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6/6/13

Look out across Monterey Bay, and one hardly thinks of a junkyard. But below the surface, decades of garbage have been piling up, a new study by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute shows.

Go 1,000 meters down, and it's still there. Go a mile down, it's still there. Go two miles down and beyond -- down to the limits of scientific exploration -- and it's still there. Old boots, tires, fishing gear and especially plastic, litter the ocean floor.

"Once it gets in the ocean, it's not going to get cleaned up," said Susan von Thun, a senior research technician at MBARI. "Especially with plastic or metal, it doesn't really break down. It'll be there for possibly thousands of years."

The study is based on 22 years of deep-sea video accumulated and cataloged by marine researchers. They decided to search their database and came up with more than 1,150 hits for human-produced garbage in the Monterey Bay region alone, much of it within the boundaries of a national marine sanctuary.

While there have been some eye-popping finds -- a shipping container full of 10,000 steel-belted tires lies at the bottom of the bay -- about a third of the findings were plastic, with about half of those being plastic bags.

PLASTIC POLLUTION

That goes to the heart of an ongoing debate about single-use plastic bags, with the plastics industry recently helping defeat a proposed statewide bag ban, as well as a second bill, by Assemblymember Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, aimed at getting plastics producers to help cut back on pollution.

When the bag ban was defeated by three votes, the industry group American Progressive Bag Alliance hailed its victory, saying the proposal was based on "unfounded stats, junk science and myths."

Dave Asselin, executive director of the American Progressive Bag Alliance, reiterated the group's position in a statement Wednesday.
"We have not had a chance to review this particular study, but we do know that the rationale behind efforts to ban or tax plastic bags is largely based off of junk science and exaggerations," Asselin said.

The study is far more exhaustive that any prior examination of debris on the ocean floor, with MBARI's submarines routinely plumbing depths rarely seen by human eyes. Whether it makes a difference in the political debate about plastic bags remains to be seen. Wednesday, Stone held a previously scheduled legislative hearing that dealt with plastics and the marine environment.
Laura Kasa, executive director of Santa Cruz-based Save Our Shores, a group that holds beach cleanups throughout the region, said the study is another sign that plastic bags need to be banned.

"This is why it's so important that we prevent trash that people leave on the beach from getting into the ocean," Kasa said. "If one person doesn't think that it makes a difference, if they leave their piece of trash on the beach, they're wrong. It'll end up in the bottom of the ocean."

Von Thun said researchers combed through video for instances where marine life interacted with plastic and found several. They include plastic bags wrapped around deep coral -- which eventually will kill the coral -- and debris serving as habitat for anemonies and other marine life, giving them a home in areas they would not normally settle.

The study also found plastics and metals were more likely to be found in deeper waters, and researchers speculated that because Monterey Bay is a national sanctuary and subject to heightened environmental protections, it is likely that oceans elsewhere have a more significant problem.

"I was surprised that we saw so much trash in deeper water. We don't usually think of our daily activities as affecting life two miles deep in the ocean," said Kyra Schlining, the study's lead author. "I'm sure that there's a lot more debris in the canyon that we're not seeing."

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The "UpState RailConnect Committee" - Dedicated to Completion of the Alternative Rail Route Feasibility Study - will meet June 26 at 10 a.m. at the Wharfinger Building in Eureka.

Read on for the meeting agenda.

For information regarding this meeting, please contact the Upstate RailConnect Committee at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

6/18/13

With the announcement that the two remaining San Onofre nuclear plants in southern California are being retired permanently, you may wonder what will happen to the remains, some of which retain significant levels of radioactivity, and how the costs will be covered.

My colleague Jordan Weaver blogs in detail on the mess that a failure to plan for decommissioning --and its costs -- is creating around the country. California, however, has avoided the uncertainty on how to pay for decommissioning that is plaguing others that bet on atomic energy at a time when nuclear proponents still claimed its operating costs would be so low, it would be “too cheap to meter.”  

Way back in 1983, when “nuclear dinosaurs” roamed the California Public Utilities Commission, an environmental colleague and I initiated an effort to require that utility customers’ contributions to decommissioning nuclear plants be invested in such a way that they would be available when the operational lives of these facilities were over.  

