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Coastal California developers now must consider sea-level rise

7/3/11

If developer Dan Johnson and his team finally earn approval to revitalize a derelict lumber mill's 240-acre company town on the shores of Humboldt County they'll be building homes with first floors 32 feet above ground.

The state's scientific advisers expect rising sea levels will hasten most of the California coastline's eastward push as it combines with storms or tsunamis. They say the few extra feet through 2100 will slowly make beaches of bluffs and marshes of beaches.

From Crescent City to San Diego, state and local planning authorities have started telling developers to factor sea-level rise into project designs.

California's diverse coastal terrain means every spot needs a unique and costly adaptation, frustrating both environmentalists and coastal property owners.

"There's a major tug between those who want to protect economic investment and those wanting to preserve natural habitat," said Curtis Fossum, the State Lands Commission's executive officer.

Environmentalists loathe the erection of sea walls, which tarnish prized beaches. Developers question overly cautious planning officials for relying on uncertain estimates. Builders only reluctantly agree to leave open low-lying coastal space that would otherwise generate profits.

A decade ago, Johnson began seeking clearance for his $100 million mixed-use town on the half-mile-wide Samoa peninsula just west of Eureka.

State studies show the tiny strip is susceptible to tsunamis. Three major ones have hit the northern coast in the past 60 years. Many scientists also say global climate change will bring more frequent storms of great intensity.

Tack sea level rise onto either tsunami or storm waves, and there's a potential of accelerated erosion and more severe coastal flooding. As a result, a $100,000 peer-reviewed study by Johnson's consultants found that permanent habitable space in the project must be 32 feet above ground to miss the brunt of tsunami waves – with a 3-foot sea rise included.

"It's not about letting people stay in their house, but about having something for them to come back to," Johnson said.

Town by town, as projects such as Johnson's come to the Coastal Commission's attention, the panel has forced local agencies to adopt a rule that all new projects consider sea level rise.

Advocates for protecting the coast say developers and regulators are playing a dangerous game by building so close to the ocean.

Former Sierra Club California coastal programs leader Mark Massara is skeptical that all of Johnson's project will remain usable by 2100.

In March, the state's Ocean Protection Council decided state agencies should prepare for a half-foot increase in sea level by 2030, just above a foot of rise by 2050 and nearly 5 feet of rise by 2100 if humans don't start drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

A study undertaken by the state due at the end of year will reveal which areas of the coast are most at risk. It would cost $100 billion in 2000 dollars to replace existing coastal property in California, according to 2009 study for the state by the Pacific Institute.

Coastal landmarks like roads, golf courses and train tracks eventually may be relocated – lest they become crackers in oceanic soup.

Other property, such as the San Francisco International Airport, will need fortified levees. Groups such as Sierra Club California and the commission warn that levees and sea walls are costly and would destroy sandy beaches because they stop sand from being replenished by natural bluff erosion. Sea walls already line about a tenth of California's 1,100 miles of coast.

Whether it's sea walls, leaving property undeveloped or moving structures back, the precautions mean extra costs and lower returns for project promoters. It's a delicate compromise.

Humboldt County developer Kurt Kramer said as needed as they may be, the added burdens from the short-staffed Coastal Commission discourage construction.

"They win by making the economic model uneconomic," he said.

State officials said putting together plans and rules in place now is essential.

"If you build a roof over your house in July, you call it an expense," said Will Travis of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. "Come November, you view it as an investment."

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Water district looks for input on water use options; district to hold hearings for public comment Thursday

7/13/11

The public will have another chance Thursday to weigh in on what the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District should do with its abundance of water.

In order to maintain water rights, the district is hoping to implement a plan to pursue revenue-generating uses, including attracting companies that use industrial amounts of water, selling water to another municipality, or using water in the Mad River watershed for environmental restoration.

The plan, released earlier this year, was created after a year of extensive outreach to community groups and agencies. The board expects to approve a final draft in August.

Board President Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap said the board hopes residents will attend the hearings -- held at noon and at 6 p.m. -- and provide feedback on the options.

”It would be helpful to hear what folks like about the proposed plan, and if they have any concerns,” she wrote in an email to the Times-Standard. “This document is based entirely on public input already, but it is helpful to hear whether we've distilled that input accurately, or if we've left anything out.”

With California's use-it-or-lose-it water rights system, the district could lose rights to the lion's share of the supply its system was designed to provide. The board has until 2029, the year the current permit expires, to develop and explore long-term options to maintain local control of the water.

