“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean.”
— Arthur C. Clarke

“Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.”
— Dave Barry

“It’s hard for the modern generation to understand Thoreau, who lived beside a pond but didn’t own water skis or a snorkel.”
— Loudon Wainwright

“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.”
— Hal Borland

“There’s something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she’s only measured water in it.”
— Erma Bombeck

“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
— Kenneth Boulding

“A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good, and a real one.”
— J.P. Morgan

“That’s the thing about Mother Nature, she really doesn’t care what economic bracket you’re in.”
— Whoopi Goldberg

“Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.”
— David Letterman

“We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.”
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“‘Growth’ and ‘progress’ are among the key words in our national vocabulary. But modern man now carries Strontium 90 in his bones … DDT in his fat, asbestos in his lungs. A little more of this ‘progress’ and ‘growth,’ and this man will be dead.”
— Morris K. “Mo” Udall

“If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.”
— Steven Wright

“I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.”
— Groucho Marx

“If it weren’t for electricity, we’d all be watching television by candlelight.”
— George Gobel

“President Bush has a plan [to fight global warming]. He says that if we need to, we can lower the temperature dramatically just by switching from Fahrenheit to Celsius.”
— Jimmy Kimmel

“Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?”
— Groucho Marx

“The only two herbicides we recommend are cultivation and mulching.”
— Organic Gardening magazine

“The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking… If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
— Albert Einstein

“Don’t get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It’s just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there’s an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it’s wireless!”
— William McDonough

“Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow.”
— Arthur Stringer

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
— Mark Twain

“If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.”
— Doug Larson

“Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.”
— Bill Vaughan

“The greenest house is the one that never gets built.”
— Whit Faulconer

“The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.”
— Steven Wright

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.

• I resolve to wash less laundry and use more deodorant
• I resolve to stop taking showers but start enjoying the rain — naked.

For drivers of expensive cars:

• I resolve to always check for fire hydrants before parking my BMW.

Click here for other New Year’s resolutions in photos. These are all over the Internet in various collections, so I’m not sure who should get the credits.

By the way, the tradition of New Year’s resolutions dates to at least 154 B.C., when the Roman Senate decided to put an end to a long series of calendar alterations made by Roman emperors. January, named for the Roman god Janus, was moved to the beginning of the annual calendar.

With two faces, Janus could look backward to the past and forward to the future. Janus became the symbol for New Year’s, a time when many Romans looked for forgiveness from their enemies and exchanged gifts as the new year began.

Roman bust of Janus (Click to enlarge.) Vatican Museums

For more New Year’s history, go to unmuseum.org and goalsguy.com.

Comedian Joey Adams once offered this optimistic outlook on the new year: “May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.”

And finally a quote from an unidentified person who takes New Year’s resolutions as seriously as I do: “A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.”

For more New Year’s quotes, see searchwarp.com.

“Snorkas” on San Juan Island. (Click to enlarge.) Photo courtesy of Doug McCutchen

“They’ve been milling slowly in the same place for the last 28 hours now,” they reported to Orca Network. “No vocalizations or other surface activity.”

Orca Network dubbed them “snorkas” for snow orcas.

I thought this was a nice piece of sculpture work, but I was wondering how Doug and Kari were able to color the snow black in exactly the right places. Doug sent me this note:

“We used some old oil that had been kicking around the shop after changing oil in the car awhile back. Kidding! We simply cut the black portions out in Photoshop, pasted them into a new window, adjusted the contrast, and then pasted them back in again. Really didn’t spend much time on it, as you can tell if you look closely. We’d made the whales the night before by rolling big snowballs together then sculpting with a machete. It snowed another 4-6″ that night, so they’re a little softer than the originals.”

Speaking of killer whale sightings, Orca Network has been receiving reports of animals in Central and South Puget Sound the past few days.

The latest report was about 9 a.m. this morning near Kingston. Because of the weather and difficulty seeing from shore, many of the reports are coming from ferry crews.

Sightings yesterday included one near Fay Bainbridge State Park and another from Restoration Point, both on Bainbridge Island. Later in the day, three groups of orcas were seen traveling down Colvos Passage between the Kitsap Peninsula and Vashon Island.

