Environment Archives - Page 94 of 107

Forceful evictions of Maasai a recipe for tribal clashes in Kenya

Ben Ole Koissaba, Intercontinental Cry

Kenya was at it again last Friday when a 33-year old land ownership dispute between the Maasai and Kikuyu in Naivasha, Kenya, took an ugly turn. Reminiscent of the post-election violence of 2007/2008, over 200 youths believed to be members of the proscribed sect Mungiki–under the escort of heavily armed police–descended on the Maasai community in Narasha with all manner of crude weapons, burning and destroying 240 houses. The arsonists, who were protected by the armed police, rendered 2,300 people homeless, killed over 20 calves and over 600 lambs. During the raid, 2 elderly Maasai men sustained bullet wounds as well as cuts from machetes; they are now recuperating in hospitals.

Narasha is the home of the Maasai who suffered massive land dispossession dating back to the 1900s when the colonial government forced the Maasai off 75 per cent of their ancestral land. Subsequent post-independence government-driven initiatives continued to alienate land from the Maasai.

The tussle for ownership is focused on a 15,000 acre area to which the Maasai claim ancestral ownership. The Kikuyu also claim ownership resulting from an allocation by the first post-independence president Jomo Kenyatta, who happens to be the father of the current president of Kenya.

The bone of contention is that the land is rich with geothermal power; government functionaries want to make a killing by displacing the Maasai. Narasha village is sitting on top of lucrative geothermal power potential. A combination of senior government officials, businessmen and the energy giant KenGen are all involved in making sure the Maasai people are moved away from the area. The Geothermal project has attracted both multi-national and bilateral donors with the World Bank being the main financier of the project.

The forces behind the inhuman act are undoubtedly Kenya’s energy giant, KenGen which is undeniably at the center of the problems facing the Maasai people in nearby Olkaria. The company has embarked on a new geothermal energy project that will add 560 megawatts of power to Kenya’s national grid. This is so far the largest geothermal project in the world. The Ksh165 billion (US$2 billion) project will require expansion beyond the current land that KenGen’s wells occupy in Olkaria. Narasha community is in the middle of the areas earmarked for the new geothermal wells. KenGen has been negotiating for the last few years with the Maasai in Olkaria on issues of compensation and relocation. Not all is going well with the process; There are big trust issues between the parties.

Ngati Farm, a company owned by the Kikuyu from central Kenya, claims to have bought the disputed land from colonialists in 1964. For the last 33 years, the company and the Maasai (who have called the land home for the last 400 years) have been fighting court battles. With the recent push by KenGen for geothermal power generation, the land is now worth billions of shillings which means the stakes are now even higher for both parties.

Leading the pack behind the evictions is Eddy Njoroge, the former Managing Director of KenGen, who is currently serving as President Kenyatta’s advisor on energy and petroleum. Njoroge is closer to the Maasai-Olkaria troubles than anyone else; He knows the potential of the resources on the ground as well as the ability of the community to fight back. Sources claim that he is planning to buy the disputed Narasha land from Ngati Farm as long as the Maasai problem is brought to an end. Njoroge is also said to be closely associated with a tender by KenGen that will see another geothermal plant developed at Narasha.

The Governor of Nakuru, Kinuthia Mbugua, is said to be the mastermind of the Enarasha attack as well as another attack in recent history. The former Police Commissioner, who claims to be a member of Ngatia Farm, has a long history of hostility with the Maasai in Naivasha. After being elected as Governor, sources say Kinuthia vowed to remove the Maasai from Nakuru County. He is also said to be personally interested in a piece of land that is currently being occupied by the family of Odupoi ole Parsitau. He offered the family Ksh2 million if they would move away; Ole Parsitau declined the offer. Kinuthia is reportedly planning additional evictions in Kedong Ranch – another historically disputed area. Governor Mbugua will benefit greatly from KenGen’s projects.

Amos Gathecah, the new Nakuru County Commissioner, is Governor Mbugua’s foot soldier. He has been used as a go-between in negotiations with Enarasha community. Gathecah recently held a meeting with leaders from Narasha at Nashipae Hotel in Naivasha where he offered the community Ksh31 million to relocate from the area. When the offer was declined, he made a threat that he would use the same money to fight the community and force them to leave. This meeting was triggered by a June 19 petition by the community to the National Land Commission concerning the dispute with Ngatia Farm. The Commission started investigations that will delay any plans for the generation of Geothermal Power in the area.

Helen Kiilu led dozens of policemen to support Governor Mbugua’s hired goons in attacking Narasha. Ms. Kiilu takes orders from Commissioner Gathecah.

Former Councilor Ole Linti, a former area councilor, is said to have changed allegiance in exchange for a share in Ngati farm or the proceeds from the KenGen deals. Ole Linti has a long history of fighting for the community against Ngati Farm and KenGen. He is said to have run out of steam after many years of struggle.

