Burning oil from BP spill produced carbon plumes

Chalk up another environmental impact from last summer's Deepwater Horizon oil spill: Nine weeks of burning off oil slicks from the surface of the Gulf of Mexico following the BP spill released an estimated 1 million pounds of soot into the atmosphere, according to a study released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The burns were conducted to reduce the size of the slicks and to minimize the amount of oil reaching the gulf’s coast and wetlands systems. But the study, which was co-written by researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences in Boulder, Colo., found the plumes of smoke from the burns produced an amount of carbon equal to the total black carbon emissions normally released by all ships that travel the Gulf of Mexico during a nine-week period.

Black carbon, whose primary component is often called soot, is among the most light-absorbing particles in the atmosphere. The new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, provides some of the most detailed observations made of black carbon sent airborne by burning surface oil.

The study found that the soot plumes reached much higher into the atmosphere than ship emissions normally rise, and that the average size of the soot particles was larger than normally emitted from other sources in the gulf region. Researchers also found that the soot particles were almost all black carbon, unlike forest fires, for example, which produce other particles along with black carbon.

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-- Julie Cart

Photo: A controlled burn on June 19, 2010, attempting to remove oil floating near the leaking BP well in the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

Newport Beach wants to remove more polluted mud from bay

Newport Beach wants to dump more sediment at the Port of Long Beach.

Already, the city has been towing barges of polluted mud from the Rhine Channel to the port, and officials recently secured space for additional contaminated dirt.

That muck, and some non-toxic silt, however, has formed shoals throughout Lower Newport Bay, causing boats to increasingly run aground.

City officials are now looking to capitalize on the Long Beach opening and available federal funds to launch a broader dredging project that would bring the bay to its original 1930s depths.

The complete project could cost as much as $25 million and would require significant political support, according to the Daily Pilot.

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--Mike Reicher, Times Community News

Homes near Bolsa Chica wetlands rejected

The California Coastal Commission last week voted down a housing project near the Bolsa Chica wetlands, putting a new wrinkle in a decade-long battle between the developer and environmentalists.

The ruling marks a significant victory for protectors of the wetlands, Councilwoman Connie Boardman said.

"I'm just really happy," said Boardman, who is also the president of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust. "I voted against the Shea project when I was on the council in 2002. I'm really glad the Coastal Commission has finally agreed with me."

The City Council originally approved Corona-based Shea Homes' 50-acre, 111-home project and related infrastructure, including roads and public access trails.

Group launches online environmental accident map

The nonprofit environmental monitoring group SkyTruth on Thursday launched a real-time alert system that uses remote sensing and digital mapping to track pollution events in the United States.

The SkyTruth Alerts system shows air and water pollution, toxic spills and other incidents on an interactive map, noting the time of the event and whether toxic materials are involved. Users can track specific geographic areas and receive updates via email or RSS feeds.

The group culls satellite images, aerial photography and reporting data from federal and state emergency response agencies to compile the maps.

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-- Julie Cart

Photo: Fires burn off oil near the crippled BP well site in June 2010. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

 

Target commits to 100% sustainable, traceable fish by 2015

The second largest discount retailer in the U.S. announced Thursday that it will sell only sustainable, traceable fish by 2015. Minneapolis-based Target Corp. operates 1,762 stores, many of which are converting to incorporate PFresh markets that sell fresh and frozen foods, including fish.

In 2010, Target stopped selling farmed salmon, Chilean sea bass and orange roughy due to various sustainability issues. It currently sells 50 different brands of fish certified by either the Marine Stewardship Council or the Global Aquaculture Alliance. 

"We thought this larger commitment to fully eliminate anything that's not certified by 2015 would be the right thing to do to encourage our guests to make the right decisions," said Shawn Gensch, vice president of marketing for Target's sustainability initiatives.

Target is partnering with the nonprofit marine conservation group FishWise to reach its sustainability goals. According to FishWise executive director Tobias Aguirre, the group will assess all Target seafood products with vendor surveys to understand how the seafood is caught or farmed and will evaluate the environmental impacts associated with each product.

Aguirre said the fish species with the largest such impacts include big eye tuna caught with 50-mile fishing lines that snag high levels of unintended catch, including sharks, turtles and sea birds, and farm-raised shrimp that may have contact with natural bodies of water and spread disease.

