Conservation & Environment

Latest designation makes 60 percent of state coastal waters a no-dumping zone

BOSTON – August 5, 2010 – In time for the busiest boating weeks of the year, Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) Secretary Ian Bowles today announced that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved creation of a No Discharge Area (NDA), prohibiting the discharge of any treated or untreated boat sewage along the upper North Shore.
 
The designation prohibits the discharge of any treated or untreated waste in the new North Shore NDA, which encompasses the 176 square miles of state waters from Gloucester to the New Hampshire border, including the tidal portion of the Merrimack River up to the Essex Dam in Lawrence. After intensive efforts by the Patrick-Murray Administration, there are now 14 such areas along the Massachusetts coast. Only three areas of state coastal waters remain undesignated — Nantucket Sound, Mt. Hope Bay and the outer Cape from Chatham to Provincetown — and work is underway to create NDAs in these areas as well.
 
Secretary Bowles submitted the North Shore NDA application through the state's Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) on March 18, capping two years of extensive work by CZM and 16 communities to ensure that there are adequate waste pumpout facilities for boaters to use. The 16 communities are: Gloucester, Rockport, Essex, Ipswich, Rowley, Newbury, Newburyport, Salisbury, Amesbury, West Newbury, Merrimac, Groveland, North Andover, Haverhill, Methuen and Lawrence.
 
"This critical piece in the NDA puzzle gives us continuous no discharge coverage all the way from the New Hampshire border to the tip of Provincetown, 60 percent of state waters," said Secretary Bowles. "By keeping bacteria and pathogens from boat sewage out of these coastal waters, we are protecting valuable coastal habitat used by recreational boaters, swimmers and the commercial fishing industry."
 
"This is a major piece of the puzzle for Massachusetts to protect one of the last large areas of coastline from boat sewage," said Curt Spalding, regional administrator of EPA's New England Office. "EPA applauds all the communities across the Commonwealth and across New England, who have recognized that protecting and enhancing the health of our environment is closely linked to preserving vibrant and prosperous communities. Clean coastal water means more tourists visiting our towns and cities and supporting our economy. Clean coastal water on the Upper North Shore means great beach days, bountiful shellfisheries and a resilient economy."
 
With the designation of the North Shore NDA, nearly 60 percent of state waters are now no-dumping zones for boat sewage. NDAs cover Massachusetts coastal waters from New Hampshire to Provincetown (including Essex Bay, Boston Harbor, Salem Sound and Plymouth-Kingston-Duxbury Bay), Buzzards Bay, Waquoit Bay in Falmouth, Three Bays/Centerville Harbor in Barnstable, Chatham's Stage Harbor, Pleasant Bay and Nantucket waters from Muskeget Island to Great Point.
 
"Like all NDA designations, this was a team effort. Local, state and federal partners worked together to both protect these coastal waters and make it easy for boaters to properly dispose of sewage through convenient pumpout options," said Deerin Babb-Brott, EEA Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Coastal Zone Management and CZM Director. "I'd like to thank these 16 North Shore communities for their commitment to coastal water quality."
 
The North Shore NDA covers an area that supports over 5,600 recreational and commercial vessels. To comply with the no discharge designation, these vessels are required to use a holding tank for sewage and pump out at one of the 13 facilities in the region — eight pumpout boats (Gloucester, Rockport, Ipswich, Rowley, Newburyport, West Newbury and Salisbury harbormaster boats and the Cape Ann Marina boat in Gloucester) and five stationary facilities (Cape Ann Marina, Gloucester; Perley's Marina, Rowley; Riverfront Marina, Newbury; Cashman Park, Newburyport; and Marina at Hatter's Point, Amesbury).
 
“I am pleased with the EPA’s announcement to create a no discharge area in the Upper North Shore as it only adds to our efforts at the state level to protect our coastal waterways,” said Rep. Bill Straus, chairman of the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee. “The creation of a continuous no discharge area will go a long way in protecting one of our greatest natural resources.”
 
NDAs protect water quality and aquatic life from pathogens, nutrients and chemical products contained in discharged sewage and also reduce the risk of human illness, making it safer to swim, boat, fish and eat shellfish from protected waters. NDAs can also help reduce the growth of harmful algae that occurs due to high nutrient levels in sewage discharge and protect commercial clam fishing flats.

