• U.S. and Mexico Finalize Border Protection Plan
  
• U.S. Not Liable for Colorado River Delta Damage
  
• Northeast Senators Roll Out Clean Air Legislation
  
• Draft EPA Reports Finds Risks From Teflon Ingredient
  
• A Natural Approach To Clean Up Freeway Runoff
  
• Steller Sea Lion Earns Better Protection
  
• Fish and Wildlife Releases Plan to Save Sea Otters
  
• The American Coot Can Count
  

U.S. and Mexico Finalize Border Protection Plan

The 10 year plan will focus on decreasing air, water, waste and soil pollution and lowering risks of exposure to harmful chemicals for the 12 million citizens who live within the 2,000 mile border region.

Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Mexico's Secretaria del Medio Ambiente Y Recursos Naturals (SEMARNAT)signed the agreement, called Border 2012, at a ceremony today in Tijuana, Mexico.

The plan is the product of two years of work by the agencies.

The priorities and actions the governments will take will be based on input from local communities and organizations, according to EPA Deputy Administrator Linda Fisher.

"We are convinced that this approach will keep us focused and greatly enhance our chances of success," Fisher said in a prepared statement.

The program has made both nations more aware of what they have in common, said SEMARNAT Undersecretary Raul Arriaga.

"The environment does not know boundaries," Arriaga said. "On the contrary, the geography and resources that we share are the element that validates our friendship and binds our destinies."

The Mexican states involved Baja California Norte, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas.

California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas are the U.S. borders states under the framework of the plan.

The officials said the plan lays out a new organizational structure focusing on regional workgroups to facilitate regional-level and local-level planning and priority setting, and, a focus on goals and objectives bases on measurable environmental and public health outcomes.

It establishes five environmental goals for the border region, which aim to reduce water contamination, air pollution, pesticide exposure, accidental chemical releases and deliberate acts of terrorism.

Implementation reports are to be compiled every two years. The announcement did not specify funding levels or enforcement measures for the plan.

U.S. Not Liable for Colorado River Delta Damage

The ruling denied the legal challenge brought by eight U.S. and Mexican environmental groups who believe the U.S. government is ignoring the ecological damage its Colorado River management efforts are causing to the delta.

The environmentalists contend that U.S. river diversions are starving the delta of water needed to maintain its species and ecosystems.

Although the judge found that the management of the Colorado River by the United States has damaged Mexico's natural resources, the ruling determined that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is not responsible for mitigation of these impacts.

"This decision tramples on the commonsense notion that the United States should be a good neighbor," said David Hogan, rivers program coordinator for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs in the suit.

"Apparently it is not enough for the U.S. Government to ignore our own environment - we are wrecking Mexico's as well," Hogan said. "It is snubs like this that lead to international political hostility toward our country."

The environmental groups said they intend to appeal the decision and will work to amend the Colorado River binational water treaty to protect the entire river, not just the U.S. portion.

According to the environmental groups, the Bureau of Reclamation consulted in 1997 with the Fish and Wildlife Service on the effects of Colorado River dams and water diversions in the United States. The agencies determined that the management of the river jeopardizes several endangered species, including the bonytail chub, razorback sucker and southwestern willow flycatcher.

Fish and Wildlife assigned conservation measures for species on the U.S. side of the border, but cited a lack of authority for similar protection of U.S.-listed species found south of the border.

Northeast Senators Roll Out Clean Air Legislation

The legislation stands as an alternative to the Bush administration's Clear Skies initiative, which many contend eases emissions restrictions for SO2, NOx and mercury. The President's plan does not address CO2 emissions.

The sponsors of "The Clean Air Planning Act of 2003" contend Northeastern states suffer the brunt of pollutant emissions from other areas of the country and believe this bill would cut emissions more quickly and effectively than the President's plan.

The bill would employ a net cap on emissions of SO2, NOx and C02. It would reduce SO2 by 80 percent, NOx by 69 percent and mercury by 80 percent, according to its sponsors.

"These reductions are aggressive but realistic and allow power plants to continue their operations within the scope of the new law without causing them fatal economic hardship," said Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican and cosponsor of the bill.

Senators Lincoln Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican, and Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, are the bill's other cosponsors.

The mandated cuts for CO2 emissions is in stark contrast to the approach by the Bush administration, which believes voluntary industry efforts are more cost effective, according to the bill's sponsors.

Although the bill is not perfect, "it is a major step forward," said Environmental Defense senior attorney Joseph Goffman.

"By including a net cap on emissions of SO2, NOx and CO2 - and embracing emissions trading - this bill has the potential to create a market for pollution clean up that will produce superior environmental results and real cost savings," said Goffman.

