• Forest Advocates Warn Bush Policies Gutting Public Woodlands
  
• California Finalizes Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Plan
  
• New Jersey Drinking Water Source Protected in New Law
  
• More Crew Member Whistleblowers Win $1 Million
  
• Developers Fined for Massachusetts Construction Run-off
  
• Raccoons With Rabies Breaking Vaccination Barrier
  
• Soil Chemistry Key to Keeping Forest Diversity
  
• Earthquakes 20 Miles Deep Lift Mountain a Few Millimeters
  

Forest Advocates Warn Bush Policies Gutting Public Woodlands

Logging and energy development trumps all other uses of public lands, including recreation and community protection programs, the groups said.

The report examines 18 timber sales and one gas development project that are moving forward in 13 states. Among the list of projects are several that would cause irreparable harm to old-growth forests.

"We could be creating jobs, instead of controversy," said Diane Linn, Oregon’s Multnomah County Commissioner. "Instead of protecting the clean drinking water supplies that Oregonians depend on and that is attracting high-tech industries to the region, the Bush administration is offering controversial timber sales in old growth forests that will pollute the waters."

"On July 12, the administration announced a complete elimination of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule," said Randi Spivak, executive director of American Lands Alliance. The rule was issued in the last days of the Clinton administration after years of debate and public hearings.

"Millions of Americans commented in support of the Rule because protecting the last remaining roadless areas of our National Forests is vitally important," said Spivak. Without these places, the heritage we leave our children will be severely diminished, our clean drinking water supplies damaged, and our recreational opportunities minimized."

"The administration is already moving ahead with its plans for 50 timber sales in roadless areas on Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, which it exempted from roadless protections last December," said David Katz of The Wilderness Society.

"This administration doesn’t seem to consider what Tribes or local citizens want for management of the forests in their community," said Anthony Johnson, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe. "The Tribe has been working to repair watersheds impacted by years of logging and road building."

The Nez Perce believe the administration’s plans for logging and road building in the South Fork of the Clearwater River are contrary to the Tribe’s efforts to restore a healthy forests and restore salmon habitat.

"These lands are too important in terms of clean water, recreation and wildlife habitat to squander," said Ernest Becenti, Jr., McKinley County Commissioner from New Mexico. "The Carson National Forest, in my state, is where local citizens look to relax or to go hunting and fishing and is the home of religious sites for the Taos Pueblo. It would be extremely sad if this area were to become an industrial zone."

The groups agree that the administration has "grossly misrepresented" the law known as the Healthy Forests Initiative. The law provides for logging for fuels reduction on public lands to reduce the risk of wildfire.

"Healthy Forests is an ironic name for the Bush forest policies," said John Bianchi, Audubon’s communications director. "They are not only bad for forests; they are bad for the birds and wildlife that live in forests. And that means they are bad for the economy."

"By reducing and mismanaging forest habitat, the administration is putting not only our birds at risk, but also - as a direct result - a significant part of the $38 billion spent annually on bird and wildlife watching throughout the U.S."

"The Bush administration’s forest policies have been skewed in favor of the timber industry at the expense of all Americans. There is a better way," said Cosgrove. "The Bush administration should focus on community protection and honest fuel reduction efforts, redirect logging subsidies to create restoration and fire protection jobs and halt new energy development in environmentally sensitive areas."

California Finalizes Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Plan

ARB staff released the report in preparation for a public hearing set for September 23 in Los Angeles. The report contains a series of technology packages that, when used together, can result in reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and more efficient vehicle operation.

ARB staff expects the technology packages to result in emission reductions of about 25 percent for cars and light trucks and about 18 percent for larger trucks and SUVs during the initial phase of the regulation set for 2009 through 2012.

During the mid-term phase the packages are expected to result in emission cuts of up to 34 percent for cars and light trucks and 25 percent for larger vehicles when the rule is fully implemented after 2016.

The new regulation will add about $292 to the costs of cars and small trucks and about $308 to the cost of large pickups and SUVs during the regulation's initial phase - 2009 to 2012.

The regulation is expected to add an average of $626 for cars and $955 for large pickups and SUVs during its mid-term phase - 2013 to 2016. Buyers of new cars after 2009 will regain those added costs through lower operating costs over the vehicle's lifetime.

The final report contains changes from the initial draft proposal released on June 14. Of these changes, the most notable include a slight increase in stringency for passenger cars and smaller trucks and a slight decrease in stringency for heavier pickups and large SUVs. Overall, the change will result in a slightly higher amount of pollution controlled than was forecast in the June 14 draft proposal.

The second major change extends the regulation's two phase-in periods from three years each to four years each starting in 2009. This change was made to better fit the planning and development time needed by automakers.

The third major change from the June 14 draft isan increase in the expected cost of mid-term implementation phase to automakersof about $100 per vehicle compared to the earlier estimate. This change is a reflection of updates to the staff cost estimates and other adjustments made to the proposed regulation.

The ARB proposal is a result of a 2002 law that requires the Board to adopt regulations to achieve the maximum feasible and cost-effective reduction of motor vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases.

The law also requires the ARB to adopt a regulation by 2005 and allows the Legislature one year to review the regulation before implementation in 2009.

