Chief Tayac of the Piscataway tribe, from left, Naiche Tayac, and William of the Lakota Nation march near the White House in Washington during a rally calling on President Barack Obama to reject Keystone XL Sunday, Feb. 17, 2013. CREDIT: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
As President Obama’s decision on Keystone XL nears, opposition from Native American tribes — many of whom have long spoken out against the pipeline — is getting louder.
Last weekend, members of South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux tribe set up a prayer camp near Mission, SD in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline. Tribe leaders say their plan is to send a message to the White House that Native Americans won’t back down on this pipeline, which they say would run through land guaranteed by an 1868 treaty for tribal use. The tribe members plan to keep the prayer camp up until President Obama denies the pipeline or until the pipeline is approved, in which case the camp will turn into a “blockade camp.”
“We’ve been talking about the XL Pipeline. Reading about it, discussing it, having meetings, and I think reality hit today,” Oglala Sioux President Bryan Brewer said at the camp’s opening ceremony Saturday. “This is the first day that we’re actually going to try to stop it.”
Tribe members have erected nine tipis, including one that will stay occupied 24 hours a day until the White House comes out with a decision on Keystone, and surrounded the camp with hay bales. The tribe is planning to enact three more prayer camps — also called spirit camps — near the proposed route of Keystone XL.
“You can feel the power here,” Brewer said. “This will be non-violent; we will take our coup stick and count coup. This Thursday the [Oglala Sioux] tribal council is going to declare war on the Keystone XL pipeline.”
Native Americans are ramping up their opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline after vowing in February to take a last stand against the pipeline, which they’ve called the “black snake.” Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, vice-chair of the House Native American Caucus, said on MSNBC this week that Native Americans’ opposition to the pipeline — especially recently — brings a spiritual dimension to the pipeline’s opposition, and will force people to pay attention to the issue if they hadn’t been before. The Rosebud tribe is also one of several to be planning a trip to D.C. at the end of April to protest the pipeline.
But Native Americans aren’t the only ones adding their voices to the call against Keystone XL. In a letter made public Tuesday, more than 200 business owners, venture capitalists and professors — inlcuding executives at Apple, Facebook, Google and Oracle — called on Secretary of State John Kerry to reject the pipeline as not in the country’s national interest. The letter called Keystone XL the “critical linchpin” for the development of Canadian tar sands and said it “undermines our international commitments.”
“The Obama Administration has expended great time and resources toward establishing America’s leadership on global challenges including the development of clean, low-carbon energy,” the letter reads. “By approving Keystone XL, the country would instead be locking itself into the development of high cost, high carbon fuels for the foreseeable future.”
A geoduck clam from Puget Sound. China’s ban on importing such shellfish remains in place, but recent U.S.-China talks have led to plans for a new testing protocol to ensure food safety. | credit: Katie Campbell | rollover image for more
U.S. officials say they will develop a new testing protocol to detect certain contaminants in shellfish, following their meeting with the Chinese government to discuss an end to that country’s ban on importing shellfish from most of the U.S. West Coast.
Representatives of the two countries’ governments met in Beijing last week for their first face-to-face discussion of China’s shellfish ban. China banned shellfish imports in December after officials there said they found high levels of paralytic shellfish poisoning in a geoduck clam from Alaska and high levels of inorganic arsenic in a geoduck from southern Puget Sound.
U.S. officials said during a briefing with reporters Friday that the Chinese are satisfied with U.S. testing methods for paralytic shellfish poisoning but they’re still concerned about arsenic. High concentrations of inorganic arsenic, a carcinogen, were found in the skin of geoduck harvested near Tacoma, Wash., last fall.
Americans don’t eat the skin. But the Chinese often do.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Paul Doremus said the U.S. will develop a new testing protocol for inorganic arsenic in shellfish.
“Ultimately it is up to China to decide whether they are satisfied that our testing mechanisms and overall protocols meets their standards,” he said.
Doremus said it was impossible to say when the ban might be lifted.
U.S. officials will meet within a week to put together the new testing protocols.
The ban has been in effect since November of 2013, costing the industry hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In this 2011 photo, Lower Elwha Hatchery Manager Larry Ward feeds the steelhead and coho that are being raised in a hatchery for introduction to the Elwha. | credit: Katie Campbell | rollover image for more
A judge has ordered federal agencies to reconsider the number of planned hatchery fish releases into the Elwha River on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula
As crews finish the largest dam removal in history on the Elwha, managers are working to restore fish runs above the dam sites. Their plan includes releasing more than 7 million hatchery salmon and steelhead into the river.
