WASHINGTON – Restore America’s Estuaries has released the findings of a groundbreaking study that confirms the climate mitigation benefits of restoring tidal wetland habitat in the Snohomish Estuary, located within the nation’s second largest estuary: Puget Sound. The study, the first of its kind, finds major climate mitigation benefits from wetland restoration and provides a much needed approach for assessing carbon fluxes for historic drained and future restored wetlands which can now be transferred and applied to other geographies.
The Study, “Coastal Blue Carbon Opportunity Assessment for Snohomish Estuary: The Climate Benefits of Estuary Restoration” finds that currently planned and in-construction restoration projects in the Snohomish estuary will result in at least 2.55 million tons of CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere over the next 100-years. This is equivalent to the 1-year emissions for 500,000 average passenger cars. If plans expanded to fully restore the Snohomish estuary, the sequestration potential jumps to 8.8 million tons of CO2 or, in other terms, equal to the 1-year emissions of about 1.7 million passenger cars.
“The study is the first to provide a science-based assessment of climate benefits from restoration at scale. The findings are clear: restoring coastal wetlands must be recognized for their ability to mitigate climate change,” said Jeff Benoit, President and CEO of Restore America’s Estuaries. “The report adds to our list of science-based reasons why restoration is so critical.”
“Healthy estuaries mean healthy economies,” Representative Rick Larsen, WA-02, said. “I have long advocated to restore our estuaries because of the critical role they play in supporting recovery of fisheries. This new study shows that estuary restoration can play a big role in countering climate change too.”
“It is very fitting that we are implementing some of the world’s leading Blue Carbon research here in Puget Sound,” said Steve Dubiel, Executive Director of EarthCorps. “We have always known that wetlands are a kind of breadbasket, thanks to the salmon and shellfish they support. Now we are learning that they are also a carbon sponge.”
In addition to the climate benefits outlined by the study, healthy and restored estuaries act as spawning grounds and nurseries for commercially and recreationally important fish and shellfish species, provide storm buffers for coastal communities, filter pollutants, and provide habitat for numerous species of fish and wildlife, as well as recreational opportunities for hundreds of millions of Americans annually.
“This study illustrates the contribution of tidal wetland restoration to reduce global warming,” said Dr. Steve Crooks, Climate Change Program Manager for Environmental Science Associates and lead author on the study. “From this analysis we find wetlands restoration in Puget Sound likely to be highly resilient to sea level rise while at the same time continuing to sequester carbon within organic soils. Similar opportunities will exist in other coastal regions of the U.S.”
“This report is a call to action. We need to invest more substantially in coastal restoration nationwide and in science to increase our understanding of the climate benefits which accrue from coastal restoration and protection efforts,” said Emmett-Mattox, Senior Director for Restore America’s Estuaries and co-author on the study. “Sea-level rise will only make restoration more difficult and costly in the future. The time for progress is now.”
This report was a collaborative effort of Restore America’s Estuaries, Environmental Science Associates (ESA), EarthCorps, and Western Washington University. Lead funding was provided by NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation and additional support was provided by The Boeing Company and the Wildlife Forever Fund.
“Coastal Blue Carbon Opportunity Assessment for Snohomish Estuary: The Climate Benefits of Estuary Restoration” full report is available here, and the Executive Summary is available here.
DAVENPORT, Calif. — By now, water would typically be ripping down Scott Creek, and months ago it should have burst through a berm of sand to provide fish passage between freshwater and the ocean.
Instead, young coho salmon from this redwood and oak-shaded watershed near Santa Cruz last week were swirling around idly in a lagoon. There has been so little rain that sand has blocked the endangered fish from leaving for the ocean or swimming upstream to spawn.
Scott Creek is one of dozens of streams across California where parched conditions have put fish in immediate danger. With the drought, stream flows have been so low that even months into winter, sandbars have remained closed and waters so shallow that many salmon have had their migratory journeys obstructed.
