Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy lawyer Matt Norton argued before the Minnesota Court of Appeals Thursday that the state’s ballast water permit should be sent back and made tougher.

Norton told the three-judge panel that the rules are too lax and, by not taking affect on most ships until 2016, will take too long to implement, allowing more invasive species to find their way into Lake Superior.

“This permit, in the final analysis, fails to do what it is supposed to do: protect the water from pollution,” Norton told the judges. “It should not be a technology-based limit, but a water-quality based limit. It should be restrictive enough to protect the high quality of the water.”

The suit was brought after the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, responding to a judge’s order from an earlier MCEA lawsuit, developed a permit to regulate the discharge of water from the ballasts of the big ships that ply the Great Lakes.

Ballast water, when it is dumped in Lake Superior, brings with it invasive species from other nations and from other Great Lakes that have been infected.  Sea Lampreys and zebra mussels are just a few of the species that have arrived and disrupted the Great Lakes ecosystem. A new deadly fish virus, viral hemorraghic septicemia  has already caused great damage in all the other Great Lakes and is poised to come into Lake Superior.

Norton argued that Minnesota should have adopted standards similar to California’s ballast water regulations which are tougher. Too many organisms would be allowed to be discharged under the Minnesota rules, but not under the California standards, he said.

“Other pollutants are inert and they tend to dilute,” Norton told the panel. “But the invasives reproduce.”

In defending the permit, Assistant Attorney General Robert Roche repeatedly pointed out that three Minnesota Supreme Court decisions have said that state agencies, such as the Pollution Control Agency, must receive great deference from the court in carrying out their tasks.

In addition, since there has never been any regulation of ballast water until now, the permits will obviously improve the water quality of Lake Superior, Roche said.

“Better than before is not the standard,” Norton said in his rebuttal. “Preserving the high quality of the water is.”

The judges must rule within 90 days.