Environment Archives - Page 100 of 107

Tribes Try Alternative Fishing Gear

Nisqually Tribe uses tangle nets, beach seines to reduce impact on chinook

E. O’ConnellBenji Kautz, Nisqually Tribe, unloads chinook during the tribe’s fishery last fall. — E. O’Connell
Benji Kautz, Nisqually Tribe, unloads chinook during the tribe’s fishery last fall.

E. O’Connell, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Treaty Indian tribes in western Washington are experimenting with fishing methods that help conserve depressed salmon

and steelhead stocks. The Nisqually Tribe began using alternative gear a few years ago, and this spring, the Lummi Nation and Upper Skagit Indian Tribe both held tangle net fisheries. Tangle nets are similar to gillnets, but have a smaller mesh size.

The Nisqually Indian Tribe will continue to lower impacts on returning chinook salmon this year.

“To make good on our recent gains in habitat restoration in the Nisqually, fishermen need to decrease how many natural origin chinook are caught,” said David Troutt, natural resources director for the tribe.

In recent years, the tribe has implemented drastic changes to its fishing regime, including a decrease of 15 fishing days since 2004; reducing the number of nets that can be used by a fisherman from three to two; and having just less than a month of mark-selective fishing with tangle nets and beach seines.

This year’s fishing plan will continue implementing mark-selective fishing, but only with beach seines.

“A historically large run of pink salmon is forecast to come in alongside chinook and coho this year,” Troutt said. Tangle

nets – which ensnare fish by their teeth – would catch an un- usually high number of pinks, which tribal fishermen aren’t targeting.

“Since 2004, Nisqually tribal fishermen have already cut hundreds of hours off their chinook season,” Troutt said. “Tribal fishermen are bearing the brunt of conservation for these fish so we can help them recover.”

In a mark-selective fishery, fishermen release natural origin fish that haven’t had their adipose fin removed in a hatchery. The adipose fin is a soft, fleshy fin found on the back behind the dorsal fin. Its removal does not affect the salmon.

“Mark-selective fisheries are a useful tool and the Nisqually is a unique place in western Washington where it could benefit salmon and tribal fisheries,” Troutt said.

Innu First Nation will not back down in fight against Rio Tinto’s IOC

Jean-Claude Therrien Pinette, Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam

(UASHAT MAK MANI-UTENAM, QC) The Innu First Nation of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam wishes to remind potential purchasers of Rio Tinto’s share of Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC) that the Canadian Aboriginal group continues to fiercely oppose IOC’s mining, railway and port operations within their traditional territory. One of the measures the Aboriginal group has taken was to file legal proceedings against IOC on March 18, 2013, along with another aboriginal group, the Innu First Nation of Matimekush-Lac John, asking the Court to block IOC’s operations in Quebec and Labrador as well as to grant them damages in the amount of CAD$900 million – see press release of March 20, 2013.

IOC’s operations on the traditional territory of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam and their Innu brothers and sisters of Matimekush-Lac John have scarred the land as well as people’s lives for more than 60 years now. The Innu are well pas their breaking point and in addition to the above legal action, IOC can expect further acts of opposition in the coming months.

Meanwhile, Rio Tinto continues to seek to sell its majority stake in IOC. And while it is clear that Rio Tinto is looking to offload assets, the Innu First Nation of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam cannot help but feel that Rio Tinto is also seeking to offload the “Innu problem”.

“We simply wish to make clear that any purchaser of Rio Tinto’s stake in IOC will run up against the same fierce opposition that is currently underway against IOC. The conflict will not end until the more than 60 years of injustice we have endured at the hands of IOC comes to an end,” stated Mike McKenzie, Chief of the Innu First Nation of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam.

“While Rio Tinto is looking to move on, our people are not going anywhere. We will still be here, occupying our traditional territory like we always have and unfortunately living with all the negative impacts IOC’s projects have caused and continue to cause,” added Chief McKenzie.

