Supreme Court declines to hear case challenging Chesapeake Bay ‘pollution diet’- Baltimore Sun

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Al Bergstein

This is likely to be one of the more important environmental decisions of the decade, and distinctly affects Puget Sound cleanup/recovery efforts. The Court has essentially agreed with the lower courts, in saying that EPA does have the authority to regulate the nutrient and sediment runoff into watersheds.

The Supreme Court said Monday it would not hear a challenge to the “pollution diet” set for the Chesapeake Bay, in effect upholding the blueprint for a substantial cleanup by 2025. The American Farm Bureau Federation and its allies said the federal Environmental Protection Agency had overstepped its authority in establishing the plan to limit nutrient and sediment runoff across the bay watershed. But a federal appeals court sided with the EPA last year, and with the high court’s refusal to take the matter up, that ruling will stand. The decision could strengthen efforts to impose similar water quality improvement plans across the country. Agriculture and business groups say they fear it could set a precedent that gives the EPA extensive power over state and local land use. Scott Dance reports. (Baltimore Sun)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/green/blog/bs-md-chesapeake-supreme-court-20160229-story.html

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Gulf Of Mexico Open For Fish-Farming Business – NPR

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Al Bergstein

NOAA continues its promotion of the aquaculture fish farming industry. Since the government destroyed huge swaths of the Gulf with its lack of stiff enforcement of oil drilling, now it has decided that fish farming there is a great idea. No environmentalists  anywhere in the world that have looked at this industry think it’s a good idea. And the fish farming industry and NOAA are targeting  opening  up the Salish Sea for more fish farming also.  Their science on it, when you read it, is missing key issues of investigation, such as long term affects of the bottom and the general larger habitat around the fish. The experience of fish farming in British Columbia, Norway and other locations, is one of vast overuse of antibiotics, needed because of dense packing in the cages, which create a vector for disease, like sea lice infestations that are infecting wild stocks that pass by the cages. Escaped farm fish compete with native species, coverups of massive problems with disease by the highly secretive farming industry and smear campaigns for highly credible scientists and their labs, including using the Government of Canada to arbitrarily shut down the labs involved after they publish their results (under the Harper and Christie government two and three  years ago) and a basic lack of concern for anything but their own bottom lines. While I support much of what NOAA does, this area is very suspiciously looking like it has been corrupted by the industry that it is supposed to be impartially regulating.

This is yet another example of a Democratic administration doing exactly what we would expect from a Republican one. It is the kind of arrogance towards our shared environment and the people of the Gulf that fuels the anger of the electorate towards Washington D.C. and the administrators there that choose business over the environment time and time again.  It’s worth remembering that Obama opened up offshore oil drilling against environmentalists concerns just weeks before the Gulf Spill in March 2010, saying it was ‘safe’ and that we had great safeguards. He was proven wrong in May of that year. He has since reopened drilling off the coast, even after the BP spill, against the wishes of Governors of those coastal states affected by the decision. Now he is opening up Gulf waters for large scale fish pens. We are also targeted for that same treatment, as fish farms are proposed west of Port Angeles at present time. The State demanded that counties not ban fish farming in their Shoreline Master Programs, and actually have held up approval of the Jefferson County SMP over that very issue. Luckily we have had Phil Johnson an ex-fisherman, fighting this issue with the State, but at present it is still legal to open a fish farm in Jefferson County, over the objections of both a scientific panel and a citizen advisory group of 20 citizens that included a shellfish farmer. When I questioned the previous head of the State of Washington Department of Ecology, he had no idea that it was even a problem worth addressing. The latest head of DOE is a lawyer as well as an administrator and she is unwilling to seriously discuss reversing her department’s decision.

To be clear, while I’m  disappointed in the administration for allowing this, voting in the opposition will simply make it worse, as the Republicans have never seen an environmental law they like. Just look at Flint Michigan for a great example of Republican oversight of the environment.  Our best efforts are to fight decisions like this in the courts, contact our representatives to make them aware of the public feelings on the issue, make it an issue at elections, and elect people like Phil Johnson who will fight against the influence of big money industries trading off the environment and our wild fish for short term profits.

To their credit, NPR does point out the  criticisms of this decision.

