• Kerry Promises Jobs in Economic, Environmental Plans
  
• White House, Pentagon Sued for Perchlorate Documents
  
• Congressmen Form Bipartisan Parks Caucus
  
• Sustainable Development Grants Empower Sister Cities
  
• California Beach Warning System Flawed
  
• Summer Climate Responds to Changes in Land Cover
  
• Off Road Vehicles Flatten Fragile California Primrose
  
• Smile, You're on Litter Cam
  

Kerry Promises Jobs in Economic, Environmental Plans

Kerry proposed to deal with the corporations that have sent jobs overseas with a stick and also with a carrot. The stick is that he would eliminate tax loopholes for companies doing business overseas - the carrot is that he would cut corporate taxes by five percent.

In his speech as prepared for delivery Kerry said, "Time after time, [the Bush] administration has put ideology first and jobs last. Today, I'm announcing a new economic plan for America that will put jobs first."

President George W. Bush's economic plan is to stick with the tax cuts already passed during his administration and make them permanent.

Last night at a Democratic unity dinner in Washington, Kerry addressed an audience that included two former Presidents - Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter - and former Vice President Al Gore, who Kerry said should have been inaugurated in 2001 as he had won the 2000 Presidential election.

Kerry sought to distinguish himself from Bush with his environmental and energy policies, saying his administration would "meet the great challenges of freeing America from its dependence on oil from half a world away."

"We reject the false choice of our opponents between energy and the environment," said Kerry. "Our values lead us to safeguard our air and our water. And our vision leads us to a bold new plan for energy independence."

"The answer to soaring gas prices is not to drill in the Alaska Wilderness," he said, "it is to invest in the technologies of the future and create 500,000 new jobs in the process. And then future generations will never have to pay the price of war for Mideast oil."

Speeches by Clinton and Carter condemned President Bush for declaring war on the environment. Carter criticized Bush for making almost every environmental descision in the last three years in order to benefit polluters and campaign donors. "Next January, under John Kerry's leadership we will restore the protection of our environment," Carter said.

Kerry has welcomed his competitors for the Presidential nomination who he said were always his friends. Former rival Howard Dean returned the compliment during a computer chat from George Washington University. "His environmental record is outstanding," Dean wrote back to a questioner.

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) says Kerry's voting record during his 19 years in the Senate has earned him the highest lifetime LCV ranking of all the presidential candidates, a 92 percent. The organization which ranks legislators on their records commends Kerry for taking a leadership role in promoting higher fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, combating attempts to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and in overturning efforts to weaken the Clean Air Act.

On international issues, he sponsored legislation to incorporate environmental protections into trade negotiations and has participated in international climate change negotiations beginning at the 1992 Earth Summit and extending through the Kyoto climate change protocol.

White House, Pentagon Sued for Perchlorate Documents

Congressmen Form Bipartisan Parks Caucus

Announcing the new caucus on March 18, the two Congressmen mentioned their "love for our national parks and national treasures," saying they created the informal group of lawmakers "to further awareness in Congress about the needs of America's national parks."

"Like those who have come before us, we hold our national parks in trust for future generations of Americans," said Souder, who often associates himself with fetal protection issues. "We must ensure that the legacy inherited by our generation is adequately preserved for the next."

"The National Parks Caucus aims to continue the mission of conservation and preservation," Souder said.

"Every year millions of Americans and tourists from around the world enjoy the beauty of our national parks," said Baird. "Our goal in the Caucus is to raise awareness in Congress of the issues and problems facing our National Park Service and help them preserve these treasures for generations to come."

The district Baird represents in southwest Washington takes in Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.

To protect another unique area, Baird has recently authored legislation to create a Lewis and Clark National Historical Park at the mouth of the Columbia River, incorporating historical sites on both the Oregon and Washington banks of the river. This bill has received broad bi-partisan support, including the approval of the Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

"I commend my colleagues for working across party lines and establishing a coalition of members to focus on making our national parks the best they can be," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, a California Republican who usually advocates for logging on public lands.

