News

Harbor District, feds create plan to get caustic liquors off peninsula


11/10/13


The United States Environmental Protec­tion Agency has taken over the Samoa pulp mill site and initiated an emergency response to remove millions of gallons of caustic liquids, much of which are currently stored in failing tanks.



EPA has stabilized the situation, and is now working with the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District on a plan to remove more than 4 million gallons of pulping liquors from the site. Adding urgency to the effort is a constant fear that a large earth­quake could lead to a potentially disastrous spill into the sensitive environmental habitat and economic engine that is Humboldt Bay.



When the district decided to take over the abandoned mill from Freshwater Tissue Co. in August, it was well aware of the daunting challenge of having to remove the pulping liquors — a caustic byproduct of the pulping process. It appears the situation was a bit more dire than the district may have known.



EPA federal on-scene coordinator Steve Calanog said he was in the area working on a clean-up effort on Indian Island in mid­August when Harbor Commissioner Mike Wilson asked him to take a look at the mill site, which closed in October 2008. Calanog said he realized the severity of the situation as soon as he got on site.



“It got my attention, that’s probably very safe to say,” he said, adding that he was immediately alarmed by the condition of the facility and its proximity to Humboldt Bay. “I was concerned there was an imminent and substantial threat of endangerment to folks who live around the facility and Humboldt Bay.”

Several weeks later, Calanog returned to do a more thor­ough assessment. On Sept. 30, he officially initiated an emergency response action, federalizing the site under EPA’s control.

The largest concern, accord­ing to Calanog, was that the tanks housing the pulping liquors — which have a pH of 13 or higher — were built in the 1960s.

“Tanks, especially in that marine environment, suffer significant corrosion,” Calanog said, adding that some of the tanks’ roofs were damaged, meaning rain water was leaking in, raising levels and increasing pressure on the tanks.

Perhaps the most alarming thing, Calanog said, were four large concrete tile tanks that look like silos. While the tanks were designed to store pulp slurry, at some point in the last handful of years, the contain­ers had been filled with the much more caustic pulping liquors. Calanog said the liquors could be seen seeping out of the sides of tanks.

“They’re not designed to store caustic materials, and there’s evidence the tanks are failing,” he said.

Since taking over, EPA crews have stabilized the site, bring­ing in temporary storage tanks to alleviate pressure from those that were failing and controlling small leaks to make sure liquors don’t run off into the bay. Calanog and the district are now working on a plan to get the liquors off the peninsula. A pulp mill in Longview, Wash., has agreed to take on and reuse the liquors, but transporting mil­lions of gallons of highly cor­rosive liquid is no easy task, especially without a rail line.

“There’s no rail system and I don’t want to put a thousand trucks over a mountain — that’s asking for a problem,” said Calanog, adding that the only other option is moving the liquid by barge.

A couple of weeks ago, the district received approval to contract with a barge and tug company that can handle the material. With the largest chemical barge available only able to transport 1.5 million gallons at a time, Calanog said the project will necessi­tate three shipments from Humboldt to Longview — a 400-mile trek.

In the coming weeks, Calanog said EPA and U.S. Coast Guard crews will be working to construct docking and loading facilities, both on the Samoa Peninsula and up in Longview, that will include piping and pumping mecha­nisms to safely fill and unload the barge.

This entire process is expensive, and the district would not have been able to move so quickly without the help of a $1.25 million line of credit put forward to the district by Pacific Coast Seafoods, which is owned by Commissioner Greg Dale.

“They, of course, are extremely concerned about the impact to the oyster indus­try if we got a catastrophic spill,” said District CEO Jack Crider, adding that the hope is the district will be able to repay the loan through the sale of the boiler and other machin­ery at the mill site, which has been valued at between $2 million and $3 million.

While hurdles remain — the Longview mill is still doing chemical testing on samples of the liquors to make sure it can reuse them — Calanog said it appears the first barge load will be ready to leave Hum­boldt Bay sometime in mid-January. Everyone involved with the effort has raved about the collaborative response, saying the district and EPA have worked very well togeth­er to address the situation.

