Saving Seafood

Republicans vow EPA scrutiny in Pebble veto’s wake

February 1, 2023 — A top Senate Republican is promising to ramp up oversight of EPA’s Clean Water Act veto power after the agency used its authority to block a contentious gold and copper mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, home to a world premier salmon fishery.

Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) blasted EPA’s final determination that barred waters within the Bristol Bay watershed from receiving dredge and fill. The federal action essentially killed the proposed mine.

Capito accused the agency of circumventing the agency review process and said upcoming talks on permitting reform legislation may address the issue. Capito and 38 other Republicans last year floated a bill called the “Simplify Timelines and Assure Regulatory Transparency (START) Act.”

“The environmental permitting process should have clear rules of the road, both for applicants and for the agencies to follow,” said the senator. “The EPA summarily denying an application before it is submitted sets a dangerous precedent for future economic development and infrastructure projects across the country.”

EPA stated considering vetoing Pebble during the Obama administration, before the mine had entered the permitting process. The Army Corps of Engineers denied a Clean Water Act Section 404 dredge-and-fill permit, but the company behind it appealed. EPA this week used its veto power over such permits to make sure the mine is never built.

Capito, a longtime critic of EPA’s history with vetoes, said her legislation would address retroactive decisions that have “negatively impacted West Virginia in the past” and said she will be “examining the agency’s use of prospective vetoes as well.”

Read the full article at E&E News

EPA decision on Bristol Bay draws criticism and praise

February 1, 2023 — The Environmental Protection Agency’s order limiting the use of some waters in Alaska’s Bristol Bay drew ire from Gov. Mike Dunleavy and praise from others.

The order prohibits using some waters in Alaska’s Bristol Bay as “disposal of dredged and fill material associated with developing the Pebble deposit in certain waters.”

The EPA is setting a dangerous precedent, Dunleavy said Tuesday.

“Alarmingly, it lays the foundation to stop any development project, mining or non-mining, in any area of Alaska with wetlands and fish-bearing streams,” Dunleavy said.

Read the full article at The Center Square

ALASKA: Alaska salmon troll fleet under the gun over chinooks and killer whales

February 1, 2023 — Alaska’s Southeast salmon troll fishery is again in the crosshairs with the latest round of legal action threatening the loss of its key chinook fisheries.

In December, a western Washington district court released recommendations to suspend fishing under the Incidental Take Statement, a provision within the Pacific Salmon Treaty that allows Alaska trollers to take wild chinooks throughout the year.

The legal battle began in 2020 with a lawsuit filed by the Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy that challenges the biological rationale in setting allocations of Pacific Salmon Treaty chinooks that Southeast trollers catch.

The premise of the case is that when the National Marine Fisheries Service rendered its biological opinion in the formation of the treaty, it did not consider a portion of the commingling stocks as forage fish for the population of 73 killer whales in Puget Sound. The WFC suit rides on the contention that the agency acted out of compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

In a 2021 ruling the same court agreed that NMFS was out of compliance. Since then, the agency has been working on language that it hopes will satisfy mandates within the ESA. But the question remains whether the Alaska troll fishery will be able to operate or not.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

U.S. EPA’s move to block Pebble project in Alaska ‘unlawful’ – CEO

February 1, 2023 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to block the proposed Pebble copper and gold mining project near Alaska’s ecologically sensitive Bristol Bay watershed is “unlawful” and hurts the state, said the top boss of the mining project.

The EPA has moved to stop the company from storing mine waste at the watershed, home to important salmon species, including the world’s largest sockeye salmon fisheries that support critical wildlife and a multibillion-dollar industry.

Read the full article at Reuters

E.P.A. Blocks Long-Disputed Mine Project in Alaska

January 31, 2023 — The Biden administration on Tuesday moved to protect one of the world’s most valuable wild salmon fisheries, at Bristol Bay in Alaska, by effectively blocking the development of a gold and copper mine there.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a final determination under the Clean Water Act that bans the disposal of mine waste in part of the bay’s watershed, about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage. Streams in the watershed are crucial breeding grounds for salmon, but the area also contains deposits of precious-metal ores thought to be worth several hundred billion dollars.

A two-decades old proposal to mine those ores, called the Pebble project, has been supported by some Alaskan lawmakers and Native groups for the economic benefits it would bring, but opposed by others, including tribes around the bay and environmentalists who say it would do irreparable harm to the salmon population.

Alannah Hurley, executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, which has long opposed the mine, said the decision “was a real moment of justice for us.”

Read the full article at The New York Times

EPA vetoes Pebble mine

January 31, 2023 — EPA will use a rare authority under the Clean Water Act to block the proposed Pebble mine and bar similar projects to dig up a massive gold and copper deposit in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed, home to one of the world’s premier salmon fisheries.

The agency’s decision marks yet another move by the Biden administration in recent days to protect sensitive areas critical to tribes, including sealing protections for the Tongass National Forest and restricting mining in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for decades (Greenwire, Jan. 26).

