Saving Seafood

Trident settles with EPA on Clean Water Act violations

March 7, 2018 — Two federal agencies have reached a settlement with Trident Seafoods over Clean Water Act violations at Sand Point and Wrangell involving discharges of fish waste.

The agreement, announced on March 2, calls for Trident to remove nearly three and a half acres of waste from the seafloor near its Sand Point plant and limits on how much seafood waste is discharged from its Wrangell plant.

Trident also will pay a $297,000 civil penalty and do a comprehensive audit of the company’s system for monitoring environmental compliance, under the agreement reached with the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Justice.

The Seattle-based processor has operated a fish meal plant at Sand Point since 1996 to help limit how much fish waste is discharged into marine waters.

Yet after decades of processing, the historic waste pile exceeds the one-acre limit, and continues to impair the health of the seafloor, EPA officials said. Unauthorized discharges of seafood processing waste lead to large seafood waste piles that contain bones, shells and other organic materials that accumulate on the seafloor. Those waste piles create anoxic, or oxygen-depleted conditions that result in unsuitable habitat for fish and other living organisms.

Read the full story at the Cordova Times

 

Trump Administration Wants to Cut Budget for NOAA, But Congress Unlikely to Accept

February 20, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Seafood News Editor’s Note: The story below lays out known facts about the cuts to the federal budget made by the Trump Administration. However, it is unlikely that Congress will accept these cuts.

The Trump Administration’s $4.4 trillion federal budget for next year takes some mean whacks to programs that affect fisheries.

Off the top, the spending plan unveiled on February 12 cuts the budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) by 20 percent to $4.6 billion. Among other things, NOAA manages the nation’s fisheries in waters from three to 200 miles offshore, which produce the bulk of Alaska’s seafood landings.

It’s the cuts within the cuts that reveal the most.

NOAA Fisheries is facing a $110.4 million drop to $837.3 million, a 14 percent budget cut. That includes a $17.7 million decrease in fisheries science and management, a $5 million cut in data collection needed for stock assessments, a $5.1 million reduction in funding for catch share programs and a $2.9 million cut to cooperative research programs.

The proposals for NOAA law enforcement are even more severe – a decline of $17.8 million is a 25 percent budget reduction.

“The entire law enforcement reduction is coming from the agency’s cooperative enforcement program and will eliminate funding for joint enforcement agreements with law enforcement partners from 28 states and U.S. territories,” reported the Gloucester Times.

The National Weather Service, also under NOAA’s umbrella, is facing a $75 million slice off its $1 billion budget. It will axe 355 jobs, more than a quarter of the NWS staff, including 248 forecasters.

Trump also wants to cut $4.8 million from habitat and conservation programs, wiping out funding and grants for NOAA’s fisheries habitat restoration projects.

The Trump plan proposes gutting $40 million from NOAA climate change programs, which would eliminate competitive grants for research and end studies on global warming in the Arctic, including predictions of sea-ice and fisheries in a changing climate.

The national Sea Grant College Program, which conducts research, training and education at more than 30 U.S. universities, is again on the chopping block.

Funding for programs under the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) that monitor earthquakes and volcanoes would each drop by 21 percent. The USGS water-resources program, which includes the national stream-gauge network, would be reduced 23 percent.

Trump proposes to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget to $6.1 billion in 2019, its lowest level since the early 1990s and about 25 percent below the current mark.

The EPA budget also eliminates funding for climate-change research while providing $502 million for fossil energy research, an increase of nearly 24 percent.

Seafood sales also could be badly hurt by proposed deep cuts to food stamps, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Instead of shopping at grocery stores, under Trump’s plan recipients would receive boxes of shelf-stable commodity items such as powdered milk, juices, pasta, peanut butter, and canned meats, fruits and vegetables.

“Seafood is the only major food group that is not considered a USDA commodity. If the new food delivery platform is going to put an emphasis on commodity goods, then that will leave out lean, heart-healthy seafood,” said Linda Cornish, president of the Seafood Nutrition Partnership.

