A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
May 21, 2007
3. Watersheds -
Whales head out
Mom and calf start swimming in the right direction, but many dangers lie ahead -
Sacramento
Editorial: Whales getting attention as Delta smelt vanish
A full-blown California
Sacramento
Decision on splittail raises suspicions
Official who had hand in getting fish removed from protected list may have had personal interests in mind -
Contra Costa Times
_____________________________________
Whales head out
Mom and calf start swimming in the right direction, but many dangers lie ahead
By Deb Kollars and Christina Jewett - Bee Staff Writers
The two humpback whales stranded in the
By 10 p.m. Sunday, the mother and her calf were 20 miles downstream of the port in the Deep Water Ship Channel.
The whales' turnaround brought relief but ongoing worries for the team of scientists and animal rescuers trying to save the animals. They cautioned that the whales still have a long journey ahead -- one laced with potential wrong turns as the animals navigate the watery maze of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta on their way to the Pacific.
It is 90 miles from the port to the
"The channel is nice and deep," said Jim Milbury, a spokesman with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Our concern is when they reach the sloughs at the end of the channel. If they go off in the wrong direction, they could end up grounded or beached."
The scientists were planning to position boats at the sloughs to keep the whales on track. Some of the vessels were being out- fitted with pipes and noisemaking equipment, which crews planned to bang underwater to drive the animals from those perilous pathways, Milbury said.
The whales made their move at 2 p.m. Sunday, when two tugboats began leaving the
"This was really unexpected," Milbury said.
Federal, state and local scientists and animal rescuers, who had been monitoring the whales, immediately began following them in boats in an attempt to keep them moving downstream. The ship channel runs parallel to the
The frantic rush of boats was matched by a frantic scramble by the crowds. Sunday's crowd of onlookers at the port had swelled to 10,000, nearly twice the size of the day before, West Sacramento Police Sgt. Trent Tyler said. As the whales began to head into the narrow ship channel, many hurried after them along the levees.
"They followed them until they ran into a fence,"
As news of the whales' departure spread, many made their way farther south to the rural levees running along the ship channel. They parked their cars, ran through fields and ditches, and leaped up the sides of levees to catch a glimpse of the whales. Some ran along the channel's edge, keeping pace with the whales.
At one spot south of
"Watch that way," said Bob Cliff of
Suddenly, one of the whales broke the surface.
"There it is. Come on," Cliff urged. "Do it again."
The animals initially moved at a fast pace of about four to five miles per hour.
"That's a good clip," Milbury said. "They usually cruise about two to three miles per hour."
The sight was moving to all.
"It makes you feel hopeful because they're moving in the right direction," said Heather Pasillas of
The two whales, dubbed Delta and Dawn, have captured the hearts of people far and wide.
The pair turned up in the
Both whales are injured, most likely from being hit by a boat propeller, but as of the weekend they were believed to be in good condition. Long-term, they cannot survive in fresh water.
The whales' departure from the port capped what had begun as lazy kind of Sunday. The team of scientists had given the animals a day of rest and relaxation while they planned a rescue effort slated for Tuesday that involved banging on underwater pipes and creating unpleasant sounds to force the animals southward. The team had planned to use Monday as a day of training, said Brian Gorman, public information officer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Those plans were pushed into fast-forward when the two tugboats, which had been berthed at the port, left to meet the Sanko Jupiter, a huge 581-foot ship parked at a dock one mile south of the port.
The team of rescuers worried the large Sanko Jupiter would stop the whales in their tracks. To their great relief, the whales kept going.
"They have safely passed the Sanko Jupiter," Gorman said Sunday afternoon.
Until that point, the whales had been circling the turning basin for five days, and people never tired of watching. On Sunday, the onlookers came on bikes, carried coolers and held umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun. Some carried puppies against their chests. Others walked with children on their shoulders. The crowd focused on the smooth surface of the lake, pointing and gasping when the mother or baby whale pierced the blue water.
About 1 p.m., the mother whale's back rose above the tiny waves and a spray of water spread 4 feet into the air.
"Did you get to see the spout?" Laurie Botting of
"It's coo-ol," said the boy, hunkered low in his camping chair, watching for the next whale cameo.
Kristie Dornan of
"I told her we don't have enough salt," Dornan said. The night before, Haley had lost a bottom tooth and made a request of the tooth fairy: "I want to wish for them to go to the ocean," she said.
