• Shuttle Tragedy Leads to Disaster Declaration
  
• U.S. Joins International Fusion Research Project
  
• EPA Issues Weak Air Rules for Ocean Vessels
  
• ASARCO Agreement Funds Cleanup Trust
  
• BLM Considers Revising Grazing Policies
  
• Acid Rain Program Brings Improvements
  
• New Mexico Wildlife Refuge Volunteer Honored
  

Shuttle Tragedy Leads to Disaster Declaration

Space Shuttle Columbia and its seven astronaut crew were lost Saturday morning when the shuttle broke up over Texas as it descended for a landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida following a 16 day flight. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is still investigating the cause of the accident.

"The cause in which they died will continue," Bush said Saturday. "Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on."

President Bush's disaster declaration authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate federal aid and ensure that responders to the accident have the resources they need.

"I had the honor and privilege to meet the families of the Columbia astronauts at its launch and my sincere condolences and prayers go out to them," said FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh. "As President Bush said, because of the courage, daring and idealism of these heroes, they will be deeply missed. The men and women at FEMA will do all that we possibly can to help our friends at NASA during these trying days."

The President's action authorizes the use of immediate assistance to protect public health and safety. Federal assistance can range from the use of federal personnel and equipment to provisions for medical and other emergency supplies. The declaration authorizes FEMA to pay up to one hundred percent of the costs of personnel or supplies.

In support of the search, find and secure mission already underway, FEMA has made its Emergency Support Team operational at FEMA headquarters in Washington, DC, and at a regional operations center in Denton, Texas. FEMA is responsible for coordinating federal assets.

"Our thoughts and prayers go out the families of the astronauts lost in this tragedy," said FEMA deputy director Michael Brown. "FEMA has been asked to lead the federal effort to search, find, and secure debris from Columbia so that NASA can move forward with a full investigation. We are working closely with several federal agencies as well as state and local officials in Texas and Louisiana to make sure that all available resources are coordinated and used effectively in this important mission."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is assisting FEMA, conducting environmental monitoring and helping in the clean up of hazardous materials. The EPA has a cadre of response managers, called On-Scene Coordinators, and scientific experts stationed across the states to help assess environmental conditions and abate threats posed by hazardous materials.

Resources throughout the EPA are assessing potential environmental consequences of the shuttle disaster, cleaning up hazardous materials, and assisting in the collection of debris from the accident. The EPA has deployed skilled response managers to incident operation centers in Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, and FEMA Command Center in Denton, Texas and the Operations Center in Lufkin, Texas.

In coordination with both FEMA and NASA, the EPA has dispatched teams of trained personnel and essential equipment within the impacted communities to conduct environmental monitoring to ensure public health is protected. In addition, the EPA will assist in collecting and removing debris to prevent the public from coming in direct contact with hazardous chemicals, should they be present.

The EPA has mobilized Airborne Spectral Photo-Imaging of Environmental Contaminants (ASPECT) aircraft to help locate debris using infrared sensors to detect hazardous chemicals, and deployed a Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzer Unit to provide mobile analytical support.

NASA has asked that anyone who believes they have found debris should call the Johnson Space Center Emergency Operations Center at 281-483-3388, and should be aware that hazardous chemicals may be present, and they should not disturb or remove any debris. All debris is United States Government property and is critical to the investigation of the accident.

"Our principal mission today is to assist the state and local authorities with this search, find and secure mission," said Brown. "Federal resources will be put to use to map the debris fields and specially trained teams will be deployed to those sites to begin collecting the debris as quickly as possible."

U.S. Joins International Fusion Research Project

Known as ITER, the project's mission is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy.

"The results of ITER will advance the effort to produce clean, safe, renewable, and commercially available fusion energy by the middle of this century," President Bush said. "Commercialization of fusion has the potential to dramatically improve America's energy security while significantly reducing air pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases."