In January Pombo said the U.S. Forest Service plan to permit logging of some 700,000 acres across the 11 national forests of California's Sierra Nevada region over the next 20 years did not go far enough towards logging. The decision triples the amount of logging allowed under the management plan created for the forests by the Clinton administration.

"Our national parks were established and are now administered for the enjoyment of all people. I look forward to working with this caucus to address the critical needs of America's national parks," said Pombo, who does not list the parks or environmental conservation as an important issue on his website.

Since the establishment of the first national park at Yellowstone over 130 years ago, the National Park System of the United States has grown to comprise 388 areas covering more than 83 million acres in 49 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Saipan, and the Virgin Islands.

In 2003, the National Park Service counted 266,900,000 visitors to parks across the nation. Last year, 125,000 people volunteered 4.5 million hours of service to America's national parks.

Sustainable Development Grants Empower Sister Cities

The grants - worth $45,000 in total - are funded and managed by the Office of Citizen Exchanges, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, at the U.S. State Department.

Sustainable development is a key focus for the growing international organization, say organizers. Sister Cities International began a network focused on sustainable development two years ago to facilitate collaboration and share best practices. “Engaging communities in projects that can be sustained for the long term is important,” said Executive Director Tim Honey.

These are the first grants the network has awarded. A total of $45,000 will be distributed as $5,000 seed grants. Funded projects will tackle issues such as micro-financing, tourism development, economic development, government, youth education, health care and environmental management.

Citizen exchanges are at the heart of developing these small budget projects. “Ordinary citizens can transcend cultural divides and unite across cultures to tackle a difficult problem together,” said Honey. “Citizen diplomacy can be amazingly effective.”

Arvada, Colorado and Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan will survey water management, power supply and community planning. The partners aim to develop an ongoing relationship that will design and help finance improvements to the water and power supply system in Kyzylorda through joint planning.

Bloomington-Normal, Illinois and Vladimir, Russia are working to develop tourism in Vladimir. They will assess and inventory existing tourism resources, compile a tourist market profile and develop a strategic plan for the Vladimir region.

Cambridge, Massachusetts and Yerevan, Armenia will develop school-based projects on energy efficiency in both communities to educate youth about sustainable development and focus on linking students from opposite sides of the globe. A children’s summer camp will focus on environmental issues and provide training to help teachers expand the program in Yerevan.

Eugene, Oregon and Irkutsk, Russia will create an entrepreneurial partnership to sell native Siberian artwork in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. This project builds on previous art exchanges between the two communities and will help fund future exchange activities.

The final five sister city pairs are part of a unique consortium called the Communities for International Development. Under the management of World Services of La Crosse, the consortium will sponsor exchanges to Russia to conduct planning sessions and develop a strategic plan addressing education, economic development, federalism, health and the environment.

The five sister city pairs on this exchange plan are:

• Blount County, Tennessee - Zheleznogorsk, Russia
  
• Fox Cities, Wisconsin - Kurgan/Shchuchye, Russia
  
• La Crosse, Wisconsin - Dubna, Russia
  
• Livermore, California - Snezhinsk, Russia
  
• Los Alamos, New Mexico - Sarov, Russia

Representing more than 2,400 communities in 123 countries, Sister Cities International is a citizen diplomacy network creating and strengthening partnerships between the U.S. and communities abroad. Begun in 1956 after a White House summit where U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower called for people-to-people exchanges, sister city partnerships are tailored to local interests and increase global cooperation at the grassroots level.

Sister Cities International promotes peace through mutual respect, understanding and cooperation by focusing on sustainable development, youth and education, arts and culture, humanitarian assistance and economic growth programs.

California Beach Warning System Flawed

Numerous flaws in the methods used for warning Southern Californians about the quality of coastal water were identified by scientists at The Henry Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California at Irvine (UCI).

By analyzing water quality data and beach warnings posted in the summer of 2001 for Huntington Beach, a coastal resort city, researchers found that the public was incorrectly notified about coastal water quality 41 percent of the time.

