WATER: Renewable energy projects cause conflict (09/30/2009)
Increasing reliance on renewable energy, from solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year.
"When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable energy," said Michael E. Webber, an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin who studies the relationship between energy and water.
Southwestern states are confronting this issue head on as dozens of multibillion-dollar solar power plants are planned for thousands of acres of desert.
Meanwhile, California lawmakers are debating a bill that would allow renewable energy power plants to use drinking water for cooling under certain conditions.
"By allowing projects to use fresh water, the bill would remove any incentives that developers have to use technologies that minimize water use," said Terry O'Brien, a California Energy Commission deputy director (Todd Woody, New York Times, Sept. 30). -- JK
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Senate EPW Committee Once Worked Together
CLIMATE: Once upon a time, Democrats and Republicans worked together on the Senate EPW panel Darren Samuelsohn, E&E senior reporter
California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer presides over an Environment and Public Works Committee considered about as partisan as a panel can get.
Ideological differences among the committee's Democrats and Republicans are evident every time the panel meets, creating a political dynamic that raises big questions about the fate of climate change legislation that Boxer and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) plan to unveil tomorrow.
Historically, the EPW Committee is known for its bipartisan accomplishments, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. But experts agree that the committee's upcoming and far-reaching effort on global warming will take place in a much different political atmosphere.
In a speech Thursday on the Senate floor, Boxer underscored that partisan divide when she attacked a Republican-led effort aimed at halting U.S. EPA climate regulations for a year.
"The interesting thing is most of these environmental laws started with a Republican president named Richard Nixon," Boxer said. "What happened to the days when environmental laws were supported on both sides? Those days appear to be gone."
Disputes in the EPW Committee start at the top. Ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.), himself a former chairman, regularly questions his Democratic counterpart's agenda with outspoken skepticism of climate change science and claims that a bill restricting greenhouse gas emissions would be a disaster for the U.S. economy.
The Senate EPW Committee, a timeline
Year Action
1838 Senate creates Committee on Public Buildings.
1947 Renamed Committee on Public Works.
1970 Passes Clean Air Act.
1972 Passes Clean Water Act.
1977 Name changed to Environment and Public Works Committee.
1990 Passes Clean Air Act amendments.
2000 Passes Everglades restoration legislation.
2007 Leads first congressional override of a President George W. Bush veto -- on Water Resources Development Act.
At a recent hearing, Inhofe and Boxer had an exchange emblematic of their unusual relationship, which the two senators themselves often describe as "friendly" when policy and politics are not involved.
Inhofe first declared that the Democrats' 12-7 advantage over Republicans meant Boxer should have little trouble moving a bill through committee, but the Oklahoma senator then promised to still lead the charge in killing the bill once it gets to the Senate floor.
Furthermore, Inhofe ticked off a list of reasons for why he thinks a Senate climate bill would not reduce domestic dependence on foreign oil and won't cut global temperatures -- two key reasons why Boxer and her allies want to pass the legislation.
"And when it's all said and done, the American people will reject it and we will defeat it," Inhofe said. "Thank you, Madame Chairman. On that happy note ..."
"You really started my day off with such excitement," Boxer said, cutting him off. That drew Inhofe's quick reply: "That's not the first time."
'A strong and cherished tradition of bipartisanship'
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hasn't always been this way.
History books detail how Democrats, Republicans and members from other early American political parties made a habit on the committee of working together on legislation overseeing the nation's government buildings and day-to-day operations.
First known as the Committee on Public Buildings, the panel authorized overtime pay for White House staff following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, helped get electricity installed in the Senate and later signed off on the construction of the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House.
Environmental issues first appeared on the committee's radar in the 1960s, well before it had the words formally inscribed in its title in 1977.
There were often disagreements. But former staffers, senators and lobbyists say that committee leaders like Sens. Jennings Randolph (D-W.Va.), George Mitchell (D-Maine), Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), Ed Muskie (D-Maine), John Chafee (R-R.I.) and Robert Stafford (R-Vt.) still worked together to produce the country's modern environmental laws, from the the 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act to the Clean Air Act of 1970 and 1990.
Sen. Ed Muskie (D-Maine) never chaired the Environment and Public Works Committee. But he served as one of its most senior members during a Senate career that lasted from 1959 until his 1980 appointment as secretary of State.
"Those are all huge accomplishments," said Dan Weiss, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who, in 1990, served as the Sierra Club's lead air pollution lobbyist. "They basically invented the basic architecture of our environmental safeguards."
Former staffers recall their bosses pushed them to find agreements across the aisle.
"There was a culture that developed on the committee, between Democrats and Republicans and among staff, people interested in trying to do the right thing," said Bob Hurley, a top Republican committee staffer from 1980 to 1990. "That's not to say there were no differences in approaches. But there was always that extra effort."
For business lobbyists, the tight relationship among EPW Committee members made it difficult to deploy a "divide and conquer" strategy that could get the majority and minority staffs arguing. "It was very hard to separate people," Hurley said.
"We didn't just have a staff draft bill, show it to the committee, have them vote it up or down and put it on the floor," added Leon Billings, a longtime Muskie aide who served as the Democratic staff director of EPW's Environmental Pollution Subcommittee from 1966 to 1978. "We'd have 30 to 40 subcommittee and full committee markups."
In a 1988 history of the EPW Committee, Chairman Quentin Burdick (D-N.D.) and Stafford, then the ranking member, wrote, "The nature of the work and the dedication of its membership have enabled the Committee on Environment and Public Works to develop a strong and cherished tradition of bipartisanship. Through this approach we are able to address issues on their merits and resolve questions on the basis of what is best for the Nation."
The fall of GOP moderates
So what happened?
Many longtime EPW Committee observers can trace the end of bipartisanship and dealmaking to a series of events in the early to mid-1990s, when conservative GOP leaders put the screws on their own crop of moderates.
Chafee lost his re-election bid as chairman of the Senate Republican conference in 1990 to the more conservative Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi. And many of the Republicans who had worked on those capstone environmental laws -- including Sens. David Durenberger of Minnesota, Al Simpson of Wyoming and Stafford -- were no longer serving in the Senate by the mid-1990s.
Consider the EPW Committee's Republican roster after the party won control of the Senate in the November 1994 elections. Chafee became the chairman, but behind him were several new committee members with a much more conservative mindset, including Sens. Inhofe, Craig Thomas of Wyoming, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Bob Bennett of Utah.
"I disagreed with Chafee more than I agreed with him," Inhofe recalled.
For Chafee and the dwindling number of moderate Republicans, it was a rough ride as the party's leadership tried to undermine the Clinton administration and their legitimate bipartisan efforts to pass legislation. For example, a bid to overhaul the Endangered Species Act, which had support from then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and both Democratic and GOP Western senators, did not get beyond the EPW Committee.
"It was a very tough time to be there, trying to be a leader on these issues and you turn around and no one is following you," said Steve Shimberg, a Republican EPW Committee staffer from 1981-1997, the last seven years of which he served as Chafee's committee staff director. "In fact, they're building an army against you."
Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.) served as the EPW Committee's ranking member from 1989-1994. He chaired the committee from 1995 until his death in 1999.
"He basically got a fist in the dike and kept it there," Billings added.
Former Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) took over as chairman of the EPW Committee in late 1999 following Chafee's death. For Smith, the promotion meant a platform to shepherd Everglades restoration legislation into law with the help of the Clinton administration, an effort that is considered by many to be the last big environmental bill to make it all the way to a president's desk.
Smith said in an interview that he was able to win over GOP leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers in a way Chafee could not. "When I said something about the Everglades or some other environmental issue, they couldn't just throw it aside," Smith said.
