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Proposed coal mine in BC’s Flathead River Valley triggers World Heritage investigation

June 26, 2009

 

 

 

Flathead River Â

Seville, Spain – The World Heritage Committee of the United Nations voted today to promptly send a mission to Canada to investigate threats to Glacier National Park (Montana) and Waterton Lakes National Park (Alberta) posed by coal mining and gas drilling proposals in British Columbia’s adjacent Flathead River Valley.

 

Together these parks make up Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, a U.N. World Heritage Site that spans the U.S.-Canadian border. Grizzlies, wolves, wolverines, lynx and many at-risk species depend on the pristine habitats and pure water of the two parks and surrounding wilderness. The Flathead River Valley, extending north from Glacier National Park into British Columbia, has the highest density of grizzly bears in North America’s interior, and some of the purest water in the world.

The committee’s action was in response to a petition written by Earthjustice on behalf of eleven environmental groups in the U.S. and Canada. Last week, over 53,000 people in the U.S. and Canada wrote in support of the petition to decision makers in both countries, asking them to protect the parks from the upstream mining and drilling.

“People on both sides of the border don’t want mountain-top removal coal mines and gas flares belching polluted air and water into the cleanest natural areas in the Northern Rockies,” said Jessica Lawrence of Earthjustice. “There are world class national parks on both sides of the border that would be polluted by energy and mining development in the Canadian Flathead.”

One proposal under consideration by British Columbia’s government is for an open pit coal mine less than 25 miles upstream from the park. More than 325 million tons of waste rock would be dumped into a tributary of the Flathead River that forms the western border of the park and provides critical habitat for threatened bull trout. Any leakage from the waste dumps would send toxic sludge into Glacier National Park within 24 hours.

Other mineral exploration is underway even closer to the park boundary. Proposed mining and drilling in the Canadian Flathead Valley would harm the parks’ wildlife by disrupting the seasonal migration of trout, moose and elk, and destroying habitat for wide-ranging species such as grizzly bears, wolves and wolverines.

The 21-member committee voted unanimously for a 2009 World Heritage Centre mission that will “evaluate and provide recommendations on the requirements for ensuring the protection” of Waterton-Glacier, citing concern about the threats that mining and energy development within the Flathead Valley would have on water and ecosystem connectivity. It asked Canada and the US to work together to prepare a report–by February 1, 2010–that examines all Flathead River Valley energy and mining proposals and their cumulative impacts.

The committee noted that:

“The integrity of the property is inextricably linked with the quality of stewardship of the adjacent areas within the international Crown of the Continent ecosystem… the protection of the property must be managed within the context of this greater ecosystem.”

“We applaud the committee’s decision and encourage Canada and British Columbia to take swift action to ensure that Waterton-Glacier does not become North America’s only World Heritage Site in Danger,” said Ryland Nelson of the British Columbia conservation group Wildsight. Nelson attended the Seville session on behalf of the petitioners.

“This is an important step forward,” said Will Hammerquist of the National Parks Conservation Association, who also attended the Seville session. “Today the United Nations recognized that both Canada and the United States have a global responsibility to protect Waterton-Glacier, the world’s first international peace park.”

Said Sarah Cox of Sierra Club BC, “Declaration of an immediate no-mining reserve in the Flathead Valley would send a strong message to the international community that British Columbia takes this decision very seriously, and is committed to land-use solutions in the Flathead that do not convert world-class wildlife habitat into a coal mine.”

Decision bodes ill for other American lakes, invites Administrative or Congressional fix

June 22, 2009

 

 

 

Acid mine drainage caused by mining activity was found near the Kensington Mine and Lower Slate Lake in 2007. Click on image for link to Juneau Empire story. Photo: U.S. Forest Service

Washington, DC – The Supreme Court ruled today that the Clean Water Act permits a mining company to pump hundreds of thousands of gallons per day of a toxic wastewater slurry into an Alaskan lake, killing its fish and aquatic life. The ruling has dire implications for other waterways across the country, but the Obama administration and Congress may act promptly to ensure lakes, rivers, streams, and wetlands are not destroyed by industrial waste dumping.

 

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision reverses a May 2007 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the mining company’s permit in clear violation of the Clean Water Act.

“If a mining company can turn Lower Slate Lake in Alaska into a lifeless waste dump, other polluters with solids in their wastewater can potentially do the same to any water body in America,” said Earthjustice president Trip Van Noppen. “The good news is that the problem is reversible. It was caused by a Bush administration rule reversing thirty years of successful regulation under the Clean Water Act. We call on President Obama to act immediately to repeal this rule and restore the original intent of the Clean Water Act.”

