News

12/21/11

Aan angler who has fished North Coast salmon streams for many years, I’m pleased that we are having relatively strong salmon returns this year. If nature cooperates with normal rainfall and good ocean conditions, and if we continue to invest in habi­tat restoration, we should see a meaningful improvement to our beleaguered salmon populations in the next few years. For the North Coast, that means more than just good news for the environ­ment; it means jobs.

But just as we see some hope for the commercial and recreational fishing industries that depend on wild Califor­nia salmon, a new threat is looming — not from dams, or sedimentation, or loss of habitat, but from a CanadianCorporation called AquaBounty which has invented a genetically engi­neered (“GE”) fish that crosses growth-hormone genes from an ocean pout with a Chinook salmon to dramatically increase the speed and size of the salmon’s growth.

For the past decade, AquaBounty has been trying to secure approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration to market and sell its proprietary GE fish as “salmon” in supermar­kets and restaurants through­out the United States. If approved, it would be the first GE animal permitted for sale for human consump­tion.

Not surprisingly, this has sparked controversy and strong concerns from the sci­entific, environmental and consumer rights communi­ties. One concern is that if the GE salmon escaped its pens, it could have devastat­ing effects on wild salmon stocks. Another is that selling the GE fish as “salmon” would confuse consumers and undermine prices for the commercial salmon fishing industry.

Despite the controversy, the FDA and the U.S. Depart­ment of Agriculture are working overtime to help AquaBounty. The USDA recently granted $500,000 to AquaBounty to do further research to perfect the engi­neered fish. This is on top of previous federal grants, now totaling nearly $3 million, to support the research and development of AquaBoun-t­y’s GE salmon.

The latest grant comes despite the introduction of an amendment by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to the 2012 Agriculture Appropria­tions bill that would prohibit the FDA from using its fund­ing to approve the applica­tion for GE salmon, and a similar amendment by Rep.

Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, and Rep. Don Young, R-Alas­ka (supported by Rep. Mike Thompson) that passed the House of Representatives earlier this year. Until this legislation gets approved by the full House and Senate and signed by the president, federal agencies can continue to dole out public money to AquaBounty, so that is what they have decided to do.

Wild Pacific salmon are a critical natural, cultural and economic resource for Cali­fornia and other Northwest states. Yet many salmon runs in California and the Pacific Northwest have gone extinct, and many more are at risk of extinction. And just last month, a lethal and conta­gious salmon infection origi­nating from farmed salmon was found in wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, stirring concern that neighboring salmon populations, includ­ing here in California, could be vulnerable to infection.

There is a dire need for research to protect our wild salmon populations, and $3 million could certainly help.

Unfortunately, the FDA seems bent on not only sub­sidizing but approving AquaBounty’s GE salmon application. That approval will affect Californians’ con­sumer confidence and their pocketbooks, and it could devastate our commercial salmon fishing industry.

Consumers would have no way to tell whether the “salmon” they purchase is genetically engineered. That’s because the federal govern­ment is not requiring AquaBounty to label its product.

This is why I wrote Assem­bly Bill 88, which requires a label on all GE salmon sold in California — just as Alas­ka law currently requires — so that consumers can make informed choices. Frankly, if California was not federally pre-empted from doing so, I would introduce legislation, similar to the Murkowski/Woolsey/Young amendments, to ban GE salmon. Short of that, we should at least make sure GE salmon is properly labeled so that consumers know what they are getting.

Our government should not be underwriting the busi­ness activities of private cor­porations like AquaBounty, especially in light of the pending application for FDA approval and the controversy and environmental risk posed by GE salmon. Here in Cali­fornia, requiring proper labeling of this dubious prod­uct is the best we can do.

AB 88 will be heard in Jan­uary when the Assembly reconvenes for session. Please write to members of the Assembly Appropriations Committee and urge them to approve AB 88, or contact my office at 415-479-4920 for information on how you can help ensure passage of this important legislation. 

Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, chairs the Assembly Water, Parks & Wildlife Commit­tee and is a candidate for the newly created 2nd Congression­al District along the North Coast. 

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A journey along Humboldt Bay to see where the ocean might come in

1/5/12 [excerpts]

In May 2011, Aldaron Laird set out to explore the entire 105-mile perimeter of Humboldt Bay and its three major sloughs. Keeping the tides’ peculiar hours, he launched his little white kayak from dozens of locations, sometimes negotiating slippery slopes and thick brambles. He walked tirelessly, squishing through mud and teetering along rock-tumbled barriers. Frequently he paused, put down his pack, and pulled out digitized maps to ink in adjustments. He shot thousands of photos.

His mission: Record the current conditions of the bay shoreline and sloughs and determine where it is vulnerable to inundation, either from erosion combined with super high “king” tides or from sea level rise driven by long-term climate change. He had been awarded a $33,000 grant from the California Coastal Conservancy for what he had hoped would be mostly a tranquil wander by kayak. That’s not quite how it turned out.