Errors were caused by a combination of factors, including infrequent sampling and testing, rapid changes in water quality and a state warning system that only allows water to be determined safe or unsafe.

The research team was led by Stanley Grant, chair of the Chemical Engineering and Materials Sciences Department at UCI. Results were published in three companion papers this week on the Web site for Environmental Science & Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society.

“Our existing warning system fails at precisely the moment it’s needed most,” said Grant. “When water quality is relatively good, the warning system works fine. But when it’s not, the warning system is so error prone, you'd do just as well to base your decision to go in the water on the flip of a coin.”

As part of a solution, the researchers have proposed that coastal states like California adopt a warning system that provides the public a range of risk, much like the forecasts provided by daily weather reports.

“We're all pretty comfortable with interpreting weather reports, in which information is conveyed to the public as a probability – for example, there's a 30 percent chance of rain today,” Grant said. “Of course, a lot of science goes into the generation of weather forecasts, and water quality forecasts will be no different.”

The research provided new insights into the causes of coastal pollution, such as fecal bacteria, that typically close area beaches.Grant and his team found that 99 percent of the pollution occurs during rainstorms, when diversion systems such as water drains are not operating because the infrastructure cannot handle large volumes of runoff.

The systems are more effective during the dry season, when the volume of runoff is smaller, originating primarily from sources like irrigation systems and car washes.

“This result has public policy ramifications because the current strategy for managing surface water runoff involves capturing and treating the dry weather surface runoff, also referred to as urban slobber,” Grant said.

“The idea that urban slobber might constitute only one percent of the problem is staggering. The results point to the importance of developing new approaches for treating storm runoff. At present, there aren't any obvious solutions out there.”

The researchers did offer an approach for locating the sources of coastal pollution, as well as estimating the physical sizes of these areas and the rates they are generating pollution. Shoreline water quality data would be run through a mathematical computer model. When applied to Huntington Beach, the approach points to tidal outlets – the Santa Ana River and the Talbert Marsh outlet – as being major contributors to the pollution problem along the shore.

Summer Climate Responds to Changes in Land Cover

Researchers from three universities working together found that changes in the type of vegetation that covers the land produced a cooling effect of more than one degree Fahrenheit in parts of the Great Plains and Midwest as agriculture expanded and replaced grasslands.

Farmlands create lower temperatures through increased evaporation.

A warming effect was found along the Atlantic coast where croplands replaced forests.

"Most people associate land cover change with deforestation, but the changes in the U.S. are more complex, creating a temperature signal that is more difficult to study," said Somnath Baidya Roy, a research scientist at Princeton University who is the lead author of this study.

"The forest cover in the U.S. has actually increased in the last 100 years mainly due to farm abandonment in the East, [and] fire suppression in the West," said Roy.

"Large parts of the Great Plains have been converted into irrigated croplands, which tends to produce cooling," Roy said.

This research brought together data and computer models from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Using the NASA funded Ecosystem Demography computer model the team traced the evolution of vegetation distribution patterns over the United States for nearly 300 years.

"The model is truly a technological breakthrough and enables scientists to study the potential impact of land use and climate change across a wide range of scales, from individual plants to continental regions," said coauthor George Hurtt of the University of New Hampshire's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space and the Department of Natural Resources.

Compared to forests, croplands produced warming. They are less efficient in transpiration, when water evaporates from leaves during photosynthesis and cools the daytime air.

The study found land cover changes could affect local rainfall, but not as much as they affect temperature.

The relatively strong cooling over the central United States has weakened the temperature difference between land and the Gulf of Mexico, slowing the northern movement of weather systems and resulting in greater rainfall across Texas.

Consequently, the researchers found, the air masses reaching the Central Lowlands region, including Illinois and Indiana, are drier, causing rainfall reductions.

"It is important to understand the effects of changing land cover, because it can mitigate or exacerbate greenhouse warming," Roy said. "In the U.S. over the past 100 years, it seems to be offsetting greenhouse warming. The opposite is probably true in most other parts of the world. This finding has also been supported in previous research," he said.