On the banks of Big Creek, a tributary of Scott Creek a few miles from the coast near Santa Cruz, some 41,000 coho salmon just over a year old are being raised for release this spring at a conservation hatchery operated by the nonprofit Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times / February 5, 2014)
To prevent further stress to salmon and steelhead, state wildlife officials have closed dozens of rivers and streams to fishing, including all coastal streams west of California 1. A storm that soaked parts of Northern California over the weekend should offer a short respite, but experts say streams like Scott Creek will need several inches of rain a week to stay open and connected to the ocean.
Nowhere is the situation more pressing than on California’s North and Central Coast, where a population of only a few thousand coho salmon were already teetering on the edge of extinction.
“This is the first animal that will feel the impacts of the drought,” said Jonathan Ambrose, a National Marine Fisheries Service biologist who stood at the sand-blocked mouth of Scott Creek to offer his assessment Wednesday. “It’s going to take a lot of rain to bust this thing open. And if they can’t get in by the end of February or March, they’re gone.”
Historically, hundreds of thousands of Central California Coast coho salmon started and ended their lives in creeks that flow from coastal mountains and redwood forests to the coast from Humboldt County to Santa Cruz.
Of those that remain, most at risk are coho salmon from about a dozen streams on the southern end of the species’ range in North America. If not for a small hatchery near the town of Davenport keeping the population going and genetically viable, coho salmon would probably already be long gone south of the Golden Gate.
The Central Coast population of coho has plummeted from about 56,000 in the 1960s to fewer than 500 returning adults in 2009. Over the last several years it has hovered around a few thousand, according to estimates from the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The population was listed as federally threatened in 1996 and reclassified as endangered in 2005. A 2012 federal plan estimated its recovery could take 50 to 100 years and cost about $1.5 billion.
“Coho are the fish that are really in trouble in the state right now,” said Stafford Lehr, chief of fisheries for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“Right now, they’re cut off in many of the streams. They’re stuck in pools,” Lehr said. “As we move deeper into this drought, every life stage is going to suffer increased mortality.”
It’s not only Central Coast salmon that are in peril.
To the North, on Siskiyou County’s Scott River, more than 2,600 coho salmon returned this winter to spawn — the highest number since 2007 — but they encountered so little water they weren’t able to reach nine-tenths of tributaries to spawn, said Preston Harris, executive director of the Scott River Water Trust.
In the Sacramento River, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to release more than 190,000 hatchery-reared chinook salmon Monday to take advantage of recent rainfall. Commercial fishing groups, however, are urging wildlife officials to consider trucking chinook downstream.
“We’re in such extremely low-flow conditions that they might as well dig a ditch and bury these fish rather than trying to put them in a river,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations.
On the banks of Big Creek, a tributary of Scott Creek a few miles from the coast near Santa Cruz, some 41,000 coho salmon just over a year old are being raised to be released this spring at a conservation hatchery operated by the nonprofit Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project.
For now, hatchery managers can only wait and hope for rains heavy and consistent enough to swell the creek’s waters and give the fish a route to the sea. Barring that, wildlife officials overseeing the hatchery are considering drastic measures, such as bulldozing a channel through the berm of sand or releasing the young fish directly into the ocean.
Salmon have existed more than a million years and have evolved with California’s climate. Scientists say they have survived dry spells much worse than this one.
What has changed in recent generations is the pressure California’s growing population has exerted on the water supply and their habitat. Farms, vineyards and cities now divert stream flows while roads, logging and urban development have degraded water quality.
Coho salmon also have a rigid life cycle that makes them more vulnerable during droughts. After three years, they must return from the ocean to the stream where they were born to spawn and die.
That urge was all too apparent when scientists observed this winter’s returning Central California Coast coho salmon. Hundreds of the roughly 1,000 adults that arrived were schooling in estuaries, waiting for rain to provide them passage upstream.
“Many of these fish may simply die in the estuary without reproducing if they can’t access spawning grounds,” said Charlotte Ambrose, salmon and steelhead recovery coordinator at the National Marine Fisheries Service. “While some rain has come, for coho this year it may be too little too late.”