“So far, an awful lot of the entire shoreline is really low,” Laird says. “Particularly the railroad beds and a lot of the dikes. And some bridges. The state is saying to prepare for four-and-a-half feet — 55 inches — of sea-level rise by 2100. Very little around Humboldt Bay can withstand that. If we don’t put the planning effort in now, we’re going to have trouble by 2050.”

Laird hopes that when people see his data, and his and Powell’s final map, they’ll be inspired to do much more. And quickly. During a king high tide Laird has seen the rookery and the Tuluwat village site on Indian Island floating on open water, with all of the surrounding salt marshes submerged. He’s seen the bay flood right up to the top of the railroad tracks near Arcata and to the lip of a dike on Gannon Slough. “Just a little bit more and it will spill over and into the fields and highway,” he said.

“I think [the idea] is so big, people just don’t want to deal with it,” Laird said, sitting in his Arcata office one day in early December. One of the pelican skeletons he’d found lay thinly on a bookshelf. “Look at Caltrans — they’re spending millions to rebuild the 101 corridor, and yet they’re not putting it on a causeway. Maybe they should be. When I’m out there walking around those places, or kayaking, I try to imagine the scale of the impact. And I think, who’s going to hold the ocean back?”

This new project had desk work, too. But Laird imagined that he’d spend much of his time in the field skimming along happily in his little white Dagger kayak. Besides the serious work at hand — the mapping — he was charmed by the notion he might be the first person to consciously cover every inch of bay and slough shoreline, shooting evocative photographs and scouting out potential new kayak launch sites while he was at it.

Instead his journey, now nearly completed, turned out to be a bit more of a slog — on foot, through mud, weeds and occasional filth. Mostly he had to go out at low tide, because he needed to see the shoreline exposed to be able to tell its nature and condition. He ended up hiking two-thirds of the 105 miles. The rest he mostly kayaked, although he sometimes took the Humboldt Baykeeper boat to inventory the industrial shoreline around Eureka. Occasionally, he had to be innovative. When he needed to get to a far southern portion of bay shoreline, up against a steep bluff encased by private property, he ventured out at low tide in a deep channel cutting through South Bay’s mudflats — it was there he saw that colony of seals — then, as the tide began to rise, bringing with it the shrieking, feeding shorebirds, he paddled toward the bluff and back along the shoreline.

1/3/12

California water officials recommended a historic investment in the state’s aging flood control system Friday, saying more than half of the state’s levees do not meet standards and the system needs up to $17 billion in repairs and investment.

The Department of Water Resources’ release of the first statewide flood plan follows a call by Gov. Jerry Brown to refocus state efforts on preparing for the effects of a warming climate as floods from a faster-melting snowpack already place increased strain on the state’s aging levees.

Officials and experts say the state’s flood control system – a piece-meal collection of 14,000 levees and other infrastructure built along the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers by farmers and local governments over the last 150 years – is no longer adequate.

Once a mostly agricultural region that was lightly populated, the Central Valley where the rivers meet has experienced rapid development and population growth.

Central Valley’s flood risk ranks among the nation’s highest. About 1 million Californians now live in floodplains and levees protect an estimated $69 billion in assets, including the state’s water supply, major freeways, agricultural land and the valley’s remaining wetland and riparian habitat, said Mike Mierzwa, senior engineer in the Central Valley Flood Protection Office.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is a freshwater source for two-thirds of California’s population and irrigates millions of acres of farmland throughout the state.

While officials have long known the flood control system was in disrepair, it’s the first time they have studied it as a whole, come up with long-term solutions and a priority for investments.

More than half of 300 miles of aged urban levees do not meet modern design criteria, according to newly released analysis. And about 60 percent of 1,230 miles of non-urban levees have a high potential for failure from under-seepage, through-seepage, structural instability, and/or erosion. In addition, about half of the 1,016 miles of channels are believed to be inadequate to handle projected flooding. And two bridges are in need of repairs.

The plan calls for $14 billion to $17 billion in repairs and other investments – including the $5 billion in bond funds already approved. Investments would be spread over the next 20 to 25 years.

Officials said the money would come from a mixture of federal, state and local sources. Voters will need to approve another bond, Mierzwa said.

Most of the money – up to $6 billion – would be spent in urban areas, where thousands of homeowners and their property could be affected by a flood. Another $6 billion would go toward system-wide improvements.

The plan doesn’t call for specific projects, but offers recommendations. Those include extensive bypass expansion and the construction of a new bypass; major improvements to intake, weir and gate structures; sediment removal projects; urban and rural levee repairs; fish passage improvements and ecosystem restoration.

Focusing on other projects beyond levee repairs is a good step forward, Mount said.

“There’s always the pressure to simply fix the problem, meaning just make the levies taller and stronger. That’s the path of least resistance,” he said.

