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1/24/12

To many, it’s a familiar scenario: a strip mall suddenly pops up in what was once a desolate quagmire or boggy boondock.

But people are coming to realize that these seemingly wasted plots where land meets water provide a valuable ecological service. In addition to nurturing biodiversity, wetlands purify water, produce fish, store carbon dioxide that would otherwise contribute to global warming, and protect shorelines from floods, storm surges and erosion.

Since the early 20th century, development has claimed over half the wetlands in North America, Europe, Australia and China. To repair the damage from those construction binges and regain the benefits of wetlands, restoration has become a booming business.

Yet new research calls into question whether manmade versions can ever compensate for wetlands buried beneath parking lots and subdivisions. In an article published on Tuesday in PLoS Biology, scientists write that restoration efforts often fall short of returning wetlands to their former biological complexity and functioning.

“In traditional restoration, people repair hydrology, put in some plants, and after a few years say the wetlands are good,” said David Moreno-Mateos, a wetland ecologist at the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve at Stanford University and the lead author of the paper. “But if you look at what’s really going on down there, you see the processes are not recovering.”

“One of the results from this study is that we need to undertake more specific restoration measures focused on recovering processes, not just nice, beautiful wetlands with ducks,” said Dr. Moreno-Mateos, who conducted the research at the University of California, Berkleley.

Before the 1960s, many people perceived wetlands as dank places to be drained or avoided, Dr. Moreno-Mateos said. But in the last 20 years, the governments of the United States Canada, and Mexico have poured over $70 billion into restoring more than seven million acres of wetlands.

Some developers deploy the strategy of promising to create or restore wetlands in one location in exchange for getting permission to bulldoze wetlands in another location. In theory, this sounds fair, but the results fall short, Dr. Moreno-Mateos said.

To quantify the success of restoration projects, the researchers performed a meta-analysis of 621 restored and created wetland sites around the world. Most of the sites were in the United States, and some restoration plots dated back around 100 years. They compared the sites with 556 natural wetlands that served as reference points.

The researchers found that hydrology seemed to recover immediately after restoration, but results varied in areas like the recovery of animals, plants and nutrients. Even after 100 years of restoration, the wetlands recovered only 77 percent of their original flora and fauna, on average.

Within five years animals like birds and bats returned, as did flying insects like midges. Other macroinvertebrates like water fleas took a bit longer, around 5 to 10 years, and these communities usually did not reach their original levels of richness or abundance.

Plants were even slower to recover. On average, they took 30 years to return but still remained less biodiverse and abundant up to 100 years after restoration.

The plant lag may be related to recovering carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus storage. After 50 years, carbon levels were still below reference levels, and it took at least 30 years for nitrogen to return to normal. All in all, restored wetlands regained an average of 74 percent of their biogeochemical components by comparison with the reference sites.

“When we lose wetlands we’re losing something we won’t recover for years,” Dr. Moreno-Mateos said. “When people develop that huge shopping mall, it will take centuries to restore the functions we had before.”

Some wetlands did recover faster than others, depending on hydrology, size and climate. The more water flowing through a site, the more quickly it bounces back to reference values. Larger sites also fared better than smaller plots, and the warmer the temperature, the more rapid the recovery. “In some warm climates, things go fast, but cold climates take forever,” Dr. Moreno-Mateos said.

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Read Original Study: Structural and Functional Loss in Restored Wetland Ecosystems 

1/30/12

After more than a decade of work, the Martin Slough enhancement project -- which aims to reduce flooding and improve salmon habitat near the Eureka Municipal Golf Course -- will acquire the funding needed to complete its design.

Don Allan, director of the Natural Resources Service Division for the Redwood Community Action Agency, said the California Department of Fish and Game posted the approval of the project's grant last week.

Allan said agencies first began discussing the a two-phase fish passage improvement, wetland enhancement and flood reduction project on the south side of Eureka in 2000 when the golf course's manager noticed coho salmon living in the Martin Slough.

It's a dual-purpose project -- also supported by State Water Resources Control Board and the city of Eureka -- that will help golfers who use the public course and the salmon who seem to be drawn to slough, he said.

”It's really nice to have a project that can address two things that I think should be important to the community,” Allan said.

The funding from DFG, coupled with the North Coast Land Trust's recent purchase of connected agricultural pasture land, will help the project move forward. RCAA hopes to implement the first phase of the project later this year.

In December, the Land Trust purchased a 36-acre agricultural property at the mouth of Martin Slough for $315,000 in order to facilitate the first phase of the restoration, which includes replacement of the defunct tide gate at the mouth with a more fish-friendly and functional tide gate.

The phase one project will also involve widening the lower Martin Slough channel to increase flow capacity, construction of four acres of tidal wetland, establishment of riparian habitat along the slough and retention of 28 acres of pasture for grazing.

