Save the Salmon: How Pebble Mine is Poised to Suck the Life Out of Bristol Bay

(photo credit: wildsalmoncenter.org)

I've been intending for the past several months to write a blog post about the looming crisis in Bristol Bay, Alaska.  The synopsis sounds like a classic Hollywood script pitting Native Americans and mom & pop commercial fishermen against an aggressive and well-connected mining company that sees Bristol Bay as an obstacle in their quest for mineral wealth.

The proposed Pebble Mine would be located on state lands in southwestern Alaska and, if built, would be the largest gold and copper mine in the world.  What is at stake is the water quality of the nearby Bristol Bay.  A recently released research report from the University of Alaska placed the annual value of the Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishery at $1.5 billion, making Bristol Bay the most valuable wild salmon fishery in the world. The same report also valued the direct annual income for Americans working in the Bristol Bay salmon industry at $580 million. Bristol Bay's salmon industry supports 7,800 full-time jobs, 12,000 seasonal jobs, and creates a positive ripple across the country when one considers the multiplier effects of distribution and retailing in grocery stores, restaurants, warehousing services, etc.

Native Alaskan drying salmon.
(photo credit: renewableresourcescoalition.org)

Aside from the dollar signs that swim around the Bristol Bay controversy, there is also a less flashy aspect to what is at stake.  There are thousands of Yupik Eskimo, Aleut and Athabaskan tribal members currently living in the Bristol Bay region and whose ancestors have been fishing these waters for thousands of years.  These Native Alaskans are subsistence fishermen, with wild salmon comprising an average of about 52 percent of their families' diets.  So it is not only sockeye salmon that rely on the clean water in Bristol Bay and its tributaries. 

Native Alaskan eating salmon. (photo credit: nrdconline.org)

As part of their review of the proposed mining operation, the EPA prepared an extensive scientific review, the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment, detailing the potential impacts of large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay, Alaska, region.

The mining company, the Pebble Partnership, is playing a high-stakes political game which, if they win, will have tragic adverse impacts on critical wildlife habitat in a region that relies on fishing and hunting tourism in addition to relying on the sockeye salmon fishery itself.  The EPA's Assessment found that even without a catastrophic spill or a series of harmful smaller spills, up to 87 miles of salmon streams and up to 4,300 acres of salmon habitat would be likely be destroyed by the proposed mining operation. Now try to wrap your head around this nugget:  the scale of the proposed mining operations would mean that up to 10 billion tons of toxic mine waste must be stored, treated, and monitored "in perpetuity."

Come on.  Who thinks for one minute that Pebble Partnership's investors would actually forgo a dime of profit to stash away billions of dollars to store, treat, and monitor their mining waste in perpetuity?   The U.S. Office of Surface Mining estimates that there are currently about 400,000 acres of abandoned mine lands in the United States.  “Abandoned” means that these former mine lands are waiting for federal tax dollars to become available to clean them up, because the mining companies that made the mess packed up and left, often shifting assets and filing for bankruptcy to avoid liability for the reclamation. The mining industry simply does not have an acceptable track record of sticking around to clean up after themselves.

Salmon spawning run. (photo credit: treehugger.com)

  As a Licensed Professional Geologist, I am acutely aware of the unavoidable adverse effects on surface water of even just a modest mining operation.  There is no doubt in my mind that the proposed Pebble Mine would irreversibly harm an economically important salmon fishery and the thousands of people whose livelihood depends on the health of that fishery.

The EPA holds a wild card in the form of the Clean Water Act.  The EPA can invoke the Clean Water Act to restrict inappropriate development activities such as the proposed Pebble Mine.   And the EPA is accepting public comment on their Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment until May 31.

So here it is, at the 11th hour.  This is my blog post in which I beg anyone reading to submit a comment to the EPA asking them to invoke the power of the Clean Water Act to prevent wholesale, large scale, irreversible damage to Bristol Bay's water quality and to give a break to all of the wildlife and people who rely on Bristol Bay's ecosystem for their survival.

Regardless of how far from Alaska you might live, our collective voices can be heard by the EPA:  Save Bristol Bay.  Here is a link that you can use to email your comment directly to the EPA on this critical situation:

http://takeaction.savebristolbay.org/savebristolbay/issues/alert/?alertid=62627501

(photo credit: counterpunch.org)

Inedible Fruit as Food for Thought This Arbor Day

This post was supposed to be for Earth Day on Monday (April 22).  But a weekend of fishing and gardening prevented me from writing it prior to Monday, and my day job prevented me from writing it on Monday.  Fortunately, I have a chance at redemption, because Arbor Day is on Friday, April 26.  And this piece really is more appropriate for Arbor Day than Earth Day.