In fact, the Innu First Nation of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam would like to take this opportunity to remind any potential investor looking to do business on their traditional territory (covering much of northeastern Quebec and Labrador) that they will defend to the end the principle that any project on their traditional territory requires their consent.

Those who walk together rise up together

By Susie Cagle, Grist

From New York’s Zuccotti Park to Egypt’s Tahrir Square, popular uprisings of the last few years have often been credited to the organizing power of digital social networks like Twitter and Facebook. But shared public spaces in dense urban areas have a lot more organizing power than hashtags or retweets, and there’s new research to back that up.

The Urban Affairs Review paper “Walk and Be Moved: How Walking Builds Social Movements” by Brian Knudsen and Terry Clark underscores how dense city-living exposes residents to new ideas and connections, and in turn fosters the creation of social movement organizations. The authors (Knudsen works at Urban Innovation Analysis, a Chicago design firm, and Clark is a sociology professor at the University of Chicago) base their research on the interaction between the urbs — our physical infrastructure, our streets, our parks, our commerce — and the civitas — the people who give those places meaning collectively.

Knudsen and Clark say they are “the first to discover and analyze electronic unpublished data for environmental, human rights, and other types” of social movement groups, and compare them to how city spaces are used and lived. Their analysis shows that it’s not just the existence of those shared public spaces, but the way we use them that contributes to making a city more politically active. Specifically, a more active city is one that uses its two feet.

“The study provides substantial evidence that it is not just density, or the crowding together of people in urban areas, that shapes political and social activism, but the direct engagement of the city through walking,” Richard Florida writes at Atlantic Cities.

We’ve intuitively known that cities spawn social movements for a really long time. It’s been 45 years since Henri Lefebvre wrote about our “right to the city” — our right, that is, to “demand a transformed and renewed access to urban life.” Lefebvre wasn’t the only, or the first, one to point this out. (Hey Jane Jacobs! Hey Aristotle!) But these ideas are especially relevant in light of the last few years of global political action.

“In our historic moment, social grievances are inextricably tied to urban living,” Marc Tracy writes about the recent uprisings in Brazil at the New Republic (uprisings that, it should be noted, were sparked by an attempt to raise bus fares). “And since the characteristic attribute of a city is density and the characteristic attribute of density is the flinging together of people from different walks of life, Brazil’s protests have engaged a broad swath of the population.”

Brazil made the right to the city national law in 2001. But do the same forces come to bear in U.S. cities? Stateside, cities seem more concerned about attracting “new talent” than fostering social justice these days. Talk among urbanists is more about bike lanes and coffee shops than lowering transit fares.

According to the study’s authors, “walking effects are larger than income, local rent, or racial diversity.” But it seems ill-advised to rule those factors entirely, especially when our cities are in flux, and when the authors are using data from the year 2000. Since then, many U.S. city centers have grown more affluent and white, while the formerly cloistered, non-walkable suburbs have become more poor and brown.

What might those shifts mean for the future of urban activism? A diversity of population and ideas is what makes the real magic behind walkability — not just the walking itself. People have to be exposed to the breadth of the human condition if they might be motivated to change it. Will social and environmental justice organizations sustain in dense neighborhoods that become richer, and more homogenous? Can that diversity of ideas sustain without a diversity of people?

Put another way, will new city residents still be motivated toward social and environmental justice issues, or will they be content to sip soy lattes and ride bikes while donning very hip-looking helmets?

Ultimately — ideally! — if these dense, walkable places can accommodate newcomers without losing sight of longtime residents, everyone stands to benefit. To do that, though, we’ll need to maintain a diverse political dialog — in the public squares, of course.

State Department contractor lied Transcanada ties, another fatal flaw of Keystone environmental review

By Steve Horn, DeSmog Blog

The contractor the Obama U.S. State Department hired for the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) of the northern half of TransCanada’s Keystone XL (KXL) tar sands export pipeline overtly lied on its conflict-of-interest disclosure form that it signed and handed to State in June 2012.

A major research dossier unfurled today by Friends of the Earth-U.S. (FOE-U.S.) and The Checks & Balances Project (CBP) shows that Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM Group) played “Pinocchio” in explaining its ties – or as they say, lack thereof – to Big Oil, tar sands and TransCanada in particular on its conflict-of-interest form.

The two groups dug deep and revealed State’s contractor ERM and its subsidiary Oasis Environmental both have ongoing contractual relationships with the Alaska Gas Project – now known as the South Central LNG Project – co-owned by TransCanada, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and BP. Further, ERM’s Socioeconomic Advisor Mark Jennings served as a “Consultant to ExxonMobil Development Company for the Alaska Pipeline Project, according to his now-scrubbed LinkedIn profile.

ERM’s own documents – FOE-U.S. and CBP further explain – also reveal the multinational firm has business ties with over a dozen companies active in the Alberta tar sands, including Exxon, Shell, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Total and Syncrude.

On its conflict-of-interest form, ERM said it had no “direct or indirect relationship … with any business entity that could be affected in any way by the proposed work.” Clearly, that’s far from the case.

In March, ERM Group – a City of London-based dues-paying member of the American Petroleum Institute (API) with a history of rubber-stamping ecologically hazardous oil and gas infrastructure projects – said KXL’s northern half “is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the rate of development” of the tar sands in its SEIS. Thus, it will also have little impact on climate change, according to ERM’s SEIS, contracted out by TransCanada on behalf of the State Department.

FOE-U.S. says these most recent developments further call the entire SEIS into question, and that doesn’t include the fact that State recently revealed it’s clueless as to the exact route of the Keystone XL.

“From the beginning, the State Department’s review of Keystone has been plagued by influence peddling and conflicts of interest,” said FOE-U.S.’s Ross Hammond in a press statement.

“This is more serious: If ERM lied about its relationship with TransCanada, how can Secretary Kerry, President Obama or the American people believe anything the company says about the pipeline’s environmental impact?”

As PLATFORM London explains, ERM Group – also a dues-paying member of fracking industry lobbying force Marcellus Shale Coalition up until Oct. 2011 – is part of the “Carbon Web.” That’s shorthand for “the network of relationships between oil and gas companies and the government departments, regulators, cultural institutions, banks and other institutions that surround them.”

Given the state of play, both FOE-U.S. and CBP have called for State’s Office of the Inspector General to conduct a thorough investigation, examining how and why ERM was chosen. They’ve also called for a complete halt in the KXL review process until that transpires.

“Secretary Kerry must halt this flawed review process and direct the State Department to conduct a full, unbiased review of the Keystone XL pipeline’s impact,” Gabe Elsner, director of CBP said in a press statement.

“In addition, the State Department Inspector General should pursue a full investigation into how a contractor with clear conflicts of interest was allowed to write the U.S. government’s assessment of Keystone XL and why the State Department failed to bring those conflicts of interest to light. Finally, the State Department should determine appropriate disciplinary actions for ERM to discourage contractors from lying to the federal government in the future.”

Friends of the Earth U.S. has set up an action page where concerned citizens can send letters to State Secretary John Kerry calling for an investigation into the many conflicts of interest scandals within the environmental review process.

Oil train death toll likely to hit 50

Associated Press

LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec — Everyone missing in the fiery crash of a runaway oil train in Quebec is presumed dead, police told grieving families, bringing the death toll to 50 in Canada’s worst railway catastrophe in almost 150 years.

Meanwhile, attention focused on the CEO of the railway’s parent company, who faced jeers from local residents and blamed the train’s engineer for improperly setting its breaks before the disaster.

Officials said Wednesday evening that 20 bodies had been found in this burned-out town, and 30 people were missing.

