Environment Archives - Page 43 of 107

Kill the Land, Kill the People: There Are 532 Superfund Sites in Indian Country!

Of a total of 1,322 Superfund sites as of June 5, 2014, nearly 25 percent of them are in Indian country. Manufacturing, mining and extractive industries are responsible for our list of some of the most environmentally devastated places in Indian country, as specified under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), the official name of the Superfund law enacted by Congress on December 11, 1980.

Most of these sites are not cleaned up, though not all of the ones listed below are still active. Some sites are capped, sealing up toxics that persist in the environment. In cases like the Navajo, the Akwesasne Mohawk and the Quapaw Tribe, the human health impacts are known because some doctors and scientists took enough interest to do studies in their regions. Some of those impacts may persist through generations given the involvement, as in the case of the Mohawk, of endocrine disrupters. Read on.

1. Salt Chuck Mine, Organized Village of Kasaan, Alaska

The Salt Chuck Mine Superfund site in southeast Alaska operated as a copper-palladium-gold-silver mine from 1916 to 1941. Members of the Organized Village of Kasaan, a federally recognized tribe, traditionally harvested fish, clams, cockles, crab and shrimp from the waters in and around Salt Chuck, unaware for decades that areas of impact were saturated with tailings from the former mine. As if that weren’t enough, Pure Nickel Inc. holds rights to mining leases in the area and began active exploration to do even more mining in summer 2012, according to Ground Truth Trekking.

2. Sulfur Bank Mine, Elem Band of Pomo Indians, California

The Elem Band of Pomo Indians, whose colony was built on top of the waste of what would become California’s Sulfur Bank Mine Superfund site in 1970, have elevated levels of mercury in their bodies, and now fear for their health. According to an NBC News investigation, nearby Clear Lake is the most mercury-polluted lake in the world, despite the EPA’s spending about $40 million over two decades trying to keep mercury contamination out of the water. Although the EPA cleaned soil from beneath Pomo homes and roads, pollution still seeps beneath the earthen dam built by the former mine operator, Bradley Mining Co. For years, Bradley Mining has fought the government’s efforts to recoup cleanup costs.

3. Leviathan Mine, Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California

The Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California requested EPA involvement in the cleanup of an abandoned open pit sulfur mine on the eastern slope of California’s Sierra Nevada that became the Leviathan Mine Superfund site. The Washoe Tribe had become concerned that contaminated waters were affecting their lands downstream, causing impacts to culture and health, environmental damage, remediation, monitoring and testing, posting of health advisories, drinking water, effects on pregnancy, and cancer. Aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, iron, manganese, nickel and thallium have been detected in surface water and sediment downstream from the mine. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concluded that exposures could result in cancerous and non-cancerous health effects.

4. Eastern Michaud Flats, Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Idaho

The abandoned FMC phosphorus facility occupies more than 1,000 acres of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes’ Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho, and lies within Eastern Michaud Flats Superfund site. The primary contaminants of concern at the site are arsenic, elemental phosphorous and gamma radiation. FMC left a legacy of contamination in the air, groundwater, soil and the nearby Portneuf River, which threatened plants, wildlife and human health on the reservation and in surrounding communities. The Shoshone-Bannock have long asked for a cleanup of contaminated soils, but instead the EPA’s 2012 interim remedy is to cap and fill, including areas containing gamma radiation and radionuclides.

5. Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex, Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Idaho

The Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex Superfund site, located in the Coeur d’Alene River Basin, is one of the largest environmental and human health cleanup efforts in the country.

Its contamination, the result of decades of mining, milling and smelting, affected more than 150 miles of the river, lake and its tributaries. The area, listed a Superfund site in 1983, is one of the “largest and most complex” in the country, according to the EPA. Studies revealed that three quarters of children living in the area in the 1970s had unhealthy levels of lead in their bloodstream. The United States, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and the state of Idaho settled with the Hecla Mining Co. in June 2011 for $263.4 million to resolve claims stemming from releases of wastes from its mining operations, an agreement that will protect people’s health by ensuring the cleanup of areas heavily polluted with lead, cadmium, arsenic and other contaminants.

6. Rio Tinto Copper Mine, Shoshone Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley, Nevada

The Shoshone Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley and the state of Nevada will oversee cleanup of the abandoned Rio Tinto Copper Mine Superfund site with $25 million paid by the Atlantic Richfield Co., DuPont and Co., the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co. and Teck American Inc., all corporate successors to companies that operated the copper mine between 1932 and 1976. The agreement was worked out last year by the EPA, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. The cleanup will remove mine tailings from Mill Creek, make the creek habitable for redband trout and improve the water quality of Mill Creek and the East Fork Owyhee River.