Read the full article at E&E News

ALASKA: Assembly greenlights $25,000 to support trollers’ legal fight

January 30, 2023 — The Sitka Assembly is moving forward with plans to donate $25,000 to the Alaska Trollers Association (ATA), to support the organization’s ongoing legal fight against a Washington environmental group that hopes to shut down commercial fishing for king salmon in Southeast Alaska. And other organizations and locals are piling on, in anticipation of a lengthy – and costly –  appeals process.

Alaska trollers and the Alaska Department of Fish & Game intervened in a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service brought by the Wild Fish Conservancy in 2020. The Duvall, Washington-based group argues that commercial trolling in Alaska threatens an endangered population of killer whales in Puget Sound by depriving them of king salmon – their primary food source. And they’ve been successful in court: In December a US District Court judge issued a report that, to make a long story short, puts the Southeast king salmon fishery at risk of closure.  And that means a bigger hole in the troll association’s pocket, as it anticipates a lengthy appeals process.

In early January, trollers drummed up support at the assembly table. And at its January 24 meeting, more folks came out of the woodwork in support of the organization. Roger Hames of Hames Corporation, which owns a major grocery store in Sitka, said he’d been asked to contribute $5,000 but he’d likely contribute $10,000. Tad Fujioka is chairman of the board for Seafood Producers Co-Op. He said the Alaska Trollers Association had requested around $48,000 from SPC, but employees asked them to donate more money from their profit sharing pool.

Read the full article at KCAW

Crabbing industry loses fight to prevent fishing in critical Alaskan ecosystem

January 27, 2023 — Fishing in designated areas off the Alaskan coast will continue despite pleas from harvesters and conservation groups to close the crucial habitat known for its red king crabs and allow for minimal disruption during the offseason.

The emergency action would have potentially shut down designated zones in Bristol Bay until at least early summer, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the petition failed to reach criteria to determine that an emergency closure would benefit the sea life population.

Several species of crabs, including the red king, have seen stunning declines over the last decade that has prompted NOAA and other stakeholders to take the extraordinary steps of limiting season fishing in an effort to try to protect crucial populations.

“We are concerned about the diminished sophistication and understanding of marine habitats, which inevitably results in collapses and that are generally only made visible with the disappearance of commercially valuable species,” Marissa Wilson, executive director of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, stated in prepared comments to NOAA.

Read the full story at Fox 7 Austin

Some hope the EPA will veto Pebble Mine, a project that has long divided SW Alaska

January 27, 2022 — ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

What would be one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world might never break ground. The EPA is expected to issue its final decision at the end of the month on the Pebble Mine in southwest Alaska. From member station KDLG, Izzy Ross reports.

ROSS: The EPA is exercising a rarely-used authority under the Clean Water Act, commonly called its veto authority. Agency officials declined to be interviewed for this story, but in a statement said the mine could harm fish spawning and breeding areas and that this action would protect the commercial and sport fisheries and a traditional way of life based on wild salmon. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied Pebble’s mining permit two years ago, but the company appealed that decision. Pebble spokesperson Mike Heatwole says the EPA is not following normal protocol by using this Clean Water Act authority before the appeal has even been processed.

MIKE HEATWOLE: We continue to say that it is largely unlawful and unprecedented, what the EPA is attempting to do regarding this project.

ROSS: And Heatwole says the company may sue. But the EPA’s use of this authority reflects its serious concerns about the mine’s impact on the region, says Joel Reynolds with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

JOEL REYNOLDS: It’s about as much opposition as one will ever see to a development project anywhere really but in particular, in a development-friendly state like Alaska.

Listen to the full story at KUNC

 

Commercial fishing vessels can serve as research vessels for cost-effective data collection

January 26, 2023 — A growing network of commercial fishing boats and private companies are using sensors attached to fishing gear to cheaply collect crucial ocean data like temperature and salinity, used in fisheries science, climate models, and more. Traditionally gathered at great expense by research vessels, moorings, and gliders, data gathered by fishing boats offers ocean observers a cost-effective way to increase their coverage.

“Word has spread in the scientific community that we’re offering affordable fieldwork,” said Jim Moore, board member of the Alaska Trollers Association (ATA). “Here our interests converge: the better the science, knowledge based on reality, the healthier the relationship between fisheries and managers.”

Moore is working to outfit 10 ATA boats with marine observation equipment as part of a grant-funded pilot program, one of many such collaborations between ocean observers and fishermen around the country. Ocean Data Network (ODN) a Maine-based data collection company recently named as a winner in the World Economic Forum’s Ocean Data Challenge, will be the back-end data management team, exemplifying the aligned interests of fishing and science.

“It’s not only that it’s more cost effective,” said Cooper Van Vranken, founder of ODN, “but it’s also that the fishing is getting data in the oceanographically most interesting areas and in the areas where it matters most for fisheries and for all kinds of other users. The future of ocean observation is a symphony of different observing platforms and fishing vessels are going to be a very important piece of all that.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman