Invasive zebra mussels and their close cousins, quagga mussels, have spread like a virus across the United States, and although they have yet to be found in Washington state or other states in the Columbia watershed, they are knocking at the door.

Originating in Eastern Europe, they were first discovered in the Great Lakes in 1988. Today, there are as many as 450 trillion quagga mussels in Lake Michigan alone, and they now infest Lake Mead in Nevada and other waters in California, Utah, Arizona and Colorado.

The damage they inflict is both physical and biological. Even though they are only the size of a fingernail, they reproduce so rapidly that they can clog pipes, screens and pumps in the infrastructure of hydropower dams, irrigation systems, hatcheries, municipal water supplies, fish passage facilities and boat motors.

By reducing plankton and nutrients found in water, they also imperil native species. Two salmon stocks in Lake Huron, as well as indigenous stocks of whitefish, lake trout and smelt in the other lakes, are all collapsing as the mussels disrupt the food web. Next to habitat loss, invasive species account for the most extinctions of plants and animals throughout the world.

How we address this threat in the next couple of years is critical. Will the Northwest have the foresight and resources to create a tight protective barrier and save the Columbia River watershed from the same fate as the Great Lakes?

Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana currently inspect boats crossing state lines for mussels, and they have already caught more than a hundred contaminated boats. Idaho has made more than 56 interceptions this year alone through a comprehensive network of inspection sites funded by a permit sold to all boat owners in the state. Washington and the other states are expanding their efforts, but the inspection cordon is inadequate and underfunded.

To put it bluntly, we need to work better and faster. We need a plan to ramp up inspection sites and decontamination facilities around the Northwest to ensure that there are no weak links in our borders, and we need to press other regions of the country to minimize the number of contaminated boats coming our way. Finally, we need a fair funding formula that allows entities to contribute to this prevention program in proportion to the risk they face if infestation occurs.

If mussels get a foothold in the Northwest and the Columbia River system, utility ratepayers, irrigators, hatchery operators, municipal and recreational water users, and boat owners will collectively pay tens of millions of dollars to address the impacts.

It’s an unfortunate fact that we simply do not know how to eradicate invasive mussels once they are here. Prevention is our best and cheapest option. Success will require broad support from Northwest residents as utility leaders, federal executives and elected officials push to develop inspection plans, pass legislation and identify funding to protect our waters from this serious threat.