New Jersey Drinking Water Source Protected in New Law

Information about the Highlands Act and answers to frequently asked questions are available at: http://highpoint.state.nj.us/dep/highlands, a new website unveiled by the Department of Environmental Protection today.

More Crew Member Whistleblowers Win $1 Million

Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett ordered Iowa-based shipping company Sabine Transportation Company to pay a $2 million fine and serve three years probation for illegally dumping thousands of gallons of waste oil, hundreds of tons of diesel contaminated grain, and plastic wastes at sea.

Judge Bennett awarded a total of $1 million of the fine to the three former Sabine crew members who reported the crimes to the government. The reward is the second award of $1 million dollars or more issued to crew member whistleblowers within the past week.

The bounties were granted under a provision in the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships that allows a court to award up to half of a criminal fine to those providing information leading to conviction,

Sabine admitted it deliberately dumped waste oil, sludge, and oily mixtures from the S/S Trinity, the S/S Juneau, the S/S Sea Princess, and the S/S Colorado without the use of required pollution prevention equipment.

The deliberate discharges were then concealed in false Oil Record Books, required logs in which all overboard discharges must be accurately recorded and which are regularly inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard. Sabine also admitted that, on a significant number of other occasions, the company falsified Oil Record Books and deliberately dumped oily wastes from other vessels in its fleet.

On Friday, a Connecticut shipping company, OMI Corporation, was sentenced to pay $4.2 million for illegally concealing the dumping of thousands of gallons of waste oil and sludge at sea. The company pled guilty of the dumping off Jacksonville, Florida in June 1998.

The former crew member who reported the crimes to the government received a bounty of $2.1 million, the largest ever awarded, for blowing the whistle.

U.S. District Judge Katharine Hayden ordered OMI Corporation to pay a $4.2 million fine and serve three years of probation. The reward was issued under a bounty provision in the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships.

In both cases, pollution prevention equipment known as an oil water separator was ignored and the deliberate waste discharges were concealed in a false Oil Record Book, a required log in which all overboard discharges must be accurately recorded and which is regularly inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Last year, Sabine also pled guilty in the Eastern District of Louisiana to a violation of the Clean Water Act based on the dumping of hundreds of tons of rust scale, tank cleaning wastes, and other oily wastes into the Mississippi River during a tank cleaning operation.

"This case should send a message that polluting our environment and lying to the government will not be tolerated," said Tom Sansonetti, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.

Developers Fined for Massachusetts Construction Run-off

According to the settlement signed last week, the three companies – Methuen Group Realty Trust and Ashwood Development Companies of Hudson and Park Construction Corporation of Fitzwilliam – discharged stormwater from the construction site of Birch Hill Estates, a 48 home subdivision in Methuen, without first obtaining a permit.

The homes at Birch Hill Estates range from 2,500 to 3,000 square feet and sit on half-acre lots. Stormwater runoff from the development, which was built on the side of a steep hill, was likely to be a problem without proper controls during construction. Construction at the 75-acre subdivision began in 1998 and is almost finished.

The case stems from several inspections of the site by EPA over the last two years. The Methuen Conservation Commission issued an enforcement order to the site in 2001 for failing to maintain erosion controls necessary to protect wetlands.

EPA claims the companies failed to maintain a detention basin, which resulted in turbid water discharging to wetlands and into a brook that leads to the Merrimack River.

The Merrimack provides drinking water to many communities, and is an environmental, recreational and ecological resource.

Rainwater running off construction sites can carry nutrients, sediments and oils into nearby streams, ponds and rivers. If not properly managed, erosion froma one acre construction site could discharge as much as 20 to 150 tons of sediment in a year.

Sediments reduce the storage capacity of drains and waterways, causing flooding, and hurt water quality and fish habitat. Sediments and chemicals can also contribute to fish die-offs, toxic algae blooms, contaminated shellfish beds and closed swimming beaches.

EPA regulations require a permit for construction sites that disturb more than one acre of land. The stormwater permit aims to protect waters from harmful pollutants that typically run off such sites and discharge into nearby waters.

The permit requires operators of a construction site to develop a detailed management plan for mitigating the effects of stormwater runoff. Contractors, developers and others responsible for day-to-day operations at a construction site must certify that they will properly implement these Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plans.

The permit also requires on-site workers to inspect stormwater controls and to use management techniques that minimize the impact of their activities on nearby waters.

The EPA has developed written materials, websites and workshops to help those involved in construction projects understand how to comply with stormwater laws. EPA New England’s stormwater website contains many of these resources at: www.epa.gov/region01/topics/water/stormwater.html.

Raccoons With Rabies Breaking Vaccination Barrier

This boundary was created to stop the westward spread of raccoon rabies by orally vaccinating raccoons against the fatal disease.

For the second consecutive year Maryland will join the multi-state campaign to stop the westward spread of raccoon rabies by orally vaccinating raccoons. Rabies was first seen in Maryland in 1981, and has spread throughout most of the state since then.