Under the Clean Water Act, a body of water can be designated an NDA if local, state and federal authorities determine that the area is ecologically and recreationally important enough to merit protection above and beyond that provided by existing state and federal laws. In Massachusetts, CZM works closely with communities and the EPA to establish NDAs as part of a comprehensive regional water quality approach.
 
The Upper North Shore NDA joins a growing list of protected state waters. The 13 previously designated NDAs include the following areas:
coastal waters of Pleasant Bay with waters in Harwich, Chatham, Orleans and Brewster;
coastal waters of Revere, Saugus, Lynn, Nahant and Swampscott, including the Pines and Saugus Rivers;
all of Cape Cod Bay;
Boston Harbor – the coastal waters of Winthrop, Chelsea, Everett, Boston, Quincy, Milton, Weymouth, Braintree, Hingham and Hull, including the Charles River in Watertown, Newton and Cambridge;
Salem Sound – the coastal waters of Manchester-by-the-Sea, Beverly, Danvers, Salem and Marblehead;
coastal waters of Cohasset, Scituate and Marshfield;
coastal waters of Plymouth, Kingston and Duxbury;
all of Buzzards Bay;
Waquoit Bay in Falmouth;
coastal waters of Harwich;
Three Bays/Centerville Harbor in Barnstable;
Stage Harbor in Chatham; and
coastal waters of Nantucket from Muskeget Island to Great Point, including Nantucket Harbor.

 

 

 

 

 

The White House announced Wednesday that a “vast majority” of the oil in the Gulf has dissipated or been collected, following the plugging of the BP Deepwater Horizon well — but environmental groups are skeptical.

As officials were monitoring a thus-far successful “static kill” of the undersea wellhead, the administration responded, ironically enough, with a leak to The New York Times: a new government analysis claiming that only 26 percent of the estimated 4.9 million-barrel spill still remains intact in the Gulf of Mexico.

Speaking before the AFL-CIO Wednesday, President Barack Obama called the developments “welcome news.”

Read the complete story from Politico.

 

 

 

 

 

The "greatest environmental disaster" in U.S. history — which has appeared at times to leave a high-control White House powerless — seemed to have lost its power to scare.

A few hours after BP's well was declared virtually dead, the Obama administration announced Wednesday that only about 26 percent of the oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico was unaccounted for.

"A significant amount of this," said Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "is a direct result of the very robust federal response efforts."

But, in interviews, scientists who worked on the report said the figures were based in large part on assumptions and estimates with a significant margin of error.

Read the completen story from the Washington Post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOUMA, La. – August 4, 2010 – For decades, the oil industry has lobbied regulators to let it use chemicals to stop spilled oil from washing ashore.

Following the April 20 explosion of a well owned by BP PLC, which dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the industry succeeded in using chemical dispersants on a broad scale.

But the question remains whether the industry's tactical success will come at an acceptable cost to the environment.

In the Gulf, the U.S. accepted dispersants as a cost-effective and reliable way to keep spilled oil off shorelines. The chemicals break the oil into tiny particles that drop below the water's surface, where natural bacteria can eat them. But dispersants present an environmental trade-off, putting oil in the path of organisms that live underwater.

Read the complete story from the Wall Street Journal.

 

 

 

 

 

WASHINGTON – August 4, 2010 – The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.

A government report finds that about 26 percent of the oil released from BP’s runaway well is still in the water or onshore in a form that could, in principle, cause new problems. But most is light sheen at the ocean surface or in a dispersed form below the surface, and federal scientists believe that it is breaking down rapidly in both places.

On Tuesday, BP began pumping drilling mud into the well in an attempt to seal it for good. Since the flow of oil was stopped with a cap on July 15, people on the Gulf Coast have been wondering if another shoe was going to drop — a huge underwater glob of oil emerging to damage more shorelines, for instance.

Read the complete story from the New York Times.

 

 

 

 

 

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – August 3, 2010 – Atka mackerel and Pacific cod fisheries in far western Alaska should close so that endangered sea lions can get enough to eat, government scientists said Monday.

