• Integrity of Gas Pipelines in Populated Areas Regulated
  
• Congress Takes Holiday Leave with Salmon Recovery Unfunded
  
• Farm Sanctuary's Downed Animal Lawsuit Reinstated
  
• Nature Conservancy Buys Land in Brazil's Atlantic Forest
  
• New York State Protects Lake George Water Quality
  
• Global Warming Means Big Changes for California Coastal Waters
  
• Methane Gas That Warmed Ancient Climate Could Recur
  

Integrity of Gas Pipelines in Populated Areas Regulated

The U.S. natural gas pipeline grid consists of more than 210,000 miles of mainline transmission lines, according to the U.S. Department of Energy Energy Information Administration.

The Department of Transportation's Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA) issued a final rule Monday that requires operators to repair pipeline defects discovered during an assessment and take additional measures to protect these high consequence areas.

The agency is responsible for safe movement of hazardous materials for all transportation modes, including pipelines, which are overseen by RSPA's Office of Pipeline Safety.

The final rule, entitled “Pipeline Integrity Management for Gas Pipelines in High Consequence Areas,” requires operators of natural gas transmission pipelines to assess and evaluate the integrity of their pipelines in areas where a failure would have the highest impact on the public or property.

The new regulations respond to the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002, which established deadlines for operators to assess natural gas transmission pipelines in order to protect public safety.

The law required the RSPA to issue regulations directing gas transmission operators to adopt and implement an integrity management program similar to regulations RSPA issued two years ago, under the Clinton Administration, for operators of hazardous liquid pipelines.

Developed from analyses of pipeline incidents, statutory mandates and safety recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board, pipeline integrity management recognizes that improved collection and analysis of pipeline information are central to accident prevention.

Pipeline operators must report to the RSPA and to the public twice each year on progress in implementing their Integrity Management plans.

Over the past 10 years, an increased demand for natural gas as a fuel has driven the expansion of the U.S. gas transportation system. A large portion of natural gas pipeline capacity within the United States is directed from major production areas of Texas and Louisiana to markets in the Western, Northeastern, and Midwestern regions of the country. In the past 10 years increasing amounts of gas from Canada are moving to these markets as well.

Congress Takes Holiday Leave with Salmon Recovery Unfunded

The net pens, operated by the Clatsop Economic Development Council, provide fish for the valuable Young’s Bay commercial gill net fishery, which generates as much as $500,000 in economic benefits each year to local fishermen.

Staff from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife began transferring the fish by truck on Monday, December 15, 2003, and are scheduled to continue through Thursday. Transferring the yearlings early is not expected to reduce their chances of survival. They will be reared in the net pens until their normal release time in Spring 2004.

Another 500,000 coho yearlings being raised for the Young’s Bay fishery will remain at Eagle Creek hatchery until March 2004, when they will be transferred on schedule to the net pens for acclimation to the bay. In April 2004, both groups of fish will be released so they can head to sea to mature.

The salmon recovery program is funded under the Mitchell Act, which was passed by Congress to mitigate for salmon losses attributed to federal dams in the Columbia River Basin. The amount of money allocated for Mitchell Act hatchery operations has remained flat since 1995, despite increasing hatchery responsibilities and operations costs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday.

The budget version approved by theHouse of Representatives before the recess held Mitchell Act funding for hatchery operations at its 2003 level of $11.3 million.

The early transfer of coho to the net pens is the first of several actions the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may need to take to address a projected Mitchell Act shortfall that could reach $350,000 in Fiscal Year 2004, the agency said.

Eagle Creek NFH is one of five FWS hatcheries operated with Mitchell Act funds. Thirteen other Mitchell Act hatcheries, operated by the states of Oregon and Washington, also may be impacted by a lack of money allocated under the act.

“These hatcheries already are underfunded so the prospect of flat funding or an actual decrease is forcing us to make some pretty tough decisions,” said Dan Diggs, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s assistant regional director for fishery resources.

With the 2004 fiscal year already nearly three months old, Diggs said he had no choice but to start taking action. Federal budget rules do not allow him to use other fishery money to pay for Mitchell Act programs.

“After careful consideration we determined that transferring these coho ahead of schedule would have the least impact on fisheries in the region," Diggs said.

