• Paper Partnership Benefits Tennessee Forests
  
• Wild Cat Sales Send Man to Jail
  
• Hydrogen Station Opens in Las Vegas
  
• Bocaccio Will Not Be Listed as Endangered
  
• Maui Bans Whale, Dolphin Exhibits
  
• Fuel Cell Provides Cheap, Clean Energy
  
• Hazwaste Company Fined for Polluting River
  
• Video Tracks Water from Mountains to Sea
  

Paper Partnership Benefits Tennessee Forests

The partnership, also known as the "Tennessee Unique Areas Cooperative Management Program," will identify, conserve and manage ecologically unique areas and populations of rare species within International Paper's Tennessee forestlands.

"This voluntary agreement allows far greater conservation of our natural resources than either the state or International Paper could accomplish on our own," said Tennessee Governor Don Sundquist. "It is another example of the effectiveness of public-private partnerships in conserving and protecting Tennessee's biodiversity and underscores the key role private forestland stewardship plays in Tennessee."

Under the three year agreement, International Paper (IP) and the state will cooperate to identify special management areas, manage rare species and habitats, restore and maintain habitats, conduct biological inventories and develop management plans for special areas on company owned forestlands. IP's Tennessee foresters will also be trained to recognize unique and important biological resources.

The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's (DEC) Division of Natural Heritage (DNH) will oversee the agreement for the state.

"We are very pleased with this agreement and look forward to continuing our cooperative partnership with International Paper," said DNH director Reggie Reeves. "We believe this offers an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the principles of conservation and stewardship on privately owned, working forestland."

Tennessee DEC biologists have identified two important populations of the endangered Tennessee yellow-eyed grass and its rare seep habitat on IP forestlands. IP has already established these areas as Special Places in the Forest(TM) under an internal program that designates and manages special areas under company ownership.

IP now manages almost 400 sites encompassing more than 28,000 acres in their Special Places in the Forest(TM) program. Four of these Special Places in the Forest(TM) are in Tennessee.

"Our relationship with TDEC is strong. This is the best next step for both of our organizations, and most importantly, for areas of exceptional conservation value in our forests," said George O'Brien, senior vice president of IP's Forest Products businesses. "These sites on our forestlands truly illustrate that biodiversity protection and working forests can go hand in hand."

International Paper, the world's largest paper and forest products company, is the largest private landowner in the United States, with some 10 million acres of forestland. All of the company's U.S. forestlands are third party certified by the Sustainable Forestry InitiativeŽ program, which ensures the continual planting, growing and harvesting of trees while protecting wildlife, plants, soil, air and water quality.

Wild Cat Sales Send Man to Jail

A federal court in St. Louis sentenced Stoney Ray Elam to one year confinement, two years probation and ordered him to pay $5,000 restitution to the Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Save the Tiger Fund for selling the federally protected animals.

Elam, former owner of PowerHouse Wildlife Sanctuary in Ft. Gibson, will serve six months of his one year sentence in an Oklahoma detention facility and six months in home confinement. Elam pleaded guilty in April to two felony violations of the Lacey Act, a federal wildlife protection law.

Each felony violation of the Lacey Act carries a maximum penalty of five years confinement and fines of up to $250,000.

In June 1998, special agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) observed Elam transport two tigers and three leopards - one black leopard and two spotted leopards - from Oklahoma to Missouri. Elam then met with an undercover federal agent posing as an exotic animal dealer near a highway rest stop in New Florence, Missouri.

Elam sold the cats to the agent for $4,800, then falsified federal documents declaring the illegal sale to be a "donation."

Elam was one of five people indicted in Missouri last November as a result of Operation Snow Plow, a lengthy multi-state investigation into the illegal exotic animal trade by special agents of the USFWS.