Off Road Vehicles Flatten Fragile California Primrose

The rare and threatened flower is found only in the Clear Creek Management Area located at the border of San Benito and Fresno Counties in central California and administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The primrose lives only on the asbestos rich serpentine soils found in the management area.

The San Benito Evening Primrose (Camissonia benetensis) was listed as a threatened species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on February 12, 1985.

Seven other rare plants in the Clear Creek Management Area (CCMA) are also federally recognized as highly imperiled "special status" species. Because of the area's diverse, rare and exceptional flora, the California Native Plant Society has been working to improve management of the area for over 15 years.

The Fish and Wildlife Service identified off road vehicle use as the principle threat to the primrose and its habitat when the plant was originally listed. But the BLM proposed no measures to reduce vehicle damage until 1998; and to date, few measures have actually been implemented, the conservation groups say.

Instead, off road vehicle use has expanded three to four times the 1998 level, and now at least 900 miles of vehicle routes crisscross the Clear Creek Management Area, where the vehicles also damage the area's fragile serpentine barrens.

"Off road vehicle use is out of control on the CCMA, as it is on millions of acres of BLM lands in California," said ecologist Daniel Patterson with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Patterson says the Bureau of Land Management does not even know how many miles of routes or acres of barrens are being ridden by the off road vehicles (ORVs). "We only know that use is intense, escalating, and destructive."

A Wilderness Study Area and a Research Natural Area have been established to study and conserve the area's chemically unique serpentine soils and the special plants that depend on them. Both types of area require protection under BLM rules, but these rules are not being respected, the groups allege.

Brian LeNeve, vice president of the Monterey Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, is frustrated. "We have done everything BLM and the ORV riders have asked - commented on management plans, participated in public oversight committees, and met extensively with ORV rider groups," he said. "Meanwhile, damage to the area the only place in the world where this primrose lives - has only escalated."

"This March, the BLM allowed motorcycle races whose routes went right through areas the BLM itself has scheduled for closure to protect the primrose," mourned LeNeve. "If this kind of destructive activity is still allowed, almost 20 years after the plant was listed, we have no choice but to ask the courts to enforce the law."

Smile, You're on Litter Cam

The tape from that day in October led to the arrest of James Pack and Phyllis Whitt for littering. They were taken into custody and released on $1,000 bond. A hearing was set for January in magistrate court, where they entered into a plea bargain with Assistant Prosecutor Chris Younger.

Pack was fined $100 plus all court costs. Charges were dropped against Whitt after she agreed to help Pack clean up the entire open dump site.

"Once they viewed 10 seconds of the footage with the license plate in clear view and clear images of them tossing trash into the dump, Mr. Pack wanted to plead guilty as quickly as possible," said Sam Stalnaker of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Pollution Prevention and Open Dump program.

The tape shows Pack and Whitt pulling their vehicle alongside the illegal open dump on a county road. They both unloaded the contents of the vehicle into the dump. "There was a full six minutes worth of dumping on that tape," Stalnaker said.

The Pollution Prevention and Open Dump program has boosted its enforcement success rate with a fleet of hidden cameras. The DEP works with a contractor who hides wireless cameras in every district in West Virginia. The cameras are equipped with low-light capabilities and night vision. Movement triggers them to run. From the video, officers can get good identifications, license plate numbers and the make of cars, and that is how they nabbed Peck and Whitt.

To fulfill their plea bargain, the couple removed 1,700 pounds of solid waste from the Mystery Mountain dump site and properly disposed of it at Waste Management's transfer station facility at Peck's Mill in Logan County.

After cleaning the dump, the couple returned to magistrate court to report back to the DEP. Enforcement inspectors Tom Ferguson and Tim Justice agreed that their debt was paid in sweat equity.

"That's a lot more than they dumped out of the back of a Jeep Cherokee, but they should consider themselves lucky," Stalnaker said. "As a side note, they've also signed up for residential garbage pickup."

To report an open dump site or to inquire about a cleanup, call the Pollution Prevention and Open Dump program at: 304-558 7763.