Budget shortfalls have prompted the Service to give notice to the Clatsop Economic Development Council that its production of coho for the Young’s Bay fishery is being phased out.

Diggs said that legal obligations to produce salmon for Indian treaty fisheries supercede the Service’s obligation to produce fish for the Young’s Bay fishery. “There’s just not enough money to keep doing both,” Diggs said, “although that’s what we want to do.”

Later this month, Diggs also may authorize the early release of one million coho yearlings from Willard National Fish Hatchery in Washington. The release of these fish four months early will reduce their ability to survive to adulthood, Diggs said, but it will enable him to preserve important mitigation and restoration programs in the mid-Columbia River and meet treaty trust responsibilities to the tribes. The Willard fish, which are tagged, will be monitored to determine their survival rate.

Farm Sanctuary's Downed Animal Lawsuit Reinstated

The lawsuit, filed by Farm Sanctuary, a nonprofit organization, and Michael Baur, a consumer of meat, had previously been dismissed by the trial court. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's findings on Tuesday, sending the case back to the lower court for trial.

"We are very pleased with this ruling, and we look forward to presenting evidence in court," said Gene Bauston, president of Farm Sanctuary. "There is no excuse for marketing and slaughtering diseased animals for food, and the practice should be stopped immediately."

A review of USDA slaughterhouse records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act found that downed animals with pneumonia, hepatitis, malignant lymphoma, gangrene and other diseases have been approved for human consumption.

Downed animals are among the most likely to be afflicted with mad cow disease, and they pose a risk for bacterial contamination and other diseases.

In 1998, Farm Sanctuary began this action by filing a petition with the USDA seeking to have all downed animals classified as "adulterated," and a to prevent the use of these animals for human consumption.

The Farm Sanctuary argued that the brief inspection of downed cattle before slaughter increased the likelihood that the food supply would be exposed to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), commonly called "mad cow disease," as BSE is one of the illnesses that causes animals to collapse.

The USDA dismissed the petition on the grounds that the group used a definition of the word "adulterated" contained in contained in the Federal Meat Inspection Act, not the definition contained in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

The Farm Sanctuary then filed the current lawsuit, which the USDA attempted to have dismissed on the grounds that the group had no "standing" to sue the federal government, that is would not suffer an imminent injury that the court could remedy.

Although the court accepted the Farm Sanctuary's application for standing, it did not recognize that Baur, as a meat eater, faced an imminent threat of injury as a result of consuming BSE contaminated meat.

Farm Sanctuary cites published research conducted by the late Dr. Richard Marsh of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which concluded that downed cows in the U.S. may be afflicted with a form of mad cow disease. Several Congressional attempts to ban the slaughter of downed animals have been thwarted in recent years, largely because of the USDA's opposition.

"It is astounding that USDA has asserted that the best way to protect consumers from mad cow disease is to ship downed animals to USDA slaughterhouses where they are killed for human food," said Bauston.

A nationwide Zogby poll of 1,013 U.S. citizens found that 77 percent oppose slaughtering downed animals for food, and 81 percent are concerned that this practice could put humans at risk for mad cow disease.

Farm Sanctuary is also concerned about humane treatment for downed animals. It is impossible to move downed animals humanely, the organization says. "They are commonly dragged with chains or pushed with tractors and forklifts. Downed animals may be left to suffer for hours or days, without receiving food, water or veterinary care, and many die of neglect."

Nature Conservancy Buys Land in Brazil's Atlantic Forest

"We believe the biological diversity of this area is important to the earth's ecosystems," said Katherine Reed, staff vice president, 3M Environmental, Health and Safety Operations. "We are pleased to join the Nature Conservancy in helping protect part of the Atlantic Forest."

The Nature Conservancy's Brazilian partner, the Institute for Social and Environmental Studies of Southern Bahia (IESB), will own the 2,395 acre piece of land and will work with Conservancy scientists and other partners to manage and protect it from environmental threats.

Located in the Environmental Protection Area of Itacaré-Serra Grande, in the coastal state of Bahia, the land lies in one of the most biologically diverse forest areas on Earth.

