Great Lakes Democratic lawmakers — including Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth — are warning the Trump administration that any more delays to a $1.15 billion barrier project to keep invasive carp out of Lake Michigan could put the economy of the region at risk.Five senators from Ill inois, Michigan, and Wisconsin are calling for a meeting to discuss the repeated pauses around the Brandon Road Interbasin Project and “steps the administration will take to ensure the project is completed as quickly as possible,” according to a new letter addressed to D. Lee Forsgren, acting assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works.“We urge the Administration to ensure the Brandon Road Interbasin Project moves forward without further interruption,” the letter states. “We also urge consistent and transparent communication with the non-federal sponsors in the future in advance of any changes to the project.”Michigan Sens. Elissa Slotkin and Gary Peters and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin also signed the letter.The letter comes after President Donald Trump and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers placed the megaproject near suburban Joliet under administrative review, halting work at the site for the second time in less than a year. While that most recent stop-work order was lifted this month, legislators wrote that the delays are increasing the already hefty price tag of the project. Illinois and Michigan are contributing $50 million and $64 million respectively.The megaproject is anchored on the Brandon Road Lock and Dam, a choke point on the Des Plaines River where the Army Corps wants to lodge a multilayered underwater defense system boasting sonic blasts, bubble walls, an electric barrier and an updated flushing mechanism.Lawmakers and policy experts worry that the delays risk extending the decadelong timeline, potentially increasing the chances that the invasive carp make into the Great Lakes.These concerns were amplified this summer by the discovery that hundreds of juvenile invasive carp found just 80 miles downstream from Lake Michigan, the farthest north the young fish have been found since the state began monitoring in 2010.Adult carp have been routinely seen as close as 50 miles away from Lake Michigan near the confluence of the Kankakee and Des Plaines rivers and headwaters of the Illinois River.The invasive carp — the silver carp and the bighead carp in particular — are a voracious family of fish that can outeat and outgrow native species. The decades-long concern among scientists and policy experts is that if the nuisance fish make it past the Illinois River and into Lake Michigan, it could upend the largest freshwater ecosystem on the planet and the multibillion recreational and fishing industries that depend on it.The Brandon Road Interbasin Project was first presented as a solution to the advancing front on invasive fish back in 2014. Congress authorized the project six years later, and then provided an initial $225 million for the first state of construction with an additional $47 million in 2023, and $28 million in 2026. Crews began work on the project last spring before it was paused just a couple months later.“Invasive carp are a serious threat to our Great Lakes, and the Brandon Road Interbasin Project is our best defense against the irreparable harm these fish could do to our lakes’ ecosystem,” Durbin said in a statement to WBEZ. “Time is of the essence as these carp are inching closer to Lake Michigan, and we do not have time for the Trump Administration to interfere with the project by arbitrarily pausing the project without explanation.” ...read more read less