• Global Oceans in Crisis, Congress Again Warned
  
• Appeals Court Nomination of Mining, Ranching Lobbyist Divisive
  
• Hawaii Supreme Court Blocks Molokai Development
  
• Forest Service Proposal Puts Threatened Lynx at Risk
  
• California Senators Clash Over Sierra Nevada Forest Plan
  
• California Asks EPA To Waive Ethanol Requirement
  
• California Petitioned to Protect Rare Salamander
  
• Florida Pressed to Embrace Energy Efficiency Standards
  

Global Oceans in Crisis, Congress Again Warned

Appeals Court Nomination of Mining, Ranching Lobbyist Divisive

Myers left the Interior Department in October 2003 and returned to the law firm where he worked prior to his tenure as the department's top lawyer. At that firm, Holland & Hart in Boise, Idaho, Myers has lobbied for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the Public Lands Council and a host of mining companies.

Environmentalists, who questioned Myers' ethics during his tenure at the Interior Department, worry that the former lobbyist will be an activist judge intent on undermining or overturning environmental laws in favor of extractive industries, developers, and grazing interests.

President George W. Bush nominated Myers to take a seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2003. This level of the judiciary is superceded only by the U.S. Supreme Court and often provides the final decision on legal challenges to environmental rules and regulations. Judges on this bench are appointed for life.

The 9th Circuit is of particular interest to environmentalists, as the court hears cases from Alaska and the American West, where environmental law concerning 485 million acres of public lands is decided.

Critics of Myers' nomination note that not a single member of the American Bar Association's committee that rates federal judicial nominees found him "well qualified" and more than a third rated him "unqualified."

All of these groups have dealings with the Interior Department. In July 2001, Myers executed a recusal agreement effective July 2001 barring him from participating in any matters involving his former clients or former employer for one year.

But environmentalists allege that Myers "met several times during the recusal period" with a number of his former clients and with representatives of his former law firm.

The U.S. Office of Government Ethics determined in January that Myers had not violated his ethics agreement, but the Interior Department's inspector general is investigating his approval of a questionable settlement with a rancher cited for overgrazing public lands.

Twenty-three public interest and environmental groups have asked the Senate Judiciary Committe Chairman Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, to postpone a hearing on Myers until that investigation is complete.

Democrats have blocked several of the Bush judicial nominees, although the vast majority nominees has been approved. The issue has become one of the most politically divisive in Washington.

Hawaii Supreme Court Blocks Molokai Development

The court said that in granting a development permit to the Molokai Ranch, the commission failed to consider the rights of native Hawaiians to water and to practice traditional and customary gathering.

Its ruling, issued Thursday, invalidated the permits and ordered the commission to revisit the matter.

"The Supreme Court has said, loud and clear - developers can no longer get permits just by arguing that their proposals won't affect native Hawaiian rights - they have to prove it," said Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff, who represented the plaintiffs in the case.

The permits would have allowed a developer to drill and pump a well in order to develop the Molokai Ranch's 65,000 acres over the next 15 to 20 years.

The plans included 1,292 housing units, an industrial park, and 120 luxury campgrounds.

The proposed well site is only three miles from an existing Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) well. The DHHL has a water reservation of 2.9 million gallons per day to service some of its 25,000 acres on Molokai and is concerned the proposed well would interfere with its water rights.

The permit would have allowed the developers to pump 655,928 gallons per day.

Island residents joined the intervention to oppose the permits, based on concern that the well would reduce the flow of groundwater needed to support plants and fish many residents rely on for subsistence.

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs also intervened to oppose the permit.

The court ruled that by failing to insure that the proposed well would not interfere with DHHL's water reservation, the commission "violated its public trust duty to protect DHHL's reservation rights ... and the public trust doctrine in balancing the various competing interests in the state water resources trust."

The court also held that the commission had wrongly tried to put the burden on the Molokai residents to prove that the well would interfere with their traditional and customary gathering rights as native Hawaiians.

The use of Molokai's limited waters has divided residents on the rural island for the past 20 years.

Forest Service Proposal Puts Threatened Lynx At Risk

The species is listed as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The lynx plan will amend forest plans on seven national forests - six in Colorado and one in southern Wyoming. The proposed amendments include habitat protection provisions, but critics say most are discretionary guidelines with no real teeth.