The Atlantic Forest, which is home to dozens of threatened bird species and other endangered species such as the golden-headed lion tamarin and the maned three-toed sloth, is itself endangered.

One study done in the region found 458 tree species in a single hectare, but Brazil's Atlantic Forest is shrinking. Less than eight percent of the original forest remains today. In the state of Bahia, several million acres of the forest have been cleared in less than 50 years.

Steve McCormick, president of The Nature Conservancy, said the organization is "proud to work with these local and international partners to keep such important natural areas unspoiled for future generations."

"The Atlantic Forest is under extreme threat and its protection is vital to maintaining the health of the global environment," McCormick warned.

The piece of land chosen for protection by The Nature Conservancy and IESB links two state protected areas and will serve as a buffer zone for those existing parks. The purchase will expand the protected land in the area to a total of 27,000 acres and strengthens the implementation of the Central Corridor of the Atlantic Forest.

The Conservancy and IESB intend to use remainder of the 3M funding to purchase neighboring Atlantic Forest areas in Brazil. They intend to launch restoration projects on land that has already been damaged by cattle ranching and illegal logging, and they plan to work with local communities on sustainable development activities.

The strategy is to create continuous large areas of forest that will link remnants and serve as corridors for animal migrations.

The Conservancy, IESB and partners also plan to use the newly purchased land as a carbon monitoring station for testing methods and models to quantify changes in atmospheric carbon over time using some combination of direct measurements, remote sensing techniques and ecological surveys.

New York State Protects Lake George Water Quality

Called the Northwest Bay property, the land is adjacent to thousands of acres of Adirondack Forest Preserve lands, stretching north to the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness Area, south across Tongue Mountain Range, and to the lake’s eastern shore to include Black Mountain and parts of Washington County.

The Northwest Bay property includes Pole Hill Pond, a pristine, spring fed pond that drains into the Northwest Bay of Lake George. The state will purchase the parcel from The Lake George Land Conservancy with funds from the Environmental Protect Fund (EPF).

Lynn Schumann, executive director of the Lake George Land Conservancy, said, “For many generations, Lake George has been a place of stunning beauty. In 1791, future United States President Thomas Jefferson described Lake George as one of the most beautiful lakes he had ever seen. Much has changed in the intervening centuries, but thanks to Governor Pataki’s foresight, the pure water quality and unspoiled upland forests are protected for generations to come.”

“Lake George has a proud tradition of providing New Yorkers with unmatched recreational opportunities,” Governor Pataki said. “We must continue to support initiatives that improve the health of the lake and its surrounding ecosystem so that future generations will have access to this magnificent natural resource."

Environmentalists praised the governor's commitment to conservation. Brian Houseal, executive director of the Adirondack Council, said, “Governor Pataki’s commitment to the ecological health and natural character of Lake George is unsurpassed in the modern era. Not since Herbert Lehman – who left office four years before Governor Pataki was born – has one governor protected so much shoreline and unbroken upland forest on the Queen of American Lakes."

"As the built-up areas of Lake George grow busier and busier, these lands will only increase in their value to the public, both as a place of refuge and a buffer against water pollution," said Houseal.

Mary-Arthur Beebe, executive director of the Lake George Association, said, “As the nation’s first lake association and a pioneer in the conservation movement, Lake George Association applauds Governor Pataki and the State of New York on the acquisition of this critical piece of land, which will create a beautiful corridor of green mountainsides."

Maintaining the intact woodland is important to preserving Lake George’s pristine water quality. This land is the watershed of Northwest Bay Brook, one of the largest streams that feeds Lake George. The woodlands and wetlands of Lake George act as natural filters to catch impure nutrients before they reach the lake’s water.

Conservationists and state officials agree that the most cost effective method of preserving water quality in Lake George is to protect the natural lands surrounding the lake.

State Senator Betty Little, who represents the area, said she looks forward to the possibility of greater public access to help our tourism industry while safeguarding the watershed.

Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Erin Crotty said the acquisition illustrates the importance of an ecosystem approach to achieve conservation goals. "By preserving the critical lands around Lake George, we are ensuring the continued health of the lake itself.”