7. Alcoa Superfund Site, Akwesasne and Saint Regis Mohawk, New York

The Alcoa Superfund aluminum manufacturing facility in Massena, New York, released hazardous substances including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) onto property and into the Grasse River, contaminating sediments in the river system to approximately seven miles downstream, a traditional area of the Akwesasne Mohawk. Analysis of fish in the Grasse River revealed high levels of PCB contamination. PCBs are linked to cancer, low birth weight and thyroid disease, as well as learning, memory and immune system disorders. When in April 2012 the EPA finalized a cleanup plan that requires dredging and capping of contaminated sediment in a 7.2 mile stretch of the river in April 2012, the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe were not satisfied with the capping solution.

8. General Motors Massena, Akwesasne Mohawk

Some 4,000 Saint Regis Mohawks live adjacent to the General Motors Massena Superfund site in Massena, New York, which while in operation used PCBs, plus generated and disposed of various industrial wastes onsite. PCBs have been found in the groundwater, on- and off-site soils and sediments in the St. Lawrence and Raquette Rivers, Turtle Cove and Turtle Creek. PCBs are probable human carcinogens that can also affect the immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems, as well as cause other health effects. Groundwater was also found to be contaminated with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are potentially harmful substances that easily evaporate in the air. Phenols have been detected in lagoons left behind.

Under an August 2010 EPA order, Motors Liquidation Co., formerly GM, and then RACER Trust became responsible for additional sampling, decontamination of the building and contents, demolition of the building, removal of PCB-contaminated soil beneath the building and restoration of the area. A controversial landfill of capped contamination will be moved 150 feet from the tribal border in 2014, EPA regional administrator Judith Enck told the Associated Press in 2012.

The bodies of young Akwesasne Mohawk adults contain twice the levels of PCBs as the national average, compared to those studied by the CDC. Researchers have already established that PCBs have altered thyroid gland function in the Akwesasne community. Prior studies found lower testosterone levels and established links to autoimmune disorders.

“Endocrine disruption seems to be the effect which is most far reaching, because other effects on the reproductive system may be well tied into that,” said Lawrence Schell, a professor at the State University of New York (SUNY at Albany) and director of its Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities who was involved in an exposure research study at the St. Regis Mohawk Nation.

9. Onondaga Lake, Onondaga Nation, New York

Onondaga Lake is a sacred place. The Great Peacemaker formed the Haudenosaunee, known as the Iroquois Confederacy, on its shores.

That the 4.5 square mile lake in Syracuse, New York is spoiled is a painful thing. Sewage overflows contaminated the lake over the years, as did industrial pollutants and heavy metals such as PCBs, pesticides, benzene, toluene, xylene, creosotes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), lead, cobalt, and mercury. The Onondaga Lake Superfund site, listed in 1994, consists of the lake itself and seven major and minor tributaries. Completion of the dredging work is being performed by Honeywell International with oversight by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the EPA and the New York State Department of Health, and capping is expected in 2016. The Onondaga Nation states the Honeywell cleanup plan does not effectively contain toxic chemicals and heavy metals that will be left beneath caps in the lake-bottom sediments.

“Caps are not a reliable form of containment—they will fail, and whether it is in 10 years or 110 years, it is only a matter of time,” the Onondaga said in a statement. “And when that happens, the chemicals will be re-released into the ecosystem.”

Nor does the plan set any goals for making the lake ‘swimmable’ or ‘fishable’ they say—a requirement under the Clean Water Act, the Onondaga added.

10. Tar Creek, Quapaw Tribe

Picher, Oklahoma, part of the Quapaw’s tribal jurisdictional area, was home to productive zinc and lead mining until 1967, when mining companies abandoned 14,000 mine shafts, 70 million tons of lead-laced tailings, 36 million tons of mill sand and sludge and contaminated water, leaving residents with high lead levels in blood and tissues. The area was declared the Tar Creek Superfund site in 1983, but Picher was deemed too toxic to clean up after a 1993 study found that 34 percent of the children tested in Picher had blood lead levels exceeding the point at which there is a risk of brain or nervous system damage. Cancers skyrocketed. A federal buyout paid people to leave. The Quapaw Tribe has cleaned up part of the Tar Creek Superfund site known as the Catholic Forty and has signed agreements to clean up two other sections of the contamination. Their goal is to make the land productive again.

11. Midnite Mine, Spokane Indian Reservation, Washington

The 350-acre Midnite Mine Superfund site on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington is centered around a former open pit uranium mine that poses a threat to human health due to elevated levels of radioactivity and the presence of heavy metals. Years of digging for uranium from 1954 to 1964, and again from 1969 to 1981, have disturbed 350 acres, left two open mine pits and piles of toxic rock on the landscape. Under a September 2011 agreement, Newmont USA Limited and Dawn Mining Company LLC would design, construct and implement the cleanup plan for the site that EPA selected in 2006. They will also reimburse EPA’s costs for overseeing the work. The United States will contribute a share of the cleanup costs. EPA will oversee the cleanup work in coordination with the Spokane Tribe. Cleanup is expected to cost $193 million.

