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Flood 2008: The Sponge That Saved Gurnee

2008-07-03T16:16:39Z

While reading coverage of the current Midwestern flood disaster, I was floored by this headline: 'Giant sponge' saved Gurnee from flooding.

Had the wise residents of this northern Illinois town erected a loofah levee?

Or rigged a mound of porous kitchen cleaners to fight off the rising Des Plaines River?

What was this amazingly absorbent technology that saved the town from the watery fate that has doomed so many other towns in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri of late?

The answer, it turned out, was much simpler.

While severe flooding plagued communities on nearby waterways, the Lake County News-Sun reported that Gurnee’s Mayor Kristina Kovarik credited her town’s dry streets to the natural protections afforded by nearby wetlands:

She attributed this to preventive flood mitigation measures that were initiated by county officials and municipalities more than a decade ago. She particularly praised the effectiveness of the Des Plaines Wetlands Demonstration Project upriver in the Wadsworth area.
"These wetlands serve as a giant sponge for us in controlling the flow of the Des Plaines River. They are an excellent shock absorber," Kovarik said.
The wetlands project dates back to the 1970s when the state commissioned a feasibility study to determine how wetland and river restoration can increase flood control, improve water quality, expand wildlife habitat and encourage recreational use, instead of just building more concrete dams. The 550-acre site along the Des Plaines River is owned by the Lake County Forest Preserve District and managed by Wetland Research Inc. The project has achieved many of its objectives and has saved millions of dollars by preventing flood damage.

As the mayor noted, streams and wetlands are natural flood protections. They act as a sponge to clean and hold water in heavy rain events. Unfortunately, we have ripped out roughly half of our wetlands in the lower 48 states.

Yesterday, I took part in a news conference to make the public aware of the fight over legislation that could make a difference in this area. The Clean Water Restoration act is an effort to clarify and reaffirm the original intentions of the Clean Water Act. In the light of Midwestern floods, the legislation is necessary to reinforce protections for our natural flood buffers---particularly since so few remain.

The federal government has recently released studies that show a likely increase in violent weather patterns, such as flooding. Instead of developing in oft-drenched flood plains, perhaps it is time to heed the lessons learned in Gurnee. A return of some land to the original flood-absorbing wetlands might make sense in many places. But let’s make sure that the few that remain are afforded the maximum legal protections.

After all, Gurnee is not the only sponge-worthy town around!

Wolves expand their range

2008-07-02T04:06:37Z

Despite the rather depressing fact that federal protections for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains have been striped away by a misguided (and illegal) federal regulation and that states like Wyoming have responded by dramatically increasing their wolf-killing program, there continues to be signs of hope for one of North America’s most iconic and magnificent predators. Last week, the Seattle Times reported on the growing evidence that one or more packs of gray wolves had successfully established itself in northern Washington’s Methow Valley. And today, the Associated Press reports that what may be another gray wolf was photographed in Northern New Mexico. Richly, the New Mexico wolf was spotted on the Vermejo Park Ranch, which is owned by Ted Turner (it’s hard to imagine a safer place for a wolf).

All of which just goes to show that wolves would do just fine if we would just get out of their way.

Sprawl and highways hurt wildlife – so why aren’t states spending the available money to reduce the conflicts?

2008-07-01T13:33:04Z

While the emphasis of this blog is on community development and smart growth, one of the reasons I promote those solutions so enthusiastically is to reduce development pressure on our working and natural landscapes. Many species of wildlife, in particular, need room to roam in order to survive, and when we invade and divide their habitat we change our ecology and diminish the wonders of nature. Not good.

One of the most menacing man-made problems for wildlife is our road system, which according to the conservation organization Defenders of Wildlife affects animals both directly with vehicle collisions that cause roadkill and indirectly via degradation, fragmentation and loss of habitat.

According to Defenders’ Habitat and Highways program, “Recent estimates indicate between 725,000 and 1,500,000 animals are struck on our roads annually. Wildlife-vehicle collisions can take a toll on species at the population level and, in some cases, push some rare species closer to extinction. Statistics for human victims are grim as well — 200 fatalities, 29,000 injuries and more than $1 billion in property damage every year as a result of wildlife-vehicle collisions.”

Beyond collisions, roads fragment habitat by creating barriers that animals will not or cannot cross and survive. As the Biodiversity Partnership puts it, this “chops the landscape into smaller, disconnected pieces that cannot sustain healthy wildlife populations. Species dependent on habitat interiors or with large habitat area requirements are especially vulnerable to fragmentation . . . Only certain species, such as those that are adapted to habitat edges or dependent upon human activity, are able to persist in these fragmented habitats.” Plant communities are affected, too, because barriers interfere with pollination.