Unfortunately, most of the locally produced snow videos show little more than stuck cars and car crashes, which I rarely find amusing. And I cringe at ski accidents and injuries on snowmobiles, which are often compiled and promoted as funny.

So here’s a compilation of photos showing what snow can do. Yes, I’m posting this “Amusing Monday” a day earlier than normal.

Animals are sometimes funny in the snow, but the reactions of people are more amusing.

OK, I need to show you one car accident.

If you’ve seen enough snowy car accidents, as I have, then watch how this one turns out.

Seriously, I know that the snow can be a pain. But we don’t often see anything like this snow we’re getting. While you have a chance, bundle up warmly and venture out into the world of snow. Let the joy of childhood overtake you, and enjoy a cup of hot chocolate for me.

I’d like to ask a question of all you readers of Water Ways. Would you like me to provide occasional updates on Sea Shepherd’s controversial tactics, or do believe it is wrong to give this organization the extensive publicity it is already receiving?

I’m open to arguments on both sides.

Meanwhile, let me tell you what has been happening with Sea Shepherd and its television series “Whale Wars,” which completed its first season on Animal Planet this week and is going into reruns.

A news release issued today quotes Watson:

“It does not get more real than this. While people are sitting in their living rooms watching our campaign against the whalers that took place last season, we are at the same time in the icy hostile seas of Antarctica engaged with the whalers this season. There is an Animal Planet crew on board and the cameras are rolling for season two of Whale Wars.”

Yesterday, Watson reported that Sea Shepherd’s boat, the Steve Irwin, caught up with the harpoon ship Yushin Maru #2. The small Delta boat was launched with the idea of pelting the ship with stinky butter bombs, but it had to be called back because of high winds and rough sea conditions.

Watch the video by Sea Shepherd.

The Yushin Marin #2 was a ship that members of Sea Shepherd boarded last year, one of the dramatic moments in Season One of “Whale Wars.” Because of that controversial action and other life-risking incidents, the series quickly picked up an audience and was a big winner for Animal Planet, according to Variety magazine, which reports on show business.

This year the Japanese ship reportedly has installed a net over its side to prevent any further boardings.

Meanwhile, producers of the program have invited Japanese officials to participate in the second season, perhaps to offer a more balanced view of events.

As you may have heard, actress Daryl Hannah has joined the crew for this year’s campaign in the Antarctic. Hannah, best known for her mermaid role in the movie “Splash,” is a longtime supporter of environmental causes. She has been forcibly removed from more than one protest demonstration, and she runs a personal Web site that covers a lot of environmental issues. I wonder what her presence will add to the show.

It seems Sea Shepherd is getting wrapped up in show business as well as continuing controversy and criticism — including Watson’s claim of being shot against denials by the Japanese. Watson apparently believes all the publicity will help stop the whaling, and now he’s getting more attention than anytime in the last 30 years.

I don’t know where things will go from here, but I can’t help but watch.

I was able to report on some broad provisions of the agreement in today’s Kitsap Sun, following the lead of Jason Hagey, a News Tribune reporter who covered a Tacoma City Council meeting where the city agreed to include land as part of a settlement with the tribe.

City Councilman Jake Fey noted that Tacoma had benefited from low electricity rates for decades while ignoring the damage caused to the tribe. Fey said the settlement would help remove a “black mark” regarding Tacoma’s regard for the environment and the tribe, according to Hagey’s report.

I have been following this issue for most of my 31 years as a reporter for the Kitsap Sun. For much of that time, both the tribe and the city believed they held the upper hand in the legal arguments. As a result, both sides looked to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the courts for answers.

After one court threw out a $5.8 billion damage claim made by the tribe against Tacoma and another court said the relicensing process should include both damage mitigation and environmental restoration, suddenly both sides had potentially more to gain — and more to lose — by leaving the judgment to FERC and the courts.

Both the city and the tribe should be given credit for working together, given their 80 years of history in which each side believed it was right.

