News

9/1/11

The fight over whether to maintain California's oil-spill response and prevention program is a classic Sacramento showdown pitting Big Oil against public safety and the environment.

State senators hoping for fat campaign checks from Exxon, BP and other oil companies are trying to, in effect, kill the system started in 1990 in the wake of the catastrophic Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. Did these people sleep through the BP oil rig disaster that devastated the Gulf Coast waters and economy just last year?

Another vote on AB 1112 will take place in the Senate by the end of next week, and this time, it must pass. Gov. Jerry Brown should be calling up senators and reading the riot act.

California's tanker safety program is funded today by a 5-cents-per-barrel fee on oil transported into the state. The program has been effective: The amount of oil spilled here is down 95 percent since 1990. But new laws passed after the tanker Cosco Busan crashed into the Bay Bridge in 2007 added to the workload of the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, while inflation has continued to drive up costs. The agency is doing less today, and without the additional 1.75 cents per barrel proposed in AB 1112, layoffs will be inevitable. Vigilance and the ability to respond quickly to a spill will decline.

Make no mistake: This is not about money. The increase would be a fraction of a penny per gallon, not even a blip for oil companies raking in billions. This is about weakening regulation so that companies can cut corners on safety.

Some lawmakers say the safety system could be more efficient, but most of the changes they suggest are pushed by lobbyists from BP and other oil companies.

The bill authored by Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, passed his own house easily, as the Mercury News' Paul Rogers reported this week. But Tuesday in the Senate, it fell four votes short of passage, with 17 yes votes, 14 no and nine who took a pass and didn't vote at all. These are the senators who should be most ashamed.

Their most likely motivation is wanting to avoid either offending Big Oil with a yes vote or angering voters with a no.

State Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco was the most surprising bystander for Tuesday's vote, but he now says he'll support AB 1112. He ought to be helping to round up votes. He wants to be mayor of San Francisco, which saw firsthand the devastation of the Cosco Busan spill.

Another surprise was state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, who chairs the Senate's committee on energy and has stood up for closer scrutiny of PG&E -- speaking of companies that can't be trusted to place public safety above profits.

And a disappointment was state Sen. Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo, who represents parts of Santa Clara County and a huge swath of the California coast. Blakeslee, a former Exxon employee, has sworn he's not in the pocket of big oil, and this would be a perfect way to show it. He and his waffling colleagues need to get off the fence and vote for this bill on the next try.

And be proud of it.

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Aug. 30 Sacramento Bee editorial by Dennis Takahashi-Kelso, Executive Vice President of the Ocean Conservancy.

9/6/11

Nine pelicans and one western gull that were exposed to fish-oil in Crescent City were released today after being washed by dedicated staff and volunteers at the Humboldt Wildlife Care Center.

On August 24 Arcata-based Bird Ally X, a non-profit advocate for wildlife and wildlife rehabilitation, received word of Brown Pelicans in trouble in Crescent City Harbor. Young
pelicans were contaminated with "fish oil." coming from the cleaning stations at the public dock.

The next morning, Bird Ally staff, in partnership with Humboldt Wildlife Care Center went to Crescent City and discovered at least 2 dozen juvenile Brown Pelicans heavily contaminated. Large bins of fish-waste at a local cleaning station were open to the young, inexperienced birds, eager for an easily gotten meal. It takes experience and maturity to get your living from the cold waters of the North Pacific and these birds, fresh from the nest, rely on bays and sheltered coves as training ground for a life at sea. Use to being fed by their parents, it is an easy switch to scavenging and begging. Securing the fish-waste bins was the first step toward solving the problem. An easy fix, HWCC, working with the Crescent City Harbor District, added hinged lids to the bins. Less easy is the rescue and rehabilitation of the impacted wildlife.

"Fish-oiled" birds require treatment almost exactly as if they had been caught in an oil spill. They need first and foremost to be washed, but they also require medical attention, food and medicine. Housing before being washed is needed, as well as housing that provides room to recover and regain strength so that they may be released back into the wild.

Humboldt Wildlife Care Center is committed to providing that care. Had this been a petroleum oil spill, the State of California has in place a response network to care for impacted wildlife. Fish oil however is beyond the legal mandate of this network. While HWCC has the support of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network and California Department of Fish and Game in tackling this problem, the financial cost of the level of care these birds need is high. Each pelican can eat up to 10 pounds of fish every day. We are relying on the North Coast community, and beyond, to help us give these birds another chance.

So far, the HWCC has spent over $4000 responding to this event, not including food - 110 pounds of night smelt every day. 

To donate or volunteer, contact them at

Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, PO Box 4141, Arcata Ca 95518

822-8839

or visit their Oiled Pelican site for updates and more info.

9/6/11

Three forums will be held this week to discuss the health of the Eel River, covering public health danger posed by toxic algae, the potential for salmon recovery and opportunities for people to get involved in helping restore water quality.

While Chinook salmon and winter steelhead populations are rebounding due to wet weather cycles and productive ocean conditions, Eel River water quality is decreasing, and toxic algae is now pervasive during late summer in the Van Duzen, South Fork and lower Eel rivers.

Harriet Hill of the Humboldt County Public Health Department will present information on Wednesday and Thursday evenings in Fortuna and Redway on toxic algae problems in the Eel River. She will describe what blue-green algae is, what causes it to bloom, what the health hazards are and what people can do to help prevent this condition.

Fisheries biologist Patrick Higgins will present information from a 2010 fall Chinook survey wherein he estimated that 10,000 to 30,000 fish returned to the Eel River watershed, the most since 1985-88 and possibly since 1955-58.

Larry Desmond, owner of Mendocino Waterworks, will make a presentation at a Saturday morning meeting in Willits. He has been involved in all aspects of water development and purification for more than 25 years.

Times and locations of forums are: Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. at the Monday Club, 610 Main St. in Fortuna; Thursday, 6:30 p.m. in Redway at the Healy Center conference room, 456 Briceland Road; and Saturday, 10 a.m. at the Little Lake Grange, 291 School St. in Willits.

There is no charge for admission, and refreshments will be served. For more information, call 707-923-4377.

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8/26/11

In the wake of the retirement of Peter Douglas after 26 years as executive director of the California Coastal Commission, it's hard to improve on the Associated Press report that broke the news: "They might not know his name but the millions of visitors annually lured to California's 1,100 miles of coastline are no doubt familiar with his work."

Meaning Douglas is largely the reason why long stretches of unspoiled coast have stayed that way, despite enormous pressure to render them otherwise.

The notion now being eagerly lobbied by the Pacific Legal Foundation, longtime foe of the Coastal Commission and the Coastal Act, is that his replacement should be chosen with an eye toward the selection of someone more moderate, more pragmatic, more balanced in his approach; specifically, someone more inclined to give additional weight to the wishes of developers so that the scales might be allowed to tip less often toward the mandates of public access and resource protection.

The only thing one need consider about this proposal is its source. It is a roadmap to the realization of an ill-concealed agenda, but it has nothing to do with the reality of California coastal politics.

It assumes the tilt in the playing field between the public and private sectors is the opposite of reality. When it comes to coastal development, regulators and public interest advocates are as outgunned, out-funded, out-lobbied and outmuscled by private interests as routinely as they are in every other arena of our society. That is the reality. The public interest is served only by people who are willing to fight for it.

That's why what the commission needs is another tough, passionate, full-throated advocate who knows coastal law and coastal politics backward and forward and who sees our relationship to the natural world as Aldo Leopold saw it, not as the Irvine Company sees it.

We need someone who knows how Leopold felt one afternoon in New Mexico in 1909, when, in the course of seeking to assure sufficient supplies of deer for hunters, he shot a wolf. He approached her body just in time to see "a fierce green fire dying in her eyes." He came to realize the value of wolves and wildness.

The testament and summation of Aldo Leopold's land ethic is "A Sand County Almanac."

For Peter Douglas, the testament and summation of his land ethic is the California Coastal Act.

The replacement for the commission's first executive director needs to embody those qualities to the maximum extent practicable. If we get anything less than that - which is to say, more moderate and pragmatic than that - we will live to see the end of California's wild coast.

Andrew Christie is the director of the Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club in San Luis Obispo.