My friend Trisha White directs the Habitat and Highways program, and she and her colleagues have released a new publication highlighting the availability of federal funds to help reduce these negative impacts. It is called The $61 Million Question: How Can Transportation Enhancements Benefit Wildlife? and it is designed to help conservationists, departments of transportation, and resource managers tap the available resources for good pro-wildlife, transportation-related projects, many of which are highlighted in the report as examples.

The title is derived from the amount of money that could be available, on average, to each state if the states allocated one-twelfth of their available “transportation enhancements” funds equally among the twelve eligible categories, including wildlife projects. Sadly, only around $11.5 million, on average, is spent on wildlife from the available funds. Trisha and her colleagues hope to give the program a boost with the report.

(Transportation Enhancements is a federal program that recognizes the negative impacts that transportation infrastructure can have on communities and the landscape, and makes funds available for all sorts of great projects to compensate. Other eligible categories include bicycle and pedestrian facilities, scenic and historic easements, welcome centers and roadside beautification.)

As conservationist David Burwell writes in the report’s preface, “it is up to state wildlife agencies and citizen advocates to sit down with state transportation agencies and map out plans for accomplishing these important ‘wildlife retrofits.’ Many state transportation agencies do not have the in-house expertise needed to strategically program funds to maximize wildlife protection as a co-benefit of transportation planning and system management.”

Some of the best examples in the new report are wildlife crossing facilities that have been built beneath or above freeways and other roads. The crossing beneath Harbor Boulevard in Los Angeles, at left, was built with Enhancements funding and restores connectivity between patches of habitat. The photo comes originally from the Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Preservation Authority (all images in this post are from the new report), which was instrumental in getting the project done.

Other types of projects include acquiring habitat to re-establish habitat connectivity, installing fencing or other structures to guide wildlife towards crossings, identifying collision hotspots through tracking, telemetry, and cameras, evaluating roadside vegetation, removing invasive species and planting native species along right-of-ways and on neighboring properties, and many more listed in the report.

Download it here.

Tainted Wood: Illegal Logging is Pushing Tribes to Extinction

2008-06-27T16:44:30Z

Let me tell you a story about illegal logging pushing tribal families to extinction.

The story begins a few days ago, when a colleague emailed me a YouTube video documenting the discovery of the Tsohon-djapa, a previously uncontacted tribe in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. Standing next to their grass huts, with bodies painted red and black in preparation for war, the Tsohon-djapa are shown shooting arrows up at the airplane, hoping to bring it down. As Jose Carlos Mireles, the one responsible for discovering the tribes, says, “They probably thought our plane was a giant bird.”

The futility of this effort brings home the point. When it comes to the mounting pressures of the industrialized world, these tribes have no defense.

With demand for luxury wood products in the United States on the rise, illegal loggers are pushing further and further into the rainforest in search of mahogany and cedar, and into the areas tribes like the Tsohon-djapa call home. The illegal loggers bring with them violent conflict, introduce deadly disease, and destroy the ecosystems upon which the tribes depend. In contrast, the plane that took these pictures is the least of their worries.

The Tsohon-djapa are but one story. There are many others. By some estimates, there are 100 such tribes left in the world, most of them in the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon. In the remote Peruvian rainforest alone, the last families of the Mascho Piro, Yora, Matsigenka, and Amahuaca are threatened.

When we talk about extinction, it’s often in the context of protecting an endangered species. But this is a story about endangered families. It reminded me – as I hope it does for you – of the need to protect human diversity.

In countries like Peru and Brazil, all of the market incentives reward deforestation. Increased consumer demand from the United Stated – the wood from one large mahogany tree alone is worth more than $100,000 when used in furniture and luxury wood products - has driven illegal loggers further into the rainforests, and the areas these tribes call home.

William Laurance, a tropical biologist with the Smithsonian Institution, was quoted on Dot Earth as saying: “The new roads open up the frontier for waves of unplanned and illegal logging, land colonization, and land speculation that is nearly impossible for the government to control... It’s a formula for environmental and social chaos.”

The problem of tropical deforestation has received increased attention recently. The cutting of forests in tropical countries accounts for about 15-25% of all of the greenhouse gas emissions. There are now discussions of how to use the emerging carbon market to slow deforestation. However, creating such a market for forest carbon is extraordinarily complicated and will take several years at best.