The George W. Bush era
Smith briefly kept hold of the EPW Committee's gavel during President George W. Bush's first term in 2001. But six months in, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont accused Bush of backtracking on key education and environmental campaign pledges. Jeffords left the Republican Party to become an independent, a move that flipped Senate control into the Democrats' hands and further inflamed partisan tensions.
Democrats rewarded Jeffords by giving him the chairmanship of the EPW Committee, and the party repeatedly used the panel to challenge the Bush administration on environmental issues. Then, in 2002, Jeffords narrowly passed out of committee a bill that would have limited both conventional air pollutants and carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who faced his own tough re-election bid that year, was the lone Democrat to vote against the bill. He joined a united Republican Party against the climate legislation and Democratic leaders never brought it up on the Senate floor. "There clearly was some effort to stand hard because of Jeffords trying to push that through," Smith recalled.
Both parties stayed in their respective corners on environmental issues under Inhofe, who took over when the Republicans regained the Senate in 2003. Environmentalists despised the Oklahoman for his declaration that man-made global warming was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
And Inhofe antagonized them more with hearings critical of the media's coverage of the issue, as well as by extending an invitation to Michael Crichton, the late science fiction writer who had written a novel depicting global warming as something concocted by environmentalists.
Looking back on Inhofe's tenure, former aides see a time when much was accomplished whenever the committee returned to its traditional jurisdictional issues, including transportation and water resources. "He really enjoyed getting into the nitty gritty of the highway formula," said Andrew Wheeler, a former EPW Committee staff director.
Boxer's rise to the chairmanship in 2006 -- the first for a Californian since Republican Sen. Leland Stanford in the late 19th century -- pushed the committee even further down the partisan road. While sources on both sides of the aisle are quick to note that she did team up with Inhofe in 2007 to override Bush's veto of the Water Resources Development Act -- a first for Congress during that administration, that was largely a blip on the radar.
The EPW Committee under Boxer has held dozens of hearings on global warming, but none yet have been dedicated to the nuances of the cap-and-trade program that the panel is considering passing this fall.
One former Senate GOP aide said Boxer had already established her reputation as a partisan flame thrower while serving as a back-bench Democrat on the committee. The staffer recalled Boxer often arriving on the Senate floor for speeches just as the West Coast evening newscasts were getting ready to air.
"It was like clockwork," the former aide said. "She seemed more interested in promoting herself than getting the work done. Those kinds of reputations linger. It's very hard to overcome them, even as you age and mellow. That impression is the one that sticks."
Smith, who lost his own re-election bid in the 2002 New Hampshire Republican primary, said Boxer made it more difficult for herself this year when she chastised Army Corps of Engineers Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh during a hearing for calling her "ma'am" instead of senator.
"That hurt her badly among a lot of people," said Smith, who is now flirting with an independent bid for the Florida seat now held by Sen. George LeMieux (R). "You have a responsibility there, sometimes larger than your own view."
Asked to size up the Senate EPW Committee in 2009, Inhofe acknowledged, "I'd say it's been pretty dysfunctional this year."
24/7 news, environmental politics
There are other explanations too beyond the personalities.
As a whole, the Senate Republican caucus has seen its moderate ranks diminish ever since the early 1990s. Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) replaced his father upon his death in 1999 but lost a re-election bid in 2006 to Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. Former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), a longtime EPW Committee member, did not show much interest in environmental issues until the end of his career, when he co-authored a climate bill with Boxer and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).
"John Warner was the last of his breed," said Weiss with the Center for American Progress. These days, Republicans count only a handful of moderates within their ranks, starting with the two Mainers. "If Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins wanted to get on that committee, they wouldn't be able to," Weiss added.
Elsewhere, many say environmental politics weigh heavily on the committee's dynamics, especially as national green groups take a more prominent role fundraising and campaigning on behalf of their chosen candidates. By doing that, Wheeler said, "You're obviously going to politicize the business of the committee."
Current and former senators and their aides also see the chamber in a different light than the fruitful period of the 1960s and 1970s when the bulk of the nation's environmental laws were written.
"When you're only here Tuesday through Thursday and all of your time here during the day is down the hall dialing for dollars, that says to me it's pretty hard building relationships," said Shimberg, who now works as an attorney at DLA Piper.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) served on the EPW Committee from 1983 until his first retirement in 2001. He came back to the Senate -- and the committee -- in 2003. These days, Lautenberg said the 24/7 news cycle and growth in the American population have something to do with the strained politics of Capitol Hill.
"We live in a world that's gotten at a much faster pace," Lautenberg said. "When you're moving at these speeds, things happen. There is a degree of rudeness that comes in in getting things done."
The current EPW Committee roster only adds to the partisanship as some of the party's most strident voices push for seats on the committee. And there is also the Democrats' 12-7 majority, the largest ever for one party over another on the modern day EPW Committee. That is a big enough lead that the committee leaders do not need to worry about the votes from Republicans, or even moderate Democrats like Baucus and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, if they want to pass a bill.
"It's tough," Smith said. "You have to recognize if you're one of the seven Republicans, there's nothing you can do to stop anything. ... What else can you do? You become basically an obstructionist."
A current Senate Republican staffer said another part of the partisan problem is Boxer's plan to move such a sweeping piece of legislation.
"If you do things on a smaller, case-by-case basis, do the work in the weeds, you get more compromises," the aide said. "If you do sweeping, mind-blowing, thousand-page bills, of course it's going to cause major strife between the members. It's going to become political. It's going to become more of a theater, circus-like atmosphere."
And then there is also the fact that the committee's two leaders -- Boxer and Inhofe -- represent extremes from within their own party. And they in turn set the tone for other members of the committee, a mood that makes it difficult for moderate Democrats and Republicans to capture 60 votes and pass the climate bill.
"It'd be fair to say that the Boxer-Inhofe relationship is defined or defines the general GOP-Democratic relationship in the Senate and in the countryside," Billings said. "I think that Inhofe very definitely reflects the base of the Republican Party. And I think [Boxer] reflects the base of the Democratic Party. I don't think either one of them gives a damn about the middle of either party because they don't have to."
California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer presides over an Environment and Public Works Committee considered about as partisan as a panel can get.
Ideological differences among the committee's Democrats and Republicans are evident every time the panel meets, creating a political dynamic that raises big questions about the fate of climate change legislation that Boxer and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) plan to unveil tomorrow.
Historically, the EPW Committee is known for its bipartisan accomplishments, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. But experts agree that the committee's upcoming and far-reaching effort on global warming will take place in a much different political atmosphere.
In a speech Thursday on the Senate floor, Boxer underscored that partisan divide when she attacked a Republican-led effort aimed at halting U.S. EPA climate regulations for a year.
"The interesting thing is most of these environmental laws started with a Republican president named Richard Nixon," Boxer said. "What happened to the days when environmental laws were supported on both sides? Those days appear to be gone."
Disputes in the EPW Committee start at the top. Ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.), himself a former chairman, regularly questions his Democratic counterpart's agenda with outspoken skepticism of climate change science and claims that a bill restricting greenhouse gas emissions would be a disaster for the U.S. economy.
The Senate EPW Committee, a timeline
Year Action
1838 Senate creates Committee on Public Buildings.
1947 Renamed Committee on Public Works.
1970 Passes Clean Air Act.
1972 Passes Clean Water Act.
1977 Name changed to Environment and Public Works Committee.
1990 Passes Clean Air Act amendments.
2000 Passes Everglades restoration legislation.
2007 Leads first congressional override of a President George W. Bush veto -- on Water Resources Development Act.
At a recent hearing, Inhofe and Boxer had an exchange emblematic of their unusual relationship, which the two senators themselves often describe as "friendly" when policy and politics are not involved.
