There was a time when people only said “fracking” to avoid using a more objectionable word. Now it can be found in national headlines, and if it’s no longer a curse word, it is proving to be a serious new environmental curse.

Fracking is shorthand for hydraulic fracturing, a rapidly growing method for extracting oil and natural gas that may (or may not) have deadly consequences. Energy companies inject a mixture of water, sand and assorted chemicals — often including diesel fuel — at high pressure into underground wells, cracking open rock formations that would otherwise trap the valuable fossil fuels. Because this was a relatively uncommon practice until recently, oil lobbyists have been extremely successful in exempting hydraulic fracturing from many of the federal regulations that govern the release of dangerous chemicals into the environment. Today natural gas extraction is soaring and so is the practice of fracking, and the public is taking notice. It’s about time.

The worry is that the chemicals used in fracking, sometimes including the carcinogen benzene, are contaminating water supplies. No one has conclusively demonstrated such contamination, but then there has been shockingly little study of the issue — and considerable evidence that political interference has discouraged regulators from thoroughly examining it. Environmental Protection Agency insiders charge that a 2004 agency study of fracking, which found that the practice posed little threat to drinking water, was seriously flawed as a result of pressure from the Bush administration and industry. The EPA is working on a new study due next year.

Complicating efforts to understand the impact of fracking is that there is no federal rule forcing oil companies to disclose what chemicals they’re using. So states — including California — are taking action.

AB 591 from Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont) would require companies to disclose the chemicals injected into wells, which would be posted on a state website. It’s patterned on a similar bill in Texas that’s considered by environmental groups to be a national model, though the California version goes further. Industry officials are opposing the bill because, unlike the one in Texas (and similar disclosure requirements approved in such states as Arkansas, Wyoming and Colorado), it doesn’t allow companies to withhold information considered trade secrets.

Requiring disclosure of potentially deadly chemicals released into the environment is an extremely modest step (indeed, it should be a federal responsibility). We understand the need to protect trade secrets, and wouldn’t object if Wieckowski’s bill were amended to afford the disclosure protections typically granted to polluters in California. But this bill is too important to be overlooked by our distracted Legislature.

from our friends at the LA Times

Bees partly loaded with pollen return to their hive. (Frank Rumpenhorst, AFP/Getty Images / May 6, 2011)

The buzzing swarms may seem scary, but we humans—and our vegetables and flowers—couldn’t get along without them

I’ve grown accustomed to the bugs that flit around my desk at home while I write. They’re the buddies of my office mate, a puppy who naps straddling the doggy door, with his head propping open the plastic flap to outside.

That’s an open invitation to insects sweltering in our Valley backyard. Rio spends entire afternoons chasing down the flies that venture inside.

But Rio didn’t know what to make of the buzzing that greeted us on the hottest afternoon of the year last week.

Bees. Lots of bees. In the hallway, the bathroom, the office; moving as if they were in a stupor, hovering in the air while I swatted them down.

They milled against the windows and patio doors, and for each one I killed, two more seemed to show up.

I flung open the door to the garage, bent on getting the insect spray, and felt like I’d stumbled into a horror movie: swarms of bees, hundreds it seemed, buzzed frantically just above my head, in the corner near my water heater.

I did what any reasonable person would do: slammed the door shut, ran to computer and Googled “bee removal San Fernando Valley.”

I’m an animal lover and a green-leaning gal, but still I was surprised by what I saw online. There were a couple of “extermination” offers, but most listings sounded like the work of “Wild Kingdom” supporters.

“Saving bees is our business,” said one. “Don’t kill those bees!” urged another. “Bee removal and relocation,” most promised. “We save and remove hives.”

I wasn’t trying to relocate the little buggers. I just wanted them out of my garage.

I called the outfit that offered “emergency service at no extra charge.” A bee removal expert would be at my door at sunrise, he promised. In the meantime, he warned, don’t open that door. (As if!)

I expected an oddball guy in bee-keeping garb — a hood, long sleeves, some sort of Ghostbuster equipment to smoke them out. Instead I got Max, a chatty young man in a tank top and shorts, who’d been running from call to call.

Bee removal firms are working overtime now, because bees are as busy as … well, bees. Pollination demands soar in the spring, so bee colonies split up and spread out, searching en masse for new homes.

Seeking refuge from the heat — high temperatures melt the honey they make — bees love building inside of chimneys and walls. They’ll find a quarter-inch hole and make a beeline for it. Once they mark a space in your home with their pheromones, you might as well hand them the deed to your property.

