The environment in the news thursday, 30 August 2012

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

By Darren Rumbold, Ph.D Professor of Marine Science

Florida Gulf Coast University.September marks the 50th anniversary of "Silent Spring."

In this groundbreaking work, Rachel Carson called upon the public to take action to save the environment.

Today it remains critically important that we get involved in order to protect our Florida way of life.

One threat to our way of life – and to our health – is the high concentration of mercury found in much of the fish we eat.

In September, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) will finalize plans to remedy the long-standing mercury problem in Florida. Hopefully, the FDEP will have the courage to protect Floridians, despite the efforts to the contrary by some special interest groups.Mercury is a naturally occurring metal that is mobilized through various processes both natural and from human activities. High mercury levels were first found in Florida in the 1980s, prompting the first fish consumption advisories. Today, more than 60 species of fish found in Florida waters should be eaten only in limited amounts or not at all (for a list, see http://www.doh.state.fl.us/floridafishadvice/).

Fish containing high levels of mercury have poisoned large numbers of people and wildlife during two well-known pollution events; first in Minamata, Japan in the 1950s and '60s and again, in Grassy Narrows, Ontario, during the 1970s.

While mercury levels in Florida are well below those dangerous levels, they are higher than in most other regions.

The average Floridian probably has little to worry about. But, if you eat a lot of fish because you want lean protein and Omega 3s, or if you are a recreational angler good at putting large game fish on the table, there is reason to be concerned.

Personal horror stories about mercury poisoning can be found in Dr. Jane Hightower's book "Diagnosis Mercury'' and on YouTube ("Medical Masquerade: One Man's Experience with Methylmercury Poisoning").

Of course, people aren't the only victims of mercury poisoning. Sharks, panthers and other top predators also suffer from high mercury levels.

Emissions from coal-fired electric utilities are a major source of the mercury that finds its way into the fish on our dinner tables, leading the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue new emission standards at the national level.

Recognizing this as a global problem, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) is working toward an international treaty. While the state, federal and international efforts all sound very promising, as is usually the case these days, there are detractors.

Immediately upon the release of the new emission standards, organizations such as the Electric Reliability Coordination Council began a campaign to overturn them. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) introduced a bill to prevent implementation of the rule, which he characterized as "one of the most expensive Environmental Protection Agency rules in history." Shortly after FDEP released its draft plan, an op-ed appeared in the Washington Times that offered half-truths in an argument against taking any corrective action.

As Yogi Berra said, "It's déjà vu all over again." These same tactics have been used throughout the 50 years following the publication of "Silent Spring'' to challenge regulations on the use of pesticides, use of chlorofluorocarbons and the use of lead in house paints and as a fuel additive. Yet the regulations directed to those threats have largely been successful and did not result in the economic doomsday(s) that the special interest groups predicted. Unfortunately, those lessons can be forgotten when well-organized, well-funded attacks on science – and appeals to focus only on the here and now – are designed to sway the public and, in some cases, sway resource managers.

The FDEP initially undertook an ambitious study to support its mercury plan. However, it has suddenly altered the scope of the study and is substituting shortcuts for good science. For one thing, the FDEP has chosen to ignore modern nutritional recommendations, going back to "average" fish consumption rates from 1994, rather than the 12 ounces of cooked fish per week now recommended by many health agencies. The result is a flawed plan that could leave Floridians at risk. The plan also leaves our wildlife at risk.

FDEP admits that advisories will continue for certain species even after its plan takes effect. Consequently, if you eat a lot of fish for health reasons or because you are an avid angler, you will need to continue to monitor your consumption of certain species. Because mercury is released by natural process, there will always be some mercury in fish, but we can do more to reduce emissions from human activities to reduce the risk.

If you feel it is important for you and your family to take advantage of the health benefits of eating the nutritionally recommended amount of your favorite fish (regardless of the species), consider dropping a line to the FDEP to tell them you want your "two fish," so they need to work with U.S. EPA and UNEP to get it done.

Darren Rumbold, Ph. D, is a Professor of Marine Science at Florida Gulf Coast University. He conducts research on the transport and fate of mercury in South Florida. NOTE: The viewpoints expressed in this article represent those of the author and are not necessarily those held by Florida Gulf Coast University.

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United States

St Albert’s gazette: Obama calls for cars to get almost 55 mpg

The Obama administration says automakers must almost double the average mileage by 2025, part of efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, oil consumption and dependence on foreign sources.

The final rules mark the latest step in a lengthy campaign by the administration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption and are the highest fuel efficiency standards in U.S. history.

With an eye to the looming presidential election, the White House touted the standards as a boost for middle-class consumers. "These fuel standards represent the single most important step we've ever taken to reduce our dependence on foreign oil," President Obama said.

But the Romney campaign was quick to condemn the rules as impractical and harmful. "Gov. Romney opposes the extreme standards that President Obama has imposed, which will limit the choices available to American families," campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said.

While automobile manufacturers welcomed the new rules, auto dealers decried them. The dealers association contends that the 2025 rules would drive up the average vehicle sticker price by $3,000. The administration says that at most, it could be as high as $1,800 and would likely be offset by $8,000 in gas savings over the lifetime of the vehicle.

The fuel economy rules would reduce the price of gasoline by about $1 per gallon, the administration estimated. They would also cut oil consumption by more than 2 million barrels a day by 2025, helping to curtail U.S. reliance on foreign oil.

Environmentalists welcomed the rules as the single biggest step any country had taken to reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, which scientists say are the biggest contributor to climate change.

The rules will probably take effect before the end of the year.

Automakers support the standards because they can move manufacturing plans forward with certainty. A midterm review is set for April 2018 in case the rules prove too onerous or expensive.

"We all want to get more fuel-efficient autos on our roads," said Gloria Bergquist of Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry lobbying group. "And a single, national program with a strong midterm review helps us get closer to that shared goal."

Will Kane Updated 11:14 p.m., Tuesday, August 28, 2012

State firefighters have fully contained a large Northern California wildfire that at its peak threatened 3,000 homes and sent thousands of rural Shasta and Tehama county residents fleeing to safer ground.

Crews surrounded the 27,676-acre Ponderosa wildfire with fire line on Tuesday, 10 days after the blaze was ignited by lightning about 30 miles east of Redding.

The fire destroyed 52 homes and 90 outbuildings, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection officials said. At its peak, it forced the evacuation of residents from several rural towns, including Manton and Shingletown.

More than 1,800 firefighters will remain on scene to mop up the blaze, said Daniel Berlant, a Cal Fire spokesman.

Elsewhere in the state, firefighters continue to battle seven other blazes that were started by lightning.

Crews have contained 32 percent of two fires that combined have burned 35,270 acres in Mendocino County, officials said. The two North Pass fires have destroyed four homes and seven outbuildings. Seventy-four homes are still threatened.

Roughly 1,700 state and federal firefighters are trying to stop the blaze from spreading north toward the Middle Fork of the Eel River. The fire is burning largely in a section of the Mendocino National Forest.

‘Fracking’ Goes Local

The battle over high-volume hydraulic fracturing is being waged town-by-town across upstate New York.

From Buffalo to Albany, Syracuse to the Catskills, about 100 municipalities have enacted temporary moratoriums on the natural-gas extraction process known as fracking, while about 35 have banned the practice altogether. Meanwhile, nearly 60 towns and villages have passed resolutions in support of fracking or against the idea of a ban. Dozens of other communities are debating the issue now.

The race to sway towns comes as Gov. Andrew Cuomo considers allowing fracking in upstate communities that express support for it. A four-year-old state Department of Environmental Conservation review of fracking is continuing, and the Cuomo administration is expected to announce a decision before the end of the year.

Fracking involves using high-pressure water and materials such as sand and chemicals to break open cracks in rock deep underground. That is combined with a method called horizontal drilling to extract natural gas.

Opponents and advocates have settled into camps divided along geographic lines.

Communities along the Pennsylvania border have generally supported allowing fracking in the Marcellus Shale—an underground rock formation rich in natural gas.

Opposition is concentrated in central and western New York, along the northern edge of the Marcellus Shale and in the Utica Shale—regions that could be exploited for natural gas but where some say drilling will be unlikely.

Experts said the municipal actions won't be the last word on fracking.

"I do think it is likely it will end up in front of the Court of Appeals one way or another," said Thomas West, an attorney representing the fracking advocates in lawsuits against town bans.

But the resolutions have fueled passionate local debates on a contentious national issue pitting environmental concerns versus economic development.

New York pro-fracking groups said most bans and moratoriums are in areas where drilling wouldn't turn up as much gas. But as antifracking forces gained momentum in the spring, advocates rushed to get towns to pass resolutions in favor it.

"We needed to do some sort of response for the towns actually in the drilling area so that their voices can be heard," said Dan Fitzsimmons, president of the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, which represents about 70,000 landowners who favor fracking.

Several towns along New York's border have looked across the border with envy at Pennsylvania, where the legalization of high-volume fracking has fueled a natural-gas boom in the past decade. Fracking, some town officials say, would be a boon for an economically depressed region.