12-532. Uranium Mining, Navajo Nation

The legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation is radioactive uranium contamination from 521 abandoned Superfund mine sites spread over 27,000 acres of Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona in the Four Corners area, leaving many homes and drinking water sources on the reservation with elevated levels of radiation. The health effects to Navajo citizens include lung cancer from inhalation of radioactive particles, bone cancer and impaired kidney function from exposure to radionuclides in drinking water. The EPA has completed on-the-ground screening of the mine sites, and with the Navajo EPA is determining the order of site cleanup. Cleanup of some sites has begun while the US EPA continues to research and identify Potentially Responsible Parties under Superfund laws to contribute to cleanup costs.

First Nations leaders urge natives and non-natives to unite against Northern Gateway

A Protest sign hangs from a building in the town of Kitimat, British Columbia, April 12, 2014. Residents of the town voted against the Northern Gateway pipeline project in a blow to Enbridge Inc’s efforts to expedite the flow of crude from Canada’s landlocked oil sands to high-paying markets in Asia. Photo taken April 12, 2014.

Globe and Mail Jun. 17 2014

The federal government’s decision to go ahead with the Northern Gateway pipeline brought chiefs and elders to tears when news reached them at a scientific conference on ocean health in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Shaking with anger, their voices trembling with emotion, native leaders brought the conference to a standstill Tuesday as they spoke of their dismay over the decision – and of their commitment to fight to stop the project from ever getting built.

“Pretty shocking … it’s a tough, tough piece of news,” said Wigvilhba Wakas, a hereditary chief of the Heiltsuk Nation.

“We see this all over the world, where corporate interests are overriding the interests of the people,” said Guujaaw, past president of the Council of Haida Nation and one of the top political leaders among native people in B.C.

“It’s way out of control and it’s probably going to take decisions like this for people to stand up [together]. I think this is a test of humanity now to stand up and fight back,” he said.

Wickaninish, former president of the Nuu-Chah-nulth Tribal Coucil, said the federal government had made “an ominous decision” that he hoped would unite native and non-native people in a common cause, as the battle over Clayoquot Sound did in his traditional territory on Vancouver Island, where mass arrests stopped logging near Tofino.

“This is not just an Indian fight … it’s all the people,” he said.

Wahmeesh, vice-President of the Nuu-Chah-nulth, said he felt an emotional blow when he heard the decision, which spread around the conference as participants read the news bulletins on their smartphones.

“My heart kind of sank, like I’d lost somebody. Like a death in the family,” he said.

Wahmeesh said he was going to return to the Nuu-Chah-nulth, a large collection of 14 tribes on the west coast of Vancouver Island, for an urgent meeting on the pipeline project. And he promised that the chiefs would be united in pledging support to those tribes along the pipeline route across Northern B.C.

“This is probably the biggest decision this government will ever make in my lifetime [affecting First Nations],” he said, struggling to find a way to describe the magnitude of the decision.

Wahmeesh echoed those who urged a coalition between native and non-native people to fight the pipeline.

“We’ll stand together as Canadians,” he said.

Margaret Edgars, an elder from the Haida Nation, was in tears as she spoke to the gathering of scientists and native leaders from Alaska, B.C., Washington, Oregon and California who had gathered for a conference to discuss the resurgence of sea otters on the West Coast.

“I was hurt a bit when I heard it,” she said of the news of Ottawa’s support for the project. “But with everyone speaking out about it here I’m feeling a little stronger. … I think we’ve had enough of what they’re doing. It’s time to stand together united. … We have to continue with the fight.”

After Alaskan delegates had reminded the gathering of the long, enduring impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Ms. Edgars said tankers pose too great a risk to coastal B.C.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/first-nations-leaders-urge-natives-and-non-natives-to-unite-against-northern-gateway/article19214189/?cmpid=rss1

Federal Salmon Plan Heads Back To The Courtroom

By Courtney Flatt, Northwest Public Radion

It’s back to court for the federal government and salmon advocates. Conservationists Tuesday once again challenged the government’s plan to manage dams on the Columbia River to protect endangered salmon and steelhead.

In January, officials released a finalized plan, known as a biological opinion or BiOp, that guides dam operations. It’s been subject to more than 20 years of legal conflict between people who want to protect salmon and people who want to produce hydroelectricity and maintain shipping channels.

“Welcome to Groundhog Day,” said Todd True, lead attorney for the challengers and Earthjustice.

True said the latest plan is far too similar to previous plans already struck down by the courts.

“We will not let the government slow-walk our wild salmon into extinction and trample our environmental laws, just because they don’t want to change the way they run the Columbia River hydro system,” True said.