If we are to save these uncontacted peoples, we cannot afford to wait. We have to take steps now to curb illegal logging. The United States, which alone is responsible for more than 80% of the mahogany exports from Peru, can provide real leadership. Click here to help save the Tahuamanú Rainforest, an NRDC Biogem.

First, consumers here can educate themselves so they can make informed decisions about what wood products they purchase. Click here for a consumer wood guide we published.

Second, the United States Government should make sure that all of mahogany and other timber trade is legal and sustainable.

Finally, we need to step up our cooperation with Peru and Brazil and other key tropical countries to improve forest governance and to put an end to illegal logging.

Colbert Weighs In

2008-06-26T18:10:11Z

It is as we all feared. Stephen Colbert threw his considerable legal acumen into the ring last night, weighing in on NRDC v. Winter – our case about naval sonar training off California, which the Supreme Court will hear in the fall. Needless to say, whales seem about ready to join bears on Mr. Colbert’s enemies list.

Colbert cast a cold eye on the deaths attributed to the Navy’s exercises. “So now sound kills whales?” he asked derisively. “What doesn’t kill whales? Harpoons? Pollution? Queequeg?” And he issued a stern warning to the cetacean crowd: “Stop dying or you’ll find yourselves in Gitmo getting airboarded.” Most cutting of all, perhaps, was his coinage of the phrase “blubber huggers,” the utterance of which caused his lower lip to vibrate dramatically.

Colbert also had some choice things to say about the Exxon Valdez case (Exxon v. Baker), speaking as “a friend of the captain, Joe Hazelwood.”

Sonar and the Supremes

2008-06-25T01:00:23Z

One thing you get when your lawsuit is taken up by the Supreme Court, aside from supportive calls from friends, is a lot of interest from the media. That happened yesterday when the Supreme Court agreed to hear NRDC v. Winter – an important case that involves the Navy’s use of mid-frequency active sonar off the California coast.

The press has reported before on the environmental damage caused by naval sonar, but as a Supreme Court matter the issue will probably be new to many readers (and many reporters), and their understanding surely wasn’t helped by the Navy’s latest round of misinformation.

For example, Navy reps reportedly said to the Associated Press that only “five whales have been stranded and 37 whales have died because of sonar since 1996.” These numbers would be true if you (1) arbitrarily threw out most of the strandings that scientists have correlated with sonar use; (2) disregarded the biology showing that sonar injures whales at sea in addition to stranding them; and (3) assumed that all of the deep-water animals killed by sonar eventually beach on shore. (In fact, the government’s own scientists say injuries and deaths would rarely be documented.)

In its environmental assessment, even the Navy admitted that its exercises would cause widespread disruption (it predicted over 170,000 significant “takes” of marine mammals) and injure as much as one-third of an entire whale population.

The role of the courts is not merely to decide abstract legal questions; another of their core functions is to make findings of fact. In this case the lower courts reviewed thousands of pages of documents and set forth those facts – concerning both harm to the marine environment and the Navy’s ability to train – in extraordinary detail. The main Ninth Circuit judgment alone runs 108 pages. There’s a fundamental disconnect between what the judges have found and what the Navy tells reporters.

In the end, the courts required the Navy to reduce harm to marine life while training with sonar. But NRDC v. Winter isn’t a case about national security vs. whales, as many of the press stories had it yesterday. It’s about a federal agency taking an extreme position utterly out of line with the facts – and getting called on it.

Wildlife? We don't need no stinking wildlife!

2008-06-24T18:05:05Z

The Bush Administration always manages to top itself. No matter how inured I think I am to the blatant hostility this Administration has for environmental protections in general—and wildlife conservation in particular—they still sometimes manage to surprise me. Today we have a double-header, courtesy of the Department of the Interior and the Department of Justice.

First, this month the Department of Interior’s Office of the Inspector General released a report “Progress Evaluation of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species Program.” (Hat tip: Daniel Patterson.) Nothing wrong with that—God knows it’s a program badly in need of evaluation. But the report, posted on Interior’s website, is so heavily redacted as to be practically unintelligible. Public Employees for Environmental Protection (PEER) makes two very good points about these redactions. First, seemingly far more sensitive reports (such as, I kid you not, an evaluation of security measures at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.) appear on the Department of Interior’s web site without any redactions. Moreover, the report on endangered species itself seems entirely unremarkable. As PEER’s Executive Director quipped: “Perhaps this report was blacked out because it is so inane.” Heh.

