December 10, 2011

A research team at UC Santa Cruz that this year for the first time tested coastal fog in California for mercury found raised levels of the element.

The team, led by chemist Peter Weiss-Penzias, reported finding “very high” levels of mercury, a neurotoxin, in the fog, according to a paper presented Thursday to a geophysical science conference in San Francisco on Thursday.

“These are unheard of levels for methylmercury,” said Weiss-Penzias. “People have measured methylmercury downstream from old mercury mines, where the bugs [microbes] have to convert inorganic mercury in sediment into methylmercury, and the highest levels they found were four parts per trillion. Well, our highest levels were 10 parts per trillion.”

Mercury is a naturally occurring element, but it can become toxic as it builds up in the environment, especially in fish, which can become hazardous to eat.

The toxin can cause a wide range of neurological problems, especially in young children, and is considered one of the most dangerous of all pollutants.

The fog is still safe to breathe, Weiss-Penzias stressed, but could be transporting the toxin from deep in the ocean to inland areas, where it could accumulate over time.

Recent surveys of hundreds of California lakes by state water agencies found that about one out of five lakes in California, including Lake Piru, have high levels of mercury. Of the lakes sampled in a 2009 report, 74 percent had levels of mercury high enough that fish were unhealthy to eat three or more times a week. About 26 percent had even higher levels, leading the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to warn against consumption of fish from such waters by children or pregnant women. Advisories have been issued on consuming fish from many popular California waters, including Lake Nacimiento, Clear Lake, and San Francisco Bay.

Some of these mercury-laden lakes are near areas of gold mining, where mercury was used to enhance the recovery of gold in the 19th century, or near abandoned mercury mines, but the contaminated lakes in Southern California are far from known mining sites. Searching for the source of this mercury, Weiss-Penzias and his team first collected samples of rain water, but when the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories tested the samples, they found low levels of mercury — about .1 percent per trillion.

Knowing that sediments on the ocean floor can have high levels of mercury left by atmospheric deposition, from both volcanoes and the burning of fossil fuels, and that these deposits are brought to the surface by strong upwelling currents during the spring and summer, Weiss-Penzias and his team looked for other means the neurotoxin could be transferred from the ocean inland.

“The upwelling begins in March and goes through July or August,” Weiss-Penzias explained. “The rain ends in April, so there’s not an overlap there. So what about the fog, because it rolls in throughout the summer, and it has closer contact with the ocean?”

The researchers found far more mercury than they expected.

“We found the typical amount of mercury and methylmercury that one usually finds in rain,” explained Christopher Conaway, one of the researchers. “The surprise is that methylmercury is so much higher in coastal fog.”

The researchers found an average of about 3 parts per trillion in fog, roughly 20 times the amount in rain, with big spikes of methylmercury, the organic form of the material. The source is not known, although deposits in the ocean are suspected, because no human sources for mercury between Monterey and Big Sur have been identified.

“This is a preliminary result that’s very surprising,” said Mark Stephenson, at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, where water samples are sent for mercury testing from around the state. “We don’t know the significance of the finding yet, but I think it will open up a whole new area of research.”

New research shows that the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere work to transform elemental mercury into oxidized mercury, which can easily be deposited into aquatic ecosystems and ultimately enter the food chain.

“The upper atmosphere is acting as a chemical reactor to make the mercury more able to be deposited to ecosystems,” said Seth Lyman, who did the work as a research assistant professor in science and technology at the University of Washington Bothell.

Lyman, now with Utah State University’s Energy Dynamics Laboratory, is lead author of a paper documenting the research published online Dec. 19 by the journal Nature Geoscience. Daniel Jaffe, a science and technology professor at UW Bothell, is coauthor of the paper. The work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The findings come from data gathered during research flights in October and November 2010 over North America and Europe by a National Center for Atmospheric Research aircraft.

The campaign used a device built at UW Bothell that can detect both elemental mercury and oxidized mercury in the same air sample, and the device recorded readings every 2.5 minutes. The flights typically are at altitudes of 19,000 to 23,000 feet, well below the confluence of the troposphere and the stratosphere, but several times during the 2010 flights – particularly on a trip from Bangor, Maine, to Broomfield, Colo. – the aircraft encountered streams of air that had descended from the stratosphere or from near it.