Fish advocates said the most recent plan also lessens the amount of water spilled over dams to help juvenile salmon migrate out to sea.

The groups are asking the court to require an environmental impact statement, which would require public comments for a new biological opinion.

“The best way to pursue a real solution for salmon would be to have a collaborative process,” said Sara Patton, executive director for NW Energy Coalition, a clean energy advocacy group.

In 2011, U.S. District Judge James A. Redden rejected the plan and asked the Obama administration to consider more ways to recover the endangered fish.

Redden’s suggestions included spilling more water over the dams to help juvenile salmon safely make it downriver to the ocean, changing reservoirs to help fish passage, and removing the lower Snake River dams altogether.

The case has been transferred to Judge Michael H. Simon. This most recent challenge is a continuation of a lawsuit filed in 2001.

Supporters of the 2014 plan called it the most comprehensive restoration plan in the country. Terry Flores’ group Northwest RiverPartners represents commerce and industry groups that defend dams on the Columbia and lower Snake rivers. For her part, Flores said the challenge is more of the same from conservation groups.

She said recent high salmon returns show that the current plan is working.

“Litigation doesn’t do anything for fish on the ground. It just drags time and energy away from those kinds of efforts that actually benefit fish and puts us all back into the courtroom,” Flores said.

Canada OKs Oil Pipeline to the Pacific Coast

By ROB GILLIES Associated Press

Canada’s government on Tuesday approved a proposed pipeline to the Pacific Coast that would allow oil to be shipped to Asia, a major step in the country’s efforts to diversify its oil industry.

The approval Tuesday was expected. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been a staunch supporter of Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline after the U.S. delayed a decision on TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline that would take oil from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Enbridge’s pipeline would transport 525,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta’s oil sands to the Pacific to deliver oil to Asia, mainly energy-hungry China.

There is fierce environmental and aboriginal opposition to the project and legal challenges are expected. About 220 large oil tankers a year would visit the Pacific coast town of Kitamat and opponents fear pipeline leaks and a potential disaster on the pristine Pacific coast.

Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford said in a statement that Enbridge must meet the 209 conditions Canada’s regulator imposed on the pipeline. The company has previously said it would.

“The proponent clearly has more work to do in order to fulfill the public commitment it has made to engage with Aboriginal groups and local communities along the route,” he said in a statement.

The Keystone XL pipeline and the Northern Gateway project are critical to Canada, which needs infrastructure in place to export its growing oil sands production. The northern Alberta region has the world’s third largest oil reserves, with 170 billion barrels of proven reserves.

Harper has said Canada’s national interest makes the pipelines essential. He was “profoundly disappointed” that U.S. President Barack Obama delayed a decision on the Texas Keystone XL option, and spoke of the need to diversify Canada’s oil industry. Ninety-seven percent of Canadian oil exports now go to the U.S.

Beekeepers are breeding a race of superbees at the Seattle airport

By Amber Cortes, Grist

It’s a sunny June day and I’m standing in a lovely meadow. Birds are singing, flowers are in bloom, and the temptation to lay out a blanket and have a picnic is strong. In fact, if not for the occasional roar of a 747 overhead, you would never guess that you were right next to one of the busiest airports in the country.

Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport boasts up to 855 takeoffs and landings a day. But just a few hundred feet away, thousands of teeny-tiny takeoffs and landings are also happening on a strip the size of a ruler.

Meet the superbees of Sea-Tac.

It’s pretty clear by now that bees are in peril: Threatened by colony collapse disorder, their long-term survival is in jeopardy. So the Port of Seattle has joined forces with local nonprofit Common Acre to establish Flight Path, a project that will turn the unused green spaces on the south end of Sea-Tac into native pollinator habitat — and in the process, produce a breed of bees that will be better suited for survival in the coming years.

Beekeeper Bob Redmond, the founder and executive director of Common Acre, sees a lot of parallels between bees and airports. Take the bee’s waggle dance: “That’s their navigation system,” Redmond says. Forager bees use the waggle dance to direct other bees in the hive toward food sources. “It’s like the air traffic controller giving instructions. It’s their way of saying, ‘Use runway 16!’”

Bees also have complex systems of transportation, collection, delivery, and warehousing. “All of these things humans have figured out — but fairly late in the game, evolutionarily speaking — the bees have been solving for eons,” he says. “Like, it’s all here, in these boxes.”

The boxes he is pointing to are just a few of the 25 hives on green space surrounding the airport that can house up to 1.25 million European honeybees at the height of the season.

“They’re pretty mellow today,” Redmond says. “Right now they’re totally disinterested in everybody. But it’s good that you have your hair up, because they might get stuck in there.”

“Oh. Sure. Ok,” I reply, trying to play it cool while thinking back to painful stings of summer camps past, and really beginning to regret washing my hair the night before with lavender-scented shampoo.