That plan has been controversial. Some conservation groups want to see wild fish repopulate the river on their own. They’re worried that releasing too many hatchery fish will reduce the chances of wild fish reproducing. They sued the agencies in charge of the plan as well as officials with Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, which operates hatcheries on the river.
One of their arguments was that the agencies –- including the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Park Service –- failed to consider options that would release fewer hatchery fish into the river.
“There was no range of alternatives,” said Kurt Beardslee, executive director of the Wild Fish Conservancy. “It was either plant all of the hatchery fish or none.”
Federal Judge Benjamin Settle agreed with that argument. He’s ordered federal agencies to meet with conservation groups to consider an option that would reduce the number of spring coho salmon and steelhead released to just 50,000 apiece. Those are the numbers conservation groups proposed.
In his opinion, the judge wrote that “the court is concerned with the spring coho and steelhead releases,” and as the agencies consider options for releasing fewer hatchery fish, those proposed numbers “would be a good starting point for an agreement.”
The National Marine Fisheries Service released a statement in response to the decision noting that the judge upheld the overall hatchery plan for the Elwha River.
“Numerous reviews and a broad consensus of scientists have found that hatcheries are necessary during dam removal to prevent the wild Elwha salmon and steelhead populations from being extinguished by sediment as the dams come down,” the statement reads. “The court upheld the Federal agencies’ decisions and the hatchery plans of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe on all points except one.”
By Billy Frank, Jr., Chairman, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
OLYMPIA – When it comes to your chances of getting cancer from the foods you eat, what odds would you like: one in a million, or one in 100,000?
Of course all of us would prefer the least amount of risk. That’s why it’s hard to believe that Gov. Jay Inslee is even considering changing water quality rules that would increase that risk. The justification? Businesses such as Boeing say that protecting your health increases their cost of doing business.
There are two important numbers that go into determining how much pollution the state allows to be put in our waters. The numbers are 10-6 and 6.5.
The first number is your cancer risk rate from eating fish and shellfish containing toxics from pollution in our waters. Right now that rate of 10-6 provides you a one in a million chance of getting cancer. But Gov. Inslee is considering changing the risk rate to 10-5, increasing your exposure to known carcinogens to one in 100,000. That’s a tenfold decrease in protection, and that’s not right.
The second number is the amount of seafood that the state of Washington says you eat every day. The lower the number, the less protective water quality standards need to be to protect us from poisons in our water.
The problem is that the state’s current rate of 6.5 grams per day (equal to about one 8-ounce portion per month) is one of the lowest fish consumption rates in the nation. It’s lower even than states like Iowa, despite the fact that Washington has abundant seafood and one of the largest populations of fish and shellfish consumers in the United States.
The state admits that the current fish consumption rate doesn’t protect most of its citizens, yet has used that very same rate to set water quality standards for more than two decades. After years of prodding by the tribes, environmental groups and others, the state has finally agreed to develop a more realistic rate and is considering a range from 125 to 225 grams per day.
While that’s encouraging, if the state adjusts the companion number, the cancer risk rate, any increase in the fish consumption rate would be made almost meaningless in terms of improved water quality standards.
The treaty tribes have been clear from the start about what we would like to see. We think the cancer risk rate should stay right where it is, and the fish consumption rate should be at least 175 grams per day. That’s the same rate that Oregon uses. We think everyone deserves at least that much protection. That’s especially true for tribes, sport fishermen and anyone else who eats a lot of fish and shellfish.
We should know Gov. Inslee’s decision on the fish consumption and cancer risk rates in a few weeks. We hope he will decide in favor of protecting our health and water quality. The choice really boils down to whether we want a pollution-based economy or one that puts people and their health ahead of profits.
Canadian Inuit have embarked on a unique form of protest against the decision by host Ellen DeGeneres to highlight an anti seal-hunting charity on Oscars night. DeGeneres’ Hollywood megastar “selfie” became the most retweeted snap of all time earlier this month, in the process raising $1.5m for the Humane Society of the United States, which campaigns against the seal hunt.
Ellen DeGeneres takes a selfie with stars at the Oscars 2014. Photograph: Ellen DeGeneres/AP
Now members of Canada’s indigenous population have hit back with their own version, the “sealfie”.
Inuit have begun to post pictures of themselves dressed in sealskin clothing, Canoe.ca reported. The move aims to highlight the cultural and financial benefits of a practice they see as a sustainable, ethical choice.