The Bush administration believes that fusion is a key element in U.S. long term energy plans because fusion offers the potential for plentiful, safe and environmentally benign energy. A fusion power plant would produce no greenhouse gas emissions, use abundant sources of fuel, shut down easily, require no fissionable materials, operate in a continuous mode to meet demand, and produce manageable radioactive waste, the administration has argued.

"This international fusion project is a major step towards a fusion demonstration power plant that could usher in commercial fusion energy," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. "ITER also provides a cost effective way to proceed with fusion research worldwide with the collaborating parties sharing in the project's cost of construction and operation."

ITER is designed to provide 500 megawatts of fusion power for 500 seconds or longer during each individual fusion experiment. ITER will demonstrate essential fusion energy technologies in a system that integrates physics and technology and will test key elements required to use fusion as a practical energy source.

ITER will be the first fusion device to produce a burning plasma and to operate at a high power level for such long duration experiments. The fusion power produced in the ITER plasma will be 10 times greater than the external power added to the plasma.

Canada, the European Union, Japan and the Russian Federation are the current members of the collaboration who have been negotiating ITER construction and operation since last year. China has joined the negotiations as well.

Candidate sites in Canada, the European Union and Japan have been offered, one of which will be selected during the negotiation and governmental decision making process.

The U.S. proposes to provide a number of hardware components for ITER construction, to be involved in the project construction management and to participate in the ITER scientific research and technology development. The nature and details of the U.S. participation and contributions would be determined during the negotiations.

The construction cost for ITER, including buildings, hardware, installation and personnel, is estimated to be about $5 billion in 2002 dollars. However, since the cost will be shared among all of the parties, who will provide most of the components "in kind," the actual construction cost will be a combination of different amounts in different currencies.

The U.S. share of the construction cost is expected to be about 10 percent of the total. ITER could begin construction in 2006 and be operational in 2014. Fusion research would last for up to 20 years.

The Department of Energy commissioned three reviews of ITER in preparation for a decision on whether the U.S. should enter into negotiations on participation in the ITER project. A National Research Council report endorsed the ITER effort as an essential next step in the U.S. fusion energy research program.

Fusion is the energy source that powers the sun and stars. In fusion, the nuclei of light elements, such as hydrogen, fuse together to make heavier elements, such as helium, giving off tremendous amounts of energy.

ITER will use a tokamak designed - a doughnut shaped magnetic configuration - to create and maintain the conditions for controlled fusion reactions on Earth. In ITER, superconducting magnet coils around a toroidal vessel will confine and control a mix of charged particles, called plasma, and induce an electrical current through it.

Fusion reactions will take place when the plasma is hot enough, dense enough and contained long enough for the atomic nuclei in the plasma to start fusing together.

More information on ITER, including a brochure U.S. and ITER, is available at: http://www.ofes.fusion.doe.gov/iter.html

EPA Issues Weak Air Rules for Ocean Vessels

Ocean going vessels represent the fastest growing, least regulated sources of pollution in the United States. Each day in large ports such as Long Beach and Santa Barbara, California, ships generate as much pollution as one million cars.

In May 2002, the EPA proposed to change an existing voluntary standard for new ship engines into a federal mandate. That mandate was finalized Friday, but critics say the action is "toothless."

The agreement with engine manufacturers promotes, but does not require, new engines installed in U.S. flagged vessels such as oil tankers, cruise ships, and cargo vessels to produce less pollution than older engine designs.

The new regulation resulted from a lawsuit settlement reached in 2001 by the San Francisco based environmental group Bluewater Network, represented by Earthjustice, challenging the EPA's failure to set any standard for smog forming emissions under the Clean Air Act.

"Federal records prove that the EPA attempted to go much farther with this regulation, but the Bush administration forced the agency to back off on both the stringency of the standards and the deadlines, too," said Russell Long, a former America's Cup skipper and executive director of Bluewater Network. "Dirty foreign flag ships - the lion's share of the problem - will get a free ride until at least 2007 since the rule does not force them to reduce emissions. And engine builders for U.S. ships are already voluntarily meeting the new standards, so on neither count does this regulation actually improve air quality. We're headed back to court."

