Mining power: EPA’s Pruitt aims to short-circuit Clean Water Act

Posted on July 5, 2018 by julia

By Jessica Hathaway June 28, 2018, NationalFisherman.com

Three days before the deadline for public comments on the proposed Pebble Mine project in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt directed his staff to create a rule limiting the agency’s ability to regulate projects under Clean Water Act guidelines.

These are the exact guidelines that commercial fishermen and local tribes urged Obama-administration EPA officials to invoke to protect Bristol Bay, Alaska’s salmon gold mine.

In a memo dated Tuesday, June 26, Pruitt directed the EPA’s Office of Water to submit the following changes, at minimum, to the Office of Management and Budget within the next six months:

• Eliminating the authority to initiate the section 404(c) process before a section 404 permit application has been filed with the Corps or a state, otherwise known as the “preemptive veto.”

• Eliminating the authority to initiate the section 404(c) process after a permit has been issued by the Corps or a state, otherwise known as the “retroactive veto.”

• Requiring a regional administrator to obtain approval from EPA Headquarters before initiating the section 404(c) process.

• Requiring a regional administrator to review and consider the findings of a final Environmental Assessment or environmental impact statement by the Corps or a state before preparing and publishing notice of a proposed determination.

• Requiring the agency to publish and seek public comment on a final determination before such a determination takes effect.

“The guiding principle should be to provide landowners, developers and entrepreneurs with certainty that the EPA will not short-circuit the permitting process… before taking any steps to veto a permit application,” the memo reads.

Mining permits are typically submitted by massive global corporations that have the lawyers, lobbyists and money to push through the permit phase. Users of clean water are typically lowly individual American citizens with an ever-dwindling influence on their federal government.

No one who has followed the Pebble process for the last two decades could possibly say the fishermen pulled a power play over the massive Canadian mining company Northern Dynasty Minerals. A multinational company named “dynasty” can hardly invoke a pity party for lack of power.

Thousands of Bristol Bay’s fishermen have fought hard to protect their livelihood from being invaded by a foreign investor who is free to cut and run after it makes its 50-year cash-out investment in Pebble — leaving behind the toxic waste resulting from the metals mining process. Forever.

This singular victory for a sustainable fishery and a renewable resource hardly warrants EPA’s attempt to shut down one of the few powers we have as citizens to protect our access to a public resource.

Source: https://www.nationalfisherman.com/viewpoints/alaska/mining-power-epas-pruitt-aims-to-short-circuit-clean-water-act/

How to Battle Ocean Acidification

Posted on June 19, 2014 by julia

June 16th, By John Upton, Pacific Standard (psmag.com)

It’s a fearsome problem. But we’re not just watching helplessly.

Shellfish are dying by the boatload, their tiny homes burned from their flesh by acid. Billions of farmed specimens have already succumbed to the problem, which is caused when carbon dioxide dissolves and reacts with water, producing carbonic acid.

When ocean life starts to resemble battery gizzards, how can humans possibly respond?

Immediately curbing the global fossil fuel appetite and allowing carbon dioxide-drinking forests to regrow would be obvious steps. But they wouldn’t be enough. Oceanic pH levels are already 0.1 lower on average than before the Industrial Revolution, and they will continue to decline as our carbon dioxide pollution lingers—and balloons.

In a recent BioScience paper, researchers from coastal American states summarized what we know about ocean acidification, and described some possible remedies.

Chart: Bioscience

As John Kerry kicks off two days of ocean acidification workshops, here’s our summary of the scientists’ overview:

WHAT WE KNOW

Acid rain can affect ocean pH, but only fleetingly, especially when compared with the effects of carbon dioxide pollution.
Studies of naturally acidified waters, like those near CO2 vents, suggest that acidification will depress species diversity; algae will continue to take over.
Farm runoff and fossil fuel pollution can worsen the problem in coastal areas. The nitrogen-rich pollution fertilizes algae. That initially reduces CO2 levels, but the plankton is eaten after it dies by CO2-exhaling bacteria. This type of pollution appears to be worsening the acidification of the Gulf of Mexico.
Strong upwelling, in which winds churn over the ocean and bring nutrients and dissolved carbon dioxide up from the depths, exacerbate local acidity levels in some regions. In the upwell-affected Pacific Northwest, climate change appears to be leading to stronger upwelling.
Shellfish are “highly vulnerable” to ocean acidification. Some marine plants may benefit. Fish could suffer from neurological changes that affect their behavior. Coral reefs are also being damaged.
Declining mollusk farm production could cost the world more than $100 billion by 2100.
Marine plants can help buffer rising acidity. Floridian seagrass meadows appear to be protecting nearby coral.

WHAT’S BEING DONE

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration created an ocean acidification program in 2012. It’s monitoring impacts, coordinating education programs, and developing adaptation strategies.
American experts are talking less these days about ocean acidification as a universal problem, and becoming more focused on local and regional solutions.
Alaska, Maine, Washington, California, and Oregon have initiated studies and working groups.

WHAT MORE COULD BE DONE

The EPA could enforce the Clean Water Act to protect waterways from pollution that causes acidification.
Other coastal states could model new working groups on the Washington State Blue Ribbon Panel, which helped form the West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel.
Incorporate ocean acidification threats into states’ coastal zone management plans.
Expand the network of monitors that measure acidity levels, providing researchers and shellfish farmers with real-time and long-term pH data.
Expand marine protections to reduce overfishing and improve biodiversity, which can allow wildlife to evolve natural defenses.

Source: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/nature-and-technology/how-battle-ocean-acidification-83489/

Acid Oceans Can Be Fought at Home

Posted on June 7, 2014 by julia

Coastal communities can help combat ocean acidification by cutting back on water pollution
Jun 5, 2014, By Elspeth Dehnert and ClimateWire

For coastal communities in the United States, the path to confronting souring seas can likely be found close to home in their very own backyards.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Ocean Acidification Program has established a successful monitoring program at the regional scale. A bit over one month ago, it made a startling discovery off the country’s West Coast—proof that ocean acidity is indeed having a negative impact on marine species
Credit: Jeff Gunn via Flickr

In fact, according to a recent study co-authored by several current and former Stanford researchers, there are several local and regional actions—many of which are not too costly—that can be taken to accelerate the adaptation to ocean acidification.

“We think of ocean acidification as being controlled by carbon dioxide, and it is, but there are a lot of different things humans do that affect the chemical equilibrium of the carbonate system in the coastal zone,” said Aaron Strong, lead author of the study and a graduate student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources.

He pointed to river discharge, local-scale upwelling, and nutrient and stormwater pollution as some of the major factors behind ocean water’s increasingly unbalanced acidity levels.

“Ocean acidification should become a part of the conversation among quality managers, stormwater managers, agricultural managers … and it tends not to be in that space,” Strong added.

To fill in the gaps, the study outlines current local and regional ocean-acidification management efforts and recommends nine other “opportunities for action” that state agencies, nongovernmental organizations, universities and industry can implement for about $1 million a pop.

“An international agreement on climate change to reduce CO2 is not the only solution,” he said.

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