Hopefully lots of trees will be planted all around the country this weekend in observation of Arbor Day.  What kind of trees?  I hope everyone considers planting trees native to their own area, because natives are already suited to the climate and typically offer some degree of benefit to wildlife.  But really, the better question to ask is:  What kind of trees should we NOT plant. I’m glad you asked.

Throughout the eastern the United States, you can easily spot Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana) trees this time of year.  Here in the mid-Atlantic states, they are now just starting to go from their full, brilliant-white bloom to leafing out.  Look for trees with upward spreading branches that are entirely in bloom in white, and you’ll probably find Callery pear trees.  In autumn, their leaves turn various pleasant shades of red.  Sounds like a really nice tree, right?  Maybe too much of a good thing.

Many communities have allowed and even encouraged Callery pear cultivars to be planted as street trees.  Planting a monoculture of any one tree species is bad, because a species-specific blight could wipe out entire neighborhoods of those trees in just a couple of years.

The Callery pear tree is native to Vietnam and China. First introduced to the United States in the early 20^th century for experimentation to develop blight resistance in the common pear, the Callery did not become popular ornamentally until the 1950s.  As its ornamental value grew, various cultivated varieties were developed.  Probably the most popular cultivar of the past 50 years has been the Bradford pear.

Cultivars in the U.S. originated from China and are different genotypes. Some genotypes require cross-pollination from another genotype to set seed, but others can self-pollinate. Different genotypes growing within about 300 feet of each other can cross-pollinate and produce fruit with viable seeds. The Bradford pear cultivar is one of several varieties of Callery pear that are capable of spreading and being invasive.

The fruits of Callerys and their cultivars are not edible by humans, being only about one centimeter in diameter.  But birds readily eat these small fruits and disperse the seeds in their droppings, and fertile seeds will establish anywhere they are dropped.  Seeds that germinate can grow rapidly in disturbed soils such as along roadsides and the margins of cultivated fields and woodlots. The plants that spread in natural areas are not true cultivars. They are sexually reproducing populations consisting of multiple genotypes that recombine every generation to produce more viable seed and perpetuate the invasion of this non-native pear tree.

Callery pear cultivars that have formed a thick patch in a former

cultivated field.


Once established, Callery pear trees can form dense thickets that push out native trees that cannot tolerate the Callery’s shade or compete with them for water, soil, and space.  A single Callery or fertile cultivar can spread quickly via seed suckers and form a formidable patch in less than 10 years.  Its success as an invasive species is aided by a general lack of natural controls like insects and diseases.  Callery pear trees are reported to have escaped cultivation and are out-competing native trees in at least 25 states.

Identification

•    Size:  mature height is 30-50 ft. tall and 20-30 ft. wide; young trees may be thorny.

•    Leaves: deciduous, alternate, simple, broad-ovate to ovate, 1½-3 in. long; shiny dark green and leathery, small round-toothed margins; scarlet, mahogany, purple hues in fall.

•    Flowers, fruits and seeds: flowers in early spring before the leaves, white with five petals, about 1 in. across; fruits mature in fall and are small, hard, brown, and almost woody.

•    Spreads: by seeds that are dispersed to new locations by birds that eat the fruits.

Control


Simply do not plant the Callery pear or any of its cultivars such as the Bradford.  Lobby your municipal planning commission to prohibit Callery pear cultivars from inclusion in land development plans.

Cut down medium or large trees and treat their stumps with a systemic herbicide like glyphosate (better known as Roundup).  If you find them coming up in your yard or even in the wild, you can simply pull the seedlings and shallow-rooted saplings when the soil is moist. 

If you succeed in pulling the seedlings or small trees out of the ground, remember that these trees and other invasive plants will take advantage of any disturbed soils to germinate their seeds.  So instead of leaving a patch of disturbed soil to germinate new invasive plant seeds, consider having some sort of native plant(s) ready to immediately plant in place of the former pear invader.

Callery pears that have escaped cultivation (meaning they probably sprouted from seeds disbursed by birds).  These trees are on the edge of a former cultivated field.

 Native Alternatives


There are several native trees that are excellent substitutes for Callery pears.  They include: serviceberry (Amelanchier species), hawthorne (Crataegus sp.), redbud (Cercis canadensis), Dogwood (Cornus florida) and crabapple (Malus coronaria).

