Arcata Whoops Feds

Well, all of you sniggerers who like to put down Arcata for meddling in distant world affairs when it ought to be attending to its own potholes, here’s your comeuppance: Our favorite anklebiter city may have just helped shape future world energy development.

Two settlement agreements were filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. In them, the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation — U.S. government-run agencies — agreed to evaluate the impacts on global warming of the fossil fuel projects they finance around the world, often in places with no environmental regulations. They’ve also agreed to each put $250 million into overseas renewable energy projects. In addition, Export-Import Bank agreed to consider carbon dioxide emissions from its projects, and to create a carbon policy. OPIC committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from overseas projects it funds by 20 percent over the next 10 years.

In August 2002, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the City of Boulder, Colo., sued these two behemoth federal financiers and insurers, accusing them of spending more than $32 million between 1990 and 2003 on major fossil fuel projects without analyzing their impacts on climate change under the National Environmental Policy Act. Arcata joined the lawsuit in 2004; Santa Monica and Oakland also jumped on.

“Typically when a U.S. agency does a large project that has potential environmental impacts, they run it through NEPA,” said Mark Andre, Director of Environmental Services for the City of Arcata, last Friday. “Well, overseas projects aren’t subject to that.”

The projects named in the lawsuit, said the litigants, had cumulatively contributed to the equivalent of “nearly eight percent of the world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions, or nearly one third of annual U.S. emissions in 2003,” said a news release from the City of Arcata.

Over the years that the suit malingered, the Bush administration insisted the agencies remain exempt from NEPA, said Arcata Mayor Mark Wheetley. This settlement, however, marks a change in direction. Wheetley said it’s been incremental; the world “mindthink” was bound to catch up to Arcata’s progressive ways, he said.

“When we filed the suit, we were back in the dark, dark, dark Bush days,” Wheetley said. “We weren’t even acknowledging global warming yet. And now we’re having a national dialog about it. It’s been coming — you know, Al Gore’s efforts, the increase in knowledge and awareness through An Inconvenient Truth, that was just a huge education outreach. And now, this whole issue has percolated to the top.”

Some major precedents came out of this case, says Nancy Diamond, the City of Arcata’s attorney in the matter. In 2005, a federal judge granted legal standing — the ability to sue, in this case under NEPA — to cities claiming injuries from global climate change. That, in turn, set the stage for a big Supreme Court decision in another case, Mass v. EPA: that greenhouse gases are subject to Clean Air Act regulations.

“Global warming in and of itself wasn’t a recognize theory of harm, when we brought the lawsuit,” said Diamond. “So, it was the first case that established standing for global climate change.”

It was Andre who helped establish Arcata’s claim to injury. In a 2004 court declaration he described how, based on available records and science, since the late 1800s the temperature in the Arcata area had risen, annual rainfall had decreased, and sea level along the California coast had risen. He cited projections of more sea level rise.

“A 12-inch rise in sea level would mean that the current 100-year high tide peak would become instead a 10-year high, thus a rare event would become common,” Andre wrote.

This could mean inundation of Arcata’s 225-acre marsh — a wildlife sanctuary and wastewater treatment facility — and the adjacentl treatment plant where chlorine is used. About 550 acres of low-lying pastures owned by the city would become saltwater messes. Diminished snowpack would reduce Arcata’s drinking water supply. There would be unpredictable floods. And a rise in ocean temperatures would threaten marine life, and thus the commercial and recreational fisheries.

Andre said the settlement is a good one. And Diamond said settling was better than going to trial. Now, the two agencies must consider the impacts on climate change of any projects they fund from here on out, instead of just the projects named in the lawsuit in 2002.

 

Nuke Fears Close Dump

Concerned about the potential of radioactive waste leeching into Humboldt Bay, county government has temporarily shut down the old Table Bluff Landfill outside of Loleta, the Journal has learned.

Table Bluff landfill was open to the public between the late 1960s and late 1970s. Since closing, the county has continued to use it as a space to dump “road spoils,” or dirt that washes onto county roads during floods.

The close-down, which happened a couple of weeks ago, was taken out of an abundance of caution, said Humboldt County Environmental Services Director Hank Seeman. There is no evidence that the site is contaminated with radioactive material, Seeman said — however, there’s no way to be sure that it isn’t.