Second, today the Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility at the U.S. Department of Justice released a report on allegations that hiring attorneys in the Department’s highly prestigious honors program (a two-year program designed for recent law school graduates) was tainted by political considerations. Not surprisingly, it turns out that candidates with liberal or Democratic affiliations on their resumes were rejected at far higher rates than similarly qualified candidates with conservative or “neutral” credentials. But this passage (hat tip: TPM Muckraker) is particularly remarkable:

...in one e-mail exchange Hruska, [then Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General] forwarded an application from a candidate from Montana to William Mercer, then U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana. Hruska asked Mercer if this was "someone we want at DOJ?"
Mercer responded by e-mail that he was inquiring with a reference the candidate listed whom Mercer knew to find out "the scoop on intellect, personality, etc." Mercer added:
My initial reaction is that the guy is probably quite liberal. He is clerking for a very activist, ATLA-oriented justice. His law review article appears to favor reintroduction of wolves on federal lands, a very controversial issue here which pits environmentalists against lots of other interests, including virtually all conservative and moderate thinkers. I know of better candidates through our internship and clerkship programs who have applied to the honors program.

The strangest thing about this exchange is the assertion that “virtually all conservative and moderate thinkers” oppose the reintroduction of wolves on federal lands. No, they don’t. In 2008, for example, polling conducted by Defenders of Wildlife showed that 71% and 69% of the public in Arizona and New Mexico, respectively, supported wolf reintroduction in their states.

Supporting wildlife conservation isn’t a liberal issue, it’s as mainstream as mainstream can get. Too bad the folks at the Bush Administration can’t see that.

Solar wins in NY, sparks controversy in CA

2008-06-20T02:11:07Z

Big news today in NY with the passage of legislation that significantly expands the opportunities for distributed renewable energy. Specifically, the package of bills, which Governor Patterson has already pledged to sign, expand net metering up to 2 MW for all customer classes for solar and wind and expand net metering for farm waste digesters up to 500 kW. NRDC's excellent Albany advocate, Rich Schrader, sent me the following insider's overview of how we got here:

Net metering broke through the Albany slumber this session largely for three reasons: both legislative houses had new chairs of their respective Energy committees and each brought a fresh, collaborative approach to the issue; several alternative technology business groups, including ACENY and Sun Edison, worked closely with NRDC and enviros to execute a disciplined legislative strategy; and the tumultuous oil price spikes refashioned the electric market in a matter of weeks, making solar and wind competitive products.

Sen. George Maziarz succeeded Jim Wright as Energy chair early in the session. At around the same time, Assemblymember Kevin Cahill was appointed Energy after his predecessor, Paul Tonko, left the Assembly to head NYSERDA. Both chairs wanted to pass a bill, but the rhythm of the session early on was more a cautious minuet than a tango, until energy prices drowned pretty much every else thing out.

Sen. Owen Johnson, an influential Long Island Republican, passed his bill first, which allowed solar and methane technologies to net meter. Assemblyman Steve Englebright passed a four-technology bill in his house, which included solar, wind, methane and fuel cells. Our main political goal was to get as many technologies as possible in the bill without coming out of the session empty-handed. We organized a clutch of lobby days, some with enviros-only, some with solar companies, some with wind firms. More quietly, we met over a period of weeks through the spring, with a number of Western New York senators in a delegation that included NRDC and wind and solar business leaders. Between the steady political advocacy and the volatile market, senator after senator dropped their opposition. Finally, both chairs agreed to move several bills here at session's end, which will include solar, methane and wind.

It's nice to win some times!

In only somewhat related news on the other coast, this article ran a few days ago highlighting the controversy surrounding the siting of transmission to get renewable electricity from a proposed large-scale concentrating solar power facility in Mojave Desert to San Diego. The solar power plant would anchor a number of renewable energy projects, but as noted in the article:

[San Diego Gas and Electric's] $1.5-billion power line would cut 23 miles through the middle of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, a spot known for its hiking trails, wildflowers, palm groves, cacti and spectacular mountain views.

Not surprisingly, the transmission proposal has run into stiff opposition. Some other environmental groups argue that SDG&E should avoid the transmission all together through rooftop PV. As NRDC's advocacy for net metering makes clear, we certainly agree that we need more of that, but ultimately that won't be enough. We don't know yet if the solar plant is the best option, but we have said that if it is, the transmission line should follow a different that we believe will significantly reduce the impacts. Here is the letter we filed opposing the proposed line and advancing the alternative.

