Save salmon now, say Ex-Northwest governors

With just weeks to go before the Obama administration must weigh in on how best to save the dwindling stocks of wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, three ex-governors of Oregon, Washington and Idaho are urging abandonment of the business-as-usual plan hatched under former President George W. Bush.

The governors' letter joins a growing chorus of calls for a top-to-bottom new dialogue on salmon in the Columbia and Snake rivers. More than 20 federal lawmakers just signed on to a bill that would put all options, including removal of four dams on Idaho's Snake River, on the table in an effort to jump-start recovery before there are no salmon left to save.

"We believe your leadership now provides an opportunity to bring fishermen, farmers, energy users and communities together to make real progress on this issue after long years of contention," said the letter to President Obama, signed by John Kitzhaber of Oregon, Mike Lowry of Washington and Cecil D. Andrus of Idaho, the last of whom who is also a former secretary of the Interior.

The new administration has until Aug. 14 to review the biological opinions for recovery of 13 endangered or threatened runs of salmon and steelhead. U.S. District Judge James Redden, who has overseen much of the two decades of litigation on the issue, has already warned he may reject this plan too, if it doesn't look at all the science and at least consider the possibility of breaching the upstream dams.

Villagers sue to halt massive Pebble Mine above Bristol Bay

 

It has always been a match made in peril: One of the biggest copper and gold mines in the world perched in the watershed above Bristol Bay, the last, best refuge for millions of wild salmon in the Pacific.

The proposed Pebble Mine would dwarf all the other mines operating in the Alaskan wilderness and generate up to 9 billion tons of ore, most of which would have to be sifted and disposed of near the hills, streams and ponds that ultimately feed into Bristol Bay.

It would also generate hundreds of jobs in troubled southwest Alaska and up to $300 billion worth of copper and gold.

In an attempt to head off the project before it gets too big to stop, a coalition of Native Alaskan village corporations and others filed suit Download Suit this week in Anchorage, charging that the state of Alaska is violating its own constitution by allowing drilling and other exploration activities to proceed without full environmental review.

The mine would cover 15 square miles, with a 1,600-foot-deep open pit ranging 2 square miles. Early development proposals -- likely to be changed, as mine operators zero in on the location of the ore and refine their operating plans -- have called for holding the hazardous tailings behind a series of massive dams, one 740 feet high, the other 450 feet high. The exact plans won't be known until 2010 or 2011, when Pebble Partnership submits its development permit applications to the state.

Conservationists worry that waiting years for public hearings and a full Environmental Impact Statement is a mistake. By then, with millions of dollars expended in exploration, the mine will have acquired a political momentum against which even Alaska's powerful fishing industry could come up short.

Investigation of Sierra flood to be released Friday

On Friday, July 17, geologists will present the results of their investigation into last year’s massive flow of boulders and mud in the Eastern Sierra that destroyed 25 homes and wiped out the historic Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery along U.S. 395.

Triggered by intense rain, the debris flow last July 12 along the south fork of Oak Creek slashed through an area blackened by an earlier fire just north of Independence, the seat of sparsely populated Inyo County, about 170 miles north of Los Angeles.

It took weeks of work by Caltrans, the U.S. Forest Service, the state Department of Fish and Game and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to restore roads, irrigation ditches and structures inundated by mud.

The presentation on Friday will start at 6:30 p.m. at the Owens Valley School Multi-purpose Room, 202 Clay St. in Independence.

On Saturday morning, those who attended Friday’s lecture can join geologists David Wagner, Jon Stroh and Margie DeRose on a field trip into the Oak Creek drainage. For more information, contact the Eastern California Museum in Independence at (760) 878-0258, or David Wagner at (760) 878-0074.

-- Louis Sahagun

Photo: Debris flow near Independence, July 2008. Credit: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

California may crack down on poachers

California may be cracking down on poaching.