Dale and Crider also said North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman has been inte­gral in working with EPA, and making sure the project will continue to receive the neces­sary federal funding moving forward.

“Jared Huffman has been very, very helpful, as have sen­ators (Barbara) Boxer and (Dianne) Feinstein,”Dale said.

In a statement released Fri­day, Huffman praised the work of the district and the EPA in addressing what he deemed an “imminent threat.”

“This effort is critical to pro­tecting Humboldt Bay and the Samoa Peninsula from potent contaminants remaining at the site,” he said. “Both agen­cies have done an exemplary job in dealing with the prob­lem, and I am committed to seeing the emergency response through to its completion.”

While nobody can say for sure what the impact of a cat­astrophic spill of millions of gallons of caustic liquids into Humboldt Bay would be, everyone agrees they don’t want to find out.

“I could only speculate,” said Calanog, adding that a large spill would surely impact water quality and the sensitive habitats of the bay, and — at least from a public perception standpoint — could prove disastrous for the local aquaculture industry.

A 4.9 earthquake located about 30 miles west-north­west of the mill site on Oct. 11 only underscored the urgency of getting those liquors off the peninsula.

“It appears to have caused a few new areas where there are some new leaks on the tanks,” Calanog said. “It was an eye­opener, and evidence that we need to get that stuff out of there as soon as possible.”

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11/5/13


Local starfish appearing to be dying of a disease spreading along the West Coast that causes the inver­tebrates to lose their arms — and in the most advanced cases disintegrate.



“It’s some of the worst stuff we’ve seen on starfish in this area,” said Joe Tyburczy, a California Sea Grant Extension scientist. “It’s potentially important because sea stars are an important predator in the intertidal, and they consume mussels, and mussels are really good at occupying a lot of space and pushing other things out.



“So, if there are fewer sea stars, there may be more mussels and less diversity because the sea stars open up space,” he said.



On Sunday night, Humboldt State Uni­versity marine biologists and students conducted surveys at Luffenholtz to deter­mine the extent of the damage caused by sea star wasting disease. Tyburczy esti­mates about 20 percent of local sea stars exhibit at least mild symptoms, including losing pigment and developing open sores. Sick stars have also been found at Trinidad State Beach.



“It’s a noticeable percentage, or we wouldn’t all be looking at it if it was just a random one in one place,” Tyburczy said.



From Vancouver, British Columbia to Santa Barbara, starfish are dying of the disease.



“I think people are trying to see whether it’s a virus or a bacteria,” Tyburczy said. “Diseases in the ocean are notoriously dif­ficult to figure out because you might detect bacteria on a sick sea star, but is the bacteria causing it? Or is the bacteria already there, just breaking down on something that’s already there?” HSU scientists began conducting sur­veys about a month ago after noticing some of the sea stars collected in the wild and brought to the Telonicher Marine Lab became sick and died.



“We noticed the collected animals we brought back to the lab autotomized so rapidly they fell apart,” HSU marine biol­ogist Kathryn McDonald said. “We’ve never seen anything like it.” The wasting disease was first noticed on the West Coast in June.

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10/16/13

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency today for failing to address ocean acidification that’s killing oysters in Oregon and Washington and threatening a wide range of other sea life. The lawsuit challenges the EPA’s decision that seawaters in those two states meet water-quality standards meant to protect marine life despite disturbing increases in acidity.

“Our oceans are taking a deadly turn. If we don’t act fast, we may not have oceans full of life and wonder for much longer,” said Miyoko Sakashita, the Center’s oceans director. “The EPA can help put us back on the right track, but not if it continues to ignore the problem.”

Marine waters are growing more acidic because, every day, oceans absorb 22 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution from power plants and cars. That, in turn, strips seawater of the chemicals marine animals need to build their protective shells and skeletons. The Pacific Northwest is particularly vulnerable; harmful impacts are already being observed in Oregon and Washington as acidified water comes near shore.