SDG&E's VP for renewables is right when he's quoted:

"It's a trade-off," said Stuart Hemphill, Edison's vice president for renewable and alternative power. "Clean energy perhaps requires building infrastructure in potentially sensitive areas. There's no way around it."

But that doesn't mean that we can afford to give up trying to minimize those tradeoffs and the impacts of that infrastructure. That's why NRDC is part of the California Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative, which has as part of its mission statement the goal of planning for renewable energy transmission needs so that they can happen where they are needed and are developed in an appropriate and environmentally responsible way. We need to expand this type of planning nationally. It will reduce the unnecessary impacts from renewable energy infrastructure and, almost as important, it will reduce the controversy around this infrastructure and thus speed its development.

Moral Consideration for Plants?

2008-06-18T19:13:39Z

Do we have any ethical obligations towards plants? Recently, a Swiss government panel addressed this very question--and concluded that we do.

Conservative publications, like the Weekly Standard, were predictably derisive about the whole notion. But I’m not so sure. We already--and rightly--recognize that plant species should be protected under laws like the Endangered Species Act. And last week the New York Times reported on the growing scientific evidence that plants perceptual and behavior abilities are far more complex than previously known. One scientist quoted in the article said that plants “have a secret social life.” There’s even an--albeit controvercial--Society of Plant Neorobiology composed of scientists who study plant behavior.

My intuition is that, as living things (and ones that are probably far more sentient than we realize) plants are due at least minimal moral consideration. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have the least problem with our use of plants--hell, I’m not even a vegetarian--but the Swiss panel’s basic conclusion that that we ought not to harm plants “arbitrarily” (according to the report, “[t]his kind of treatment would include, e.g. decapitation of wild flowers at the roadside without rational reason”) seems about right to me.

What do you think?

How Is the Cheney Energy Plan Working for You?

2008-06-17T21:35:25Z

We knew this day would come. We knew oil prices would break through the $100 ceiling. We knew gas prices would soar past $4 a gallon. We knew China and India would demand bigger pieces of the petroleum pie. The White House and Detroit automakers say they are shocked, shocked, by the death of cheap gasoline, but plenty of Cassandras--including policy makers, executives, and politicians--have been foretelling this event for years. So if we knew it was coming, why haven’t our leaders developed a plan to cope with it?

Where is America’s plan for creating a cleaner, most secure energy future?

It is missing in action, because we got the Dick Cheney Energy Plan instead. That’s the one that looked for answers in the past--burn more coal, drill more oil--rather than 21st century solutions like biofuels, more efficient cars, and renewable energy sources.

Many forces conspire to raise the price of oil. But when you are experiencing sticker shock at the gas pump or when you are hearing politicians say they just don’t know how we got into this fix, remember the single most important policy that helped land us here: The Cheney Energy Plan.

Let’s take a look at the hallmarks of the plan and see how they are serving America today.

1. Let the Wolves Guard the Hen House

Cheney’s Energy Task Force was conducted largely in secret. NRDC and our partners had to sue the government to gain access to the records of what should be public business. Once we reviewed the files, it became clear that entire sections of the energy plan were written by industry insiders--the very people and companies the government is charged with regulating.

What difference did it make? Oil companies registered record profits throughout this administration, and Americans are picking up the tab at the gas pump.

2. Drill, Drill, and Drill Again.

Cheney’s plan gave away millions of acres of pristine public lands so oil and gas companies could expand their drill pads and deepen their pockets.

Where does that leave us? Considering the United States is home to only 3 percent of world’s oil supply, the new wells did little to change the dynamics of the global market. And still, Americans who live near some of those once-beautiful wildlands are spending up to 16 percent of their income on gasoline.

3. Don’t Give an Inch on Global Warming

Back on the 2000 campaign trail, Bush claimed he would take action to curb global warming. Then Cheney gathered his task force, and everything changed. NRDC’s lawsuit to gain access to Cheney’s records found documents that show how the coal industry and an industry-funded think tank helped convince President Bush to renege on his campaign promise.

The result? America holds the ignoble distinction of being the single remaining hold out on climate progress in the world. America is also years behind in promoting the renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions that will get us out of this mess. And thanks to our delay, it will cost companies, consumers, and the government more money to finally address the issue than it would if we had stuck with Bush’s campaign promise.

You can judge for yourselves how well you think the Cheney Energy Plan is working for you and your fellow Americans. From my point of view, I think it is doing an excellent job of helping oil companies, but it has left the rest of the nation eight years behind in solving what we already knew would be a challenge: creating a clean energy future.