Environment Archives - Page 45 of 107

TransCanada shuts down southern leg of Keystone XL Pipeline, raising “suspicions”

Image credit: Installation of the southern portion of the Keystone XL on Michael Bishop’s property in Douglas, Texas ©2013 Julie Dermansky

By Julie Dermansky, June 3, 2014. Source: Desmog Blog

TransCanada shut down the southern leg of the Keystone XL (now called the Gulf Coast Pipeline Project) on June 2 for “routine work,” according to Reuters.

“Pipelines aren’t normally shut down for maintenance shortly after being started up. They may have planned it but something is wrong,” an industry insider told DeSmogBlog. “A two day shutdown on a new line raises suspicions.”

The Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration was unable to provide an answer to DeSmogBlog when asked to confirm if the shutdown was due to routine work today.

“The Gulf Coast Pipeline is the safest oil pipeline built in the United States to date,” TransCanada spokesman David Sheremata told DeSmogBlog.

TransCanada states this claim often, despite the serious issues cited by pipeline regulators in warning letters, along with the two new special conditions added to the existing 57 required if the northern section of the pipeline is permitted.

Can that statement be true after an undisclosed number of new girth welds were introduced into the pipeline during the repair process? Despite the high weld rejection rate that regulators warned TransCanada about, a new pressure test was not required to check the new welds.

“During the first week 26.8 percent of the welds required repairs, 32.0 percent the second week, 72.2 percent the third week, and 45.0 percent the fourth week. On September 25, 2012, TransCanada stopped the Spread 3 welding after 205 of the 425 welds, or 48.2 percent required repairs.” PHMSA wrote TransCanada on September 26, 2013.

“Let’s remember, TransCanada claimed that the Keystone I pipeline system would be one that would ‘meet or exceed world-class safety and environmental standards’ and leak an average of 1.4 times a decade,” Rocky Kistner, a communications associate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote on the NRDC‘s blog.

“In just its first year of operation, Keystone leaked 14 times, a hundred times more leaks than TransCanada predicted. On its Canadian side, the pipeline has leaked at least 21 times.”

TransCanada’s Bison Pipeline in Wyoming also had to be shut down after a portion of it ruptured six months after it was put into operation.

Michels Corporation, one of the contractors that worked on the Gulf Coast Pipeline, was also the contractor for Bison.

Evan Vokes, former TransCanada employee turned whistleblower, told the Wyoming Tribune that speed was put ahead of safety on that project. He noticed problems with pipe alignment welding, excavation and backfilling, among other things while working on that project.

“It is questionable that a pipeline which generates millions of dollars a day, in operation for barely six months, is suddenly off,” Kathy DaSilva, an activist representative of the Tar Sands Blockade, told DeSmogBlog.

This latest incident led the Tar Sands Blockade to renew its call for Keystone XL‘s southern leg to remain shut down until further testing is done to ensure the pipeline’s integrity.

The advocacy group Public Citizen also called for a new pressure test on the pipeline.

“Given the stakes – the looming potential for a catastrophic spill of a hazardous crude along a pipeline that traverses hundreds of streams and rivers, and that comes within just one or two miles of some towns and cities – it would be irresponsible for the federal government to allow tar sands crude to start flowing through the southern leg without ordering a complete hydrostatic retesting of the line and a thorough quality assurance review,” their report on the Keystone XL‘s southern route concluded.

The big question remains: is the Obama administration playing Russian roulette with Texas and Oklahoma aquifers by not requiring the retesting on the Gulf Coast Pipeline?

Regulators Discuss The Future Of Coal-Fired Power In The West

This image of the coal-fired plant in Colstrip, Mont., was made in the 1980s by Montana native David T. Hanson. It was part of an exhibit at Modern Museum of Art in New York. | credit: David T. Hanson |

By Ashley Ahearn, KUOW

SEATTLE — The Obama administration’s new rules to cut carbon emissions fueled energy sector leaders’ conversations about the future of coal in the West during their gathering here this week.

