Chicago — The pioneer of controversial "environmental" DNA tests that indicated Asian carp were getting closer to Lake Michigan testified Tuesday that he warned Illinois and federal officials not to waste $1.5 million poisoning a river just south of Chicago last spring, but he was ignored.

University of Notre Dame professor David Lodge said in the days just before the planned poisoning that his lab had received fresh DNA results saying there were no carp in the area.

"We advised them not to go forward because our most recent results didn't give us confidence that there were (Asian carp) in there," Lodge testified Tuesday in a federal suit brought by a coalition of Great Lakes states that are suing to force the federal government to do more to protect Lake Michigan from the carp.

During a break in the testimony, Lodge told the Journal Sentinel that the people planning the May poisoning told him they were too far along to call it off.

Col. Vincent Quarles of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said during a break that he could not comment and referred questions to a Department of Justice spokesman in Washington, D.C. That spokesman said he did not know enough about the details to comment at this time.

The Army Corps is a defendant in a federal lawsuit under way in Chicago.

The repeated DNA tests that since November have shown carp beyond an electric fish barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal are a point of contention because politicians outside Illinois said they were enough evidence to warrant temporarily closing two Chicago navigation locks, creating a barrier between the carp-infested Mississippi River basin and Lake Michigan.

Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are plaintiffs in an ongoing suit that seeks temporary emergency lock closures, except in emergencies, such as floods. The suit also seeks a permanent separation between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi basin that the Chicago canals destroyed more than a century ago.

Illinois officials and industry leaders strongly have resisted closing the busy navigation locks. They argue that the closures won't effectively stop the carp, but they will devastate the tour boat industry and barge operators and the industries that depend on the bulk goods they carry.

"Obviously no one wants Asian carp to continue migrating (toward Lake Michigan), but we think there are other ways of dealing with it without completely shutting off navigation for the Chicago area," said David Rieser, an attorney representing a coalition of industry groups.

Trying to settle the question of whether carp had advanced beyond the barrier - and frustrated after months of turning up no Asian carp - the federal government and the State of Illinois in May decided to poison a five-mile stretch of the Little Calumet River.

"We're going to be able to kill damn near everything in here," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deputy regional director Charlie Wooley said at the beginning of the five-day operation in May.

And if they didn't find an Asian carp?

"It gives us an indication that the (electric) barrier is doing its job keeping the carp out of here," Wooley said.

They didn't find an Asian carp, and cries grew louder from lock-dependent industries that the DNA science was flawed.

Now - with Lodge's testimony that he had fresh evidence there were no carp in the area at the time - it appears that failure to find a fish could be used to bolster the argument that the DNA testing works. So does the subsequent find of a 20-pound Asian carp in June six miles from the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Thom Cmar, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he was not surprised by what Lodge had to say.

"This is another case of the agencies ignoring or downplaying the recommendations of scientists in favor of trying to appease the 'show me a fish' crowd that doesn't want to hear what the scientists are telling them," he said.

Illinois Department of Natural Resources assistant director John Rogner said Tuesday during a break after Lodge's testimony that he did not recall anyone telling Lodge they could not call off the poisoning because plans were too far along.

He acknowledged that he was indeed told in May before the poisoning that the most recent samples showed there were no Asian carp in the area they were about to poison. But he said they decided to poison anyway because they figured if there were any Asian carp in the area, they likely would be in that stretch of river because it has characteristics that Asian carp favor. He also noted previous DNA tests taken earlier in the year had shown the fish were in the area.

Lodge testified Tuesday, a positive result is only good for about two days because the DNA material quickly breaks down.

The poisoning went ahead anyway, and it killed more than 100,000 pounds of fish, not one of them an Asian carp

Testimony in the hearings to consider an emergency lock closure continues Wednesday.