More than 16,000 fishmeal baits containing the rabies vaccine will be distributed across a 104 square mile area in the westernmost part of Garrett County, Maryland. Most of the ice cube-size baits will be distributed by low-flying aircraft. If necessary, additional baits may be distributed by hand.

People and pets cannot get rabies from coming into contact with the baits. Residents are encouraged to leave the baits undisturbed should they encounter them.

Most sightings of rabid raccoons occur during the spring and summer when people are more likely to come into contact with wildlife. Raccoon rabies is caused by a virus that attacks the central nervous system. Symptoms include unusual, aggressive or calm and friendly behavior, an inability to eat or drink, balance problems, circling, seizures, coma and finally death.

The oral vaccination program is coordinated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's wildlife services program. I

In cooperation with the Ohio Department of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other state, county and municipal agencies, the federal agency distributed more than 165,000 oral rabies vaccine baits on August 5 across a three county area in northeastern Ohio - Cahoga, Geauga and Lake counties.

Officials are concerned that the barrier has been breached. On July 16, the Ohio Department of Health and Lake County General Health District in Ohio reported that a rabid raccoon was discovered in Leroy Township - in an area west of the established ORV barrier.

On July 23, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the animal had the raccoon variant of the disease, prompting wildlife services and Ohio state agencies to plan the vaccine bait distribution.

Most of the rabies vaccine baits were distributed by low–flying planes in forested and rural areas, with dispersal by hand in Ohio's populated areas. The Cuyahoga, Geauga and Lake counties in northeast Ohio involved in this vaccination effort.

APHIS works with 15 states to distribute oral rabies vaccine baits. They include - Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.

For more information concerning the raccoon oral rabies vaccine program, contact USDA's wildlife services toll-free at 1-866-487-3297

Soil Chemistry Key to Keeping Forest Diversity

The study, appearing in the latest issue of the journal "Ecology," looked at four mahogany species in Dznagha-Sangha Dense Forest Reserve, a 1,700 square mile region in Central African Republic.

The authors found that that three of the four species required specialized soils with a particular combination of plant nutrients. They grew only where the soils contained those nutrients.

The study found that that the importance of soil chemistry and its effects on biological with regards to plant diversity has been largely ignored.

Previous analyses of soils to determine the distribution of the mahoganies and other tropical tree species have looked at things like topography to identify soil conditions, completely missing the importance and complexity of soil chemistry.

"In practical terms, regenerating these high value species, could be the difference between justifying reuse of a given forest for timber production, or converting it for other uses, such as agriculture," said the study's lead author, Dr. Jefferson Hall.

Hall believes the implications of this study on green certified timber, which requires regeneration of harvested tree species, are "huge."

Hall said that the tradition throughout West and Central Africa has been one of mahogany "mining," and that their failure to regenerate has caused loggers to move on to other species, which in turn has led to deforestation. The early stages of this vicious cycle are evident even in the most remote forests of Africa.

Knowing and taking into account the regeneration requirements of these species when writing management plans will improve the prospects for long-term management, Hall pointed out.

"Understanding how a tropical forest maintains its diversity is extremely important for conservation biologists," said Hall. "One cannot hope to manage and protect a species within forests if one does not understand the processes that control their distribution."

Earthquakes 20 Miles Deep Lift Mountain a Few Millimeters

Some 1,600 small earthquakes 20 miles beneath Lake Tahoe, the world's second-largest alpine lake, from August 12, 2003 through February 19, 2004 and then stopped, eyewitnesses report.

Based on observations from the university's Nevada Seismic Network and an ultra-sensitive Global Positioning System (GPS) station at Slide Mountain, the researchers believe the quake cluster coincided with an unprecedented eight millimeter uplifting of the Slide Mountain ski resort mountain in the Sierra Nevada.

"We've been watching earthquakes for 30 years in the Tahoe area and have never witnessed an earthquake swarm anything like this," said Ken Smith, research seismologist at the university's Nevada Seismological Laboratory and principal author of an article to be published in August in the journal, "Science," and on its website

"We haven't seen any more deep earthquakes or notable movement at the Slide Mountain GPS station since," Smith said.

Geoff Blewitt, a research geophysicist with the university's Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology and co-author of the "Science" article, said the uplift at Slide Mountain "can be explained by the movement of magma about 20 miles deep, which forced several miles of rock apart by about one meter."

He added that he and his colleagues believe the rapid growth of this fissure caused the series of earthquakes - no greater than magnitude 2.2 - that caused the mountain to rise.

The eastern side of the Sierra Nevada is the West's third most seismically active area behind only Alaska and the San Andreas fault system in California. Scientists note that over the past several million years, Lake Tahoe itself has been created by repeated earthquakes on the West Tahoe Fault, which runs along the lake's bottom and western side.

The eastern front of the Sierra Nevada represents one of the fundamental tectonic boundaries in the United States. The mountain range moves at a rate of about 12 to14 millimeters per year to the northwest. Researchers believe the deep event observed at Lake Tahoe is part of the process of the evolution and westward growth of the Basin and Range Province.

The university is a member of the National Science Foundation's Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, an exclusive group of only 15 universities involved in carrying out research and obtaining information vital for reducing the nation's vulnerability to catastrophic earthquakes.