The result was the first time that the two mercury forms were measured together in a way that showed that elemental mercury is transformed into oxidized mercury, Lyman said, and evidence indicated the process occurs in the upper atmosphere.

Exactly how the oxidation takes place is not known with certainty but, once the transformation takes place, the oxidized mercury is quickly removed from the atmosphere, mostly through precipitation or air moving to the surface. After it settles to the surface, the oxidized mercury is transformed by bacteria into methyl mercury, a form that can be taken into the food chain and eventually can result in mercury-contaminated fish.

Some areas, such as the Southwest United States, appear to have specific climate conditions that allow them to receive more oxidized mercury from the upper atmosphere than other areas, Lyman noted.

He added that where the mercury settles to the surface can be thousands of miles from where it was emitted. For example, mercury from coal burning in Asia could rise into the atmosphere and circle the globe several times before it is oxidized, then could come to the surface anywhere. Understanding where it is oxidized and deposited would help efforts to predict ecosystem impacts of mercury emissions, he said.

“Much of emitted mercury is deposited far from its original sources,” Lyman said. “Mercury emitted on the other side of the globe could be deposited right at our back door, depending on where and how it is transported, chemically transformed and deposited.”

Saturday, December 10, 2011

A research team at UC Santa Cruz that this year for the first time tested coastal fog in California for mercury found raised levels of the element.

The team, led by chemist Peter Weiss-Penzias, reported finding “very high” levels of mercury, a neurotoxin, in the fog, according to a paper presented Thursday to a geophysical science conference in San Francisco on Thursday.

“These are unheard of levels for methylmercury,” said Weiss-Penzias. “People have measured methylmercury downstream from old mercury mines, where the bugs [microbes] have to convert inorganic mercury in sediment into methylmercury, and the highest levels they found were four parts per trillion. Well, our highest levels were 10 parts per trillion.”

Mercury is a naturally occurring element, but it can become toxic as it builds up in the environment, especially in fish, which can become hazardous to eat.

The toxin can cause a wide range of neurological problems, especially in young children, and is considered one of the most dangerous of all pollutants.

The fog is still safe to breathe, Weiss-Penzias stressed, but could be transporting the toxin from deep in the ocean to inland areas, where it could accumulate over time.

Recent surveys of hundreds of California lakes by state water agencies found that about one out of five lakes in California, including Lake Piru, have high levels of mercury. Of the lakes sampled in a 2009 report, 74 percent had levels of mercury high enough that fish were unhealthy to eat three or more times a week. About 26 percent had even higher levels, leading the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to warn against consumption of fish from such waters by children or pregnant women. Advisories have been issued on consuming fish from many popular California waters, including Lake Nacimiento, Clear Lake, and San Francisco Bay.

Some of these mercury-laden lakes are near areas of gold mining, where mercury was used to enhance the recovery of gold in the 19th century, or near abandoned mercury mines, but the contaminated lakes in Southern California are far from known mining sites. Searching for the source of this mercury, Weiss-Penzias and his team first collected samples of rain water, but when the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories tested the samples, they found low levels of mercury — about .1 percent per trillion.

Knowing that sediments on the ocean floor can have high levels of mercury left by atmospheric deposition, from both volcanoes and the burning of fossil fuels, and that these deposits are brought to the surface by strong upwelling currents during the spring and summer, Weiss-Penzias and his team looked for other means the neurotoxin could be transferred from the ocean inland.

“The upwelling begins in March and goes through July or August,” Weiss-Penzias explained. “The rain ends in April, so there’s not an overlap there. So what about the fog, because it rolls in throughout the summer, and it has closer contact with the ocean?”

The researchers found far more mercury than they expected.

“We found the typical amount of mercury and methylmercury that one usually finds in rain,” explained Christopher Conaway, one of the researchers. “The surprise is that methylmercury is so much higher in coastal fog.”

