3/12/12

For the first time ever, the nation’s largest group of food retail companies has spoken out on behalf of protecting Alaska’s Bristol Bay fishery—the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery. The Food Marketing Institute (FMI), which represents 26,000 retail food stores, and $680 billion in annual revenue—three-quarters of U.S. retail food store sales—announced its support for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study currently underway to determine the suitability of large-scale development in Bristol Bay, including the Pebble Mine.

“Since Bristol Bay is one of the world’s largest sustainable salmon fisheries, it plays an important role in the supply chains of a number of our wholesale and retail members,” said Erik Lieberman, regulatory counsel for the Food Marketing Institute in a letter to the EPA.

“We look forward to reading the preliminary report expected to be released in the next few months and hope it will reflect our own belief in the importance of continuing to preserve and responsibly manage this extraordinary natural resource,” the letter further stated.

The watershed assessment, expected in April 2012, was initiated by the EPA in response to requests from the Bristol Bay commercial fishing industry and the Bristol Bay Native Corporation, who oppose the Pebble Project due to the risks to the fishery. They petitioned the EPA to use its authority under Section 404c of the Clean Water Act to restrict the disposal of mine waste into Bristol Bay’s pristine waters, if science shows that it will harm the salmon fishery. The EPA study is expected to provide the scientific basis on which the agency can take further protective action under 404c.

The Bristol Bay salmon fishery is the economic engine for the region, generating $318 to $573 million in annual revenue, and roughly 10,000 jobs.

“Food retail stores have a real stake in the long-term sustainability of the Bristol Bay salmon fishery because it is a vital part of our nation’s food supply. We applaud the Food Marketing Institute and the 1,500 retailers it represents for their support of this unique resource,” said Bonnie Gestring of the conservation organization, Earthworks.

“Bristol Bay is the lifeblood of our industry. Our fishermen are proud of the sustainably harvested wild salmon that we provide to the nation, and we appreciate the Food Marketing Institute’s support for this important scientific assessment,” said Bob Waldrop, director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association (BBRSDA), which represents approximately 2,000 Bristol Bay commercial fishermen.

“Investors representing $170 billion in assets have expressed similar support to the EPA and we are delighted to see an industry association as important as FMI speak up as well,” added Jonas Kron, vice president of Trillium Asset Management.

The Pebble Mine is proposed by a 50:50 joint venture between UK-based Anglo American plc (LSE:AAL)(JSE:ANGLO) and Canadian company Northern Dynasty.

A 2010 ecological risk assessment commissioned by The Nature Conservancy studied the impacts of large-scale mining in Bristol Bay watershed, and concluded that the risks to wild salmon populations are “very high.”

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3/12/12

MONTAGUE, Calif. - An environmental group is threatening to sue a water district in this Siskiyou County community, claiming that operation of a roughly 90-year-old dam is causing losses of federally listed coho salmon.

The Orleans, Calif.-based Klamath Riverkeeper, which was a party in an earlier lawsuit over water diversions by ranchers in the county, has given the Montague Water Conservation District 60 days to come up with a solution for imperiled fish.

The group believes Dwinnell Dam, which creates the Shastina Reservoir and provides water for agricultural and residential customers, has caused a loss of 20 percent of habitat for coho in the Shasta River since it was built in the 1920s, said Erica Terence, the group's executive director.

"That's an important amount of habitat," Terence said. "It's difficult to deny that after the dam was built, the coho population went into a steep decline. Only one out of three generations of coho that come back to spawn in the Shasta River is considered biologically viable."

Terence said the district is violating the Endangered Species Act by failing to obtain incidental take permits for the salmon. She said the group wants the district to either remove the dam or build a fish passage and take other measures to protect the coho.

"We did feel it was necessary to put them on notice," Terence said, adding she hopes the issue is settled out of court. "They had at least 15 years of operating this dam since coho salmon were put on the endangered species list as threatened."

Lisa Faris, the Montague water district's office manager, said she would wait to comment until after its board discussed the issue at its regularly scheduled March 13 meeting.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is taking no enforcement actions against the district, said Don Flickinger, the agency's natural resources management specialist in Yreka, Calif. However, if the dam's operation is resulting in the taking of coho, the district does need to contact the agency about permits, he said.