Inhofe first declared that the Democrats' 12-7 advantage over Republicans meant Boxer should have little trouble moving a bill through committee, but the Oklahoma senator then promised to still lead the charge in killing the bill once it gets to the Senate floor.
Furthermore, Inhofe ticked off a list of reasons for why he thinks a Senate climate bill would not reduce domestic dependence on foreign oil and won't cut global temperatures -- two key reasons why Boxer and her allies want to pass the legislation.
"And when it's all said and done, the American people will reject it and we will defeat it," Inhofe said. "Thank you, Madame Chairman. On that happy note ..."
"You really started my day off with such excitement," Boxer said, cutting him off. That drew Inhofe's quick reply: "That's not the first time."
'A strong and cherished tradition of bipartisanship'
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hasn't always been this way.
History books detail how Democrats, Republicans and members from other early American political parties made a habit on the committee of working together on legislation overseeing the nation's government buildings and day-to-day operations.
First known as the Committee on Public Buildings, the panel authorized overtime pay for White House staff following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, helped get electricity installed in the Senate and later signed off on the construction of the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House.
Environmental issues first appeared on the committee's radar in the 1960s, well before it had the words formally inscribed in its title in 1977.
There were often disagreements. But former staffers, senators and lobbyists say that committee leaders like Sens. Jennings Randolph (D-W.Va.), George Mitchell (D-Maine), Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), Ed Muskie (D-Maine), John Chafee (R-R.I.) and Robert Stafford (R-Vt.) still worked together to produce the country's modern environmental laws, from the the 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act to the Clean Air Act of 1970 and 1990.
Sen. Ed Muskie (D-Maine) never chaired the Environment and Public Works Committee. But he served as one of its most senior members during a Senate career that lasted from 1959 until his 1980 appointment as secretary of State.
"Those are all huge accomplishments," said Dan Weiss, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who, in 1990, served as the Sierra Club's lead air pollution lobbyist. "They basically invented the basic architecture of our environmental safeguards."
Former staffers recall their bosses pushed them to find agreements across the aisle.
"There was a culture that developed on the committee, between Democrats and Republicans and among staff, people interested in trying to do the right thing," said Bob Hurley, a top Republican committee staffer from 1980 to 1990. "That's not to say there were no differences in approaches. But there was always that extra effort."
For business lobbyists, the tight relationship among EPW Committee members made it difficult to deploy a "divide and conquer" strategy that could get the majority and minority staffs arguing. "It was very hard to separate people," Hurley said.
"We didn't just have a staff draft bill, show it to the committee, have them vote it up or down and put it on the floor," added Leon Billings, a longtime Muskie aide who served as the Democratic staff director of EPW's Environmental Pollution Subcommittee from 1966 to 1978. "We'd have 30 to 40 subcommittee and full committee markups."
In a 1988 history of the EPW Committee, Chairman Quentin Burdick (D-N.D.) and Stafford, then the ranking member, wrote, "The nature of the work and the dedication of its membership have enabled the Committee on Environment and Public Works to develop a strong and cherished tradition of bipartisanship. Through this approach we are able to address issues on their merits and resolve questions on the basis of what is best for the Nation."
The fall of GOP moderates
So what happened?
Many longtime EPW Committee observers can trace the end of bipartisanship and dealmaking to a series of events in the early to mid-1990s, when conservative GOP leaders put the screws on their own crop of moderates.
Chafee lost his re-election bid as chairman of the Senate Republican conference in 1990 to the more conservative Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi. And many of the Republicans who had worked on those capstone environmental laws -- including Sens. David Durenberger of Minnesota, Al Simpson of Wyoming and Stafford -- were no longer serving in the Senate by the mid-1990s.
Consider the EPW Committee's Republican roster after the party won control of the Senate in the November 1994 elections. Chafee became the chairman, but behind him were several new committee members with a much more conservative mindset, including Sens. Inhofe, Craig Thomas of Wyoming, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Bob Bennett of Utah.
"I disagreed with Chafee more than I agreed with him," Inhofe recalled.
For Chafee and the dwindling number of moderate Republicans, it was a rough ride as the party's leadership tried to undermine the Clinton administration and their legitimate bipartisan efforts to pass legislation. For example, a bid to overhaul the Endangered Species Act, which had support from then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and both Democratic and GOP Western senators, did not get beyond the EPW Committee.
"It was a very tough time to be there, trying to be a leader on these issues and you turn around and no one is following you," said Steve Shimberg, a Republican EPW Committee staffer from 1981-1997, the last seven years of which he served as Chafee's committee staff director. "In fact, they're building an army against you."
Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.) served as the EPW Committee's ranking member from 1989-1994. He chaired the committee from 1995 until his death in 1999.
"He basically got a fist in the dike and kept it there," Billings added.
Former Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) took over as chairman of the EPW Committee in late 1999 following Chafee's death. For Smith, the promotion meant a platform to shepherd Everglades restoration legislation into law with the help of the Clinton administration, an effort that is considered by many to be the last big environmental bill to make it all the way to a president's desk.
Smith said in an interview that he was able to win over GOP leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers in a way Chafee could not. "When I said something about the Everglades or some other environmental issue, they couldn't just throw it aside," Smith said.
The George W. Bush era
Smith briefly kept hold of the EPW Committee's gavel during President George W. Bush's first term in 2001. But six months in, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont accused Bush of backtracking on key education and environmental campaign pledges. Jeffords left the Republican Party to become an independent, a move that flipped Senate control into the Democrats' hands and further inflamed partisan tensions.
Democrats rewarded Jeffords by giving him the chairmanship of the EPW Committee, and the party repeatedly used the panel to challenge the Bush administration on environmental issues. Then, in 2002, Jeffords narrowly passed out of committee a bill that would have limited both conventional air pollutants and carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who faced his own tough re-election bid that year, was the lone Democrat to vote against the bill. He joined a united Republican Party against the climate legislation and Democratic leaders never brought it up on the Senate floor. "There clearly was some effort to stand hard because of Jeffords trying to push that through," Smith recalled.
Both parties stayed in their respective corners on environmental issues under Inhofe, who took over when the Republicans regained the Senate in 2003. Environmentalists despised the Oklahoman for his declaration that man-made global warming was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
And Inhofe antagonized them more with hearings critical of the media's coverage of the issue, as well as by extending an invitation to Michael Crichton, the late science fiction writer who had written a novel depicting global warming as something concocted by environmentalists.
Looking back on Inhofe's tenure, former aides see a time when much was accomplished whenever the committee returned to its traditional jurisdictional issues, including transportation and water resources. "He really enjoyed getting into the nitty gritty of the highway formula," said Andrew Wheeler, a former EPW Committee staff director.
Boxer's rise to the chairmanship in 2006 -- the first for a Californian since Republican Sen. Leland Stanford in the late 19th century -- pushed the committee even further down the partisan road. While sources on both sides of the aisle are quick to note that she did team up with Inhofe in 2007 to override Bush's veto of the Water Resources Development Act -- a first for Congress during that administration, that was largely a blip on the radar.
The EPW Committee under Boxer has held dozens of hearings on global warming, but none yet have been dedicated to the nuances of the cap-and-trade program that the panel is considering passing this fall.
One former Senate GOP aide said Boxer had already established her reputation as a partisan flame thrower while serving as a back-bench Democrat on the committee. The staffer recalled Boxer often arriving on the Senate floor for speeches just as the West Coast evening newscasts were getting ready to air.
"It was like clockwork," the former aide said. "She seemed more interested in promoting herself than getting the work done. Those kinds of reputations linger. It's very hard to overcome them, even as you age and mellow. That impression is the one that sticks."