The Western Conference of Public Service Commissioners on Wednesday wrapped up its conference — a gathering of the people who decide where the region’s power comes from and how to regulate it.

Now that the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing that states cut CO2 emissions from power plants by 30 percent over the next 16 years, regulators are turning their attention to coal. Does it have a future?

“The answer is a resounding yes, the question is how much?” said Travis Kavulla with the Montana Public Service Commission. He’s one of the guys calling the shots on what kind of power his state produces, and what it will cost consumers. Montana mines and burns a lot of coal. So, as you might imagine, Kavulla’s not too pleased with the EPA right now.

“The bottom line is that the EPA seems set on establishing state by state goals, based on particular building blocks, a particularly infantilizing term, I think,” he told the crowd.

The “building blocks” include boosting energy efficiency, getting more renewable energy on the grid and using less coal.

Puget Sound Energy, an investor-owned utility based in Bellevue, Washington, gets more than 15 percent of its power from Montana coal. PSE is under mounting pressure from voters and the state government to kick its coal habit, and the new EPA rules add to that pressure.

“It’s very easy for part of our country to be rejoicing after yesterday and say ‘There, we’re just going to shut it all down.’” Well, that’s not going to work,” said Kimberly Harris, president and CEO of Puget Sound Energy. “You cannot just shut down coal units and expect for the grid to continue to operate. And we have an obligation to serve.”

Harris says that transitioning off of coal is possible, but it will take time – and states will have to work together.

“Any type of a retirement has to be transitional because we have significant decisions to make and investment and planning to do as a region. This really needs to be a regional approach,” Harris emphasized.

Washington’s in good shape to meet the EPA requirements, pretty much just by phasing out its only coal plant, which operates in Centralia. But Montana is going to need help lowering its CO2 emissions and getting more renewables online.

But who will will pay for it?

“From an investor’s point of view, all of this looks like a giant investment opportunity,” said Mike Weinstein, an investment analyst with UBS Securities in New York.

Weinstein said investors will be looking to throw money at new technology to cut CO2 emissions at the smokestack or sequester those emissions underground.

Some other winners, according to Weinstein? Renewable energy, natural gas and maybe nuclear power.

He also stressed the role of energy efficiency in helping utilities meet the EPA requirements, and keep costs down.

Monsanto Set to Sue Vermont for Requiring GMO Labeling

OccupyReno MediaCommittee/Flickr Creative CommonsA Monsanto protest in Reno, Nevada — OccupyReno MediaCommittee/Flickr Creative Commons
A Monsanto protest in Reno, Nevada

Indian Country Today

On May 8, Vermont set history by becoming the first state in the country to require genetically modified (GMO) food to be labeled.

When Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) signed the bill into law, he released the statement: “We believe we have a right to know what’s in the food we buy.”

But one hurdle still stands in the state’s way: a likely lawsuit from Monsanto, the world’s largest GMO producer.

According to a recent report on labeling requirements from the nonprofit Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, at least 25 states are considering similar legislation, but with trigger clauses like Connecticut and Maine that require multiple other states to pass GMO labeling laws before theirs take effect.

“If Vermont wins, it might not be long until the entire country mandates GMO labeling, giving consumers the information to make their own choices,” states a petition by the SumOfUs community (sumofus.org) that urges people to sign to protest Monsanto suing Vermont for its decision to label GMO foods.

Attorney General Bill Sorrell told Vermont Public Radio in May that he would be “very surprised” if Monsanto doesn’t sue the state, reported the Washington Post. State officials have even guarded against a lawsuit with a copy.5 million legal defense fund, which would be paid for with settlements won by the state.

Among Monsanto’s outlandish claims is that a labeling requirement would be a violation of the company’s freedom of speech. In recent years, Monsanto has even gone as far as to partner with DuPont and Kraft Foods to grossly outspend and defeat supporters of similar laws in California and Washington, explains sumofus.org.

Sign the SumOfUs petition here.