The researchers found an average of about 3 parts per trillion in fog, roughly 20 times the amount in rain, with big spikes of methylmercury, the organic form of the material. The source is not known, although deposits in the ocean are suspected, because no human sources for mercury between Monterey and Big Sur have been identified.

“This is a preliminary result that’s very surprising,” said Mark Stephenson, at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, where water samples are sent for mercury testing from around the state. “We don’t know the significance of the finding yet, but I think it will open up a whole new area of research.”

© 2011 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

Click here for original article

A lethal and highly contagious marine virus has been detected for the first time in wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, researchers in British Columbia said on Monday, stirring concern that it could spread there, as it has in Chile, Scotland and elsewhere.

Farms hit by the virus, infectious salmon anemia, have lost 70 percent or more of their fish in recent decades. But until now, the virus, which does not affect humans, had never been confirmed on the West Coast of North America.

The researchers, from Simon Fraser University and elsewhere, said at a news conference in Vancouver that the virus had been found in 2 of 48 juvenile fish collected as part of a study of sockeye salmon in Rivers Inlet, on the central coast of British Columbia. The study was undertaken after scientists observed a decline in the number of young sockeye.

Richard Routledge, an environmental scientist at the university who leads the sockeye study, suggested that the virus had spread from the province’s aquaculture industry, which has imported millions of Atlantic salmon eggs over the last 25 years, primarily from Iceland and Scandinavia. He acknowledged that no direct evidence of that link existed, but noted that the two fish had tested positive for the European strain of infectious salmon anemia.

The virus could have “a devastating impact” not just on the region’s farmed and wild salmon but on the many species that depend on them in the food web, like grizzly bears, killer whales and wolves, Dr. Routledge said. “No country has ever gotten rid of it once it arrives,” he said in a statement.

The only barrier between the salmon farms and wild fish is a net, he noted at the news conference, opening the way for “pathogens sweeping in and out.” No vaccine or treatment exists for infectious salmon anemia.

Gary Marty, the fish pathologist for the province’s Ministry of Agriculture, said the Canadian Food Inspection Agency would seek fish samples from the researchers and run its own tests.

The British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association, an industry group, said fish health departments had regularly tested for the virus on the farms “and have never found a positive case.” Dr. Marty confirmed that no cases had been found in that testing.

Still, “if these results are valid, this could be a threat to our business and the communities that rely on our productive industry,” said Stewart Hawthorn, the managing director for Grieg Seafood, an association member.

At the news conference, the Simon Fraser researchers said Fred Kibenge, a researcher at Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island, the global center for tests detecting the virus, had confirmed its presence in the two fish. They called for widespread testing to determine where the virus exists in the region and in what fish.

Alexandra Morton, a researcher and activist who collected the sockeye samples and is an outspoken critic of salmon farming practices in British Columbia, called the virus “a cataclysmic threat” to both salmon and herring, which can also contract it.

“If we test five million fish and found two sick, O.K.,” she said. “But 48 in the middle of nowhere?” The inlet where the samples were taken is 60 miles from the nearest salmon farm, the researchers said.

Fishery experts with no connection to the study agreed that the threat was serious. James Winton, who leads the fish health research group at the Western Fisheries Research Center in Seattle, an arm of the United States Geological Survey, called it a “disease emergency” and urged that research begin at once to determine on how far the virus had spread.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, infectious salmon anemia virus morphed from a benign form in nature into a “novel virulent strain” when salmon stocks entered Norway’s densely packed salmon farms. Rather than getting picked off by a predator, a sick fish would undergo a slow death in a crowded pen, shedding virus particles.

Offshore saltwater pens supply most of the Atlantic salmon sold in the United States.

Read the original article here

“By the law of nature these things are common to mankind—the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the shores of the sea. No one, therefore, is forbidden to approach the seashore, provided that he respects habitations, monuments, and buildings which are not, like the sea, subject only to the law of nations.”

The quote above is from the Justinian Code of 530 AD, on what has become known as the Public Trust Doctrine in jurisprudence. Justinian, the sage Roman Emperor who gave us much of what we now think of as “common law, had more to say on the subject:

“The seashore extends as far as the greatest winter flood runs up.” He wasn’t through yet: “The public use of the seashore, too, is part of the law of nations, as is that of the sea itself; and, therefore, any person is at liberty to place on it a cottage, to which he may retreat, or to dry his nets there, and haul them from the sea; for the shores may be said to be the property of no man, but are subject to the same law as the sea itself, and the sand or ground beneath it.” As one can imagine, the conflicts between those in the cottages and drying sheds along the shore and the rest of the public wanting to gather “cockles and mussels, alive alive oh” in the same area grew nastier and more complex as development increased and seashore living became a luxury for the leisure classes, instead of a necessity for the fisher folk.

Public Trust lands are strictly speaking the lands under the oceans and other waterways and are held in trust by the state for the people as a whole. They cannot be bought or sold, except in rare situations where the public trust itself will be benefited.

Enter the Courts

The seminal case which established the scope of this doctrine in the U.S. is Illinois Central Railroad v. Illinois , 146 U.S. 387 (1892). The State of Illinois wanted to grant the entire Chicago waterfront to Illinois Central Railroad. The United States Supreme Court determined that Illinois held title to these lands in trust for the public. They could only convey title to other entities id that conveyance would actually improve the public’s rights. This was not the case with the Railroad’s plans for the land, and the State prevailed.

In 1988 the Supreme Court expanded this doctrine by holding that the principles underlying it applied to all water influenced by the ocean’s tide, regardless of whether it was navigable or part of a navigable body of water in the case of Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Mississippi, 484 U.S. 469 (1988).

Early California case law and legislation determined that the public trust lands along the seashore extended to the “mean high tide” mark, and that landowners could own the land under the trust waters, they could not keep the public off it, or impede the public’s use of those lands up to the mean high tide. As late as the early 1970’s, litigants were wrangling over the definitions of these lands:

“Public trust easements are traditionally defined in terms of navigation, commerce and fisheries. They have been held to include the right to fish, hunt, bathe, swim, to use for boating and general recreation purposes the navigable waters of the state, and to use the bottom of the navigable waters for anchoring, standing, or other purposes.” (Marks v. Whitney, 1971, 6 Cal. 3d 251, 259.)

This case also recognized that an important use of the tidelands was “the preservation of those lands in their natural state, so that they may serve as ecological units for scientific study, as open space, and as environments which provide food and habitat for birds and marine life, and which favorably affect the scenery and climate of the area.” (Ibid. at 259, 260.)

So it’s not just all navigation and fishing rights as it was defined in the old days. In California, the State is ultimate arbiter of whether the Public trust lands are serving their public trust purpose. This has led to a collision of competing water interests, when land owners or public agencies with the right to appropriate water from navigable waterways, including rivers, streams and lakes have locked horns with environmentalists.

The most celebrated case on this issue may be the Mono Lake diversion. In the case of Mono Lake, the Los Angeles Department of Public Works asserted their rights to the waters of tributaries to the Lake for the purpose of supplying the vast metropolitan L.A. basin. These tributaries were not themselves “navigable” waters, but supplied the Lake. Diminishment of their capacity was soon felt on the Lake itself, which was in danger of being drained with resultant loss in habitat and wildlife dependent on it. By 1979, the Lake had sunk 43 feet and diminished in size from 83 to 60 miles. Salinity levels were rising leading to changes in migratory bird patterns.

This was by far the most expansive use of appropriative water rights, and continued unabated for years. The damage to the Lake was impossible to ignore however, and environmentalists brought suit to stop the practice.

The California Supreme Court clarified existing law that protection of the environment was a reasonable use, and that the appropriative use did not take precedent over that environmental protection. National Audubon Society v. Superior Court Alpine County (1983, 33 Cal.3d 419).

The Ebb and Flow of Water Rights

Today, we see threats to our Public Trust doctrine under attack in the attempted sales of water rights to private contractors. Private entrepreneurs are attempting to buy “excess water” from California rivers to transport in giant water bags to sell to places in need of more water. This year, popular mystery writer, Marcia Muller, used a water grab in the fictitious town of Cape Perdido in one of her thrillers The “waterbaggers” as the locals called them, were forced to fold their bags and go home after a series of unfortunate events revealed them to be more than simply greedy. A good read, based in fact.