"If the water district makes a good faith effort to contact (NMFS), that would be a good way of working together to find ways of avoiding that kind of take," Flickinger said.

Klamath Riverkeeper's notice of intent to sue, which it issued March 12, is only the latest in a series of skirmishes between environmental groups and landowners over the use of water from the Shasta and Scott rivers, which are key tributaries of the Klamath River. Already, environmentalists and the Siskiyou County Farm Bureau have separately sued the California Department of Fish and Game over how it enforces rules regarding water diversions from the two rivers.

Dwinnell Dam is not one of the four dams suggested for removal under the Klamath Basin agreement.

For more info, visit Klamath Riverkeeper at http://www.klamathriver.org/

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The US EPA has finally released their major report on the noncancer health effects of dioxin, which for the past twenty seven years has been delayed due to interference from the chemical industry.  Environmental and health groups across the country celebrated this important milestone.

“We applaud EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and the Obama Administration for finalizing this important health report on dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals on the planet,” said Lois Marie Gibbs, Executive Director of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ). “After twenty seven years of delays, I quite honestly never thought this report would ever see the light of day.  Today the American people won a major victory against the chemical industry, who has been working behind closed doors for decades to hide and distort the truth about the dangers of dioxin.  The science is clear: dioxin is toxic to our children’s health and development.  We strongly urge the EPA to now finish the job by finishing their review on dioxin and cancer, and to develop a comprehensive action plan to further reduce dioxin emissions and exposures.  To start, the EPA should finalize the EPA’s proposed cleanup standards for dioxin at toxic sites, which have been languishing at the White House OMB since 2010.  We call on the Obama Administration to dust off the prestigious National Academy of Sciences report on dioxin in food to explore innovative policies to reduce the levels of dioxin in the food supply.”

Dioxin is building up in our bodies as a result of the food we eat. According to EPA over 90% of human exposure to dioxin occurs through our diet.  Dioxin is most prevalent in meat, fish, dairy, and other fatty foods.

EPA has been under enormous pressure by environmental health, environmental justice, labor, health-impacted, and Vietnam Veterans organizations to release the non-cancer health assessment in recent weeks and ever since President Obama entered office.  In January a letter was delivered to EPA Administrator Jackson signed by over 2,000 organizations and individuals.  Over the past month a broad coalition of organizations have written to EPA urging the agency to finalize this report. This includes the Breast Cancer Fund, Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ), Endometriosis Association, Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, National Medical Association, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sierra Club, Vietnam Veterans of America, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Canadian Environmental Law Association, , Clean Water Action, Ecology Center, Edison Wetlands Association, Environmental Working Group, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Healthy Child Healthy World, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, International POPS Elimination Network (IPEN), Ironbound Community Corporation, Kentucky Environmental Foundation, the Lone Tree Council, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Reproductive Health Technologies Project, Science & Environmental Health Network, The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, Union of Concerned Scientists, Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign, and Women’s Voices for the Earth.

In January, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), Ranking Member of the Natural Resources Committee and senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, sent EPA a letter urging the agency to finalize this dioxin assessment.  In April, Rep. Markey and 72 members of Congress sent a letter to EPA calling on the agency to release the report.

Dioxin is a known human carcinogen.  Dioxin also causes a wide range of adverse non-cancer effects including reproductive, developmental, immunological, and endocrine effects in both animals and humans. Animal studies show that dioxin exposure is associated with endometriosis, decreased fertility, the inability to carry pregnancies to term, lowered testosterone levels, decreased sperm counts, birth defects, and learning disabilities.  In children, dioxin exposure has been associated with IQ deficits, delays in psychomotor and neurodevelopment, and altered behavior including hyperactivity. Studies in workers have found lowered testosterone levels, decreased testis size, and birth defects in offspring of Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

Dioxin’s effects on the immune system of the developing organism appear to be among the most sensitive endpoints studied. Animal studies show decreased immune response and increased susceptibility to infectious disease. In human studies, dioxin was associated with immune system depression and alterations in immune status leading to increased infections.  Dioxin can also disrupt the normal function of hormones—chemical messengers that the body uses for growth and regulation. Dioxin interferes with thyroid levels in infants and adults, alters glucose tolerance, and has been linked to diabetes.