But opposition has grown as environmental groups have raised safety concerns. Some towns have changed their zoning laws to essentially ban the practice. Others have issued temporary moratoriums until the state makes a decision or more information is known.

Towns "are responding to their constituents," said Deborah Goldberg, an attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental-law firm.

In the Catskill Mountains town of Bethel, residents were concerned that fracking would hurt agriculture and tourism, the main industries.

"We could have done nothing," said Bethel Town Supervisor Daniel Sturm. "I happen to think that was the worst thing. Our actions speak louder than words on this issue."

Ithaca-based attorneys David and Helen Holden Slottje have driven antifracking efforts across the state, giving informational meetings and providing draft language for legislation. The Slottjes began advocating the use of zoning regulations to ban fracking in the fall of 2010. By the summer of 2011, a wave of towns had begun employing the legal theory to ban fracking.

"Industry ridiculed the argument" of zoning bans, said Ms. Slottje. But two New York State Supreme Court rulings in February upheld the bans. She said: "You couldn't have a bigger green light."

Ms. Slottje dismissed criticism that most bans and moratoriums are outside the prime drilling area. "If there wasn't any chance of drilling, why are there leases" on the land there? she asked.

The opposition hasn't gained much traction in the New York and Pennsylvania border countries like Steuben, Tioga and Broome, an area rich with natural gas where drilling would likely be fruitful.

"We are for gas fracking," said Jim Finch, town supervisor of Conklin in Broome County. "We need to do it to survive."

Major floods in 2006 and 2011 devastated the region, and the area has yet to recover from the cost, Mr. Finch said. His town is still reeling from the flight of large business like International Business Machines Inc.

"We have all this money coming out, and no money coming in," Mr. Finch said. "The only salvation we have is to have safe, natural-gas drilling."

Some towns like Cobleskill in Schoharie County, about 45 miles west of Albany, are taking a wait-and-see approach.

"Right now my board is pretty neutral on it," said Tom Murray, town supervisor in Cobleskill. The town considered passing a ban or a moratorium this year but decided to keep its options open, Mr. Murray said.

"We are looking at different ways of protecting ourselves in case we don't want hydraulic-fracking taking place," Mr. Murray said. "We want to make those choices. We don't want big gas companies making those choices for us."

By JOSH FUNK Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- The remnants of Hurricane Isaac could bring welcome rain to some states in the Mississippi River valley this week, but experts say it's unlikely to break the drought gripping the Midwest.

Along with the deluge of rain expected along the Gulf Coast when Isaac makes landfall, the National Weather Service predicts 2 to 6 inches of rain will fall by Sunday morning in eastern Arkansas and southeast Missouri, much of Illinois and Indiana and parts of Ohio.

Those areas are among those hard hit by the drought that stretches from the West Coast east into Kentucky and Ohio, with pockets in Georgia and Alabama. The rain that falls inland likely will ease, but not eliminate, drought because those areas are so dry, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center.

Arkansas rancher Don Rodgers said his area is short 17 inches of rain this year. He said even a couple of inches from Isaac would make a significant difference because he would have water for his cattle and might be able to grow some forage for this winter.

"I'm very sorry for the people in the path of this hurricane. I'm just praying we can get some of the benefit from it up here," said Rodgers, who lives in Crawford County, a rural area near the Oklahoma border.

Heavy rain, especially if the storm pushes into the Ohio River Valley, would improve traffic on the Mississippi River, where low water levels have been a problem for weeks, National Weather Service hydrologist Marty Pope said. Pope said any rise in the river would help clear clogged shipping channels, which have caused temporary closures.

"If that happens, it would help us out quite a bit," Pope said.

The low water levels also have prompted companies to reduce loads on barges carrying goods ranging from grain to gasoline, which can mean big losses for shippers.

Port of Greenville, Miss., Director Tommy Hart said he has been praying for rain for weeks but it's not clear yet how much Isaac will help.

"I may have prayed too hard, I don't need a hurricane," he said Tuesday.

Isaac has been gaining strength and it officially became a Category I hurricane on Tuesday before making landfall. The storm's path may change, but the drought is so widespread that the rain is certain to be welcomed in most areas that get it.

More than half of all U.S. counties have been identified as natural disaster areas this summer, mostly because of drought. Conditions are especially bad in the corn belt. Nearly all of Nebraska, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and more than two-thirds of Iowa are in the worst two stages of drought.

But Svoboda said a high pressure system over the Great Plains this week will keep Isaac's moisture from reaching much of that area. And Iowa may be too far north to see significant rainfall since the storm will have dropped much of the moisture it picked up in the Gulf by the time it hits there.