"This bill stands in contrast to Clear Skies, which while it has emissions trading in it, does not use that tool to achieve superior environmental results."

Draft EPA Reports Finds Risks From Teflon Ingredient

A collection of animal reproduction studies and comparisons of blood levels in the affected animals with blood levels in people indicated that children with the highest measured blood levels of the chemical have less than one tenth the margin of safety the EPA considers acceptable.

The EPA's draft risk assessment of ammonium perfluorooctane (PFOA) was analyzed by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit environmental research group.

"Both EPA's and EWG's analyses conclude that current PFOA exposures in children are well above safe levels," according to EWG's analysis.

EWG says the concern over the hazards of PFOA are heightened by "the widespread exposure and near-universal contamination of the human population" with the chemical at levels similar to those that indicated toxicity in laboratory animals.

PFOA is present in the blood of more than 90 percent of the population of the United States, and levels in some people in the general population are as high as levels found in some PFOA factory workers, EWG reports.

Studies show the chemical accumulates because it is extremely slow to break down. It is not know how people are directly exposed to it or how exposure would accumulate.

The EPA risk assessment was prompted last September by the agency's growing concern with the entire family of perfluorinated chemicals, in particular perfluorooctane sulfonates (PFOS), which was the active ingredient in Scotchguard. In 2000 the manufacturer of Scotchguard reformulated the fabric softener, removing PFOS from the product.

PFOS and PFOA share many similar chemical and toxic property, and neither compound breaks down in the environment.

PFOA is manufactured by Dupont and used to make Teflon, which is widely used in cookware. The company refers to the chemical as C-8 and is contesting a class action suit that claims C-8 is harmful to the environment and human health.

"This brewing crisis represents a stunning breakdown of the regulatory system for toxic chemicals," according to EWG's report.

The organization blames a legacy of lax regulation of the chemical industry for a lack of data about the health risks of such widely used chemicals.

The EPA has not said when its draft report will be released.

A Natural Approach To Clean Up Freeway Runoff

When the rain begins to fall, the freeways get slippery because the water lifts the oil and grease that has collected on the pavement. The initial cloudburst also breaks loose tons of pollutants, sending them down the storm drains and into the ocean, explained Michael Stenstrom, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Conventional storm drains were designed to prevent flooding, Stenstrom said, and provide "the biggest, slickest pipe to the ocean."

"If you want to prevent floods, that is the way to do it. Get the water down to the ocean," he said. "But when you push it down to the ocean that quickly, you transport all the contaminants along with it."

Bioinfiltration basins, consisting of a grate covered trench filled with gravel and topsoil, offer a natural way to treat the runoff before it gets into the stormwater drains, Stenstrom explained.

Gravel is about 50 percent porous, so each cubic yard of gravel can hold a cubic yard of water. The trenches would run alongside the freeways.

"When it starts to rain, the first really dirty water flows into the bioinfiltration basin, goes down into that gravel and topsoil and it stays there," Stenstrom said. "The rest flows off because the gravel is full."

This approach would be more cost effective than trying to treat all the storm water, the UCLA professor contends, and does not just trap pollutants, but detoxifies them as well.

If allowed to filter into the soil, the top layer of soil will remove both heavy metals and the polynuclear aeromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that are created by partially burned fuels, Stenstrom said.

"You can trap them there for many, many years and the PAHs will biodegrade over time," Stenstrom said. "There are organisms that will detoxify PAHs if you just keep them in the soil."

Similar bioinfiltration basins are being used in other parts of the world including the East Coast of the United States and many Asian cities.

Steller Sea Lion Earns Better Protection

The Steller sea lion, the largest member of the eared seal family, was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 1990. Male Steller sea lions can reach 11 feet in length and weigh as much as 2,400 pounds.

The lawsuit was filed by Greenpeace, American Oceans Campaign and the Sierra Club in 1998. The organizations said the biological opinion governing the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) management plan for the North Pacific fisheries did not consider the effects on endangered Steller sea lions and their habitat.

The ruling issued by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ultimately confirmed this view and this week the final paperwork in the case was completed.

"With the two decisions from the court this winter, all the issues the conservation groups raised back in 1998 have been resolved, and we have largely prevailed," said Janis Searles, an attorney with Earthjustice, which handled the case for the plaintiffs.

"The court ruled in our favor in virtually all the issues we've litigated over the past several years, and has directed the government to protect sea lions and their habitat and fully assess the impacts of the fisheries on the entire North Pacific ecosystem," Searles said.

The court set a schedule for the completion of a new environmental impact statement that examines the impact of the fisheries as a whole on the entire North Pacific ecosystem and considers any necessary changes in those fisheries.

