Local government officials have been getting letters from the Federal Emergency Management Agency about saving salmon. The letters say the National Flood Insurance Program violates the Endangered Species Act and describe how to fix the problem.

I mentioned this situation in a story in Oct. 19 in the Kitsap Sun. This morning, I received the text of the letter (PDF 40 kb) in an e-mail from FEMA.

As the result of a federal lawsuit and consultation with the National Marine Fisheries Service, FEMA needs to change its flood-management program. It remains unclear, however, how much local governments will need to change their land-use rules to qualify for flood insurance under the new program.

Measures that must be taken to comply with the law are spelled out as “reasonable and prudent alternatives,” which begin on page 151 of the “biological opinion,” which can be downloaded from NOAA’s Web site.

Steve Landino of the National Marine Fisheries Service said the effects of the biological opinion are likely to vary from place to place.

“It is the most complicated (biological opinion) that we have worked with, at least in our office in Washington,” Landino told me.

The notice mailed last week was required to recommend a temporary moratorium on floodplain development and explain the next steps to come into compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

FEMA must make sure that local governments implement changes “as soon as practicable” but no later than three years from now. Priority must focus on “Tier 1” salmon populations, followed by “Tier 2.” Kitsap County and its cities are located in the second category.

Tier 1 areas involved in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) include all the major rivers in the Puget Sound area, as shown below.
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The timing is truly mind-boggling.

Last night, in this blog, I wrote about an eight-year legal battle by environmental groups to get the federal government to examine the true hazards of insecticides on salmon. (See entry below this one.)

In this morning’s Kitsap Sun, I noticed an Associated Press article by Dina Cappiello that talks about eliminating a portion of the Endangered Species Act that made this process possible.

A draft of the rule that Cappiello talked about has not been made public. It’s pretty technical and we should wait for the specific rule to be published. But it looks like federal agencies proposing certain actions would be allowed to do their own analysis with little or no interference from the agencies assigned to protect endangered species.

So what would be wrong with the Environmental Protection Agency examining the effects of pesticides on salmon without further review by the National Marine Fisheries Service?

According to federal biologists, the EPA has adopted protocols for reviewing chemicals as they go on the market.

“They (EPA scientists) have a pretty rigorous set way they analyze the chemicals,” Jim Lecky of NMFS told me last week. “We have taken that information ourselves and used it in our analysis.”

Lecky, who is director of the Office of Protected Resources of NMFS, said the EPA uses surrogates to represent a group of species. For example, rainbow trout was the surrogate for salmon.

“Our mission is to look at endangered and threatened species,” Lecky said. “EPA extrapolates from rainbow trout to chinook salmon. We go a little further and try to find additional effects. I think we have identified the best available information.”

Patti Goldman of Earthjustice reminded me that five years ago the EPA said in its first review of pesticides that the chemicals would have little or no effect on salmon. If the proposed rule had been in effect, EPA may have escaped further analysis of its findings.

It took two lawsuits by environmental groups as well as scientists in a separate federal agency to finally give status to the idea that pesticides on the market, as used today, pose a serious risk to endangered salmon.

It’s been a long time coming, but the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides is on the verge of getting the federal government to change its policies with respect to three insecticides that can harm salmon. They are diazinon, chlorpyrifos and malathion, all neurotoxins affecting the central nervous system.

As I described in a story in Sunday’s Kitsap Sun, the National Marine Fisheries Service has issued a finding of “jeopardy” under the Endangered Species Act. That means the chemicals pose a risk of extinction for the salmon. Scientists are now considering findings for other pesticides.

Concerns about 54 pesticides were officially raised in 2000, about the time NMFS was spelling out the environmental risks — including pesticides — to more than two dozen threatened and endangered salmon.

In 2002, a federal judge ruled the Environmental Protection Agency must “consult” with NMFS on those pesticides, as required by the Endangered Species Act. Eventually, EPA found that 37 pesticides could create problems for salmon.

The other side of the consultation — a response from NMFS — was not ensured until the end of July, when the agency signed a settlement agreement with NCAP, Earthjustice and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. That agreement lays out a schedule for completing “biological opinions” under the ESA.

The draft biological opinion (PDF 11 mb) is available at NMFS’ Office of Protected Resources Web site.

“The fact that it has taken eight years to get here has left me aware that we need to continue to watchdog the process,” Aimee Code, water quality coordinator for NCAP, told me today in a phone conversation.

“I am thrilled we have gotten this far, but I am very aware that we cannot let down our guard,” she said. “It is hard for me to know that our government has been so irresponsible, allowing the marketing and sale of products they knew were of concern. They let people get comfortable using them (the pesticides) … without looking at the risks.”

An so the story continues.