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Critics say proposed rules on fish consumption insufficient

Tribal leaders are skeptical of a proposal by Gov. Jay Inslee to set new water-quality standards.

By Lynda V. Mapes, Seattle Times, July 21, 2014

Some tribal leaders and environmental groups say a water-pollution cleanup plan proposed by Gov. Jay Inslee this month is unacceptable because while it tightens the standards on some chemicals discharged to state waters, it keeps the status quo for others.

Inslee is drafting a two-part initiative to update state water-quality standards, to more accurately reflect how much fish people eat, and to propose legislation to attack water pollution at its source. The fish-consumption standards have the effect of setting levels for pollutants in water: The more fish people are assumed to eat, the lower the amount of pollution allowed.

Inslee decided that lowering some standards wouldn’t create a big-enough benefit to human health to justify the economic risk for businesses, said Kelly Susewind, water-quality program manager for the state Department of Ecology.

“The realistic gains on the ground didn’t warrant that concern and disincentive to invest in our state,” Susewind said.

That’s because the rules regulate state permits for dischargers, such as industrial manufacturers and wastewater-treatment plants — but that isn’t where most of the pollution is coming from.

Setting tougher standards for some pollutants would also result in levels too low to detect or manage with existing technology — but would create a regulatory expectation that could cloud future business investment, Susewind said.

“The concern is that we set in motion a chain of events where it is inevitable they can’t comply. If they are worried they will cease to invest in 30 years, they are not going to invest today; that is the long-term picture that caused the uncertainty.”

In the case of PCBs — polychlorinated biphenyls, industrial chemicals used as coolants, insulating materials, and lubricants in electric equipment — setting a limit below the existing limit of 170 parts per quadrillion wouldn’t improve people’s health, Susewind said. That’s because most PCBs are entering waterways from other sources, including runoff. “It is not the most effective place, to put the pinch on dischargers,” Susewind said.

The problem is that the Clean Water Act, under which the standards are issued, doesn’t reach beyond so-called point sources: pollution in water discharged from pipes by industries and others regulated by Ecology and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“A lot of our challenge is finding ourselves with only one tool,” said Carol Kraege, who leads toxics reduction at Ecology. “Getting toxics out of our water with just the Clean Water Act is not enough.”

To gain new tools to clean up state waters, Inslee has asked Ecology to put together legislation to expand its authority to ban certain chemicals, to keep them from getting in the water in the first place. The legislation, which is still being drafted, is intended to address so-called non-point sources of pollution.

The governor has said he won’t submit a final water-quality rule to the EPA for approval until after the legislature acts.

Christie True, director of King County Natural Resources and Parks, which runs the county’s wastewater-treatment plants, said she was encouraged by the governor’s approach. “We have to be focused on outcomes,” True said.

“The thing I was really happy about was he said we can’t just rely on regulating the same old sources if we want to improve water quality. I know it is going to be very challenging to take these issues to the Legislature, but that is where we need to head to have a better outcome.”

The debate now under way arose from the state’s need to update the water-quality standards that address health effects for humans from eating fish. The state’s rules today assume a level of consumption so low — 6.5 grams a day, really just a bite — that it is widely understood to be inadequately protective, especially for tribes and others who eat a lot of fish from local waters.

The standard also incorporates an incremental increase in cancer risk in that level of consumption.

Inslee has proposed greatly increasing the fish-consumption standard in the new rule, to 175 grams per day, a little less than a standard dinner serving. But he also upped the cancer risk, from 1 in 1 million under current law, to 1 in 100,000 in the new standard. That was to avoid imposing tighter standards for some pollutants.

That isn’t good enough for tribal leaders who say they want tougher protection now — for all pollutants, not just some. “Holding the line isn’t good enough,” said Dianne Barton, water-quality coordinator for the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission.

Counting on the Legislature to grant new authority to Ecology and money to back it up is also a shaky proposition, some said. “That is a big gamble,” said Chris Wilke, executive director of Puget Soundkeeper, a nonprofit environmental group that sued the EPA to force Washington to update its standards. Delay, meanwhile, “is more business as usual,” Wilke said.

Brian Cladoosby, chairman of the Association of Washington Tribes and the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, said tribes are going to take their case directly to the feds both at Region 10 EPA and in the EPA administrator’s office in Washington, D.C., and insist no change be made in the cancer risk.

“In our minds, the bar hasn’t moved that much,” Cladoosby said. “It took 100 years to screw up the Salish Sea; hopefully, it won’t take another 100 years to clean it up. But we have to start somewhere.”

Canoe Journey Message: Protect Our Fragile Environment

Tracy Rector/Longhouse MediaThe Heiltsuk First Nation is hosting 31 canoes from Pacific Northwest indigenous nations. That number was provided by the manager of the Paddle to Bella Bella Facebook page. Canoes arrived July 13; the week of cultural celebration continues through July 19. — Tracy Rector/Longhouse Media
The Heiltsuk First Nation is hosting 31 canoes from Pacific Northwest indigenous nations. That number was provided by the manager of the Paddle to Bella Bella Facebook page. Canoes arrived July 13; the week of cultural celebration continues through July 19.

Richard Walker, Indian Country Today

En route to the territory of the Heiltsuk First Nation, pullers in the 2014 Canoe Journey traveled through territory so beautiful it will be impossible to forget: Rugged, forested coastlines; island-dotted straits and narrow, glacier-carved passages; through Johnstone Strait, home of the largest resident pod of orcas in the world, and along the shores of the Great Bear Rainforest, one of the largest remaining tracts of unspoiled temperate rainforest left in the world.

They also traveled waters that are increasingly polluted and under threat.

Pullers traveled the marine highways of their ancestors, past Victoria, British Columbia, which dumps filtered, untreated sewage into the Salish Sea. They traveled the routes that U.S. energy company Kinder Morgan plans to use to ship 400 tanker loads of heavy crude oil each year.

Canoes traveling from the north passed the inlets leading to Kitimat, where heavy crude from Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway pipeline would be loaded onto tankers bound for Asia, a project that Canada approved on June 17.

Canoes from the Lummi Nation near Bellingham passed Cherry Point, a sacred and environmentally sensitive area where Gateway Pacific proposes a coal train terminal; early site preparation was done without permits and desecrated ancestral burials.

Young activist Ta’kaiya Blaney of the Sliammon First Nation sang of her fears of potential environmental damage to come in her song, “Shallow Waters”:

“Come with me to the emerald sea / Where black gold spills into my ocean dreams.

“Nothing to be found, no life is around / It’s just the sound of mourning in the air.”

Canoes from Northwest indigenous nations arrived in Bella Bella, British Columbia on July 13; the gathering continues until July 19 with cultural celebrations, a rally against Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline, and an indigenous economic summit. The ceremonies are being livestreamed online at Tribal Canoe Journeys 2014 :: Qatuwas Bella Bella.

Mike Williams Sr., chief of the Yupiit Nation and member of the board of First Stewards, noted that the Canoe Journey route calls attention to the fragile environment that’s at stake. First Stewards, an indigenous environmental advocacy group, will host a symposium on “Sustainability, Climate Change & Traditional Places” from July 21–23 in Washington, D.C.

“The Canoe Journey is a really big statement to us to hang onto our culture and our way of life, and to bind people together,” said Williams, who is also a well-known musher. “In the Iditarod, there are pristine places but there are also old mining towns [on the route] where we’re told not to drink the water.”

The parallels between the water issues encountered on the Iditarod and the Canoe Journey are unmistakable, he added.

“In the Canoe Journey, there are pristine waters and there are waters that contains toxic substances,” Williams said. “There’s oil and the continuous leaking of pipelines. It happens.”

Not only does it happen, but it does not go away. Prince William Sound has never totally recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Williams said. Likewise, he added, if the Northern Gateway pipeline, the coal trains and increased shipping come to fruition, an environmental disaster is inevitable.

“It’s going to happen,” Williams said. “There has to be total, thoughtful conversation for everyone—consider all the possible impacts. And there has to be meaningful consultation with the tribes. They have to weigh in on that. We’ve got to make it 100 percent fail-safe or don’t do it.”

The Heiltsuk First Nation’s hosting of the 2014 Canoe Journey included a rally against the Enbridge pipeline. Canoes arrived in Bella Bella, B.C., on July 13; the week of cultural celebration continues through July 19. (Photo: Tracy Rector/Longhouse Media)

State Senator John McCoy, D-Tulalip, is a citizen of the Tulalip Tribes. He is the ranking member of the Senate Energy, Environment & Telecommunications Committee, which focuses on such issues as climate change, water quality, toxic chemical use reduction and cleanup, and management of storm water and wastewater.