SEATTLE — Commercial and tribal fishermen in Washington state could be getting federal help after the closure of the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery last year cost them millions of dollars.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker issued a disaster declaration for the fishery Tuesday. That allows Congress to send money to the affected communities.
The Fraser River flows from the Canadian Rockies into the Strait of Georgia at Vancouver, British Columbia. Low returns of sockeye to the river prompted the closure.
Several Washington tribes, including the Lummis, Nooksacks and Tulalips, fish for sockeye. They and the state’s nontribal, commercial fishermen typically bring in a collective $4.1 million per year from sockeye. The Commerce Department says last year, the total was just $115,000.
Pritzker said that if Congress appropriates money, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will work closely with Congress, the tribes and the state to distribute it.
Terry Williams introduces USDA Deputy Under Secretary of Agriculture Butch Blazer at the Jan. 23rd presentation of the SnoCo SLS. Photo: Andrew Gobin
By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News
Over the last three years the Snohomish County Sustainable Land Strategy (SLS) has gained national attention for innovative planning to preserve and protect both agricultural interests and the county watershed. What started as a small project now will drive national agriculture policy. Collaborators of the SLS met with United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources & Environment, Arthur “Butch” Blazer, on January 23rd to discuss the progress of the SLS so far and their future plans. Historically, Snohomish County and area tribes have a reputation for innovative strategic planning, yet this is the first strategy that is beneficial to everyone’s interests.
The SLS is a collaborative project between the Tulalip Tribes, the Stillaguamish Tribe, and Snohomish County that “balances the need to restore vital salmon habitat while also protecting the viability of local agriculture,” according to Snohomish County’s brochure on the SLS. Salmon and farming are noted as having key roles in the history and economy of the county and can both be protected through the SLS.
Qualco Energy is one example of a collaborative effort to protect salmon habitat without burdening or infringing on agriculture. The energy company, located a few miles southwest of Monroe, is a non-profit partnership comprised of the Tulalip Tribes, Northwest Chinook Recovery, and the Sno/Sky Agricultural Alliance. In February of 2008, after 10 years of planning and research, Qualco installed an anaerobic digester that converts cow manure into energy and natural gas. Cow manure has devastating impacts on salmon habitat and typically has to be hauled away or diverted to a lagoon. Now, the manure can go right to a digester, keeping it out of the watershed without incurring time and monetary costs to farmers.
“Local communities are also happy with the reduced agricultural smells, now that the waste goes to the digester and isn’t sitting in open lagoons,” added Qualco Vice President Daryl Williams, a Tulalip tribal member who also works for the Tulalip Tribes Natural Resources department.
The Qualco example also demonstrates the support the SLS has from the state legislature. The land on which the project is located is an old dairy farm donated to the project by the state. State permitting laws were changed for the project in order to allow the project to expand to food waste, now allowing the Qualco digester to run 30% food waste without need a solid waste permit.
Co-Facilitator of the SLS, Dan Evans, said, “When you bring together the tribes and agriculture, you have tremendous bandwidth. With that, you have the key to push things through legislation,” referring to the political influence of the SLS.
That political momentum has caught the attention of the USDA, which only adds to it.
“The primary purpose I am here is to listen. This presentation is material I can take back with me [to Washington DC] and help you continue doing what you’re doing on a national policy level,” said USDA Deputy Under Secretary Butch Blazer.
The SLS has the potential to expand to other counties; Skagit and King are currently expressing an interesting in developing their own SLS.
In addition to peripheral county influence, the SLS is a gateway for future innovation in the fields of sustainable land use and clean, renewable energy.
Is it safe to eat fish from the Pacific Ocean in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster? The consensus since the 2011 power plant failure has been a yes, but Seattle’s Loki Fish Co. found customers remained concerned.
The fishing company, a local institution, went on to do its own testing for radiation levels in its fish, and shared the laboratory reports online. (The short version: The fish were fine.)