While the government denies knowledge of the evictions, the presence of the police and the manner in which the raids were carried out is indicative of a well-executed plan with backing from state machinery.

Grassroots anti-pipeline groups and Idle No More say “Enbridge no more! Shut down the tar sands!”

Source: Intercontinental Cry, July 27, 2013

Today, members of Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia Against Pipelines (ASAP) along with supporters of the Idle No More movement and environmental groups gathered in Sarnia’s Chemical Valley at Lasalle Line where Enbridge’s Line 9 comes above ground across the road from the border of the Aamjiwnaang reserve. Community members and grassroots activists briefly blocked the Lasalle Line road with a mock oil spill, calling attention to the risks posed by the Line 9 Reversal Project and to commemorate the 3 year anniversary of the Line 6 spill in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The demonstration on Lasalle Line is at the spot where Line 9 comes above ground and there is a small Enbridge facility right on the edge of Aamjiwnaang. At this site, Aamjiwnaang community members will conduct a land protection ceremony.

The Line 9 Reversal Project is Enbridge’s plan to ship tar sands oil east for export through a nearly 40 year old pipeline for which experts not employed by oil companies agree that it is a matter of when, not if, this line will spill.

Today’s demonstrators call attention to the broader destruction caused by the tar sands and not just the local risks posed by the Line 9 reversal Project. “All pipeline spills are overlooked by the media all the time,” says Vanessa Gray, a member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation and a founding member of ASAP. “The problem is not how we transport the product, it’s the product itself and the oil companies we should question. The Tar Sands is the most destructive project exploiting First Nation’s territories on Turtle Island today and the future generations of all peoples are depending on the actions we take to defend the air, water, and land we need.” said Gray.

Today’s demonstration was called to commemorate the three year anniversary of the spill on Enbridge’s Line 6 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which started spilling on July 25, 2010, and was the largest inland oil spill in US history. Communities around that spill site continue to deal with devastating local environmental and health impacts. However, the message coming from Chloe Gleichman of the Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands was similar to Gray’s, in that she too was interested in focussing on broader, rather than local impacts.

“The community and climate devastation caused by tar sands transcends fabricated boundaries drawn by governments and authorities in collusion with companies like Enbridge,” said Gleichman. “Tar sands development is industrial genocide to indigenous cultures, ecosystems, and anyone who stands in the way of infrastructure expansion. We must resist Enbridge because no community should become collateral damage in the endless and reckless pursuit of profit,” she said.

Clayton Thomas Muller, National Campaigner for Idle No More’s Sovereignty Summer (#SovSummer) campaign, says that, “a movement is rising up from coast to coast to coast against the Canadian Tar Sands and will continue to grow incrementally until we take back our democracy from the hands of corporations like Enbridge who would see all our streets, rivers, lakes and coastal areas destroyed by tar sands pipeline spills.” Thomas-Muller continues, “We will not stop until the six core demands of Idle No More & Defenders of the Land’s campaign, #SovSummer, including the right of communities to say NO are respected by the Harper Government.”

Expansion of drilling prompts deep fears in Michigan

Gary Heinlein, Detroit News

A new environmental fight looms over a huge natural gas harvesting project opponents claim will industrialize northern Lower Peninsula forests and drain billions of gallons of water from aquifers that feed treasured trout streams.

A Canadian firm proposes to use hydraulic fracturing to draw natural gas from as many as 500 wells extending nearly two miles underground and the same distance horizontally.

“It’s intense industrial resource use, intense water use unprecedented in Michigan,” said Traverse City environmental lawyer Jim Olson, who represents an outdoors organization that wants to protect the unspoiled Jordan River Valley in Antrim County near the affected area. “We need to get a handle on this way ahead of time.”

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has been used in Michigan for 60 years on 12,000 wells with very few problems and little public attention, but not in shale formations this deep.

Environmental activists, partially driven by highly publicized fracking battles in other places, are starting to butt heads with state agencies that oversee oil and gas drilling and with Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration.

Calgary, Alberta-based Encana Corp.’s project dovetails with Snyder’s energy plan.

“I am committed to ensuring that Michigan can take advantage of the reliability, affordability and environmental and economic benefits of natural gas resources,” Snyder said in a special address to lawmakers last November.

Calling Michigan “a very strong natural gas state,” Snyder also called for a state reserve to set aside some of what’s harvested and hold down the price.

The governor defended the use of hydraulic fracturing and announced a University of Michigan study that will guide state policies for tapping the abundant natural gas deposits discovered over the past decade or so in Michigan.

Encana is tapping Michigan’s mammoth Antrim and Collingwood shale formations, which zig-zag from the tip of the mitt all the way down the middle of the state to Gratiot County. The company’s mineral rights are mostly in Cheboygan, Emmet, Kalkaska and Missaukee counties but also spread into other counties.

Fracking sparks concern

Controversies have swirled around the fracking technique, which opens vast new sources of oil and gas to world markets but has been blamed for environmental problems, from earthquakes and tremors in England to methane gas in drinking water in Pennsylvania.