Closer to home, Trump also plans to stop federal funding for the Denali Commission, introduced by Congress in 1998 as an independent agency to provide critical utilities, infrastructure and economic support throughout Alaska.  The plan calls for a $10 million cut out of $17 million, with the difference going to an “orderly closure.”

The White House says that any state that can afford to pay its residents an annual dividend doesn’t need a “unique and additional federal subsidy” such as the commission, wrote longtime Alaska journalist Dermot Cole. Trump added that “the commissions’ effectiveness at improving overall economic conditions remains unproven.”

The FY19 budget, which goes into effect on October 1, now goes before Congress.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

Proposed changes to food stamps program could take a bite out of seafood sales

February 16, 2018 — U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2019 budget proposal, which includes deep cuts to the U.S. food stamp program, could harm seafood sales at U.S. supermarket chains, organizations told SeafoodSource.

The Trump administration proposes slashing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or “food stamps” program, by USD 17.2 billion (EUR 13.8 billion) in 2019, or around 22 percent compared to last year’s funding.

In addition, the program would shift to a boxed food delivery program. The current system allows SNAP participants to purchase their  groceries at supermarket chains, farmers markets, and other retail locations.

Under the new proposal, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), would deliver packages of U.S.-grown commodities such as shelf-stable milk, juice, grains, cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans, along with canned meat, fruits and vegetables to recipients.

USDA estimates that it could provide the boxed delivery program at half the cost of the current retail program.

“Seafood is the only major food group that is not considered a USDA commodity. If the new food delivery platform is going to put an emphasis on commodity goods, then that will leave out lean, heart-healthy seafood, which is the only significant source of essential nutrients such as omega-3s EPA and DHA, as well as selenium,” Linda Cornish, president of Seafood Nutrition Partnership, told SeafoodSource.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

New Yorkers rally against offshore drilling plan

February 16, 2018 — ALBANY, N.Y. — Wearing fish-shaped caps and armed with a megaphone, New York state’s leading environmental advocates protested President Donald Trump’s plan to open offshore areas to oil and gas drilling on Thursday as federal energy officials held an open house on the proposal near the state Capitol.

The group, wearing caps shaped like sturgeon, salmon and other vulnerable ocean species, included Aaron Mair, past president of the Sierra Club, and Judith Enck, the regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator under former President Barack Obama. They said Trump’s plan could devastate the environment while leaving potential renewable energy sources untouched. They called on Congress to pass a law blocking the proposal.

“We all remember the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe,” Enck said into a megaphone, referring to the 2010 rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that triggered the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. “We cannot afford that reckless activity in the Atlantic.”

Inside, federal energy officials handed out information packets and briefed members of the public on the president’s decision last month to open most of the nation’s coast to oil and gas drilling as a way of making the U.S. less dependent on foreign energy sources. Several dozen people had trickled through at the midpoint of the four-hour open house. Members of the public were encouraged to submit written comments.

William Brown, chief environmental officer at the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said he welcomed comments from opponents to the plan.

Read the full story from Associated Press at the Seattle Times

 

Trump Budget Would Zero Out Funding For Puget Sound Recovery, Again

February 14, 2018 — Members of Congress who represent Puget Sound are pushing back against the Trump administration’s budget for 2019 in part because it would zero out all federal funding for cleanup and recovery of the iconic ecosystem.

The proposal cuts all funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s geographic program for Puget Sound, as well as for a national estuary program and for Pacific salmon recovery through National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries. The administration says it wants local governments to take on the responsibility and continue recovery efforts.

The missing money totals more than $30 million, says Sheida Sahandy, Executive Director of the state’s Puget Sound Partnership, which coordinates cleanup. Those funds are leveraged with money from other state and local sources to get work done, so she says the cuts would be “crippling.”

“We’re at tipping point for, for example, the Orca,” she said, referring to the dwindling population of southern resident killer whales, which has reached its lowest number in 30 years. Only 76 are left in the wild.