The Gulf of Mexico is now open for commercial fish farming. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced last month that, for the first time in the U.S., companies can apply to set up fish farms in federal waters. The idea is to compete with hard-to-regulate foreign imports. But opening the Gulf to aquaculture won’t be cheap, and it could pose environmental problems. Tegan Wendland reports. (NPR)

http://www.kplu.org/post/gulf-mexico-open-fish-farming-business

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Water rights bill passes state Senate committee – Skagit Valley Herald

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Al Bergstein

Another bad bill from our Republican controlled Senate.  Want to get around the rules to protect the water sources for rivers and aquifers for community waters sources so you can use as much as you want? Our state is legally charged with protecting water levels in rivers  for endangered salmon. In the Dungeness Basin, for example, the Dungeness River Management Team has brought together a wide array of stakeholders, for over 20 years, to come up with water management of the river and it’s flows. Now a couple of disgruntled people are pushing for a change that would give a workaround for collaborative processes like these. I doubt the Supreme Court would find this possible law constitutional, given their earlier ruling.

A state legislative bill that would give landowners a process for overwriting water use regulations tied to instream flow levels passed its first committee in the state Senate on Thursday. The bill, which passed the Senate Agriculture, Water and Rural Economic Development Committee, still needs to go through the Senate Rules Committee before it could see a floor vote, according to a news release from the office of Sen. Kirk Pearson, R-Monroe. Senate Bill 6584, sponsored by Pearson, would task the state Department of Ecology with devising a method of determining if a landowner’s water supply affects instream flow levels of a river, which the bill calls “proof of water reliance.” The bill is of importance to landowners in the Skagit River basin. A 2013 state Supreme Court ruling effectively revoked water rights from well users in the basin when the river is below a certain level. Brandon Stone reports. (Skagit Valley Herald)

http://www.goskagit.com/all_access/water-rights-bill-passes-state-senate-committee/article_086697fb-e342-5118-9bc3-dd19f1e8a5e6.html

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Bills Take Aim At Drinking Water Protections -InvestigateWest

Posted on February 6, 2016 by Al Bergstein

A new legislative session is underway and with it, a slew of really bad bills. Given the nightmare in Flint Michigan, with an entire city’s water supply knowing poisoned and hidden from the public by state officials, including the Governor, you would think that protection of our drinking water sources would be important. Wrong. Bills are moving through the State legislature that would eliminate the ability of a citizen to sue over groundwater contamination (sponsored by a Democrat from Seattle  no less!), and a House bill that would remove all drinking water protections entirely from law! (of course sponsored only by Republicans who wonder what business would ever do such a thing? How about any of the large cattle operations in Yakima that are leaking nitrates into local wells and being sued over it?)

  1. This section specifically acknowledges that if a holder of a
  2. 14  general or individual national pollutant discharge elimination system
  3. 15  permit complies with the permit and the dairy nutrient management
  4. 16  plan conditions for appropriate land application practices, the
  5. 17  permit provides compliance with the federal clean water act and acts
  6. 18  as a shield against citizen or agency enforcement for any additions
  7. 19  of pollutants to waters of the state or of the United States as
  8. 20  authorized by the permit.

It doesn’t appear that our Democratic legislators will have anything to do with these bills.

Read the whole sordid tale here…

InvestigateWest story on water pollution bills

 

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Understanding State Environmental Bills

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Al Bergstein

If you are interested in what is happening in Olympia regarding environmental related bills, check out my upper tab, on Legislative Roundups, 2016. I’ve posted the weekly updates to from the Environmental Priorities Coalition. Separate Hot Lists are prepared for the House and Senate and distributed each Monday (and online here). Please feel free to contact  clifford@ctassociates.org or 206.369.2235 if you have any questions.

Filed under: Puget Sound | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Ericksen’s bill would prohibit state agency from setting carbon cap – AP

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Al Bergstein

So here’s another bill brought to you by the oil lobby of Washington State. Doing all they can to stand in the way of any constructive proposals to slow climate change. Oh by the way, the NY Times reports today that 2015 was the warmest year on record, by a lot. Remember this in November as you decide who you are going to vote for in the election.