Wyoming Governor Visits Washington To Promote Coal Exports

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead talks with Millennium Bulk Terminals general manager Bob Steward about the loading dock at the proposed coal export terminal site in Longview, Washington. | credit: Cassandra Profita

By Cassandra Profita, OPB

LONGVIEW, Wash. — A controversial coal export terminal proposed for this Columbia River town has a big supporter from the state of Wyoming.

Its governor was in Longview Tuesday to tour the old aluminum smelter where the The Millennium Bulk coal export terminal would move up to 44 million tons a year of Wyoming coal off trains and onto ships bound for Asia.

It’s a terminal he says is important to coal producers in his state – especially as the industry faces new regulations on coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said he sees coal exports as way to expand the market for the 400 million tons of coal his state produces annually. He’d like to see more terminals like the Millennium project, which would export up to 44 million tons of coal per year.

“That’s a lot of coal, but relative to the amount of coal we produce it’s 10 percent,” Mead said. “So this port and other ports are important to Wyoming in terms of the coal industry.”

Gov. Mead on the bridge of a ship delivering alumina.

But what he calls “unreasonable” new regulations on coal-fired power plants in the U.S. are making it harder to expand coal markets here. Even before those rules came out, coal producers in his state had been looking for Asian buyers for all that Wyoming coal.

“We’ve got to have a continuation in a real way, in an economical way so these companies can keep going, and exports are part of that future,” Mead said.

Companies hoping to be part of that future have proposed a half-dozen coal export terminals around the Northwest. The three proposals still under consideration face a long permitting process and strong local opposition.

In addition to the Longview export project, coal and transportation companies want to build a train-to-ship facility for coal exports on Puget Sound north of Bellingham. The third proposal would involve transporting coal by train to barge to ocean-going vessel with two transport facilities on the Oregon side of the Columbia River.

In all they would help transport roughly 100 million tons of coal annually from Wyoming and Montana to Asia.

Mead said expanding the overseas coal trade with export terminals like Millennium will be good for the U.S. and its trading partners. But not everyone sees the benefits he does.

Mead’s visit sparked a protest from opponents of the Millennium project. Outside the terminal site, about 30 people gathered with a bucket of coal.

Protesters put a bow on a bucket of coal for Mead.

Diane Dick of the opponent group Landowners and Citizens for a Safe Community spoke at the protest. She said her group has a bucket of coal that came from Wyoming, and she wants to give it back to Gov. Mead while he’s in town.

“We believe his coal should be kept in the ground in Wyoming,” she said. “We don’t want it here. We don’t want it shipped to Asia, where it will be polluting the skies in Asia and will blow back pollution and creating poisonous air for us.”

Mead followed the terminal site tour by meeting with a group of Washington legislators in Longview. He said he wanted to hear their concerns and help answer their questions to build support for the Millennium project.

‘The cause is us’: world on verge of sixth extinction

A golden lion tamarin, which is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Speacies. (Photo: Jo Christian Oterhals/cc/flickr)

Species loss soaring at ‘pace not seen in tens of millions of years’

By Andrea Germanos, May 30, 2014. Source: Common Dreams

A new study showing that the human activity has driven current rates of species extinction to 1,000 times faster than the natural rate is “alarming” and “should be a clarion call” to work towards greater conservation efforts, an environmental group charges.

The study, published Thursday by the journal Science and led by conservation expert Stuart Pimm, also warns that without drastic action, the sixth mass extinction could be imminent.

From habitat loss to invasive species to climate change to overfishing, humans are contributing to the plummet in biodiversity.

“This important study confirms that species are going extinct at a pace not seen in tens of millions of years, and unlike past extinction events, the cause is us,” stated Noah Greenwald, endangered species director with the Center for Biological Diversity, who was not involved in the study.

While new technology like smart phone apps and crowd-sourcing have increased the amount of data collected on species, much still remains a mystery.

“Most species remain unknown to science, and they likely face greater threats than the ones we do know,” Pimm said in a statement.

“The gap between what we know and don’t know about Earth’s biodiversity is still tremendous,” added study co-author Lucas N. Joppa, a conservation scientist at Microsoft’s Computational Science Laboratory in Cambridge, UK, “but technology is going to play a major role in closing it and helping us conserve biodiversity more intelligently and efficiently.”