“I think the message is, pollution is occurring everywhere,” McCoy said of the takeaway from the Canoe Journey. “It’s a worldwide problem, and it needs to be addressed. If we keep polluting our water, we’re going to be in big trouble. Water is the essence of life.”

Canoes were underway for Bella Bella on July 9 as Governor Jay Inslee announced that he wants to increase the recommended fish-consumption rate in the state from 6.5 grams to 175 grams a day—that’s good news for indigenous peoples, for whom fish is important culturally, spiritually and as a food. But for 175 grams of fish to be considered safe to eat, businesses that pollute will have to conform to tougher pollution control standards.

Inslee’s plan for how toxic substances will be controlled in expected in December. It will require legislation, McCoy said.

Jewell James is coordinator of the Lummi Treaty Protection Task Force and a leader in the effort to prevent a coal train terminal from being built at Cherry Point, a sacred area for the Lummi people and an important spawning ground for herring, an important food for salmon.

James said environmental degradation is just part of a series of historical traumas set upon Indigenous Peoples: First, the diseases that came after contact; then the treaty era and the relocation to reservations; then the cultural and spiritual oppression of the boarding school era, and then the termination era.

“Yet we continue to exist,” James said. And the Canoe Journey, now in its 23rd year, has helped “revitalize and breathe new life into our cultural knowledge” given that journey gatherings are venues for the passing down of stories about how the ancestors lived in and cared for the environment that sustained them.

James hopes people on the Canoe Journey connect with and carry on those stories and values.

“There are messages in those stories,” he said. “And within those stories there are sacred symbols that mean something—that you have to be careful with what you do, and others have to be careful with what they do, to Mother Earth.”

Wash. To Host First Public Meeting On Inslee’s Fish Consumption Rate Proposal

By Bellamy Pailthorp, KPLU

Washington is slowly moving ahead with a long-delayed plan to update its water quality rules. Tuesday’s will be the first public meeting on Gov. Jay Inslee’s proposal to dramatically increase the fish consumption rate, which determines how clean discharged water must be. But some say the proposal doesn’t go far enough.

The governor’s plan would increase the fish consumption rate to about a meal a day, rather than a meal a month. It would increase the current rate of 6.5 grams per day to 127 grams per day. That’s the same rate recently adopted by Oregon, which has the strictest rate in the country.

“Well, yes, but it’s important to remember that that’s just one part of this equation,” said Chris Wilke with Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, one of four groups that sued the federal government last year to force it to make the state comply with the Clean Water Act.

Wilke says the plaintiffs are glad to see a more realistic fish consumption rate. But at the same time, he points out that Inslee’s proposal also lowers the bar on the allowable risk for cancer by a factor of 10, from one in a million to one in 100,000.

“It appears the state has kind of engineered the standards to come out where they want them to be or where might be acceptable to business interests,” Wilke said.

The state Department of Ecology says the Governor felt the compromise is necessary, because businesses have warned tightening the standard too much would prompt them to move jobs elsewhere.

And instead of just cleaning up the aftermath, Inslee is pushing for additional policies to discourage use of the chemicals in the first place, to “shift people away from using these kinds of things that are so problematic for the permit holders,” said Carol Kraege, who leads the state Department of Ecology’s toxics reduction efforts.

But the plaintiffs who brought suit for cleaner water say such policies might not make it through the Legislature. And they say a similar compromise was recently put forward in Idaho and rejected by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Abuse and Neglect: The Toxic Lives of Drug Endangered Children

Lorraine Jessepe, Indian Country Today

An 8-month-old baby drowns in the bathtub while his father gets high smoking marijuana with friends. A baby girl is barricaded inside her playpen, ignored while her parents party with friends. A grade school boy wanders the early morning streets alone in his Halloween costume, not knowing how to get to his school party because his mother is at home, passed out on drugs.

In her 20 years of experience in law enforcement, Lori Moriarty has seen heartrending stories of children like these caught in the cycle of substance abuse—the root cause of child abuse and neglect.

Moriarty spoke to a gathering of about 150 tribal officials, law enforcement officers, educators, attorneys and victims’ advocates on developing a successful collaborative response to drug endangered children at the 2014 Indian Country Conference, July 16-17 at Prairie Band Casino and Resort in Mayetta, Kansas. “I’m going to tell you today,” Moriarty said, “children plus drugs equals risk.”