An hour later, that's where they were headed.#
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/187922.html
Editorial: Whales getting attention as Delta smelt vanish
A full-blown California
It's easier for us all to understand certain problems. When a tanker trunk carrying gasoline overturns and ignites a spectacular freeway fire that crumbles a section of
But some huge challenges don't look that way at first. Take a tiny fish in the Delta known as a smelt. State biologists should be finding thousands of them this time of year. Instead, they are finding a handful. The smelt are indicators of the overall health of the estuary. And their dramatic decline could have an impact to the state that is far greater than
This vanishing tiny fish could very soon present Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger with his first, true water crisis. None of the choices are easy, but running from the problem may be the riskiest of them all. Environmental groups as soon as Monday are expected to be in court demanding tougher enforcement of the California Endangered Species Act. Courts have threatened to take over control of the Delta before. It is inevitable unless fixing the Delta gets the same level of urgency out of this administration as fixing the MacArthur Maze.
This is a sick estuary for many reasons. Invasive species such as Asian clams have taken hold. The food supply is profoundly altered. And the pumps in the southern Delta are changing the natural flow in the system. To sustain the state's economy, water must flow from north to south through the Delta. Nature intended the water to flow west into
The level of pumping is a political obsession for obvious reasons. Southern California and
If the state were to slow the pumps enough to prevent flows from reversing in the system, the impact could be huge -- a 50 percent cut in water supply. Imagine every other freeway lane going out of service until a solution is found for air pollution (some tidal gates and other physical improvements in the Delta could take years). That's one scenario for the Delta. Another is to find some "compromise" that eases the impact to farmers and
The governor, meanwhile, seems fixated on building two new
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/185809.html
Decision on splittail raises suspicions
Official who had hand in getting fish removed from protected list may have had personal interests in mind
Contra Costa Times – 5/20/07
Mike Taugher, Staff Writer
In an apparent conflict of interest, a former high-ranking Bush administration official helped remove a fish from the list of threatened and endangered species in a decision that eased an economic threat to her farm near
Julie MacDonald resigned April 30 as deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Interior, a month after the department's office of inspector general issued a scathing report that accused her of altering scientific reports in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's endangered species programs and improperly leaking internal reports to industry groups and friends.
The report said nothing about MacDonald's participation in the decision to remove the
But documents show she edited the decision on the fish, at one point softening scientists' conclusion that the species "is likely" experiencing a population decline to say it "may be" in such a decline.
The
Documents show MacDonald was deeply involved in crafting the language used to justify the final decision.
The decision to withdraw the protective status of the fish was first made in the Fish and Wildlife Service's
But her participation in the decisionmaking at any stage of the process may have violated conflict of interest rules because MacDonald owns an 80-acre farm in the Yolo Bypass, a floodplain of wetlands, pastures and row crops north of the Delta that is key habitat for the fish.
In almost all circumstances, federal law prohibits federal employees from participating in decisions in which they have a personal interest.
MacDonald did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment to her
In response to Times inquiries, the Department of Interior issued a written statement.
"To our knowledge, senior departmental officials were unaware of these issues," the statement read. "The Department of the Interior Inspector General investigated former Deputy Assistant Secretary MacDonald's role in administering the Endangered Species Act and issued a report. We rely upon the Inspector General's investigation and counsel. If it turns out that former Deputy Assistant Secretary MacDonald acted inappropriately regarding the
The splittail is more dependent on floodplains than any other fish in the Delta. And the Yolo Bypass is the last big floodplain in the
That's why landowners in the bypass have been concerned about the splittail's status: A mandate to boost the splittail's population could lead to more flooding in the bypass, which could inundate crops and equipment. Farmers also worry that measures to enhance splittail populations could force them to install costly fish screens at water intakes and submit to stricter regulations on their use of pesticides.
"In the Sacramento drainage, the most important spawning areas appear to be the Yolo and Sutter bypasses, which are extensively flooded during wet years," according to a 2004 white paper on splittail biology.
According to financial disclosure reports, MacDonald's farm is worth more than $1 million, and she receives $100,000 to $1 million a year in income from it.
"At the very least, this certainly has the appearance of a conflict of interest," said Mary Boyles, spokeswoman for Common Cause in
"The government ethics rules clearly state that you're not supposed to participate" in decisions that affect you personally, Boyles said. "We need enforcement of these rules that are on the books."
In addition to influencing the agency's decision on the splittail, MacDonald has come under fire for meddling with scientific reports on other endangered species, including the
The March 23 inspector general's report concluded that MacDonald, an engineer with no background in biology, "has been heavily involved with editing, commenting on, and reshaping the Endangered Species Program's scientific reports from the field."