Two recent movies, “Gasland” and Gasland II,” stoked new concerns and made claims disputed by the industry and some studies.

Encana’s project, for which it has leased mineral rights to 432,000 acres of public and private land, has the potential to make fracking more of an issue than it has been in the past in Michigan.

Fly fishermen are starting to wonder if their favorite waters will be harmed; Charlevoix-headquartered environmental activists want voters to ban the technique; and House Democrats are calling for tighter state restrictions. Also, fracking opponents have held demonstrations at DNR mineral rights bidding sessions in the past year and a half.

“My big concern is where’s the water going to come from?” said Josh Greenberg, owner of Gates Au Sable Lodge, next to Michigan’s most-popular trout stream in the Grayling area. “It’s coming from here. Who’s going to benefit? Someone who’s not here.”

Encana says fracking uses 58,800 to 31.5 million gallons of water per well. The amount varies from one well to another.

Olson last September urged the state’s Natural Resources Commission to slow down mineral rights leasing on public lands and declare absolutely off-limits state game reserves, recreational and natural areas he characterizes as Michigan’s “crown jewels.”

Safety ensured

Officials at the two key regulatory agencies expressed confidence hydraulic fracturing can continue to be done safely.

“The biggest concern is the volume of fluids (water) being used,” said Harold Fitch, state geologist and head of the Office of Oil, Gas and Minerals at the Department of Environmental Quality. “If you manage water consumption and the waste water that’s produced, you’ve got control.”

The Department of Natural Resources, which oversees mineral rights, is careful about where drilling is permitted, added spokesman Ed Golder. Special areas such as critical dunes, Great Lakes bottom lands and the Jordan River Valley are off-limits.

“We do a thorough analysis of the land we lease and what type of use should be allowed,” Golder said.

Fracking uses high volumes of water, sand and a chemical mix, pumped under very high pressure, to create fissures in shale formations, releasing the natural gas they hold.

Two-thirds or more of the mixture stays in the deep formation, Encana says. The rest shoots back up the pipe to be drawn off into special tanks and trucked to one of 740 deep-formation chemical waste storage wells.

The hydraulic fracturing takes from a few days to a few weeks. Once that’s completed, a well can continue to produce natural gas for as long as 40 years, according to company literature.

Encana has drilled a dozen wells since 2009. One goes down 10,500 feet and about two miles horizontally, said spokesman Doug Hock.

“We’re in the early stages,” Hock said of new drilling in northern Michigan. “Til we do the exploration, we won’t know whether we have something that can scale up and be economic.”

Hock said the investment could be huge: $10 million per well.

Dems seek safeguards

House Democrats argue for more safeguards and have rolled out bills with stringent requirements for disclosure of fracking chemicals and water use. Municipalities and individuals would be entitled to court hearings before permits are issued.

“If I lived in northern Michigan and they were putting (fracking chemicals) in the ground near my house, I’d want to know,” said Rep. Andy Schor, D-Lansing, one of the bill sponsors.

Fitch, the state geologist, said the DEQ has looked into a recent case in which the process temporarily affected a homeowner’s well. Beyond that, he said, fracking has been almost trouble-free here: two limited wastewater spills.

That’s not enough assurance for those who worry about toxic chemicals left in the ground, no matter how deep, and waterways that might be hurt by massive groundwater withdrawals.

Charlevoix-based Ban Michigan Fracking wants to collect at least 258,088 registered voter signatures by Oct. 1 for a 2014 ballot proposal to prohibit fracking. A similiar effort to get a ban on the 2012 ballot failed when opponents didn’t collect enough petition signatures.

At Gates Au Sable Lodge, Greenberg views Encana’s project with deep concern. For his lodge, shop and restaurant to thrive, the Au Sable River always must flow clear and cold.

“I’m scared and a little concerned about what it’s going to look like if it all comes to pass,” Greenberg said.

“I don’t think you could ever convince me you can take that much water from what’s under the earth and not affect what’s on top of it.”

America Recycles Day 2013 Announces Open Registration for Local Events

Join the national celebration of recycling by hosting a local event

WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 29, 2013) – Online event registration is now open for America Recycles Day, a national initiative of nonprofit Keep America Beautiful (KAB). This year’s America Recycles Day theme, “I Want To Be Recycled,” will help to educate people about the importance of recycling to our economy and environmental well-being as well as motivate occasional recyclers to become everyday recyclers.

America Recycles Day, which takes place annually on Nov. 15, recognizes the benefits of recycling while providing an educational platform that helps raise awareness about the value of reducing, reusing and recycling – every day – all throughout the year.

Online registration is now open at AmericaRecyclesDay.org for local organizers to schedule events in their communities and gain access to valuable resources to plan, promote and host an event. To support event organizers, there are best practices guides for hosting events, activity ideas, downloadable posters and banners, media outreach tools, sample proclamations, and much more. Events can be scheduled any time during the fall, but should be held as close to Nov. 15 as possible.

America’s leading companies are proud to make America Recycles Day possible. National sponsors of America Recycles Day to date are: Anheuser-Busch, the Johnson & Johnson Family of Consumer Companies and Waste Management.

About Keep America Beautiful
Keep America Beautiful is the nation’s leading nonprofit that brings people together to build and sustain vibrant communities. With a strong national network of 1,200 affiliates and partners including state recycling organizations, we work with millions of volunteers who take action in their communities. Keep America Beautiful offers programs and engages in public-private partnerships that help create clean, beautiful public places, reduce waste and increase recycling while educating generations of environmental stewards. Through our actions, we help create communities that are socially connected, environmentally healthy and economically sound. For more information, visit kab.org or follow us on Twitter at @kabtweet.

About America Recycles Day
America Recycles Day is a national program of Keep America Beautiful, and is the only nationally-recognized day and community-driven awareness event dedicated to promoting and celebrating recycling in the U.S. Since its inception in 1997, communities across the country have participated in America Recycles Day on Nov. 15 to educate, promote environmental citizenship, and encourage action. To learn more, visit americarecyclesday.org.

Lac-Mégantic Rail Tragedy Resonates in Quinault Nation as Victims Are Memorialized

Fire rages the day after a 73-car train carrying crude oil from the Bakken shale of North Dakota to refineries in New Brunswick, Canada, burn after the train got loose and smashed into the town of Lac-Mégantic, killing 47.

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

As hundreds attended a memorial service in Lac-Megantic on Saturday July 27 for the 47 people killed in the train explosion that flattened the center of the 6,000-population town, the horrific accident resonated with a tribe all the way over in the Pacific Northwest.

The Quinault Nation is fighting a plan to transport oil by rail through their territory and across ecologically sensitive areas. Indeed, the July 6 accident in Quebec, in which the brakes failed on a Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train and it sped downhill from its overnight resting place to derail and slam into the center of the small town, highlighted a drastic increase in rail transport of oil across the U.S. and Canada.

“It could have easily been Hoquiam,” said Fawn Sharp, President of Quinault Indian Nation, in a statement soon after the crash.

About 234,000 carloads of crude oil were moved around the U.S. in 2012, up from 66,000 carloads in 2011 and 9,500 in 2008, USA Today reported. That makes for a more than 2,000 percent increase over four years, the Quinault Nation pointed out in its July 9 statement.

“It is not a matter of ‘if’ these shipments will cause a major spill; it’s a matter of ‘when’,” said Sharp.

The Quinault are battling plans by the Westway Terminal Company out of Louisiana and Texas to build an oil shipping terminal in Grays Harbor with the capacity to store 800,000 barrels of crude. The company expects to transport 10 million barrels of crude through the ecologically sensitive harbor every year, the Quinault said in their statement.

In addition two other facilities to receive crude oil via rail shipments also being proposed in the Grays Harbor area, which includes marine shipping, would create “major environmental risks” to the community and the Quinault.

“The massive train, oil barge and ship traffic this project will bring to Grays Harbor is a tragedy waiting to happen,” Sharp said. “There will be spills and they will harm salmon, shellfish, and aquatic life, trample our treaty rights and cultural historic sites, and tie up traffic for extensive distances.”

Moreover the expansion of the Westway Terminals’ Port of Grays Harbor facility violates treaty rights as well as the tribe’s standards of “good stewardship and common sense,” Sharp said. “The risk is not worth a few more, unsustainable jobs. Far too much is at stake, and there is simply no way oil train proponents can pass the straight face test and tell us that their proposal is safe. Lives are at stake. Fish and wildlife resources. Water quality and much, much more. These are the same type of rail cars that will come pouring through our area, and unquestionably threaten the lives and safety of our people and resources.”

Back in Quebec, the tragedy hit home anew. Nearly 1,000 people crowded into Ste-Agnes Church for the morning Mass presided over by Archbishop Luc Cyr of Sherbrooke, the Associated Press reported. Also attending were Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois and Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche, as well as the Crown representative, Governor-General David Johnston. Maine Governor Paul LePage also attended.

“This has been an emotional day followed by a very emotional period,” Harper said outside the church, according to AP. “It is very difficult to absorb all this when you see all of these families who have been affected.”

Several lawsuits have been filed as a result of the explosion, and both the police and federal transportation safety officials conduct investigations, AP reported.

Will It or Won’t It Cost $60 Trillion? Climate Change Unknowns Dog Methane Question

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Debate has erupted in the scientific community as a study puts the economic cost of a mega-burst of methane that could be emitted by melting Siberian permafrost over the next decade or two at $60 trillion—about equal to the entire world’s economic output in 2012.

The study, published on July 25 in the journal Nature, based its economic price tag on the assumption that a 50-gigatonne reservoir of methane on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf “is likely to be emitted as the seabed warms, either steadily over 50 years or suddenly,” the paper said. This will lead to higher atmospheric concentrations of methane, which will accelerate global warming as well as Arctic ice melt, wrote the three authors, Gail Whiteman, Chris Hope and Peter Wadhams.

