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Wash. Port Releases New Lease Details For Oil-by-Rail Terminal

The Port of Vancouver on Wednesday released an updated version of its lease for the Northwest’s largest oil-by-rail transfer terminal, featuring fewer censored details but maintaining redactions of key issues the port considers sensitive.

The port released the updated version of its lease (429 pages in electronic format) with Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies in response to multiple requests made in April by various parties, including the Columbian and The Oregonian newspapers, Theresa Wagner, the port’s communications manager, said Wednesday.

In the original version of the lease, the port had kept secret a total of 22 pieces of information. In the updated rendition, the port revealed 11 of those 22 pieces of information, Wagner said.

One revelation: The port is allowed to terminate the lease if Tesoro and Savage fail to launch construction within four months after both parties are presumed to have fulfilled certain other contractual obligations.

Previously, the port had censored the companies’ construction timeline.

Still kept a secret, however, are the number of months — since the effective date of the lease — the port and companies have to cancel the lease early if either party fails to meet their contractual obligations.

Exactly how those obligations, known as “conditions precedent,” work isn’t entirely clear. An obvious allowed reason for cancelling the deal is if Tesoro and Savage fail to obtain permits from state regulators.

The companies submitted their permit application to the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council on Aug. 29, seeking to handle as much as 380,000 barrels of oil per day for eventual conversion into transportation fuel. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has the final say over the project.

Another disclosure the port made Wednesday: If Tesoro and Savage move a certain average volume of oil per day for 30 months after they start making rent payments to the port, then the companies get to keep exclusive rights to run an oil terminal at the port.

The port, under that scenario, wouldn’t be able to lease property to a new tenant who also wants to handle crude oil.

Previously, the port had censored how long the companies would have to maintain certain oil volumes to keep their exclusivity rights.

However, the oil volumes — and the date on which the companies start paying rent to the port — are still unknown, because the port kept them redacted in the updated version of its lease.

The port also maintained redactions of the amounts of wharf and dockage fees it will charge Tesoro and Savage. Those unknown fees are in addition to lease revenue that’s already known: The agreement involves 42 acres and is worth at least $45 million to the port over an initial 10 years.

The port is maintaining certain redactions under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, saying that if certain pieces of information were made public, it would harm the port in various ways, including damaging its competitiveness and its ability to negotiate

Wagner said the port chose to reveal certain pieces of information because they’ve either become known from the Tesoro-Savage permit application or by way of public presentations given by the companies.

However, a Vancouver city attorney has questioned the port’s redactions. In a Feb. 18 email to the port, two weeks after he’d received and reviewed the lease, Bronson Potter, chief assistant city attorney, wrote that it’s “doubtful that any of the information redacted would qualify as being a ‘trade secret.’?”

The port’s lease also gives Tesoro and Savage first rights on leasing additional property to expand if the average amount of oil moved by the first facility exceeds certain barrels-per-day targets. Those targets remain unknown, because the port kept them secret in the updated version of its lease.

Tesoro and Savage would have to seek another round of permits to expand or build another facility.

Swinomish Tribe measures changes to shellfish over decades on Kukutali Preserve

Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.com

Apr 29th, 2014

The never-realized plans to build a nuclear power plant on Kiket Island has a legacy that’s proven useful to the Swinomish Tribe.

The 1969 power plant proposal attracted researchers to study the island’s ecology. Among these was then-graduate student Jon Houghton, who established permanent transects around Kiket Island to study intertidal ecology and measure, among other things, clam density and biomass. In 2011, Swinomish shellfish biologist Julie Barber worked with the tribe’s water resources program to survey the same transects as Houghton to quantify ecological change over the past four decades.

Tiffany Hoyopatubbi, water resources specialist, uses a quadrat to sample shellfish species on the beach on Kukutali Preserve

In the decades since the power plant plans were scrapped, Kiket Island was privately owned. For at least the past two decades, tribal members were discouraged by upland owners from harvesting on the tribally owned tidelands. This long-term lack of harvest pressure now provides Swinomish with the unusual opportunity to study unharvested clam populations.

In 2010, the Swinomish Tribe and the state of Washington purchased the island and now jointly manage it as the Kukutali Preserve.

At the time of Houghton’s surveys, butter clams were the preferred shellfish harvested on Kiket Island. Since no one had been harvesting there for two decades, Barber was not surprised to learn that the number and size of butter clams has increased substantially since the 1970s.