UFSWS investigators, working closely with U.S. Attorney's Offices in Missouri, Illinois and Michigan, uncovered a group of residents and small business owners in the Midwest that bought and killed exotic tigers, leopards, snow leopards, lions, mountain lions, cougars, mixed breed cats and black bears with the intention of introducing meat and skins into the lucrative animal parts trade. Elam is the fourth defendant charged by the Missouri Federal Court to be sentenced.

Hydrogen Station Opens in Las Vegas

The project, a public-private partnership between the Department of Energy (DOE), the sity of Las Vegas, Air Products and Chemicals Inc. and Plug Power, will be a learning demonstration of hydrogen as a safe and clean energy alternative. The co-production of hydrogen fuel and electricity also offers a potential business opportunity for the sale of merchant hydrogen or for generating electric power while hydrogen vehicles are developed.

Hydrogen powered vehicles are the focus of the FreedomCAR project launched by the Bush administration.

"This project supports FreedomCAR by providing the means for learning about hydrogen infrastructure technologies necessary for clean energy efficient vehicles," said David Garman, assistant energy secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The fueling station is located at the city of Las Vegas vehicle maintenance and operation service center. It is capable of dispensing hydrogen, hydrogen enriched natural gas and compressed natural gas and consists of an on-site hydrogen generator, compressor, liquid and gaseous hydrogen storage tanks, dispensing systems and a stationary fuel cell.

The costs for the $10.8 million project were split evenly between DOE and the Air Products team. The Air Products team was responsible for the design, construction and operation of the hydrogen facility.

Plug Power was responsible for manufacturing and installing the proton electrolyte membrane fuel cell. DOE is also sharing the cost with the city of Las Vegas and NRG Technologies Inc. to convert and operate hydrogen-based vehicles for use at the new hydrogen energy station.

Future work under this project will evaluate hydrogen operating safety, the reliability of fuel cell power and its overall economic feasibility, and verify the integration of power generation and vehicle refueling designs. This project is one of the Department of Energy's strategies to develop hydrogen and fuel cell technologies that will reduce dependence on imported oil.

For more information, visit: http://www.eren.doe.gov/hydrogen

Bocaccio Will Not Be Listed as Endangered

The southern population of bocaccio is a rockfish located in the waters south of Cape Mendocino off the coast of California.

"Scientific data show the southern population of bocaccio to be at low levels, but the population does not warrant listing under the ESA," said NMFS Director Bill Hogarth. "Instead, we will closely monitor the status of bocaccio by continuing research activities and by working with the Pacific Fishery Management Council to monitor the progress of their rebuilding measures."

Environmental groups said failure to list the bocaccio could doom the fish to extinction.

"The government's refusal to list bocaccio means this fish may go the way of other species hunted to extinction," said Karen Garrison, co-director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's oceans initiative. "The fisheries service's own data show these fish have declined by 96 percent since 1969. The fish, fishermen and consumers all will suffer if we allow this ecologically and economically valuable fish to disappear forever."

Bocaccio is considered overfished under the nation's marine fisheries law, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. In January 2001, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Ocean Conservancy petitioned NMFS to list the population of bocaccio south of Cape Mendocino as threatened, and to designate critical habitat under the ESA.

In June 2001, NMFS found that the petition contained information that warranted further examination. Information and comments were solicited from the public, and the NMSF Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California, reviewed the status of the species.

The status review provided a summary of the biology, current population status, and future outlook for the southern population of bocaccio, including results of a population model that projects population levels at 25 and 100 years under varying harvest rates. In addition, the status review includes an evaluation of several risk factors that are critical for determining whether the listing of bocaccio was warranted under the ESA.

Based on a review of the best scientific and commercial information on the status of the species, and on management recommendations submitted by the council to further protect bocaccio, NMFS finds that listing the southern stock of bocaccio under the ESA is not warranted at this time. However, bocaccio will be retained on the candidate species list, and its status will be monitored, NMFS said.

NMFS is preparing additional management measures recommended by the Pacific Fishery Management Council that the agency says will further reduce incidental and directed catches of bocaccio in 2003.