"The oil tanker owners lobbied the Bush Administration to delay and weaken this regulation, and once again, fossil politics trumped the public interest. It's a disastrous defeat for the environment," Long added.

The world's biggest ships now account for 14 percent of total nitrogen oxides (NOx) and 16 percent of all sulfur oxide emissions from petroleum sources. Given recent technology advances, environmental groups say a 90 to 95 percent decrease in NOx emissions appears within reach, and sulfur levels could be established to attain the low levels already achieved by Sweden.

Since worldwide shipping is expected to triple by 2020 as a result of global trade agreements, air pollution is expected to jump as well.

The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to establish regulations to reduce air pollution from non-automobile engines that contribute to pollution in areas with poor air quality. Based on a 1991 study, the EPA determined that the largest type of ship engines - called "Category 3" engines - were a "significant contributor" of important pollutants, including NOx.

ASARCO Agreement Funds Cleanup Trust

The agreement will provide about $100 million for environmental cleanup at ASARCO managed sites.

As a result of the agreement, the Justice Department will withdraw a previously filed complaint seeking an order prohibiting ASARCO from selling its stock holding interest in the Southern Peru Copper Corporation (SPCC) to its parent company, American Mining Corporation (AMC).

The complaint filed by the United States last year alleged that the proposed transfer of SPCC stock was for less than "reasonably equivalent value" and would render the company unable to meet all of its environmental obligations because of its precarious financial condition. To assure that the transaction would not take place without court review, the United States sought a preliminary injunction and ASARCO agreed not to transfer the asset until a settlement was reached with the U.S.

The settlement announced last week requires AMC to pay about $765 million - more than $100 million more than had previously been proposed - for ASARCO's stock ownership interest in SPCC. The settlement creates and funds an independent environmental trust that will be used over the next several years to pay for cleanup of environmental contamination at sites for which ASARCO is responsible. Initial funding of the trust is valued at about $100 million.

"This exceptional settlement will guarantee necessary remediation funds are available to protect human health and the environment," said Kelly Johnson, principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's environment and natural resources division.

"This settlement is fair to all concerned, provides the resources needed to protect the public's health and the environment, and is of significant value to ASARCO," said John Peter Suarez, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance. "This settlement will ensure that important environmental cleanup will occur."

The agreement also relieves ASARCO of paying EPA about $4.5 million in past cleanup costs, forgives certain past uncollected penalty claims, and caps ASARCO's cleanup responsibilities for three years, during which time much of ASARCO's environmental cleanup work will be funded by the trust. The environmental trust is guaranteed by the parent corporation of ASARCO, Grupo Mexico S.A. de C.V. of Mexico City, to assure the cleanup will occur.

All other ASARCO liabilities to the federal government, and all existing or future liabilities to state or tribal governments, are not affected by this agreement.

BLM Considers Revising Grazing Policies

BLM Director Kathleen Clarke said the policy changes that the BLM is considering would provide more flexibility for resource managers, ranchers, and conservation groups to work in partnership to promote conservation and healthier grazing allotments. The changes would also authorize the creation of an administrative mechanism that would help grazing permittees meet mitigation requirements aimed at protecting threatened and endangered species.

"The changes under consideration would enhance community based conservation and promote cooperative stewardship of the public rangelands," said Clarke. "The potential changes would also improve BLM business practices and provide greater flexibility to managers and grazing permittees in the administration of public rangelands."

Early this month, the BLM plans to publish two grazing related notices detailing potential regulatory changes. The first, known as an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), will describe the nature of the possible changes.

The second, called a Notice of Intent, will announce the BLM's intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement under the National Environmental Policy Act. The environmental statement or study will analyze the potential impact of the changes under consideration, as well as the potential effects of alternative options.