Today, Moriarty serves as vice-president of the National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children in Westminster, Colorado, an organization working to break the cycle of child abuse and neglect by empowering practitioners to identify and respond to children living in dangerous drug environments.

The NADEC defines drug endangered children as children who are at risk of suffering physical or emotional harm as a result of illegal drug use, possession, manufacturing, cultivation or distribution. They may also be children whose caretaker’s substance misuse interferes with the caretaker’s ability to parent and provide a safe and nurturing environment.

In Indian country, American Indian/Alaskan Native children experience child abuse and neglect at much higher rates than their non-Native peers, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Why are we not looking for the kids?”

Moriarty said one of the biggest challenges of substance abuse and drug endangered children has been competing goals between law enforcement and child welfare advocates. While the goal for child welfare advocates may be family reunification, law enforcement’s primary focus has been arrests and seizures. “Why are we not looking for the kids?”

After a parent is arrested, children are placed in foster care, which can also prove traumatic for the child. “I want us to have a common vision,” Moriarty said. “Where do we come together?”

Moriarty pointed to FBI statistics that indicated an illegal drug arrest is made in the U.S. every 21 seconds. In 2011 alone, 1.5 million drug arrests were made. For Moriarty, the big question is this: How many children were associated with the arrestees?

In 2005, for example, Moriarty said the North Metro Drug Task Force in Adams County, Colorado made 88 arrests. Of those 88 arrests, 137 kids were associated with the arrestees.

According to a 2005 study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 9.2 million children live in homes where parents or other adults in the home engage in substance abuse. Substance abuse in the home is a huge stressor in a child’s life, Moriarty said. “It’s called toxic stress.”

The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University defines toxic stress in kids as frequent, prolonged adversity, such as exposure to violence and substance abuse, without adequate adult support. This can have long-term negative consequences in children’s lives.

Drug endangered children are at risk to develop emotional, behavioral and cognitive issues such as problems with language development, poor memory and the inability to learn from mistakes. They also have a higher risk of becoming substance abusers themselves.

Moriarty said children who suffer child abuse and neglect are 59 percent more likely to be arrested as juveniles, 28 percent more likely to be arrested as adults, and 30 percent more likely to commit violent crimes.

A Collaborative Mindset

Early intervention and developing a collaborative mindset increases the likelihood of breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect. Moriarty told conference attendees that a collaborative mindset involves the exchange of information between law enforcement, child protective services, judicial, emergency and medical providers to make each other stronger. “Let’s not have that next generation wanting to use,” she said. “We have to start sharing information,”

On that note, Daniel Goombi (Kiowa-Apache), Tribal Victim Services advocate for the Prairie Band Potawatomi, said good communication and knowing the cultural dynamics of small, Native communities is crucial. “Everything we do is about relationships,” Goombi said. “You have to know the people you’re working with.”

Although social change may take decades, Moriarty said the goal in Indian country should be 100 percent healthy, happy and safe children. “These kids are resilient. Don’t ever forget that. We can make a difference in their lives.”

EPA To Protect Salmon Fishery By Blocking Massive Alaska Mine

A 2012 file photo of Fisherman's Terminal in Seattle bustling as ships get ready to head to Alaska for the summer fishing season. Hundreds of Northwesterners hold commercial fishing permits for Bristol Bay. | credit: Ashley Ahearn — A 2012 file photo of Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle bustling as ships get ready to head to Alaska for the summer fishing season. Hundreds of Northwesterners hold commercial fishing permits for Bristol Bay. | credit: Ashley Ahearn

by: Associated Press

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it is proposing restrictions that would essentially block development of a planned massive gold-and-copper mine near the headwaters of a world premier salmon fishery in Alaska.

The announcement came as the EPA was being sued by Pebble Limited Partnership, the group behind the proposed Pebble Mine, and the state of Alaska for allegedly exceeding its authority.

The state and Pebble Partnership, which was created to design, permit and run the mine, argue the EPA should not be able to veto the project before a mine plan is finalized and evaluated through the permitting process. Pebble has asked that a judge block the EPA from taking any additional steps, but no ruling has been made.

Read the EPA proposal to block Pebble Mine

EPA regional administrator Dennis McLerran said the science is clear “that mining the Pebble deposit would cause irreversible damage to one of the world’s last intact salmon ecosystems. Bristol Bay’s exceptional fisheries deserve exceptional protection.”

