Saving Seafood

Trump Administration Lessens Clean Water Protections For Streams, Wetlands

January 24, 2020 — The Trump administration on Thursday finalized a significant cutback on water protections, a move critics say could make it easier for companies to pollute potential sources of drinking water.

Under the final rule, named “The Navigable Waters Protection Rule,” many streams, wetlands and other waterways will no longer qualify for federal protections against pollution under the Clean Water Act.

“After decades of constant litigation and uncertainty, the Trump administration’s navigable waters protection rule brings regulatory certainty to American farmers, landowners, businesses and the American public, and should significantly curtail the need to hire teams of attorneys to tell them how to use their own land,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said on a call with reporters. “Our rule protects the environment and our waterways while respecting the states and private property owners.”

The plan is a part of the Trump administration’s goal to repeal and replace a 2015 rule from the Obama administration that expanded the types of federally protected waterways. Republicans criticized the rule, saying it would regulate ditches and puddles. The regulation specifically exempted puddles, but the rhetoric reflected a larger concern about federal overreach among some farmers, businesses and landowners.

Read the full story at U.S. News

Fishermen consider next move after court upholds Atlantic national monument

January 14, 2020 — A federal appeals court has upheld the creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, affirming that the federal Antiquities Act can be applied at sea as well as on land.

The Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association and other fishing advocates challenged former President Barack Obama’s designation of the 5,000-square-mile area at the edge of the continental shelf south of Georges Bank in 2016. A lower federal court ruled against their lawsuit in 2018.

Conservation groups and environmental advocates joined the arguments in both the lower and appeals courts, portraying the monument protections as critical to protect deep-sea corals, whales and other marine life from future offshore oil exploration and “industrial fishing.”

In an opinion for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Circuit Court Judge David Tatel explained why the three-judge panel dismissed all of the fishermen’s arguments against the monument – starting with their contention that the Antiquities Act cannot apply to the sea floor.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Seamounts monument lawsuit appeal rejected by federal court

January 3, 2020 — A lawsuit against a national monument created by U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has been defeated once again after an appeal to an earlier ruling was denied.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has rejected the appeal of an earlier ruling that dismissed a lawsuit brought by fishermen against the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The monument, created in 2016, will be 4,913 square miles of ocean roughly 130 miles off of the coast of New England that will be closed to commercial activity, including fishing.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Atlantic Marine Monument Withstands Federal Appeals Court Challenge

December 30, 2019 — A federal appeals court has ruled that President Barack Obama acted within his authority when he created the country’s first Atlantic marine monument off the coast of New England in 2016.

“The fishermen have had the ocean all to themselves for centuries.” says Peter Shelley, senior council for the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston.

Shelley says the lawsuit challenging the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, and the presidential authority that created it, failed to acknowledge other “values” such as conservation and preservation as powers granted in the Antiquities Act of 1906.

Shelley says the appeals decision is good news for a very delicate region of the Atlantic Ocean.

“But it’s also good news for other areas of great scientific interest that need to be protected from the destructive effects of fishing and oil and gas drilling and other sorts of development activities,” he says.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Court Upholds Creation of National Monument in Atlantic

December 27, 2019 — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld former President Barack Obama’s designation of a federally protected conservation area in the Atlantic Ocean, a move that commercial fishermen oppose.

Fishing groups sued over the creation of Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a 5,000-square-mile (8,000-square-kilometer) area that contains fragile deep sea corals and vulnerable species of marine life. The monument was established in 2016.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit last year, and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the decision Friday.

The appeals panel brushed aside arguments that federal law governing monuments applies only to land, not oceans; that the area of the ocean is not “controlled” by the federal government; that it is not compatible with National Marine Sanctuaries Act; and that it is not the “smallest area compatible” with management goals.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

ALASKA: EPA kills proposed Obama-era Pebble mine ‘veto’

July 31, 2019 — The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday it will reverse an Obama-era decision to block a controversial Alaska mine project.

“After today’s action EPA will focus on the permit review process for the Pebble Mine project” Region 10 Administrator Chris Hladick said in a statement.

“The agency has worked closely with the Army Corps to engage with stakeholders and the public on this issue, which has resulted in an expansive public record, including specific information about the proposed mining project that did not exist in 2014,” Hladick added.

While the EPA is withdrawing the 2014 determination, which it wrote “was issued preemptively and is now outdated,” the withdrawal does not constitute an approval of the permit application or a determination in the permitting process.

