Happy New Year!

You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting many entries lately. I’ve been on vacation since the beginning of the snow — officially since the beginning of last week. I will return to full speed on Monday.

Meanwhile, I’ve been watching developments on the environmental front and will try to catch up on some of the bigger issues when I get back. I’d like to discuss, for example, some of President-elect Obama’s staff positions related to water and the environment.

For now, I’d like to call your attention to a disturbing Washington Post story about Chesapeake Bay, then I’d like to talk about implications for the restoration of Puget Sound.

The Post piece begins:

Government administrators in charge of an almost $6 billion cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay tried to conceal for years that their effort was failing — even issuing reports overstating their progress — to preserve the flow of federal and state money to the project, former officials say.

The cleanup, which had its 25th anniversary this month, seems doomed to miss its second official deadline for achieving major reductions in pollution by 2010.

The story, by David A. Fahrenthold, goes on to say that the Chesapeake Bay Program failed to achieve the political will to reduce pollution. So how did officials in the Environmental Protection Agency and other organizations respond? They fudged the data to show greater progress than what was actually taking place.

Officials did not have good monitoring data to measure progress. So they used computer models to show what should be taking place. Richard Batiuk, the EPAs’ current associate director for science for Chesapeake Bay, said exaggeration was never intentional. Officials simply did not use the models correctly.

When scientists finally caught up with the truth across the sprawling Chesapeake Bay watershed, which covers parts of five states, the price tag for cleanup was $28 billion. Officials realized they had no real plan to meet such a financial and public relations challenge. At the same time, it became clear that the goal of cleaning up the bay by 2010 could not be met — but nobody wanted to be the one to say so.

Ann Pesiri Swanson, executive director for the Chesapeake Bay Commission, said she suspected as early as 1997 that public statements were too optimistic. The situation became more clear as time went on.

“I think that, by 2005, 2006, you know, we should have made more . . . perhaps [we] could have recognized it more publicly,” she was quoted as saying.

In 2004, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that computer modeling and a lack of real-world data “downplays the deteriorated condition of the bay” and paints too-rosy of a picture.

That’s when I began paying closer attention to Chesapeake Bay and comparing it to efforts taking place in Puget Sound. See my stories from Sept. 17 and Sept. 18, 2006. We’ve all learned a great deal more over the past two years.

So what are the lessons to be learned from Chesapeake Bay?

I believe there are many. Above all, the people of Puget Sound must understand where things stand and what is at stake. We must rely on scientific conclusions based on real-world monitoring. Politics must not get ahead of the science — which is to say that most, if not all, actions should be analyzed for their costs and benefits to the ecosystem.

Bob Benze of Silverdale recently wrote a piece for the Seattle Times bemoaning the lack of science brought to bear on the recently adopted Puget Sound Action Agenda. He points out that legislative deadlines forced remedies to be proposed before scientific teams could validate those efforts.

Much of what Bob says is very legitimate, but one could argue that scientists have a general idea about what needs to be done. So taking actions before completing a full scientific evaluation may not be a waste of money. It may be a way to keep Puget Sound from slipping further behind while scientists catch up. Above all else, scientists need data to work with. Much monitoring has been done, but more is needed.

I think Bill Ruckelshaus, chairman of the Leadership Council of the Puget Sound Partnership, has a good grasp of the situation. He has talked about the vital need to measure and report progress. This is one of the big lessons from Chesapeake.

Here are some other lessons I’ve learned: Let the scientists do their jobs; be willing to pay for monitoring; be thoughtful about how progress is measured; be honest with all appraisals; and let the public know the truth, no matter what the repercussions may be.

Researchers with the New England Aquarium, Wildlife Trust and Florida Conservation Commission have started their annual aerial survey to monitor the movement of endangered right whales. The focus of their attention in a calving area in the Southeastern United States. (See area map.)

Researchers from the New England Aquarium are blogging about the experience on a site called Right Whale Aerial Survey Blog. The team of bloggers is including plenty of great whale photos to go with their observations.

One of the researchers, identified as Jonathan, posted this today about an event that took place yesterday:

Kara and I were flying the southern part of our survey when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a whale about one mile north of us. We broke from our track line and headed for the whale. As we approached, we noticed a very long piece of fishing line (approx. 350 ft) trailing behind the whale. Our team reacted quickly; Kara grabbed the camera and began photographing the whale and the trailing fishing line; I took a position of the whale and immediately called our ground contact …

Our images show there is line wrapping around the whale’s head and body and there appears to be fresh peduncle scars that may be from this entanglement…

We stayed with the whale for over an hour. During which the whale moved almost true north 4 miles! The whale was racing diving - A forceful and fast dive in which the flukes are typically lifted out of the water at a shallow angle. Racing dives are often observed in a quick series with each dive being performed after a single respiration…

The weather conditions were too poor for a disentanglement effort to be launched yesterday. All the survey team are aware of the entangled whale and we are hoping to see it again when we can deploy a research vessel to attempt to disentangle the animal.