Seeman said that the issue came up a couple of months ago, when the Sheriff’s Office considered using the location for bomb squad training. When the proposal arose, county personnel started to do some standard-issue assessment about the risks of planting people at a dump site for extended periods of time. That’s when someone noted that the dump was located in the vicinity of PG & E’s old Humboldt Bay Nucleaer Power Plant and the naval training facility at Centerville Beach, both of which have housed nuclear materials.

“Given the uncertainty about waste management activities at that point [in time], it’s conceivable that some radioactive material made it into Table Bluff Landfill,” said Humboldt County Environmental Services Director Hank Seeman yesterday. “And we realized that we didn’t have any info on residual radioactivity that might be coming out of that landfill.”

The county, in consultation with the California Integrated Waste Management Board, decided to shutter the facility until such time as specialized tests can be performed. A crew from the Waste Management Board is scheduled to test the site at the end of February, Seeman said.

PG&E certainly operated in a loosey-goosey manner back in the day, and it wouldn’t at all be surprising to find that nasty materials made their way out of the power plant and into the landfill. For more, see last year’s cover story “The Not-So-Peaceful Atom” (Mar. 20), in which one of the plant’s first employees recalls what happened when he blew the whistle on hazardous practices there.

 

Avast, Ye Miners!

Aye, ye gravel grovelers, ye watery wastrels, ye ramblin’ rogues of the deep! I’ll sink yer dredges and steal yer gold, ye dirty river rats! Ye say yer dredges don’t hurt the fishes? Excuse me, but I think yer arguments are bullshit! Aaarghhh!

And thus spake Sen. Pat Wiggins, although it’s true that we may have garbled her words a bit as we struggled to hear her speak over the roar of her trusty pirate ship as it sped up the Klamath River last fall toward battle.

But Wiggins’ displeasure with the California Department of Fish and Game came across quite clearly this week as she reacted to the agency’s rejection of an emergency petition to halt suction dredge gold mining on various rivers and streams, including some on the Klamath River Basin, in order to protect vulnerable species of fish. The petition was filed by the Karuk and other tribes, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and several conservation groups. Wiggins said:

California’s once-thriving salmon populations have plummeted to the point that they face extinction unless we take immediate action. It will take courage and bold action on all our parts to bring the fisheries back to healthy levels …

[I]t’s time for our government to step up. If the Department of Fish and Game is unwilling to place the burden of rebuilding fisheries fairly upon all users, I will continue to take legislative action to get government to do its job.

Here’s how the petitioners reacted on Monday to the rejection.

The Sacramento Bee also chided the DFG  in an editorial yesterday, saying in part:

No doubt global warming, dams, logging, pesticides and other human activities kill fish and destroy habitat, but the bulk of the science strongly suggests that suction dredge mining harms fish, too.

As salmon populations dwindle, the state agency charged with protecting them protects gold miners instead.

Need a refresher on the petition?

And, uh, it was Dan Bacher at IndyBay who cleverly used the pirate photo first.

 

A Post-Dams World

In some people’s nightmare’s, ya take down the Klamath Dams and a world-engulfing blob of hell-deep muck that’s accumulated around that dam for too many years will engulf the downriver world, smothering all salmon, salmon fry, lamprey, lamprey younguns, and everyone else silly enough, in that scenario, to call the Klamath River home. And, oh, the floods!

A soggy apocalypse.

Hey — please don’t have that nightmare anymore. It’s freaky. And, besides, three reports that have just come out seem to allay some of those dam-removal fears. According to a joint news release from the Karuk Tribe and American Rivers, the reports — which were commissioned by the California Coastal Conservancy — conclude that the removal of four large dams on the Klamath River will have “relatively minor” short-term negative impacts on the fisheries but no major long-term impacts.

Most remarkably, the groups say sediment removal won’t be required.

Quoth the release:

The Water Quality report shows that the removal of the dams would:

• Eliminate or greatly reduce toxic blue green algae production.
• Greatly alleviate releases of harmful nutrients from oxygen-starved reservoirs.
• Significantly decrease summer and fall water temperatures, from 4-7° F.
• Substantially increase dissolved oxygen levels.
• Reduce dramatic fluctuations of pH levels.
• Likely reduce levels of fish disease-causing parasites.

The Downstream Biological Impacts study concludes that although fish populations will suffer some negative impacts immediately following removal, this effect will be short lived.  Specifically,

• Impacts to fall Chinook will be short-term, and the population should fully recover to pre-removal levels within five years.
• Spring-run Chinook should experience rapid recovery to pre-dam removal stock levels.
• Coho salmon should experience only short-term effects and populations will recover fully.
• Steelhead populations could be highly affected but should experience a strong recovery.
• Pacific lamprey are expected to recover relatively quickly from impacts.

The Sediment Transport analysis concludes that:

• Less than 1/3 of the sediment trapped by the dams will be transported downstream.
• Nearly all of the sediment that is transported will travel directly to the ocean without being deposited in the river.
• Flood risk will not be increased appreciably.
• Sediment concentrations will likely be significant during the first winter after reservoir drawdown.

This sounds promising, especially since PacifiCorp recently has come around to the notion of taking down those dams.

 

Here Comes the Navy!

The United States Navy is coming to town!

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer — a newspaper that’s about to fold, incidentally — reports that the United States Department of the Navy will hold a public hearing in Eureka on Feb. 2.

Concerning what, you ask? Concerning the proposed Northwest Training Range Complex, the department’s plan to designate most of the Pacific Northwest coast as training grounds for naval operations. (UPDATE: The NWTRC already exists — news to me, anyway. The current proposal is to increase training operations in its bounds.)

What sorts of training? According to this brochure:

Training Activities

Training activities involve activities in the range complex where Navy personnel learn skills they need to operate machinery or weapons. These activities provide realistic experience and include:

Operating vehicles, aircraft, submarines, and surface ships;
Conducting live fire training against surface and air targets at sea;
Conducting airborne surveillance activities;
Detecting, locating, and countering threat electronic signals;
Finding and removing underwater mines;
Training Navy divers in a cold water environment;

There’s a mass of material, including the full Enivronmental Impact Statement for the project, on the “documents” section of the project’s site.

Map below. More to come, obviously.

 

The trees are dying

A Yosemite sugar pine, victim of bark beetles

You remember that scene in The Day After Tomorrow — the goofy 2004 global warming thriller — where Jake Gyllenhaal tries to outrun a wave of insta-freeze that’s chasing him down hallways and around corners? (You’re forgiven, or even commended, if the answer is no.) Well, a scarier, real-life version of that scene appears to be taking place here in the Pacific Northwest, only instead of insta-freeze it’s rapid global warming, and instead of Jake Gyllenhaal it’s coniferous trees.

As reported on CNN.com, a new study reveals that forests on our part of the continent are dying twice as fast as they were 17 years ago, thanks to climate change.

The study primarily focused on three types of coniferous trees: pines, firs and hemlocks. Older-growth forests — some up to 500 years old — have trees of all ages, and researchers found that mortality rates have increased for all age groups. Since mortality rates went up across the board, scientists ruled out a number of other possible causes, including ozone-related air pollution, long-term effects of fire suppression and normal forest dynamics. In the end, California had the highest tree-death rate.

Some scientists speculate that as the climate warms up, these suffering forests will simply re-establish themselves in cooler climes, like old folks retiring to Nova Scotia. Of course pines, firs and hemlocks lack the nimble, loping gate of young Mr. Gyllenhaal.

Given the speed at which warming appears to be occurring, it’s not clear whether tree species will be able to migrate fast enough to survive, said [Phillip] van Mantgem of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Yikes. And that’s not the only thing trees have to fear. Invasive insects like the bark beetle –

Cute, aren't they?

– love the warm weather almost as much as they love gnawing on weak trees.

On a related note, nice weather we’ve been having, ain’t it?

 

Million Gallon Spill

Last Tuesday afternoon, Journal reader Rachael Brilbeck went for a stroll on the beach on the North Spit, right across from the Evergreen Pulp Mill, which is currently shuttered. Everything was normal when she set off on her walk, but when she returned an hour and a half later she saw something strange.

At some point in the interim, a gusher of water opened up out of the ground, right beneath some kind of large vent. Brilbeck and others watched the torrent flow for about half an hour. As it made its way to the Pacific, it cut a deep channel into the beach.

Brilbeck took photos and brought them into our office the next day. She wondered: Was this a spill from the pulp mill? The mill has an exhaust pipe that carries its liquid effluvia underground and out to sea — could the pipe have stopped up somehow, spilling noxious mill residue on to the beach? She thought she noticed an unusual odor in the water.

It took us a little while to figure this out, but it turns out that the spill Brilbeck witnessed had little to do with the mill. That was clean river water making its way out to the ocean — as much as a million gallons of it, according to Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District Superintendent Barry Van Sickle.

