11/3/10

Health testing of California beaches has been extended for another year, giving temporary relief to the state program to protect swimmers from contaminated ocean water.

The State Water Resources Control Board voted Tuesday to spend $984,000 in state bond money to continue testing for pathogens at hundreds of beaches through 2011.

Beach water-quality monitoring has been in jeopardy because of state and county budget cuts. A Times investigation this summer found that testing had sunk to its lowest level in more than a decade, leading to fewer beach closures and advisories and putting swimmers, surfers and divers at a greater risk of getting sick.

The reprieve comes two years after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the $1 million the state had provided each year to test beaches across the state.

Since then, emergency bond funds and stimulus dollars have been tapped to keep the program afloat. But those funds were set to run out at the end of the year, leaving health agencies with the prospect of discontinuing testing and ending public alerts when the ocean poses a health risk.

In addition to the one-year extension, the water board called for wastewater agencies to coordinate their ocean water testing programs with health departments to save money.

A permanent source of funds for the tests, according to water board officials, can be authorized only by the Legislature and the next governor.

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11/1/10

The number of salmon in the Pacific Ocean is twice what it was 50 years ago. But there is a downside to this bounty, as growing numbers of hatchery-produced salmon are flooding the Pacific and making it hard for threatened wild salmon species to find enough food to survive.

In the American Northwest, the struggle to save endangered runs of salmon is one of the epic crusades of the contemporary conservation movement. Seventeen strains of Pacific salmon are currently listed as threatened or endangered. Two more are labeled “species of concern,” meaning they are close to jumping onto the list.

So what are we to make of this: A recent study published in the journal Marine and Coastal Fisheries found that the north Pacific Ocean may be nearing the limit of its salmon-carrying capacity. The North Pacific is becoming “overcrowded with salmon,” according to Randall Peterman, one of the study’s authors and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Fisheries Risk Assessment and Management at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C. He and his co-author, Seattle-based fisheries biologist Greg Ruggerone, recently set out to compile the most complete set of data on Pacific salmon abundance. What they found is that today’s total Pacific salmon population is twice what it was 50 years ago. “We’re seeing more total salmon now than we’ve ever seen before,” says Peterman.

A surprising number of those fish — more than one in five — originate in hatcheries. And that has created its own set of problems. Masses of hatchery-bred salmon are gobbling up smaller fish, krill, and other prey, reducing food supplies in the North Pacific for endangered wild runs and hampering their recovery. In addition, hatchery fish, which come from limited brood stock with less diverse DNA, aren’t as genetically fit as wild salmon to support the long-term survival of the species.

How can numerous Pacific salmon runs be on the verge of extinction while total salmon numbers are straining the limits of the ocean’s capacity to support them?

According to the researchers, the abundance of some salmon species has been caused by a resurgence in wild salmon populations due to productive ocean conditions, as well as to the ever-increasing production of hatchery fish. But the problem is, the resurgence of wild populations hasn’t been universal. Five species of salmon exist in the Pacific: Pink, chum, sockeye, coho, and Chinook. (The Atlantic Ocean has only one species, the Atlantic salmon.) Over the past quarter-century, pink salmon populations from around the Pacific Rim have doubled, thanks, in part, to hatchery production. Other runs, such as Upper Columbia River Chinook and Snake River sockeye, limp along in alarmingly low numbers.

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10/31/10

The government has spent many millions of dollars in recent decades cleaning up sites contaminated with dioxin and, in extreme cases, relocating residents of entire neighborhoods tainted by the toxin.

But tough new pollution standards proposed by the Obama administration could require additional dioxin cleanups at scores of abandoned factories, military bases, landfills and other locations declared safe years ago, officials say.

If the guidelines receive final approval, federal and state officials will examine sites with known dioxin contamination to identify those needing work and what the work will cost. Among those expected to be reviewed are notorious places such as the former village of Times Beach, Mo., where about 2,000 people were relocated in the 1980s after dioxin-laced waste oil was sprayed on roads to control dust.

The Environmental Protection Agency plan has escalated a decades-long debate over the danger of dioxin, a family of chemical byproducts from industries such as pesticide and herbicide production, waste incineration and smelting. One form of dioxin was in Agent Orange, the defoliant used by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War.

The EPA is expected to make a final decision this fall on the new standards. But congressional critics and chemical companies say the agency is acting hastily and should wait until it completes a reassessment of dioxin's health effects in the coming months.

"They're proposing these sweeping changes to regulations without giving us an idea of how many sites will be affected, how many homes will be affected, what the economic impact would be," said Rep. Dave Camp, a Republican whose Michigan district includes a 50-mile-long watershed polluted with dioxin from a Dow Chemical Co. plant. 

EPA officials say they want to move ahead because they are convinced dioxin is hazardous at lower concentrations than previously thought. If necessary, they say, the standards can be adjusted later.

"We're driven by the need to protect against excessive risk of both cancer and non-cancer health concerns," said Mathy Stanislaus, EPA assistant administrator for solid waste and emergency response. "We believe (the current standards) are not sufficiently protective and more stringent numbers are needed."

Since 1998, the agency has regarded dioxin soil concentrations of less than 1,000 parts per trillion (ppt) as safe for residential areas. For commercial and industrial zones, 5,000 ppt to 20,000 ppt has been considered safe.

The proposed revisions would drop the safe levels to a fraction as much - 72 ppt for residential areas and 950 ppt for commercial and industrial sites.

Cleanups could be ordered anywhere dioxin readings exceed those thresholds, including sites where previous cleanups used less stringent standards.

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10/29/10

The Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has announced that it is suspending its effort to develop a wave energy project off the coast of Humboldt County.

The utility cited “significant permitting challenges” and higher-than-expected projected costs. The proposed configuration and location of the project made it unviable, PG&E said in a statement.

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Click Here for PG&E's press release

Update from the Times Stanbdard, 10/30/10:

Wave project breaks apart; PG&E quits Humboldt coast effort, citing costs, permitting