Tracing Target's fish from the water to the store is likely to be more difficult because "there is no national traceability policy and the seafood supply chains are incredibly complex," Aguirre said. Supplier audits and a tracking system are among the tools FishWise plans to implement in partnership with Target.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not currently have a seafood tracking database. Just 2% of the seafood eaten in the United States is inspected, according to a seafood fraud report issued earlier this year by the Washington, D.C.-based international ocean advocacy group, Oceana.

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-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: A steak is cut from the tail of an Atlantic blue fin tuna. Credit: Sachi Cunningham / Los Angeles Times

The sea runs deep in new biography of John Olguin, longtime director of the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium

John Olguin taught us to love the ocean.

Indeed, it was Olguin’s job to argue the case for protecting the sea as longtime director of the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro.

The ocean was central to his married life, too. All of their lives, Olguin and his wife, Muriel, slept under the stars -- rain or shine -- on a large bed on the porch of their San Pedro home, and awakened to the barks of sea lions and the calls of gull below.

Olguin, who in 1999 was named Citizen of the Century by the Los Angeles Times, died in January at the age of 89.

His authorized biography, An Ocean of Inspiration: The John Olguin Story, from Rocky Mountain Books of Surrey, B.C., Canada, casts a warm and intimate eye on his remarkable life. It was co-writtenby three close friends and colleagues: Stefan E. Harzen, chairman and chief executive of The Taras
Oceanographic Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to marine mammal conservation; marine mammal researcher Barbara J. Brunnick;and Mike Schaadt, the current director of the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium.

Their research for this chronicle, which was launched a decade before Olguin died, was driven by great admiration and begins when he was born to an impoverished Mexican family in San Pedro.

"We had access to his archives and photographs," Harzen said. "He was an extremely hard worker, and had a wonderful view of the world in the sense that he tried hard to understand the really important things in life -- and reached out to share what he had learned with others."

Olguin worked as a lifeguard in 1937, at 16, and graduated from San Pedro High School in 1941. He won a Silver Star while in the Army from 1942 to 1945, serving in New Guinea, the Philippines and Japan.

He went on to organize the world’s first commercial whale-watching program for children in 1971 and presided over grunion watches in which thousands of onlookers dashed to the beach fronting the aquarium to witness the reproductive mayhem of the silvery, slender fish riding in on the swells to mate on the sand.

He found the love of his life in Muriel. The couple stayed fit by rowing 24 miles from San Pedro to Santa Catalina Island in a little boat packed with a thermos of coffee, warm clothes, sleeping bags, their little poodle, Pico, and his guitar. They also carried flares and a battery-powered light to row at night.

Their vibrancy, passion and influence come to life in these pages: “The couple ventured out to sea: pulling the oars -- not hard, just steady -- and leaning back to use their own weight to draw through the water. That’s what got them the mileage. As John used to say, “Five miles to a peanut butter sandwich!”

The book is scheduled for release on Oct. 16, and will be available at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, 3720 Stephen M. White Drive, San Pedro, and at Williams Bookstore, 443 W. 6th St., San Pedro.

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Photo: John Olguin. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Agency overseeing oil, gas exploration gets shakeup

 
The Obama administration fulfilled a vow made just after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to reorganize and revamp the beleaguered agency that oversees the domestic offshore oil and gas exploration and production.

The April 20, 2010, Macondo well blowout killed 11 men and spewed nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the ocean. It also revealed that the Interior Department agency tasked with managing the vast offshore energy sector, the Minerals Management Service, was plagued by conflicts of interest, inadequate resources and weak regulations.

The administration swiftly did away with MMS after the gulf oil disaster to create an interim agency. On Saturday, with the restructuring completed, two new agencies are set to emerge: the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which would regulate the leasing of offshore blocks for energy development, and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), which would be responsible for the permitting and inspections of offshore oil and gas projects.

A year ago, the Interior Department created an independent unit that collects royalties from the oil and gas production. Michael Bromwich, who oversaw the interim agency that followed MMS, will continue as interim director of BSEE until a permanent director is found.

Several candidates for the directorship have turned away the administration’s overtures because of the political fights they knew they would have to endure, Bromwich said at a meeting with the media Friday.

The Interior Department has come under withering political criticism from congressional Republicans and representatives from the Gulf Coast and Alaska for allegedly moving too slowly to grant drilling permits. Recently, Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) compared ocean energy employees in the Interior Department’s New Orleans office to the Gestapo because they could not meet with him on an unannounced visit.