While the study illustrates a dramatic pace in biodiversity loss, Greenwald emphasized that it also highlights the successes of conservation efforts, such as the 50-year-old Wilderness Act and the Endangered Species Act.

“Were it not for the huge effort over the past 50 years to protect wilderness, we would have had a 20 percent higher extinction rate,” Greenwald told Common Dreams. “Protecting places, standing up for places, leaving some places untouched does make a difference,” he said.

As for what people can do to help those conservation efforts, Greenwald said people should let their legislators know that they support protecting areas as wilderness or parks, “because that is really what this study shows” — that the conservation laws and efforts over the past several decades have helped thwart further losses.

“The findings of this study are alarming to say the least,” Greenwald’s statement continues. “But it also shows we can make a difference if we choose to and should be a clarion call to take action to protect more habitat for species besides our own and to check our own population growth and consumption.”

As Greenwald said, the cause of the problem is us, but the solution, too, lies with us.

“We are on the verge of the sixth extinction,” Pimm told the Associated Press. “Whether we avoid it or not will depend on our actions.”

Klamath Tribal council Stonewalls Tribal Membership at General Council Meeting

Security Guards and Metal Detectors for Tribal membership meeting

Posted by Zig Zag on Warrior Publication

June 2, 2014

(Chiloquin, Oregon)Saturday May 31 A long awaited General Council meeting was held at the Klamath Tribes Administration building that had been originally scheduled for Saturday May 17. The original meeting was rescheduled when the Klamath Tribal Council misinformed the public regarding accusations of “threats” toward Tribal Council. According to Klamath Tribal Councils press release, “some Klamath Tribes members have been campaigning to organize a hostile takeover of the meeting. Threats included chaining and padlocking doors to force the Tribal Council and meeting attendees to remove Gentry from the council and to overturn the results of a recent referendum vote.”

Klamath members were “wanded” and searched by security hired from Medford before entering the front doors, and asked to provide Klamath Tribal ID to Chairman Gentry’s wife, Mary Gentry, prior to entering the auditorium. Everyone was asked to sign in and wear a name tag. Signs were posted on the front door of the Administration building that read “video/audio recording is NOT permitted, unless specifically authorized by the Klamath Tribes.”

Approximately 100 eligible voting tribal members were in attendance, many who wanted accountability and answers from their elected officials regarding the recent illegal referendum that granted Chairman Gentry signatory authority to sign the “Proposed Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement” on behalf of membership. This agreement, now called the “Klamath Water Recovery and Economic Restoration Act of 2014”, was introduced May 21^st to Senate by Senators Wyden, Merkley, Boxer and Feinstein.

Every opportunity membership had to discuss the referendum was denied by Chairman Gentry at the General Council meeting. Though membership rights have been compromised by tribal negotiators, the outstanding concern Klamath tribal members have is that their elected leaders did not properly follow the laws of the Klamath constitution regarding a referendum vote. Throughout the meeting, the Klamath Tribal constitution, bylaws and Roberts Rules of Order were only acknowledged by Chairman Gentry when the rules benefited council and were denied when rules were invoked to conduct General Council business.

“This is a dictatorship!” exclaimed Ramona Mason a Klamath Tribal member.
When addressing Klamath Tribal Council regarding their disrespectful behavior toward membership, elder Heidi Kimbol stated,

“You all look very bad.”

klamath-tribal-meeting-5 — Looks like court, not a general meeting of tribal members…

Klamath Tribes General Council meetings were established to give tribal members the power to discuss issues, make important decisions for their community and to conduct business accordingly. Only limited authority has been granted to tribal council and membership reserves majority sovereign authority to themselves.

But at Saturday’s meeting it was clear that the Klamath Tribal council has abused their authority, publically displaying their unethical treatment of the general membership. And membership finally had the opportunity to unify and vocalize how discontent they are with how their elected leaders conduct themselves.