Global Warming Means Big Changes for California Coastal Waters

The researchers, led by Professor of Earth Sciences Lisa Sloan, used computer simulations of the regional climate to show that wind-driven upwelling along the California coast will likely intensify over the next 50 years as a result of increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In addition, the models showed the upwelling season extending later into the fall.

This seasonal upwelling supports California's diverse marine life and productive fisheries, but how changes in the upwelling will affect these and other aspects of coastal ecosystems remains uncertain.

The first set of experiments was published in the August 14 issue of Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), and a second paper with additional findings will be published online this week by the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)."

Previous studies by other researchers found that the intensity of upwelling along the California coast has been increasing over the past 30 years, leading some to speculate that the trend is a result of global warming, said Mark Snyder, lead author of the GRL paper, who earned his Ph.D. this month working with Sloan.

"Some people think we may already be seeing the effects of climate change on the upwelling regime, so we thought we would use our climate models to see how increases in greenhouse gases would affect the winds that drive the upwelling," Snyder said.

These winds are the result of differences in atmospheric pressure over the land and the ocean that develop because the land surface heats up faster than the ocean surface.

Global warming could be expected to raise temperatures more over land than over the ocean, making the differences in atmospheric pressure even greater and creating stronger winds.

Sloan's group set out to test this hypothesis using powerful computers to run complex models of the climate system. Their results showed the same general effects on upwelling as in the previous studies, only more pronounced, said postdoctoral researcher Noah Diffenbaugh, lead author of the PNAS paper.

"The interactions between vegetation and climate that are set in motion by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations enhance the effects on the upwelling regime," Diffenbaugh said.

The projected changes in vegetation result from warmer and dryer conditions created by global warming and lead to changes in the overall energy balance of the land surface, he said.

Diffenbaugh cautioned that despite the complexity of the climate models, they still represent a simplified view of a complicated system of feedbacks and interactions. Still, as human activities continue to pour more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, these studies show just how wide ranging its effects may be, he said.

"The regional climate model is certainly the best tool we have at the moment, and it shows us that elevated carbon dioxide is important not only for its direct effects on the climate, but also because it induces other changes that feed back into the climate system, and the magnitudes of those feedbacks appear to be substantial," Diffenbaugh said.

Researchers at UCSC and elsewhere are currently working to understand how changes in upwelling conditions will affect fisheries and the dynamics of coastal ecosystems. The new climate studies highlight the importance of those efforts, Snyder said.

Methane Gas That Warmed Ancient Climate Could Recur

The researchers, from the University of California, Riverside and Columbia University, say the same chemical condition exists in ocean sediments today and a similar gaseous release could happen again.

The Earth’s coldest climate is believed to have occurred about 600 million years ago when ice sheets stretched to today's tropics. The global ice age is of interest to paleobiologists because it took place just before the first appearance of animals in the fossil record, and may have supplied an environmental drive to evolution.

The new evidence is based on a chemical fingerprint of the methane gas from rocks in south China. Enriched in the carbon isotope carbon-12, researchers found this fingerprint in ancient ocean carbonate sediments that were deposited as Earth gradually warmed.

The methane gas that was released into the atmosphere came from the melting of frozen methane clathrate crystals that had accumulated beneath the sea floor, the scientists believe.

Ganqing Jiang, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside, and the article’s lead author, said the findings provide "unambiguous evidence for methane derived carbon."

“We now have an important record of the role methane plays in climate change and the global carbon cycle," he said.

Methane clathrates now are thought to play a role in mass extinctions associated with climate change in the Earth’s history. They are a large and unstable source of greenhouse gas, greater than the equivalent of instantaneously burning all the oil reserves on Earth, the scientists say.

“Linking these dramatic climate events to changes in the methane clathrate pool has important implications for the stability of our current climate,” said Martin Kennedy, an associate professor of geology at UC Riverside.

“The Earth has a large unstable pool of these clathrates in ocean sediments today, and it is thought that a few degrees of ocean warming could trigger large scale release into the atmosphere," said Kennedy. "We now have strong evidence of this doomsday scenario in one of the most important intervals of Earth’s biologic history.”

The study, funded by the National Science Foundation’s Division of Earth Sciences, will be published in Thursday's issue of the journal "Nature."