“The ramifications will be felt far from the poles,” they said. Further, the article made the point that the business opportunities being slavered over by oil and resource companies to the tune of copy00 billion are dwarfed by this potential cost.

At issue, besides the question of whether we can expect such a methane “pulse,” is how quickly the permafrost will melt relative to how long the methane—which does not stick around as long as carbon dioxide—will last in the atmosphere. Those critiquing the study say that the greenhouse gas will not build up faster than methane dissipates, which takes about two years. In contrast, carbon dioxide, the other potent greenhouse gas, can linger for centuries, a recent study found. And melting permafrost has also been a concern in Alaska.

Antarctic Mud Tells Tales of Ancient Ocean Rise

Melting Permafrost Could Release Greenhouse Gases: NYT

Regardless of how much the dollar amount is, said co-author Wadhams, who heads the Polar ocean physics group at Cambridge University, in a rebuttal to the initial critique in the Washington Post, “the planetary cost of Arctic warming far outstrips the benefits (from shipping and oil exploration) that have been talked about so confidently by some politicians.”

The naysayer, Jason Samenow, set off a chain reaction of sorts as expert after expert came forward to concur that the methane-belch scenario is not that probable.

“The paper says that their scenario is ‘likely.’ I strongly disagree,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, to LiveScience.com. He explained that summer sea ice has nearly disappeared before, during previous warm geological eras, and did not result in the melting of methane hydrates trapped in permafrost as predicted by Wadhams and his team.

However, Wadhams said that today’s factors are different.

“The mechanism which is causing the observed mass of rising methane plumes in the East Siberian Sea is itself unprecedented, and the scientists who dismissed the idea of extensive methane release in earlier research were simply not aware of the new mechanism that is causing it,” wrote Wadhams, an oceanographer at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. “But once the ice disappears, as it has done, the temperature of the water can rise significantly, and the heat content reaching the seabed can melt the frozen sediments at a rate that was never before possible.”

Either way, the current models being used to calculate climate change may be missing some key variables, simply because they cannot be known until they happen. A rash of recent studies have shown how aspects of climate change influence other factors that compound and cloud the issue.

“What is missing from the equation is a worldwide perspective on Arctic change,” wrote the paper’s three authors. “More modeling is needed to understand which regions and parts of the world economy will be most vulnerable.”

The Antarctic is not immune from such melt either. As this debate erupted, the Los Angeles Times was reporting on another study, this one published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, that found melt rates of buried ice in the Garwood Valley “that shifted from a creeping annual rate of about 40,000 cubic feet per year over six milleniums, to more than 402,000 cubic feet last year alone,” the newspaper reported on July 24.

“We think what we’re seeing here is sort of a crystal ball of what coastal Antarctica is going to experience,” said geologist Joseph Levy, of the University of Texas, lead author of the study, to the Los Angeles Times. “When you start warming buried ice and other permafrost in the dry valley, it’s going to start to melt and it’s going to start melting in a style that’s consistent with permafrost thaw in the Arctic.”

Regardless of how much the melting permafrost will cost economically, other manifestations of climate change are already being felt, especially by Indigenous Peoples. Even if methane does suddenly get unleashed into the atmosphere, could damage be mitigated if we were to harness it for energy?

Coming Clean: Historic Agreement Reached for Navajo Generating Station

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

The electricity delivery from the Navajo Generating Station will continue well into the future – while achieving significant air pollution reductions.

That was the announcement made this morning by the Department of the Interior, which said it is part of an agreement that was reached to continue the services of NGS.

That agreement was signed by the Department of the Interior, Central Arizona Water Conservation District, Navajo Nation, Gila River Indian Community, Salt River Project, Environmental Defense Fund, and Western Resources Advocates.

With the agreement came a proposed “Reasonable Progress Alternative to BART,” that was submitted to the United States Environmental Protection Agency today for consideration in developing the final Best Available Retrofit Technology (BART) rule for NGS.

“This consensus agreement among a very diverse group of interested parties is nothing short of historic,” said Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Anne Castle in a DOI press release. “Through collaboration and cooperation, this innovative proposal will not only significantly reduce harmful emissions, it will also mitigate the plant’s carbon footprint and ensure continued generation of electricity that helps power the local economy.”

NGS, while being the largest coal-fired power plant in the West, is also the single sources of nitrogen oxide air pollution in the country, contributing to ozone and fine particle pollution in the region – home to the Grand Canyon and 10 other national parks and wilderness areas according to the release. Another significance for the NGS is that it provides more than “90 percent of the power for the Central Arizona Project (CAP), the state’s primary water delivery system, and plays a critical role in numerous tribal economies.”

