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Being a libertarian and an environmentalist (passionate though not a zealot about either) makes me – within my customary, political circles — something of a stranger in a strange land.

My usual allies were somewhat dismayed, even politely dismissive, of my expressions of concern over the looming invasion of the Great Lakes by some non-native species of carp, already wreaking havoc in the Mississippi River and its tributaries into which they had escaped.

Not to mention disdaining of any suggestion that we might want to reconsider the wisdom (or at least recalculate the value) of the century-old system of locks and canals that has reversed the flow of the Chicago River and connected Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River basin.

Now that a 19-pound, 34-inch, Asian carp has been caught by an Illinois angler on Lake Calu­met — six miles past the electric barrier supposed to halt the fish’s quarter-century odyssey — perhaps my objectivist (”Übermensch remaking the world in his own image”) and conservative (”Commerce über alles”) friends will regard the issue as more than mere carp carping.

Experience with other foreign invaders, e.g., the zebra mussel, to cite another, unwelcome, Great Lakes homesteader, has proven, time and again, the lesson learned by the mythical Pandora millennia ago.  And it prompts three, simple — but profoundly important– questions:

1. Assuming all scientific and technological resources are made available and brought to bear, what exactly could be done to stop the proliferation of a large, aggressive, voracious, invading species of fish in the 94,000 square miles of the world’s most extensive, fresh water system?
2. What are the estimated costs — both for implementation of said remedy and compensation to the $7 billion per year, Great Lakes fishing industry in the interim?
3. Who will bear these costs?
   

As someone who had to personally pay a tree-cutting service to cope with the impact of the last Asian invader — a little, green beetle that stowed away on shipping palettes — on my tiny, little piece of our pleasant peninsulas, I am (I think, understandably) anxious about who will be required to pay for damages should giant, alien fish infest the Great Lakes.

I will hazard a guess that it will not be the commercial vessels and pleasure boaters who are using the locks and canals that raise the threat.  Thus, from their perspective not only is the impact of Asian carp on the Great Lakes hypothetical, but any resulting costs will be shared by many others — in eight states and one province. The impact of closing the fish’s point of access, on the other hand, is not only concrete and immediate, but borne entirely by them.

This is a classic example of what economist Mancur Olson first described a half-century ago as the ineluctable Logic of Collective Action: “concentrated benefits versus diffused costs.”

Fortunately, there is a way to balance these competing interests.  A solution I first suggested some years ago when I learned that my new hometown of Allen Park was confronting a similar kind of dilemma.

Ford Motor Company was asking public officials and residents to approve conversion of the last remaining cell of its landfill on the northern border of our city to accommodate toxic waste.  Company executives could not have been more unequivocal in their assurances that the chances of even the slightest leak were so vanishingly remote they should give reasonable people not the slightest hesitation.

Of course, it was precisely that prospect, whatever the likelihood, that did give pause to the good (and not obviously unreasonable) citizens of our safe and contented little community — and led to the SRO meeting at city hall.  In as much as the distance from the site in question to my own home could be measured in yards rather than miles, me among them.

So I took my opportunity during the allotted “Citizen Comment” time to make a straightforward proposal that I hoped would satisfy all parties: Ford could simply put up a bond, secured by its own assets, sufficient to indemnify all properties within range of any potential toxic leak.

Company representatives grew ashen at the suggestion.  Having to purchase all the residential, retail and commercial property in this prosperous, suburban area would be bankrupting, one of them claimed.

But, I rejoined, according to their own assessments, such a situation would never, ever arise.  So why not put up the bond?

Although I was never clear on the logic, it seems the magnitude of the risk was somehow dependent upon who was being asked to bear it.

(A parenthetical note for any who are curious as to the denouement of this tale: Whether or not the public meeting played any role, the proposal to convert the landfill to store toxic waste was shelved.  This eventually proved fortuitous.  A few years later Ford, working in cooperation with the federal government, demolished an all-but-abandoned, veterans health care complex on an adjacent property, disposing of the detritus in the conveniently available landfill.  A “reverter” clause included in the property bequest to the VA by Henry and Clara Ford reclaimed the cleared, 38-acre parcel.  Visitors today will discover two, large shopping malls and a public park where an empty hospital complex stood for years — useless, decaying and ignored.  The impetus for this salutary development is recounted in The Allen Park Veterans Clinic.)

The point in any case is that interests can be balanced.

We need not necessarily choose between ignoring the invasive species threat and permanently disrupting canal operations — if the users, the people of Chicago, the State of Illinois, or some combination of them, merely indemnifies the rest of us against the hazard.

Of course, this still resolves only the last of the three questions — begging the first two.  Both of which are more than a little problematic.

The mussel and beetle infestations cited previously were singular, inadvertent events.  The Asian carp threat is the result of a deliberate, environmental double-whammy.

The fish were intentional imports into an ecosystem lacking natural predators.  No consideration had been given to the consequences of their escape from southern farms into the Mississippi watershed — which, of course, they did during floods in the 1990’s.

Nor had any thought been given to this kind of threat a century ago when the continent’s most extensive river system was artificially connected to the 5,000 cubic miles of its most extensive, interconnected source of fresh, surface water.

It was not until 2007 that recognition of the problem finally prompted the commissioning of a seven-year, federal assessment.

“We are moving forward,” reassured U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson, Jacqueline Ashmon, “with the completion of a Project Management Plan and collaboration with our Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee partners to identify the range of options and technologies that could be implemented to reduce the risk of transfer of invasive species between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins.”

Unfortunately, as the careful reader will note, the purpose of the instant study, now half completed, is merely to assess how best to keep the giant carp from covering the final, few miles of its long trek.

Options for repairing the damage will, presumably, require an additional study.

If USACE were to begin that one immediately upon conclusion of this — and assuming it takes no longer to complete — we could expect answers from the federal government around 2020.

In the meantime many of us who are concerned about the potential consequences — environmental and financial  — of a “Great Lakes Escape” by these aggressive invaders could be placated by those who have an economic interest in the canal, if they would merely indemnify against the risk.  A danger which they continue to eschew as remote.

Naturally, more rabid environmentalists will not be satisfied with anything short of total disconnection of the Great Lakes from the Mississippi watershed.

As I noted at the outset, I am not so zealous.  However, even my equally measured libertarianism demands that everyone — from heroic innovators and entrepreneurs to eccentric spiritualists and hedonists — take responsibility for their actions by not infringing on the equal rights of everyone else.

Until it can be definitively shown that the rest of us will not be harmed, users of the Lake Michigan/Mississippi River connection should be required to guarantee against the possibility.

And until we have one or the other, prudence dictates that the artificial connection between what virtually everyone considers to be Michigan’s most valuable asset and the source of Huck Finn’s legendary adventures must be severed.

For as old folk wisdom sagely observes, there’s no point in locking the lock door after the fish is gone.