Smith, who lost his own re-election bid in the 2002 New Hampshire Republican primary, said Boxer made it more difficult for herself this year when she chastised Army Corps of Engineers Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh during a hearing for calling her "ma'am" instead of senator.
"That hurt her badly among a lot of people," said Smith, who is now flirting with an independent bid for the Florida seat now held by Sen. George LeMieux (R). "You have a responsibility there, sometimes larger than your own view."
Asked to size up the Senate EPW Committee in 2009, Inhofe acknowledged, "I'd say it's been pretty dysfunctional this year."
24/7 news, environmental politics
There are other explanations too beyond the personalities.
As a whole, the Senate Republican caucus has seen its moderate ranks diminish ever since the early 1990s. Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) replaced his father upon his death in 1999 but lost a re-election bid in 2006 to Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. Former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), a longtime EPW Committee member, did not show much interest in environmental issues until the end of his career, when he co-authored a climate bill with Boxer and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).
"John Warner was the last of his breed," said Weiss with the Center for American Progress. These days, Republicans count only a handful of moderates within their ranks, starting with the two Mainers. "If Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins wanted to get on that committee, they wouldn't be able to," Weiss added.
Elsewhere, many say environmental politics weigh heavily on the committee's dynamics, especially as national green groups take a more prominent role fundraising and campaigning on behalf of their chosen candidates. By doing that, Wheeler said, "You're obviously going to politicize the business of the committee."
Current and former senators and their aides also see the chamber in a different light than the fruitful period of the 1960s and 1970s when the bulk of the nation's environmental laws were written.
"When you're only here Tuesday through Thursday and all of your time here during the day is down the hall dialing for dollars, that says to me it's pretty hard building relationships," said Shimberg, who now works as an attorney at DLA Piper.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) served on the EPW Committee from 1983 until his first retirement in 2001. He came back to the Senate -- and the committee -- in 2003. These days, Lautenberg said the 24/7 news cycle and growth in the American population have something to do with the strained politics of Capitol Hill.
"We live in a world that's gotten at a much faster pace," Lautenberg said. "When you're moving at these speeds, things happen. There is a degree of rudeness that comes in in getting things done."
The current EPW Committee roster only adds to the partisanship as some of the party's most strident voices push for seats on the committee. And there is also the Democrats' 12-7 majority, the largest ever for one party over another on the modern day EPW Committee. That is a big enough lead that the committee leaders do not need to worry about the votes from Republicans, or even moderate Democrats like Baucus and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, if they want to pass a bill.
"It's tough," Smith said. "You have to recognize if you're one of the seven Republicans, there's nothing you can do to stop anything. ... What else can you do? You become basically an obstructionist."
A current Senate Republican staffer said another part of the partisan problem is Boxer's plan to move such a sweeping piece of legislation.
"If you do things on a smaller, case-by-case basis, do the work in the weeds, you get more compromises," the aide said. "If you do sweeping, mind-blowing, thousand-page bills, of course it's going to cause major strife between the members. It's going to become political. It's going to become more of a theater, circus-like atmosphere."
And then there is also the fact that the committee's two leaders -- Boxer and Inhofe -- represent extremes from within their own party. And they in turn set the tone for other members of the committee, a mood that makes it difficult for moderate Democrats and Republicans to capture 60 votes and pass the climate bill.
"It'd be fair to say that the Boxer-Inhofe relationship is defined or defines the general GOP-Democratic relationship in the Senate and in the countryside," Billings said. "I think that Inhofe very definitely reflects the base of the Republican Party. And I think [Boxer] reflects the base of the Democratic Party. I don't think either one of them gives a damn about the middle of either party because they don't have to."
Friday, September 25, 2009
Reclamation Launches Basin Studies
WATER: Reclamation launches basin study program to plan for future challenges
April Reese, E&E reporter
With climate change, population growth and the needs of endangered species stressing water supplies in the West like never before, the Bureau of Reclamation has launched a new program aimed at studying some of the West's hardest-hit basins to help prepare them for the unprecedented challenges that lie ahead.
Last week, Reclamation Commissioner Mike Connor announced the first three basins to receive federal funding under the agency's new Basin Study Program: the Colorado River Basin, the Yakima River Basin in Washington, and the Milk and St. Mary river systems in Montana. Reclamation will provide $1 million for the Colorado River Basin study, which will quantify supply and demand; $1.3 million for the Yakima project, which will focus on infrastructure restoration; and $350,000 for the Milk and St. Mary study, which will explore how to meet future needs. All three grants will be augmented by matching funds from states, local governments and tribes.
All of the studies will measure existing supplies and determine whether water supply infrastructure is sufficient to meet future demands. The studies will also include recommendations on how to optimize operations to supply adequate water and power while accounting for environmental values, according to Reclamation.
The two-year studies will "help lead us down the road to adaptation strategies," Connor said during an address to the Colorado River Symposium, held in Santa Fe, N.M., last week. Given the shrunken snowpacks, earlier runoff and more severe storms and droughts that are expected to beleaguer the West as a result of climate change, it is important to understand how much water is available now and how to manage those supplies to meet future demands, he said.
The new Basin Study Program is part of a larger effort within Reclamation and the Interior Department to meet water needs for both people and wildlife in the face of climate change and population growth, Connor noted. He added that it is also a key part of Reclamation's implementation of the SECURE Water Act, which was passed as part of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009.
"It's unclear whether our usage and management is sustainable," he said. "That's what I see Reclamation's role is moving forward: [providing] certainty and sustainability."
Connor's Sept. 17 announcement came on the heels of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's signing of an order earlier in the week outlining the department's strategy for addressing the current and future impacts of climate change on the country's natural resources, including water.
Connor said he hopes the basin studies will provide a model for how to assess available supplies and how to respond to the inevitable changes that will place new demands on river basins. Reclamation has asked for another $4 million in Interior's 2010 budget request to fund more basin studies next year, Connor said. "There are a lot of river basins out there" that need such studies, he said.
The three basins awarded funds were chosen from more than two-dozen letters of interest amounting to about $10 million in requested funding.
Praise for the basin-level approach
Tony Willardson, executive director of the Western States Water Council, a project of the Western Governors' Association that focuses on water issues, commended Reclamation for taking a basin-level approach to addressing the unprecedented demands on water supplies.
"Instead of the federal government addressing a problem here and a problem there, they're looking at the whole basin and trying to get ahead of the game," Willardson said.
Reclamation chose the Colorado, Yakima and Milk and St. Mary basins because they face some of the most pressing water challenges and all need to be better studied. For instance, the Colorado River Basin provides water across seven states for 27 million people -- up from 25 million just a few years ago -- but there are significant data gaps in how the basin's water is used and how its supplies can be stretched to meet future needs. It is also one of the regions that will be hit hardest by climate change.
And in the Yakima River Basin, one of the most intensively irrigated basins in the United States, aging infrastructure has managers worried about the reliability of the system, as well as whether existing supplies there will be adequate down the road.
The potential failure of that system, built in the early 1900s, "has implications for the farmers there but also environmental and social impacts," Willardson said. Two fish species in the basin are listed under the Endangered Species Act: bull trout and mid-Columbia steelhead.
In the Milk and St. Mary river systems, which extend into Canada, managers face a tangle of issues relating to changing natural flows, leaking diversion facilities, international commitments and requirements for bull trout.
With all three basins already grappling with huge challenges, the basin studies will be crucial in determining how they will continue to provide water for people and wildlife in a climate-altered future, Willardson said.
"We really don't have a good idea how much more water we'll be using," he said. "So we need to look at water policies in the West and look at growth, climate change and demand now."