Another aquarium researcher, Monica Zani, is said to be the first person to observe the birth of a right whale. In a question-and-answer interview on the New England Aquarium’s Web site, she described it this way:
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We don’t know if salmon actually enjoy the smell of Christmas cookies that wash into Puget Sound with sewage effluent, but they can probably sense the holiday smell, according to Rick Keil, associate professor of oceanography at the University of Washington.

Keil and his students have been taking samples of water from Puget Sound and measuring the levels of chemicals associated with specific tastes. Chemicals associated with thyme are found after Thanksgiving. Methyl-vanilla, an ingredient in waffle cones and kettle corn, is found only in summer. Natural vanilla and cinnamon peak at holidays such as Christmas, Valentines Day and so on.

Keil started this project as a way to help people see the connections between the human and natural environments. He has pretty much stayed out of controversy by avoiding discussions about pharmaceuticals that can be found in Puget Sound. Some researchers believe that drugs flushed into local waters after passing through the human body may cause physiological changes in fish, including effects on the immune and reproductive systems.

Keil says all of the cinnamic acid, associated with cinnamon, that gets into Puget Sound has passed through the body of a mammal. Since it’s not likely that dogs and bears are eating a lot of cinnamon, he assumes that almost all is coming from human sewage.

“Control” stations off Vancouver Island in Canada show almost none of these compounds.

Ethyl-vanilla, a petroleum-derived product that creates a stronger vanilla taste than even natural vanilla, is more abundant in Puget Sound than the substance it mimics.

How these spices are affecting fish and wildlife remains uncertain. Are salmon ignoring these smells? Are they using them to home in on their natal streams? Are they confused by the smell of the holidays, experiencing more difficulty in finding their way through Puget Sound?

“You are what you eat,” Keil says, “and so is Puget Sound. If you eat it, Puget Sound eats it.”

Keil has been reporting on these results and adding to them for a couple of years. Read the latest UW news release or look up a story he wrote for the summer edition of “Watershed Review” (PDF 1.5 mb).

The latest twist on this research is getting more people involved in testing the waters in various areas of Western Washington. The Sound Citizen program includes UW students and scientists as well as anyone willing to follow scientific procedures in their sampling. Sampling kits are available. If you are interested, go to the Sound Citizen Web site.

I heard a couple of radio reports on this subject yesterday. But if you have 22 minutes, I highly recommend a recorded lecture of Keil’s. You can link to the audio and download the related slide show (PDF 1.5 mb). The discussion is quite informative and allows this researcher with a human touch to display his sense of humor before a live audience.

Will the economic stimulus package being formulated by President-Elect Barack Obama align with the financial demands of cleaning up Puget Sound?

Several speakers celebrating yesterday’s approval of the Puget Sound Partnership’s Action Agenda said that is exactly where Gov. Chris Gregoire wants to go. See my story in today’s Kitsap Sun.

If that’s true, and Gregoire is able to pull this off, it would be an amazing turnaround. Many of us were thinking that shrinking government revenues would force major cutbacks in state spending — including a retreat in the effort to clean up Puget Sound. Instead, we’re being led to believe that the effort can survive tough economic times.

It’s not clear whether Gregoire will shift funds around to increase, or even continue, existing funding levels for Puget Sound. It’s not evident that she’s even thinking about issuing state bonds to jump-start the effort. And, although the federal government has the ability to print money, we’ll have to see how much fiscal constraint takes place at the federal level and how Puget Sound cleanup fits into the national picture.

Of course, it never hurts to have U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, one of the strongest advocates for Puget Sound, holding a few purse strings in Congress.

Where will the political winds blow? Will the public get behind the Partnership, perceiving local waters as the lifeblood our culture and economic well-being? Or will people be outraged by the notion of spending money to improve water quality and protect plants and animals while people are suffering?

It will be fun to watch the public debate over the next month or two.

One last note about the Action Agenda, something that I’ll need to follow up with further reporting: Why did the Leadership Council retreat from numerical goals, measured by “benchmarks”? I was prepared to put together a list of the “current conditions” along with goals that will bring Puget Sound closer to a healthy condition. The final document deleted most of the numerical goals listed in the draft while expanding the description of current conditions.