Since about 2005, shellfish hatcheries in Washington and Oregon have experienced massive die-offs of oyster larvae with losses of up to 80 percent of production. Oysters are failing to reproduce in Willapa Bay, Wash., and, elsewhere, corals are growing more sluggishly, while some plankton have thin, weak shells.

“If we stand by and wait for things to get worse, it’ll be too late,” said Sakashita. “We need fast action to save marine diversity, because when the harm of ocean acidification deepens we’ll realize how much we all depend on the ocean.”

Ocean acidification poses long-term, severe problems for ocean ecosystems. It also magnifies the toxins in harmful algal blooms known as red tides. Research suggests that toxins increase five-fold in harmful algae that can poison shellfish, marine mammals, fish, and even cause paralytic shellfish poisoning in people.

“The Pacific Northwest is among the places getting hit hardest at the outset of this crisis. Although some state officials in Washington are taking it seriously, we need the EPA and the Clean Water Act to truly begin addressing it on a broader scale,” said Sakashita.

The Clean Water Act has an important role to play in addressing ocean acidification. The law requires that waters not meeting water-quality standards, including those for acidity, be identified as impaired. In turn, impaired waters can lead to pollution control, which here can result in needed measures to reduce carbon emissions and other pollution that drives acidification. Similarly, the EPA uses the Clean Water Act for water-quality problems caused by atmospheric mercury and acid rain. Using the Clean Water Act to address ocean acidification complements efforts to reduce CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act and state initiatives.  

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10/17/13

Oh, ocean creatures are just amazing! While you’ve likely heard about the oarfish carcass that washed up near Catalina Island, we’ve had some fantastic sightings closer to home, too. Orcas aren’t quite as exotic as oarfish, but they’ll impress you with their beauty, speed and mad predatory skills – who else (other than humans) goes after sharks?

Coastal sightings of these killer whales are rare. Out at sea, however, odds of seeing orcas increase and the folks at Naked Whale Research are hoping more people will share their stories and photos. Researcher Jeff Jacobsen recently relayed a couple:

On October 5, Robert Reed and Bob Stewart were fishing near the Eel River Buoy when a pair of killer whales happened by. Stewart took photos of the male, which Jacobsen sent to Alisa Shulman-Janiger who maintains the killer whale photo-ID catalog for California. She identified the male as CA60 aka “Canopener,” who was first identified off of Humboldt on Sept. 20 1980 – 1980!

Canopener’s been seen from Santa Rosa Island off of Santa Barbara to the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii), most frequently in Monterey Bay lately.  He is a mammal eater, a “transient” ecotype, maybe the biggest one in her catalog. And despite his fearsomeness, he always travels with his mom.

The next day, Jim Yarnall and wife were in the same general area and saw another transient pair, a male and a female. Shulman-Janiger identified the female as the rarely seen CA136 and is still trying to match the male.

Jacobsen explained that a rich history exists on most of the killer whales traversing the coast and, importantly, that individual whale background can be accessed via a simple photograph – providing it shows enough detail of the side, trailing edge of the dorsal fin and overall shape, and the gray saddle patch behind it.  

You can be part of things! Report sightings and upload photos at the Naked Whale Research website.

Here’s some more fun local orca facts:

The mammal eaters – “transients” – seem to run a trap line along the coast, keeping that element of surprise on their side by not hanging out in one area for long.  

The salmon-eating “residents” from the Salish Sea area (Puget Sound) also pass back and forth – the K pod made the news because researchers were able to track one of the whales from a satellite tag placed temporarily in his dorsal fin.  

And, no doubt, Jacobsen says, the third and less-known type, the “offshores,” who tend to spend most their time west of the shelf break in deep water feeding on sharks, can be seen here too.  

Remember to observe NOAA’s Whale Watching Guidelines.

More at the Center for Whale Research and Wild Whales.

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