Maui Bans Whale, Dolphin Exhibits

"We have the ocean as our natural dolphinarium," wrote Maui County Councilmember Jo Anne Johnson, who introduced the bill more than a year ago.

At Friday's hearing, Johnson noted that, "this matter has received more public support than any other matter in the history of Maui County."

"We need to listen to the will of the people and keep cetaceans wild and free," Johnson concluded.

More than 15,000 petition signatures and hundreds of letters - including those from country blues singer Bonnie Raitt, and the producers of the Free Willy movies, Lauren Shuler Donner and her husband Richard Donner - poured into the offices of the Maui County Council. The letters urged the council to reject a proposed dolphinarium in Maui, and ban the keeping of any captive marine mammals on Maui.

The bill passed by the Council states that the "Council finds that cetaceans (dolphins and whales) are highly intelligent - and highly sensitive - marine mammals. The Council further finds the presence of cetaceans in the Pacific Ocean surrounding Maui County provides many cultural, spiritual, and economic benefits to the County's residents. The Council also finds that the exhibition of captive cetaceans leads to distress living conditions for these animals. Therefore, the purpose of this ordinance is to prohibit the exhibition of captive cetaceans (dolphins and whales)."

Under the approved bill, it is unlawful to exhibit captive cetaceans on Maui. Any person who violates this law shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

"As a small child I had a chance to visit various dolphinariums and aquariums that had cetaceans. I was excited as a youngster, but the older I grew, the less excited I was about seeing them in tank," said councilmember Charmaine Tavares, presiding officer pro tempore.

"I went to visit Keiko at the Oregon Coast Aquarium before they tried to release him, and it was the saddest thing I saw," added Tavares. "The pictures do not portray how sad it was to see him in the tank."

Maui joins 17 other cities and counties across the U.S. that have banned the display of cetaceans. The state of South Carolina has a similar ban.

Maui is world famous as a place to watch humpback whales in the winter and is home to the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. Wild spinner, bottlenose, spotted and rough-toothed dolphins live off shore year round, along with pilot whales, false killer whales and other odontocetes.

Maui "will now be recognized as a place where whales and dolphins will all live free - and in the wild," said councilmember and Maui County Mayor Alan Arakawa. "This decision proves we can do what is right."

Fuel Cell Provides Cheap, Clean Energy

Their innovation, which paves the way for pollution free power generators that serve neighborhoods and industrial sites, lies in replacing ceramic electrodes with stainless steel supported electrodes that are stronger, easier to manufacture, and cheaper. This latter advantage marks a turning point in the push to develop commercial fuel cells.

"We're closer to breaking the cost barrier than ever before," said Steve Visco, who developed the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology with fellow Materials Sciences Division researchers Craig Jacobson and Lutgard De Jonghe.

The cost barrier is $400 per kilowatt, a bar set by the Department of Energy's Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance, a government, industry, and scientific group tasked with developing affordable fuel cell based power generators. The $400 target - about one-tenth the cost of today's fuel cells - is equivalent to the most efficient gas turbines and diesel generators, and is based on the premise that a fuel cell's success hinges on its competitiveness.

"Green is great for marketing, but people won't buy an environmentally friendly product if it's twice as expensive," Visco said.

Fuel cells work by converting chemical energy to electrical energy, capitalizing on hydrogen and oxygen's tendency to bond and form water. Unlike gas turbines, this process does not emit air pollutants such as nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide.

Because fuel cells are more efficient than gas turbines, they emit far less carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Visco and colleagues' foray into affordable fuel cell design began several years ago when they developed a way to lower a fuel cell's operating temperature to 800 degrees Celsius without sacrificing efficiency. Until then, fuel cells worked best at 1,000 degrees Celsius, a high temperature that decreases the cell's life span and precludes the use of metal components.