April Reese, E&E reporter
With climate change, population growth and the needs of endangered species stressing water supplies in the West like never before, the Bureau of Reclamation has launched a new program aimed at studying some of the West's hardest-hit basins to help prepare them for the unprecedented challenges that lie ahead.
Last week, Reclamation Commissioner Mike Connor announced the first three basins to receive federal funding under the agency's new Basin Study Program: the Colorado River Basin, the Yakima River Basin in Washington, and the Milk and St. Mary river systems in Montana. Reclamation will provide $1 million for the Colorado River Basin study, which will quantify supply and demand; $1.3 million for the Yakima project, which will focus on infrastructure restoration; and $350,000 for the Milk and St. Mary study, which will explore how to meet future needs. All three grants will be augmented by matching funds from states, local governments and tribes.
All of the studies will measure existing supplies and determine whether water supply infrastructure is sufficient to meet future demands. The studies will also include recommendations on how to optimize operations to supply adequate water and power while accounting for environmental values, according to Reclamation.
The two-year studies will "help lead us down the road to adaptation strategies," Connor said during an address to the Colorado River Symposium, held in Santa Fe, N.M., last week. Given the shrunken snowpacks, earlier runoff and more severe storms and droughts that are expected to beleaguer the West as a result of climate change, it is important to understand how much water is available now and how to manage those supplies to meet future demands, he said.
The new Basin Study Program is part of a larger effort within Reclamation and the Interior Department to meet water needs for both people and wildlife in the face of climate change and population growth, Connor noted. He added that it is also a key part of Reclamation's implementation of the SECURE Water Act, which was passed as part of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009.
"It's unclear whether our usage and management is sustainable," he said. "That's what I see Reclamation's role is moving forward: [providing] certainty and sustainability."
Connor's Sept. 17 announcement came on the heels of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's signing of an order earlier in the week outlining the department's strategy for addressing the current and future impacts of climate change on the country's natural resources, including water.
Connor said he hopes the basin studies will provide a model for how to assess available supplies and how to respond to the inevitable changes that will place new demands on river basins. Reclamation has asked for another $4 million in Interior's 2010 budget request to fund more basin studies next year, Connor said. "There are a lot of river basins out there" that need such studies, he said.
The three basins awarded funds were chosen from more than two-dozen letters of interest amounting to about $10 million in requested funding.
Praise for the basin-level approach
Tony Willardson, executive director of the Western States Water Council, a project of the Western Governors' Association that focuses on water issues, commended Reclamation for taking a basin-level approach to addressing the unprecedented demands on water supplies.
"Instead of the federal government addressing a problem here and a problem there, they're looking at the whole basin and trying to get ahead of the game," Willardson said.
Reclamation chose the Colorado, Yakima and Milk and St. Mary basins because they face some of the most pressing water challenges and all need to be better studied. For instance, the Colorado River Basin provides water across seven states for 27 million people -- up from 25 million just a few years ago -- but there are significant data gaps in how the basin's water is used and how its supplies can be stretched to meet future needs. It is also one of the regions that will be hit hardest by climate change.
And in the Yakima River Basin, one of the most intensively irrigated basins in the United States, aging infrastructure has managers worried about the reliability of the system, as well as whether existing supplies there will be adequate down the road.
The potential failure of that system, built in the early 1900s, "has implications for the farmers there but also environmental and social impacts," Willardson said. Two fish species in the basin are listed under the Endangered Species Act: bull trout and mid-Columbia steelhead.
In the Milk and St. Mary river systems, which extend into Canada, managers face a tangle of issues relating to changing natural flows, leaking diversion facilities, international commitments and requirements for bull trout.
With all three basins already grappling with huge challenges, the basin studies will be crucial in determining how they will continue to provide water for people and wildlife in a climate-altered future, Willardson said.
"We really don't have a good idea how much more water we'll be using," he said. "So we need to look at water policies in the West and look at growth, climate change and demand now."
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Kittitas Well Situation Awaits AG Opinion
State AG ruling awaited to settle regulation of Kittitas wellsby David Lester
Yakima Herald-Republic
YAKIMA, Wash. -- Kittitas County commissioners and the state Department of Ecology have resigned themselves to waiting for an attorney general's opinion on the authority of the state and the county to regulate exempt wells in the upper county.
While the wait may not be long -- the opinion could come out any day -- any chance for a rapid end to a two-month moratorium on new wells collapsed last week after a flurry of back-and-forth proposals between Commissioner Paul Jewell and Ecology Director Jay Manning.
"I really thought we were moving in a positive direction to get an agreement," Jewell said. "Once again, when it came to making a decision, Ecology was unwilling to move forward."
At issue are the unpermitted wells builders and property owners have been using over the last several decades to tap into groundwater to build new homes in north Kittitas County. State officials worry that there's not enough water to accommodate the newcomers and senior water rights users, but Kittitas County commissioners aren't convinced there's a problem.
Exempt wells, which don't require a state permit, have been allowed since the state groundwater code was adopted in 1945. Such wells include those for homes, a half-acre lawn and garden, industrial use and watering livestock.
Among its latest proposals, Kittitas County commissioners offered to adopt a new ordinance that would prohibit new lawns and gardens unless an irrigation district supplied the water. An owner could also irrigate lawns and gardens by purchasing a senior water right as mitigation.
But disagreement on how soon owners would be required to obtain an existing water right to make up for the new use doomed a possible agreement on that issue.
Tom Tebb, the agency's regional director in Yakima, said the agency was concerned the county wouldn't be able to adopt the ordinance on lawns and gardens for more than a month. Coupling the adoption delay with the county's request to lift the moratorium within two weeks would leave a gap in protection for groundwater.
The county also wanted to delay the mitigation requirement until the water exchange program is fully operational.
Tebb said the county's proposals would not have protected senior water rights and stream flows from being affected by the drilling of new exempt wells.
Jewell said the talks appear to be at a standstill. And now, both sides are waiting to hear from Attorney General Rob McKenna. An opinion was expected this week.
Kittitas County and the Department of Ecology have submitted questions to the attorney general about the state's legal authority to restrict exempt wells and whether county officials can adopt land-use regulations that set limits on water use, as Ecology is requesting.
One of the proposals from the state is to combine two of the exemptions -- for homes and outdoor use -- into one category, and that the water use for that exemption would be limited to less than 5,000 gallons per day.
Ecology imposed an emergency rule in July that prohibited new wells in the north end of the county west and north of Indian John Hill because of a belief that a water management agreement with Kittitas County could not be reached.
The ban has been criticized for damaging an already weak economy by halting construction of new homes.
The Department of Ecology has sought to soften the blow by launching a water exchange program under which property owners can purchase a senior water right to offset, or mitigate, their new use of water. The source for the mitigation water are rights purchased by Suncadia, the massive mountain resort near Cle Elum.
Suncadia purchased nearly 500 acre-feet of water to be left in streams under a requirement imposed by Ecology.
The water exchange Web site began operation Aug. 31.
* David Lester can be reached at 509-577-7674 or dlester@yakimaherald.com.
Yakima Herald-Republic
YAKIMA, Wash. -- Kittitas County commissioners and the state Department of Ecology have resigned themselves to waiting for an attorney general's opinion on the authority of the state and the county to regulate exempt wells in the upper county.
While the wait may not be long -- the opinion could come out any day -- any chance for a rapid end to a two-month moratorium on new wells collapsed last week after a flurry of back-and-forth proposals between Commissioner Paul Jewell and Ecology Director Jay Manning.
"I really thought we were moving in a positive direction to get an agreement," Jewell said. "Once again, when it came to making a decision, Ecology was unwilling to move forward."