The question arises, what is “excess water?” where the public trust is concerned. Can there be such a thing? An even trickier question is how to treat ground water, that water lying under ground, hidden from the public eye, but often feeding local water wells essential to human and agricultural consumption?

Traditionally, the public trust relates to navigable waterways only. In Mono Lake, the doctrine was found to extend to instances when diversion from a tributary to a navigable waterway damages that water, in that case, Mono Lake.

Ground water, that body of water lying under the ground, in springs for instance, is not so protected. Although ground and surface water are interconnected, there is no permit process for the use of ground water the way there is for surface water.

Consequently, it is often treated like a commodity, to be bought and sold. If you drink water out of a plastic bottle, chances are it comes from a groundwater source and it may be having a devastating effect on the environment.

Case in point: Recently the Nestle Corporation entered into a contract with the water agency in McCloud to sell ground water for bottling. Locals sued and the court ruled this spring that they needed to do an environmental impact report before entering into the contract. So the project is on hold for now. However, resolution of the issue of whether this use will impinge upon the public trust will have to wait for another day.

This is an ever-evolving area of the law and public policy. Many third world countries are now obliged to buy their own water from private corporations. In fact, the World Bank encourages privatization as an answer to dwindling water resources. NAFTA and the WTO consider water as a “good” and failure to treat it as such by signatory countries can result in trade sanctions. This is a devastating development as water resources are literally drying up in many places on the globe.

The commons are in trouble, not only in the third world but here at home. The City of Atlanta turned to water privatization as a way out of a failing public system. Only recently did the City take back control of its own water supplies. If the Atlanta experience is any indicator, people in this country are not willing to have the public trust sold to the highest bidder. Not yet anyway.

A Walk on the Beach

Earlier this summer, two state Supreme courts issued landmark ruling upholding the Public trust doctrine to shoreline areas. The Michigan Supreme Court’s ruling overturned seventy years of appellate court decisions in favor of private property rights over the public’s access to shoreline. In that case, the justices found that the public’s right to beachfront access extended to the “ordinary high water line,” not just to the actual water itself.

A similar outcome resulted from a case in New Jersey in which a private club tried to limit public access to the Beach. There, the court found that the public’s rights to enjoy the beachfront to the mean high tide did not depend on that line being under water, as contended by the property owners.

Property rights advocates are in a tizzy over these rulings, and urging the US Supreme court to overturn them.

In California, our rights to walk on the beach are still protected to the mean high tide line, whether on wet or dry ground. Here, the issue is mostly over access to the beach, with fierce battles being waged by property owners in tony beachfront communities like Malibu, not wanting the great unwashed to pass their multimillion dollar investment homes on the way to the public beaches.

In Seadrift, at Stinson Beach, property owners, in an attempt to stem the rising tide of storm washed seawater, built rock bulkheads without benefit of permits in the early 1990’s. After a long court battle with the Coastal Commission, the State caved into the owners’ demands and agreed to limit the public access. Frightened homeowners were terrified at the specter of scruffy beachgoers standing atop their seawall for a look at how the other half lives. Or so they claimed.

A group of citizens (represented by volunteer attorneys, the author of this piece among them) brought their own suit claiming an “implied dedication” to the entire beach, meaning the public had used the beach for so many years as if it were a public beach, that dedication for public use could be implied. This case, Citizens for Open Access to Sand and Tide, was heartbreakingly dismissed on the eve of trial for lack of standing. The court found that the earlier Coastal Commission settlement determined the public’s rights and no one else was allowed to sue to protect them. (See Citizens for Open Access etc. Tide, Inc. v. Seadrift Assn. (1998) 60 Cal.App.4th 1053)

Beach goers and their legal teams are avidly watching the two newly decided cases opening up access in Michigan and New Jersey (as well as a similar case working its way through the Washington State court system) with a certain amount of trepidation. Will a more conservative property rights oriented United State Supreme Court reverse the Michigan and New Jersey cases , and if so, what is the implication for California and the other states which already had a more expansive view of the Public Trust doctrine? That is the question on everyone’s minds.