A new bill takes aim at Gov. Jay Inslee’s carbon policies by prohibiting state regulators from adopting rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions without legislative direction. The measure, sponsored by Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, targets the Democratic governor’s ability to take executive action on the issue. After failing to get legislation passed on his cap-and-trade plan last year, Inslee directed the Department of Ecology to limit carbon pollution using its existing authority under state law. This month, Ecology proposed a draft rule requiring Washington’s largest industrial emitters to reduce carbon emissions by 5 percent every three years. (Associated Press)

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article55535550.html

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Carbon Tax Measure Will Make The Washington Ballot, Backers Say – Earthfix

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Al Bergstein

With the carbon tax initiative now officially having reached it’s goal of signatures, one might be tempted to think that this is a great idea, right? It’s been promoted by a wide range of environmental activists, and you likely have seen them and probably even signed the initiative without much thought. I know I did. Well, the issue is far more complex.

While this initiative is sponsored by some well meaning people, it does not encompass the thinking of a coalition of environmental organizations and labor. Senator Keven Ranker, who has been trying unsuccessfully for many years to pass just such a tax, and is considered the most environmentally active legislator in Olympia, is not in favor of it. Why? Because trial polling has apparently shown that this wording is not very clear or convincing to voters, and it does nothing to build on jobs in exchange for carbon reductions. Ranker is very worried that putting forward a badly worded initiative such as this, with no real jobs component, will rankle both the Republican climate deniers and labor. That would be a death knell for the initiative, he claims. He also mentioned, in a wide ranging talk with Ashley Ahearn at the Annual Northwest Straits Conference in November (audio available here: https://soundcloud.com/mountainstone/sets/2105-nw-straits-annual (starts at 22:27) that the possible outcomes is that the initiative will now go to the legislature, and they could rewrite it, and end up with two competing versions on the ballot, and if the Alliance initiative gets on the ballot, it could even mean three!  (this would be very bad for it’s passing, and is likely to happen given the Republican desire to kill it).

The competing initiative has been carefully thought out by a large coalition of environmental groups such as WEC, and Sierra Club, representative organizations from communities of color, the Tribes, Unions such as the AFL-CIO and SEIU, and even members of retired people’s organizations.  (in full disclosure, I am a member of WEC). If both, or all, of these go forward, the confusion may lead to all of them failing, and in Rankers’ mind, will set back the carbon tax possibility for many years to come. The Alliance initiative contains provisions to reinvest the collected carbon tax into local jobs . As their web site says, “The funds will be invested in accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy and addressing the impacts of carbon pollution on our air, land and people.”  This seems to be a more useful approach that directly ties jobs to cleaning up the environment. It would be much harder for the Republican opposition to effectively attack.

There seems to be some thoughts, that the two initiative teams could and should pull their teams together and craft one workable solution, that both can push forward together and actually get passed. That would be the optimum situation, which would allow the Tax and Refund initiative to get the support of the large alliance of the Tax and Reinvest initiative. If this merger does not happen, it will be mean a loss of a huge amount of turn-out-the-vote workers, that these alliance organizations have at their disposal. Those forces will be getting people to vote on the competing initiative and could lead to both failing as the voters may be confused enough to turn both down.

If you have been involved in getting signatures for the tax and refund initiative you might consider calling the initiative office and telling them you support an merged version that gets the Alliance folks onboard too.

For a more detailed read on the battle over these initiatives, you can read: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/carbon-tax-initiative-divides-environmentalists/

A voter initiative that would put a tax on carbon emissions has gathered enough signatures to put it on the ballot in 2016. The measure would impose a tax of $25 for every ton of carbon emitted when fossil fuels are burned. Backers of the measure say that will increase some consumer prices, like what people pay for gasoline. The measure also calls for carbon tax’s revenue to be used to lower the state sales tax, effectively eliminate the B&O tax on manufacturers and to provide rebates to lower income households. Carbon Washington, the group behind the carbon tax, says it has gathered more than 330,000 signatures from Washington voters. If validated, the initiative will go to the state legislature in January. The legislature could adopt the initiative as is, or it will go to the voters in 2016. Ashley Ahearn reports. (EarthFix)

http://www.opb.org/news/article/carbon-tax-measure-washington/

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Event: JeffCo Democrats discuss Marbled Murrelet Resolution – 10/27