Getting rid of the family apidae isn’t easy or cheap. It can run into the thousands of dollars if walls have to come down and hives pulled out.

But why all the obsession with keeping bees safe?

Because humans couldn’t exist without bees. Those vegetables at the farmers’ market, the lemons on my backyard tree, the roses ringing my front lawn … all courtesy of pollination by bees.

“They kind of have a bad image,” said Al Edrisi, whose company Bee Friendly is one of the largest in California. They donate the hives they remove to local beekeeping operations.

“Anything that can sting you, hurt you, send you to the hospital, maybe possibly kill you … you can think of that as the enemy,” he said.

But when they swarm — like those bees in my garage — they’re not about to attack us, he said. They’re just protecting the queen inside. “They twirl around her, keeping her safe. Because if she’s damaged or injured or dies, the whole colony dissipates and fails.”

The queen is the colony’s mother. And the most crucial mission in bee removal is to save the queen from harm. “When we take a swarm we don’t get all the bees. Some are out collecting pollen or water.” When they come back and realize the hive is gone, they cluster up in the size of a baseball, attach themselves to a wall and stay there together until they die off.

“They can’t join another colony because they won’t be accepted,” Edrisi said. “There’s nothing we can do to save them. That’s the natural cycle of life”—and the collateral damage of ridding ourselves of something that’s both a necessity and a nuisance in human lives.

My garage apparently didn’t make the cut as a suitable place for a hive to set up. When Max walked in, there were no bees around. He peered inside the walls, poked through boxes, scoured the floor around the water heater where I’d spotted them.

I was beginning to wonder if I’d dreamed it all when he spotted a clump of dead and dying bees plastered against the windows on my garage door.

The bees I had seen probably were scouts, looking for a place to set up shop. They were buzzing around the top of my water heater because it offered shade, seclusion and water.

Some had made their way inside through tiny holes around the pipes. Then their instincts drew them toward the light; they’d popped out inside my home through gaps in my recessed lighting. He found no hive, no hidden bees. They’d probably moved on not long after I called.

The dozens of tiny bodies we found were bees that died trying to find a way out. “They flew toward the windows,” he said, “and exhausted themselves trying to get out.”

He reached down and plucked one from the floor. His voice took on that tone I use with my puppy. “C’mon, little guy.” It stirred, barely alive.

And I know that it’s irrational, but I felt guilty for wanting them gone.

from our friends at the LATimes

sandy.banks@latimes.com

Keep in mind that there’s a bit of stats tweaking going on here. ISAAA has calculated that total by adding together all areas of land cultivated with GM crops since their introduction in 1996. In 2009 current land under GM cultivation was 148 million hectares.

Brazil saw the fastest increase in GM crop adoption last year, but area under GM cultivation fell in Europe. Just joining the GM crowd in 2010 were Pakistan and Burma which both began planting GM cotton for the first time.

We’ve detailed pretty much every talking point on why GM crops aren’t the saviors of humanity that their manufacturers would like you to think they are dozens of times–from corporate control of crops, to subversion of millennia-old agricultural practice, to farmers suicides in developing nations, to the fact that crop yields aren’t nearly as good as claimed (often), to increased use of herbicides (more profit), potential health problems, etc etc etc.

by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY

from our allies at TreeHuggers.com

Genetifically Modified Alfalfa Officially On The Way

by Barry Estabrook

On Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the United State Department of Agriculture (USDA) had approved the unrestricted planting of genetically modified alfalfa sold by Monsanto Co. and Forge Genetics, despite protests from organic groups and public health advocates and comments from nearly 250,000 citizens asking the department to keep this GMO genie in its bottle. With this announcement, the Obama administration showed whose side it is on in the battle between proponents of sustainable, organic agriculture and the big businesses that profit from conventional, chemical agriculture. Big Ag won. It wasn’t even close.

“Thousands of people spoke out about this contamination,” Fantel said.
“They were ignored”

If you eat meat or dairy, you indirectly consume alfalfa. It is a leading source of hay for cattle. In terms of acreage, alfalfa is the United States’ fourth biggest crop behind corn, soybeans, and wheat. It is also notoriously promiscuous, and its pollen can be carried by bees and other insects for five miles, making it all but certain that the GMO crop, designed to survive applications of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, will contaminate much of the country’s conventional alfalfa. Because GMO products are not allowed in USDA-certified foods, it could become all but impossible to produce organic milk and meat in many areas unless organic farmers switch to less desirable sources of forage.

Earlier, the USDA said that it was weighing three options: (1) complete deregulation of GM alfalfa; (2) allowing it to be planted but requiring five-mile buffers between it and non-GM alfalfa; and (3) allowing unrestricted planting except in seed-growing regions to prevent contamination. Vilsack went for the first: the most Big-Ag-friendly choice.

“This is very disappointing,” said Will Fantle, co-director of the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute, an organic and small-farm watchdog group that is a plaintiff in a lawsuit brought against the USDA claiming that it did not take the required legal steps before originally approving GM alfalfa in 2007. “Tens of thousands of people spoke out against this contamination,” Fantle said. “They were completely ignored. It looks like the biotech industry has all the political power.”

“This creates a perplexing situation when the market calls for a supply of crops free of genetic engineering,” said Christine Bushway, Executive Director and CEO of theOrganic Trade Association in a press release. “The organic standards prohibit the use of genetic engineering, and consumers will not tolerate the accidental presence of genetic engineered materials in organic products, yet GE crops continue to proliferate unchecked.”

Widespread application of Roundup, Monsanto’s trade name for the weed-killing chemical called glyphosate, has already led to the proliferation of “superweeds” that have mutated and can survive applications of the chemical. Currently, Australia ranks first in the world for weed resistance to herbicides. Speaking to a farmers’ group in January, Stephen Powles, a renowned resistance expert at the University of Western Australia, warned that the United States might overtake his country if present trends continue.

The Obama administration’s decision makes it all but certain that the dubious honor will soon be ours.

Full article available from our friends at Atlantic Monthly

Author:
John DeCock

Environmental Activist And Writer

There’s no reason for concern about the mass death of bees through Colony Collapse Disorder. No reason at all unless you happen to be a plant who relies on pollination or a living being who is planning to sustain life by eating food. If you don’t fall into either of those categories, you might want to increase your stock in German agribusiness giant Bayer. They’re making a ton of money selling a pesticide called Clothianidin, marketed under the upbeat friendly name “Pancho.” ¡Olé! ¡Qué veneno excepcional!

If you’re in one of the other categories, and I confess to being in at least one, you have some cause for concern. A document leaked on Wednesday disclosed that the Bush Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency approved use of this pesticide in spite of the fact that there was clear scientific evidence that it represented a serious threat to bees. It has been in use since 2003, used broadly to treat corn. Agribusiness conglomerates have blanketed the midwest with corn monoculture over nearly 100 million acres. That’s a lot of bee poison.

Clothianidin is in a family of pesticides called “neonicotinoids”. This means the pesticide is used to treat seeds. The neonicotinoids are then transferred into the pollen where they kill pests, including the pollenators.

Bayer was granted “conditional registration” by the EPA and given a deadline of December 2004 to complete a study addressing the toxic effects of Clothianidan on bees. This meant they were free to market their product widely and this is exactly what they did. The use of the pesticide became pervasive and began having real world impact in the first growing season of its use.

Bayer applied for and was granted an extended deadline. Sales of Clothianidin continued and increased. When the final study was delivered in 2007, it was a complete joke, a poorly controlled and invalid study by any reasonable standard of scientific method. However, on the basis of this study, the pesticide was given full registration. Pancho continued to poison the bee population at ever-increasing levels.

Enter the Obama administration and a new and better era for the EPA under Lisa Jackson. Two scientists from the EPA Environmental Fate and Effects Division (EFED), Michael Barret and Joseph DeCant, issued a memo, leaked to Colorado Beekeeper Tom Theobald, on November 3, which documented the serious dangers of the pesticide to bee populations, stating:

Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct… risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.

In spite of this assessment, Clothianidin has retained its registration and is going to be available for the spring planting season in the United States unless the EPA reverses itself. Several European countries have withdrawn registration in response to the weight of scientific evidence of harm to bee colonies.

You can take action on this issue by signing a petition to demand that the EPA withdraw registration for Clothianidin. Expressing your concerns directly to Administrator Lisa Jackson is also important.

We will live with the effects of the Bush Administration’s deference to corporate profits over the public good for many generations in many ways. Wherever we have the chance to right one of these wrongs, we need to push the big, clumsy mechanisms of government to grind forward and do the right thing.

from our friends at Huffington Post

Follow John DeCock on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jdecock

Minefields or Coalfields: Should Big Coal Change Name For Mountaintop Removal/Strip Mining?