“We were getting so much blowback from customers that have just been reading incredibly paranoid stuff on the Internet,” said Pete Knutson, co-founder of the family-owned business. Beyond some of the “off the charts” fears, though, he understands why people would be concerned, and he’s always interested in knowing how pure his own products are. The decision: “Let’s just do the testing and let the chips fall where they may.”
It helped his decision that he could find no specifics from public agencies like the FDA, which simply says on its website that “to date, FDA has no evidence that radionuclides from the Fukushima incident are present in the U.S. food supply at levels that would pose a public health concern.”
After the $1,200 endeavor, Loki’s web page reported that “All seven stocks of salmon were tested for the radionuclides associated with the nuclear plant failures in Japan: Cesium 134, Cesium 137, and Iodine 131. Of the seven samples, five did not register detectable levels of radionuclides. Two of the samples registered at trace levels – Alaskan Keta at 1.4Bq/kg for Cesium 137, and Alaskan Pink at 1.2Bq/kg for Cesium 134. There were no detectable levels of iodine-131 in any samples.
“To put those numbers in perspective, the critical limit set by the FDA for either Cesium-134 or Cesium-137 is 370 Bq/kg, far above the amount found in Loki’s Alaskan Keta and Pink salmon.”
Is that enough to ease the minds of diners? One customer on the Loki Facebook page wrote “A. it’s only January. B. keep testing.” Another warned that “it would be unrealistic to tell people afraid of the radiation on the basis of one test that the fish is safe forever.”
Knutson said that “I tell people, this isn’t conclusive, it’s only 7 samples, but it’s a random sampling,” not one that could have been gamed in any way. At the least, “it makes me feel better.”
Bellingham-based Vital Choice Wild Seafood & Organics, which sells fish online, has had fish tested several times with similar results. Knutson wasn’t aware of anyone else doing so, but thinks such moves might be more common in the future. His son, Dylan, faced regular queries about the radiation issue at Loki’s farmers market tables, though those customers are “a pretty motivated group that’s interested in chain of custody,” and perhaps more likely to raise the issue.
People are “not fully confident the government’s telling the truth,” or that corporations are telling the truth, he said. Sharing such direct data from producer to customer, he said, might just be “where the future of food is.”
Updated Jan. 20 to reflect additional Vital Choice tests.
JUNEAU — U.S. Sen. Mark Begich has come out against the proposed Pebble Mine, calling the massive gold-and-copper project “the wrong mine in the wrong place for Alaska.”
In a statement released by his office Monday, Begich said he has long supported Alaska’s mining industry and believes continued efforts must be made to support resource-development industries that help keep Alaska’s economy strong. But he said “years of scientific study (have) proven the proposed Pebble Mine cannot be developed safely in the Bristol Bay watershed.”
“Thousands of Alaskans have weighed in on this issue, and I have listened to their concerns,” he said. “Pebble is not worth the risk.”
In 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency initiated a review of large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay region in response to concerns about the impact of the proposed Pebble Mine on fisheries. The agency released its final report last week, concluding that large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay watershed posed significant risks to salmon and Alaska Native cultures that rely on it. The region is home to a world-premier sockeye salmon fishery.
The Bristol Bay basin is made up of six major watersheds: the Togiak, Nushagak, Kvichak, Naknek, Egegik, and Ugashik. Image source: Wild Salmon Center.org
The report did not recommend any policy or regulatory decisions. But EPA regional administrator Dennis McLerran said it would serve as the scientific foundation for the agency’s response to the tribes and others who petitioned EPA to use its authority under the Clean Water Act to protect Bristol Bay. Mine opponents have been pressing the agency to take steps to block or limit the project.
Begich, a Democrat, is the only member of the state’s congressional delegation to outright oppose the project, and his position, first reported by the Anchorage Daily News, won praise from Pebble critics on Monday.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Don Young, both Republicans, last week expressed concerns that the EPA report could be used to pre-emptively veto the project, saying that would set a bad precedent.
“If the EPA has concerns about the impact of a project there is an appropriate time to raise them – after a permit application has been made, not before,” Murkowski said in a release.