A Dangerous Precedent for Other Mines and Other Industries

The Supreme Court’s decision will have impacts well beyond Alaska’s remote Lower Slate Lake. Read more

“The purpose of the Clean Water Act is to keep America’s waters safe for drinking, fishing, and swimming,” added Tom Waldo of Earthjustice, who argued the case on behalf of three conservation groups. “The Clean Water Act was intended to halt the practice of using lakes, rivers, and streams as waste dumps. Today’s decision does not achieve these purposes.”

The permit allows the Coeur d’Alene Mines Corporation’s Kensington gold mine near Juneau to pump over 200,000 gallons per day of a toxic wastewater slurry directly into Lower Slate Lake in the Tongass National Forest. The dumping, which will take place over ten years, will eventually deposit 4.5 million tons of solids in the lake, killing nearly all its aquatic life. The Bush administration approved the waste dumping permit after issuing a new rule in 2002 allowing industries to dump their solid wastes in waters.

“Mining companies have operated for years without having to dump toxic tailings into lakes,” stated Rob Cadmus with the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. ”Even at the Kensington mine, more environmentally sound methods of dry land disposal are practical and able to get a permit.” 

The Clean Water Act allows “fill material” to be put into waters for constructive purposes such as the creation of levees, seawalls, and the like, under permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers. For decades the regulatory definition of “fill material” expressly excluded waste, meaning the Army Corps could not permit waste dumps in waters. In 2002 the Bush administration changed the definition of “fill” so that most solid material, including waste and contaminated materials, could be placed into waterways. In the Kensington Mine case, the Bush administration expanded its interpretation of the rule, through an informal EPA memo that was never subject to public notice or comment, to allow dumping of toxic, industrial wastewater slurries directly into lakes and other water bodies, a practice that had long been prohibited by EPA rules. The Court based its ruling on this informal memo.

This rule change can be reversed with a new rule issued by the Corps and EPA, by legislation, or by revising the informal EPA memo. A bill already introduced in this Congress by Representatives Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Dave Reichert (R-WA) would, if passed, accomplish this task. The Clean Water Protection Act, H.R. 1310, has 151 cosponsors.

“As this case has shown, it is essential that the misguided ‘fill’ rule be reversed before more of our waters are lost and the communities and economies that depend on them are harmed. President Obama’s administration and Congress can and should act to reverse it as soon as possible,” said Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director.

Today’s decision is of great interest to Alaska Natives and fishermen in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, hundreds of miles from Lower Slate Lake. There, the proposed Pebble mega mine has proposed to dump waste into the headwaters of salmon streams that support the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery. Also watching closely are communities in Appalachia, where mountaintop removal coal mining operations have already buried more than 1,200 miles of streams under mining waste.

Earthjustice and Public Citizen Litigation Group represent the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Sierra Club, and Lynn Canal Conservation in the lawsuit

Affected communities cheer federal proposal to slash pollution from cement kilns

June 16, 2009

 

 

 

Los Angeles, CA – Public health and environmental advocates from across California are traveling to Los Angeles today to speak out at a public hearing on a new federal proposal to cut air pollution from cement kilns.

 

Advocates are cheering the new standards, which will cut mercury pollution from the nation’s more than 150 cement kilns between 11,600 and 16,250 pounds — a reduction of 81 to 93 percent. EPA estimates that the new regulations will save as much as $11 billion, primarily from reduced health care costs.

“EPA got it right,” said Dr. Joseph Lyou of the California Environmental Rights Alliance, “These new cement kiln regulations will save lives and money.”

The hearing is being held by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and is one of three public hearings being held this week on the proposed federal standards.

Advocates hope the new standards will improve California air quality. California is the nation’s biggest cement producer, representing about 13 percent of the entire cement industry, according to the Portland Cement Association industry group. A cement plant in Tehachapi, CA, had the dubious distinction of being the state’s largest mercury air polluter in 2006, reporting to the EPA emissions of 586 pounds of mercury that year. And eight of the top 10 mercury air polluters in California are cement kilns.

“California communities living near these kilns have been bearing the brunt of the pollution for far too long,” said Jane Williams of Desert Citizens Against Pollution. “The cement industry has had a free pass to pollute and it’s time they started cleaning up. Their neighbors have had to breathe dirty air and eat contaminated fish. This proposal by the EPA is finally putting us on a path towards a cleaner, healthier environment.”