I suspect that the simple answer will be that the benchmarks need more work by the Partnership’s Science Panel. But I’ll try to dig into the questions about whether benchmarks can truly represent ecosystem health. In other words, can anyone be comfortable using a few benchmarks to measure restoration progress, given the enormous complexity of the Puget Sound ecosystem?

On Monday, the Puget Sound Partnership will deliver to the Legislature its Action Agenda for restoring Puget Sound to health.

The draft of the Action Agenda and supporting documents can be found on the Partnership’s Web site.

We can expect the Action Agenda to be an evolving document, with the constant goal of restoring Puget Sound to health by 2020. I think we will see the agenda grow more detailed as time allows the Partnership to delve deeper into various issues while involving regional representatives.

As for the goal of restoring Puget Sound to health by 2020, most people I know believe that this goal is too ambitious, practically impossible. But everybody is fairly nervous about speaking out and telling the emperor he (or she) has no clothes.

In any event, the release of the very first Action Agenda provides an important milestone to be celebrated. The rollout for the media will include comments by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, U.S. Rep Norm Dicks; Gov. Chris Gregoire; Bill Ruckelshaus, chairman of the Partnership’s Leadership Council; David Dicks, executive director of the Partnership; state Rep. Dave Upthegrove, a chief architect of the legislation creating the Partnership; and Elin Miller, regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Puget Sound Environmental Caucus, a coalition of 43 organizations, offered a letter and comments on the Action Agenda prior to the deadline. If you wish, you can read the two documents for yourself (PDF 100 kb). Priorities for these groups, with detailed suggestions, are stormwater, toxics, habitat, species, water quality and various other issues.

I’ve pulled out a few noteworthy statements from the cover letter:
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If you can stand another scientific report about Puget Sound’s killer whales, I’d like to point you to interviews I conducted with Sam Wasser and his research associate Katherine Ayres for a story in Sunday’s Kitsap Sun.

It turns out that hormones taken from the whales’ feces tend to confirm that the animals were under “nutritional stress” this year, when seven whales died, compared to last year, when the mortality was minimal.

The unpublished information needs to undergo peer review, but the implications are many for Puget Sound restoration and what is needed for the whale population to survive.

Wasser and Ayres also hope to be able to tell whether the whales are under stress when pursued by a greater number of whale-watching boats. Stay tuned; I’ll be tracking this research as it goes along.

I’m still trying to understand the various implications of a study by David Bain and Pete Schroeder, who found that Puget Sound’s killer whales are harboring antibiotic-resistant bacteria as well as some strains of bugs that can be deadly to immune-compromised mammals.

Puget Sound killer whales // NOAA photo

It seems likely that killer whales are picking up bacteria from humans, since the resistance is most likely caused when people or livestock take antibiotics but don’t take them long enough or in great enough concentration to kill all the bacteria. The result is that some bacteria get a taste of the antibiotics but escape and become resistant.

How the bacteria get into marine waters is somewhat uncertain, but likely sources are discharges in stormwater, in sewage effluent and from boats.

The fact that the researchers found some bad bugs is not a good thing, since the orcas’ immune systems may be weakened by toxic chemicals and a shortage of food.

Federal biologists studying the risks of extinction for Puget Sound orcas worry that a catastrophic event — such as an oil spill or disease — could kill one-third or more of the animals, leaving a nonviable population. It’s distressing to think that humans are loading these animals up with toxic chemicals, which reduce their resistance to disease, then dumping potentially deadly bacteria into the waters around them.

Read more about these findings, including interviews with the researchers, in a story I wrote for today’s Kitsap Sun.

Just a quick reminder: If you wish to submit comments regarding the draft of the Puget Sound Action Agenda, they must be in by Thursday.

The Puget Sound Partnership offers plenty of information — including downloads of the entire Action Agenda and a way to offer comments online — at the Action Agenda Center of the PSP Web site.

If anyone would care to summarize your comments in a few sentences and send them to me by e-mail, I’ll try to find a place for them on Watching Our Water Ways. Or you can just post something as a comment to this entry.

Also of interest on the Web page:
Full Size Draft Action Area Profiles (PDF)
New Report on Puget Sound Toxic Pollution (ECY)
2009-2011 Biennial Science Work Plan (PDF)
DNS (PDF)
Final SEPA checklist (PDF)
Q1 supplemental materials (PDF)
Q2.2 supplemental materials (PDF)

Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are turning the oceans more acidic, according to scientists who have been raising alarms for years.

The acidity threatens the marine food web, with the most direct effects on the shells and skeletons of shellfish and corals, since their absorption of calcium carbonate is reduced in a more acidic environment.

