Bill Ruckelshaus: Two-time Director of the EPA and influential environmental leader
Bill was one of the sharpest, kindest minds in the room in the Washington Blue Ribbon Panel on Ocean Acidification. When we proposed it and worked with the governor’s staff to organize it, a palpable thrill moved through the whole team when Bill agreed to serve as co-chair. His clear eye on the long view helped to ensure that the panel’s recommendations did not gather dust on a shelf. His efforts helped to make Washington’s approach a compelling example that other states were quick to embrace.
One outcome: some coastal states became important funders for critically needed research to understand this problem and test potential interventions. I distinctly remember one meeting that consumed most of a day and left all the panel members drained. In his 80s, Bill was the eldest of all, but he was the only one who thought to thank the kid who brought coffee to the table—and he remembered his name. We are fortunate to have had such good company and excellent leadership.
Brad Warren, Executive Director, Global Ocean Health/NFCC
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.
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.
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.
An oil rig pumps near the hills of California’s Wind Wolves Preserve.
A new study out on Monday says that the United States’ is emitting far more of the greenhouse gas methane than previously thought. The study, published by the National Academy of Sciences, estimates that in 2008 the US emitted 50 percent more methane gas into the atmosphere than was previously thought by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The new data indicates that methane could be a bigger challenge in combating global warming than scientists previously thought, according to the Associated Press. Here’s more from the AP:
Methane is 21 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, the most abundant global warming gas, although it doesn’t stay in the air as long. Much of that extra methane, also called natural gas, seems to be coming from livestock, including manure, belches, and flatulence, as well as leaks from refining and drilling for oil and gas, the study says.
The new research, NBC News reports, “is based on atmospheric methane measurements taken from the top of telecommunications towers that stick more than 1,000 feet into the air as well as from airplanes.”
An oil rig pumps near the hills of California’s Wind Wolves Preserve.