A report by the National Marine Fisheries Service said current fishing practices don't appear to be affecting endangered whales but that is not the case with Steller sea lions, whose numbers have declined dramatically.

About 45,000 sea lions lived on the western Aleutian Islands in 2008, compared with perhaps 250,000 in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were listed as endangered in 1997 under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Fishermen harvest more than 4 billion pounds of fish from the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska each year. Most of the world's sea lions live along Alaska's vast coastline.

Read the complete story from the AP at Google.

 

 

 

 

 

 

JUNEAU, AK – August 2, 2010 – Oceana acknowledges the long-overdue release of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) draft biological opinion (BiOp) analyzing the impacts of the Alaska groundfish fisheries on endangered marine mammals and their habitat. The draft makes clear that current management does not comply the Endangered Species Act mandates to protect Steller sea lions and their critical habitat and recommends changes in the western Aleutian Islands.

“As the BiOp shows, the Aleutian Islands ecosystem cannot support the current level of industrial fishing”, said Jon Warrenchuk, Ocean Scientist of the worldwide ocean conservation group Oceana. “It’s clear that the industrial trawl fisheries need to be scaled back to ensure a continuation of the vibrant Aleutian Island ecosystem.”

The draft BiOp evaluates the impacts of removing more than 3.5 billion pounds of atka mackerel, pacific cod, and pollock from the ocean per year. Most of this fish is caught by industrial trawlers, many of which are home ported in Seattle. Together, these three species are vital prey for the endangered western population of Steller sea lions, which has declined 80% since the 1960s. Steller sea lions are one of the apex predators in the North Pacific, and they are faring the worst in the Aleutian Islands.

Read the complete story from Oceana.

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 30, 2010 – Early explorers marveled at the abundance of marine life in Cape waters, but a new report released yesterday paints a picture of the decline of many species over hundreds of years in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, just a few miles to the north.

Scientists Stefan H. Claesson and Andrew A. Rosenberg mined ancient accounts, along with fishermen logbooks, fishermen interviews, recorded landings, research cruises and other historical documents for the report of the sanctuary, which covers 842 square miles of ocean from the waters north of Province­town up to Cape Ann.

After three years of research, the report assesses the relative health and historical conditions of Stellwagen, designated a national marine sanctuary in 1992. Produced by the Gulf of Maine Cod Project at the University of New Hampshire, the report depicts a vastly depleted resource.

Read the complete story from The Cape Cod Times.

 

 

 

 

 

by Kate Bonzon

In continuing with our look at harvesting cooperatives as a part of our Catch Share Conversations series, the Pollock Conservation Cooperative in Alaska's Bering Sea shows a good example of how a cooperative form of catch share can lead to conservation and economic benefits for fisheries.

The Pollock Conservation Cooperative (PCC) was established in 1999 and is made up of six member companies operating 19 catch-processor vessels. As an industry led initiative, the PCC is used to coordinate harvesting activities that promote conservation of fish stocks and better utilization of landed fish. The PCC has resulted in slower paced pollock fishing, a longer season – from 74 days in 1998 to 285 days in 2009, and 50 percent more product per pound of fish landed.

Read the CSC Pollock Conservation Cooperative of the Pollock Conservation Cooperative to learn more about its history, performance, and key design features.

 

 

WASHINGTON, July 26, 2010 – Oceana, the world’s largest international conservation organization focused solely on protecting and restoring the world’s oceans, announced today its partnership with Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, which premieres Sunday, August 1 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

“Sharks deserve widespread attention not only because they are fascinating but also because they are in terrible trouble – each year industrial fishing kills more than 100 million sharks a year ,” said Andy Sharpless, CEO of Oceana. “We applaud  Discovery Channel’s efforts to make Shark Week’s millions of viewers know about the threats to sharks, and the need for better policies to protect sharks.”

Discovery is helping Oceana educate the American public about the plight of sharks – and what people can do to help – through blogs, social media outlets and public service announcements that will air each night during primetime.  Viewers can look for a PSA for Oceana featuring Craig Ferguson, host of the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

Read the full press release at Oceana.com