Under section 404c of the Clean Water Act, the EPA has the authority to restrict, prohibit, deny or withdraw use of an area as a disposal site for dredged or fill material if the discharge would have “unacceptable adverse” effects on things like municipal water supplies or fisheries, according to an EPA fact sheet. The agency says it has issued just over a dozen final veto actions since 1972.
Mike Heatwole, a spokesman for the Pebble Limited Partnership, the group behind the project, said Pebble is disappointed that Begich had “come out against thousands of new jobs, hundreds of millions in state revenue, and potentially billions in economic activity for Alaska.”
Heatwole said in a statement that it is “no secret that there is a substantial difference of opinion regarding the science of EPA’s recent Bristol Bay Assessment. Not many Alaskans think EPA is impartial.”
He said there is a process that exists for evaluating a project, and there is no environmental harm in allowing Pebble to follow that permitting process.
Begich told The Associated Press that one of the complaints he hears from the mining industry is that it needs to know what federal agencies want before getting too far along in the permitting process. He said if Pebble intends to apply for a permit, the watershed assessment provides a framework for what to respond to before the permit process starts.
The federal government today released its final plan to protect endangered salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin. | credit: Aaron Kunz | rollover image for more
The federal government is standing by its previous plans for managing the Columbia River to prevent the extinction of its salmon and steelhead. That means little would change for dam operations on the West’s biggest river — but only if it wins court approval.
Officials Friday released the finalized plan, known as the biological opinion or BiOp. It guides dam operations to assure they do not lead to the extinction of 13 species of salmon and steelhead that are protected under the Endangered Species Act. The plan has been the subject of more than 20 years of legal conflict between people who want to protect salmon and people who want the dams to produce hydroelectricity and maintain shipping traditions.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the lead agency in developing the biological opinion. It says the current plan is on track to meet Endangered Species Act goals for the federally protected fish. NOAA officials say the plan may better protect some fish than previously thought.
“The actions outlined in the biological opinion, and the operation of the hydro system, is designed to move us in the direction towards recovery and avoid jeopardy, and this program does that,” said NOAA’s Barry Thom. “It actually does improve the status of the populations over time. But it is not designed to achieve ultimate recovery of the population.”
Officials say the 610-page plan will protect and improve habitat, with specific attention paid to tributaries and estuaries of the Columbia and Snake rivers.
“A major focus of the tributary habitat program is to help us buffer against potential effects of climate change in the system, so that the habitat projects … are designed to maintain and protect the cool water inputs into the system,” Thom said during a conference call with reporters.
NOAA released a draft version of this plan in September.
In 2011, U.S. District Judge James A. Redden rejected the plan and asked the Obama administration to consider more ways to recover the endangered fish.
Redden’s suggestions included spilling more water over the dams to help juvenile salmon safely make it downriver to the ocean, changing reservoirs to help fish passage, and removing the Snake River dams altogether.
The case has been transferred to Judge Michael H. Simon. He has yet to set a court date for the plan’s sponsors and opponents to argue it. He’ll then decide if the plan is adequate to protect Columbia River salmon and steelhead.
Now that the previous version of the plan is partway completed, supporters say a trend toward larger salmon runs shows the plan is working. Terry Flores is with Northwest RiverPartners, which represents commerce and industry groups that defend the presence of hydroelectric dams on the Columbia-Snake system.
“This plan is amazing. It’s the most comprehensive plan we can find anywhere in this country by far,” Flores said.
Environmental groups say they are disappointed with this finalized plan. Gilly Lyons, with advocacy group Save Our Wild Salmon, said the group is frustrated.
“The federal agencies in charge here have re-isuued a slightly tweaked, but largely status quo federal salmon plan that repeats a lot of the same mistakes over the past decade or so that kept them in court and bound them in litigation over these dams and the salmon that they impact,” Lyons said.
Lyons said it is too soon to tell if environmental groups will file another lawsuit.
“With all the stuff that we see in the plan, or that’s not there, as the case may be, it sure looks like the federal government would like to go back to court,” Lyons said.
