An Oyster in the Storm

10/29/12

Down here at the end of Manhattan, on the border between evacuation zones B and C, I’m prepared, mostly. My bathtub is full of water, as is every container I own. My flashlights are battery-ed up, the pantry is crammed with canned goods and I even roasted a pork shoulder that I plan to gnaw on in the darkness if ConEd shuts down the power.

But as I confidently tick off all the things that Governor Andrew M. Cuomo recommends for my defense as Hurricane Sandy bears down on me, I find I’m desperately missing one thing.

I wish I had some oysters.

I’m not talking about oysters to eat — although a dozen would be nice to go with that leftover bottle of Champagne that I really should drink if the fridge goes off. I’m talking about the oysters that once protected New Yorkers from storm surges, a bivalve population that numbered in the trillions and that played a critical role in stabilizing the shoreline from Washington to Boston.

Crassostrea virginica, the American oyster, the same one that we eat on the half shell, is endemic to New York Harbor. Which isn’t surprising: the best place for oysters is the margin between saltwater and freshwater, where river meets sea. Our harbor is chock-a-block with such places. Myriad rivers and streams, not just the Hudson and the East, but the Raritan, the Passaic, the Kill Van Kull, the Arthur Kill — the list goes on and on — flow into the upper and lower bay of the harbor, bringing nutrients from deep inland and distributing them throughout the water column.

Until European colonists arrived, oysters took advantage of the spectacular estuarine algae blooms that resulted from all these nutrients and built themselves a kingdom. Generation after generation of oyster larvae rooted themselves on layers of mature oyster shells for more than 7,000 years until enormous underwater reefs were built up around nearly every shore of greater New York.

Just as corals protect tropical islands, these oyster beds created undulation and contour on the harbor bottom that broke up wave action before it could pound the shore with its full force. Beds closer to shore clarified the water through their assiduous filtration (a single oyster can filter as much as 50 gallons of water a day); this allowed marsh grasses to grow, which in turn held the shores together with their extensive root structure.

But 400 years of poor behavior on the part of humans have ruined all that. As Mark Kurlansky details in his fine book “The Big Oyster,” during their first 300 years on these shores colonists nearly ate the wild creatures out of existence. We mined the natural beds throughout the waterways of greater New York and burned them down for lime or crushed them up for road beds.

Once we’d hurled all that against the wild New York oyster, baymen switched to farming oysters. But soon New Yorkers ruined that too. Rudimentary sewer systems dumped typhoid- and cholera-carrying bacteria onto the beds of Jamaica Bay. Large industries dumped tons of pollutants like PCBs and heavy metals like chromium into the Hudson and Raritan Rivers, rendering shellfish from those beds inedible. By the late 1930s, oysters in New York and all the benefits they brought were finished.

Fortunately, the New York oyster is making something of a comeback. Ever since the Clean Water Act was passed in the 1970s, the harbor’s waters have been getting cleaner, and there is now enough dissolved oxygen in our waterways to support oyster life. In the last 10 years, limited sets of natural oyster larvae occurred in several different waterways that make up the Greater New York Bight.

Alongside nature’s efforts, a consortium of human-run organizations that include the Hudson River Foundation, New York-New Jersey Bay Keeper, the Harbor School and even the Army Corps of Engineers have worked together to put out a handful of test reefs throughout the Bight.

Yes, there have been some setbacks. New Jersey’s state Department of Environmental Protection actually demanded that a test reef from the nearby bay at Keyport be removed for fear that people might poach those test oysters and eat them. But the program has persisted, even in New Jersey. In 2011 the Navy offered its pier at Naval Weapons Station Earle, near Sandy Hook, as a new place in New Jersey to get oysters going.

Will all of these attempts to get oysters back in New York City have any effect in defending us against Sandy? Surely not. The oyster kingdom is gone, and what we have now are a few struggling refugees just trying to get a foothold in their old territory.

But what is fairly certain is that storms like Sandy are going to grow stronger and more frequent, and our shorelines will become more vulnerable. For the present storm, all we could do was stock up on canned goods and fill up our bathtubs. But for the storms to come, we’d better start planting a lot more oysters.

Paul Greenberg, the author of “Four Fish,” is writing a book about reviving local seafood.

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Friends of the Dunes Spooky Dune Tour in Manila, Sun. Oct. 28

1-3 p.m. @ Humboldt Coastal Nature Center

A Halloween event for kids and their adults! Join some spooky dune characters for fun Halloween games and educational activities at the Humboldt Coastal Nature Center. Come dressed in costume and bring a trick or treat bag, or a t-shirt to make into a bag! Be prepared for a short hike in the sand. One hour tours will start every 30 minutes from 1-3 pm. Space is limited, call 444-1397 to reserve a spot. Tours en espanol en 2pm.

Humboldt Baykeeper will be there making re-useable bags out of recycled t-shirts to emphasize how easy and fun it can be to recycle and halt the use of plastic bags simultaneously.

Refreshing the Clean Water Act

The federal law has made life better nationwide, but 40 years later, it desperately needs to be updated.

10/17/12

On Thursday, one of the country's most effective environmental laws — the federal Clean Water Act — will turn 40. Los Angeles County residents owe the law a huge debt of gratitude. Because of it, Santa Monica Bay no longer has a dead zone, its bottom fish no longer have tumors and fin rot, and the days of baywide summer beach closures due to multimillion-gallon sewage spills are long gone.

These successes didn't simply happen. They required the combined efforts of government and public activists, and took considerable financial investment, along with excellent engineering and construction work, and leadership at multiple levels. But without the Clean Water Act, they couldn't have been accomplished.

The act sets wastewater standards and regulates the discharge of pollutants into the nation's oceans, rivers and lakes. Locally, one of the biggest focuses has been on coastal sewage treatment plants, which have upgraded their facilities and reduced by 90% the amount of sewage solids going into the ocean. Another local success has been with industrial waste programs, which have slashed their discharges of toxic metals and organic pollutants more than tenfold. Standards set by the act have led to cleaner beaches during the summer and the installation of more than 50,000 catch-basin screens and inserts to keep trash out of the ocean as well as lakes and rivers.

These measurable successes have reduced health risks to swimmers and surfers and improved ecosystem health. But they aren't enough. The Clean Water Act as written can't create the universally fishable, swimmable and drinkable (where appropriate) waters that Congress envisioned when it passed the act 40 years ago. It hasn't been updated in 25 years, and it desperately needs to be.

Many kinds of pollution stemming from agriculture, mining, septic systems and the timber industry are still largely unregulated, and they are causing problems such as dead zones, hypoxic waters and harmful algal blooms in the nation's waters. Storm-water pollution regulations also need to be strengthened. If you want to understand why, visit our local beaches after a rain. Many of them look like trash dumps, and about half of the county's beaches get Fs on the Beach Report Card after a rainstorm. Polluted urban runoff is often toxic to aquatic life.

It's no wonder that after 40 years, the Clean Water Act is in need of updating. We need storm-water pollution regulations that incentivize and require state-of-the-art technologies. We need infrastructure retrofits that will allow the capture and treatment of polluted runoff to the level required by water quality standards. And we need to upgrade sewage treatment plants to treat water to a level that can more easily augment local water supplies.

The question now is how to achieve these things. Some necessary fixes, such as tightening standards on storm-water pollution, can be accomplished through strengthening rules already mandated by the act. But other Clean Water Act modifications, such as regulating agriculture and mining, providing funding for green infrastructure projects or extending the act to cover groundwater, would require congressional action. In the current, highly partisan Washington atmosphere, that would be incredibly difficult to accomplish.

Still, polls consistently find a high degree of concern on the part of Americans about water quality issues, and most Americans value the protections that are in place. Representatives in Congress should listen to their constituents and move to finish the job of protecting aquatic life across the nation.

Without a more comprehensive federal approach to water management, the nation's aquifers, rivers, lakes and coastal waters will continue to degrade. This isn't simply an aesthetic or a tourism issue; clean water protects aquatic life and public health. Clean water is essential for drinking, and for agriculture, and for life. Congress had the foresight 40 years ago to override a veto by President Nixon to pass the Clean Water Act, which has served us well for four decades. Now the law needs updating to meet the act's ambitious goals and serve us as well in decades to come.

Mark Gold, former president of Heal the Bay, is associate director of UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

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Clean Water Act 2.0: Rights of Waterways

10/15/12

In a decisive display of bipartisanship, Congress passed the U.S. Clean Water Act into law on October 18, 1972, overriding President Nixon's veto. The Act faced significant hurdles; for example, my own, pre-Clean Water Act childhood in Massachusetts included sewage-choked beaches radiating illness toward those brave enough to approach beckoning waves, and industrial waste discharges that poisoned my favorite fishing runs.

The Act responded to such highly visible insults with clear goals: achieve fishable and swimmable waters by 1983, eliminate the discharge of pollutants into navigable waters by 1985, and prohibit the discharge of toxic pollutants in toxic amounts. Fueled with funding for essential treatment infrastructure, and catalyzed by citizen lawsuits against major polluters, the Act steadily picked off much of the low-hanging pollution fruit.

Over the last 40 years, progress has undeniably been made -- but it has also undeniably stalled. Over half of monitored rivers and streams nationwide, and almost 70 percent of lakes, reservoirs and ponds, still cannot meet one or more established beneficial uses such as swimming, fishing or habitat.

Water flows are also increasingly compromised, with fish and even whales disappearing as water diversions increase. Climate change also is threatening waterways; in the recent opening days of the 67th Session of the U.N. General Assembly, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for urgent action on climate change to ensure water and food security world-wide.

The 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act calls for reflection on next steps. While the Act's vision was laudable, it has in effect legalized pollution and extraction, with slowed but ongoing degradation. Our other environmental laws similarly have fallen short in protecting people and planet, their limitations evident from growing, global problems such as spreading species extinctions and accelerating climate change impacts.

One of the key reasons our environmental laws are falling short is that they accept without question the overarching assumption that the natural world can and should be manipulated and degraded for short-term financial profit. Our laws fail to reflect the fact that we are inextricably intertwined with the natural world, and that what we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. We must modernize our laws to correct this fundamental misunderstanding and guide us on a better path.

We can begin to course-correct our imbalanced relationship with the environment by examining the nature of rights, and the rights of nature. We accept as our birthright the fundamental human rights to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Just as we have fundamental rights that arise from our existence on Earth, so too does the natural world. Our failure to recognize the inherent rights of nature has resulted in lifestyles dangerously out of balance with the Earth's systems. Only by recognizing the inherent rights of the natural world to exist, thrive and evolve may we begin to rectify this imbalance and ensure the well-being of both people and planet.

Water is essential to implementing our collective right to life. We applaud California Governor Brown's recent signature on a bill recognizing the human right to water, one for which human rights groups around the globe have been fighting with growing success. With expanding water shortages, however, pressure is increasing from those attempting to commodify this essential element of life for profit.

Natural systems cannot withstand this pressure indefinitely. We, the people, need to recognize clearly in our laws both the human right to water needed for life, and the inherent rights of the life-giving waterways themselves. We also must acknowledge in law our responsibility to enforce those rights in the face of profit-motivated and otherwise unsustainable claims to dwindling waterways and other natural systems.

A movement to advance the rights of waterways is happening now around the world, with advocates calling for water rights for waterways to parallel and support our own human right to water. Most recently, New Zealand recognized the Whanganui River and its tributaries as a legal entity with rights to exist and flourish as an "integrated, living whole." Guardians will be appointed to oversee the rights of the River pursuant to this new legal recognition.

Industry struggles with logistics as use of ash in agricultural soil questioned

10/14/12
Concerns over what contaminants may be associated with Humboldt County's biomass industry -- and Eel River Power's plans to shutter its Scotia facility, citing reasons including regulatory uncertainty -- highlight just two sides of the challenge of tapping the region's largest source of renewable energy.

”Biomass has played a significant role in Humboldt County,” Schatz Energy Research Center senior research engineer Jim Zoellick said, adding that it currently provides about 30 percent of the North Coast's energy.

The center recently completed a draft study for the Redwood Coast Energy Authority that said North Coast biomass energy production could potentially double by 2030.

Only Los Angeles County produces more biomass -- in its case, garbage -- according to a study from University of California, Davis. On the North Coast, biomass plants traditionally burn scraps and residue from sawmills in order to generate power.

”The mill source is very dependent on the timber industry in Humboldt County -- which has been in decline in recent years,” Zoellick said.

On top of that, some timber cut in Humboldt County is shipped overseas to be milled.

Unlike sawmill residue, Humboldt County's substantial forest biomass, created at logging sites or ecological forest thinnings, is not easily accessible.

”You can only transport it so far and have it be economically viable,” Zoellick said.

Now researchers are looking at ways to process fuel materials close to the site of recovery with satellite processors in towns like Hoopa, Willow Creek and Weaverville.

”There's not a real easy and clear path to make that stuff economically viable,” Zoellick said.

Looking toward expansion can be difficult considering the challenges facing existing North Coast biomass plants.

The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board recently sent letters to four biomass plants in Northern California, including Blue Lake Power, Eel River Power, and DG Fairhaven Power in Samoa.

In the letters, the board expressed concerns about the management of wood ash, a byproduct of biomass energy plants that has typically been sold or given to farmers who use the ash as soil amendment, mixing it with earth in hopes of improving various properties.

Concerns about dioxins and other contaminants in ash waste led the water board to request extensive testing, due Monday. The board will review results of the testing at its December meeting.
David Leland of the water board said that dioxins can cause cancer and be transferred through food into humans.

”It magnifies up the food chain -- or has the potential to do that at least,” Leland said.

Heavy metals and changes to pH balance are additional concerns to the area's surface water and groundwater.

Humboldt Waste Management Authority interim Executive Director Patrick Owen said that if the board determines there are too many toxins in the ash waste, power plants might be forced to send the ash to landfills instead, which would dramatically drive up costs.

”That could really affect the viability of these regional plants,” Owen said.

The problem doesn't end there. Added landfill waste could jeopardize county compliance with state-mandated waste diversion. If the plants fail, biomass would be reintroduced to the waste stream.

Water Board senior engineer Mona Dougherty said regulation of the ash lapsed in recent years. It came to the board's attention again recently when citizens expressed concerns about heavy dumping of ash and contaminants.

”We decided it was time to start taking a look and see if there were any water quality issues associated with it,” Dougherty said.

Landfilling the ash is not the only option, Dougherty said. Water board staff is researching ways to reduce contaminants during the burning process.

”We might find that there's not a problem,” Dougherty said. “It's difficult to know until we see what we've got.”

California Coastal Commission planner Melissa Kraemer said her commission had been contacted by a citizen concerned about the use of the ash in agricultural lands.

She said a lot of seasonal grazing lands around Humboldt Bay are wetlands, and the coastal commission determined that some heavy spreading of the ash constituted development, requiring a permit.

”I don't think our commission is really regulating the disposal of material as a soil amendment,” Kraemer said, but added that it was interested in the results of the water board's inquiries.

”Disposal can be a challenge,” Kraemer said. “Certainly if it has elevated levels of dioxin, we don't want that going into our waters and contaminating our oysters and dairylands.”

Attitudes about biomass appear cautiously hopeful. Matt Ross, speaking for Eel River Power, said local and state officials are working with the plant in hopes to reopen next year.

Management at the Blue Lake and Fairhaven plants did not respond to calls by press deadline.