The BLM expects to publish its official proposed regulatory changes, in the form of a proposed grazing rule, during the summer.

The public will have 60 days to comment on the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking after its publication. During that same period, the public will also be able to comment on the scope and other aspects of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) associated with the potential rules changes.

The BLM will hold four EIS related meetings in March at four sites: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Reno, Nevada; Billings, Montana; and Washington, DC.

The regulatory changes under the BLM's consideration would extend the time for a grazing permittee's temporary nonuse of a permit from the current three-year limit to five years. Such an extension would enhance the BLM's ability to cooperate with ranchers who want to temporarily rest the land to allow for forage recovery. The five-year limit would also enable the BLM to meet the needs of those ranchers who temporarily cannot use their permits because of business or personal needs.

The changes would authorize the BLM to designate a new type of grazing unit called "Reserve Common Allotments." Ranchers could use these allotments for livestock forage while their normal allotments undergo range improvement treatment.

This would provide an alternative forage source for those ranchers who are engaged in a range recovery effort that requires a temporary resting of the land from grazing. Reserve Common Allotments could enable ranchers to maintain their herds while their allotments recover.

The BLM is proposing to reinstate an earlier provision that allows the agency and a grazing permittee to share title of certain range improvements - such as a fence, well or pipeline - if they are constructed under what is known as a Cooperative Range Improvement Agreement. This potential rule change envisions the BLM and a permittee sharing title in proportion to each party's contribution to the initial cost of constructing the improvement.

The proposed changes would streamline the administrative appeals process relating to grazing decisions, and clarify which non-permit violations the BLM may take into account in penalizing a permittee.

The changes would distinguish between access on public and private land, and revise administrative fees for permit applications, billings, and preference transfer. The BLM is not considering any change to the existing grazing fee formula, which Congress established in 1978 and has continued by Executive Order since 1986.

The BLM would be required to follow state law in the acquisition of water rights. All reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act will consider the economic, social, and cultural impacts of the BLM's decisions, the agency noted.

In keeping with recent federal court rulings, the proposed changes would eliminate existing regulatory provisions that assert the BLM's authority to issue long term "conservation use" grazing permits. These permits were introduced in 1994.

Acid Rain Program Brings Improvements

Acid rain includes both wet deposition through rain, snow and fog, and dry deposition through gases and particles of sulfate.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a report documenting the success of the agency's Acid Rain Program in reducing acid rain in sensitive ecosystems of the United States. The Acid Rain Program is a market based cap and trade program that allows companies to earn credits for reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) below permitted levels, then trade or sell those credits to companies that have not met their emissions caps.

The release last week was timed to provide support for a similar program that the Bush administration has proposed to address power plant emissions of SO2, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and mercury.

"This study confirms that market based approaches to pollution control work," said EPA Administrator Christie Whitman. "This Acid Rain Program model is the basis for President Bush's Clear Skies plan, which is expected to result in significantly less air pollution and major environmental results."

The most recent data, available in the report, confirm a 40 percent decrease in wet sulfate deposition across broad areas of the Northeastern and Upper Midwestern U.S. Regional declines in surface water sulfate can be linked to declines in emissions and deposition of sulfur that have occurred since the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, Whitman said.

The EPA's Acid Rain Program has achieved more emission reductions at a faster pace and lower cost than first expected. The 1990 law set a goal of reducing annual SO2 emissions by about 50 percent below 1980 levels in 2010 to combat acid rain. In 2001, emissions of SO2 under the Acid Rain emissions trading program measured 10.6 million tons, already more than six a half million tons below 1980 levels.

The reductions to date represent 80 percent of the progress needed to reach the program's emission reductions goal.

The EPA's Office of Research and Development, along with other collaborators, released the report, "Response of Surface Water Chemistry to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990." The EPA and its collaborators have been working since 1990 to determine whether control measures have reduced levels of acidity in lakes and streams in five geographic areas of the Upper Midwest and Northeastern United States - those areas most affected by acid rain.