The EPA in February issued a proposed BART rule for NGS to meet Clean Air Act legal mandates, recognizing the important role NGS plays on the regional economy, the EPA invited alternative proposals. According to the release, a Technical Working Group that consists of NGS owners, the DOI, affected tribes and other interested parties came together and submitted a supplemental proposal. “The group worked to address the concerns of many diverse interests in the plant and to provide the best path forward for all parties, in a manner that reflects current and future economic and environmental considerations,” the DOI release states.

Emissions of nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide will be significantly reduced under the agreement, while maintaining essential operations at NGS into the future.

Key items within the agreement are:

–An 11.3 million metric tons, or 3 percent annually, carbon dioxide emissions reduction no later than December 31

— 80 percent clean energy by 2035 for the U.S. share in NGS

— $5 million Local Benefit Fund for community improvement projects within 100 miles of NGS or the Kayenta Mine, which supplies coal to NGS.

— Development of a 33-megawatt solar energy facility for the Gila River Indian Community

— DOI will provide copy00 million over 10 years, beginning in 2020, to provide financial assistance to tribes in Arizona that rely on water from the Central Arizona Project.

The release states “[t]he agreement reached today will further the objectives set forth in the Joint Statement to find ways to produce ‘clean, affordable and reliable power, affordable and sustainable water supplies, and sustainable economic development, while minimizing negative impacts on those who currently obtain significant benefits from NGS, including tribal nations.’”

Cruise to Set Sail to Investigate Ocean Acidification

NOAA Ship Fairweather in the Gulf of Alaska with namesake Mt. Fairweather.Credit: NOAA — NOAA Ship Fairweather in the Gulf of Alaska with namesake Mt. Fairweather.
Credit: NOAA

By Douglas Main, Staff Writer for LiveScience

July 25, 2013 06:01pm ET

The waters off the Pacific Northwest are becoming more acidic, making life more difficult for the animals that live there, especially oysters and the approximately 3,200 people employed in the shellfish industry.

Researchers from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will set sail Monday (July 29) on a monthlong research cruise off the U.S. and Canadian West Coast to see how ocean acidification is affecting the chemistry of the ocean waters and the area’s sea life.

Ocean acidification occurs when greenhouse-gas emissions cause carbon dioxide to accumulate in the atmosphere and become dissolved in sea water, changing the water’s chemistry and making it more difficult for coral, shellfish and other animals to form hard shells. Carbon dioxide creates carbonic acid when dispersed in water. This can dissolve carbonate, the prime component in corals and oysters’ shells.

The world’s oceans are 30 percent more acidic than they were before the Industrial Revolution, scientists estimate.

This cruise follows up on a similar effort in 2007 that supplied “jaw-dropping” data on how much ocean acidification was hurting oysters, said Brad Warren, director of the Global Ocean Health Partnership, at a news conference today (July 25). (The partnership is an alliance of governments, private groups and international organizations.)

That expedition linked more acidic waters to huge declines in oyster hatcheries, where oysters are bred, Warren said. Oyster farms rely ona fresh stock of oysters each year to remain economically viable.

When the data came in from that cruise, it was “a huge wake-up call,” Warren said. “This was almost a mind-bending realization for people in the shellfish industry,” he said.

The new cruise will also look at how acidification is affecting tiny marine snails called pteropods, a huge source of food for many fish species, including salmon, said Nina Bednarsek, a biological oceanographer with NOAA’s Pacific Environmental Marine Laboratory.

The research will take place aboard the NOAA ship Fairweather, which will depart from Seattle before heading north and then looping back south. It will end up in San Diego on Aug. 29. During this time, scientists will collect samples to analyze water chemistry, calibrate existing buoys that continuously measure the ocean’s acidity and survey populations of animals, scientists said.

The researchers will also examine algae along the way. Ocean acidification is expected to worsen harmful algal blooms (like red tide), explosions of toxin-producing cells that can sicken and even kill people who eat oysters tainted with these chemicals, said Vera Trainer, a researcher at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Email Douglas Main or follow him on Twitter or Google+. Follow us@livescience, Facebook or Google+. Article originally on LiveScience.com.

Teaching Indigenous Solutions to Modern Agricultural Problems

Alex Jacobs, Indian Country Today Media Network

For 18 years, Clayton Brascoupe, director of Traditional Native American Farmers Association, has taught a course called Indigenous Sustainable Communities Design. The stories of how people and communities have been affected are powerful.

• There were the South American students who took back their knowledge and heritage seeds to create gardens and build a new community house. They grew a certain yellow watermelon and when presented to the elders at a fiesta, they began to cry because they hadn’t tasted the fruit since they were children. They were also recognized at the national level for this community work.

• Then there was the phone call Clayton received from the mother of a young man from Arizona. She asked what they had done to her son, because he had completely changed from a game-playing couch potato into an engaged busy gardener.

• Another young man returned home to Los Angeles to start urban gardens, but his story was not quite that simple: As it turned out, he was hard-core gang member who took it upon himself to change his community by providing fresh food.

• On another occasion, the course provided a natural solution when mother nature wreaked havoc: A Mayan group from Belize learned to preserve surplus garden-grown food and marinated chicken. When hurricanes damaged everything, they still had the preserves to feed the community.

Clayton Brascoupe. Photo by Alex Jacobs

Clayton Brascoupe — known around Turtle Island as Clayton or “Scoobie” — is Mohawk and Anishnabe, and was raised in Tuscarora, NY. He married Margaret Vigil from Tesuque Pueblo, NM and they have four daughters, which is also the name of their farm “4 Sisters”. He served an appointed position on the Tesuque Pueblo Tribal Council, and has been involved in community gardens and marketing for years. We travelled together with White Roots of Peace/Akwesasne Notes on the 1973 Wounded Knee trip; Clayton returned to NM to marry Margaret, and our fellow traveler Tom Cook returned to Pine Ridge, SD to marry Loretta Afraid of Bear. I went on to become an editor of Akwesasne Notes, co-founder of Indian Time and Akwekon, Tom is now a respected member of his Lakotah community and participates in the Sun Dance. Clayton’s older brother Simon Brascoupe, was an important artist in the early development of marketing Canadian Native Arts.

Clayton’s course is a two-week hands-on grassroots workshop — it’s also, frequently, a life changing experience. Class size ranges from 20 to 25, with the most ever being 35. Locals from New Mexico, Arizona, and elsewhere in the southwest make up most of the class. There are urban Natives, as well as Natives from Canada, Central and South America. Many students return to become instructors — the staff is 98% indigenous, and many of are women. Recently there’s been a Midwifery component — the thinking being, if we can grow clean food in a non-industrial way, then why not our children?

Traditional foods ready to eat. Image courtesy Clayton Brascoupe.

What Clayton says is important for these students, is it to develop a resource base of knowledge in the affected communities and to become experts in their respective communities. Identify resources, land bases, elders’ knowledge, youthful energy, water sources, urban parks, markets and outlets, recycling discarded resources and discarded people too. Identify problems and solutions and use local resources to fix them, and if there aren’t enough local resources, go out in wider and broader networks to find more. Its base knowledge is agriculture, but it’s not just about planting gardens. Health care is everyone’s biggest issue and expense, but fresh food dramatically changes diet and lifestyle, positively affecting diabetes and heart disease. Food, health, economies, energy, housing, spiritual well-being, elder care, raising children, education — it all becomes inter-related.

Clayton had originally started the course as Permaculture Design but each group had different issues, so the course grew outward and became its own living organism, adapting and changing. Citing examples around Indian country, he talked about ecology and borders and what he terms eco-tones, where two environments come together. These “edges” are where things happen and exchanges are made, where there is more diversity of plants and animals. It’s the difference between a riparian area with a meandering river or a re-created “seaway”, dug out and made straight for industrial traffic. Communities become just like these traffic lanes — dollars don’t stay, they leave immediately like out a pipeline fast, instead of percolating around families. In most communities, dollars are replenished in grants instead of recycling via local diverse economies. Just like a riparian wetland or our own digestive system, there needs to be more meandering, more edges where things meet, interact and exchange, to yield more nutrients, more bang for the buck, rather than having everything of value be extracted by corporations and outside markets.

Growing heirloom seeds. Photo courtesy Clayton Brascoupe.

Although the course is designed for and made up of indigenous peoples, non-Natives have been students and there are usually around 5 spots for non-natives who pay the full course fee. Sometimes Native organizations or benefactors will sponsor individuals to come and learn and then go back to Native communities to teach. Participants can camp nearby, children are allowed but there’s no daycare, and there’s local food catering from San Juan (Ohkay Ohwingeh). The 2013 session of Sustainable Communities Design runs from July 28 through August 9 in Santa Cruz, New Mexico. Those interested should visit tnafanm.org/TNAFA.html for more information.

One final story: An El Salvadoran farmer comes every year driving his cooking-oil fueled pick-up truck. He fills up at restaurants (which usually have to pay to have their oil picked up), the best fuel oils are from Taiwanese, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants. The McDonalds waste cooking-oil clogs his vehicle’s engine, it won’t run; so think about that for awhile.

Alex Jacobs, Mohawk, is a visual artist and poet living in Santa Fe.

Sockeye fishing at Baker Lake tougher this year

Baker Lake SockeyeSource; FishwithJD.com — Baker Lake Sockeye
Source: FishwithJD.com

By Wayne Kruse, Special to The Herald

July 25, 2013

Baker Lake sockeye anglers are scratching a little harder for fish so far this season than in 2012, and that probably means predictions for a somewhat smaller run are proving accurate.

“Historically, about half the run has been counted at the (Baker Dam) trap by July 19,” said Kevin John at Holiday Sports in Burlington. “The count at that point this year was a little over 9,000 fish, and if you double that, you’re getting close to the prediction of 21,000 fish.”

That would be down from last season’s total trap count of 28,410 sockeye, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t fish to be taken.

“It has actually been fairly good,” John said. “The numbers seem to be holding true, so it’s going to be a little tougher, but that only means moving around, watching for ‘showing’ fish, using a sounder, spending a little more time on the water.”

John said salmon are scattered, mostly above the bend, and at different water depths as well. Heavy morning fog recently delayed the morning bite, he said, and fishing didn’t really pick up until more light was on the water.

He recommends starting early in the day and dropping your gear to 20 or perhaps 30 feet to start, going down later to as deep as 55 feet or so. Rig with a big ring “0” dodger, eight to 18 inches of leader, bare red or black hooks, or a 11/2-inch pink hoochie. Add a small piece of raw or cured shrimp or a sand shrimp tail, and douse the works with shrimp oil.

The hoochie can be UV pink, John said, maybe dressed up with a smile blade or a red or pink size 8 or 10 Spin N Glo. John likes dodgers in UV white, UV purple haze, or 50-50.

The dam counts as of July 19 were 9,032 trappoed, and 4,620 transported to the lake. Check out the current trap counts at http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/salmon/sockeye/baker_river.html.

Pinks

The big run of odd-year humpies continues to work its way down the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but it’s not here in any numbers yet. State creel checks at the Washington Park public ramp west of Anacortes on Saturday showed 59 anglers with 11 chinook, one coho and 38 pinks. On Sunday, it was 38 anglers with 21 pinks. Those are Fraser and/or Skagit fish which tend to be a little earlier than those headed for Puget Sound tributaries in this area.

Sunday’s count at the Port of Everett ramp was 10 pinks for 390 anglers, most of which were caught incidentally to the ongoing chinook fishery. Weekend checks at Olson’s Resort in Sekiu showed outstanding salmon fishing: 206 anglers with 130 chinook, 10 coho, and 61 pinks.

Local chinook

Gary Krein, owner of All Star Charters in Everett, said that after a very hot couple of opening days, fishing for clipped-fin kings in the Port Townsend area dropped off precipitously, and that Possession Bar remained fairly slow. He said a few fish are being picked up a lot of places — Pilot Point, Point No Point, Possession, Kingston, and Richmond Beach among several others — but that there has been no local hot spot.

State check numbers, however, indicate at least decent local fishing. On July 16, opening day, some 212 anglers at the Port of Everett ramp had 96 kings, 11 coho and three pinks. And last Sunday, it was 390 fishermen with 39 chinook, 10 coho and 10 pinks — still not too bad.

But how long has it been since you’ve seen success rates on adult kings better than a fish per rod? Check this out: On July 16, opening day of the area 9-10 selective chinook fishery, 169 fishermen at the Port Townsend Boat Haven ramp were contacted with 194 chinook. And that’s about as good as it gets around here.

Krein said the scattering of pinks caught already on Possession Bar is encouraging for this early in the season, particularly as they were mostly taken on spoons worked by chinook fishermen. Good-sized humpies, too, he said, some in the 7- to 8-pound range.

Westport open seven days

Marine Area 2 opened July 19 to salmon fishing seven days a week, joining the three other coastal areas already open daily. Angler effort and catch rates are building slowly, but creel checks have not yet broken the one-per-rod figure, according to Wendy Beeghley, creel sample coordinator for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. The latest Westport numbers showed about one-third chinook and one-half coho per person, Beeghley said.

“That may improve in the next couple of weeks,” Beeghley said. “They’re doing better up north, on fish moving down the coast, and trollers are also reporting more fish.”

Waterfowl outlook

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released its report on 2013 duck breeding populations, and while predictions are for a slightly lower total North American duck population, the numbers remain strong and well above the long-term averages. The report said its survey showed an estimated 45.6 million breeding ducks in the heart of the most important areas in the U.S. and Canada, a six-percent decrease from last year’s estimate but 33 percent above the 1955-2012 average.

Of the 10 species surveyed, seven were similar to last year’s estimates, including mallards. Scaup and blue-winged teal were significantly below last year’s estimates. American wigeon were 23 percent above last year, and mallards are 36 percent above the long-term average.

Neah Bay strong

Best coastal salmon results recently have been at Neah Bay, where anglers are averaging about one fish per rod, equally split between chinook and coho. They have been killing the pinks there, however, and when humpy numbers are added, Neah Bay anglers are scoring at a 1.6-fish-per-person clip.

Cowlitz River

Pretty good steelhead fishing on tap between the hatcheries, where 74 boat anglers last week were checked with 43 fish.

Buoy 10

The lower end of the Columbia opens to chinook and hatchery coho on Aug. 1 but, as usual, fishing probably won’t be close to hot on the opener. Joe Hymer, state biologist in the Vancouver office, said there are a few chinook in the area, but warm water temperatures and a lack of big tides early in the Buoy 10 season will probably tend to keep an improved coho run off the coast.

Hymer looks for fishig to improve, however, over the next few weeks and said the coho numbers look good this year.