"Under this plan, nearly every project the Forest Service has proposed in the region in recent years would be exempted from lynx habitat protection," said Jeremy Nichols, endangered species coordinator for Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. "As a result, this plan, as proposed, is not likely to do much of anything for the lynx or lynx habitat."

The proposal gives the Forest Service the ability to waive most of the management provisions and offers broad exemptions for hazardous fuel reduction projects and oil and gas development.

"The only interests the plan protects are those of extractive industry and snowmobilers," explained Rob Edward, carnivore restoration director for Sinapu, a Colorao based predator protection organization.

A recent report by the alliance and seven other conservation groups documents how the Forest Service has largely failed to protect the lynx and its habitat.

The report concludes that the agency has not lived up to its promises to protect the species, despite the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's warning in its 2000 Biological Opinion on Forest Service management in lynx habitat that "it is imperative that federal land management practices maintain lynx habitat and the prey upon which lynx depend."

"The fate of the lynx still hangs very much in the balance," said Erin Robertson, staff biologist for Center for Native Ecosystems. "The Forest Service needs to step up and do its part to protect lynx habitat."

California Senators Clash Over Sierra Nevada Forest Plan

In a letter to Pacific Southwest Regional Forest Jack Blackwell, Feinstein outlined an array of concerns over the $50 million plan, which permits the logging of some 700,000 acres over the next 20 years - triple the amount of logging allowed under the management plan created for the forests by the Clinton administration.

Forest Service officials say the new plan will protect old growth forests, wildlife and communities against catastrophic wildfire and Blackwell said the "large, old trees will not be cut."

But conservationists and state officials also are wary of the plan, which allows the logging of larger trees and directs less of federal efforts to lands near mountain communities.

Feinstein raised concern about a provision that calls for protecting 50 percent canopy cover in 25 percent of the state's four million acres of old growth forests in order to protect habitat for the California spotted owl.

Biologists recommend that at least 50 percent of the old growth needs to be protected to ensure adequate habitat for the species, Feinstein said, and to safeguard the state's old growth stands.

"Without provisions for the majority of old forest, your plan may threaten the very existence of old growth reserves," she said in the letter to Blackwell.

The Clinton plan called for 75 percent of funding for hazardous fuel reduction projects to be targeted near communities, but the revisions cut that to 50 percent.

"I question ... why your current plan devotes only 50 percent of funds throughout the state to the top priority of community protection," Feinstein wrote.

In addition, the Clinton plan set a maximum diameter for targeted trees cut at 20 inches - the new plan increases that to 30 inches for all 11.5 million acres of the Sierra Nevada's national forests and allows canopy cover to be reduced to 30 percent compared to existing levels.

"I ask whether you can reduce brush and other flammable material without disturbing old growth forests as much as your plan now permits," the California Democrat wrote.

Congressman Richard Pombo, a Californian Republican and chair of the House Resources Committee, said the plan moves forest management in the right direction, but does not go far enough.

Pombo criticized the revisions because they call for the removal of 115,000 acres per year, or 3.5 million board feet, treating only one-fifth of the net growth each year.

"The plan recognizes fire is the single greatest threat to communities, endangered species like the California spotted owl and the overall health of the forests," Pombo said. "In large part however, these forests will continue to grow at an unsustainable rate, adding more and more fuel to the fires that will certainly come."

Pombo says his committee will hold a field hearing on the plan to address concerns it does not allow for enough logging.

"Without these and further revisions, the Sierra Nevada could see firsthand the devastation of wildfire witnessed in Southern California last fall," he said.

California Asks EPA To Waive Ethanol Requirement

Under the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, areas in violation of federal smog standards must use gasoline with two percent oxygen in order to reduce harmful emissions. But California banned one oxygenate, MTBE, in 1999 because of concerns over groundwater contamination - and does not want to be required to use ethanol, the other alternative.

State officials say the requirement to use ethanol, a corn based fuel additive, is too costly and does too little to reduce air pollution.

"The Clean Air Act oxygen mandate slows environmental improvement, raises costs and is no longer required to ensure substantial and sustained ethanol use in California," Schwarzenegger said in his letter to EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt.

The California governor, a Republican, noted that a Blue Ribbon Panel of the U.S. Enivornmental Protection Agency (EPA) has concluded that a minimum oxygen content is not needed in California, and the California Air Resources Board has demonstrated that "the oxygen requirement is detrimental to our efforts to achieve healthy air quality."