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Plaintiffs include InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, which represents 10 Northern California American Indian tribes.

1/26/12

Conservationists and Native American tribes are suing over the U.S. Navy's expanded use of sonar in training exercises off the country's west coast, saying the noise can harass and kill whales and other marine life.

In a lawsuit being filed Thursday by the environmental law firm Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups claim the National Marine Fisheries Service was wrong to approve the Navy's plan for the expanded training.

They said regulators should have considered the effects repeated sonar use can have on those species over many years and should have restricted where the Navy could conduct sonar and other loud activities to protect orcas, humpbacks and other whales, as well as seals, sea lions and dolphins.

Instead, the Navy is required to look around and see if sea mammals are present before they conduct the training.

Kristen Boyles, an attorney with Earthjustice, said it's the job of the fisheries service to balance the needs of the Navy with measures to protect marine life.

"Nobody's saying they shouldn't train," she said. "But it can't be possible that it's no-holds-barred."

In 2010, the fisheries service approved the Navy's five-year plan for operations in the Northwest Training Range Complex, an area roughly the size of California that stretches from the waters off California to the Canadian border. The Navy has conducted exercises there for 60 years but in recent years proposed increased weapons testing and submarine training.

The environmental groups want the permit granted to the Navy to be invalidated. They are asking the court to order the fisheries service to study the long-term effects of sonar on marine mammals, in accordance with the Endangered Species Act and other laws.

Regulators determined that while sonar use by navies has been associated with the deaths of whales around the world, including the beaching of 37 whales on North Carolina's Outer Banks in 2005, there was little chance of that happening in the U.S. Northwest. The short duration of the sonar use, typically 90 minutes at a time by a single surface vessel, and reduced intensity would help prevent whale deaths, they said. Regulators required the Navy to shut down sonar operations if whales, sea lions, dolphins or other marine mammals were spotted nearby.

The lawsuit, being filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, claims that the Navy's sonar use in the Northwest might be strong enough to kill the animals outright. But even if it doesn't, it claims, the repeated use of sonar in certain critical habitats, such as breeding or feeding grounds, over many years could drive those species away, making it more difficult for them to eat or reproduce. The fisheries service should have ordered the Navy to keep out of such areas, at least seasonally, the environmental groups said. 

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Read the Press Release 

1/23/12

Every year, winter rains like the recent storms that have soaked the Bay Area help fill reservoirs and perk up lawns. But they also carry an ugly downside, causing aging sewage systems to back up, overflow and malfunction, endangering human health and polluting San Francisco Bay.

Last year, a staggering 17.5 million gallons of raw or partially treated sewage spilled in the nine Bay Area counties -- enough to fill 26 Olympic-size swimming pools -- and 95 percent of it flowed to the bay, lakes or streams.

But with little fanfare, a small nonprofit group is steadily turning the tide.

Over the past five years, San Francisco Baykeeper, with a staff of eight people, has filed 10 lawsuits under the Clean Water Act, seeking to force dramatic reductions in sewage spills. The group has won every one, securing settlements that are forcing 20 cities from the East Bay to Silicon Valley to invest tens of millions of dollars replacing miles of cracked pipes, boosting inspections and cleaning up their operations.

"We have the worst polluters on a path to success," said Deb Self, executive director of the San Francisco-based group.

"It's a quality-of-life issue. There shouldn't be areas where there is sewage in the streets and playgrounds and flowing into the bay. These are not conditions we should have in this country."

Aging pipelines

The problem is fairly basic. There are 17,166 miles of sewer pipe in the Bay Area. That's nearly enough to stretch from San Francisco to New York City and back three times. But much of it is aging clay pipe that dates to the 1950s and earlier, with some sections under older suburbs more than a century old.

Earthquakes and shifts in the ground crack the pipes, allowing tree roots to grow through. Grease and other debris clog the pipes. Heavy rains pour into the cracks, overloading treatment plants and bubbling up through manhole covers.

"This is essentially untreated sewage. It is very significant," said Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the state's primary water pollution agency, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, in Oakland.

"It overflows into storm drains and goes into the bay," Wolfe said. "It's organic matter, heavy metals, bacteria and other things that are significant for human health and aquatic species."

But state budget cuts have forced Wolfe's agency to cut his staff from 145 people a decade ago to 100.

Seeking more enforcement, Baykeeper stepped in.

The group took advantage of a 2006 law passed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that requires every public agency running a sewer system in California to file monthly reports showing how many spills their systems suffered and how much was spilled. The reports are tallied up in a database and posted on the Internet.

Baykeeper began ranking the roughly 100 cities in the Bay Area by their rate of spills. It hired lawyers and began suing them under the Clean Water Act, one of the nation's most powerful environmental laws -- and one that gives regular citizens, rather than just government agencies, the authority to sue polluters.

Critics say the group goes too far.

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