The EPA said as part of its analysis it used plans filed by the mine’s owner, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2011. That information indicated the Pebble deposit is likely to involve excavation of the largest open pit ever built in North America, reaching a depth that rivals that of the Grand Canyon at nearly a mile, the EPA said in its report.

The agency looked at three mine scenarios, one based on the worldwide median size deposit that contains copper-, gold- and molybdenum-bearing minerals, which was the smallest scenario analyzed, and two that it said were based on statements made by Northern Dynasty, of mine sizes of 2 billion tons and 6.5 billion tons.

The restrictions proposed by EPA are in line with the estimated impacts of the smallest scenario, including loss of at least 5 miles of streams with documented salmon or loss of 1,100 or more acres of wetlands, lakes and ponds that connect to salmon-bearing streams or tributaries of those streams.

The EPA said if the proposed restrictions were finalized, mining of the Pebble deposit would still be possible, but only if the environmental impacts were smaller than those laid out.

U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, who has said Pebble is the wrong mine in the wrong place, said he’s seen noting in the EPA document that would prevent Pebble from applying for a permit.

“Instead, it sets the ground rules for responsible development that the Pebble Partnership, or any other business, must abide by in order to mine the Pebble deposit in this critical habitat,” he said.

The EPA called its analysis conservative, focused on the use of certain waters in the region for disposal of materials associated with mining the Pebble deposit. The agency said it did not include impacts associated with build-out and operation of a mine, like roads, pipelines and housing for workers, or potential effects of accidents or mine failures.

Read Why An Alaska Mine Worries Fishermen In The Northwest

The EPA also said the proposal is specific to the Pebble deposit, and does not affect other deposits or claims.

In 2011, the EPA, petitioned by Alaska Native tribes and others to protect Bristol Bay, initiated a review that culminated in the finding earlier this year that large-scaling mining in the Bristol Bay watershed posed significant risks to salmon and Alaska Native cultures that rely on the fish. The agency later invoked a rarely-used process through which it could ultimately restrict or prohibit development of the proposed Pebble Mine to protect the fishery.

The announcement Friday is the next step in that process. EPA plans to take public comment beginning Monday through Sept. 19 and to hold public meetings in Alaska next month. After that, McLerran would have to decide whether to withdraw the proposed action or send it to EPA headquarters for consideration.

Tom Collier, CEO of the Pebble Partnership, said while his group needed to analyze EPA’s proposal, it was outraged that the agency took this next step with litigation pending and EPA’s inspector general reviewing whether EPA followed laws, regulations and policies in developing its watershed assessment.

“We will continue to fight this unprecedented action by the Agency, and are confident we will prevail,” he said in a statement.

Obama Allocates $10 Million for Tribal Climate Change Adaptation

Newtok Planning GroupThe Alaska Native village of Newtok is one example of an indigenous community at the forefront of climate change. Erosion due to rising sea levels has required the relocation of the entire village. — Newtok Planning Group
The Alaska Native village of Newtok is one example of an indigenous community at the forefront of climate change. Erosion due to rising sea levels has required the relocation of the entire village.

Indian Country Today, 7/16/14

President Barack Obama on July 16 released another set of climate-change-resilience guidelines, this batch geared specifically toward tribes, and announced the allocation of $10 million to help tribes cope with climate change.

The allocation was one of a number of measures announced at the final meeting of the White House State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, created by Obama last fall. Karen Diver, chairwoman of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Minnesota, and Reggie Joule, mayor of the Northwest Arctic Borough in Alaska, were the tribal officials designated to serve on the task force.

The money will fund the development of resource management methods, climate-resilience planning, and youth education and empowerment. Climate adaptation grants will also be awarded for the development of climate-adaptation training programs, assessment of vulnerability, monitoring and other aspects of learning about the effects of climate change. Adaptation planning sessions will be offered, and tribal outreach will be funded with the money as well, Interior said. Administration officials said such measures are sorely needed.

“From the Everglades to the Great Lakes to Alaska and everywhere in between, climate change is a leading threat to natural and cultural resources across America, and tribal communities are often the hardest hit by severe weather events such as droughts, floods and wildfires,” said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, chair of the White House Council on Native American Affairs, in a statement. “Building on the President’s commitment to tribal leaders, the partnership announced today will help tribal nations prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change on their land and natural resources.”