According to EPA, dioxin releases increased by 18% from 2009-2010 nationally.  Dioxin air releases increased by 10%.  Some of the top U.S. companies that reported releasing dioxin into the environment in 2010 were Dow Chemical, Missouri Chemical Works, Gerdau Ameristeel, Lehigh Southwest Cement, Formosa Plastics Corporation, Temple-Inland, Cahaba Pressure Treated Forest Products, and Clean Harbors Aragonite.  Three of these facilities make chemicals to produce polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic. Municipal waste incinerators, medical waste incinerators, landfill fires, and backyard burn barrels are some of the other top sources of dioxin in America.

For a copy of EPA’s new dioxin health report, visit http://www.epa.gov/dioxin

For a fact-sheet on the hazards of dioxin, visit http://chej.org/wp-content/uploads/Documents/Dioxin%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

For frequently asked questions about dioxin in food, visit http://chej.org/wp-content/uploads/Frequently-Asked-Questions-About-Dioxin-and-Food.pdf

For a detailed history of dioxin delays, visit: http://chej.org/wp-content/uploads/DioxinTimeframeFebruary2012.pdf

The House of Representatives approves a bill that overrides California's environmental protections and changes federal irrigation policy. But its prospects are dim in the Senate.

3/1/12

The House approved a bill Wednesday that rewrites two decades of water law in California, wiping out environmental protections and dropping reforms of federal irrigation policy that have long irritated agribusiness in the Central Valley.

The legislation passed on a mostly party line vote of 246-175 in the Republican-controlled House. But its prospects of becoming law are poor. The White House has issued a veto threat, and it is unlikely to survive the Democratic-controlled Senate, where both of California's senators have vowed to work against it.

"It essentially says farmers will get theirs and nothing for anybody else," said Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.).

Despite the long odds, Republicans brought the bill to the House floor to highlight differences between the parties in an election year. Republicans contend that environmental regulations are killing jobs.

"The senators don't understand that they're going to put tens of thousands of people out of work," said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), who once brought a bowl of fish to a congressional hearing to argue that the interests of fish were being elevated over those of farmers. Nunes, the proposal's lead author, said he will work hard to advance the proposal, including attaching it to other legislation.

"If the two senators think they can sit back and do nothing, they've got another thing coming," he said. "Because there's going to be absolute hell to pay."

The bill, called the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act, kills a settlement that has launched one of the most ambitious river restoration projects in the West: the rewatering of a dried-up stretch of the San Joaquin River to revive salmon runs. It guts a 20-year-old federal law that set aside a large portion of federal irrigation supplies in California for environmental purposes and toughened the terms of federal irrigation contracts.

The legislation also rolls back fish protections in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to those stemming from a 1994 agreement between the state and federal government and it preempts California water law.

"Part of what it tries to do is turn back time," said UC Berkeley law professor Holly Doremus. "It's a remarkable overreach. It tries to give the irrigators everything. They threw all of the wish list in here."

The bill's passage highlights the growing influence of Central Valley Republicans after the GOP takeover of the House last year. The House Majority Whip is Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, a co-author of the legislation. Rep. Tom McClintock of Granite Bay is chairman of a subcommittee that oversees water policy.

Backers blamed environmental protections in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the state's water hub, for a "man-made drought" that has cut irrigation deliveries, left fields unplanted and hurt the San Joaquin Valley economy.

"For too long this man-made drought in California has been ignored," McCarthy said during floor debate.

Aside from theU.S. Chamber of Commerce and national farm groups, supporters listed by Nunes were primarily from the Central Valley, including such agricultural powerhouses as the Harris Ranch and Westlands Water District.

Ten Democrats supported the bill, including Californians Joe Baca of Rialto, Dennis Cardoza of Atwater and Jim Costa of Fresno. One Republican voted no.

Cardoza supported the bill but said that "rather than doing the hard work of reaching across the aisle to craft a truly bipartisan bill that could have been signed into law, we have passed legislation that is unlikely to see the light of day in the Senate."

Opponents warned that if Congress overrides state water law in California, it can do the same thing elsewhere. "What happens in California won't stay in California," said Rep. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Creek). "This bill, if it ever becomes law, will ignite California's next water war and the fights will spread across the West."

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