NOAA officials said there will be a few years before they have to start writing a new 10-year plan beyond 2018.
“One main priority is to carry out this existing biological opinion,” Thom said. “There will be a period of time between [the 2018 discussions] and the next couple of years where I would like to focus our efforts on talking about long-term recovery. … As opposed to focusing either on A) the litigation or B) the details of a new biological opinion beyond 2018.”
SEATTLE — Today the U.S. Department of Interior recognized the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership (PNAMP) for its conservation achievements focused on federally listed salmon species. The partnership was selected for a “Partnership in Conservation” award because it improves the scientific foundation for natural and cultural resource management and advances government-to-government relationships with Indian nations.
“The Department of the Interior is proud to recognize the accomplishments of those who are innovating and collaborating in ways that address today’s complex conservation and stewardship challenges,” Secretary Jewell said at an awards ceremony at the Interior headquarters in Washington today. “These partnerships represent the gold standard for how Interior is doing business across the nation to power our future, strengthen tribal nations, conserve and enhance America’s great outdoors and engage the next generation.”
For the past eight years, the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership has promoted the recovery of Endangered Species Act listed salmon populations that represent a significant cultural resource for four Treaty Indian tribes and numerous non-Treaty tribes, as well as state commercial and sport fisheries. The partnership helps ensure program accountability and avoid duplication of efforts, which can pose problems for resource management. The partnership also plays an important role in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of water and biological monitoring and in management and exchange of data.
The “Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership demonstrates that the whole truly can be more than the sum of its parts,” said Max Ethridge, U.S. Geological Survey’s Regional Director for the Northwest, “with partners working together in a time of scarce resources, the winner is conservation.”
The Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership is a voluntary partnership of state, tribal and federal entities, supported by a small team of four USGS employees. Working to coordinate efforts of partners and other entities, the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership strives to improve efficiency and effectiveness of aquatic monitoring programs in the Pacific Northwest. Ultimately, these efforts contribute to the restoration of salmon populations and protection of aquatic habitats throughout the region.
“Salmon recovery is a shared goal,” said Jennifer Bayer, USGS Biologist who oversees the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership’s staff, “by focusing on common needs and sustaining collaboration among many entities, the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership enhances partners’ contributions to salmon conservation, ultimately working towards more effective monitoring and data collection efforts.”
The Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership has created free, web accessible tools that help users discover and share data, document methods, and design and manage monitoring programs. The team also organizes workshops, standing workgroups and technical forums to share best practices for documentation, data sharing and data management related to salmon conservation.
The Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership has a unique geographic, technical and policy scope. The Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership supports partners across Washington, Oregon, Idaho and northern California; engages technical experts in water quality, water supply, energy resources, endangered species recovery, invasive species, ecological modeling and data management; and reports annually to federal, state and tribal executive leadership.
The Partners in Conservation Awards recognize outstanding examples of conservation legacies achieved when the Department of the Interior engages groups and individuals representing a wide range of backgrounds, ages and interests to work collaboratively to renew lands and resources. At the annual awards ceremony, the Department of the Interior celebrated conservation achievements that highlight cooperation among diverse federal, state, local and tribal governments; public and private entities; non-profit organizations; and individuals.
FILE- In this July 13, 2007 file photo, a worker with the Pebble Mine project test drills in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska near the village of Iliamma, Alaska. An EPA report indicates a large-scale copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region could have devastating effects on the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery and adversely affect Alaska Natives, whose culture is built around salmon. Photo: AL Grillo, AP
By BECKY BOHRER, Associated Press
anuary 15, 2014
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A government report indicates a large-scale copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region could have devastating effects on the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery and adversely affect Alaska Natives, whose culture is built around salmon.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday released its final assessment of the impact of mining in the Bristol Bay region. Its findings are similar to those of an earlier draft report, concluding that, depending on the size of the mine, up to 94 miles of streams would be destroyed in the mere build-out of the project, including losses of between 5 and 22 miles of streams known to provide salmon spawning and rearing habitat. Up to 5,350 acres of wetlands, ponds and lakes also would be lost due to the mine footprint.
The report concludes that “large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay watershed poses significant near- and long-term risk to salmon, wildlife and Native Alaska cultures,” EPA regional administrator Dennis McLerran said in a conference call with reporters.
The battle over the proposed Pebble Mine has been waged for years and extended beyond Alaska’s borders, with environmental activists like actor Robert Redford opposing development. Multinational jewelers have said they won’t use minerals mined from the Alaska prospect, and pension fund managers from California and New York City last year asked London-based Rio Tinto, a shareholder of mine owner Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., to divest, a request Rio Tinto said it planned to consider.
EPA has said its goal was to get the science right. McLerran said the report doesn’t recommend any policy or regulatory decisions and will serve as the scientific foundation for the agency’s response to the tribes and others who petitioned EPA in 2010 to use its authority under the Clean Water Act to protect Bristol Bay. He said no timeline for a response had been set.
The report also found that polluted water from the mine site could get into streams through runoff or uncollected leachate, even with the use of modern mining practices. It noted culvert blockages or other failures could impede fish passage and failure of a tailings dam, where mining waste is stored, could be catastrophic though the probability of such a failure was considered quite low.
Supporters of the EPA process hoped it would lead the agency to block or limit the project, action they urged again Wednesday; opponents saw it as an example of government overreach and feared it would lead to a pre-emptive veto.
Jason Metrokin, president and CEO of Bristol Bay Native Corp., said the corporation supports “responsible development where it can be done without causing unacceptable risks to the people, cultures and fishing economy of our region. The proposed Pebble mine is not such a project.”
John Shively, the chief executive of the Pebble Limited Partnership, which was created to design, permit and run the mine, called the report rushed and flawed, saying EPA did not take the time or commit the financial resources to fully assess such a large area. In a statement, he said the report is “a poorly conceived and poorly executed study, and it cannot serve as the scientific basis for any decisions concerning Pebble.”
Some see the mine as a way to provide jobs, but others fear it will disrupt or devastate a way of life. A citizens’ initiative scheduled to appear on the August primary ballot would require legislative approval for any large-scale mine in the region.
The Bristol Bay watershed produces about 46 percent of the world’s wild sockeye salmon, and salmon are key to the way of life for two groups of Alaska Natives in the region, Yup’ik Eskimos and the Dena’ina. The report said the response of Native cultures to any mining impacts was unclear, though it could involve more than the need to compensate for lost food and include some degree of cultural disruption.
Jeff Frithsen, a senior scientist and special projects coordinator with EPA, said the Pebble deposit is a low-grade ore deposit, and over 99 percent of the ore taken from the ground will end up as waste. He said the deposit’s location is at the headwaters of two of the watersheds that make up half the Bristol Bay watershed and produce half its sockeye salmon.
He said the existence of a large-scale mining operation there would affect fish habitat and any accidents would add to that. He said any loss of habitat can affect the overall diversity of the fishery habitat in the watershed.
“Changes in the portfolio of streams within the Bristol Bay watershed can reduce the overall reliability and increase the variability of the fishery over time,” he said.
Asked whether EPA believed a mine could co-exist with fish, McLerran said the assessment spoke for itself.
While EPA initiated the review process in response to concerns about the impact of the proposed Pebble Mine on fisheries, the report wasn’t meant to be about a single project.
EPA said the report looks at possible impacts of reasonably foreseeable mining activities in the region. The agency said it drew on a preliminary plan published by Northern Dynasty and consulted with mining experts on reasonable scenarios.
Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell said in a statement the report was little more than a pretext for an EPA veto of the state’s permitting process. “As my record demonstrates, I will not trade one resource for another, and every permitting application — when filed — deserves scientific and public scrutiny based on facts, not hypotheticals.”
The Pebble Partnership has called the mine deposit one of the largest of its kind in the world, with the potential of producing 80.6 billion pounds of copper, 107.4 million ounces of gold and 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum over decades.