Bottom line is this -- by all means, go out and plant several trees this weekend to celebrate Arbor Day.  Just select your trees with regard to the environment.  Natives are all-around winning selections.  But if you go with a non-native cultivar, please do your homework to make sure you are not buying a cultivar that is likely to “escape cultivation.”  Happy planting!

Stormwater Runoff - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

OK, with a title like that, you might think I would actually quote that classic spaghetti western.  But no.  I'll open with a quote from a different classic flick.

“Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.”  That’s what Travis Bickle, the Taxi Driver, said in the 1976 Martin Scorsese movie of the same name. Bickle, played by Robert DeNiro, was referring to vigilante justice as the rain and some of New York City’s shadiest characters as the scum that would be washed away.

photo by the author

But this post isn’t about violence or criminals.  It’s about the inanimate scum that gets washed from streets, sidewalks, and everywhere by actual rain storms.  You can call it stormwater, runoff, or the more technical “overland flow.”  But the effect is the same.  Trash, sediment, and chemicals get washed from the land’s surface into the nearest body of surface water.  Even in the absence of trash and chemicals, many streams become degraded by sediment washing off of sparsely vegetated areas and by stormwater that gets heated up by washing over hot asphalt surfaces during summer thunderstorms (trout cannot tolerate warm water).

I read a post this weekend on the American Rivers blog about some big strides that the city of Atlanta is taking to make their stormwater infrastructure greener and thereby easing the effects of urban runoff on the rivers and streams that receive their stormwater.  Atlanta recently updated their stormwater ordinances to encourage implementing green infrastructure, recognizing that,

“The use of green infrastructure and runoff reduction practices improves water quality in our streams and reduces the magnitude and frequency of flooding and combined sewer overflow events through the infiltration, evapotranspiration, and reuse of stormwater runoff…”

The City of Philadelphia has been proactive with its stormwater management for a number of years.  The Philadelphia Water Department is in charge of managing the stormwater runoff and has a system in place to charge property owners based on the volume of stormwater they discharge to the city’s storm sewer system.  Philadelphia is approaching the runoff problem the right way by getting property owners to pay for their stormwater runoff in proportion to the volume they discharge.  Therefore, a 30-year old big-box store surrounded by a sea of asphalt does not get away with discharging their stormwater, untreated, to the city stormwater system.  They pay.  So they have an incentive to treat as much of their stormwater on-site as they can.

Little Lehigh Creek. Sedimentation and elevated temperatures are the most significant stressors in this segment of this spring-fed stream (photo by the author).

Ironically, many U.S. cities understand the big picture of stormwater management better than some medium-sized municipalities that still have delusions of being a semi-rural bedroom communities as opposed to the suburban wastelands they are allowing  themselves to become. With increasing suburbanization and urbanization, the stormwater runoff problems become more acute.  EPA regulations governing Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (abbreviated as MS4) are requiring municipalities to take responsibility for the stormwater that their storm sewer systems discharge into surface water bodies.  And here in Pennsylvania, our Department of Environmental Protection’s newer stormwater regulations are requiring new construction projects to manage their stormwater on site using either old-fashioned, ugly retention basins or, preferably, naturalized stormwaterbasins, pervious pavement, or other green infrastructure.

photo credit: LowerMacungiePatch.com

In my township, however, we still have voluminous problems with the stormwater runoff from all of the recklessly approved new construction from the early 1990s up through the middle of the last decade.  We have serious, recurring flooding problems because of the stormwater runoff entering the stream that runs the length of our township – stormwater coming from a Walmart shopping center with inadequate on-site stormwater management facilities, and stormwater coming from hundreds upon hundreds of acres of warehouse facilities built in a neighboring township.

photo credit: LowerMacungiePatch.com

I’m sure my local stormwater runoff problem is also happening in many other municipalities that have experienced unchecked suburbanization in the past 20-30 years.  This problem cannot be solved by simply requiring all future development to manage its stormwater on-site. It’s time to make all property owners pay for the burden of their stormwater on the public.  Stormwater runoff should be managed by a municipal authority in the same manner that sanitary sewer services are managed.  Pennsylvania’s municipal code allows for creation of a municipal authority to manage a utility, and stormwater management is a utility that has been ignored for too long in many areas.  Unlike sanitary sewer service, which can be apportioned based on political subdivision boundaries, however, stormwater management authorities would function more practically if they are based on watershed boundaries.  All dischargers should pay their fair share to manage their runoff so that it does not exacerbate flooding or impair water quality in the receiving streams.

There should be no free lunch when it comes to discharging large volumes of stormwater that can cause localized flooding and seriously impair high-quality streams.