“We are fearing extinction around the corner and stopping our efforts at this point in their tracks would essentially mean that we’re giving up on saving them,” Sahandy said, adding that the orcas are only the most obvious example of what’s at stake.

If there’s any silver lining, it’s that her agency has been through this once before.

Last year, the President’s budget proposed nearly identical cuts. Congress ultimately pushed back, reinstating all $28 million in the geographic program for Puget Sound in the 2018 budget.

But Sahandy says it will take a lot of advocacy once again. She says Washington state is so far away from the capitol that many well-meaning members of Congress need to be reminded why their support is critical.

Read the full story at KNKX

 

Scott Pruitt pushes back on finding that would restrict pesticides’ use to protect fish

February 5, 2018 — For months, chemical companies have waged a campaign to reverse findings by federal fisheries scientists that could curb the use of pesticides based on the threat they pose to endangered species. They scored a major victory this week, when Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced he would press another federal agency to revisit a recent opinion triggering such restrictions.

The struggle over an arcane provision of the Endangered Species Act, in which the EPA must affirm that the pesticides it oversees do not put species’ survival in jeopardy, has become the latest front in the battle over a broad-spectrum insecticide known as chlorpyrifos. Pruitt denied a petition to ban its agricultural use after questioning EPA scientists’ conclusions that exposure impedes brain development in infants and fetuses.

Speaking to the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture on Wednesday, Pruitt said he plans to inform the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Fisheries Service “that there needs to be a consultation because we have usage data, frankly, that wasn’t considered.”

NOAA Fisheries issued a Biological Opinion on Dec. 29, which was publicly released Jan. 9 by the environmental law firm Earthjustice, finding that the current use of chlorpyrifos and malathion “is likely to jeopardize the continued existence” of 38 species of salmon and other fish in the Pacific Northwest and destroy or harm the designated critical habitat of 37 of those species. It found another pesticide, diazinon, could jeopardize the continued existence of 25 listed fish species and could harm critical habitat for 18 of them.

In allowing chlorpyrifos to stay on the market — the product is already prohibited for household products — Pruitt cited concerns raised by the Department of Agriculture, pesticide industry groups and an EPA scientific review panel about studies the agency used to conclude that the pesticide poses a serious enough neurological risk to ban its use on dozens of crops. One study, by researchers at Columbia University, found a connection between higher exposure levels to chlorpyrifos and learning and memory problems among farmworkers and children.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

 

Pruitt’s EPA puts brakes on Pebble Mine proposal in Bristol Bay, Alaska

January 31, 2018 — Activists fighting a proposed gold and copper mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska breathed a sigh of relief on Friday, 26 January, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) upheld an Obama-era declaration that the proposed Pebble Mine, which would sit in the watershed for the world’s biggest sockeye salmon run, could cause irreversible harm to area fisheries.

Fishermen, native groups, and conservationists fought against the mine proposal for years, and won a temporary victory with a 2014 EPA ruling that stated mining could lead to “significant and irreversible harm” to local fishing grounds. But after years of eyeing the site, the project’s main backer, Northern Dynasty Minerals, filed for its first federal application in December 2017, just a month after President Donald Trump was elected, and fanned fresh concerns with activists opposing the mine.

EPA head Scott Pruitt issued a statement Friday that the order does not block the mine outright, but does shelve the permitting process until further environmental impact reviews can be conducted.

“It is my judgement at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there,” Pruitt said in the statement. “Until we know the full extent of that risk, those natural resources and world-class fisheries deserve the utmost protection. Today’s action allows the EPA to get the information needed to determine what specific impacts the proposed mining project will have on those critical resources.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

EPA halts plans to lift proposed mine restrictions in Alaska

January 29, 2018 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday halted plans to withdraw proposed restrictions on mining activity near a major Alaska salmon fishery, drawing praise from opponents of the Pebble Mine project.

Last year, in settling a legal dispute with the Pebble Limited Partnership, which wants to build a copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, the EPA agreed to initiate a process to withdraw restrictions proposed during the Obama administration.