"Furthermore, the oxygen requirement limits the ability of fuel producers to use the most cost effective mix of gasoline blends and, as a result, greatly increases fuel costs borne by California motorists," the governor wrote.

California has been seeking the waiver for five years, but officials are bolstered by recent moves that indicate the EPA may be ready to change course on the issue.

Last week, the EPA announced it is ready to grant New Hampshire a waiver from the program because of its concerns over MTBE. New Hampshire, however, opted into the program.

Federal lawmakers from ethanol producing states have lobbied against granting California a waiver for fear of what it might do to the market for the corn based fuel.

In his letter Schwarzenegger tried to defuse that concern and said there will still be a large market for ethanol in California without the mandate and added that he is considering mechanisms to "spur in state ethanol production."

California Petitioned to Protect Rare Salamander

The petition contends that the species, threatened primarily by habitat destruction and invasive species, warrants immediate listing as an endangered species.

"The California tiger salamander does not have the luxury of time," said Kassie Siegel, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity and one of the primary authors of the petition. "The scientific case for listing this species is irrefutable and we look forward to prompt action by the Fish and Game Commission to protect this essential part of California's natural heritage."

State officials have 90 days to make a recommendation to the commission, which will then vote at its next meeting whether to accept the petition and designate the California tiger salamander as a "candidate" species while the department conducts a full status review for the species.

Designation as a "candidate" species confers the same protection as listing while the review proceeds.

Some 25 academic scientists, wildlife managers, and consulting biologists officially support the listing.

The species was historically distributed throughout most of the Central Valley, adjacent foothills, Coast Ranges, portions of Santa Barbara County, and the Santa Rosa Plain in Sonoma County.

The habitat types used by the species - vernal pools, seasonal wetlands, grasslands, and oak woodlands - are some of the most endangered habitat types in California.

It has been estimated that less than one-tenth of one percent of California's native grasslands remain, and approximately 95 percent of California's vernal pool landscape has already been lost.

Available habitat for the species throughout its range has been eliminated in recent decades by at least 75 percent.

The petition cites an ongoing research project by the Center for Biological Diversity which has identified at least 118 projects to date that will impact suitable or occupied California tiger salamander habitat and demonstrates that the species does not receive sufficient protection under either the California Environmental Quality Act or the federal Clean Water Act.

The California tiger salamander is listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) in Santa Barbara and Sonoma County, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently proposed the Central California populations for listing under the federal ESA as "threatened."

Florida Pressed to Embrace Energy Efficiency Standards

Setting such standards could save Florida consumers more than $2.9 billion, according to the Florida Public Interest Research Group (Florida PIRG).

Florida state officials denied the petition, filed by Florida PIRG and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, last October. The petition would have started a new rulemaking process to set the standards.

In addition, consumer groups and civic leaders, Tampa Electric Company, and Florida TaxWatch urged Governor Jeb Bush to enact energy efficiency standards for 10 products and appliances sold in Florida.

"Historically, Florida has been a leader in setting state level energy efficiency standards," said Florida PIRG's Holly Binns. "It is very disappointing that Governor Bush's administration took a pass on this proposal. It is a great opportunity to substantially reduce Florida's exploding electricity demand and put Florida on the path to a smart, pro-consumer, pro-environment, clean energy future."

The appeal was filed last week in the wake of a new report on the state's energy future prepared for the Florida Energy Office and the Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA).

The report views appliance efficiency standards as "highly cost effective" and recommends that Florida "adopt and maintain strong energy codes and appliance standards."

In its denial of the petition, the DCA determined that six of the products proposed for stronger efficiency standards were not "consumer" products as defined by the Florida Energy Conservation Standards Act, and thus the agency does not have authority to establish new efficiency standards for these products under current law.

Although the agency agreed that it has the authority to adopt energy efficiency standards for four consumer products listed in the petition - ceiling fans, television cable boxes, torchiere lights, and external transformers for small appliances - it said the benefits from adopting these standards would be "marginal" and the issue should be left to the federal government.

Energy efficiency advocates say the savings from energy efficiency standards for these four products would be equivalent to nearly twice the electricity all the homes and businesses in the state capital, Tallahassee, used in 2000.

Several states around the country are moving to enact measures that establish new energy efficiency standards. Last month the Maryland General Assembly overrode Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich's veto of an energy efficiency bill that will set minimum efficiency standards for nine products commonly sold or installed.

Similar legislation is now being considered in other states, including Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and many of the New England states.