In a new episode of Big Coal Gone Wild last week, coal lobbyists announced their intentions to rebrand mountaintop removal mining as “mountaintop development.” For besieged residents living near mountaintop removal sites in Appalachia — and in the 20-odd states that allow strip-mining — this announcement has triggered another name suggestion: Given that millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives are detonated daily near historic American communities, should Big Coal-controlled areas be renamed as “minefields,” and not coalfields. Check out this typical detonation of one of our American mountains — in West Virginia, among over 500 that have been blown to bits to reach thin seams of coal — and decide:

(blasting footage by Chad Stevens)

Minefields is an apt name, in fact.

Notwithstanding the fact that an estimated 50-60 percent of the coal mining jobs have been eliminated by the shift to highly mechanized and explosive strip mining operations in the last 25 years, local economies have been left in ruin, and nearly 1.2 million acres of hardwood forests and adjacent settlements have been completely wiped by out the reckless mining operations, Rob Perks at the Natural Resources Defense Council notes:

NRDC’s recent analysis found that the industry’s promise of reclaiming flat land for economic development is a big, flat lie. Our study — “Reclamation FAIL” — revealed that of the 1.2 million acres, including 500 mountains, that have been demolished by coal companies in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee, over 89% of sites have no post-mining development.

Coal Tattoo journalist Ken Ward examined the veracity of mining industry claims this week.

Nearly a hundred years ago, a US soldier had a better chance of surviving in the fields of combat than a miner in West Virginia — over 104,000 coal miners have died in accidents and disasters, and an estimated 200,000 coal miners have died from black lung disease.

At a hearing last week in West Virginia, hundreds of citizens appealed to a new judicial panel to recognize the deleterious impact of coal slurry contamination of their drinking water.

Across the strip mined fields today, from Wyoming to Illinois to West Virginia, showers of toxic silica and coal dust, fly rock, and thunderous blasting have turned communities into minefields of unthinkable levels of destruction.

from our friends at Huffington Post

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
One of the most important political and economic thinkers of our time, this Canadian journalist and author (The Shock Doctrine and No Logo) penetrates the veils of corporate globalization to expose transnational capital’s most ruthless strategies yet to exploit catastrophe from Baghdad to New Orleans. She portrays her vision of how people’s movements can counter the disaster of disaster capitalism.

28mn

from our friends at Bioneers.org

‘We have never seen anything like this,’ chief researcher says

A close up of one of the impacted corals. A small amount of apparently living tissue on the tips of some branches is orange. Most of the skeleton is bare or covered by brown flocculent material.

Scientists returning from an expedition off the Gulf Coast said Friday they found dead and dying deepwater coral near the BP oil spill site that was covered in a brown substance.

“The compelling evidence that we collected constitutes a smoking gun” that the substance is tied to the BP spill, the chief researcher on the cruise, Penn State biologist Charles Fisher, said in a statement Friday.

“We have never seen anything like this,” he added. “The visual data for recent and ongoing death are crystal clear and consistent over at least 30 colonies; the site is close to the Deepwater Horizon; the research site is at the right depth and direction to have been impacted by a deep-water plume, based on NOAA models and empirical data; and the impact was detected only a few months after the spill was contained.”

“These kinds of coral are normally beautiful, brightly colored,” Fisher said. “What you saw was a field of brown corals with exposed skeleton — white, brittle stars tightly wound around the skeleton, not waving their arms like they usually do.”

Fisher described the soft and hard coral they found seven miles southwest of the well as an underwater graveyard. He said oil probably passed over the coral and killed it.

The coral has “been dying for months,” he said. “What we are looking at is a combination of dead gooey tissues and sediment. Gunk is a good word for what it is.”
The researchers found the evidence at a site 4,600 feet deep.
“Ninety percent of 40 large corals were heavily affected and showed dead and dying parts and discoloration,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement. NOAA sponsored the cruise. “Another site 400 meters (1,200 feet) away had a colony of stony coral similarly affected and partially covered with a similar brown substance.”

One of the impacted corals with attached brittle starfish. Although the orange tips on some branches of the coral is the color of living tissue, it is unlikely that any living tissue remains on this animal.

NOAA Chief Jane Lubchenco said she was concerned about “impacts to marine life in places in the Gulf that are not easily seen.”

For the government, the findings were a departure from earlier statements. Until now, federal teams have painted relatively rosy pictures about the spill’s effect on the sea and its ecosystem, saying they had not found any damage on the ocean floor.