“The meat feeds families, which is important to an area where many households have identified that they face issues of food insecurity,” said Sandi Vincent, who posted her own “sealfie” on Thursday. “In Inuit culture, it is believed seals and other animals have souls and offer themselves to you. Humanely and with gratitude we accepted this gift,” she said, recalling her first seal hunt at age 15. “My uncle placed some snow in the seal’s mouth when it was dead, so its soul would not be thirsty. If there is one word to describe seal-hunting, I would suggest ‘respectful’.”
DeGeneres’ website says Canadian seal-hunting hunt is “one of the most atrocious and inhumane acts against animals allowed by any government”.
The $1.5m (£900,000) donation came about after Korean firm Samsung promised to donate $1 to a charity of the Oscars host’s choice each time her celebrity-loaded selfie was retweeted.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee has acknowledged the Oso landslide could be the deadliest natural disaster in state history.
So far 25 people have been confirmed killed and as many as 90 remain missing. If the ultimate death toll reaches 100 that would eclipse even the 1910 Stevens Pass avalanche that hit two trains.
“We do know this could end up being the largest mass loss of Washingtonians, but whether it is or is not it does not change on how we are approaching this,” said the governor after a bill signing ceremony at the Capitol in Olympia.
Inslee says that approach is to mount a full scale rescue effort. He adds that any one loss is a tragedy.
Seattle Times photo. State allowed logging on plateau above slope This aerial photo, taken after Saturday’s landslide, shows part of the plateau that has been logged over the decades. Right above where the hill fell away is a 7½-acre patch, shaped like a triangle, that was clear-cut about nine years ago.
In recent decades the state allowed logging — with restrictions — on the plateau above the Snohomish County hillside that collapsed in last weekend’s deadly mudslide.
The plateau above the soggy hillside that gave way Saturday has been logged for almost a century, with hundreds of acres of softwoods cut and hauled away, according to state records.
But in recent decades, as the slope has become more unstable, scientists have increasingly challenged the timber harvests, with some even warning of possible calamity.
The state has continued to allow logging on the plateau, although it has imposed restrictions at least twice since the 1980s. The remnant of one clear-cut operation is visible in aerial photographs of Saturday’s monstrous mudslide. A triangle — 7½ acres, the shape of a pie slice — can be seen atop the destruction, its tip just cutting into where the hill collapsed.
Multiple factors can contribute to a slide.
With the hill that caved in over the weekend, geologists have pointed to the Stillaguamish River’s erosion of the hill’s base, or toe.
But logging can also play a role in instigating or intensifying a slide, by increasing the amount of water seeping into an unstable zone, according to an analysis of the watershed submitted to the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
In May 1988, when a private landowner, Summit Timber, received approval to begin logging above the slope, scientists raised alarms about the removal of trees that intercept or absorb so much water, according to documents obtained by The Seattle Times.
Paul Kennard, a geologist for the Tulalip Tribes, warned regulators that harvesting holds “the potential for a massive and catastrophic failure of the entire hillslope.”
Others echoed his concerns. Noel Wolff, a hydrologist who worked for the state, wrote that “Timber harvesting could possibly cause what is likely an inevitable event to occur sooner.” And Pat Stevenson, an environmental biologist for the Stillaguamish Tribe, cited “the potential for massive failure,” similar to a slide that occurred in 1967.
The agency that issued the permit — the DNR — responded to the concerns by assembling a team of geologists and hydrologists to study the harvest’s potential impact on landslides.
Lee Benda, a geologist with the University of Washington, wrote a report that said harvesting can increase soil water “on the order of 20 to 35 percent” — with that impact lasting 16 to 27 years, until new trees matured. Benda looked at past slides on the hill and found they occurred within five to 10 years of harvests.
In August 1988, the DNR issued a stop-work order, putting Summit Timber’s logging operation on temporary hold.
“1988 was maybe the first time that we were getting serious as to what you should or should not do in terms of logging and road construction around those things,” said Matt Brunengo, at that time a DNR geologist.
GRAPHIC BY THE SEATTLE TIMES; PHOTO BY TED S. WARREN / AP Use an interactive tool to look at the effects of the mudslide.
A week after the stop-work order, a Summit representative wrote DNR, saying $750,000 to $1 million worth of timber was at stake. He listed alternative steps that could be taken to lessen the risks of a slide — for example, having the state relocate the channel of the Stillaguamish River that was cutting into the hill’s base.
“I can only conclude that the real issue here is not slides and water quality, but timber cutting,” he wrote.
Although records indicate that at least 300 acres were harvested on the plateau in the late 1980s, the state moved to prevent Summit Timber from clear-cutting 48 acres considered most likely to discharge water down the slope.