In three of those areas, one-quarter to one-third of lakes and streams once affected by acid rain are no longer acidic, although they are still sensitive to future changes in deposition. In other areas, signs of recovery are not yet evident, suggesting that further reductions would aid in ecosystem recovery.

Among the report's highlights:

• Eight percent of lakes in the Adirondacks are still acidic, down from 13 percent in the early 1990s.

• Fewer than one percent of lakes in the Upper Midwest are now acidic, down from three percent in the early 1980s.

• Nine percent of the stream length in the Northern Appalachian Plateau region is acidic, down from 12 percent in the early 1990s.

The researchers cautioned that the improvements do not mean that northeastern waterways are out of danger. For example, although sulfuric acid levels have dropped in many surface waters, nitric acid levels have not decreased.

Data from about 100 lakes in Maine and another 286 in New England indicates that there has been little net change in the acid status of waters in that region.

"The report emphasizes that there are significant uncertainties in our understanding of processes related to recovery of acidic lakes, and that research needs to continue for us to understand the effectiveness of the Clean Air Act and any future amendments," said Steve Kahl, director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research at the University of Maine. Kahl led the EPA research effort in New England and helped to lead the team that wrote the report.

"We've seen reductions in sulfate that are linked to Clean Air Act regulations," Kahl noted. "Sulfuric acid does not control the acidity of surface waters as it used to."

Levels of dissolved aluminum in lakes and streams have dropped in some regions and remain unchanged in others, the report found. Dissolved aluminum concentrations are related to acidity. The metal can impair reproduction in fish and amphibians, although its actual biological consequences are unclear.

Levels of calcium, magnesium and other acid buffering elements have dropped in lakes and streams for reasons that are unclear, and this change has offset some of the decrease in acidity that would have otherwise occurred. Dissolved organic compounds in water increased in every region and contributed natural acidity to surface waters.

The full EPA report is posted on UMaine's Senator George Mitchell Center's web page at: http://www.umaine.edu/WaterResearch/ under "Publications."

New Mexico Wildlife Refuge Volunteer Honored

Each year, individual volunteers who donate their time to national wildlife refuges around the country are nominated for national recognition by the USFWS. Dr. James Montgomery was recognized for his contributions at a ceremony in Washington, DC on February 1.

"This is a special year for the National Wildlife Refuge System, because we will celebrate its centennial anniversary on March 14," said USFWS Director Steve Williams. "We should all recognize that the contributions of volunteers like Dr. Montgomery makes it possible for us to conserve these wonderful places and provide opportunities for the public to enjoy them."

A full time biology professor at the New Mexico Military Institute, Dr. Montgomery has accumulated more than 10,000 volunteer hours at the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge. In his work there, Dr. Montgomery discovered the banner tail kangaroo rat - a species never found before on the refuge.

In monitoring and surveying the sandhill crane population on the refuge since 1988, Dr. Montgomery has become an expert in the ecology of this bird. He also has also monitored nesting activity of the interior least tern.

The only system of federal lands devoted to wildlife, the National Wildlife Refuge System is a network of diverse habitats. The system teems with millions of migratory birds, serves as a haven for hundreds of endangered species, and hosts a variety of other plants and animals.

"While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service celebrates the centennial of the National Wildlife Refuge System, it's fitting to remember another volunteer, Paul Kroegel, whose commitment to protecting birds helped launch the National Wildlife Refuge System," said Dale Hall, director of the USFWS southwest region.

The first refuge was created on March 14, 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt. Pelican Island, a small island in Florida's Indian River, which supported the only remaining nesting colony of brown pelicans became the first "federal bird reservation." Kroegel, a local volunteer, became the first refuge warden.

"He, like Dr. Montgomery, volunteered his skills to safeguard the refuge so it could grow to become a system that now protects over 95 million acres for wildlife," said Hall.