This essay was first published on On The Commons (http://onthecommons.org) Dotty E. LeMieux is an environmental attorney in Marin County California, working on land use issues in the public interest. You can read her updates on her blog at www.landusenews.blogspot.com.

Russian River Watershed Protection Committee (RRWPC) has closely followed Sonoma County Water Agency’s (SCWA) Estuary Management Plan process for many years. We are quite familiar with the issues addressed by Supervisor Carrillo in the Close to Home article entitled Myths about sandbar plan that ran on Oct. 18, 2011 in the Press Democrat. We disagree with many of the article’s assertions.

The article defends the project by stating SCWA will not close the sandbar; they won’t add pollutants to the river; they will assure recreation and seals will continue, and it will save threatened fish species. The article specifically blames failing septics for existing pollution in the river along with “other” sources. The article credits SCWA for hiring consultants to conduct extensive studies.

Carrillo then goes on to paint SCWA as the heroes in this matter for doing all this work for the fish, when they are merely doing their jobs. It is their responsibility to assure a healthy and sustainable river, and are paid well to do so, but there is a lot more that could be done.

RRWPC concerns about this project have been extensively documented in our comments over the last several years (for more information visit www.rrwpc.org).

The Estuary is a magnificent force of nature not suited to being controlled. This year the mouth did not close once during the project period and SCWA was unable to conduct the project. Last year they tried, but the mouth reopened within 12 hours and they had to stop. Most river mouths north of the Russian never close.

This is a management plan and project features have only been estimated. Many factors are unknown and public comments were necessarily limited. The project is an experiment. Consultant studies only revealed “tip of the iceberg” impacts. We don’t know water quality impacts if mouth is closed for five months and existing pollutants get to fester in the water all that time. How will fish be affected if they are residing in mercury-laden waters for long periods?

Seals always leave the estuary haul out when the mouth is closed. If lengthy closures occur, we may never see seals there in summer again. We have no idea how this situation will affect them and they are a protected species also.

Heavy equipment will work on the dunes as many as 36 days during the summer season, greatly affecting access at the most popular beach in Northern California. State Parks is so concerned about this that they would only give the project a one-year permit rather than the 13-year permit requested.

SCWA has separated the Estuary Project from the “low flow” project (proposal to lower minimum flows at Hacienda by 44%), but they are closely related and should have been considered together. The only reason given for lower flows at Hacienda is to avoid flooding of a few properties in Jenner, the lowest of which is the Visitor’s Center, flooding at 9 feet. Since the project will be maintained at 8 feet, and surplus water can flow into the ocean, we fail to see necessity for low flow project. Furthermore, in a private meeting, we were told that the project could be managed at normal flows.

Finally, to single out failing septics as the main source of pollution is a travesty. Agricultural practices, timber harvesting, gravel mining, wastewater discharges, dewatering of the tributaries, urban run off and extensive use of pesticides and herbicides, all contribute heavily to river pollution. It is the County’s responsibility to strictly enforce Storm Water Runoff and other programs to control all pollution, instead of playing political favorites with certain polluters over others.

For more information visit www.rrwpc.org

–Larry

Dear Editor:

Newspapers and other media all over the country are covering a proposal to
clear-cut redwood trees in the Gualala River watershed in Sonoma County to
plant vineyards. These include the Marin Independent Journal, the Oakland
Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee and the San Jose
Mercury News in California, and the Boston Globe, the Washington Post,
Forbes.com, the Florida Times-Union and the Huffington Post elsewhere. Many
ran an article earlier this month under the headline: ‘Redwoods vs. Red
Wine’.

The Press Democrat apparently decided that the Associated Press story titled
‘Plan to Cut Forest for Vineyards Faces Opposition’ was of no interest to
readers of the online or print editions.

Strangely, other stories concerning the winery itself (Artesa) and its
parent company (Codorniu) are regularly covered in the business section of
the Press Democrat.

One might wonder about these editorial decisions, and, possibly, reach
somewhat cynical conclusions.