At issue are the unpermitted wells builders and property owners have been using over the last several decades to tap into groundwater to build new homes in north Kittitas County. State officials worry that there's not enough water to accommodate the newcomers and senior water rights users, but Kittitas County commissioners aren't convinced there's a problem.
Exempt wells, which don't require a state permit, have been allowed since the state groundwater code was adopted in 1945. Such wells include those for homes, a half-acre lawn and garden, industrial use and watering livestock.
Among its latest proposals, Kittitas County commissioners offered to adopt a new ordinance that would prohibit new lawns and gardens unless an irrigation district supplied the water. An owner could also irrigate lawns and gardens by purchasing a senior water right as mitigation.
But disagreement on how soon owners would be required to obtain an existing water right to make up for the new use doomed a possible agreement on that issue.
Tom Tebb, the agency's regional director in Yakima, said the agency was concerned the county wouldn't be able to adopt the ordinance on lawns and gardens for more than a month. Coupling the adoption delay with the county's request to lift the moratorium within two weeks would leave a gap in protection for groundwater.
The county also wanted to delay the mitigation requirement until the water exchange program is fully operational.
Tebb said the county's proposals would not have protected senior water rights and stream flows from being affected by the drilling of new exempt wells.
Jewell said the talks appear to be at a standstill. And now, both sides are waiting to hear from Attorney General Rob McKenna. An opinion was expected this week.
Kittitas County and the Department of Ecology have submitted questions to the attorney general about the state's legal authority to restrict exempt wells and whether county officials can adopt land-use regulations that set limits on water use, as Ecology is requesting.
One of the proposals from the state is to combine two of the exemptions -- for homes and outdoor use -- into one category, and that the water use for that exemption would be limited to less than 5,000 gallons per day.
Ecology imposed an emergency rule in July that prohibited new wells in the north end of the county west and north of Indian John Hill because of a belief that a water management agreement with Kittitas County could not be reached.
The ban has been criticized for damaging an already weak economy by halting construction of new homes.
The Department of Ecology has sought to soften the blow by launching a water exchange program under which property owners can purchase a senior water right to offset, or mitigate, their new use of water. The source for the mitigation water are rights purchased by Suncadia, the massive mountain resort near Cle Elum.
Suncadia purchased nearly 500 acre-feet of water to be left in streams under a requirement imposed by Ecology.
The water exchange Web site began operation Aug. 31.
* David Lester can be reached at 509-577-7674 or dlester@yakimaherald.com.
Monday, July 13, 2009
FFA Challenges Delta Smelt Order
Family Farm Alliance News Release
Family Farm Alliance Calls for Withdrawal
Of Biased, Unscientific Order for Delta Smelt Contact: Dan Keppen @ 541-892-6244
Brenda Davis @ 916-341-7404
Fifteen Years of Failure to Protect the Delta Is Enough;
Group Calls on Government to Restore Scientific Integrity
(Klamath Falls, Oregon - July 13, 2009). Declaring that fifteen years of failure is enough, the Family Farm Alliance (Alliance) has filed suit to force the withdrawal of the federal government's latest order cutting back California's water supplies on behalf of the delta smelt. The order issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife (USFWS) does not meet the Endangered Species Act's standards for quality of data and scientific integrity according to the suit filed on Friday with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.
"Fortunately the Endangered Species Act (ESA) sets strict standards to protect the public and the environment from biased and unscientific abuses of its provisions," said Dan Keppen, Alliance Executive Director. "We are taking this action to protect the integrity of ESA and to ensure that those standards are applied to correct the federal government's unmitigated record of failure in the Delta."
For the past 15 years, federal regulators have ordered more and more stringent restrictions on the water supplies pumped through the Delta to serve California's farms and cities, on the presumption that the pumps were harming delta smelt. Those restrictions have cost California billions of dollars in economic losses and tens of thousands of jobs. But instead of showing any benefit from these measures, the population of delta smelt has continued to decline.
Among the many defects in USFWS's December order, which reduced by one third the state's water supplies to more than 25 million people, the Alliance pointed out that:
Instead of conducting the independent peer review that the law requires, USFWS brought in the authors of the papers on which the agency's order was based. In effect, they were being asked to review the adequacy of their own work. None would qualify under the standards set by ESA, the Information Quality Act or the federal Office of Management and Budget guidelines.
Although ESA requires USFWS to use the best available scientific and commercial data, the agency instead based its findings in part on an analysis which had not been published or peer reviewed and, supposedly, data, which USFWS refused even to disclose. Moreover, it turns out the agency did not actually possess some of the data that it claimed it used to order the cutbacks in water supplies.
Rather than relying on scientific evidence to form its conclusions as the law requires, USFWS only cited the bits and pieces of information that supported its own assumptions and ignored the rest.
The Alliance is not alone in questioning the integrity of USFWS's smelt order. The California Department of Water Resources has formally asked that it be withdrawn for reconsultation and revision. DWR says there is new information on better ways to protect the smelt that was not considered in the existing order.
And the federal court recently granted a temporary injunction against USFWS' order on a complaint that the order violated the National Environmental Policy Act because the federal government failed to prepare an environmental impact statement. Instead the order was drafted in secret and put into effect without any public hearings or review.
At a recent town hall meeting in Fresno, where area congressmen, business leaders, landowners and farmworkers criticized the order's scientific inadequacy, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar declined to defend USFWS' action, pointing out that these cutbacks in water supplies had been the work of the previous administration.
"President Obama and the leadership in Congress have declared their commitment to upholding the standards and bringing the best science to bear on governmental decision making," said Keppen. "We applaud their commitment and call on them to live up to that promise by withdrawing this flawed and fallacious order now, before it does any more harm."
Numerous scientific studies have identified multiple causes for the delta smelt's decline, including ammonia discharges from Sacramento and other industrial pollution, temperature changes, and invasive non-native species that are devouring the smelt's food as well as the smelt themselves.
"USFWS has refused to analyze these other factors and their importance, sticking instead to their assumption that pumping must be the problem," Keppen said. "But if anything, their failure to produce any benefits for the smelt over the last fifteen years should demonstrate that the pumps are not the problem."
According to analyses prepared by the University of California, federal restrictions on pumping water through the Delta, combined with the ongoing effects of drought, cost California's Central Valley economy more than $300 million in 2008 and nearly $1 billion this year. The economic impacts statewide are much greater.
"These are critical issues for the members of our alliance," Keppen pointed out. "More than 300,000 acres of productive farmlands have been fallowed because of these cutbacks. Rationing is being imposed in many California cities. Our membership includes farmers but we also represent irrigation districts, commodity associations, private water companies, and suppliers of a wide range of farm-related services and equipment. We are all being hurt by these federal cutbacks in water deliveries."
The Alliance brought its concerns with the adequacy of the data used for this order to the attention of USFWS as soon as the order was released in December, 2008. But USFWS has so far refused to address these problems or correct the order. The Alliance has now exhausted all of the opportunities for administrative relief.
"This is the first time that the Alliance has engaged in litigation, and it's not a step we take lightly," said Alliance President Patrick O'Toole. "But in this case, we had no other choice. "Preserving the scientific basis for these decisions and ensuring the fairness and transparency of all the proceedings under ESA is a vitally important issue for all of our members throughout the western states."
The Family Farm Alliance is a grassroots organization of family farmers, ranchers, irrigation districts and allied industries in 17 Western states. The Alliance is focused on one mission: To ensure the availability of reliable, affordable irrigation water supplies to Western farmers and ranchers. For more information on the Alliance, go to www.familyfarmalliance.org
Family Farm Alliance Calls for Withdrawal
Of Biased, Unscientific Order for Delta Smelt Contact: Dan Keppen @ 541-892-6244
Brenda Davis @ 916-341-7404
Fifteen Years of Failure to Protect the Delta Is Enough;
Group Calls on Government to Restore Scientific Integrity
(Klamath Falls, Oregon - July 13, 2009). Declaring that fifteen years of failure is enough, the Family Farm Alliance (Alliance) has filed suit to force the withdrawal of the federal government's latest order cutting back California's water supplies on behalf of the delta smelt. The order issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife (USFWS) does not meet the Endangered Species Act's standards for quality of data and scientific integrity according to the suit filed on Friday with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.
"Fortunately the Endangered Species Act (ESA) sets strict standards to protect the public and the environment from biased and unscientific abuses of its provisions," said Dan Keppen, Alliance Executive Director. "We are taking this action to protect the integrity of ESA and to ensure that those standards are applied to correct the federal government's unmitigated record of failure in the Delta."
For the past 15 years, federal regulators have ordered more and more stringent restrictions on the water supplies pumped through the Delta to serve California's farms and cities, on the presumption that the pumps were harming delta smelt. Those restrictions have cost California billions of dollars in economic losses and tens of thousands of jobs. But instead of showing any benefit from these measures, the population of delta smelt has continued to decline.
Among the many defects in USFWS's December order, which reduced by one third the state's water supplies to more than 25 million people, the Alliance pointed out that:
Instead of conducting the independent peer review that the law requires, USFWS brought in the authors of the papers on which the agency's order was based. In effect, they were being asked to review the adequacy of their own work. None would qualify under the standards set by ESA, the Information Quality Act or the federal Office of Management and Budget guidelines.
Although ESA requires USFWS to use the best available scientific and commercial data, the agency instead based its findings in part on an analysis which had not been published or peer reviewed and, supposedly, data, which USFWS refused even to disclose. Moreover, it turns out the agency did not actually possess some of the data that it claimed it used to order the cutbacks in water supplies.
Rather than relying on scientific evidence to form its conclusions as the law requires, USFWS only cited the bits and pieces of information that supported its own assumptions and ignored the rest.
The Alliance is not alone in questioning the integrity of USFWS's smelt order. The California Department of Water Resources has formally asked that it be withdrawn for reconsultation and revision. DWR says there is new information on better ways to protect the smelt that was not considered in the existing order.
And the federal court recently granted a temporary injunction against USFWS' order on a complaint that the order violated the National Environmental Policy Act because the federal government failed to prepare an environmental impact statement. Instead the order was drafted in secret and put into effect without any public hearings or review.
At a recent town hall meeting in Fresno, where area congressmen, business leaders, landowners and farmworkers criticized the order's scientific inadequacy, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar declined to defend USFWS' action, pointing out that these cutbacks in water supplies had been the work of the previous administration.
"President Obama and the leadership in Congress have declared their commitment to upholding the standards and bringing the best science to bear on governmental decision making," said Keppen. "We applaud their commitment and call on them to live up to that promise by withdrawing this flawed and fallacious order now, before it does any more harm."
Numerous scientific studies have identified multiple causes for the delta smelt's decline, including ammonia discharges from Sacramento and other industrial pollution, temperature changes, and invasive non-native species that are devouring the smelt's food as well as the smelt themselves.
"USFWS has refused to analyze these other factors and their importance, sticking instead to their assumption that pumping must be the problem," Keppen said. "But if anything, their failure to produce any benefits for the smelt over the last fifteen years should demonstrate that the pumps are not the problem."
According to analyses prepared by the University of California, federal restrictions on pumping water through the Delta, combined with the ongoing effects of drought, cost California's Central Valley economy more than $300 million in 2008 and nearly $1 billion this year. The economic impacts statewide are much greater.
"These are critical issues for the members of our alliance," Keppen pointed out. "More than 300,000 acres of productive farmlands have been fallowed because of these cutbacks. Rationing is being imposed in many California cities. Our membership includes farmers but we also represent irrigation districts, commodity associations, private water companies, and suppliers of a wide range of farm-related services and equipment. We are all being hurt by these federal cutbacks in water deliveries."
The Alliance brought its concerns with the adequacy of the data used for this order to the attention of USFWS as soon as the order was released in December, 2008. But USFWS has so far refused to address these problems or correct the order. The Alliance has now exhausted all of the opportunities for administrative relief.
"This is the first time that the Alliance has engaged in litigation, and it's not a step we take lightly," said Alliance President Patrick O'Toole. "But in this case, we had no other choice. "Preserving the scientific basis for these decisions and ensuring the fairness and transparency of all the proceedings under ESA is a vitally important issue for all of our members throughout the western states."
The Family Farm Alliance is a grassroots organization of family farmers, ranchers, irrigation districts and allied industries in 17 Western states. The Alliance is focused on one mission: To ensure the availability of reliable, affordable irrigation water supplies to Western farmers and ranchers. For more information on the Alliance, go to www.familyfarmalliance.org
Monday, July 6, 2009
LA Times Weighs in on Columbia River Salmon Issues
Saving the Columbia and Snake river salmon
L.A. Times-7/6/09
By Paul VanDevelder
Opinion
If ever there were a story that foreshadowed the political and legal Waterloos that loom in seeking solutions to climate change, surely that cautionary tale is the one about the Columbia and Snake rivers' salmon and their imminent extinction. And like most stories about endangered species or environmental threats, this one is not only about fish and rivers -- it's about us.
The policy deadlock that has resulted from the debate among stakeholders along the Columbia and the Snake -- aluminum smelters, the Bonneville Power Administration, politicians, Indian tribes, states, conservation groups, fishermen, barge operators, agribusiness and wheat farmers -- has flushed billions of taxpayer dollars out to sea over the last 15 years while doing very little to prevent 13 endangered salmon stocks from going extinct.
In March, the federal judge responsible for herding all these cats toward a scientifically based solution that meets the requirements of the Endangered Species Act announced that he had heard enough bickering. District Judge James Redden summoned all the stakeholders to his courtroom in Portland, Ore., with the edict to take "aggressive action" and that "now is the time to make that happen."
In addition to being the judge in this case, Redden acts as the government's "special master" for the Columbia River basin, a network of rivers and streams that fans out over an area the size of France. In that role, he has the final say on any proposed changes to fish habitat and the uses of the rivers' payload: water.
At the March meeting in his courtroom, Redden wore both hats and congratulated all sides for getting "very close" to a final rescue plan for the fish. After losing precious years to political infighting and foot-dragging by the Clinton and Bush administrations, Redden noted that much progress had been made in recent years in formulating a workable plan -- "a biological opinion" -- to keep the salmon from becoming extinct.
However, he warned, there were still problems with the plan. For one thing, government scientists had relied too heavily on statistical sleight of hand to support their argument that endangered fish were trending toward recovery. For another, the removal of four dams on the lower Snake River must be included in the recovery plan in case all other remedies fail.
There it was. Out in the open and on the table. Dam removal -- a remedy that the Bush administration had rejected out of hand -- was back in play. Fax machines across the region came to life when Redden's letter reached the stakeholders.
"Federal law doesn't allow dam removal, and no Democrat-politician-turned-activist-judge can rewrite the law," wrote Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) The Northwest River Partners expressed dismay, and the Portland Oregonian's editorial board described Redden's letter as "puzzling."
"The letter is strongly critical of the key strategy in the plan to focus on habitat improvements to offset the harm that federal power-generating dams inflict on fish," the Oregonian wrote, expressing surprise at such a reaction while conveniently ignoring the fact that billions of dollars spent on habitat improvement, fish ladders and barging young fish around dams have done very little to increase salmon populations.
If anything, these measures have lengthened the odds against the salmon's survival by shifting the focus away from more politically explosive solutions, such as dam removal. Redden first issued his warning about the dams in 2004, when he threw out the first Bush rescue plan.
Politicians and stakeholders have steadfastly resisted the painful solution of dam removal while hoping for a miracle. That hope turned out to be a one-way road on a dead-end street, and in many respects they're now blaming the court for their current predicament. With few exceptions, the region's politicians, past and current, have been challenging the recommendations of scientists (including dam removal and increasing the spills over the dams) for more than a decade. Former Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) famously vowed to chain himself to a dam rather than surrender, a prospect relished by many conservation groups.
Throughout this stalemate, fish counts have continued to fall, and the underlying science is clear: In river after river where dams have been removed, native fish populations have rebounded and thrived. As the government's former chief aquatic biologist, Don Chapman, concluded, dam removal is the most effective strategy for saving endangered native fish stocks from extinction.
This was the conclusion reached by the Idaho Statesman newspaper back in 1997 after it conducted a yearlong study of the Snake River dams. The paper reported that the economic benefits of a healthy fishery -- and the resultant tens of thousands of jobs -- would swamp the benefits of leaving the dams in place.
Dozens of reports by natural resources economists have agreed. Among other things, they describe the dams as economic sinkholes, which produce less than 3% of the region's power, do nothing for flood control, irrigate only a handful of big farms and subsidize transportation costs (at the expense of taxpayers and salmon) for wheat farmers in Idaho and eastern Washington.
The Columbia-Snake corridor is the salmon's only option for survival, and Redden is probably their last hope. He is the one person in this entire drama who is legally obligated to use science and the law to protect the fish from extinction and from the whims of politicians. If the law and science are unable to trump politics to save this fishery -- a fishery that was the most productive in the world just two generations ago -- how will we ever meet the towering challenges posed by global climate change?
For the sake of the fish and the 500 other species that depend on this wild and "vital resource" for their survival, many of us hope the judge has the resolve to stay the course and to see the job through.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-vandevelder6-2009jul06,0,1077571.story?track=rss
L.A. Times-7/6/09
By Paul VanDevelder
Opinion
If ever there were a story that foreshadowed the political and legal Waterloos that loom in seeking solutions to climate change, surely that cautionary tale is the one about the Columbia and Snake rivers' salmon and their imminent extinction. And like most stories about endangered species or environmental threats, this one is not only about fish and rivers -- it's about us.
The policy deadlock that has resulted from the debate among stakeholders along the Columbia and the Snake -- aluminum smelters, the Bonneville Power Administration, politicians, Indian tribes, states, conservation groups, fishermen, barge operators, agribusiness and wheat farmers -- has flushed billions of taxpayer dollars out to sea over the last 15 years while doing very little to prevent 13 endangered salmon stocks from going extinct.
In March, the federal judge responsible for herding all these cats toward a scientifically based solution that meets the requirements of the Endangered Species Act announced that he had heard enough bickering. District Judge James Redden summoned all the stakeholders to his courtroom in Portland, Ore., with the edict to take "aggressive action" and that "now is the time to make that happen."
In addition to being the judge in this case, Redden acts as the government's "special master" for the Columbia River basin, a network of rivers and streams that fans out over an area the size of France. In that role, he has the final say on any proposed changes to fish habitat and the uses of the rivers' payload: water.
At the March meeting in his courtroom, Redden wore both hats and congratulated all sides for getting "very close" to a final rescue plan for the fish. After losing precious years to political infighting and foot-dragging by the Clinton and Bush administrations, Redden noted that much progress had been made in recent years in formulating a workable plan -- "a biological opinion" -- to keep the salmon from becoming extinct.
However, he warned, there were still problems with the plan. For one thing, government scientists had relied too heavily on statistical sleight of hand to support their argument that endangered fish were trending toward recovery. For another, the removal of four dams on the lower Snake River must be included in the recovery plan in case all other remedies fail.
There it was. Out in the open and on the table. Dam removal -- a remedy that the Bush administration had rejected out of hand -- was back in play. Fax machines across the region came to life when Redden's letter reached the stakeholders.
"Federal law doesn't allow dam removal, and no Democrat-politician-turned-activist-judge can rewrite the law," wrote Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) The Northwest River Partners expressed dismay, and the Portland Oregonian's editorial board described Redden's letter as "puzzling."
"The letter is strongly critical of the key strategy in the plan to focus on habitat improvements to offset the harm that federal power-generating dams inflict on fish," the Oregonian wrote, expressing surprise at such a reaction while conveniently ignoring the fact that billions of dollars spent on habitat improvement, fish ladders and barging young fish around dams have done very little to increase salmon populations.
If anything, these measures have lengthened the odds against the salmon's survival by shifting the focus away from more politically explosive solutions, such as dam removal. Redden first issued his warning about the dams in 2004, when he threw out the first Bush rescue plan.
Politicians and stakeholders have steadfastly resisted the painful solution of dam removal while hoping for a miracle. That hope turned out to be a one-way road on a dead-end street, and in many respects they're now blaming the court for their current predicament. With few exceptions, the region's politicians, past and current, have been challenging the recommendations of scientists (including dam removal and increasing the spills over the dams) for more than a decade. Former Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) famously vowed to chain himself to a dam rather than surrender, a prospect relished by many conservation groups.
Throughout this stalemate, fish counts have continued to fall, and the underlying science is clear: In river after river where dams have been removed, native fish populations have rebounded and thrived. As the government's former chief aquatic biologist, Don Chapman, concluded, dam removal is the most effective strategy for saving endangered native fish stocks from extinction.
This was the conclusion reached by the Idaho Statesman newspaper back in 1997 after it conducted a yearlong study of the Snake River dams. The paper reported that the economic benefits of a healthy fishery -- and the resultant tens of thousands of jobs -- would swamp the benefits of leaving the dams in place.
Dozens of reports by natural resources economists have agreed. Among other things, they describe the dams as economic sinkholes, which produce less than 3% of the region's power, do nothing for flood control, irrigate only a handful of big farms and subsidize transportation costs (at the expense of taxpayers and salmon) for wheat farmers in Idaho and eastern Washington.
The Columbia-Snake corridor is the salmon's only option for survival, and Redden is probably their last hope. He is the one person in this entire drama who is legally obligated to use science and the law to protect the fish from extinction and from the whims of politicians. If the law and science are unable to trump politics to save this fishery -- a fishery that was the most productive in the world just two generations ago -- how will we ever meet the towering challenges posed by global climate change?
For the sake of the fish and the 500 other species that depend on this wild and "vital resource" for their survival, many of us hope the judge has the resolve to stay the course and to see the job through.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-vandevelder6-2009jul06,0,1077571.story?track=rss
Thursday, June 25, 2009
SCBID Seeks Accountant
Accountant Position Available
The South Columbia Basin Irrigation District is accepting applications for the position of Accountant. Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and 1-3 years of governmental accounting experience preferred. Suitable accounting experience may satisfy degree requirement. Wage: $18.39 - $22.92 per hour DOQ. Benefit package includes medical, dental, retirement, paid vacation, holidays and sick leave. Interested parties should submit a resume and letter of interest to HR Manager, P.O. Box 1006, Pasco, WA 99301 by 7/24/09.
The South Columbia Basin Irrigation District is accepting applications for the position of Accountant. Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and 1-3 years of governmental accounting experience preferred. Suitable accounting experience may satisfy degree requirement. Wage: $18.39 - $22.92 per hour DOQ. Benefit package includes medical, dental, retirement, paid vacation, holidays and sick leave. Interested parties should submit a resume and letter of interest to HR Manager, P.O. Box 1006, Pasco, WA 99301 by 7/24/09.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
