3/12/12

MONTAGUE, Calif. - An environmental group is threatening to sue a water district in this Siskiyou County community, claiming that operation of a roughly 90-year-old dam is causing losses of federally listed coho salmon.

The Orleans, Calif.-based Klamath Riverkeeper, which was a party in an earlier lawsuit over water diversions by ranchers in the county, has given the Montague Water Conservation District 60 days to come up with a solution for imperiled fish.

The group believes Dwinnell Dam, which creates the Shastina Reservoir and provides water for agricultural and residential customers, has caused a loss of 20 percent of habitat for coho in the Shasta River since it was built in the 1920s, said Erica Terence, the group's executive director.

"That's an important amount of habitat," Terence said. "It's difficult to deny that after the dam was built, the coho population went into a steep decline. Only one out of three generations of coho that come back to spawn in the Shasta River is considered biologically viable."

Terence said the district is violating the Endangered Species Act by failing to obtain incidental take permits for the salmon. She said the group wants the district to either remove the dam or build a fish passage and take other measures to protect the coho.

"We did feel it was necessary to put them on notice," Terence said, adding she hopes the issue is settled out of court. "They had at least 15 years of operating this dam since coho salmon were put on the endangered species list as threatened."

Lisa Faris, the Montague water district's office manager, said she would wait to comment until after its board discussed the issue at its regularly scheduled March 13 meeting.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is taking no enforcement actions against the district, said Don Flickinger, the agency's natural resources management specialist in Yreka, Calif. However, if the dam's operation is resulting in the taking of coho, the district does need to contact the agency about permits, he said.

"If the water district makes a good faith effort to contact (NMFS), that would be a good way of working together to find ways of avoiding that kind of take," Flickinger said.

Klamath Riverkeeper's notice of intent to sue, which it issued March 12, is only the latest in a series of skirmishes between environmental groups and landowners over the use of water from the Shasta and Scott rivers, which are key tributaries of the Klamath River. Already, environmentalists and the Siskiyou County Farm Bureau have separately sued the California Department of Fish and Game over how it enforces rules regarding water diversions from the two rivers.

Dwinnell Dam is not one of the four dams suggested for removal under the Klamath Basin agreement.

For more info, visit Klamath Riverkeeper at http://www.klamathriver.org/

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The US EPA has finally released their major report on the noncancer health effects of dioxin, which for the past twenty seven years has been delayed due to interference from the chemical industry.  Environmental and health groups across the country celebrated this important milestone.

“We applaud EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and the Obama Administration for finalizing this important health report on dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals on the planet,” said Lois Marie Gibbs, Executive Director of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ). “After twenty seven years of delays, I quite honestly never thought this report would ever see the light of day.  Today the American people won a major victory against the chemical industry, who has been working behind closed doors for decades to hide and distort the truth about the dangers of dioxin.  The science is clear: dioxin is toxic to our children’s health and development.  We strongly urge the EPA to now finish the job by finishing their review on dioxin and cancer, and to develop a comprehensive action plan to further reduce dioxin emissions and exposures.  To start, the EPA should finalize the EPA’s proposed cleanup standards for dioxin at toxic sites, which have been languishing at the White House OMB since 2010.  We call on the Obama Administration to dust off the prestigious National Academy of Sciences report on dioxin in food to explore innovative policies to reduce the levels of dioxin in the food supply.”

Dioxin is building up in our bodies as a result of the food we eat. According to EPA over 90% of human exposure to dioxin occurs through our diet.  Dioxin is most prevalent in meat, fish, dairy, and other fatty foods.

EPA has been under enormous pressure by environmental health, environmental justice, labor, health-impacted, and Vietnam Veterans organizations to release the non-cancer health assessment in recent weeks and ever since President Obama entered office.  In January a letter was delivered to EPA Administrator Jackson signed by over 2,000 organizations and individuals.  Over the past month a broad coalition of organizations have written to EPA urging the agency to finalize this report. This includes the Breast Cancer Fund, Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ), Endometriosis Association, Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, National Medical Association, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sierra Club, Vietnam Veterans of America, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Canadian Environmental Law Association, , Clean Water Action, Ecology Center, Edison Wetlands Association, Environmental Working Group, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Healthy Child Healthy World, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, International POPS Elimination Network (IPEN), Ironbound Community Corporation, Kentucky Environmental Foundation, the Lone Tree Council, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Reproductive Health Technologies Project, Science & Environmental Health Network, The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, Union of Concerned Scientists, Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign, and Women’s Voices for the Earth.