“We informed them of the potential loss of their loved ones,” said Quebec police inspector Michel Forget, who came to an afternoon news briefing from a meeting with families of the dead and missing. “You have to understand that it’s a very emotional moment.”

Edward Burkhardt, the head of the train’s U.S.-based parent company blamed the engineer for failing to set the brakes properly before the unmanned Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train hurtled down a seven-mile (11-kilometer) incline, derailed and ignited in the center of Lac-Megantic early Saturday. All but one of its 73 cars was carrying oil, and at least five exploded.

The crash has raised questions about the rapidly growing use of rail to transport oil in North America, especially in the booming North Dakota oil fields and Alberta oil sands far from the sea.

The intensity of the explosions and fire made parts of the devastated town too hot and dangerous to enter and find bodies days after the disaster. Only one body had been formally identified, said Genevieve Guilbault of the coroner’s office, and she described efforts to identify the other remains as “very long and arduous work.”

Burkhardt, president and CEO of the railway’s parent company, Rail World Inc., faced jeers from residents and scorn from Quebec’s premier as he made his first visit to the town since the disaster. He was expected to meet with residents and the mayor Thursday.

Burkhardt said the train’s engineer had been suspended without pay and was under “police control.”

Investigators also had spoken with Burkhardt during his visit, said a police official, Sgt. Benoit Richard. He did not elaborate.

Until Wednesday, the railway company had defended its employees’ actions, but that changed abruptly as Burkhardt singled out the engineer.

“We think he applied some hand brakes, but the question is, did he apply enough of them?” Burkhardt said. “He said he applied 11 hand brakes. We think that’s not true. Initially we believed him, but now we don’t.”

Burkhardt did not name the engineer, though the company had previously identified the employee as Tom Harding of Quebec. Harding has not spoken publicly since the crash.

“He’s not in jail, but police have talked about prosecuting him,” Burkhardt said. “I understand exactly why the police are considering criminal charges … If that’s the case, let the chips fall where they may.”

Investigators are also looking at a fire on the same train just hours before the disaster. A fire official has said the train’s power was shut down as standard operating procedure, meaning the train’s air brakes would have been disabled. In that case, hand brakes on individual train cars would have been needed.

The derailment is Canada’s worst railway disaster since a train plunged into a Quebec river in 1864, killing 99.

Quebec police have said they were pursuing a wide-ranging criminal investigation, extending to the possibilities of criminal negligence and some sort of tampering with the train before the crash. The heart of the town’s central business district is being treated as a crime scene and remained cordoned off by police tape.

At a news conference shortly before Burkhardt’s arrival, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois faulted his company’s response.

“We have realized there are serious gaps from the railway company from not having been there and not communicating with the public,” Marois said. She depicted Burkhardt’s attitude as “deplorable” and “unacceptable.”

Burkhardt, who arrived in town with a police escort, said he had delayed his visit in order to deal with the crisis from his office in Chicago, saying he was better able to communicate from there with insurers and officials in different places.

“I understand the extreme anger,” he said. “We owe an abject apology to the people in this town.”

In an exchange with reporters, Burkhardt defended the practice of leaving trains unmanned, as was the case when the train rolled away. Canadian transportation department officials have said there are no regulations against it.

“For the future we, and I think probably the rest of the industry, aren’t going to be leaving these trains unmanned,” Burkhardt said. “We’ll take the lead with that. I think the rest of the industry is going to follow.”

Among the residents looking on as Burkhardt spoke was Raymond Lafontaine, who is believed to have lost a son, two daughters-in-law and an employee in the disaster.

“That man, I feel pity for him,” Lafontaine said. “Maybe some who know him properly may think he’s the greatest guy in the world, but with his actions, the wait that took place, it doesn’t look good.”

The disaster forced about 2,000 of the town’s 6,000 residents from their homes, but most have been allowed to return.

Power plants turning back to coal

Source: Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON — Power plants in the United States are burning coal more often to generate electricity, reversing the growing use of natural gas and threatening to increase domestic emissions of greenhouse gases after a period of decline, according to a federal report.