Bob Redmond tends to the beehives. — Amber Cortes

After stints working in the nonprofit and arts world, Redmond became intrigued by the plight of the bees after reading about colony collapse in the newspaper. “It sounded really serious,” he says. “It was a food system issue. And at the same time, bees are fascinating, and the more I read about them the more I got drawn in.”

After starting with a couple of hives in his yard, Redmond founded the Urban Bee Company, which produces local and sustainable honey and serves as an information hub for other urban beekeepers. Redmond became inspired by the bee apiary project at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in 2011. Noticing all the green space while flying over Sea-Tac one day, Redmond thought he could try a similar project here. Redmond called the Port of Seattle with his idea and the Flight Path project was quickly born.

Surrounding Sea-Tac is about 116 acres of wildlife and wetlands. Port of Seattle’s wildlife biologist Steve Osmek sees the honeybees as the hook that gets people interested in the wider conservation effort at the airport that addresses the declining numbers of all sorts of local pollinators — not just bees, but also butterflies and hummingbirds.

“The airport is 3,000 acres, and granted 13 million square feet of that is concrete,” he jokes. “But what we’re working on is to really transform the south end of this airport right now into something that’s valuable for pollinators.”

The bees of Sea-Tac airport. — Amber Cortes

But what really sets the Sea-Tac pollinator initiative apart from other airport apiaries is that this is a full-fledged conservation effort: they’re actually trying to selectively breed more genetically vigorous bees that are adapted to the regional Pacific Northwest area.

“It’s easy to set up a few colonies, and just say, ok, now we have some honeybees,” Osmek says. “We’re contracting Bob to not only establish the honeybee colonies, but also to think more into the future. You know, how can we provide a good resource of queens that are specifically acclimatized to the Pacific Northwest, to increase their robustness and genetic diversity.”

And according to Bob Redmond, an airport’s green space is the perfect place to control the breeding area for building a better bee. So how will it work? Pump some Barry White into the hives and get this party started?

“I prefer Al Green myself,” Redmond laughs. Actually, it’s balancing act of introducing the bees to other, heartier species. “We like wild bees. And feral bees, because those are survival colonies who are already attuned,” Redmond explains.

On of the pieces at the Sea-Tac art exhibit in Terminal B. — “To Be or Not To Bee” by L Kelly Lyles

In addition to its conservation efforts, the Flight Path project aims to educate and inspire travelers in the airport via an art exhibit (in Terminal B, of course!). There’s also the Sing for the Bees benefit concert and recent bee hackathon, where techies developed a prototype for an app that travelers can use to compare their flight miles with the bees’.

Redmond hopes it will be an opportunity for travelers to connect with the world of bees and learn from them. “The thing that we can learn from the bees is the collective spirit of cooperation — and consumption,” he says. “Like each of us ‘in the hive’ has to realize that there’s an overall community ethic at work, and we can only eat what the hive can support. So that’s something that is not as easy to swallow, but vital to understand for our own future.”

You may now feel free to cue up Flight of the Bumblebee. Or maybe queue up this video and start a bee breeding revolution of your own:

Three Tribes Win Coveted Washington State Environmental Education Awards

Northwest Indian Fisheries CommissionHabitat restoration efforts such as removal of the Elwha Dam, shown here in process on October 8, 2011, have helped bring back salmon spawning grounds. — Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
Habitat restoration efforts such as removal of the Elwha Dam, shown here in process on October 8, 2011, have helped bring back salmon spawning grounds.

Indian Country Today

Three tribes are among the recipients of the Green Apple Awards given for environmental education initiatives by the not-for-profit group E3 Washington, a professional group that provides education on environmental development and stability.

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, President Fawn Sharp of the Quinault Indian Nation and State Senator John McCoy of the Tulalip Tribes will receive awards, E3 announced on June 11. In addition, Billy Frank, Jr., Nisqually tribal elder and longtime chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, will be honored at a gala and awards ceremony to take place on June 26.

E3 is an outgrowth of the Environmental Education Association of Washington (EEAW), the state’s professional association for environmental and sustainability educators and stakeholders. The initiative was established in 2005, when the Governor’s Council on Environmental Education asked the association to take the lead in planning environmental education, according to the EEAW website. “E3” stands for education, environment, and economy. The EEAW is in turn affiliated with the North American Association for Environmental Education.

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe was chosen to receive the President’s Award for both honoring elder wisdom and teaching youth self-respect, said retired teacher Marie Marrs, who nominated the tribe.