Read the full story at The Hill

Trump’s National Monument Changes Return to Spotlight

March 13, 2019 — As Democrats in Congress prepare to scrutinize President Donald Trump’s review of 27 national monuments, most of the recommendations made by ex-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke remain unfinished as other matters consume the White House.

Trump acted quickly in December 2017 on Zinke’s recommendations to shrink two sprawling Utah monuments that had been criticized as federal government overreach by the state’s Republican leaders since their creation by Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

But in the 15 months since Trump downsized the Utah monuments, the president has done nothing with Zinke’s proposal to shrink two more monuments, in Oregon and Nevada, and change rules at six others, including allowing commercial fishing inside three marine monuments in waters off New England, Hawaii and American Samoa.

Zinke resigned in December amid multiple ethics investigations — and has joined a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm. Trump has nominated as his replacement Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the oil and gas industry and other corporate interests.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S News and World Report

Chesapeake Bay health worsened in 2018 for the first time in a decade, report says

January 9, 2019 — For the first time in a decade, the overall health of the Chesapeake Bay declined, dropping from a C- to a D+ in an annual State of the Bay report issued Monday.

Culprits in the decline include increased runoff from rainstorms in 2018 that were rendered more intense by a changing climate and continued failure in some jurisdictions to curb nutrient and sediment loads.

This is especially true in Pennsylvania, which consistently fails to meet most of its bay cleanup commitments, and where the chronically polluted Susquehanna River delivers half the bay’s freshwater.

“Simply put, the bay suffered a massive assault in 2018,” Will Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, told reporters. “The bay’s sustained improvement was reversed in 2018, exposing just how fragile the recovery is.”

Adding to the assault, Baker said, are plans by the Trump administration to roll back clean water and clean air regulations that will directly impact the watershed.

Trump plans to overturn an Obama-era rule and reduce federal oversight for vast sections of the nation’s waterways and wetlands, and also ease federal restrictions for coal-fired power plant emissions. About a third of the nitrogen that reaches the bay comes from airborne sources, said Baker, some from as far away as the Midwest.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

New England States Fear Increased Mercury Contamination As EPA Considers Weakening Rules

December 18, 2018 — Scientists are speaking out about what they say have been “remarkable improvements” in curbing mercury emissions under Obama-era regulations that are now under threat by the Trump administration.

Mercury is a toxic chemical most commonly associated with coal-burning power plants. Because they are downwind from coal-burning states, Maine and the rest of New England have traditionally had higher-than-average rates of mercury contamination, and scientists say a proposal to weaken emission rules could impede progress.

The coal industry considers the 2011 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, known as MATS, the most expensive air pollution regulation ever implemented and responsible for the closure of dozens of coal plants around the country. Acting Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist, and now the EPA is proposing to weaken MATS by heavily weighing costs to the industry.

The EPA maintains that the Obama administration was indifferent toward that side of the equation. But scientists say the agency is downplaying the health and environmental benefits of the rule across the country.

“The reductions in emissions of mercury in the U.S. since 2006 have decreased about 85 percent,” says Dr. Charlie Driscoll, a professor at Syracuse University who spoke to reporters in a teleconference on Monday.

Most of the emissions Driscoll’s referring to came from coal-fired power plants, and he says much of the reason for their reduction can be attributed to the MATS rules.

“We’ve seen decreases in mercury in air, in atmospheric deposition, in water, in soil and we’ve seen declines in both freshwater fisheries in the U.S. in mercury as well as marine fisheries in the Atlantic Ocean,” he says.

Mercury is a neurotoxin that is especially harmful to children and developing fetuses, which is why the Maine Bureau of Health has a freshwater fish consumption advisory for pregnant women, nursing mothers and kids under 8.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Opponents Say Seismic Tests Could Lead To Atlantic Oil Drilling, Harming Right Whales

December 3, 2018 — The Trump administration has approved a first step toward offshore oil and gas drilling on the Atlantic coast.

The National Marine Fisheries Service issued permits Friday for five private companies to conduct offshore seismic tests from New Jersey to Florida.

The tests fire acoustic pulses into the sea floor in search of oil and gas deposits.

Such tests haven’t occurred in the Atlantic as part of hydrocarbon exploration since around the 1980s, according to federal officials, though academic seismic tests have happened more recently.

These permits, which were denied under the Obama administration in 2017, will allow the companies to disturb protected marine mammals during their surveys.

Read the full story at New England Public Radio