Coal’s share of total domestic power generation in the first four months of 2013 averaged 39.5 percent, compared with 35.4 percent during the same period last year, according to the Energy Information Administration, the analytical branch of the Energy Department.

By contrast, natural gas generation averaged about 25.8 percent this year, compared with 29.5 percent a year earlier, the agency said in its most recent “Short-Term Energy Outlook.”

With coal prices dropping and gas prices rising, the agency said it expected the use of coal to remain on the upswing, accounting for 40.1 percent of electricity generation through 2014. Natural gas would fuel about 27.3 percent.

Power plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gases that drive climate change. The growing use of coal is occurring against the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s announcement of a sweeping plan to reduce greenhouse gases, including curtailing emissions from power plants. His initiative has already sparked opposition from the coal industry, congressional Republicans and coal-state politicians.

Opponents say new regulations are unnecessary in part because utilities have relied more on natural gas, which emits less heat-trapping carbon dioxide than coal does. But the new data indicate that power plants will readily return to coal if the price of natural gas gets too high.

“Markets on their own may go in your direction for a period of time, but to ensure that we get reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in a significant, sustained way, you’re going to need government intervention,” said James Bradbury of the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank.

The energy administration estimated that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels would rise by 2.4 percent in 2013 and 0.6 percent in 2014, after falling about 3.9 percent in 2012.

“The increase in emissions over the forecast period primarily reflects the projected increase in coal use for electricity generation, especially in 2013 as it rebounds from the 2012 decline,” the report said.

In a speech last month, Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency to propose rules by June 2014 to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. A rule for new power plants is expected by September.

Coal-fired generation accounted for about 50 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. about a decade ago. But a natural gas boom driven by hydraulic fracturing has pushed down prices, making natural gas more competitive with coal. By April of last year, coal and natural gas each produced about one-third of the country’s power.

Lower demand for coal drove down its average price, said Elias Johnson, a coal industry expert for the agency. At the same time, the price of natural gas ticked upward, buoyed by demand and somewhat reduced production.

Utilities, many of which have natural gas and coal plants, will probably toggle between the two fuels in the near term, burning the cheaper one more often.

“What is the least expensive form of generation gets dispatched first: renewables, hydro, then maybe nuclear and then coal or natural gas,” said Karen Obenshain of the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group in Washington.

Coal is not expected to grab a 50 percent share of power generation again because new regulations curtailing mercury emissions from power plants will probably shutter many small, older coal plants, said Mark McCullough of American Electric Power, one of the country’s largest coal-fired utilities. Even with such closures, the U.S. will probably fail to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, a goal set by Obama in 2009, without a comprehensive effort to address carbon dioxide pollution.

Said Bradbury, “Electricity markets are very dynamic, and while there’s been a lot of press about the success story of the benefits of natural gas, it’s important to realize that that’s temporary and it depends on gas prices staying really low, and we’re starting to see there are these thresholds where utilities will switch back to higher-carbon fuel, like coal.”

USDA, Interior and Defense Departments Partner to Benefit Agricultural Lands, Wildlife Habitat and Military Readiness

First Sentinel Landscape Pilot in Washington State will Support Local Economy, the Conservation of Natural Resources and National Defense

Source: USDA

WASHINGTON, July 10, 2013 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Defense Acting Deputy Under Secretary for Installations and Environment John Conger announced today a federal, local and private collaboration that will preserve agricultural lands, assist with military readiness and restore and protect wildlife habitat.

Through the Sentinel Landscapes partnership, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Department of the Interior (Interior) and Department of Defense (DoD) will work together in overlapping priority areas near military installations to help farmers and ranchers make improvements to the land that benefit their operation, enhance wildlife habitat, and enable DoD’s training missions to continue.

“This is a great example of a federal, local and private collaboration working together to achieve greater results for the American people – in this case by enhancing conservation efforts while ensuring our national defense,” Vilsack said. “As a result of this partnership between Federal agencies and private partners, producers will have greater certainty with regard to the environment, we’ll protect habitat for at-risk species, and our Armed Forces will retain access to important training opportunities.”

“Today’s announcement is a win-win for the American people and for the land and wildlife we cherish,” Jewell said. “We are taking an important step in addressing one of the greatest threats to wildlife in America today, loss of habitat, while helping to ensure the preservation of working landscapes and our military readiness.”

“The Department of Defense is committed to working together with other federal agencies to ensure we sustain a world-class training environment at military installations across the country,” Conger said. “This arrangement benefits our service members and is an innovative, efficient use of taxpayer resources. It has the added benefits of protecting important habitats for imperiled wildlife species and working lands in rural communities that surround military installations. I look forward to our applying this model at other locations across the country.”

A result of collaboration through the White House Rural Council, the federal agencies will kick off this partnership through a pilot Sentinel Landscape in the South Puget Sound region of Washington State. Home to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, an important troop training facility, this region has some of the last remaining native prairie habitat in the state.

Once covering 150,000 acres, only three percent of the original native prairie habitat remains due to development. Several of the at-risk species in this area include Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly, the streaked horned lark, and the Mazama pocket gopher. A rare native plant, the golden Indian paintbrush, is already listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.

DoD, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and partner organizations will invest more than $12.6 million to restore and protect more than 2,600 acres of this important prairie habitat on both public and private lands, allowing training activities at the Joint Base to move forward with more flexibility.

Many NRCS conservation and DoD programs ease pressures that development puts on wildlife habitat, including DoD’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration program. Left unaddressed, this decreasing habitat could otherwise restrict testing and training on military installations, areas to which many species flee when displaced by development.

The creation of long-term or permanent easements will protect nearby agricultural and private lands from development and help preserve farms and rural culture. Wildlife habitat can be created and managed to benefit species as well as agricultural production and military readiness.

Building on the successes of USDA’s Working Lands for Wildlife, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will provide regulatory predictability under the Endangered Species Act to ranchers who implement conservation practices in the pilot landscape, and is pursuing the possibility of granting ecosystem credits to DoD from the federal conservation investments.

With interagency and private collaboration, these Sentinel Landscapes will help preserve the land’s natural character while benefitting national defense, local economies and the conservation of natural resources.

The departments are reviewing additional sites for the partnership to collaborate in the future and will continue to capitalize on the USDA, Interior, DoD and local partners’ overlying priorities and programs.

Government doesn’t know exact route of Keystone XL

John Upton, Grist

You might think that one would need to know the precise route of a huge planned pipeline in order to assess its environmental impacts. But the State Department apparently disagrees.

Thomas Bachand has been trying to find out the precise route of Keystone XL for his Keystone Mapping Project. When he submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department, which is responsible for assessing Keystone, it responded with a big shrug of the shoulders. From the department’s June 24 letter to Bachand:

[T]he Department does not have copies of records responsive to your request because the Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone pipeline project was created by Cardno ENTRIX under a contract financed by TransCanada Keystone Pipeline LP, and not the U.S. government.

Neither Cardno ENTRIX nor TransCanada ever submitted GIS information to the Department of State, nor was either corporation required to do so. The information that you request, if it exists, is therefore neither physically nor constructively under the control of the Department of State and we are therefore unable to comply with your FOIA request.

DeSmogBlog lists some of the important questions left unanswered because we lack the specific route info:

Where will KXL intersect rivers or cross ponds that provide drinking water? What prized hunting grounds and fishing holes might be ruined by a spill? How can communities prepare for possible incidents?

This isn’t the first time Bachand has been blocked in his efforts to map the proposed pipeline. From his blog:

Last year when I requested the data from TransCanada, I was told that releasing it would be a “national security risk.” Despite this, TransCanada only carries $200 million in third party liability insurance. By contrast, cleanup costs for the 2010 pipeline spill in Kalamazoo, Michigan are $1 billion and climbing.