In early August, a federal report said that nearly 70 percent of the 170 million gallons of oil that gushed from the well into the sea had dissolved naturally, or was burned, skimmed, dispersed or captured, with almost nothing left to see — at least on top of the water. The report was blasted by scientists.

Still, NOAA stopped short of attributing the substance to oil from the spill, or to the chemical dispersants used to break up some of the oil.

“Further testing will also determine if the substance is oil, and if so, whether it is consistent with the release from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,” NOAA said.
The researchers from government and academia worked off a ship that had a remotely operated vehicle that took samples and photographs. The ship returned to port on Thursday after three weeks at sea.

Eric Cordes, a Temple University marine scientist on the expedition, said his colleagues have identified about 25 other sites in the vicinity of the well where similar damage may have occurred. An expedition is planned for next month to explore those sites.

When coral is threatened, its first reaction is to release large amounts of mucus, “and anything drifting by in the water column would get bound up in this mucus,” Cordes said. “And that is what this (brown) substance would be: A variety of things bound up in the mucus.”

Ocean Conservancy, a group that had worked on the Exxon Valdez oil spill restoration efforts, urged the Obama administration to constantly and consistently monitor the subsea areas around the BP site.

“The deep sea coral damage that has been identified by federal scientists is another reminder that the governments must vigorously explore all possible injury from this oil disaster and seek appropriate compensation in support of Gulf restoration,” Stan Senner, Ocean Conservancy’s director of conservation science, said in a statement.

“The Gulf of Mexico is a special place, providing the nation with food, jobs, and a unique way of life,” he added. “Measuring its full impact will take years, and fully restoring the Gulf will take decades.”

A Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force ordered by President Barack Obama last month will have its first public meeting on Monday. Made up of federal and state agencies, it is headed by Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Coral is essential to the Gulf because it provides a habitat for fish and other organisms such as snails and crabs, making any large-scale death of coral a problem for many species. It might need years, or even decades, to grow back.

“It’s cold on the bottom, and things don’t grow as quickly,” said Paul Montagna, a marine scientist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. He was not on the expedition.

Montagna said the affected area is so large, and scientists’ ability to explore it with underwater robots so limited that “we’ll never be able to see everything that happened down there.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Thanks to our friends at msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 11/5/2010

About the film

“The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudia Arabia of natural gas” just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.”

• 1-7 million gallons of water per fracturing [fracking]
• over 590 chemicals pressured into each well
• Oil and Gas industry Exempt [in 2005] from Clean Air Act & Clean Water Act +++

A film by Josh Fox.

from our friends at:
gas land the movie

Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society.

from our friends at theRSA.org

by our friends at CognitveMedia

Dave Letterman thanks Bill McKibben, “…for scaring the crap out of me..”

For the last three days, I’ve been sitting at my kitchen table in California cranking out press releases, calling reporters, and generally playing “pit crew” for Bill and our Put Solar On It road trip. It’s been a great ride: tens of thousands of people have shown their support for putting solar back on the White House, the crew had great stops in Boston, New York, and D.C., and we managed to secure a meeting with the Administration to discuss putting solar back on the roof.

As we expected (but secretly hoped wouldn’t be the case), the White House didn’t commit to … well, anything. We tossed them a big, fat soft ball to hit out of the park and they just watched it float on by.

That’s too bad. But it’s also a great reminder of who the real leaders are. As Joe put it, if the President can’t climb up on the roof and hammer in some solar panels, clearly we need to push him up.

That’s exactly what we’re going to do on 10/10/10. There are actions all around the world where people are putting up solar panels and finding other ways to get to work on climate solutions. In the Maldives, President Nasheed will be on his roof top putting in a set of panels donated by our friends at Sungevity. In Zimbabwe, students will trek out to a rural hospital to install a solar panel there. In thousands upon thousands of communities, we’ll be showing our so-called leaders what leadership really looks like.

…for more

from our friends at lateshowaudience.com

also from out allies at 350.org

An international team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope reports a significant brightening of the emissions from Supernova 1987A. The results, which appear in this week’s Science magazine, are consistent with theoretical predictions about how supernovae interact with their immediate galactic environment.

The team observed the supernova remnant in optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared light. They studied the interaction between the ejecta from the stellar explosion and a glowing 6-trillion-mile-diameter ring of gas encircling the supernova remnant. The gas ring was probably shed some 20,000 years before the supernova exploded. Shock waves resulting from the impact of the ejecta onto the ring have brightened 30 to 40 pearl-like “hot spots” in the ring. These blobs likely will grow and merge together in the coming years to form a continuous, glowing circle.