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Al Bergstein
Tuesday, October 27, JCD Membership Meeting, Program and Business Meeting on Murrelet Resolution, 
Port Townsend Community Center, 7 p.m.
Following a presentation by Kevin Schmelzlen (Murrelet Survival Project) and Peter Bahls (Northwest Watershed Institute

), the members will meet to discuss a resolution regarding Survival of the Marbled Murrelet. Here are the meeting agenda, minutes of last meeting, and the resolution.
The Marbled Murrelet is more than a cute little bird. This threatened species is in decline in Washington, partly because our state has taken a very long time to adopt public policies for managing our mature and ancient forests, a source of revenue for the state and local governments, in a way that provides for its long-term survival.
If passed, the resolution calls on the state to immediately adopt a long-term survival plan for the marbled murrelet, and it calls on the  Board of County Commissioners to speak up, as well. If passed, the resolution would also go forward to the Washington State Democrats for their consideration in January.

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Republicans kill the Land and Water Conservation Fund

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Al Bergstein

One of the most successful conservation programs in the Federal Government, The Land and Water Conservation Fund, has been allowed to sunset by the Republican controlled Congress. This program, which has been supported for 50 years by both parties, up to now. What is it? What good has it done? Why not let it die?

According to the Land and Water Fund Coalition,

The LWCF state assistance program provides matching grants to help states and local communities protect parks and recreation resources. LWCF funding has benefited nearly every county in America, supporting over 41,000 projects. From building hiking and biking trails, to improving community parks, playgrounds and ballfields, this 50:50 matching program is the primary federal investment tool to ensure that families have easy access to public, open spaces.

Rep. Rob Bishop, a Republican from Utah who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee is the person responsible for this change, even though his state benefits from it.

If we just focus on Washington State, this program has used some of the royalties from off shore oil and gas leasing, (not tax dollars from US citizens) to fund a wide variety of projects, from maintenance of Mount Rainier’s Carbon River bridges, Alpine Lakes Wilderness, The Moses Coulee, North Cascades National Park, Mt St. Helens, the list goes on and on and can be found here http://www.lwcfcoalition.org/washington.html.

Closer to home, here on the Olympic Peninsula, this program has funded, over the last 50 years, the Bogachiel River Boat Launch repair, maintenance at Clallam Bay, Clallam Bay Spit development, Freshwater Bay development, Snow Creek Renovation, Salt Creek County Parks renovation, and the Shane Park Playground in Port Angeles. Remember, Clallam County usually votes Republican, and this is what you are getting folks for your support of that party, which now controls the purse strings at the Federal Level.

In Jefferson County, Fort Worden State Park was funded with over $156, 000, The Hoh River Boat Launch, Kai Tai Park, Fort Worden Breakwater, and the Point Whitney (south in the county on Hood Canal) acquisition all were supported by funding from this program. You can find the entire list of funded projects here: http://www.nps.gov/lwcf/index.htm

What did Congress want to use the funds for? They want to give this money to the oil and gas industry for employee training. You read that right. They want to give the money to private enterprises to offset their employee training, which will make them more profitable by not having to spend that money themselves.

What can you do? There is a letter called the “Dear Colleagues” that is a method that Congress uses to show support for various funding programs.  Representative Derek Kilmer has yet to sign one, while most of our other representatives have. (see the list at the bottom of the page here (http://www.lwcfcoalition.org/washington.html). Call or email Derek and ask him to sign one now.  UPDATE: Representative Kilmer’s Olympic Peninsula Field Representative Judith Morris wrote back this morning to let me know that Representative Kilmer has in fact signed a letter sent by 129 Democratic members of the House ( and a similar letter was penned by many Republicans), to reauthorize the Fund.

In the letter sent last week, the members wrote: “LWCF is our nation’s premier program to help local communities protect the places they love. It has conserved iconic landscapes in every state and is responsible for more than 40,000 state and local outdoor recreation projects such as playgrounds, parks, refuges, and baseball fields.”

It goes on to state that Rep. Kilmer is a cosponsor of a bill that would permanently reauthorize the LWCF.

If you happen to live in a county that has a Republican representing you at the Federal level, give them a piece of your mind. If you belong to an organization that supports outdoor recreation in any form, get them to act nationally. And vote idiots like Rob Bishop out next year. He has wasted an enormous amount of time from Congress for an idea that no one but him and other oil and gas funded Congresspeople wants to see implemented.

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