The General Council meeting began at 10:00 am and finally ended at approximately 5:00 pm, commencing with Councilman Don Gentry’s wife, Mary Gentry, accusing a young woman of “stealing from the tribe.” When asked for clarification on what Mrs. Gentry was referring to, she stated the woman stole coffee cups from a previous public event, cups which were provided for any guests in attendance, free of charge.

Though security was originally hired to prevent a “hostile takeover” of the meeting, the only event where security needed to intervene concerned the Chairman’s wife, Mary Gentry, who was ranting, crying and shaking as she was escorted outside of the building.

Media Contact: Kayla Godowa (541)-844-6114
Rowena Jackson: (541)-246-0281
Danita Herrera: (541)-852-6106

Vancouver City Council Votes 5-2 To Oppose Northwest’s Largest Oil Terminal

Hundreds turned out for a Vancouver City Council hearing on a resolution opposing the Tesoro-Savage oil terminal, proposed for the Port of Vancouver. | credit: Cassandra Profita

By Cassandra Profita, OPB

Monday night had turned to Tuesday morning by the time the Vancouver City Council voted to pass a non-binding resolution opposing what would be the Northwest’s largest oil-by-rail shipping facility.

The vote was 5-2 with Mayor Tim Leavitt and Councilor Bill Turlay dissenting. It followed six hours of testimony from residents, most of them opposed to the Port of Vancouver’s planned facility that would transfer North Dakota crude oil from trains to ships bound for West Coast refineries.

It was after 1 am when City Councilor Bart Hansen made a motion to pass the resolution, which expresses deep concern about rail safety, oil spills and explosions and urges Washington Gov. Jay Inslee not to approve the Tesoro Savage oil terminal.

The council debated whether or not to take the vote in the wee hours of the morning. Turlay said he wasn’t ready to take action. Leavitt said he wanted to make some changes to resolution before voting.

“I’ve been told nothing good happens after midnight,” Leavitt joked in pushing to delay the vote. “I know there are ways to improve the resolution. I hope we can get to a unanimous vote. Certainly, I’m not supportive of it as it is now.”

But other councilors pushed ahead. Councilor Anne McEnerny-Ogle said two-thirds of the testimony and comments she’s heard are from people opposed to the project.

“When I look at all the different e-mails that have come back, the voice says that for this community, this doesn’t work for us.”

Big Crowd Dwindles

By the time the board voted a crowd that had started out in the hundreds had dwindled to a few dozen.

More than 170 people signed up to testify at the hearing. At 11 p.m., more than four hours after the hearing began, the council voted to extend the meeting even later to take additional testimony. By 1 am, the council had heard from 101 people.

Even before the resolution was formally taken up, a majority of the city council had voiced opposition to the Tesoro-Savage oil terminal.

The hearing addressed two resolutions on the terminal, but most residents came to talk about the one that opposes the project as a whole. That resolution asks the Port of Vancouver to cancel its lease with Tesoro-Savage and urges state agencies and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee not to approve the project. It also supports new laws and regulations to improve crude oil transportation safety.

The council unanimously approved a resolution that calls for the city to play a bigger role in the state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council review process.The council is in the midst of completing an environmental review of the project and is tasked with making a recommendation to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has the final say. That resolution supports the city’s intervening in that process by presenting evidence to the state council, making arguments and appealing a decision to approve the oil terminal.

Most who testified Monday night voiced support for both resolutions and opposition to the oil terminal, although there were many who spoke on behalf of project backers Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies.

Emotional Testimony

The resolutions drew some emotional testimony from both sides.

Don Orange, owner of Hoesly Eco-Automotive of Vancouver, told the council that he’s angry about the prospect of “thousands of pounds of filth” coming into his neighborhood and hurting his business.

“You can call this a terminal. To me, it’s a toilet,” he said. “It’s coming in here on a freight train and we’re flushing it off into ships. This small businessman thinks it stinks.”

On the other side, Port Commissioner Jerry Oliver expressed sadness that the council would consider opposing the project he thinks will benefit the country as a whole by distributing more domestically produced oil to U.S. refineries.