As for the terms of the settlement, I see where many people are already passing judgment in comments after reading my account in the Sun. And that troubles me. I urge everyone to wait until they see the final settlement, which will deal with a number of environmental issues not yet made public.

I’ll have more to say on this subject in the future, but sometimes a situation is too complex to be boiled down to winners and losers.

Up until the sighting earlier this month, Charter boat captain Eddie Hall thought he had seen everything.

“Lot’s of cool stuff, everything from submarines to ships to every kind of shark you can think of, never a killer whale,” he said during an interview with Debbie Williams of WKRG News in the Mobile-Pensacola area. “Never ever thought about seeing a killer whale in my lifetime in the Gulf.”

(If the screen below doesn’t work, go straight to the WKRG Web site.)

Until now, the population of killer whales in the Gulf had been estimated at 150, according to Williams’ report.

Biologist Keith Mullin said 17 orca sightings have been recorded. “Ten to 15 in a pod; that’s the most we’ve ever seen or really even gotten reports of,” he told WKRG.

The stock assessment report (PDF 152 kb) by the National Marine Fisheries Service suggests that very little is known about killer whales in the Gulf of Mexico. A report written in October 2007 offers a guesstimate of 49 animals in the Northern Gulf of Mexico area.

Thirty-two individuals have been photographically identified to date, with 6 individuals having been sighted over a 5 year period, and 1 whale resighted over 10 years… The Gulf of Mexico population is provisionally being considered a separate stock for management purposes, although there is currently no information to differentiate this stock from the Atlantic Ocean stock(s)…

There are insufficient data to determine the population trends for this species. The total level of U.S. Gulf of Mexico fishery-caused mortality and serious injury for this stock is unknown, but the rarity of mortality reports for this species suggests that this level is insignificant and approaching a zero mortality and serious injury rate.

As you can see, the knowledge about killer whales in the Gulf is considerably different from what we know about killer whales in the Northwest, where every birth and death of our two fish-eating resident populations are noted and where most of the seal-eating transients have been identified and monitored over time.

For a little more about the recent Gulf sighting, Steve Layton and Gary Finch wrote about the event on the Orange Beach (Ala.) Community Web site, where they said video would be coming soon.

Thanks go to Orca Network for tracking down good whale stories, wherever they take place.

Clicking your mouse, you could dress up these coal chunks in various hats and scarfs, pick a background such as a sunny beach or a field of snow, then cue these hard-headed lumps to sing Christmas carols about the benefits of “clean coal.”

It was one of the silliest things I’ve seen this year. Alas, the American Coalition of Clean Coal Electricity, which launched the Clean Coal Carolers, dismantled the Web site at the end of last week, only five days after it went up.

I was able to find a version that someone recorded for You Tube, so you can watch one version of the show in the window below.

ACCCE officials never gave much explanation about why the site was taken down so soon. See the note from Joe Lucas, vice president of communications.

Maybe it was the environmental groups who blasted the display, saying there is no such thing as clean coal. Maybe it was the folks who objected to turning sacred Christmas songs, such as Silent Night, into a public relations stunt. Maybe the ACCCE realized that the ridicule coming down on the site was drowning out the message the organization was trying to get out.

Here’s a video showing the Clean Coal Carolers at work:

The whole brouhaha about this public relations gimmick is fairly amusing. A blogger called Green Mullet had this to say:

Leave it up to one of the most polluting industries in the country, the single largest spewer of mercury in the U.S., to tarnish the spirit of the season with a campaign like this.

One of the songs is called “Clean Coal Night.” Is there a way to get baby Jesus (or big Jesus) to give an endorsement? The singers who lended their voices for these songs might as well be singing “See you in Hell” by the ugly (but great) Grim Reaper, circa 1987.

Another blogger named Envirowonk offered his perspective of how the idea came into being.

The coal industry is actually very serious about developing a technology that can take the pollutants out of coal. Whether that can be accomplished is highly controversial and politically loaded.

Although not amusing, here’s a fairly balanced look at the issue produced in June by a CBS News team headed by Wyatt Andrews.

I outlined the projects for the Kitsap Peninsula and Hood Canal in a Kitsap Sun story last week.