The state Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved AB 708, a bill that would set a mandatory minimum fine for some poaching violations, including hunting protected birds or hunting over the limit or out of season. The mandatory minimum fine for a first offense would be $5,000 for anyone illegally taking or trading amphibians, birds, fish, mammals or reptiles. The bill has already passed in the Assembly.

"Poaching is completely out of control in California," said Dan Taylor, director of public policy at Audubon California. Poaching violations rose to 17,840 in California in 2007, up from 6,538 in 2003. Fishing violations also rose from 8,001 in 2003 to 15,892 in 2007. Taylor said the current penalties are not strict enough to discourage people from poaching.

Cases of "extreme" poaching spiked in 2008, according to the California Department of Fish and Game. That year, a man in Gilroy was found with 335 dead birds, a Tuolumne County man was found with the scattered remains of an estimated 26 deer in his home, and two men in Monterey County were arrested for poaching 66 abalone.  

The bill weathered some adjustments in committee.  But Taylor said he remains "satisfied" and hopes it will pass the full Senate this summer. 

-- Amy Littlefield

Photo: Mallards are among the birds that have been affected by poaching in California. Credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Mussel plague on Lake Tahoe?

 

Conservationists believe an invasion may be coming that could change the ecology of Lake Tahoe forever.

Quagga and zebra mussels, which cluster onto boats, piers, old boots, beer cans, or anything else that lingers in the water, have infested lakes and reservoirs in California and across the West. A single quagga or zebra mussel lays 1 million eggs a year, so once one creature gets into the lake, "it's all over," said Michael Donahoe, conservation co-chair at the Tahoe Area Sierra Club. The mussels clog boat engines and gobble up fish food, and their razor-sharp shells can cut the feet of unsuspecting beachgoers. 

Conservation groups filed an injunction on Thursday against additional pier and boat ramp construction on the lake, saying that increased boating would drive up the number of potential hosts for the menacing mussels.

No quagga or zebra mussels have been spotted in the lake, said Sierra Club's Ron Grassi, a volunteer boat inspector. But Grassi said he believes a contaminated boat will likely get past inspectors this summer. The mussels latch onto boats, kayaks, wet suits, and other gear, so recreationists could unknowingly transport them.

Boat inspectors check motor boats at launch sites for the tiny larvae, but Grassi says illegal launchers and non-motorized boats escape inspection.

On the busy Fourth of July weekend, Grassi said Friday, boats are lining up 30-deep to get into the water at designated launch points.

Fearing the invasion, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power banned recreational watercraft on Klondike Lake in the Owens Valley in May.

But the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency is expanding the lake's boating capacity by permitting the construction of 128 private piers and six boat ramps as part of the Shorezone ordinance passed in October  2008. 

-- Amy Littlefield

Photo: A paddle steamer carries tourists across Lake Tahoe's Emerald Bay. Credit: Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times

If salmon can't be saved, Snake River dams may have to go

For years, the federal government has struggled to find a way to operate the massive hydropower system on the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Pacific Northwest--and also try to recover the endangered salmon that are all-too-frequently slaughtered at the massive dams as they make their way up and down the river.

One option for saving the fish has never really been on the table: breaching the four dams on the lower Snake River that stand between the salmon and millions of acres of pristine habitat in central Idaho and northeastern Oregon.

President George W. Bush made it clear it would never be an option on his watch. The dams, after all, are generating enough electricity to power Seattle, and provide Lewiston, Idaho, with a port for barging valuable cargoes of grain 140 miles down the river.

But it's a new watch. And a federal judge in Oregon has signaled that breaching the Snake River dams needs to be considered, at least as a contingency plan, if other options for bringing back salmon fail to do the job.

In a letter to parties in the long-running litigation, U.S. District Judge James A. Redden made it clear he is ready to find substantial shortcomings in the biological opinion for salmon recovery laid out by the Bush administration last year.

"Federal defendants have spent the better part of the last decade treading water, and avoiding their obligations under the Endangered Species Act. Only recently have they begun to commit the kind of financial and political capital necessary to save these threatened and endangered species, some of which are on the brink of extinction. We simply cannot afford to waste another decade," the judge wrote.