We were residents of Humboldt County at the time, and the local nuclear plant had been shuttered seven years earlier due to its proximity to earthquake faults. What would happen when it was dismantled, we wondered?  How would the utility (PG&E in this case) pay for it?  What about larger nuclear plants? We, with other locals in a group known as the “Redwood Alliance,” decided to find out. We organized the first public conferences ever held on nuclear decommissioning.

The first event at Humboldt State University was keynoted by Amory Lovins, then a rising star in the energy world, who gained notoriety for his essay in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled: “Energy Strategy, the Road Not Taken.” The second was keynoted by Ralph Nader, whose organization the Critical Mass Energy Project had begun to wonder about the nuclear end-of-life issues, too. We invited experts from the nuclear industry, government scientists, economists and contractors from Battelle Pacific National Laboratory, and private sector scientists to help us figure it out.  As we learned more, a plan began to take shape and we decided to plunge into the deep waters of the California Public Utilities Commission to propose a policy that would protect California’s people and resources when it came time to retire her nukes, big and small.

The idea was to ensure that funds for decommissioning would be protected from loss should a nuclear accident (or other factor) force the plant owner into bankruptcy. At the time, the two Diablo Canyon plants in central California represented half of all PG&E’s assets, and errors in the construction process had raised serious issues about the affordability of plant completion and operation. Having the money run out prior to completion could create a public safety challenge, we reasoned.

The proposal I made (with my friend and colleague J.A. Savage, now a prominent energy journalist and editor) was to set up an independently administered fund, external to the utilities’ assets. Contributions from ratepayers would be collected and when combined with earnings and interest over the plant’s lifetime, would pay for decommissioning when the time came. It was important that the funds be segregated from utility assets because if anything happened to the solvency of a utility (say in the event of a nuclear accident affecting a major portion of a utility’s capital investment), the fund could be protected from creditors. At the time many scoffed at the idea that a utility could ever go bankrupt. But in fact, California’s policy protected Diablo Canyon’s decommissioning fund during PG&E’s bankruptcy in April, 2001. Then- (and now) Governor Jerry Brown supported the proposal through his appointees at the California Energy Commission, and assigned Commission staff to assist us. Our proposal was adopted by the Public Utilities Commission and remains in effect. California is the only state with such a policy. The fund now contains more than $6 billion. Time will tell if it is enough.

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5/22/13

The Eureka City Council voted 4-1 on Tuesday, with Mayor Pro Tem Mike Newman, dissenting to adopt a resolution directing the city of Eureka to move for­ward on a project with the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District that would allow the expansion of shellfish operations in Humboldt Bay.



Following the presentation on a proposed Humboldt Bay mariculture pre-permitting project, Newman said he supports the proj­ect and understands that part of the future of Humboldt Bay is the mariculture indus­try, but believes the council needs more information before a resolution is made.



“I think this is a fantastic project,” Coun­cilwoman Melinda Ciarabellini said. “I’d like to see us partner with you folks and move forward on it.” According to the proposed project, the harbor district would take on the responsi­bility of getting the necessary permits and permissions needed to farm pre-permitted sites in Humboldt Bay and would then lease areas out to shellfish growers through a bidding process, harbor district Director of Conservation Dan Berman said.


Berman said the harbor district is under­taking this operation because the permit approval process is lengthy and expensive.



Three sites — covering roughly 200 acres — fall within the city’s tidelands, meaning that the city would potentially be the lessor, once those sites were permitted.



The sites are near Indian Island, north of the bay toward Arcata and inside the Samoa Peninsula.



“This is an exciting proposal because all the studies have shown mariculture is a good economic development for our bay,” Councilwoman Linda Atkins said. “I think joining the harbor district is a good thing to go forward with tonight.”

The harbor district is also consulting with the Wiyot Tribe on two sites at Indian Island. “We’re trying to address sort of a hurdle for businesses to expand here,” Berman said. “We know the bay is produc­tive for shellfish farming. We have a number of businesses that are successful at it and interested in expanding.”

The existing local shellfish industry employs 50 to 60 people and earns $7 to $8 million in annual revenue, according to Berman.

Leasing the pre-permitted areas is projected to double shellfish production in the bay, generate over 50 jobs and increase demand for bayside facilities, according to the harbor district.

Ideally, the harbor district hopes to start operations in the summer of 2014, Berman said. The harbor district is pursuing the project now because it recently received a grant from the Headwaters Fund — created by the county to utilize $22 million in state and federal funds given to offset the sale of the Headwaters Forest Reserve.

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