The biomass of native littleneck clams, on the other hand, has declined significantly, and researchers don’t know why.

Comparing the data from Kiket Island with other nearby beaches shows that the littleneck clam decline appears to be a trend. The increase in butter clams is believed to be a trend on these other beaches as well, but Barber doesn’t have enough data yet to know for sure.

Barber is working with other tribes and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to compare data throughout the region. Her eventual goal is to create a Puget Sound map that shows the temporal change in bivalve biomass by bivalve management region.

“That would help us at least map out where these changes are occurring,” she said. “You can’t easily find out why this is happening until you know where these changes are happening.”

Swinomish staff who assisted in the surveys included Todd Mitchell, Tiffany Hoyopatubbi, Tanisha Gobert, Courtney Greiner and Jennifer Ratfield.

For more information, contact: Julie Barber, shellfish biologist, Swinomish Tribe, 360-466-7315 or jbarber@skagitcoop.org; Kari Neumeyer, information officer, NWIFC, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

Prosecutors on Navajo seek to combine trials

The Associated Press

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP) — Prosecutors investigating the use of discretionary funds on the Navajo Nation are seeking to try a handful of defendants together.

In a request Wednesday to tribal Judge Carol Perry, prosecutors said consolidating the trials would save tens of thousands of dollars in court expenses, jury fees and prosecution.

Perry has not ruled on the request.

Jury trials aren’t common in Navajo courts. According to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report on tribal courts, eight were held on the Navajo Nation between 2007 and 2011 among 51,000 civil and criminal cases. At the time, none of the tribe’s 10 district courts had set aside funds for jurors in their budgets.

Prosecutors are seeking to combine trials for two current and three former tribal lawmakers who are facing bribery charges.

RCMP uncover over 1,000 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women

30. Apr, 2014 by APTN National News |

Kenneth Jackson
APTN National News
An RCMP project aimed at tallying the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women has uncovered “over 1,000” cases, APTN National News has learned.

The RCMP was able to determine over a 1,000 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women with the help other police forces across the country, according to a person with knowledge of the project, who asked not to be named because they’re not the official spokesperson on the project.

As part of this project, the RCMP reached out to over 200 police forces across the country to get a peek in their files to compile their statistics.

APTN was told the project was complete and the report’s release is being held up by the federal ministry of public safety Canada and was supposed to come out March 31.

However, RCMP Aboriginal policing Supt. Tyler Bates denied a report was done when contacted on his cellphone Wednesday afternoon but not the tally.

“There is no report as of yet that has been disseminated,” said Bates. “There will be a publicly available document down the road.”

When asked about the tally of over 1,000 Bates said he couldn’t confirm or deny any number.

“I’m not going to speak to a specific number to confirm or refute anything at this juncture,” he said. “I don’t have any comment right now. All I can tell you is there is work that remains ongoing.”

The purpose of the project was to give the RCMP clear data on the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women Bates told APTN in December.

The tally of over 1,000 cases would shatter anything officially compiled up until this point. The Native Women’s Association of Canada released a report in 2010 with nearly 600 cases.

Then just recently an Ottawa researcher said her work put the number at over 800.

The RCMP questioned NWAC’s numbers in the past, but, until the recent project, the federal force only tallied information from within its own files.

A call the public safety minister’s office wasn’t immediately returned.

– with APTN files

Tribes and federal government begin settling decades-long contract disputes

Norma Thomas, a resident of Owyhee on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, talks with David Simons, a doctor at the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes Owyhee Community Health Facility in Nevada on Nov. 25, 2013. (Darin Oswald for The Washington Post)

By Kimberly Kindy

The Washington Post May 1, 2014

After decades of underfunding hundreds of contracts with Native Americans, the federal government over the past several months has reached settlement agreements on 146 claims, totalling $275 million, government records show.

The settlements for health and social service contracts represent about 10 percent of all outstanding tribal claims with the federal Indian Health Service. The unpaid contract expenses were the subject of two U.S. Supreme Court rulings, the latest in June 2012, in which both IHS and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) were ordered to pay outstanding claims on the self-determination contracts.

The disputed contracts have their origins in the 1975 Indian Self-Determination Act, which gives tribes the option of receiving federal funding to run their own education, public safety and health-care programs. Those services — which were promised in perpetuity in tribal treaties — historically were delivered by the IHS and BIA.

The unpaid claims are for “contract support costs,” which include travel expenses, legal and accounting fees, insurance costs and workers’ compensation fees. Such costs typically account for between 10 to 20 percent of the value of a contract.

“The federal government has a trust responsibility to provide health care for this nation’s First Peoples and it’s about time it steps up to pay legal and contractual obligations to those tribes that choose to take over this responsibility through self-governance contracts and compacts,” Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) said in a prepared statement.

Through letters and public hearings, Begich and several other members of Congress have pressured IHS and BIA to resolve past unpaid claims since the last Supreme Court ruling nearly two years ago.

IHS is working through thousands of disputed claims in more than 200 lawsuits filed by tribes, which are being individually negotiated. BIA is dealing with a single class-action lawsuit, which includes unpaid claims for hundreds of tribes, which has not yet been resolved.

The largest IHS settlement of $96 million went to Southcentral Foundation in Anchorage. The organization operates several health-care facilities, including a portion of the Alaska Native Medical Center, and serves more than 60,000 Alaska Natives and American Indians.

Llloyd Miller, an attorney in the Supreme Court cases, who is also representing 55 tribes in the settlement talks, said progress is being made, but at the current pace it would take IHS another three years to resolve all outstanding claims.

“It’s an enormous breakthrough because, over the past two years, little in the way of settlements have been achieved,” Miller said. “The challenge for the agency is to resolve the remaining 90 percent in a coherent time frame.”

In February, both agencies committed for the first time in decades to fully fund the self-determination contracts in their 2014 revised budgets. The revisions followed a Washington Post article in December that detailed the administration’s plans to impose spending caps on the contracts, despite two U.S. Supreme Court rulings ordering the government to fully compensate the tribes.

Federal contractors have carefully monitored the case because they worried that if federal agencies were able to not pay contract support costs for tribes, it could set a dangerous precedent for non-tribal service contracts with federal agencies.

In a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court in 2012, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said: “The government’s position would have the effect of making contracts illusory by giving it a broad right to refuse payment at the stated price for services rendered.”

U.S., Canadian, tribal leaders discuss Salish Sea’s environmental, economic concerns

April 30, 2014 By ELLIOTT SMITH

As featured in The Bellingham Herald

This isn’t breaking news, but salmon and orcas don’t stop at the border. They don’t show passports and clear customs or shop at the duty-free store.

The environment doesn’t stop at the border and neither does the economy. A healthy economy depends on a healthy environment and we must work across the border with our Canadian and tribal/First Nations partners to ensure both.

Salish Sea and tribal nations. Map source: Seattle University

This week in Seattle, Western Washington University is the proud lead organizer of the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference bringing together about 1,200 of the top marine science professionals, First Nations and tribal leaders, industry executives and policymakers who make decisions about resource management on our shared waters. The Salish Sea encompasses all of the inland marine waters of southern B.C. and Western Washington, from the Johnstone Strait at the top of Vancouver Island to the bottom of Puget Sound near Olympia. The Salish Sea also includes the Georgia Strait in Whatcom County and B.C., as well as the San Juan Islands, Hood Canal and the Strait of Juan de Fuca out to the Pacific Ocean.

Our region’s future demands that we have serious conversations across international and jurisdictional boundaries about the decisions before us in marine resource management. Since the 1970s, Western has reached beyond the Canada/USA border with our research and teaching on environmental and economic issues. WWU’s Huxley College of the Environment and Center for Canadian-American Studies have been leaders in thinking, and acting, across the border with common sense solutions for over 40 years.

This week, we live it.

This is not underwater tree hugging. The Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference is an important dialogue about the future of our marine waters and the jobs that depend on them.

We cannot just yell at each other about coal trains and jobs. We must sit down at the table together and weigh the pros and cons of decisions that will affect our children’s health and economic well-being for generations to come.

This week, Western provides that table, and the forum for the exchange of information that will lead to intelligent decisions. More than 450 scientific presentations will be delivered this week at the Washington State Convention Center by scientists from both sides of the border. The goal is, quite simply, to provide the best scientific and policy research that can lead to decisions that will foster the long-term health of the Salish sea and the economy that depends on it.

It is crucial that we work with our neighbors and partners to understand the latest scientific research, so we can make the smartest decisions for our region’s future. Western Washington University’s mission is to serve the people of our region by encouraging learning. This week, we proudly carry that mission forward as lead organizer of the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference.

Bellingham is at the heart of the Salish Sea, and WWU is proud to be at the heart of this important conference.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elliott Smith is the 2014 Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference Administrator at WWU. Find him on twitter at @soundslikepuget.

Heritage senior sets his sights high

Alan Enick (Center) Clutching the trophy for the district championship title.

By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News

After four years with the Tulalip Heritage Hawks, Alan Enick will be graduating. He is one of four seniors that the Hawks will lose this year, after an extraordinary season that ended in upset at the State Championships in March of this year. Alan plans to attend either Northwest Indian College or Everett Community College this fall, and intends to transfer to the University of Washington Bothell.

Alan’s parents, Leon and Annie Enick, have always encouraged him to do well in school and pursue education. After a presentation from the University of Washington Bothell, Alan set his sights on a degree in either business or sports medicine.

He is an excellent student, with his principle Shelly Lacy commending his high attendance record. She said he is always at school, and is always working hard. Alan enjoys art class, particularly beading. He finds it to be relaxing. As a student athlete, he has taken advantage of weightlifting classes and P.E. to better his game. Alan’s parents are very supportive, encouraging him to make good choices. Like every teen, he faces peer pressure to try drugs or to drink underage, though he is proud to say he has never done either. He attributes his strength in overcoming peer pressure to discussions with his father about the importance of good life choices.

Recently, Alan attended a lecture that Tulalip Councilwoman Deborah Parker gave about the Violence Against Women Act, and expounded on some of the issues facing tribes today. Inspired to act from this lecture, Alan is also considering pursuing a degree in Tribal Law.

Andrew Gobin is a reporter with the See-Yaht-Sub, a publication of the Tulalip Tribes Communications Department.
Email: agobin@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov
Phone: (360) 716.4188

New York State Charges Passamaquoddy Fisheries Official With Elvers Poaching

WCSH6/NBC affiliatePassamaquoddy fisheries official charged with fraud while helping Unkechaug Indian Nation implement an eel management plan. — WCSH6/NBC affiliate
Passamaquoddy fisheries official charged with fraud while helping Unkechaug Indian Nation implement an eel management plan.

Gale Courey Toensing, ICTMN

The Passamaquoddy Tribe’s battle with the State of Maine over Native fishing rights became an interstate issue recently when New York State authorities lodged multiple felony poaching charges against a Passamaquoddy fisheries official who is helping the Unkechaug Indian Nation implement its eel management plan.

But according to Fred Moore III, the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s Fisheries Committee Coordinator who was charged, the fight for Native fishing rights is soon to become a bigger issue than the battles in Maine and New York.

Moore, his two sons and five other Native men, including citizens of the Unkechaug, Shinnecock, Mohawk and Anishinaabe nations, were charged with possession of American eels in excess of the New York State limit; possession of undersized American eels, and not having a state-issued food fish permit. All three charges are considered felonies because the value of the eels in the group’s possession was more than copy,500. They were also given misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to commit a crime and using an eel trap with a mesh size smaller than the minimum limit allowed, according to Lisa King, spokesperson for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), in an e-mail response to an ICTMN request for comment.

King said the eight men “surrendered themselves” to DEC officers on April 8. She did not respond to questions seeking the state’s position on tribal sovereignty and aboriginal fishing rights. The men are scheduled for arraignment on June 25.

The Passamaquoddy Tribe has been locked in battle with the State of Maine for the past two years over the tribe’s treaty and aboriginal right to fish for elvers, tiny baby American eels also known as glass eels. Citing concerns about the dwindling number of American eels available, the state wants to limit the number of permits the tribe issues. The tribe says every member has an inherent right to fish, but its conservation plan limits the total amount of elvers the tribe can harvest. Ironically, until this year the state limited the number of permits it issued but allowed an unlimited harvest of baby eels. This year under threat from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) to shut down the fishery, the state has caught up to the Passamaquoddy’s traditional conservation knowledge and reduced and limited the total allowable catch.

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Moore, who is working at Unkechaug under tribal authority, told ICTMN that the matter of Native fishing rights is soon to become a central issue for eastern coastal nations. The Penobscot Nation is already embroiled in a federal lawsuit against the State of Maine over hunting and fishing rights. The lawsuit is supported by the Interior Department, which has entered the case as both intervener and plaintiff, and the Passamaquoddy Tribe is thinking about intervening, Moore said. In an interview with ICTMN, Passamaquoddy Chief Clayton Cleaves at the tribe’s Sipayik community, said the council will also consider a separate legal action.