Let’s take note of a few new milestones, although nobody has a practical idea for responding to the threat without addressing the entire issue of global warming.

First, and none too soon, the first comprehensive national study of ocean acidity was commissioned last month by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation. See Oct. 20 news release.

The study followed an international symposium in early October, called the “Second International Symposium on the Ocean in a High CO2 World.” The meeting’s chairman, James Orr of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had this to say in a prepared statement:

“Since the industrial revolution, the acidity of ocean surface waters has increased by 30 percent. This change is greater and happening about 100 times faster than for previous acidification events experienced in many millions of years…

“Published research indicates that by 2030, the Southern Ocean will start to become corrosive to the shells of some marine snails that swim in surface waters. These snails provide a major source of food for Pacific Salmon.

“If they decline or disappear in some regions, such as the North Pacific, what will happen to the salmon – and the salmon fishing industry? And what will happen as ocean acidification increasingly affects coral reefs, which are home to one-quarter of the world’s fish during at least part of their lifetime, and which support a multi-billion dollar tourist industry?”

Finally, the Center for Biological Diversity today issued a notice to the Environmental Protection Agency saying it intends to sue the federal government for failure to respond to the threat of ocean acidification. Last year, the environmental group filed a formal petition asking EPA to impose stricter pH standards for ocean water quality and to publish guidance to help states protect U.S. waters.

A press release from the center includes these comments:

The federal Clean Water Act requires the EPA to update water-quality criteria to reflect the latest scientific knowledge. Since the agency developed the pH standard back in 1976, an extensive body of research has developed on the impacts of carbon dioxide on the oceans.

“Ocean acidification is global warming’s evil twin,” said Miyoko Sakashita, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s oceans program. “The EPA has a duty under the Clean Water Act to protect our nation’s waters from pollution, and today, carbon dioxide is one of the biggest threats to our ocean waters.”

It appears the Center for Biological Diversity is launching a flank attack on the global warming issue via the Clean Water Act, which allows citizen lawsuits. A similar flank maneuver involved the effort to get the polar bear protected under the Endangered Species Act as a result of melting ice caused by global warming. See CBD press release.

Clearly, environmental groups are not waiting for a new administration to move into the White House or to see how President Barack Obama might address the threat of global warming.

Navy officials and attorneys with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which brought the sonar lawsuit, offered these responses to today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

For further details about the ruling, see the entry below in Watching Our Water Ways.

Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter:
“This case was vital to our Navy and Nation’s security, and we are pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision in this matter. We can now continue to train our Sailors effectively, under realistic combat conditions, and certify our crews “combat ready” while continuing to be good stewards of the marine environment.”

Admiral Gary Roughead, chief of Naval Operations:
“We are pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision on this case of vital importance to our National Security. We will continue to train realistically and certify the Sailors and Marines of our Navy strike groups in a manner that protects our nation’s security and the precious maritime environment.”

Lt. Sean Robertson, media relations action officer, CHINFO
“Without the crippling restrictions contained in the preliminary injunction, our Sailors can train realistically and the Navy is able to certify our forces are ready for Anti-Submarine Warfare, reducing risk to our Sailors and national security, while simultaneously protecting the environment. The Navy appreciates the careful consideration and prompt review the Court gave this important case involving national security.”

Rear Adm. James A. Symonds, commander of Navy Region Northwest
“Although this decision does not directly affect the Puget Sound, some SONAR training does occur on a smaller scale in the Northwest training ranges. It is important that our Sailors are able to train as they would be called to fight, in a realistic environment.

“When Sailors train, they adhere to the 29 protective mitigation measures whenever mid-frequency active SONAR is needed to minimize potential harm to marine mammals. This includes posting lookouts, power-down and shut-down requirements. The Navy is preparing an environmental impact statement to comprehensively analyze the effects of all Navy activities in the Northwest training ranges.”

Joel Reynolds, senior attorney and director of NRDC’s marine mammal program:
“The Supreme Court held that the lower courts did not properly balance the competing interests at stake, and struck down two significant safeguards that reduce harm to whales from high-intensity sonar training.

“The decision places marine mammals at greater risk of serious and needless harm. However, it is a narrow ruling that leaves in place four of the injunction’s six safeguards. It is significant that the court did not overturn the underlying determination that the Navy likely violated the law by failing to prepare an environmental impact statement.”

Richard Kendall, NRDC co-counsel:
“It is gratifying that the court did not accept the Navy’s expansive claims of executive power, and that two thirds of the injunction remains intact.”

See the full press release from NRDC