Obama has been highlighting the effects of climate change on Native peoples in his efforts to construct a plan for dealing with the inevitable changes.

“Impacts of climate change are increasingly evident for American Indian and Alaska Native communities and, in some cases, threaten the ability of tribal nations to carry on their cultural traditions and beliefs,” said Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn. “We have heard directly from tribes about climate change and how it dramatically affects their communities, many of which face extreme poverty as well as economic development and infrastructure challenges. These impacts test their ability to protect and preserve their land and water for future generations. We are committed to providing the means and measures to help tribes in their efforts to protect and mitigate the effects of climate change on their land and natural resources.”

The Interior Department will also team up with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create a subgroup on climate change under the White House Council on Native American Affairs, the DOI said. This cooperation between Jewell and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy will entail working with tribes to pool data and information on climate change effects that are directly relevant to issues faced by American Indians and Alaska Natives. Traditional and ecological knowledge will be a cornerstone of the initiative.

“Tribes are at the forefront of many climate issues, so we are excited to work in a more cross-cutting way to help address tribal climate needs,” said McCarthy in the statement. “We’ve heard from tribal leaders loud and clear: when the federal family combines its efforts, we get better results—and nowhere are these results needed more than in the fight against climate change.”

Obama’s Climate Initiatives in the Northwest

A 3-D map of the Olympic National Forest.Credit Martin D. Adamiker / Wikimedia — A 3-D map of the Olympic National Forest.
Credit Martin D. Adamiker / Wikimedia

By: Courtney Flatt, Northwest Public Radio

President Obama Wednesday announced several initiatives to help prepare for a warming climate. He said wildfires, heat waves and rising sea levels brought on by climate change threaten public safety.

One of the main problems that the initiatives will address in the Northwest is the risk people face from floods and landslides.

Climate scientists say warmer winter storms will lead to more frequent and prolonged periods of rainfall. And that could trigger more landslides like the Oso disaster that killed 47 people last march in Washington’s north Cascades. But detailed 3-D maps can help predict where disasters like the Oso landslide could happen.

Check out our earlier coverage of landslide risks to homeowners and how changing rainfall could lead to more landslides.

Obama’s climate initiative will give $13 million dollars to the U.S. Geological Survey to help map more areas, which is not much money for this expensive technology. But Tom Carlson, a geographer with the USGS, says every little bit helps.

He says only about one-fourth of Washington has been mapped by this technology.

“It’s very patchy. There are lots of doughnut holes out there, lots of blank spots,” Carlson says.

About one-third of Oregon and very few parts of Idaho have been mapped.

Also in the president’s initiative:

Tribes will get $10 million to help mitigate and plan for climate change. Tribes will be awarded grants to start planning how to adapt and monitor changes and vulnerabilities. They’ll also get money to help gather and share more data about the effects of climate change.

Read about some of the challenges tribes face dealing with climate change:

A future without fish and fights to regain precious land
How climate change could hit Northwest tribes hard
How Northwest tribes are leading the way in climate adaptation

Obama’s initiative will also help communities build more green stormwater infrastructure, like rain gardens and urban forests, something Northwesterners know about.

EarthFix backgrounders on green infrastructure in the Northwest:

Neighbors fight pollution with by building rain gardens
The nation’s first community rooftop garden
Research at the Washington Stormwater Center
Industrial rain gardens
Harvesting urban fruit;
An edible public forest

The initiative will also provide funding for coastal communities to deal with rising sea levels. One way to do that, Obama says, is to build stronger sea walls. Seattle officials say parts of the city will be underwater by 2050.

Along with the president’s initiatives, the Centers for Disease Control released a guide for local health departments that outlines the threats climate change poses to human health.

For more on how climate change will affect people’s health, check out EarthFix’s Symptoms of Climate Change series. We explored urban heat islands, increases in wildfire smoke, toxic algal blooms, and farmworkers in a warming climate.

Groups Seek Ban Of Older Oil Train Tankers

By: Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — Two environmental groups are asking the U.S. Department of Transportation to immediately ban shipments of volatile crude oil in older railroad tank cars, citing recent explosive oil train wrecks and the department’s own findings that those accidents pose an “imminent hazard.”

The petition filed Tuesday by the Sierra Club and ForestEthics seeks an emergency order within 30 days to prohibit crude from the Northern Plains’ Bakken region and elsewhere from being carried in the older tank cars, known as DOT-111s.

Accident investigators have reported the cars rupture or puncture even in wrecks at slow speeds.

The Obama administration has said it will propose a new rule this month governing tank cars, which could include retrofits of older models cars and tougher standards for new ones.

But that “will take too long to address the imminent hazard posed by use of dangerous DOT-111 tank cars to ship crude oil,” according to the petition, which the law firm Earthjustice filed on behalf of the two groups.

It could take a year before a rule is finalized. In the meantime, the shipments are putting small towns and major cities along the rail lines at risk, the petition said.

Transportation Department spokesman Ryan Daniels said the agency cannot comment on whether an outright ban is under consideration, because a formal rule-making process for the older tank cars already is underway.

Since 2008, derailments of oil trains in the U.S. and Canada have seen the 70,000-gallon tank cars break open and ignite on multiple occasions, resulting in huge fireballs. A train carrying North Dakota crude in DOT-111s crashed into a Quebec town last summer, killing 47 people.

“We need to get them off the tracks as soon as possible. I’d like to see a moratorium,” said Ben Stuckart, city council president in Spokane, Washington, where as many as 17 mile-long oil trains pass through the county in a typical week.

In New York, Albany County Executive Dan McCoy said he wants to see those older tank cars replaced with safer models. “They really should ban them across the board, and go with the newer models,” he said.

Problems with the older tank cars have been cited by safety advocates since the mid-1990s. In April, outgoing National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman urged quicker action on pending tank car rules. She warned that a “higher body count” could result from further delay.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in May advised companies to avoid using the older cars to carry the volatile oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada. But the step was voluntary, and the older tank cars continue to be used.

Shippers in North America use about 65,000 so-called “legacy” tank cars to carry flammable liquids, including more than 25,000 for crude, according to industry representatives.

The vast majority of those cars deliver their shipments safely, said Tom Simpson, president of the Railway Supply Institute, which represents the companies that make, own and use the tank cars.

“They are not rolling time bombs. They are not Pintos on rails,” said Simpson said, referring to the older model Ford cars known to catch fire in accidents.

Since 2011, more than 10,000 tank cars with more protective shells and other improved safety features have been put into service under a voluntary industry standard. Simpson said further upgrades could be made over the next decade, and older cars found to be unfit for service eventually will be retired by their owners.

Regulators in Canada have moved more aggressively on the issue than their U.S. counterparts. In April, Transport Canada ordered railroads to phase out older cars within three years.

Ballot Power: The Revolution in How Alaska Natives Vote

Courtesy James Tucker, of law firm Wilson Elser, in Las VegasThe extreme isolation of many Alaska Native villages makes early voting, and the options it offers, a critical part of helping residents get to the polls. — Courtesy James Tucker, of law firm Wilson Elser, in Las Vegas
The extreme isolation of many Alaska Native villages makes early voting, and the options it offers, a critical part of helping residents get to the polls.

Stephanie Woodard, 7/15/14, Indian Country Today

A perfectly timed combination of negotiation and grassroots organizing has allowed numerous Native villages across Alaska to become absentee in-person voting locations for federal elections for the first time. That’s a sea change from just a few weeks ago, when voters in only about 30 Native villages had a way to cast a ballot ahead of Election Day, said Nicole Borromeo, general counsel of the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN). Meanwhile, Alaska’s urban voters had 15 days to do so. The locations will be in place for the August primary.

This transformation in voting access follows years of fruitless requests to the state for the election services by three groups: AFN, an organization of regional and village corporations, tribes and other entities; ANCSA Regional Association, a group of Native-corporation CEOs; and Get Out The Native Vote. “In late June, AFN and ANCSA sat down with the state and said, ‘we will sign up the locations,’” recalled Borromeo, who is Athabascan from McGrath Native Village. The state agreed, and the Native team began seeking groups and individuals to handle the election activities.

“Eleven days later, we had added 128 locations,” said Borromeo. “We have been entirely focused on this.” The goal is to bring equal voting rights to all of Alaska’s 200-plus indigenous villages, she said.

This has been a Native-led project, according to Borromeo: “We identified the problem, we identified the solution, and we made it happen. Now, the state has to play its part and do election training. We’ll be monitoring to be sure it happens. We intend to be a long-term partner in this effort.”