A coalition of 15 environmental justice groups throughout the state have signed on to a letter thanking the EPA and encouraging the agency to adopt protective pollution standards for other industries. The letter will be submitted at today’s Los Angeles hearing.

“We applaud and support the EPA’s proposal. It’s long past time to reduce these plants’ toxic mercury pollution. The Lehigh Hanson plant by Cupertino, CA, is the fifth largest emitter of mercury of the nation’s 150 cement kilns,” said Joyce M Eden, West Valley Citizens Air Watch. “Our community is tired of the toxic plume raining down on us from this poorly regulated cement kiln. The proposed rule, if enacted, will finally stop this outrage.”

The pollution cuts are being proposed as part of a court settlement reached between the EPA, California-based Desert Citizens Against Pollution, other community groups, and the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Desert Citizens Against Pollution was represented in the court case by the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice.

“We’ve fought for nearly a decade to protect communities plagued by pollution from these kilns,” said Earthjustice attorney Jim Pew. “We’re heartened by EPA’s commitment to cleaning up these pollution sources and we hope the cement industry will do the right thing and abide by these new rules.”

The EPA proposal seeks to limit, for the first time, kilns’ emissions of the acid gas hydrochloric acid which acts as a lung irritant and other highly toxic pollutants such as benzene. In addition, they will significantly reduce cement kilns’ emissions of particulate (PM) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution, pollutants which damage heart and lung function.

Although cement kilns have avoided controlling their mercury pollution until now, they are one of the largest sources of mercury emissions nationwide and the worst mercury polluters in some states. But kilns can curb their mercury emissions by using cleaner raw materials, cleaner fuels, and readily available technology like scrubbers and activated carbon injection.

The new rules would also require cement kilns to monitor their mercury emissions for the first time. In the past, the industry has been notoriously lax about reporting these emissions: a study last summer (”Cementing a Toxic Legacy?“) from Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) found that cement kilns emit mercury pollution at more than twice the level estimated as recently as 2006 by the EPA, which only started to collect data on the problem in 2007.

Mercury is dangerous in even very small doses; one-seventieth of one teaspoon of mercury can contaminate a 20-acre lake and make the lake’s fish unsafe to eat. But a study in 2004 by the University of Florida found that when mercury pollution is reduced, ecosystems can indeed bounce back, documented by reduced mercury levels in fish and certain bird species within just a few years.

A dangerous neurotoxin, mercury interferes with the brain and nervous system. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, eight percent of American women of childbearing age have mercury in their bodies at levels high enough to put their babies at risk of birth defects, loss of IQ, learning disabilities and developmental problems. The build up of mercury in aquatic systems and the resulting fish contamination undercuts the million-job industry supported by the nation’s 45 million recreational fishers and renders a portion of the hard-won catch unfit for human consumption.

Additional Resources:

View an interactive map showing the location of cement kilns nationwide

See how cement manufacturing creates mercury pollution

See how mercury impacts humans

Watch a video flyover of cement kilns in Seattle and San Francisco

Read an EPA fact sheet on the proposed regulation (PDF)

For a report documenting the recreation fishing economic engine, please visit Sportfishing in America: An Economic Engine and Conservation Powerhouse

Scientific finding should affect other salmon rivers

June 10, 2009

 

 

 

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Seattle, WA  – Federal officials in California have acknowledged that destruction of salmon freshwater habitat on the Sacramento River illegally jeopardizes killer whales. The loss of salmon habitat has greatly reduced the supply of wild salmon, a favorite food of Puget Sound’s resident killer whales. These killer whales roam as far south as Monterey Bay in California during the winter in pursuit of salmon. Puget Sound resident killer whales are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.

 

The finding released last week in a biological opinion from the National Marine Fisheries Service was welcomed by Northwest conservation, fishing, and killer whale advocates.

Earthjustice attorney George Torgun said, “The National Marine Fisheries Service is saying that operation of state and federal water projects in California’s Sacramento River basin deplete chinook salmon, the killer whale’s primary prey. It’s clear that harming our rivers and our salmon harms not only the salmon and coastal communities that rely on them, but also animals far and wide, reaching all the way to Washington’s killer whales.”

Salmon advocates say similar facts justify the same findings in biological opinions governing reservoir and dam operations on the Columbia and Snake rivers in Idaho, Washington and Oregon, as well as the Klamath River in California and Oregon.

NMFS’s finding for the Sacramento River stands in stark contrast to the agency’s conclusion – reached under the Bush administration – that the salmon-killing dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers do not harm Washington’s declining killer whale population.