By constructing and strengthening levees, Mount said, the state may actually induce development and growth behind the levees and hence increase flood risk. Thus the need, he said, to prioritize flood control investments to areas where risk reduction is greatest – and to choose wisely which areas to develop.

“Climate change has expanded our uncertainties,” Mount said. “If trends associated with warming continue, we’ll have to constantly upgrade the levees to match these conditions. So we have to consider this constant economic investment.”

Environmental groups said the plan was a step in the right direction. Still, John Cain, Director of Conservation for California Flood Management at the nonprofit American Rivers, noted that one concern is the plan doesn’t sufficiently tackle the effects of climate change, like sea level rise, and it isn’t based on updated projections of what extreme floods could look like.

Another concern, he said, is that the state should not spend all the bond money on levees while leaving improvements such as bypass construction for a later date when funds may not be available.

But Mierzwa said the plan calls for working on levees and other improvements simultaneously. The state is already putting together a team to start feasibility work for two bypass expansions, he said.

Thus far, state officials say they have spent about half of the $5 billion in bond funds on more than 200 projects. Those include flood emergency exercises, 120 critical levee erosion site repairs, the removal of three million cubic yards of sediment from the bypasses and substantial levee improvement projects, among others.

The Central Valley Flood Protection Board must adopt the plan by July 2012.

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1/2/12

The longtime practice of dumping huge rocks and chunks of concrete along the coastline to stop erosion is coming under fire from those who favor letting the shoreline retreat naturally. San Francisco's efforts to protect Ocean Beach is the latest battleground.

For years, San Francisco's Ocean Beach has been under assault by such powerful surf that a fierce winter storm can scour away 25 feet of bluff in just days.

The startling pace of the erosion near the San Francisco Zoo has compelled the city to spend $5 million to shore up the crumbling bluffs. The strategy has been simple: drop huge rocks and mounds of sand to protect the nearby Great Highway and the sewer pipes underneath from being destroyed by the crashing waves.

But as the enormous rocks have piled up, adding to a jumble of concrete — chunks of curb and bits and pieces of gutters — from parking lots that have tumbled onto the shore, so too have the demands that the city get rid of it all and let the coastline retreat naturally.

Now, San Francisco finds itself under fire from environmentalists, who call the rock and rubble unsightly and harmful to the beach, and the California Coastal Commission, which regulates development along the state's 1,100-mile coastline but has refused to sign off on the fortifications, some of which have sat on the shore for 15 years without its permission.

The standoff at Ocean Beach is the face of the fight in California over the proliferation of sea walls and tossed-together barriers, steps that environmentalists and others say are obliterating the state's beaches and will never stand up against the advancing ocean.

The dispute over how to respond to the receding shoreline south of the Golden Gate Bridge is similar to others playing out at wave-battered bluffs and beaches up and down the coast, where temporary sea walls have a way of becoming permanent fixtures.

On crumbling bluff tops from Pacifica in Northern California to Encinitas in San Diego County, homes are protected by large rock sea walls and sandbags that were allowed under emergency permits but have never been formally approved. In Cayucos, a beach town in San Luis Obispo County, some oceanfront homes are protected by nearly 30-year-old sea walls that received nothing more than verbal authorization. Other coastal highways in the state are protected by sea walls that were supposed to be temporary.

The 1,000 feet of rock sea walls at the center of the dispute in San Francisco were not supposed to be permanent either. Some were built with emergency permits and some without any permission from the Coastal Commission.

In July, the panel rejected San Francisco's bid for after-the-fact approval for the barriers and get permission to build several hundred feet of new, buried sea wall. The commission said the city needed to come up with a better plan, such as moving back from the shore or building a vertical structure mimicking a natural bluff.

San Francisco shot back, suing the Coastal Commission in September in an effort to void its decision.

Twice, the waves have been brutal enough to pose a threat to underground infrastructure, city officials said. The El Niño-stoked storms of December 2009 and January 2010, for instance, devoured more than 40 feet of bluff, undermined the Great Highway and sent its southbound lanes sliding into the surf.

San Francisco's reliance on crude sea walls isn't out of the ordinary in California, where property owners for decades have erected fortifications when waves threaten homes, roads and underground sewer lines.

The result: More than 10% of the state's coastline — and about one-third of Southern California — is protected with man-made barriers.

Although sea walls effectively protect property in the short term, they can intensify the effect of waves and alter surf patterns, leaving beaches stripped of sand until they narrow or even vanish altogether.

Environmental and surfing groups strongly oppose the barriers, and coastal regulators have increasingly asked property owners to find other ways to cope with the ocean.

There are some signs San Francisco is moving in that direction.

Last month the Coastal Commission granted the city an emergency permit to drop large sandbags on a length of the beach in preparation for this winter's storms, a softer approach on the city's part that even drew praise from a member of the local chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, an opponent of sea walls.

A master plan being drafted for the beach calls for moving the most pinched stretch of the Great Highway several hundred feet inland and narrowing the road in other places. 

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