“It makes me sad, not so much that you’re turning your back on the Port of Vancouver, but that you have so little faith in our ability as a community to make this happen,” Oliver said.

Safety And Business Concerns Raised

The Tesoro Savage oil terminal would transport up to 380,000 barrels of crude oil a day. The oil would come from North Dakota’s Bakken fields by trains, be transferred to vessels on the Columbia River and then shipped to West Coast refineries. It’s the largest oil terminal project among the several proposed in the Northwest.

While project supporters noted that the city council doesn’t have the authority to stop the project, opponents of the project said it’s important that the city council let the governor know where it stands.

“It’s difficult to imagine the governor supporting this project if the city of Vancouver opposes it,” said Clark County resident Don Steinke after presenting the council with a box of 2,000 signatures in support of the resolutions.

Vancouver resident Carol Rose says she’s worried about safety in her community if the proposed project is built.

“It’s a tremendous amount of oil, and it’s a danger,” she says. “I’ve lived here for 40 years. I don’t want to have to move because of this.”

Many project opponents voiced concern about the risk of oil train derailments and explosions like the one that killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, last year.

Project supporters defended the safety record of Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies. Earlier this year, Tesoro committed to using newer rail cars that meet higher safety standards.

Many who testified in support of the project were employees of Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies. They told the council that they appreciate the jobs and economic development the oil terminal would bring to the area and vouched for the companies’ track records in treating their employees well.

Jared Larrabee, general manager for Tesoro, said the resolution opposing the project is premature because the Washington Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council hasn’t completed its environmental review.

“The resolution is making a predetermination without having all of the facts, in our view,” he said. “The resolution contains several inaccuracies and assertions that haven’t been validated by the forthcoming Environmental Impact Statement.”

He and other Tesoro representatives supported the resolution that would support the city intervening in the state’s environmental review process. But they urged the council to delay its vote opposing the project or to reconsider it altogether.

Todd Coleman, director of Port of Vancouver, criticized the city’s resolution and said it would damage the port’s ability to do business.

“You can’t have it both ways,” he told the board. “You can’t have a thriving port and all the things that come with that success and then attempt to choose between cargo. A vote for this resolution is a vote against this community’s ability to attract private sector business.”

Submerged Wave Energy Generator On Track For Deployment Near Astoria

By Tom Banse

May 30, 2014 nwnewsnetwork.com

An engineering company based in Salem, Oregon, says it is close to deploying the first submerged wave power generator on the West Coast. M3 Wave Energy Systems plans a temporary deployment late this summer in shallow water off the northern Oregon Coast.

The concept here relies on wave pressure passing over acrylic pillows on the sea floor. That pressure compresses air in the pillows, which is then used to spin an electric turbine.

Mike Morrow, M3 Wave’s CEO, said the initial open water deployment will be a self-contained, 7′ x 30′ rectangle on the seafloor off of Camp Rilea near Astoria.

“It is smaller scale so it is not going to generate a huge amount of power,” he said. “It would be enough to power a small sensor array or marker beacon.”

The demonstration is planned to last two to six weeks starting this August or September. Longer term, Morrow foresees manufacturing larger devices in Oregon. The devices would probably be exported to power off-the-grid outposts or coastal communities with high electricity costs such as Pacific islands or in Alaska.

Morrow said government grants and private investors are financing the commercialization of this technology.

The steady, powerful pounding of the ocean surf along with supportive state governments attracted a plethora of energy developers to the Pacific Northwest over the past decade. But one-by-one, project developers have thrown in the towel as their funding ran low or West Coast utilities proved unwilling to commit to this type of renewable electricity at above-market rates.

M3 Wave has managed to survive the shakeout in the ocean renewable energy sector.

“One of the key things about M3 and our technology is that it does fit on the [sea] bottom. We took a very different philosophy,” Morrow explained. “There’s less energy on the bottom available — that’s just simple laws of physics — but we think it will be easier and more cost effective to harness that energy.”