The project’s success shows that voting rights can be provided quickly and efficiently when there’s a will to do it, said Natalie Landreth, member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma and a Native American Rights Fund plaintiffs’ attorney litigating the Alaska Native voting-rights case Toyukuk v. Treadwell.

Media coverage of the just-concluded trial helped the Native team convince the state to let it set up the new voting centers, said Borromeo: “It was the perfect political storm.”

Nicole Borromeo, general counsel of the Alaska Federation of Natives (Courtesy AFN)

“Our people have a hunger to vote,” she added. “They go to huge lengths to do so, and overcome barriers no one else in the country faces.” Just to get to the polls, Alaska Native voters cope with fierce winter weather, vast distances and, in one village photographed by James Tucker, another Toyukuk v. Treadwell plaintiffs’ attorney, a raging river that separates two precincts sharing one ballot box. Pollworkers in a small launch brave ice-filled water to transport the box across the water, Tucker said.

The pressure of survival in a demanding environment is another hurdle. “During the election season, many rural voters are busy with subsistence activities and may not be near their polling place on Election Day,” said Jason Metrokin, ANCSA chair. The new centers expand their options and give them the same access as urban Alaskans, Metrokin said.

Once Alaska Native voters get to the polls, the traditional-language speakers need translation of election materials. However, testimony in Toyukuk v. Treadwell exposed yet another obstacle: longstanding systemic problems in the state’s delivery of federally mandated language assistance. (The judge’s decision is expected shortly.)

Lieutenant Governor Mark Treadwell, the lawsuit’s lead defendant, recently announced that the new locations will make 2014 election ballots “the most widely available in state history.”

That has the potential to transform politics in a state where indigenous people make up a fifth of the population. Said AFN president, Julie Kitka, “Having access to early voting is only the first step. Now our people need to learn about this right and understand what they’re being asked to vote on. There is much more work to be done by the state’s Division of Elections.”

What’s Killing Clams? Solve This Low Tide Mystery

By Joshua McNichols, KUOW

One of the lowest tides of the year this weekend revealed a “crime scene” at the beach at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle.

The victims: thousands of clams that died in the prime of their lives. Each bivalve victim has a tiny hole drilled near its hinge.

Also strewn on the beach were gray rubbery things that looked like toilet plunger heads. The Beach Naturalists from the Seattle Aquarium say concerned citizens have collected them in buckets, upset that someone would have dumped so much litter on the beaches.

But it turns out that the holes and the toilet plunger heads are all the products of a little-known predator: the moon snail.

The culprit: Not a toilet plunger head, but the predatory moon snail. Credit KUOW Photo/Joshua McNichols

A Gruesome Murder

When it comes to the moon snail, Seattle Aquarium Beach Naturalist Will Downs is unwavering when he describes how the moon snail treats its victims: The snail “doesn’t see his prey. He feels them. He tastes them. And if you’re a clam, he sneaks up on you and engulfs you.”

Low tide at Seattle’sGolden Gardens Park.
Credit: Joshua McNichols/KUOW

It gets worse. If the snail can’t smother the clam then and there, it drills through the clam shell with its bony, barbed tongue. That specialized tongue slowly files away at the clam, “day after day sometimes, until it can reach the interior, where the clam thought it was safe. Then it extrudes in there acids, enzymes, anything that’ll digest the clam.”

Downs grins as he delivers his punch line: “…and then it slurps up its own clam chowder.”

And those rubbery things that look like toilet plunger heads? Downs says they’re moon snail egg collars. The snail squeezes out the leathery substance by fusing together eggs, sand and its own mucus. As the egg collar emerges, it wraps around the moon snail’s shell, taking on the shell’s shape.

Case Closed

Before we condemn the moon snail, Seattle Aquarium naturalist Darcie Larson said the moon snail may be vicious predators of clams, but they’re an important part of the beach ecosystem of Puget Sound.

“If we had no predators, we might have too many shellfish. And then the shellfish population would get out of balance,” she said. “And they would eat up all the food, all the plankton in the ecosystem. We refer to predators like that as keystone species, and they hold the whole system together.”

So are moon snails threatened? Larson said anecdotally, the moon snails are doing well. Which is good, as other predators, such as sunflower sea stars, are currently suffering from a mysterious wasting disease.

This was first reported for KUOW.