In January, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), Ranking Member of the Natural Resources Committee and senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, sent EPA a letter urging the agency to finalize this dioxin assessment.  In April, Rep. Markey and 72 members of Congress sent a letter to EPA calling on the agency to release the report.

Dioxin is a known human carcinogen.  Dioxin also causes a wide range of adverse non-cancer effects including reproductive, developmental, immunological, and endocrine effects in both animals and humans. Animal studies show that dioxin exposure is associated with endometriosis, decreased fertility, the inability to carry pregnancies to term, lowered testosterone levels, decreased sperm counts, birth defects, and learning disabilities.  In children, dioxin exposure has been associated with IQ deficits, delays in psychomotor and neurodevelopment, and altered behavior including hyperactivity. Studies in workers have found lowered testosterone levels, decreased testis size, and birth defects in offspring of Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

Dioxin’s effects on the immune system of the developing organism appear to be among the most sensitive endpoints studied. Animal studies show decreased immune response and increased susceptibility to infectious disease. In human studies, dioxin was associated with immune system depression and alterations in immune status leading to increased infections.  Dioxin can also disrupt the normal function of hormones—chemical messengers that the body uses for growth and regulation. Dioxin interferes with thyroid levels in infants and adults, alters glucose tolerance, and has been linked to diabetes.

According to EPA, dioxin releases increased by 18% from 2009-2010 nationally.  Dioxin air releases increased by 10%.  Some of the top U.S. companies that reported releasing dioxin into the environment in 2010 were Dow Chemical, Missouri Chemical Works, Gerdau Ameristeel, Lehigh Southwest Cement, Formosa Plastics Corporation, Temple-Inland, Cahaba Pressure Treated Forest Products, and Clean Harbors Aragonite.  Three of these facilities make chemicals to produce polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic. Municipal waste incinerators, medical waste incinerators, landfill fires, and backyard burn barrels are some of the other top sources of dioxin in America.

For a copy of EPA’s new dioxin health report, visit http://www.epa.gov/dioxin

For a fact-sheet on the hazards of dioxin, visit http://chej.org/wp-content/uploads/Documents/Dioxin%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

For frequently asked questions about dioxin in food, visit http://chej.org/wp-content/uploads/Frequently-Asked-Questions-About-Dioxin-and-Food.pdf

For a detailed history of dioxin delays, visit: http://chej.org/wp-content/uploads/DioxinTimeframeFebruary2012.pdf

The House of Representatives approves a bill that overrides California's environmental protections and changes federal irrigation policy. But its prospects are dim in the Senate.

3/1/12

The House approved a bill Wednesday that rewrites two decades of water law in California, wiping out environmental protections and dropping reforms of federal irrigation policy that have long irritated agribusiness in the Central Valley.

The legislation passed on a mostly party line vote of 246-175 in the Republican-controlled House. But its prospects of becoming law are poor. The White House has issued a veto threat, and it is unlikely to survive the Democratic-controlled Senate, where both of California's senators have vowed to work against it.

"It essentially says farmers will get theirs and nothing for anybody else," said Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.).

Despite the long odds, Republicans brought the bill to the House floor to highlight differences between the parties in an election year. Republicans contend that environmental regulations are killing jobs.

"The senators don't understand that they're going to put tens of thousands of people out of work," said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), who once brought a bowl of fish to a congressional hearing to argue that the interests of fish were being elevated over those of farmers. Nunes, the proposal's lead author, said he will work hard to advance the proposal, including attaching it to other legislation.

"If the two senators think they can sit back and do nothing, they've got another thing coming," he said. "Because there's going to be absolute hell to pay."

The bill, called the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act, kills a settlement that has launched one of the most ambitious river restoration projects in the West: the rewatering of a dried-up stretch of the San Joaquin River to revive salmon runs. It guts a 20-year-old federal law that set aside a large portion of federal irrigation supplies in California for environmental purposes and toughened the terms of federal irrigation contracts.

The legislation also rolls back fish protections in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to those stemming from a 1994 agreement between the state and federal government and it preempts California water law.

"Part of what it tries to do is turn back time," said UC Berkeley law professor Holly Doremus. "It's a remarkable overreach. It tries to give the irrigators everything. They threw all of the wish list in here."

The bill's passage highlights the growing influence of Central Valley Republicans after the GOP takeover of the House last year. The House Majority Whip is Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, a co-author of the legislation. Rep. Tom McClintock of Granite Bay is chairman of a subcommittee that oversees water policy.