Earlier this spring, New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies canceled its plans to deploy an array of ten wave energy buoys, which would have floated on the ocean surface near Reedsport, Oregon. A Scottish wave energy developer, Aquamarine Power, closed its Oregon office in 2011 citing uncertainty about seabed leases.

One of the other survivors in the ocean energy space regionally is Seattle-based Principle Power. It recently won a federal grant to test wind energy generation using turbines placed atop redesigned offshore drilling platforms. Principle Power is currently seeking permission to deploy such floating windmills offshore of Coos Bay, Oregon.

Student built rain gardens are key to salmon recovery

Hanna Bridgham, Cassidy Forler and Tessa Rurup, students at Eatonville High School, inventory plants in a new raingarden built in a courtyard at their school.

Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Eatonville will keep its title as the “rain garden capital” because of some work being done by the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the Nisqually River Council. Working with local high school students, the tribe and the council are building six rain gardens in Eatonville this year, continuing several years of stormwater mitigation work in the community.

“If we don’t do something, growth in Eatonville will have a massive detrimental impact on salmon and water quality,” said David Troutt, natural resources director for the Nisqually Indian Tribe. “But, if we can handle the growth the right way, we can have salmon and a healthy community. Rain gardens are an important tool in making that happen.”

Dozens of rain gardens have already been built throughout Eatonville, giving the city the distinction of the highest density of rain gardens of any community in the country.

Rain gardens landscape amenities that are designed to capture and absorb polluted runoff from impervious surfaces, like roofs or parking lots. They reduce runoff by allowing stormwater to soak into the ground instead of flowing into storm drains causing pollution, flooding, and diminished groundwater.

As a part of the project, the council’s Nisqually River Education Project is engaging local high school students in building and caring for the city’s growing collection of rain gardens. The education project is working with four students from Eatonville High School to design each new rain garden. Each student also participated in the tribe’s Stream Stewards training course this summer.

Poor stormwater management leads to high flows in the winter and low flows in the summer. The Mashel River, which runs through Eatonville, already is too low and too warm for fish.

Low flows in the Mashel typically occur just as adult chinook salmon are making their way back to spawn. “Adult salmon need cool, deep pools to rest as they swim upriver,” Troutt said.

“This kind of effort is what we’d like to see across the watershed and across the region,” Troutt said. “When we end up saving salmon and Puget Sound, it will be because we’ve found ways to handle the population growth that is going to come.”

Fresh Columbia River Chinook Salmon! Tribes Open Sale Memorial Day Weekend

Courtesy Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish CommissionFresh-caught fish for sale on the Columbia River — Courtesy Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission
Fresh-caught fish for sale on the Columbia River

Indian Country Today

For Memorial Day weekend, leaders from the Umatilla, Yakama, Warm Springs and Nez Perce tribes opened a two-night commercial gillnet fishery that will bring ample amounts of fresh spring chinook to the salmon-loving public. The latest fishery comes on the heels of an above average spring chinook run which should reach 224,000 returning adults. This spring’s commercial fishery will be the largest in the last four years.

“The tribes are just one the many communities benefiting from this year’s spring chinook run,” said Paul Lumley, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s executive director. “For the first time in four years, we are thrilled to share the coveted spring chinook salmon with our loyal customers that appreciate fresh and locally-caught fish.”

A tribal fisher checks his nets along the Columbia River. (Courtesy Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission)

Indian fishers may be found selling fish at a number of locations along the river including Marine Park at Cascade Locks, Lone Pine at The Dalles, and the boat launch near Roosevelt, Washington as well as other locations. Commercial sales will not occur on Corps of Engineers property at Bonneville Dam. Information on where the day’s catch is being sold is available by calling Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s salmon marketing program at (888) 289-1855 or visiting the salmon marketing website http://www.critfc.org/harvest. Price is determined at the point of sale and sales are cash only.

The tribal fishery is protected by treaties made with the federal government in 1855, where the right to fish at all usual and accustomed fishing places in the Columbia River basin was reserved. The tribal treaty right extends beyond ceremonial and subsistence fisheries to commercial sales. The Columbia River fisheries are adjusted throughout the season in accordance with management agreements and observed returns.