It’s worth noting that Gov. Chris Gregoire continues to tout the economic benefits of environmental restoration, as well as the benefits to Puget Sound, the Columbia River and other important ecosystems.

“The health of salmon populations is an indication of the health of our environment,” Gregoire said. “These grants will not only help protect and restore our land and water, but many will help stimulate our economy. Some of these grants create jobs with small companies to complete the restoration work. These grants also help keep Washington a place that people want to visit for its natural resources.”

Some observers say Puget Sound restoration will be proposed as part of this state’s economic stimulus package to be funded by the federal government.

For information about how the grants are awarded, check out the news release by the SRF Board. Because the link was not working today, I’ve pasted the information below:

Gov. Gregoire Announces more than $19.8 Million in Grants for Salmon Recovery

OLYMPIA – Governor Chris Gregoire today announced that more than $19.8 million in grants to protect and restore salmon populations have been awarded to communities across Washington.

“The health of salmon populations is an indication of the health of our environment,” Gregoire said. “These grants will not only help protect and restore our land and water, but many will help stimulate our economy. Some of these grants create jobs with small companies to complete the restoration work. These grants also help keep Washington a place that people want to visit for its natural resources.”

The grants in the Puget Sound area also work toward implementing Governor Gregoire’s initiative to restore Puget Sound.

The grants from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board ranged from $10,000 to nearly $900,000. They were awarded to organizations in 28 counties for work ranging from planting trees along streams to cool the water for salmon, to replacing culverts that prevent salmon from migrating to spawning habitat, to restoring entire floodplains.

The grants were given to projects in the following counties. (For details on each project, download from the Web.)

Asotin County…………………………. $46,410
Chelan County……………………… $956,568
Clallam County…………………….. $883,578
Clark County…………………………. $532,644
Columbia County…………………. $694,619
Cowlitz County……………………… $826,639
Grays Harbor County……………. $467,753
Island County……………………….. $267,538
Jefferson County……………….. $1,021,906
King County………………………. $1,539,572
Kitsap County……………………….. $382,395
Kittitas County……………………. $1,050,370
Klickitat County…………………….. $693,275
Lewis County………………………… $596,606
Mason County………………………. $968,161
Okanogan County……………… $1,213,432
Pacific County………………………. $448,887
Pend Oreille County……………… $400,000
Pierce County……………………….. $867,577
San Juan County…………………. $341,412
Skagit County…………………….. $1,455,558
Skamania County…………………. $417,000
Snohomish County………………. $767,766
Thurston County…………………… $296,394
Wahkiakum County……………… $663,790
Walla Walla County………………. $931,664
Whatcom County………………….. $712,550
Yakima County…………………….. $370,630

“These projects are identified and prioritized by local watershed groups, who know what’s happening in their communities,” said Steve Tharinger, chairman of the Salmon Recovery Funding Board. “The state’s scientific panel then reviews the projects to ensure that each project will be effective in bringing salmon populations back from the brink of extinction. Linking local priorities with scientific review has made Washington a national model in salmon recovery.”

Several populations of salmon were put on the federal list of endangered species in 1991. By then, the number of salmon had fallen to only 40 percent of historic levels in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California. By 1999, almost three-fourths of Washington’s watersheds were affected by Endangered Species Act listings of salmon and bull trout. Those listings set off a series of activities including the formation of the Salmon Recovery Funding Board to oversee the investment of state and federal funds for salmon recovery. Since 2000, the board has awarded more than $345 million in grants, funded by federal and state dollars, for 1,115 projects. Grantees have contributed more than $160 million in matching resources, bringing the total investment to more than $506 million.

The Salmon Recovery Funding Board’s citizen members are appointed by the governor and they are: Harry Barber, Washougal; Donald “Bud” Hover, Okanogan County; Bob Nichols, Olympia; Steve Tharinger, Clallam County; and David Troutt, Dupont. Five state agency directors also serve as members (Conservation Commission, Department of Ecology, Department of Fish and Wildlife, Department of Natural Resources and Department of Transportation). Information about the Salmon Recovery Funding Board is available online.