“The annual paddle journeys, alcohol and drug free, are strong signs of cultural revival,” Marrs said, according to the E3 statement. “The Klallam language is taught at local high schools, as a foreign language. Tribal leaders are visible, and honored, at many community events. Native youth are enrolled in natural resource programs at the area Skill Center, as well as Peninsula College, acquiring specials skills and internships with local economic and environmental power bases such as Battelle, Olympic National Park, NOAA, Merrill Ring, the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, and the Feiro Marine Science Center, as well as their own natural resource/fisheries programs. Skill Center classes are co-taught with a tribal culture specialist as part of the team. Peninsula College has a Longhouse, a House of Learning, for special gatherings and ceremonies, the first in the nation to be built on a community college campus.”

Noting that the very aim of the E3 Washington Lead Green goal is to use every location as a teaching tool, E3 Washington board president Tom Hulst—who selected the Llower Elwha Klallam for the award—said that numerous sites managed by the tribe reach this ideal.

“The E3 Washington Lead Green goal is that every place, be it a building or other site becomes a ‘learning laboratory’ for the shift to sustainability,” Hulst said. “In the case of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe multiple sites under its management meets this goal!”

Sharp will accept the Green Apple Award, which recognizes awareness of indigenous knowledge, language and values, as well as encourages a multicultural approach to environmental and sustainability education, all while exemplifying E3’s Lead Green goal, according to the release. Sharp, who is also president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and area vice president of the National Congress of American Indians, was nominated by Olympia-based businessman Steve Robinson.

“President Sharp is a very dynamic leader whose incredible energy level is matched only by her skill as a leader and her enthusiastic approach toward serving her people as well both Indian and non-Indian people, particularly in such fields as sustainability, environmental education and health and human rights,” Robinson said in his nomination. “She has long been active in environmental education at all levels, providing leadership in the classroom, the outdoors and the intergovernmental arena. Just one example of many major successes resulting from her leadership was last summer’s Paddle to Quinault—a highly successful canoe journey that brought traditional canoes from near and far to the Quinault homeland. It was a major cultural event enjoyed by thousands, and was a huge historic achievement in helping to build bridges of understanding between tribal and non-tribal communities.”

For his part state Senator John McCoy, Democrat, will receive the 2014 Diversity in Action-Individual E3 Washington Green Apple Award, which “recognizes an individual, organization, tribe or program that demonstrates cultural awareness and encourages a multicultural approach to environmental and sustainability education programs while exemplifying the Lead Green goal,” the E3 statement said.

“Senator McCoy has been a tireless leader in many capacities which have served environmental education, multiculturalism and diversity well,” said Robinson, who nominated McCoy as well as Sharp. “His presence on ‘the hill’ in Olympia has provided an immeasurable amount of benefit to both tribal and non-tribal people and governments. He has sponsored phenomenal, far-reaching legislation, ranging from bills to integrate Indian culture and history into the classroom to a bill to establish Indian Heritage Day. Senator McCoy is one of the hardest working legislators in Olympia and he is committed to the protection and restoration of a healthy, vibrant environment for all.”

Frank, who passed away on May 5, was involved in E3 and will be honored at the awards ceremony, which will take place The awards will be presented at E3’s Summer Evening Awards Event 2014, A Summer Celebration of Environmental and Sustainability Education, on June 26.

“Billy Frank, who was E3’s honorary co-chair, was a friend to, and tireless advocate for, all people and species,” said Ruskey. “His spirit lives in us and continues to guide us, as he always will.”

Redwood Burl Poaching Spreads To Oregon

By Chris Lehman, NW News Network

Redwood burl poaching has long been an issue in the Redwood National Park in California. But now a conservation group says it’s spotted evidence of this type of tree damage in a national forest in Oregon.

Burls are the knobby growths sometimes found at the base of towering redwood trees.

They’re highly valued for their intricate designs. Cross-sections are used to make furniture or artwork.

There’s been an uptick in the theft of redwood burls from public lands in northern California’s redwood region.

Now Oregon Wild says it’s spotted a burl theft in one of Oregon’s redwood groves in the far southwest part of the state.

The group’s Steve Pedery said that a redwood usually survives having its burl removed.

“When you hack these chunks out of the tree, you’re leaving the tree open to disease, to insects,” Pedery said. “You’re weakening it structurally in case there’s a storm or a wind event in the future. And if there’s a drought, you’re making it very unlikely that that tree will survive.”

Forest Service spokesman Tom Knappenberger said the agency is taking the report seriously. He said theft of redwood burls is potentially a felony violation.

This was first reported for the Northwest News Network.

Scientists Close In On The Cause Of Sea Star Wasting Syndrome

A dying Pisaster ochraceus sea star in the waters off West seattle dangles by its tentacles off an underwater piling that would normally be covered with a rainbow of sea stars. | credit: Laura James

By Katie Campbell and Ashley Ahearn, KCTS9

ORCAS ISLAND, Wash. — Drew Harvell peers into the nooks and crannies along the rocky shoreline of Eastsound on Orcas Island. Purple and orange starfish clutch the rocks, as if hanging on for dear life.