The draft plan is available online at www.hbmwd.com/ draft_implementation_plan_to_evaluate_and_advance_ recommended_water-use_ options.

If You Go:

What: Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District Board of Directors meeting

Where: District office, 828 Seventh St., Eureka

When: Thursday, noon and 6 p.m.

At a glance:

The Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District has created a draft plan to evaluate and pursue new water-use options. With the loss of industrial customers, such as pulp mills, the district had to pass costs onto residential customers last year. The plan could help the district find other sources of revenue, and ensure it keeps its water rights, set to expire in 2029.

In April, the district released a draft of the plan, which looks at actively pursuing companies that use industrial amounts of water, selling water to another municipality, or using the water in the Mad River watershed for environmental restoration.

The Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District Board of Directors will hold a public hearing on the plan Thursday at noon and 6 p.m.

Pollution poses problem for oysters, Puget Sound

7/11/11

For over 75 years, Blau Oyster Co. has relied on Washington state's cool clean waters to grow the plump oysters that are as prized in the Northwest as salmon and orcas. But too much pollution from animal and human waste has been washing into Samish Bay in north Puget Sound, prohibiting shellfish harvests 38 days already this year.

"If the water quality isn't good, we can't be open," said Scott Blau, whose family has been farming in these tidelands 80 miles north of Seattle since 1935. Most of the harvest from the small business is shucked and ends up in stews or can be ordered pan-fried or raw at local restaurants; some oysters are sold in the shell as far away as Hong Kong and Singapore.

Washington state is the nation's leading producer of farmed oysters, clams and other bivalves with about $100 million in annual sales. The recent downgrade of 4,000 acres of shellfish beds in Samish Bay because of fecal contamination means more days when shellfish beds can't be harvested, hurting the local economy and jeopardizing the much larger, decades-long effort to clean up pollution in Puget Sound, the nation's second largest estuary. It also was set back in the state's goal to increase 10,800 acres of harvestable shellfish beds by 2020.

Gov. Chris Gregoire earlier this year said the state has failed in Samish Bay, and directed agencies to fix the problem by next September. "We're not going to flush, literally flush 4,000 acres down the drain of prime shellfish growing area in the state," she told managers at an April meeting.

In response, state and local officials last month released a plan for more inspections and enforcement on all fronts, including septic tanks, livestock operations, small hobby farms, dairies and others, as well as more education and help for landowners. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this summer plans over flights to determine likely pollution sources, such as muddy fields where rain is more likely to wash mud manure into waters.

The problems of Samish Bay highlight the greater challenges facing Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay and other distressed watersheds, where cleanup is complicated by pollution from many varied and diffused sources, called nonpoint pollution, including farmland or stormwater runoff, agricultural activities, urban development, failing septic tanks, toxics and even pet waste.

"If we can't fix it in Samish, we're in trouble," said Bill Dewey, who owns a clam farm in the bay and is a spokesman for Taylor Shellfish, which also has a farm there. "This is as classic as it gets for nonpoint pollution. (The governor) has put a stake in the ground here and said this is going to be an example."

Officials say the fecal contamination comes from many sources, including farm livestock waste, wildlife, pets and humans. The bacteria level is especially high when heavy rains cause additional runoff into the Samish River, which flows into the bay. Shellfish can accumulate bacteria or other harmful pathogens; eating contaminated shellfish can make people sick.

Last year, Samish Bay shellfish areas were closed 14 times for a total of 63 days. This year's six closures, mostly after rain events, have pinched Blau Oyster Co., which has 10 full-time employees.

Varied diet has allowed gray whales to survive millions of years

7/7/11

Gray whales survived many cycles of global cooling and warming over the past few million years, likely by exploiting a more varied diet than they do today, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, and Smithsonian Institution paleontologists.

The researchers, who analyzed California gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) responses to climate change over the past 120,000 years, also found evidence to support the idea that the population of gray whales along the Pacific Coast before the arrival of humans was two to four times today’s population, which stands at about 22,000. The whale is considered a conservation success story because protections instituted as early as the 1930s have allowed populations to rebound from fewer than 1,000 individuals in the early 20th century, after less than 75 years of systematic whaling.

“There almost certainly were higher gray whale populations in the past,” said evolutionary biologist David Lindberg, a UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology who coauthored the paper with his former student, Nicholas D. Pyenson, now curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The paper appeared in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE.