While EPA focused on the effects of one mine, the report said several mines could be developed in the watersheds studied, each of which would pose risks similar to those highlighted.
A new plan for six species of salmon and trout in Oregon’s coastal rivers would shift the balance of hatchery and wild fish. | credit: caddiseug/Flickr
Hatchery-reared fish would get the heave ho from certain rivers along the Oregon Coast under the latest strategy to help Oregon’s wild salmon and steelhead.
The new management plan proposed by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife would designate several coastal rivers as “wild fish emphasis areas,” while increasing the number of hatchery fish planted in other coastal rivers to expand fishing opportunities in those waters.
The idea is to improve the way six species of wild salmon and steelhead are managed without shortchanging those people who count on hatcheries to produce enough fish for them to catch.
To find the right balance, the agency convened several stakeholder committees with members from sportfishing, commercial fishing and conservation groups. Stakeholders spent months debating which rivers should get more hatchery fish and which ones should get less.
ODFW’s Coastal Multi-Species Conservation and Management Plan aims to conserve six species in 20 different river basins along the Oregon coast. None of the species are listed under the Endangered Species Act, and the state wants to make sure it stays that way.
The fish face threats from habitat loss, predators and overfishing. And also from their own hatchery-raised relatives. Studies show hatchery fish can compete with wild fish for habitat, and they can impact genetics through interbreeding. Several lawsuits are targeting hatcheries in the Northwest as scientists continue to document conservation risks to wild fish from hatchery releases.
Of course, hatcheries also serve an important role in coastal communities.
“They provide fish for people to catch,” ODFW program manager Tom Stahl says. “We’re trying to balance the hatchery program in terms of providing that fishing opportunity and also conserving wild fish populations.”
The state plan, which is currently in draft form and open to public comment, wouldn’t reduce the overall number of hatchery fish being released into coastal rivers. In fact, it would increase that number slightly from 6 million to 6.3 million per year. But it would reduce the number hatchery fish being released in some rivers such as the Kilchis, Siletz, and the Elk.
The plan has sparked outcry from both sportfishing and conservation groups. Some fishermen prefer to catch fish on rivers that would have fewer hatchery fish under the plan, and some conservation groups have put a lot of effort into improving wild fish runs on rivers that would get more hatchery fish.
After sitting on one of the committees, Alan Moore of the conservation group Trout Unlimited says it will be impossible to make everyone happy.
“The Kilchis River will be a wild fish emphasis area, and hatchery production will be moved to Nestucca River,” Moore says. “Trout Unlimited is planning a bunch of habitat conservation work on the Nestucca. We’re wondering: Should we be thinking about moving it to a different river where it stands a better chance of helping wild fish?”
Meanwhile, fishermen who rely hatcheries to ensure enough fish to catch are counting to make sure that the hatchery fish proposed to be removed from the Kilchis are actually going to be released somewhere else.
“Everybody’s counting fish,” Moore says.
The plan would also put more effort into preventing hatchery fish from interacting with wild fish overall, Stahl says, and it proposes a sliding scale for fishing seasons that would allow more fishing in years with higher predicted runs of fish.
“The plan really is trying to be proactive in increasing conservation as well as increasing fishing opportunity,” he says. “We’re threading that needle.”
ODFW is holding six meetings this month to collect public comments on the plan. The first meeting is from 6 to 9 pm Thursday at ODFW Headquarters, 4034 Fairview Industrial Drive SE, in Salem.
Other meetings will be held from 6 to 9 pm:
Jan. 21 at the TIllamook County Library Meeting Room, 1716 3rd St., in Tillamook;
Jan. 23 at the Best Western Plus Agate Beach Inn, 3019 N. Coast Highway, in Newport;
Jan. 27 at Douglas County Library Meeting Room, 1409 NE Diamond Lake Blvd., in Roseburg;
Jan 28 at North Bend Community Center, 2222 Broadway St., in North Bend; and
Jan. 29 at Reedsport Community Center, 451 Winchester Ave., in Reedsport.