How very thoughtful of TransCanada to be concerned about risks.

Small farms fight back: Food and community self governance

By Tory Field and Beverly Bell, Toward Freedom

Heather Retberg stood on the steps of the Blue Hill, Maine town hall surrounded by 200 people. “We are farmers,” she told the crowd, “who are supported by our friends and our neighbors who know us and trust us, and want to ensure that they maintain access to their chosen food supply.”

Blue Hill is one of a handful of small Maine towns that have been taking bold steps to protect their local food system. In 2011, they passed an ordinance exempting their local farmers and food producers from federal and state licensure requirements when these farmers sell directly to customers.

The federal government has stiffened national food-safety regulations in order to address the health risks associated with industrial-scale farming. Recent widespread recalls of contaminated ground turkey, cantaloupe, eggs, and a host of other foods illustrate the serious problems at hand. These outbreaks have been linked to industrial farms with overcrowded animals and unbalanced ecosystems. The significant distance between industrial farms and consumers creates a lack of accountability and difficulty tracing problems when they arise.

Small-scale farming, however, doesn’t spark the same safety risks. Small farmers who sell their food locally will tell you that the nature of their business, based on face-to face relationships with the people who eat their food, creates a built-in safety protection. They don’t need inspectors to make sure they are following good practices. Keeping their neighbors, families, and long-time customers in good health is an even better incentive. Customers are also more able to witness the farming practices firsthand.

Still, small farmers are being pushed out of business because they are saddled with the financial and bureaucratic burdens of the same regulations as large industrial farms. Heather and her family’s Quill’s End Farm raise grass-fed cows, lambs, pastured pigs, chickens for eggs and meat, turkeys, dairy cows, and goats. The diverse mix is better both for the land and the economic viability of the farm.

Given the scale of their business, building their own chicken processing unit was financially out of the question, so instead they were butchering at a neighboring farm’s USDA-approved unit. When state inspectors told them that USDA regulations didn’t allow them to share this neighbor’s facility, Quill’s End Farm was forced to stop raising and selling chickens altogether.

“I just remember the feeling that if that was happening to us, the same message was being given to all sorts of farmers of our scale and people were just going to give up and stop farming,” said Heather. “My sense, more than anything, was a really daunting realization that, ‘Oh, this is how farms get disappeared.’ And people are so supportive, but then when we disappear, everybody might just kind of shake their heads like, ‘Oh, it must just be really tough to make it farming.’”

So Heather, together with a small group of other farmers and farm patrons in Maine, began crafting the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance, the ﬁrst of its kind in the country. The ordinance exempts direct sales between farmers and customers – at farms, farmstands, and markets, for example – from state and federal licensing and inspections. It allows Heather to sell chicken at her farmstore, and Bob St. Peter, a fellow farmer and organizer, to sell his homemade cookies at the farmers’ market.

In March 2011, the ordinance passed unanimously in the town of Sedgwick, Maine. Three days later it was presented at Heather’s town meeting in Penobscot. “We spent a good while talking about whether to give $3,000 to our local library,” says Heather, “and I was sitting there thinking ‘Whoa, this is a tough crowd.’ But then when the ordinance came up, it was another unanimous vote. It was tremendous.” Other towns in Maine immediately followed suit.

Since then, says Heather, “We’ve heard from people in Tennessee, Texas, California, Virginia… someone in New Zealand. Last year, Vermont passed a food sovereignty resolution with similar language. Over in California they’re working in the direction of an ordinance in Mendocino County. In Arizona they’re beginning to circulate petitions. And this fall we heard that a town in Utah had passed the ordinance.” Over the two years following Sedgwick’s success, more than eight towns in Maine itself have adopted such ordinances.