“We are seeing the effect a supernova can have in the surrounding galaxy, including how the energy deposited by these stellar explosions changes the dynamics and chemistry of the environment,” said University of Colorado at Boulder Research Associate Kevin France of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy. “We can use these new data to understand how supernova processes regulate the evolution of galaxies.”

Discovered in 1987, Supernova 1987A is the closest exploding star to Earth to be detected since 1604 and it resides in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy adjacent to our own Milky Way Galaxy.

from our friends at Hubble Site

Woe, 6 trillion miles wide in a ‘dwarf galaxy’!
TTMG

Health testing way down at California beaches

The monitoring is at its lowest level since becoming law more than a decade ago, putting swimmers, surfers and divers at greater risk of exposure to contaminated water, a Times investigation shows.

By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times

August 30, 2010

Health testing of California’s beaches has slumped to its lowest level since ocean monitoring became law more than a decade ago, putting swimmers, surfers and divers at greater risk of exposure to contaminated water, a Times investigation has found.

Beaches from San Diego to the Bay Area are being tested less often and in fewer locations; some are going untested for months at a time. Statewide, the number of annual tests for bacteria has dropped by nearly half since 2005, according to a Times analysis of state records.

Beach closures and advisories have also fallen dramatically — in part because there’s less pollution, but also because health officials aren’t detecting the dirty water that remains.

At calm, sheltered Baby Beach in Dana Point, which attracts parents with young children but also traps contaminated runoff, health officials did not test for five months earlier this year.

In Long Beach, home to some of the most polluted ocean water in the state, 40% of beach sites are no longer being tested, city officials said. State records show that testing at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro is down 80% and 65% in Santa Monica. At San Onofre State Beach at the northern edge of San Diego County, water at the legendary Trestles surf break was tested only four times last year, down from nearly 70 times in 2005.

The culprit is a familiar one: state and county budget cuts. In 2008, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the $1 million the state had provided each year to test hundreds of beaches for bacteria. Since then, emergency bond funds and stimulus dollars have been tapped to keep the testing program afloat, but the money is expected to evaporate by year’s end.

Overall, water quality at the region’s beaches is almost certainly better than it was in the past, experts say. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to divert and treat runoff and wastewater before it washes into the ocean. Drought conditions have also reduced the amount of runoff reaching the ocean.

Nonetheless, clean-water advocates say the cutbacks have put people at risk. Those who swim in contaminated water are exposed to gastrointestinal viruses and to pathogens that can cause skin rashes and ear, eye and staph infections. Swimmers are most likely to get sick in poor-circulating water near river mouths and sewer outfalls, especially after rain.

“Water quality absolutely has gotten better during the summer months,” said Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay. “But the reality is that less frequent monitoring means there’s a much greater chance of someone swimming or surfing in polluted water unknowingly.”

Tourism officials have also expressed concern. They say the cost to monitor beaches is inconsequential compared with the estimated $12 billion in tourist-related revenue California beach towns generate each year.

“California’s coastline is one of our biggest assets as a travel destination,” said Kathryn Burnside, a spokeswoman for the California Travel and Tourism Commission. “What makes sense from a health perspective certainly makes sense for the tourism industry.”

Health and wastewater agencies responsible for beach testing defend the scaled-back monitoring as adequate. Some officials said the amount of testing has been underreported, while others acknowledged severe cutbacks.

Schwarzenegger’s office said the state has continued funding beach water monitoring at a 90% level despite budget difficulties.

“It is not immediately clear why the number of tests taken by counties have declined this much,” spokeswoman Rachel Arrezola said in a written statement. She said the Department of Public Health and the State Water Board are investigating the reason for the declines while they search for a permanent funding source for future testing.

Los Angeles County health officials said their own testing has remained constant and disputed the state’s records for the county’s coastline.

“We continue to do the tests weekly, and we’re not doing less sampling because we don’t have money,” said Alfonso Medina, director of the county’s Environmental Protection Bureau. However, other agencies that test some of the county’s beaches may have cut back.

Public health officials say they are unable to gauge if reduced testing has caused more swimmers to get sick. Cases are rarely reported because they mimic ailments such as food poisoning or stomach flu.

The number of beaches in California closed by health officials has fallen 74% since 2005, The Times found. Postings, which alert swimmers to contaminated water, dropped 44%. State and local officials do not know how much of that decline is attributable to cleaner water and how much to less testing. Many beachgoers, however, assume that the lack of signs means the water is clean.

“If there isn’t a sign posted, I kind of assume it’s safe,” said Susan Thomas, who takes her 16-month-old daughter, MaKenzie, to the beach every other weekend. “We’re obviously taking a risk going into the water anywhere along this coast, but when she swims, she goes under.”

The beach where Thomas spoke, Baby Beach in Dana Point, was busy on a balmy afternoon earlier this month. Dozens of children and their parents splashed in a shallow, roped-off swimming area as a lifeguard watched from a tower nearby.

Historically, the beach has been one of the region’s dirtiest, sliding by with C’s and D’s on Heal the Bay’s annual beach report card. And yet health monitoring at Baby Beach and 38 other beaches in Orange County — including Little Corona in Newport Beach and Main Beach in Laguna — shut down for five months during the winter for lack of funds.

California’s pioneering 1999 law requires health officials to test at least once a week during the long summer beach season. If a beach fails, lifeguards post signs alerting swimmers to the risk. Congress used the law as its national model, and many Southern California beaches expanded to year-round, almost daily testing earlier this decade.

But the California law has a loophole: Testing isn’t required if the program is not fully funded. Without money from Sacramento, health agencies can cut testing or choose not to report results without violating the law, something state officials suspect is contributing to the declining numbers.

In Ventura County, the loss of state funds meant that monitoring of its 42-mile coastline was halted for eight months in November 2008.

“Once the money went away, there was no mandate to sample, so we suspended sampling,” said program coordinator Richard Hauge.

In some coastal areas, nonprofits are taking up the slack as government agencies cut back.

When Santa Barbara County reduced funding for year-round beach testing two years ago, the nonprofit Santa Barbara Channelkeeper raised money to pay interns to collect the water samples at 16 beaches through the winter, when the bigger waves draw more surfers.

Other places, such as Orange County, are collaborating more with sanitation districts, which are required to test ocean water as part of their license to discharge wastewater from sewage treatment plants.

And in San Diego County, which had to drop its monitoring program for half a year last winter, health officials have begun more frequent testing at pollution-prone coastlines, such as Torrey Pines State Beach.

Even with those assists, however, there is less information available for surfers and swimmers like Barry Gardner, a ninth-grade health teacher from Yorba Linda who takes half a dozen surf camping trips a year.

He’s wary of spending too much time in dirty ocean water and avoids a section of Doheny State Beach known as “Dead Bird Cove” because of its supposed toxicity. But for the most part, he prefers to push his luck.

“If the surf is good, I’m going to go in the water,” he said. “But if you don’t know what’s in it, it’s tough.”

tony.barboza@latimes.com

Times staff writer Doug Smith and data analyst Sandra Poindexter contributed to this report.

from our friends at the LATimes.com

Toxic levels of oil found in gulf area crucial to fish

Researchers describe ‘a constellation’ of oil droplets mixed with sediment. Phytoplankton, the base of the marine food web, is found to be in poor health nearby.

“…feeling a toxic response to those waters…”

By Sara Kennedy, McClatchy Newspapers

August 18, 2010

St. Petersburg, Fla. — Scientists have found evidence that oil has become toxic to marine organisms in a section of the Gulf of Mexico that supports the spawning grounds of commercially important fish species.

Researchers from the University of South Florida said Tuesday that, in preliminary results, there appear to be droplets of oil among the sediments of a vital underwater canyon where clouds of oil from the BP spill were found.

“So, indeed, the waters have a level of toxicity that needs to be recognized, and I think these were some of the first indicators that the base of the food web — the bacteria and the phytoplankton — may be affected,” said David Hollander, chief scientist on a research vessel that just returned from a 10-day trip in the gulf.

More than 200 million gallons of oil leaked into gulf waters from BP’s broken well until it was capped last month. The company used millions of gallons of chemical dispersant to break up the oil as it gushed off the Louisiana coast.

Researchers peering into the murk described what they saw using a process involving ultraviolet light.

“We were able to detect sediments that had oil covering them,” said Hollander. “It wasn’t like a drape, don’t get me wrong, like a blanket of oil; rather, it looked like a constellation of stars that were at the scale of microdroplets. They seemed to be at every location we looked east of the wellhead, and interestingly and surprisingly, at the top of the DeSoto Canyon to the east.”