But in a release Friday, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said based on comments the agency has received, “it is my judgment at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there.”

“Until we know the full extent of that risk, those natural resources and world-class fisheries deserve the utmost protection,” he said.

About half of the world’s sockeye salmon is produced by Bristol Bay, the EPA has said.

Tom Collier, CEO of the Pebble partnership, said the EPA’s announcement does not deter the project. Pebble recently filed a permit application with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which will trigger an environmental review of the project.

“We believe we can demonstrate that we can responsibly construct and operate a mine at the Pebble deposit that meets Alaska’s high environmental standards,” he said in a release. “We will also demonstrate that we can successfully operate a mine without compromising the fish and water resources around the project.”

The restrictions on development proposed under President Barack Obama were never finalized; a judge had ordered the agency to stop work related to that process while the litigation between Pebble and the EPA played out.

The EPA said Friday’s announcement doesn’t derail the permit application process but said the application “must clear a high bar, because EPA believes the risk to Bristol Bay may be unacceptable.”

The agency said it plans to solicit additional public comment.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, said Pruitt is taking a balanced approach that lets Pebble enter the permitting process but also acknowledges EPA’s duty to protect the region’s fisheries.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald 

 

EPA: New Bedford Harbor among top opportunities in New England

January 18, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — New Bedford Harbor has been identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection agency as one of two Superfund sites in New England with the greatest potential for redevelopment and commercial use.

No funding comes with the designation, but additional staff time and attention could be devoted to the sites, EPA spokeswoman Kelsey Dumville said in an interview.

No. 1 on the Port of New Bedford’s priority list is extending North Terminal by 800 feet, Port Director Edward Anthes-Washburn said. The space would add more room to dock commercial fishing boats, and it could serve other purposes in the future, he said. Boats are rafted three and four deep on the docks in the central waterfront.

“We definitely have a small supply and high demand for dockage,” he said.

The city could also use the space for cargo or offshore wind-related operations, he said.

The New Bedford Harbor Development Commission has applied for a $15 million federal grant for the North Terminal bulkhead and dredging.

Mayor Jon Mitchell’s office has said the project would not only finalize cleanup of the harbor and create more dockage, but also create at least 900 new jobs and spur millions of dollars in private investment.

“The purpose of this project is to promote growth in the Port of New Bedford across multiple industries: fishing, offshore wind, cargo, and island freight,” Mitchell said in a press release in October.

The New England regional EPA office in Boston made recommendations about sites to be named among the 31 nationally with the most redevelopment potential, EPA spokeswoman Emily Bender said. The other New England site is Raymark Industries Inc., a former manufacturer of automobile brakes, clutches and other parts in Stratford, Conn.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Government Scientists Say A Controversial Pesticide Is Killing Endangered Salmon

January 12, 2018 — The federal government’s top fisheries experts say that three widely used pesticides — including the controversial insecticide chlorpyrifos — are jeopardizing the survival of many species of salmon, as well as orcas that feed on those salmon.

It’s a fresh attack on a chemical that the Environmental Protection Agency was ready to take off the market a year ago — until the Trump administration changed course.

Chlorpyrifos is widely used by farmers to protect crops like strawberries, broccoli and citrus fruit from insect pests. In recent years, though, scientists have found evidence that exposure to chlorpyrifos residues can harm the developing brains of small children, even in the womb.

Two years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposal that would have stopped farmers from using chlorpyrifos. The final decision, however, fell to the Trump administration, and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt decided to keep the chemical on the market while the agency continues to study its risks.

This new report, however, examines another danger entirely — the risk that chlorpyrifos and two other pesticides, diazinon and malathion, are washing into streams and rivers and harming wildlife.

The National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that continued use of the chemicals is likely to jeopardize the survival of endangered species of salmon, as well as orcas that eat the salmon. According to the report, use of chlorpyrifos is affecting 38 species of endangered fish, and it’s having negative effects on 37 areas that have been designated as “critical habitat” for endangered species.

Read the full story at New England Public Radio