As of this writing, Maine’s State Department of Agriculture is challenging one of the local ordinances by suing a dairy farmer. Community members are reaching out to friends in surrounding counties and national food justice coalitions, asking them to call in and urge the state to drop the suit. The case has drawn national attention. Meanwhile, organizers from far and wide are watching closely, hoping to launch similar initiatives in their own communities.

In addition to efforts at the local level, farmers and activists are attempting to tackle the government’s one-size-fits-all approach to food safety at the federal level. When US legislators voted to increase Food and Drug Administration inspections and reporting requirements for farms in 2010, more than 150 food groups succeeded in winning an amendment that provides some exemptions for small farmers.

“Foodborne illnesses don’t come from family agriculture,” says Senator Jon Tester from Montana, who co-sponsored the amendment.

Will the native legal winning-streak hit 200?

25 June 2013 11:36

Written by Administrator 3 The First Perspective

Analysis by Bill Gallagher: Lawyer / Strategist / Author

Resource Rulers – Fortune and Folly on Canada’s Road to Resources

Many commentators are saying that the courts are tightening up and that the native legal winning streak will be harder to maintain for future legal challenges.

They could be right but then again they could be wrong – big time!

Recently, I cautioned that natives need to be more judicious in some of the cases that they are advancing and have warned them of over-reaching (recently they incurred three losses in a row – in my view – all in legal actions that may not have furthered their social justice causes).

Still they nevertheless also won two significant procedural wins at the appellate court level: ‘cumulative impacts’ in Alberta (#180) and ‘Rupert’s Land’ in Yukon (#181). Both these key issues will now have new trials: the first potentially impacting the oilsands; the second potentially impacting 40% of Canada’s land mass. Stay tuned!

So what makes one think that natives might hit the 200 mark? A hint comes from a case decided this week on Vancouver Island having to do with the Douglas Treaties. Again the native-side did not prevail because they failed to reciprocate by discharging their duty-to-consult obligations (being as it is a two-way street) and they were properly called-out by the court for their consultation intransigence.

Likewise the British Columbia government was called-out for its narrow legal-mindedness. The following paragraph from the judgment appears at the halfway point – and took me (a close reader of rulings) completely by surprise:

d) Did the Provincial Crown have a Duty to Consult in respect of the Kwakiutl First Nation Traditional Territory beyond the KFN Treaty Lands?

[123] The Provincial Crown concedes that it had a duty to consult with respect to the treaty rights but denies this duty extended to the whole KFN Traditional Territory. (excerpt Chartrand v The District Manager 2013 BCSC 1068) (author’s underlining)

The fact that this assertion appears in a Supreme Court ruling in mid-2013 tells us something about the narrow legal mindset emanating from BC government lawyers.

Needless to say the court made short work of it:

[147] All three elements that give rise to a duty to consult in respect of the KFN Traditional Territory were present. Accordingly the Provincial Crown had a duty to consult with the KFN in respect of the Decisions and their potential for adverse impact on the KFN Traditional Territory and its treaty rights. (ibid)

No wonder the judge told BC to bear its own court costs, along with making other recommendations in the pursuit of furthering real reconciliation down the road:

[208] Although this declaration does not provide the relief the Kwakiutl First Nation advocated for in terms of their quest for a resolution of their Aboriginal land claims, neither does it ignore the problem. I encourage and challenge both the Federal Crown and the Provincial Crown to engage the KFN regarding the KFN’s asserted and treaty rights, titles and interests with a view to the negotiation of a treaty without any further litigation, expense or delay. (ibid) (author’s underlining)

While the province did adequately consult the KFN in this instance – even with this outcome – the native side did not leave court empty-handed. More over, if the same type of provincial government narrow legal-mindedness permeates the other native legal challenges presently before the courts, then hitting 200 native legal wins in the Canadian resources sector will soon be a litigation track-record certainty. And it’s no wonder then that pipelines, dams, transmission lines, woodlots, mines, run-of-river hydro projects are all heading into the legal blender in BC.