Van Sickle told us yesterday that the spill was a result of some faulty computer equipment at a water tank that services the mill. Water levels at the tank are monitored electronically. The device on the tank fritzed out, registering the tank as empty when it was actually full. So the district sent water down the pipe leading to the tank, causing it to overflow into the outlet pictured above. This went on for about an hour before district personnel figured out that something was wrong and turned off the spigot.

It might be galling to places like Las Vegas, San Diego or Barstow, but losing a million gallons of water isn’t that big of a deal for the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District. We’re currently running a huge surplus of the stuff, even taking this year’s dry conditions into account. Of course, Van Sickle said, the district would prefer not to accidentally dump mass quanitities of water into the ocean, but there are unlikely to be any repercussions. It’s river water. It was headed that way in any case.

The only consequence likely to be of note was brought up by someone who witnessed the spill with Brilbeck. She told us that this fellow, apparently a surfer, noted that the movement of sand into the sea was likely to create a nice new break at that spot.

 

Rep. Mike hits ground running

This just in from Mike Thompson’s office:

Congressman Thompson Introduces Bill to Permanently Ban Drilling on North Coast

WASHINGTON – On the first day in the 111th Congress, North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson (D-CA) introduced a bill that would permanently prohibit oil and gas drilling off the coasts of Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. The Northern California Ocean and Coastal Protection Act provides protection to the unique and productive marine environment along Northern California’s outer continental shelf (OCS).

“For the economic and biological health of our country, it’s critical that we permanently protect this unique area from the environmental hazards of off-shore drilling,” said Congressman Thompson.  “Unfortunately in the last Congress drilling became a political drama, rather than a policy debate.  My legislation is one aspect of a broader campaign to restore sensible, science based policy and ensure the health of our oceans for generations.”

During the last Congress, the ban on OCS drilling expired, which leaves the North Coast susceptible to drilling in as little as three years. The moratorium on OCS drilling had been a bipartisan agreement in Congress since 1982, but came under regular attack, and was not renewed in 2008.  In order to make sure that the North Coast of California is permanently protected, Congressman Thompson introduced his legislation today.

“Our coastline is home to one of the four most important upwellings in the world, which together support 20 percent of the ocean’s fish.  Drilling on the North Coast doesn’t make sense, either from an economic standpoint or an environmental perspective.  By permanently banning drilling, we can provide our coast with the protection it needs, regardless of who is in charge in Washington,” said Congressman Thompson.

Upwelling regions are coastal areas that support extremely abundant and productive marine life. This is because an upwelling brings cold, nutrient-rich waters up from the ocean depths that, when combined with sunlight, enhance seaweed and phytoplankton growth. The seaweed and phytoplankton provide energy for some of the most productive ecosystems in the world, including many of the world’s most important fisheries, such as the North Coast fisheries.

Drilling for gas and oil off the Northern Coast of California could cause serious harm to the unique and productive ecosystem and abundant marine life found off the coast, including the fish many local North Coast economies depend on.

Thoughts?

 

Driving into the Hydrogen Future

Humboldt State unveiled its hydrogen fueling station today with Rep. Mike Thompson here to help with the ribbon-cutting and talk about the role the Schatz Energy Research Center is playing in our renewable energy future. He’s shown above driving HSU’s hydrogen-powered car, which he’d just helped fill with fuel.

Here’s a soundbite from Rep. Mike’s speech:

Star of the show was Schatz lab director Peter Lehman (below), whose pioneering work was featured in a Journal story, “Peter and the Fuel Cell,” back in 2006.

Here’s an excerpt from Peter’s speech:

Peter Lehman addresses crowd at ribbon cutting

While this is certainly cutting edge stuff, there are limitations. The fueling station at Humboldt State is the northernmost outpost on what’s deemed California’s “hydrogen highway.” The Toyota Prius hydro-car (converted at a cost of cost $45,000) will only go 100 miles on a 2.5 kilogram tank of hydro-fuel, and there is not another fueling station within its range. (A California Fuel Cell Partnership map shows the closest stations being in Davis and Oakland.) So, Humboldt’s lone hydro-car is mostly for show: President Rollin Richmond will be among the drivers, and as a Schatz lab tech explained to Rep. Thompson, there are plans afoot to use the vehicle to take mail deliveries up to the Telonicher Marine Lab in Trinidad.

 

Wigged

That’s tellin’ ‘em, California State Senator Pat Wiggins! Let them eat cake!