Mapping out the areas most likely to feed water into unstable terrain is “fraught with uncertainty,” wrote one geologist who studied this landslide zone in the 1990s.
Summit Timber was a family-logging business led by Gary Jones, who grew up in nearby Darrington. Jones believed the acreage atop the hill was second-growth forest, initially logged in the 1920s or 1930s. He said the company eventually backed away from its request to log the 48 acres, given the hill’s history.
“It was a little bit risky,” Jones told The Seattle Times. “We decided not to do it.”
Jones said he was always cautious when working around the river, especially considering he was an avid fly fisherman fond of the Stillaguamish.
Kennard, who now works as a geomorphologist at the National Park Service, said the 1988 application was contentious because the state rarely objected to proposed harvests. Getting the DNR to limit the cut’s scope was no small task, he said.
“That was considered kind of a big victory,” Kennard said.
Concerns about landslides surfaced again in 2004, when property owner Grandy Lake applied for a permit to clear a 15-acre tract near the plateau’s edge.
The state rejected the application, saying some of the proposed logging fell within a sensitive area that could feed water into the slope. Working in that zone would require years of intensive monitoring of precipitation and groundwater.
Grandy Lake revised its application, halving its proposed harvest to avoid the sensitive zone. The final plan — a clear-cut shaped like a right triangle — had an eastern border that abutted the area.
The state approved Grandy Lake’s application while attaching conditions, including: “All yarding and log-hauling activities will cease at the onset of heavy or steady rain and will not resume until the rain has subsided for at least 24 hours.”
Harvesting in that area was finished by August 2005.
Officials with Grandy Lake did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday.
In January 2006, a large slide hit, with so much mud crashing into the Stillaguamish that the river was diverted. Where the hill fell away was maybe 600 feet southwest of the clear-cut area.
Saturday’s slide took more of the hill, reaching right up to that triangle.
Grandy Lake has done selective logging on the plateau in more recent years. Following the approval of a 2009 permit that also included an area abutting the sensitive zone, the company reported to the state that it removed 20 percent of the area’s trees. It returned in 2011 and got approval to take 15 percent more.
Staff reporter Justin Mayo contributed to this report. Mike Baker: mbaker@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2729; Ken Armstrong: karmstrong@seattletimes.com or 206-464-3730
ARLINGTON – A company that makes cups from recycled soda and water bottles is undergoing a $10 million factory expansion here.
MicroGreen will be able to produce 2 million InCycle cups per day after the expansion, up from the current 400,000.
“Our investors expect big things from us – it’s go-time,” said Tom Malone, CEO of MicroGreen, in a statement. “Production is running 24/7 on our existing lines, while we’re also managing the construction site and training new employees.”
Investors include the Stillaguamish Tribe and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in Oregon.
“We are pleased that our investment in this young company has resulted in creating more than 100 jobs in our local community,” said Shawn Yanity, chairman of the Stillaguamish Tribe, in the press release.
In December, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde funded an equipment loan to MicroGreen and followed that with $5 million in January. This allowed MicroGreen to proceed with expansion.
The company is changing the industry, said Titu Asghar, director of economic development for the Grand Ronde, in the statement.
“We are looking ahead several generations to create an economically sustainable future, supporting clean technology that helps correct wasteful practices with environmentally sound products that are simply better in performance,” he said.
The company, at the Jensen Business Park near Highway 9, uses technology developed at the University of Washington to make the InCycle cups. The idea is to reduce the waste in landfills by using plastic bottles to create cups that can be recycled over and over.
MicroGreen has contracts with several airlines to provide cups for hot beverage service in flight. It’s also looking at using the same technology to expand to other markets, ranging from building construction and electronics to transportation.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California began hauling 30 million young chinook salmon hundreds of miles toward the Pacific Ocean in tanker trucks to save the fishing industry after a record drought left rivers too low for migration.
Three climate-controlled trucks, each bearing 130,000 silvery three-inch smolts, left a federal hatchery 180 miles north of San Francisco on Tuesday for a sloshy, three-hour drive to San Pablo Bay, where they are held in netted pens to acclimate before release. Officials had said they might need as many as four vehicles.
Visitors walk over Salmon Falls Bridge, normally submerged, at Folsom Lake in California last month. California began hauling 30 million young chinook salmon hundreds of miles toward the Pacific Ocean in tanker trucks to save the fishing industry after a record drought left rivers too low for migration. KEN JAMES — BLOOMBERG NEWS
“Water conditions, because of the drought, are going to be horrible for the fish,” said Harry Morse of the state Fish and Wildlife Department. “Depending on how far those fish have to go, the longer they must travel through the system, the higher the losses.”