In fact, they are.

Watch the video:

“It’s a lot worse than it was last week,” says Harvell, a marine epidemiologist at Cornell University. She’s been leading nationwide efforts to understand what is causing starfish to die by the millions up and down North America’s Pacific shores and on the east coast as well. It’s been called sea star wasting syndrome because of how quickly the stars become sick and deteriorate.

“It’s the largest mortality event for marine diseases we’ve seen,” Harvell said. “It affects over twenty species on our coast and it’s been causing catastrophic mortality.”

Scientists have been working for months to find out what’s causing the massive die-off and now Harvell and others have evidence that an infectious disease caused by a bacteria or virus, may be at the root of the problem. The disease, they say, could be compounded by warming waters, which put the sea stars under stress, making them more vulnerable to the pathogen.

Harvell has studied marine diseases for 20 years. She had thought that the syndrome might spare Washington’s San Juan Islands. Until recently, pockets of cold water and swift currents seem to have protected the local sea star population from the epidemic.

But with the arrival of summer, the waters around the San Juan archipelago have warmed. From what Harvell and her team see as they survey beaches, there’s not much time for these starfish — or sea stars, as scientists prefer to call them since they’re not fish.

Harvell crouches in the sand and points at a withering orange pisaster ochraceus, or ochre star, one of the most common sea stars found in the intertidal zones of the West Coast. One arm is curled over on itself, another hangs by a thread of gnarled flesh.

“The whole arm is flat. It looks dried out, wasted, thin, deflated. Sea stars are not supposed to look like that,” Harvell says, her brow furrowed. “My expectation is that within the next month all of the stars will die.”

The team checked this rocky patch last week and found 10 percent of the stars showed signs of the wasting syndrome. Today they estimate that number has increased to more than 40 percent. They’ve been monitoring sites around the San Juan Islands through this past winter and expect the percentage of infected stars to continue rising as the waters warm this season.

“Over this winter I surveyed here, and looked at every animal and there was no disease at all,” said Morgan Eisenlord, a PhD student in Harvell’s lab at Cornell. “When we came back in the spring we found sick animals so it obviously spread as it started to get warmer.”

A Warm-Water Connection?

Some scientists see a connection between rising water temperatures and the wasting syndrome. The waters around the San Juan Islands tend to be colder than the Washington outer coastline where dying starfish were first reported last summer. Since the arrival of warmer weather this season, the syndrome has spread rapidly to areas like the San Juan Islands that were previously untouched by the syndrome. Recent reports have also surfaced of die-offs along Oregon’s coastline.

Read: Rapidly Spreading Sea Star Disease Spurs Talk Of ‘Localized Extinction’ In Oregon

Farther south in California where water temperatures are even warmer, starfish have been nearly wiped out, according to Carol Blanchette, a research biologist at University of California Santa Barbara. Blanchette has tracked the spread in Southern California closely, monitoring 30 sites. She says the hypothesis that rising water temperatures could be triggering the epidemic makes sense, based on what she’s seen.

Drew Harvell, Cornell University

“The period of time in which the disease progressed rapidly has been a period in which waters have been warmer than usual winter conditions,” Blanchette said.

While scientists are reluctant to assign blame to climate change, Harvell explained that as oceans warm, outbreaks like this are more likely to occur.

“A warmer world would be a sicker world,” Harvell said. “Under warming conditions a lot of microorganisms do better. They grow faster. They replicate faster. Many of our hosts can actually be stressed by warm conditions. And so it kind of creates a perfect storm of sickness.”

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Sea star die-offs have occurred in the past, but never to this extent. In Southern California, Blanchette says the die-offs have occurred during warmer El Niño years – 1982-1983 and 1997-1998 most recently –- but the sea star population eventually recovered. This most recent outbreak was first spotted in June 2013 on the Washington coast at a place called Starfish Point.

Scientists believe the pathogen spread through the water, as well as via physical contact (starfish often clump together). Another hypothesis is that the pathogen could also be concentrating in the mussels and clams that starfish like to eat.

Scientists are testing whether shellfish, a top food
source for starfish, may transfer the pathogen.
Credit: Laura James

At the University of California Santa Barbara Aquarium, captive sea stars started showing signs of the syndrome at the same time as their wild counterparts who live on the rocks several hundred feet from the tanks. The captive sea stars are kept in tanks of filtered seawater. In one tank they were fed mussels harvested from the rocks outside. In another tank the sea stars were fed frozen squid.

The animals that ate frozen squid stayed healthy, while the sea stars that ate the wild-harvested mussels contracted the syndrome. Blanchette cautions that these observations are purely anecdotal and the sample size is very small, but she believes this hypothesis merits further study.

With projections for a warm El Niño year ahead, Harvell worries that things will only get worse for sea stars on the west coast.