Farmers have been hoping for rain all summer, as drought damaged corn, soybeans and other crops.

But Missouri farmer Will Spargo said Isaac is arriving too late in the season to help much. The rain could even slow the corn harvest if fields become too muddy to support combines and grain trucks.

"We've gone months and months without rain, and now here it is at harvest that we're getting rain," said Spargo, who grows corn, soybeans and rice near Neelyville, Mo.

But farmers and ranchers in the path of the storm still were looking forward to the rain because anything that improves soil moisture will help them next year.

Flooding can be a concern anytime too much rain falls quickly in an area, but officials in Arkansas and Missouri said they weren't too concerned because the ground is so dry that it should be able to absorb the rain. And streams and lakes in the area should be able to handle runoff because they're so low.

With as dry as this year has been, many people would probably welcome the moisture even if it is accompanied by some flooding, Arkansas climatologist Michael Borengasser said.

"We'll take all of it we can get," Borengasser said.

Posted: 08/28/2012 10:42 pm Updated: 08/28/2012 11:24 pm

As Hurricane Isaac batters the Gulf Coast, some experts are warning that the storm could threaten more than levees, power lines and gas prices.

Isaac's high winds and rains, they speculate, could also stir up remnant crude oil from the BP's Deepwater Horizon spill -- exposing more residents and wildlife to its potentially toxic effects.

"This is another disaster on top of the hurricane that we're going to have to deal with," Garret Graves, chairman of Louisiana's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, told The Huffington Post. "The threat is not insignificant."

Up to 1 million barrels of oil are estimated to remain in the Gulf of Mexico. That oil remains, Graves said, because BP has failed to clean it all up in the more than two years since the tragedy. "That's four to five times the oil that was spilled with the Exxon Valdez," he added.

In total, an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico when the offshore rig exploded on April 20, 2010. As HuffPost reported on the spill's two year anniversary, some people, particularly children, may still be dealing with chronic coughs, headaches and other effects of exposure to contaminated air, water and seafood.

Graves fears the hurricane could spawn another wave of similar health issues.

He also noted that hurricane clean up could be complicated by the oil. Debris from a destroyed home, for example, could become hazardous waste and need special, more expensive disposal, rather than simply going to the landfill.

"The frustrating thing is that this could all have been entirely prevented," said Graves. "We've known all this time that oil is there, but BP has not been proactive in trying to remove it."

Mitchell Roffer, president of Roffer's Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service and an adjunct professor at the Florida Institute of Technology, shares Graves' concerns about the storm dredging up the old crude. "This is something that we talked about way back in May following the gulf spill," he said.

Roffer and others then argued against the widespread use of chemical dispersants to combat what would become the worst oil spill disaster in U.S. history.

"All it was doing was putting oil at the bottom of the ocean -- out of sight, out of mind," Roffer said. "I strongly believe that there is going to be some oil coming back up from submerged depths, into the water column and onto beaches."

But BP rejects such dire predictions. "Consistent with the past two hurricane seasons, we do not expect any significant impact of residual MC252 oil following Hurricane Isaac," BP spokesman Ray Melick told HuffPost in an email.

Still, should any oil surface, Melick said BP would be on top of it. "We have repeatedly demonstrated our ability to respond quickly following severe weather," said Melick. "We will do the same as necessary after Hurricane Isaac."

The idea that oil deep on the ocean floor could be stirred up by a tropical storm is debated, though a growing body of research does support the possibility.

"Winds will push water away from the center of a storm, which causes an upwelling as the ocean tries to adjust," said Nick Shay, professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami. "It brings whatever is near the bottom up higher in the water column and currents can then push it towards the coast."

His research team has found upwellings from prior tropical storms as deep as 1,500 feet. Crude oil settled at such dark, cold depths tends to break down slower than oil closer to the surface.

Robert Weisberg, a marine scientist at the University of South Florida, follows the work of Shay and others. He, too, sees "no reason not to believe" that Deepwater Horizon oil will resurface. "We will know pretty soon," he said. "Isaac will do his own talking."

Less controversial is the potential rise of oil buried in the sand or near the shore of Gulf beaches as the hurricane bears down on the coast.

"That's the most obvious way that the oil might come back into the public eye. Erosion could expose and churn up tar balls and tar mats," said John Amos, president of the nonprofit SkyTruth, where he is urging the public to post photos of oil pollution in the wake of Isaac.

Water surges could also flush water out of marshes -- where BP oil is known to have traveled -- and back into the coastal areas. Sea turtles, added Roffer, would be among the many that could suffer the consequences.

"This is the time of year that these little baby turtles hatch," he said. "Oil is not health food for anyone."