EPA Warns House Bill Would 'Overturn' Clean Water Law

By: Paul Quinlan

June 23, 2011

U.S. EPA warned of the potential dire consequences of legislation being fast-tracked through the House that would give states final say on rules concerning water, wetlands and mountaintop-removal mining.

In a four-page legal analysis (pdf), EPA said the measure (H.R. 2018 (pdf)) sponsored by House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) and ranking member Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) "would overturn almost 40 years of federal legislation by preventing EPA from protecting public health and water quality."

GOP House leaders expect to bring the bill to a floor vote this summer.

EPA said the Mica-Rahall bill would "significantly undermine" the agency's role of overseeing states' establishment and enforcement of water pollution limits and permits. It said the measure would hinder EPA's ability to intervene on behalf of downstream states harmed by pollution coming from a state upstream. And it said the bill would prevent EPA from protecting local communities from ill-conceived mountaintop-removal and similar projects allowed to go forward under Army Corps of Engineers-issued permits.

"This would fundamentally disrupt the balance established by the original [Clean Water Act] in 1972 -- a law that carefully constructed complementary roles for EPA, the Corps, and states," the analysis said.

That is the opposite of what proponents argue the bill would do. They say it would shore up what they see as the erosion of state authority under the Clean Water Act and restore a state-federal partnership on enforcement of the law.

At its core, the bill would prevent EPA from reversing or overruling previously issued approval of state water quality limits, permitting authority, or permits to dredge and fill waterways or wetlands.

Defenders of the agency say that power is necessary to keep up with new scientific understanding of pollution and health effects and to ensure that states, seen by many as more vulnerable to local influence and political pressure, are enforcing rules on their books to protect local and interstate waters.

Proponents of the bill counter that the Obama administration's EPA has abused that authority by overruling states, reversing decisions made under previous administrations and creating widespread regulatory uncertainty that has hindered job-creation and economic recovery.

Rahall and Mica have both bristled over EPA's recent actions affecting their home states, including the decision to subject mountaintop-removal mining applications to tougher review and to replace vague, state-established water pollution limits in Florida with tougher, numeric standards.

"Our coal miners are scared about their jobs, and they have received no comforting actions or signals," Rahall said yesterday before the committee approved the bill in a nearly party-line vote. "I hoped under this administration we would reach common ground. Unfortunately, that has not been the case."

In the analysis, EPA defends its power to veto permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, calling it "the action of last resort." Under the Mica-Rahall bill, the state would have to concur with the EPA veto.

Supporters rejected EPA's warnings, saying that states have a vested interest in protecting their waters and that EPA's arguments are "insulting to states, governors and state legislatures."

"It's not 1972 anymore -- we've come a long way since then," said Justin Harclerode, spokesman for committee Republicans. "These arguments only work if you believe that the states have no interest in protecting the health and safety of their citizens or the quality of their waters. ... Nothing in the bill overturns, prevents or eliminates any of EPA's traditional authorities or roles -- the bill simply restores the historic balance between the EPA and states under the Clean Water Act."

EPA provided the analysis to Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Clean Water Act. Bishop railed against committee leaders' efforts to fast-track the bill and offered an amendment yesterday that would preserve EPA's authority over individual states. The amendment failed along party lines.

"This go-it-alone approach flies in the face of science, common sense and decades of experience implementing the Clean Water Act," Bishop said.

Groups weigh in

The bill has prompted an outpouring of support and opposition from various corners of the debate on federal regulatory authority over water.

Environmental groups panned the committee vote to approve the bill.

"This bill is a recipe for increased pollution, dirtier waters and more mountaintop removal mining," said Jon Devine, senior attorney in the water program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Its supporters seem intent on taking us back to the 'good old days' when rivers like the Cuyahoga caught fire and Lake Erie was declared dead."

Industry groups, such as the Associated Equipment Distributors, which represents heavy equipment dealers, supported the bill. "EPA is standing in the way of a broad range of economic activity that involves 'turning dirt,'" the group wrote in a letter to Mica and Rahall. "That is hampering job creation and recovery in an industry hit hard by the recession."

The National Water Resources Association (NWRA), which represents many Western agricultural irrigation districts and has advocated for states' rights over water, also applauded the bill. "The current EPA has continued to show little deference to states' rights," Executive Vice President Thomas Donnelly wrote in a letter to Mica.

A group of West Virginia chambers of commerce sent EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson a letter asking for swift consideration of mining permits, an issue the legislation seeks to address. The National Mining Association said the bill would "provide much needed certainty for jobs and the Appalachian economy."