“What we’re doing here is providing Unkechaug with technical assistance in implementing their eel management plan,” Moore said. “But we’re also here to assist other tribes in formulating a position for a class action suit against the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. The ASMFC has an American eel management plan that deals purely with member states and only references Native Americans. We don’t want equal status [with states]—want to be exempt from inadequate management mechanisms which cater to the economic interests of competing jurisdictions. We can’t have any part of it because they‘re completely inconsistent with indigenous culture.”

The ASMFC, created in 1942 by Congress, represents 15 Atlantic coastal states with a stated mission of “promoting and protecting Atlantic coastal fishery resources.” Each state has three representatives on the commission: the director of the state’s marine fisheries management agency, a state legislator, and an individual appointed by the state governor to represent “stakeholder interests,” according to the organization’s website. The United South and Eastern Tribes’ 26 member tribes, whose aboriginal and reservation territories are predominantly along the Atlantic coast, are not represented on the commission.

Moore said he wasn’t fishing on the night of March 28 when the men were ticketed for violations, but that the group had fishing permits issued by Unkechaug. The DEC was alerted to the group’s activities in a creek on Long Island’s east end and waited in the weeds for the tribal members to come back and start emptying their nets of elvers, Moore said.

“They were aware that the Unkechaug had issued permits, but they made a policy statement by charging us and basically treated these folks like they’d just robbed a 7-11 at gunpoint,” Moore said. “And to be branded as poachers is laughable—Passamaquoddy has offered the state assistance in apprehending poachers.”

If DEC authorities hadn’t “pounced” on the group, Moor added, they would have seen the men stock most of the elvers above artificial barriers—which is one of the conservation techniques he is implementing for the Unkechaug.

Unkechaug Chief Harry Wallace called the charges “ridiculous…. It was a multi-tribal project, and the whole idea is to restore the fishery all along the northeast coast,” he said. “If we don’t do it the whole fishery will be destroyed if they [the state] continue their practice.”

The creek is in Unkechaug aboriginal territory, where members exercise aboriginal fishing rights, Wallace said.

New York State allows a massive taking of eels six inches and longer, but prohibits the taking of elvers. The tribe has imposed a moratorium on the taking of adult eels, each of which can spawn tens of millions of elvers, Wallace said.

“Our goal is to restore 50 percent of what we take. We put them above a manmade obstruction so their chances of survival are enhanced,” he said. “This is a Native practice.”

To date, the Nation has successfully stocked more than 10,000 glass eels into Mill Pond and East Mill Pond at the headwaters of the Forge River adjacent to the Unkechaug Indian Reservation near Mastic, New York, said Wallace, adding that the DEC violated its own policy by filing felony fishing charges against Nation members and employees operating under the authority of the Unkechaug Nation American Eel Management and Restoration plan without first consulting the Nation.

“After being advised that Unkechaug eel restoration activities were being conducted under license issued by the Nation, ranking officers and representatives of the DEC acknowledged that they were aware of the license but refused to void the charges,” Wallace said. “Instead, DEC officials made racially disparaging remarks concerning the inherent rights and responsibilities of Native Americans, insisting that the Unkechaug eel fishery is a front for the illegal exportation of glass eels to other states.”

The Nation is contemplating legal action against the state, Wallace said.

On April 17, Chief Clayton Cleaves and Chief Joseph Socobasin of the Passamaquoddy communities at Sipayik and Motahkomikuk, respectively, wrote a letter of “support and commitment” to Wallace.

“Please be assured that your efforts to secure the rights and interests of your people while ensuring the sustainability of the American eel within their natural range will benefit all Native people on the east coast, including others who do not understand the cultural and spiritual relationships we have developed over several millennia of existence within our territories,” they wrote.

The chiefs said they are committed to working with Unkechaug “in defense of the marine environment, its resources and fishing rights of indigenous people.”

Empowering Tribes to Address Energy Needs and Development Opportunities

U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, April 30, 2014

U.S. SENATE – Today at a U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing Chairman Jon Tester and Vice Chairman John Barrasso called for increased energy development on tribal lands.

The hearing was held to consider ways to improve the ability of Indian tribes to responsibly develop their natural resources, including the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act Amendments of 2014 (S. 2132). This bill is intended to remove the burdensome and lengthy approval processes that currently cause potential development partners to look elsewhere for energy projects.