The wildlife agency's deputy director, Marshall Jones, described MacDonald to the inspector general's investigator as a Bush administration "attack dog."
Though the report found no evidence of a crime, it said she broke rules against granting preferential treatment and distributing internal agency information.
The report said MacDonald:
Released an internal draft of· regulations on designating critical habitat for endangered species to the Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento-based law firm that regularly sues to weaken endangered species rules.
Asked subordinates to gather internal· information about Delta smelt that was requested by a California Farm Bureau lobbyist and then passed that information to the lobbyist.
Forwarded to a California Farm Bureau· attorney an e-mail she had sent to the
E-mailed large internal files from the· U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, including one on plans for water quality regulations, to e-mail accounts ending in chevrontexaco.com.
Sent an internal document on Delta· smelt to a friend she met during online role-playing games, through the e-mail address of the friend's father.
The report noted that the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, Dale Hall, said MacDonald was particularly interested in endangered species issues in her home state of
Before MacDonald went to work in
Several of the other participants were contacted for this story, but none could recall much, if anything, about her involvement.
But the strategy document, completed in 2001, reflects a number of concerns that landowners in the bypass had regarding ecosystem restoration projects to benefit fish, including splittail.
The fish is also of deep concern to water users elsewhere in the state because it could add a new layer of complexity to the increasingly difficult task of maintaining the state's water supply for farms and cities, and protecting its ecosystems.
That is because splittail's dependence on floodplains is unique in the Delta, and that opens up a new set of potential impacts on water supply.
Splittail are large minnows that can grow to more than 12 inches long and live five to seven years. Their populations tend to drop substantially during long droughts and rebound dramatically in response to wet weather.
There is an honest disagreement among scientists about whether the fish belongs on the list of protected species, with some arguing that splittail are well-suited to bounce back from depressed population numbers and others contending the population is on a worrisome downward trend.
In response to concerns that splittail were in decline, the wildlife service added it to the list of threatened species in 1999.
When the court ordered the listing decision redone, it set off a highly unusual series of reports in which biologists in the wildlife service's
But none of those reports was sent to
Then, in January 2003, the head of the
Shortly thereafter,
"I thought it was clear we weren't going to be able to list it. In the face of uncertainty, you err on the side of the species," said Douglas, who now works in the agency's
The splittail report -- concluding that the fish be taken off the list of threatened species -- was then sent to the agency's
The rest of the roughly 100-page report, however, was largely intact, and that inconsistency angered MacDonald, according to a participant on a conference call with MacDonald at the time.
"She's hopping mad and saying this thing reads like a listing package," said the participant, a wildlife service official in
The official added that although the recommendation to take the fish off the list was made in
Thompson, the head of the
"Certainly, Julie MacDonald called me on a regular basis, and I'm sure she talked to me about it," Thompson said.
On Sept. 15, 2003, eight days before the decision to take splittail off the threatened species list was made final, the Washington office faxed to Sacramento six marked-up pages of the new rule with the cover page notation, "re: Julie MacD's latest comments/edits."
In it, MacDonald made numerous changes and comments, most of which appear to have been aimed at softening the language of the rule. In addition to changing the conclusion that splittail "are likely" declining to "may be" declining, she wrote that, "At this point, none of the threats individually or collectively rise to a level of concern that warrants listing."
That sentence does not appear in the final report.
MacDonald also took issue with the statistical methods employed by her agency's biologists.
At the time of the decision, there was a debate about how to perform statistical calculations to determine whether the splittail population was declining. The stricter method favored by some scientists, including biologists working for the state of
But the relaxed method preferred by federal biologists did.
That dispute might have been rendered moot by a third statistical method that appeared to conclusively show that splittail was in decline.
The wildlife agency ignored the third method in its final rule, however.
In a memo filed in June 2003, former agency field supervisor Wayne White wrote that the new statistics reinforced what agency biologists had been saying since 1994: that the fish was in decline.
But, he noted, the new statistics had not been subject to public comment, and the officials who made the decision to take splittail off the list of threatened species were aware of the new data.
In the end, the agency concluded that even if the fish were in decline, new programs were in place to improve the fish's habitat.
Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, a senior member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, said MacDonald's actions regarding the splittail listing were very serious and cast doubt on every endangered species decision she touched.
"This is like a police department where they tamper with evidence. You have to go back" and re-examine decisions that might be compromised, he said.
"It's clearly worthy of a criminal investigation," said Miller. "This was not an accident. She knowingly did this. She aggressively did this." #
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_5942663
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