“The recent National Marine Fisheries Service conclusion linking destruction of salmon habitat to harm to killer whales is a breath of fresh air,” said Kathy Fletcher, Executive Director of People for Puget Sound. “Our killer whales are at critically low numbers and NMFS has recognized that what we do to salmon in freshwater impacts our orcas in the ocean. But, it doesn’t make sense to protect salmon for whales to eat in California while at the same time ignoring the effect of dams on fish in the whales’ backyard.”

Conservationists and fishermen are challenging the Bush administration’s plan for the Columbia and Snake dams in a federal Court in Portland, Oregon. The federal judge hearing that case recently sent a letter to the litigants outlining his preliminary conclusion that NMFS’s 2008 plan is illegal. In his letter, U.S. District Court Judge James Redden said, “Federal defendants have spent the better part of the last decade treading water, and avoiding their obligations under the Endangered Species Act… We simply cannot afford to waste another decade… All of us know that aggressive action is necessary to save this vital resource, and now is the time to make that happen.”

The Obama administration has asked the court for 60 days to consider whether it will support the 2008 Bush plan. Tens of thousands of citizens have asked the administration to bring people together to forge durable solutions that will protect and restore salmon and salmon-dependent communities throughout the Snake and Columbia basins and along the west coast. These same actions will help protect Puget Sound’s killer whale population.

“The fiction that the dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers have no effect on the food supply for orcas is one of many failings in the Columbia and Snake River biological opinion,” said Steve Mashuda of Earthjustice, which represents the groups in the case. “Our killer whales shouldn’t have to travel all the way to Monterey Bay to find a decent meal.”

Mashuda is optimistic that the Obama administration’s current review of the Columbia-Snake biological opinion will result in findings consistent with those reached for the Sacramento River. “We need the Obama administration to ensure that the Columbia River, the largest salmon-producing river in the lower 48 states, can help feed the whales, too.”

The recent California salmon biological opinion also differs markedly from the Bush administration Columbia opinion in the way it views the role artificially propagated salmon from hatcheries play in supplying a secure food source for killer whales. Both rivers have major salmon hatcheries. The Bush administration presumed the loss of wild salmon stocks could be offset by supplying killer whales with hatchery fish in the Columbia Basin. But the new California opinion finds that hatchery fish can have harmful effects on the long-term fitness of salmon populations, and that current hatchery practices at some hatcheries are diminishing the long-term viability of salmon stocks. These impacts will also harm killer whales.

Federal agencies hide behind misinterpretation of the law to allow mountaintop removal to continue

June 11, 2009

 

 

 

Mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia Photo by V. Stockman/OVEC

Washington, DC – The following statement is from Joan Mulhern, Senior Legislative Counsel at Earthjustice regarding the Council on Environmental Quality’s announcement on the future of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia:

 

“What the administration is proposing today is essentially rearranging the bureaucratic deck chairs on the disastrous ship that is mountaintop removal. They announced new processes for interagency coordination and the potential to review regulations, but no substantive policies to actually stop the destruction caused by mountaintop removal.

“The real questions for the administration are these: will they stop the destruction caused by mountaintop removal or not? Will they follow the Bush administration’s policies of allowing enormous piles of waste to be dumped into streams, forever burying them, or not?

“While the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency have talked a good game about reviewing and, we hope, eventually ending mountaintop removal mining, their actions today are not supporting those words. In fact, the agencies are saying today that they are going to allow mountaintop removal to continue.

“Until the White House announces that it will stop the blowing up of mountains and burying of streams, we cannot support their policies, regardless of what process is used to review the mines on a case by case basis.

“CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley’s statement today is that the administration is doing what it can on mountaintop removal under current law and regulations. But these are regulations changed by the Bush administration in an attempt to legalize a practice that is contrary to the Clean Water Act. The Obama administration could easily change the regulations back to restore longstanding prohibitions on burying streams and rivers with waste, but they seem to be hiding behind an excuse that their hands are tied. It is simply incorrect for the White House to imply that it is powerless to change the law. If the Clean Water Act were enforced, it would prohibit this type of stream destruction.

“We are disappointed that the people of Appalachia and their community watersheds will continue to be the sacrificial lamb for our nation’s dependence on coal. Despite the strength of the Clean Water Act and the clear direction that perennial and intermittent streams cannot be buried and destroyed, mountaintop removal mining will continue unabated. The valleys, streams, forests, mountains and communities of Appalachia are facing a bleak future indeed.

“We hope that at some point soon the Obama administration will actually do something to stop mountaintop removal before more of Appalachia is permanently destroyed.”