be a bad thing.

Veeck was the man who, at various times, owned the Chicago White Sox (twice), the Cleveland Indians, the St. Louis Browns, and minor league teams in Milwaukee and Miami. He never spent more than six years at a time in any one spot, because he realized that actually owning a major league team was not the way to make money.

Veeck, in his 1961 biography “Veeck, as in Wreck,” noted that he made his money when he sold the team, and also managed to make money off sideline interests that fed off of the baseball team.
This computer-generated illustration is what a Chicago Olympic Stadium on the South Side would look like, at least until they disassembled most of it following the games. Illustration provided by http://www.chicago2016.org/.

That logic is relevant because a lot of people are tossing out the notion that Olympic Games spectacles are worthless for their host cities. It is next to impossible for a municipal government to make a profit on the actual staging of the games.

I’LL AGREE. I’LL also say that such logic is pretty much worthless.

What is relevant is how much of the infrastructure built for an Olympic Games remains of use to the city after the games are over and done with.

Many cities use the occasion of hosting an Olympics to build new athletic facilities that later go on to serve as home fields for their professional sports teams. That certainly was the case for the Olympics held in North America – where Los Angeles and Atlanta use their Olympic stadiums for college football and major league baseball, respectively.

And in Montreal, the construction of the “Big O” was what kept the Montreal Expos in the French-Canadian city for nearly three decades.

NOW IN CHICAGO, our sports teams are not in need of new stadiums, with the exception of the Cubs (who likely are committed to a major renovation of their existing building).

So what we have to gain from staging an Olympics are the services that feed into the staging of the games.

In particular, I’m talking about mass transit.

When the International Olympics Committee on Wednesday announced that Chicago was one of the four cities still being considered for 2016, they issued a series of rankings in various categories that indicated they have serious concerns about Chicago’s mass transit and its ability to handle the crush of people who will converge from around the world to the shores of Lake Michigan.

IN SHORT, THE Chicago Transit Authority (in fact, all the agencies that oversee mass transit programs in the six-county Chicago area) is going to need major improvements and expansion.

It’s not like those improvements would disappear once the games were complete (although it still amazes me that city officials are talking about a temporary stadium in Washington Park to host the opening and closing ceremonies and major outdoor events).

I wish Chicago area government officials were willing to take on the task of making mass transit improvements just for the sake of improving the system. But if it takes a major event like an Olympics to get our officials off their duffs, then I’ll settle for it.

Veeck would realize that the notion of whether an Olympic Games was a success for Chicago would be on whether the presence of the event made Chicago a better and more interesting place to be.

PLUS, LET’S NOT forget midgets and fireworks.

I don’t know what kind of crazy stunts he would have been coming up with all across the Chicago area, but he would have created an atmosphere that would have people eagerly anticipating the notion of world-class athletes coming to our city to show off their skills.

He would have made people want to get tickets so they could see the activity for themselves, almost so they could claim in future years that they were present for what was one of Chicago’s historic moments (seriously, an Olympics – if handled correctly – would be as significant event in the city’s history as either of the World’s Fairs held in Chicago).

Veeck also would have come up with stunts during the event so that, even if an athletic world’s record was not broken at the particular event one attended, that person would still have a pleasant memory of having fun.

INSTEAD, WE’RE GETTING Chicago political people who are letting this thing get bogged down in partisan politics. People seriously bring up the petty politics of Antoin Rezko and Todd Stroger – which likely will create an atmosphere among the International Olympics Committee that a Chicago Olympics is too much of a headache.

It’s no wonder that the Olympics observers watching the selection process are convinced that Chicago is Number Four on the list – and probably lucky that it didn’t get dropped Wednesday for Prague.

Yes, Prague.

The Polish city was one of three that learned this week they are no longer in the running to host the Olympic games eight years from now.

CHICAGO CAN SAY it topped Baku and Doha as well. Woo Hoo! (Heavy sarcasm is intended).

I would find it depressing if this is as close as Chicago can come to staging a major international event, particularly since Chicago likes to think it is a “world-class” city (even though no two people have the exact same definition of what constitutes world-class).

I don’t understand the mentality of Chicagoans who would rather not be bothered with such events. The reason we live in a major metropolis is because we want to be at the center of the significant events.

If we wanted to be separated from the masses, we’d go live in some rural burg. Heck, I never would have left Springfield, Ill., which is a completely nice small city with an interesting historic character (you almost expect to see a plaque reading, “On this spot in 1845, Abraham Lincoln blew his nose) to it.

BUT IT’S NOT Chicago.

We ought to realize we are a central point of the United States, and not just because our city is located near the middle of the country. Chicago and the surrounding Midwestern U.S. could provide a truly American atmosphere to an Olympics that wasn’t achieved at any of the previous U.S.-hosted games in California or Georgia.

Instead, we seem too willing to give in and let the games go to Rio de Janeiro (allegedly the frontrunner in part because the games have never before been staged in a South American country).

I find such thoughts discouraging.

I WOULD LIKE it if come the 50th year of my life, my home city were to stage an event that would become one of the classic moments in its history – although I’m not sure an Olympics in Chicago would warrant a fifth star on the city’s flag.

And I would particularly enjoy being able to go to the games while taking a CTA elevated train that does not rock along rickety tracks that are more than a century old.

Not only would the spectacle be something to see, I like the notion that the city could feed off of the infrastructure improvements that would so desperately be needed if the event were to be held in the Chicago area.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: We’re Number Four. We beat Baku. It doesn’t take much to make Mayor Daley (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=29683) “very excited” these days.

The municipalities surrounding Chicago are expecting to garner their own economic benefits (http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2008/06/02/daily25.html) if the (http://www.nwi.com/articles/2008/05/19/news/illiana/doc287bd1abccbaf0a48625744d007d52bd.txt) Olympic Games were to be held here.

Doha official were gracious (http://www.gamesbids.com/cgi-bin/news/viewnews.cgi?category=1&id=1212598639) in offering their congratulations to the cities that remain in the running for the Olympics.

The “Champion of the Little Guy” would have created such a fun-loving atmosphere (http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041027_3631_db078.htm) that Chicagoans would have been clamoring to have the 2016 summer games in their city.