The 90 percent decline in Steller sea lions in western Alaska over the past few decades coincided with the rise in industrial fishing in the sea lions' home waters.

NMFS has acknowledged that the massive federally managed fisheries that target sea lion prey in important sea lion habitat had to be modified to protect sea lions.

"The North Pacific is one of the most magnificent marine systems in the world and the federal government was not doing its job protecting sea lions, whales, sea birds and all the other rich wildlife there," said Searles.

"It is now up to the government to follow the law as the court told it to and protect these national treasures. We will be watching them closely."

Fish and Wildlife Releases Plan to Save Sea Otters

The plan, which comes after a 14 year delay, is a blueprint for otter recovery along California's central coast. It recommends that the species be considered for removal from the ESA listing when the population exceeds 3,090 individuals each year for a three year period. Currently, the population stands at some 2,000 animals.

The historic range of the southern sea otter extended from Oregon south to Baja California, Mexico. During the 18th and 19th centuries otters were hunted for their thick fur pelts and by the early 1900s the species was believed to be extinct. Today the species ranges from Half Moon Bay to Point Conception off the coast of central and southern California.

The government's new plan calls for additional research to identify what could be limiting population growth and efforts to reduce or eliminate threats to sea otters from human activities.

The plan also identifies a pending decision on the fate of an experimental sea otter translocation program at San Nicholas Island as critical.

The purpose of the 1987 translocation program was to help southern sea otters recover by establishing an experimental colony of otters at San Nicolas Island and to remove otters that strayed into a "management zone" in ocean waters south of Point Conception in Santa Barbara County.

FWS has concluded that the experimental "no otter zone" is not allowing the sea otter to recover, a decision that has been hailed by The Otter Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to recovery of the southern sea otter.

"It is crazy to think animals can recognize a line across the water and stay out of an area where a few commercial users have interests," said Steve Shimek, executive director of The Otter Project. "We need to let otters roam naturally, and to leave the San Nicolas otters in peace."

The overall plan "is a critical step at a critical time," said Shimek who explained that sea otters are considered a "sentinel species" indicative of coastal health.

"The quality of life of the sea otters is directly related to the quality of life in the ocean. As the sea otter goes, so goes the ocean."

Southern sea otter counts peaked in 1995, according to the organization, and have declined six of the past seven years. Sea otters are threatened by oil spills, pollution, incidental taking by fishers and habitat destruction.

Shimek pointed out that this plan identifies toxic chemical, in addition to oil spills, as pollution threats to otter recovery. The original 1982 plan did not include chemical pollution.

The southern sea otter is the smallest of marine mammals. It usually lives for 15 years and feeds primarily on a variety of large invertebrates, including sea urchins, abalone, rock crabs, kelp crabs, and clams.

The American Coot Can Count

This talent is part of a range of defense mechanisms female coots used to thwart other coots who lay their eggs in rival nests, explained study author Bruce Lyon.

The American coot is a slate gray bird with a white beak, about the size of a small duck. "Coot" means a stupid person or simpleton, a name that seemed appropriate for an ungainly bird that is awkward on land, reluctant to fly and not all that graceful in the water.

The discovery shocked Lyon, who published his findings in the April 3 issue of the journal "Nature."

"At first, I didn't believe the results," said the assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "The ability of females to count only their own eggs in a mixture of eggs is a remarkable feat that provides a convincing, rare example of counting in a wild animal."

Lyon studied hundreds of coot nests in British Columbia during a four-year investigation that was originally designed to study how coot parents care for their chicks.

This changed when the professor discovered high levels of "brood parasitism," which is the practice of laying eggs in other birds' nests.

Of the coots in the study, brood parasitism affected 41 percent of the nests and accounted for 13 percent of all eggs laid by the study population. The phenomenon has a serious impact on the coot population, Lyon explained.

"Typically about half the chicks in a nest starve to death," Lyon said. "That explains both the cost of parasitism to the host and the benefit to the parasite."

But female coots, Lyon says, are quite good at recognizing and rejecting parasitic eggs. Rejected eggs were buried deep in the nesting material and never hatched or banished to inferior incubation positions.

Lyon examined whether the presence of parasitic eggs affected clutch size because coots lay eggs until an internal cue tell them to stop. Scientists had thought this cue was triggered by a sense of touch, prompted when the female was sitting on the right number of eggs.

"Rejection takes a long time, so the clutch-size decision is made while the parasitic eggs are still in the nest," Lyon said. "That means they are not using a touch cue. These birds are looking at their nests and counting only those eggs they recognize as their own to make a clutch-size decision."