And give me two of whatever you just had!

Via the Sac Bee‘s Capitol Alert.

 

Eureka declared one of the best

The folks over at the Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau want you to know that Outside Magazine selected Eureka as one of the best towns in the America, ranking it No. 8 on a list of 20. The blurb incudes shout-outs to the Accident Gallery,  the Boardwalk, the Arkley Center (identified as the Sweasey Theater)  and Humboldt Baykeeper. Not sure why they chose to illustrate a piece on Eureka with a photo of the mouth of th Mattole, but that’s what they did. (Click on images to enlarge.)

Another interesting note: the list of largest employers, topped by the city of Eureka, also includes the Times Standard.

 

Gold war

Tis the season for dredge miners to dust off their campers and mosey into the mountains for river gold.

Tis also budget season, and the Karuk Tribe and California Trout have asked Gov. Schwarzenegger to endorse a provision that the state legislature added to the 2008 Budget Bill that would place a moratorium on suction dredge mining. The groups say the moratorium will protect fish — like the endangered coho — in the Klamath and other rivers. Dredging, they say, kicks up toxic mercury that settled into riverbeds after gold smelting at mines in the 1800s, among other bad things.

“The groups’ call to limit the recreational mining technique comes as California faces the worst fisheries collapse in history,” says the news release.

The miners, meanwhile, are on it. On the New 49er’s members forum, they’ve outlined an action plan that includes pumping up their deflated war chest to fund “an aggressive lobbying offensive.” As part of that, they’re holding a drawing: “Our girls in the office will print your tickets as we receive contributions ,” writes Dave Mack.

But, he admonishes, “this is more important than winning prizes. It is about defending our right to continue prospecting for gold in California.”

We wrote about this last August.

 

Will the dams come down?

A recent AP story reports that the U.S. government and PacifiCorp are involved in talks that may eventually lead to a plan for dam removal on the Klamath River:

PacifiCorp, the federal government and the states of Oregon and California are in talks over how to resolve a proposal to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River to help struggling salmon runs.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Alex Pitts confirmed Tuesday that federal agencies and the utility are in continuing “conversations” about a hydropower agreement, but would not characterize that agreement as a way to remove the dams.

PacifiCorp spokesman Art Sasse would say only that the utility company is in talks with “key stakeholders” surrounding its application to relicense the dams.

This process is separate from the hydropower agreement, which the 26 stakeholders involved in the settlement talks had included in their restoration agreement, unveiled to the public this past January after two years of closed-door negotiations.

Reached by phone today, Craig Tucker, Klamath campaign director for the Karuk Tribe, said, “It is encouraging that the feds are stepping up.” He added that any final deal would have to be agreed upon by the tribes and other stakeholders.

 

Picture of the Day: Local Activists Hang Banner on Orleans Bridge

 

Dirty birds

Dear old Clam Beach has made the list that no self-respecting body of sand and surf would want to be on: The Top Ten Beach Bummers. Heal the Bay, a nonprofit environmental group, puts this list together each year as part of an annual water quality report card issued for more than 500 California beaches (you can weekly updates, however, as well). The 18th annual, 91-page report card — for 2007-2008 — was released today.

The report cards are based on stats gathered year round by local health departments, who test their beaches for three types of pollution-indicator bacteria regularly during three periods: April to October; dry weather year-round; and wet weather year-round. Beaches are graded on an A-F scale for water quality.

Clam Beach, near Strawberry Creek, scored an F between April and October, as well as for dry weather — its lowest grades yet. Moonstone Beach, near the Little River, scored a C during those same periods. The other three beaches tested — Trinidad, Luffenholtz, and the Mad River Mouth (north) — scored much better, As and Bs, and all did well in wet weather year-round.

According to the report, one in 25 people get sick swimming or surfing in polluted water near flowing storm drains (yick, anyway). No surprise, most of the bummer beaches were in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

But Clam Beach’s filth apparently came from elsewhere, anyway, says the report:

In June 2005, Humboldt DEH began systematic collection of bird population data at both Moonstone Beach and Clam Beach. Both of these locations have substantial and growing resident bird populations. Also, Humboldt County experienced some unusual rain events during the AB411 time period last year. Over an inch of rain fell in July 2007 and three inches of rain fell in early October. The large bird populations coupled with the summer rains are believed to have contributed to many of the bacterial exceedances at Moonstone and Clam Beach last summer.

 

Damned flyway.

See the report.