The fish taxi is the latest in a series of emergency steps that state and federal authorities are rushing into place as reservoirs ebb one-third below normal and farmers idle thousands of acres. Gov. Jerry Brown has called for a voluntary 20 percent cut in water use and many areas have declared mandatory restrictions. More than 800 wildfires have broken out since Jan. 1, three times more than usual, according to state records, and smog in Los Angeles is worse without winter rains to clear the air.
California’s 38 million people endured the driest year on record last year. The most-populous state has only about a quarter of the average amount of water in mountain snow that melts in the spring to fill lakes and rivers.
The hatchery fish that typically migrate through the Sacramento River Delta to the sea are key to the state’s $1.5 billion commercial and recreational fishing industry, according to the Nature Conservancy. Fish released now will be part of the population that can be harvested in a few years.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council, which helps set fishing seasons, predicted earlier this month that more than 630,000 fall-run Chinook salmon from the delta are in the Pacific Ocean now. That’s less than last year but more than enough for a normal commercial fishing season, the council said.
The lack of rainfall means that the Sacramento River will prove too shallow and too warm for the tiny fish to survive the 200 to 300 miles of river and tributaries some must navigate to reach the Pacific.
Convoys of four to seven trucks daily will make the trip from the federal hatchery for 22 days during the next two and a half months. In all, 12 million juvenile fish will be taxied from there, along with 18 million raised in four state-owned hatcheries in June. When released from the pens, the tiny fish will migrate to the ocean and mature. They return to the rivers as an adult to spawn.
“Our 2016 fishing season may be riding on the survival of the fish in these trucks,” said Roger Thomas, chairman of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, an advocacy group based in Petaluma. “We know that fish trucked around dangers lurking in the rivers and delta survive at much higher rates than those released at the hatcheries.”
While the state usually trucks some of its hatchery fish to the ocean, this year’s haul will be about three times the usual. It costs California taxpayers $1,500 a week to rent the tanker trucks, and the state expects to spend $150,000 on trucking, including fuel costs, Morse said.
The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation said last month that it won’t be able to deliver any of the more than 2.4 million acre-feet of water requested by farmers in California’s Central Valley, the state’s most productive agricultural region. An acre-foot is the volume needed to cover an acre of land one foot deep with water.
The Bureau of Reclamation supplies water to 1 million people and a third of the irrigated farmland in California through a 500-mile network of canals and tunnels.
About two-thirds of Californians get at least part of their water from northern mountain rains and snow through a network of state-managed reservoirs and aqueducts known as the State Water Project, which also has said it won’t be able to deliver any of the water requested.
The California Farm Water Coalition said March 17 that farmers probably will fallow as much as 800,000 acres of land because of the lack of water at a cost of $7.5 billion.
Air pollution has become the world’s largest environmental risk, killing an estimated 7 million people in 2012, the World Health Organization says.
That means about 1 out of every 8 deaths in the world each year is due to air pollution. And half of those deaths are caused by household stoves, according to the WHO published Tuesday.
The fumes from stoves that burn coal, wood, dung and leftover crop residues as primary cooking fuels contribute to heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and respiratory infections.
“What people have had available to them are primarily wood, dung and crop residues,” says , an environmental health researcher specializing in air pollution at Harvard University who wasn’t involved in the study. “These three fuels are the most polluting fuels on earth per unit of energy extracted.
“They don’t have a lot of energy, so you have to burn a lot of fuel, and that causes a lot of pollution in the process,” Powers told Shots.
People in low- and middle-income countries in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific are most affected, with 3.3 million deaths caused by indoor air pollution annually.
But it’s not an easy problem to fix, despite new technologies like solar, gas and electric stoves that are more efficient and healthier than the biomass stoves many are using today.
“No matter how much you improve biomass stoves … you can have some health benefits but you can’t meet health targets,” she tells Shots.
The challenges, she says, lie in distributing less-polluting stoves to people in rural areas, and getting people to want them. Many of these people sit around the stove to keep warm or use the stove to heat their beds, so more efficient stoves may not be accepted if it forces them to change those habits.
“Even if they are given the stove for free, they end up not using it,” Powers says.
The bigger issue at hand is to get cleaner fuels to people, she adds, which will address not only the health hazards but also the environmental problems.
But because of population growth and increasing cost, the shift to cleaner and more efficient use of energy hasn’t made much progress. In fact, the shift has slowed and even reversed, to the International Energy Agency.