Alaska gold mine agrees to pay more than $800,000 for storm runoff

The remote town of Nome, Alaska, has always depended on mining and has had to put up with the arsenic and mercury contamination that come along with it. But it got to be too much for many Nome residents last year when storm water thick with sediment pulsed into salmon-bearing streams. Now, operators of the Rock Creek Mine have agreed to pay $833,628 in civil penalties.

The fine is one of the biggest ever assessed in the Northwest over Clean Water Act violations, said Rob Grandinetti, compliance officer for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Toxic mine tailings weren't the issue. It was ordinary silt allowed to wash into creeks as a result of heavy rainfall during construction in 2007 and 2008, hundreds of times above levels permitted under state water quality standards.

"The construction at Rock Creek Mine resulted in virtually unchecked runoff of silt and sediment to important fish habitat," said Michelle Pirzadeh, EPA's acting regional administrator in Seattle.

Rock Creek Mine, expected to eventually produce 100,000 ounces of gold a year, closed in November when the operator, NovaGold Resources Inc., ran into trouble meeting environmental requirements, among other problems. The company has said it hopes to sell the mine or reopen it in 2010. Alaska's gold mining industry has boomed under elevated gold prices, but permitting and environmental problems have made the going tough for mine operators.

-- Kim Murphy

Photo: A bus carries workers into the Rock Creek Mine construction site in 2007. Credit: Al Grillo, Associated Press

Group says proposed nature center will destroy Whittier Narrows habitat

Opponents of a proposed $30-million interpretive center at the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary are ramping up their effort to block the project they fear would destroy a rare expanse of critical habitat in eastern Los Angeles County in order to enhance understanding of the San Gabriel River watershed.

The group Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area issued a five-page "media backgrounder" just weeks away from release of a draft environmental impact report on the proposal to build an 18,230-square-foot "discovery center" equipped with with interactive exhibits including a 7,000-square-foot model of the San Gabriel River featuring flowing water.

The proposed San Gabriel River Discovery Center would also offer an artificial wetlands in the heart of a region that was recently designated an "important bird area" by California Audubon.

The center "would destroy critical habitat, rob our diverse communities of open space, and shift focus away from firsthand experiences of nature," the backgrounder says. "And it would do so using public dollars to take public lands for a project the goals of which could be better served through less destructive and costly means."

The $14-million coho creek

The Nature Conservancy has bought 4,136 acres of Northern California ranch land to protect a short creek that could play an important role in reviving coho salmon stocks in the Klamath River Basin.

The private group paid $14.2 million for the grazing land, which lies between Weed and Yreka northwest of Mt. Shasta. The property is crossed by a 2.2-mile long, spring-fed stream that flows into the Shasta River, coho spawning grounds.

The spring water is an ideal temperature for coho, but it warms up in the summer with irrigation runoff. Cattle grazing has also altered the creek channel.

Henry Little, director of the conservancy's Klamath River Project, said the group might not eliminate all grazing on the land, called Shasta Big Springs Ranch, but it will fence off areas and change irrigation practices to restore stream habitat.

The group could later sell the ranch's conservation easement to the state or another nonprofit. But given the state's budget squeeze, that probably won't happen soon.

— Bettina Boxall

Photo: Shasta Big Springs Ranch. Credit: Cindy Diaz      

   

Congress to wilderness planners: Not so fast ...

Remember that omnibus public lands bill that would protect places such as Magic Mountain (no, not Six Flags, the former missile site in the San Gabriels) and help restore the San Joaquin River, among other things? The bill, S. 22, had passed the Senate and was back in the House of Representatives, which today put the skids on it.

There's plenty of support for it (282 to 144), just not the two-thirds majority required to push it forward the way it was introduced — with limited debate and no amendments allowed. No word yet on when and how it will be reintroduced.

— Geoffrey Mohan

Photo: The view from Magic Mountain. Credit: Brian Vander Brug