Backers blamed environmental protections in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the state's water hub, for a "man-made drought" that has cut irrigation deliveries, left fields unplanted and hurt the San Joaquin Valley economy.

"For too long this man-made drought in California has been ignored," McCarthy said during floor debate.

Aside from theU.S. Chamber of Commerce and national farm groups, supporters listed by Nunes were primarily from the Central Valley, including such agricultural powerhouses as the Harris Ranch and Westlands Water District.

Ten Democrats supported the bill, including Californians Joe Baca of Rialto, Dennis Cardoza of Atwater and Jim Costa of Fresno. One Republican voted no.

Cardoza supported the bill but said that "rather than doing the hard work of reaching across the aisle to craft a truly bipartisan bill that could have been signed into law, we have passed legislation that is unlikely to see the light of day in the Senate."

Opponents warned that if Congress overrides state water law in California, it can do the same thing elsewhere. "What happens in California won't stay in California," said Rep. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Creek). "This bill, if it ever becomes law, will ignite California's next water war and the fights will spread across the West."

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Humboldt County veterans to put last plank on historical boat

3/3/12

Two years after the Golden Rule sank in Humboldt Bay during a storm, the vessel that was once used to protest militarism during the Cold War is now one plank away from being watertight again.

After patching up two large holes on the starboard side, members from local chapters of Veterans For Peace will add the last plank — known in nautical terms as the “whiskey” plank or shutter plank — to the boat’s hull on Sunday. To celebrate this milestone, Veterans For Peace members and Fairhaven boat yard owner Leroy Zerlang will hold a fundraising party to complete the Golden Rule’s restoration.

Golden Rule project volun­teers hope to sail the wooden boat, which once carried vet­erans protesting nuclear test­ing, to other points in the United States, said Chuck DeWitt of the Eureka Veter­ans For Peace chapter.

But there is still a lot of work to do, he said.

“We’ve done very little on the deck, nothing on the cabin and nothing on the interior,” he said, adding that Golden Rule project volun­teers have been working on the boat for about a year and a half. “We’ve been limited by money, first of all. Sometimes months will go by when the group just doesn’t have enough money to buy mate­rial and pay for labor.”

In addition to patching up the holes in the boat’s hull, the group has started work on the craft’s foredeck, using heavy-duty laminated wood, DeWitt said. Much of the material used on the boat’s hull comes from Pierson Building Center and Schmid­bauer Building Supply. Figas Construction donated an excavator to pick up the boat from the beach near Fairhaven and move it to Zer­lang’s shipyard, DeWitt said. Zerlang donated the space.

“Without really putting out a penny, we got the boat moved up on the beach, lev­eled out and set out on some beams,” DeWitt said. “Tech­nically, we could put it in the water and it would float again, but we got a lot of work to do.” 

In 1958, Albert Bigelow — a former lieutenant com­mander in the U.S. Navy who commanded three combat vessels in World War II — sailed the boat with four crewmen from San Pedro, Calif., to protest nuclear testing in the waters off the Marshall Islands, located in the western Pacif­ic Ocean between Hawaii and Guam.

The boat was boarded by the U.S. Coast Guard twice in Hawaii, and the Golden Rule crew was arrested before the boat could make it to the test­ing area. According to Zer­lang, who researched the boat’s legacy on the Internet after pulling it out of the bay, the Golden Rule was one of the first boats that started the peace movement.

“It was very much what Greenpeace is today,” he said. “It was so important in trying to stop testing for nuclear bombs back in the Cold War. It’s a tiny little boat with brave men who sailed to Hawaii.”

The Golden Rule showed up in Humboldt Bay 10 years ago as the property of a local doctor, Zerlang said. It sank in a big storm two years ago this month. After he raised the battered 30-foot hull from the bottom of the mari­na, Zerlang said, the boat nearly became firewood.

“If it wasn’t for her histo­ry, her very unique history, the boat would have been destroyed,” he said. “People have come from the East Coast to visit this boat. They come from Canada to visit this boat.”

Once the Golden Rule proj­ect finishes restoring the boat, local Veterans For Peace representatives will sail the boat up and down the West Coast, making ports of call wherever there’s a Veterans For Peace chapter, DeWitt said. The group will open the boat to visitors and use it as a platform for educating peo­ple about the hazards and dangers of nuclear warfare.

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