Scientists at Cornell are narrowing the list of pathogen suspects using DNA sequencing from samples of sick stars and hope to publish their findings in an upcoming edition of the journal Science. Once the exact pathogen is identified and more is known about how the disease is spread, scientists will be better able to understand whether west coast starfish will be able to recovery.

Seeking Boots On The Beach

In the meantime, there is a role for citizen science in tracking the epidemic. UC Santa Barbara and the University of Washington and Cornell University have set up websites where beach goers can share information about the location and abundance of infected sea stars. Then scientists can study how water temperatures, currents and other factors may correlate with the spread of the die-off.

“One of the reasons we’re a little obsessed with trying to learn everything we can about both the causative agent in terms of the microbe and the environmental conditions is to think about what we can do better next time,” Harvell said.

What Happens When They’re Gone?

Sea stars are an apex predator in the intertidal zone. They voraciously consume mussels and other shellfish, and they are referred to as a “keystone species,” meaning that, like in any stone building, if you remove the keystone, things start to crumble.

“It has an extraordinarily significant effect on the biodiversity of the entire community,” Blanchette said. “Losing a predator like that is bound to have some pretty serious ecological consequences and we really don’t know exactly how the system is going to look but we’re quite certain that it’s going to have an impact.”

Scientists inspect young starfish for signs of wasting disease. Credit: Katie Campbell

Looking out at the rising tide on Eastsound, Harvell said, “This area has some of the highest biodiversity of sea stars in the world. We’re not just losing one keystone species, we’re losing a whole guild of stars.”

And the stars here are what’s called an endemic species, meaning they only live on this shoreline and nowhere else on the planet, she explained. If sea stars are wiped out along these shores, there’s a potential for not just local, but global extinction.

She picks up a tiny young ochre star and looks carefully at its malformed arms for symptoms of the disease. If these juvenile stars can find a way to resist the pathogen, local extinction could be avoided, she explains.

“If we lose all of the adult ochre stars and all of the young recruits in the San Juans, then I don’t think we’ll see ochre stars here for quite a few years,” Harvell said.

Story by Ashley Ahearn and Katie Campbell. Video by Campbell. Audio by Ahearn.

Wash. Gov. Jay Inslee Issues Directive On Oil Train Safety

Source: The Columbian

Gov. Jay Inslee directed the state Thursday to tackle mounting public safety concerns and develop a spill response plan as oil train traffic continues to increase, particularly in Southwest Washington.

He announced the directive at a meeting of The Columbian’s editorial board in Vancouver.

“The Pacific Northwest is experiencing rapid changes in how crude oil is moving through rail corridors and over Washington waters, creating new safety and environmental concerns,” the directive reads.

The governor asked the Department of Ecology to work with other state agencies, the Federal Railroad Administration and tribal governments to “identify data and information gaps that hinder improvements in public safety and spill prevention and response.”

Specifically, the governor’s directive asks agencies to: – Characterize risk of accidents along rail lines. – Review state and federal laws and rules with respect to rail safety and identify regulatory gaps. – Assess the relative risk of Bakken crude with respect to other forms of crude oil. – Identify data and information gaps that hinder improvements in public safety and spill prevention and response. – Begin development of spill response plans for impacted counties. – Identify potential actions that can be coordinated with neighboring states and British Columbia. – Identify, prioritize, and estimate costs for state actions that will improve public safety and spill prevention and response.

He set an Oct. 1 deadline for agencies to respond.

He also said he’ll reach out to other states to develop coordinated oil transportation safety and spill response plans, and pledged to ask the 2015-17 Legislature for money for oil train safety.

The directive comes as the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council is reviewing an application by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos. to build an oil shipping terminal at the Port of Vancouver. Bakken crude would arrive at Vancouver by train and leave by ship or barge on the Columbia River.

As governor, Inslee will have the final say on the Tesoro-Savage permit. “We will make the right decision at the right time,” he said, without tipping his hand.

The first-term Democrat is in Vancouver all day today. He presented awards to Washington State Department of Transportation employees, and is scheduled to visit a local technology firm, Smith-Root, that is expanding. This evening he will give the commencement address at the Washington School for the Deaf’s graduation ceremony.

Buffett firm eyes tribal solar project

Richard A. Kessler rechargenews.com

Thursday, June 12 2014

NV Energy, part of billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company, is seeking regulatory approval in Nevada to buy the second US largest solar project to be located on tribal trust lands.

Construction of the 200MW (AC) PV project on the Moapa River Indian Reservation northeast of Las Vegas would begin after expected fourth quarter approval by the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada of the proposed purchase, and completion of final contracts.

Moapa Band of Paiutes acting chairman Greg Anderson tells Recharge the tribe hopes to have the project in fully commercial operation in 2016. It will be sited on land leased by the tribe which has about 400 members on the reservation.