He described the DeSoto Canyon as an underwater geologic feature that is thought to bathe the Continental Shelf with nutrient-rich waters.

In subsurface waters east of the wellhead, phytoplankton — microscopic, plant-like organisms that form the base of the marine food web — was found to be in poor health, Hollander said.

In those locations, phytoplankton was repressed, or “feeling a toxic response to those waters,” he added.

———

from our friends a LATimes.com

BP Spill: Catastrophe, Sure. Disaster? Nah.

Why hasn’t a single Gulf governor asked Obama to declare the spill a federal disaster?

By Mac McClelland | Fri Aug. 13, 2010

Given the size and far-reaching devastation of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, you may have assumed that it qualifies as a federal disaster. Though you’d have been wrong, you wouldn’t have been alone. “I am shocked that the Stafford Act has not been used for a declaration of federal disaster,” says Mitchell Moss, disaster expert and professor of Urban Policy and Planning at New York University’s Wagner School. “This is exactly why we have this policy tool—to provide federal aid in this kind of crisis.” And that aid could be crucial to some coastal communities’ survival.

The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act is the US law by which a federally declared disaster triggers the financial and logistical support of FEMA in any event that state and local governments aren’t equipped to handle, from hurricanes to terrorist attacks to chemical spills. It’s invoked by the president, by the request of an affected state’s governor. Though the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida have all declared states of emergency, none has publicly requested the federal designation. (Eight days of calls to the office of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal—whose state got most of the washed-up oil—and to the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness didn’t turn up anyone who would comment on the issue.)

What difference would a federal disaster declaration make? FEMA could provide assistance to individuals, local organizations, and governments. For example, a FEMA spokeswoman explained to me, FEMA could step in and buy the food if a church that was running a food bank ran out of money to buy meals.

As it stands, “the only person responsible is BP, but BP doesn’t have any idea what response and recovery means from a human perspective,” says Tom Costanza, chair of the Greater New Orleans Disaster Recovery Partnership, a collaboration of 60 local organizations. BP is required to pay for certain environmental damages under a slew of federal laws—the Oil Pollution Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, and the Superfund statute. “But there’s no funding for human recovery.

Since May, Catholic Charities of New Orleans has been delivering more than $100,000 worth of emergency grocery and bill assistance; last week, the organization announced that it’s out of money [1]. “Right now we have people standing in food lines,” says Costanza. “If this were a federal disaster, we’d get disaster food stamps. We’d get disaster case management. Disaster mental health. Disaster unemployment.” The Stafford Act would also activate an interagency task force that includes the American Red Cross, which so far, Costanza says, “didn’t raise a dime. Neither did the Salvation Army.”

Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao (R-La.), whose district includes fishing communities from New Orleans, “has not pressed the case for the Gulf Coast to be declared a federal disaster because he feels strongly that BP, not taxpayers, should be held strictly accountable for the damage it has caused,” according to a spokesman. But Costanza points out that government assistance doesn’t have to preclude BP accountability: The Department of Labor sent $27 million [2] in support to affected Gulf workers and will bill BP for the cost; the federal government has collected tens of millions from the company for its spill-response expenses.

Regardless of who ultimately foots the bill, NYU’s Moss says the Stafford Act is the communities’ best chance for long-term assistance at a time when initial relief is running out. Next week, Catholic Charities is cutting services to St. Bernard Parish, many of whose residents are struggling [3] with the spill’s effects. Many local fisheries still aren’t open. BP is drawing down its cleanup operations [4], the only job many unemployed fishermen have been able to get. The Greater New Orleans Disaster Recovery Partnership has repeatedly asked BP for a $12 million grant to help continue emergency humanitarian services for the next several months, but has yet to get a response. “There’s no legislation that tells them what to do,” Costanza says.

The fate of the fishermen rendered unemployed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill suggests the devastation that can occur in the absence of federal aid. Victims were ultimately able to extract $1.1 billion in compensation from the company, but only after 19 years of litigation. “A lot of them are dead, or bankrupt, or divorced,” says Brian O’Neill, the lawyer who tried the case. “The impact of the spill on both the natural environment and their abilities to make a living resulted in huge social disruption in the fishing communities. There were increased rates of alcoholism, domestic violence. Whatever social services existed were unable to handle it. Some communities didn’t survive or are half the size they were in 1988. Whatever assistance BP is giving these people now, that will taper off drastically when this is off the front page.”

from our friends at MotherJones.com