In 2005, Congress enacted legislation to allow tribes to develop their energy resources without the Secretary of the Interior’s approval of individual projects, provided the tribe had an approved Tribal Energy Resource Agreement (TERA).

“Sadly, however, the Energy Policy Act has not been successful,” said Kevin Washburn, Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Washburn added that since promulgation of the Department’s TERA regulations in 2008, the Department has not received a single TERA application.

Tester, who is working to revive the recently expired Indian Coal Production tax credit said, “Energy development has the potential to provide stable economic environments for tribes, their members and surrounding communities. There is no entity better qualified to oversee and manage tribal resources than the tribes themselves. We need to simplify and expedite the TERA process, but also further promote the development of alternative energy sources such as solar, biomass and hydroelectric projects.”

Barrasso said, “Energy development on tribal lands is critical for economic growth and job creation in Indian Country. By streamlining the approval process, this bill will give folks in Indian Country the tools they need to spur economic growth and create good paying jobs in their communities.”

James M. “Mike” Olguin, Acting Chairman of the Southern Ute Indian Tribal Council, said, “The tragic consequence of no approved TERAs and a continued reliance upon federal supervision has been the incredible lost opportunities to develop Indian energy resources during the period between 2005 and today.”

Michael O. Finley, Chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, said, “Potential partners and development capital sit on the sidelines because it takes years to get anything approved by the Department of the Interior. Indian Country needs an institutionalized answer to the ongoing challenge of burdensome bureaucratic processes and delay of tribal energy leasing and permitting.”

Bird Group Sues Over Federal ‘Take Permits’ Allowing Eagle Deaths At Wind Farms

A national bird conservation group is going to sue the federal government over a 30-year permit it will issue to wind farms. | credit: Flickr Creative Commons: ahisgett

By Courtney Flatt, Northwest Public Radio

It’s essentially a fight between conservation-minded groups. On one side, renewable energy companies want to build wind farms. On the other side, bird advocates don’t want those giant, blade-spinning wind turbines to harm bald and golden eagles.

Now, a national bird conservation group is going to sue the federal government over a 30-year permit it will issue to wind farms.

The permit will allow wind farms to legally kill a certain number of eagles. The birds are shielded by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

Matthew Stuber, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 1 eagle permit coordinator, said take permits have been an important management tool since 2009.

“A permit allows an activity to happen that needs to happen. And in doing so, it gets the best possible thing for the eagles. We’re actually able to get conservation, and hopefully in the long run, prevent that nest from begin disturbed at all by that activity.” Stuber said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service originally wanted to grant five-year permit. West Butte Wind Farm in Central Oregon was the first facility in the nation to apply for a five-year “take” permit.

But the wind industry complained that five years was not enough time to find financial backers and get the project up and running. It wanted more continuity.

Now, to provide that continuity for wind farms, the service has extended the permit to 30 years. Permits must be reviewed every five years.

The American Bird Conservancy is suing the U.S. Department of Interior over the 30-year rule.

Michael Hutchins, the American Bird Conservancy’s bird-smart wind energy coordinator, the 30-year permit will make the process less transparent.

“Data on things like bird fatalities at a particular institution might be hidden from us, and therefore, it would be very difficult to do a legitimate review of what is exactly going on at any one of those facilities,” Hutchins said.

For its part, the Fish and Wildlife Service says this 30-year permit means regulators will have to anticipate more problems ahead of time.

“Before we issue a permit, since it’s a lot longer time frame, we need to try to foresee more possible situations and have a better, what we call, adaptive management plan as a part of these permits. That way, when we come in for the five-year check-in, we have things on paper of what we’ll do to respond to certain situations,” Stuber said.

Companies mitigate for eagle deaths upfront. One way to do that is to retrofit existing power poles, where historically, a lot of eagles have been electrocuted when their wings touch two power lines at the same time.

Fish and Wildlife officials say they can quantify how many eagles will be saved be retrofitting a certain number of power poles.

Hutchins said the American Bird Conservancy is not against wind energy. He said wind farms need to be sited properly to not disturb or kill eagles, even if they are producing green energy.

“It’s just a really big price to pay. I don’t think that we can see these resources as collateral damage to try to win the fight on climate change,” Hutchins said.

Bird Mortality at Wind Farms