Tommy Beaudreau was named as the director of BOEM. An Alaskan whose father worked in the state’s oil industry, Beaudreau was a partner with Bromwich at a Washington law firm before going with him to MMS shortly after the well blowout. Industry officials and environmentalists have said Beaudreau was the architect behind many of the sweeping changes to the old agency.

The agencies are certain to be buffeted by proponents and opponents alike of offshore oil and gas development. Next week, the Republican-led House Natural Resources Committee, an ardent critic of the Obama administration’s offshore policies, is scheduled to hold a hearing on a federal report that investigates the causes of the blowout and rig explosion.

Earlier this week, environmentalists filed a lawsuit to block the Interior Department’s conditional approval of Royal Dutch Shell’s plan to drill in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska.

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-- Neela Banerjee in Washington

File: Boats skim oil and then ignite oil collected on the surface of the water as crews work in July 2010 to clean up the massive oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

Heal the Bay: Long Beach water quality improves dramatically

The waters off Long Beach -- long among the most contaminated in the state -- have improved dramatically in the last year, according to a new report that gives the city's beaches their highest water-quality ratings in a decade.

All the beaches in the city earned grades of A or B in the environmental group Heal the Bay’s End of Summer Beach Report Card.

Statewide, 92% of California beaches earned A or B grades this year, the same as last year, according to the report.

But the picture was not rosy at some Southern California beaches.

Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro earned an F for the eighth consecutive summer despite millions of dollars spent on municipal projects to improve water quality.

Also flunking were a number of popular beaches in Malibu, including Surfrider Beach, Malibu Pier, Solstice Canyon at Dan Blocker County Beach, Carbon Beach at Sweetwater Canyon and Topanga State Beach.

The annual report by Heal the Bay evaluated hundreds of beaches in California, Oregon and Washington from Memorial Day to Labor Day, giving them grades based on tests for bacterial pollution, which indicate how likely the water is to make swimmers sick.

Read the full story.

-- Tony Barboza

Photo: The Los Angeles River cascades under the Anaheim Street bridge on its way to Long Beach Harbor. Credit: Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times

$44.4-million settlement reached in San Francisco Bay oil spill

Local, state and federal officials on Monday announced a $44.4-million civil settlement with the owners and operators of a container ship that spilled 53,000 gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay after striking a tower of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in heavy morning fog.

The 2007 spill killed thousands of birds, damaged the bay’s herring spawn, sullied miles of coastal habitat and closed regional waters and beaches to fishing and recreation.

"This bay is the jewel of the San Francisco region and the Cosco Busan oil spill left a lasting scar across our water, natural habitats and wildlife," California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris said in a statement. "This settlement will allow all of these precious resources to be restored to their original health and beauty."

The settlement comes in the form of a U.S. Justice Department consent decree negotiated with Regal Stone Limited and Fleet Management Ltd., the owners and operators of the M/V Cosco Busan. The state, the city and county of San Francisco and the city of Richmond also are parties to the decree.

The settlement includes funds for natural resource restoration, penalties and reimbursement to governmental entities for spill response costs.

Arctic ice shrinks to near-record low

A blistering summer melted Arctic sea ice to near-record lows, and scientists say two more weeks of high temperatures could bring ice coverage in the polar region to the lowest since satellite measurements were first taken in 1979.

That's the grim assessment released Thursday by the National Climatic Data Center, which also calculated that last month's global temperatures amounted to the eighth-warmest August on record. Federal forecasters predicted a return to La Nina conditions, bringing slightly drier and warmer weather to much of the country.

The sea ice melt in August was the second most extensive, and with a few more weeks left of melting it's possible that the record lows of 2007 could be matched, according to Jake Crouch, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Heat and aridity records were bested across the United States this summer where every state except North Dakota and Vermont reported at least one day of 100-degree readings. Texas was the hardest hit: 88 of 92 days of summer exceeded 100 degrees in Wichita Falls.

Texas state climatologist John  Nielsen-Gammon said an average of 10 inches of rain has fallen across the state in the last 11 months. If Texas does not receive 3-1/2 inches of rain in the next two weeks, 2011 will go in the record books as the state's driest ever.

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-- Julie Cart

Photo: From 3,000 to 4,000 walruses died in stampedes on the Russian side of the Chukchi Sea in 2007, after they were stranded on land due to a lack of sea ice. Credit: Anatoly A. Kochnev / Pacific Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography