A Denver-based federal team fighting invasive freshwater mussels
is investigating new and hopeful treatments, including poison,
blasts of ultra-violet light and shock waves, and the
introduction of a mussel-destroying predatory sunfish. The
researchers testing these tactics say some seem to work and, if
proved, could save tens of millions of dollars by protecting
western hydropower and water delivery facilities against the
proliferating Eurasian quagga and zebra mussels. "Once the
mussels are there, this would help control them," said U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation mussel program coordinator Leonard
Willett, who this week was supervising tests at dams along the
lower Colorado River. Lab tests of the poison are
"verypromising," he said. It contains Pseudomonas fluorescens —
derived from a bacterium that destroys mussels but apparently
not fish. The Environmental Protection Agency has been asked to
issue an emergency permit allowing open-water tests. The marble-
size quagga and zebra mussels moved from central Asia