LANSING – The Council of Great Lakes Governors pushed for more trade transportation on the lakes as Illinois opened the door to ending ship traffic between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.

The governors and premiers included Asian carp on the council’s list of “least wanted” invasive species, and Illinois Governor Pat Quinn acknowledged that the current electrical barriers might not be sufficient to keep the giant scavenger fish from moving through the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal into Lake Michigan.

“Ultimately, I think we have to separate the basins,” Quinn, a co-chair of the council, said during a media event. “I really feel that is the ultimate solution. We have to do it.”

The statement represents a reversal by the state, which has to date fought efforts by the other Great Lakes states to close the locks that currently connect the lake and the canal.

U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Zeeland) praised the statement. “I am encouraged by Governor Quinn’s comments regarding the clear separation of the two systems,” he said in a statement. “A biological barrier preserves an estimated $7 billion in economic activity generated by Great Lakes fisheries, protects Michigan’s pristine waters for our sportfishing and recreational boating industries, and helps safeguard the ecosystem from future invasive threats. I am hopeful that Governor Quinn’s words will translate into action. It’s time to reverse the river’s course to its natural state and with it conserve the ecosystem of the Great Lakes for future generations.”

But Quinn said the federal government would have to foot the bill for the up to $9 billion cost of reconstructing the separations between the basins. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is currently studying possible solutions to keep the carp from crossing into the Great Lakes Basin.

As part of the effort, the council members agreed to work together on funding for such projects, as well as to standardize invasive species prohibitions and ballast water regulations.

“The trade and transport of aquatic invasive species presents a grave threat to the region’s ecological and economic health. We must take action, and today the Governors and Premiers are committing ourselves to a new approach,” Governor Rick Snyder, Council of Great Lakes Governors co-chair, said in a statement. “As Governors and Premiers, we are taking important steps to build on current actions and partnerships to ensure that the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River continue to be the greatest freshwater system in the world.”

While shipping to Chicago would potentially have to end on the shores of Lake Michigan rather than passing into to the Mississippi River, the governors and premiers said they would be working to increase the amount of shipping in the lakes.

The council created the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Maritime Initiative that would encourage the U.S. and Canadian governments to work together and treat the St. Lawrence Seaway as a single system and that would include a task force to determine where infrastructure improvements are need within the system and how to fund those projects.

The council noted in its resolution that maritime traffic is expected to increase in the region, while some of the facilities within it are more than twice their projected 50-year lifespan.

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Water Partnership would promote use of the waterways for trade operations, including leading trade missions to Asia and other markets.

The leaders separately approved a resolution calling on the U.S. government to improve implementation of its State Trade and Export Promotion program and to permanently authorize the program.

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