They fabricated thin ceramic electrodes that conduct ions at 800 degrees Celsius as well as thicker electrodes do at 1,000 degrees Celsius. Lowering the temperature also allowed them to use metal components, instead of ceramic, to connect several ceramic cells into a stack.

Their design did not hit the $400 per kilowatt target, but it allowed them to reduce the cell's operating temperature without sacrificing performance.

Since then, they have developed a fuel cell that features 10 to 15 microns of a zirconia based electrolyte layered onto 10 to 20 microns of a nickel based electrode. These are supported by and bonded to about two millimeters of porous high strength commercial alloy.

"The low cost of a metal based SOFC's raw materials, and its design flexibility, should allow a stack to be manufactured below the $130 fuel cell target," Visco said.

To meet the $400 generator target, the Berkeley Lab fuel cell must now be developed into other stack designs, and paired with a low cost inverter and other supporting technology.

"Instead of building a large, fuel cell based power plant, which is expensive and therefore risky, it makes sense to start smaller," Visco concluded. "The big question is not if fuel cells will enter the market, but when."

Hazwaste Company Fined for Polluting River

Cycle Chem was cited by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for violations of New Jersey's Water Pollution Control Act, the facility's General Stormwater Permit and its Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan. The company is involved in the collection, temporary storage, testing, mixing and the bulking of chemical wastes for disposal or reclamation at off site facilities.

"Environmental compliance is an imperative especially for facilities like Cycle Chem that handle pollutants posing a potential public health risk," said DEP commissioner Bradley Campbell. "Without strict enforcement of individual permitting requirements and environmental safeguards, Cycle Chem's violations may have been left unchecked and the affected water body vulnerable to further pollution."

Cycle Chem's General Industrial Stormwater Permit allows only the discharge of clean stormwater from the property - water that has not contacted any industrial source materials.

During a moderate rain event on March 20, 2002, DEP enforcement officers inspected the Cycle Chem facility and witnessed stormwater running off the property that had contacted and conveyed hazardous and non-hazardous pollutants to the Elizabeth River. The inspectors noted that drums of hazardous and non-hazardous materials stored at the site were exposed to the rain - with many sitting in standing water.

As part of a previous inspection of Cycle Chem on May 2, 2001, the DEP had noted a large amount of hazardous and non-hazardous waste materials stored outdoors of the facility where rainwater could contact and wash it off the property. In a letter dated June 8, 2001, Cycle Chem was required by the DEP to remove, or cover, the source materials, or cease all stormwater discharges from the affected areas.

Cycle Chem's onsite drainage ditch, which empties into the Elizabeth River, can be closed off to contain stormwater on the site, where it can then be removed and disposed of as hazardous waste.

On October 7, the DEP issued an administrative order and penalty notice to Cycle Chem requiring the company to cease the discharge of stormwater that has had any contact with industrial source material. Cycle Chem is now in compliance with the DEP order, and has requested an administrative hearing.

Due to the wide variety of chemicals handled by Cycle Chem and the undetermined length of time that stormwater violations occurred, the DEP is unable to assess the harm caused to the Elizabeth River Watershed or identify adverse impacts to human health.

New Jersey's stormwater permitting program relies on pollution prevention through the development, implementation and maintenance of stormwater pollution prevention plans. These plans stress the development of reasonable and cost effective methods to eliminate or minimize the contact between source materials and stormwater.

Video Tracks Water from Mountains to Sea

"From Sea to Summit: A Journey Through the Watershed" was Developed as a component of Surfrider's ongoing Respect The Beach educational program. The video enlists a virtual who's who of action sports stars to help educate elementary and middle school aged students on the hydrological cycle and related issues such as urban runoff and non-point source pollution.

The video traces the entire hydrological cycle, using a mix of computer generated graphics and filmed footage to illustrate the process as water falls to earth in the form of precipitation, filters down through watersheds into urban and agricultural areas, and flows out to sea, where it is evaporated into the atmosphere to start the entire process over again.

In addition to appearances by skateboarding legend Tony Hawk and top women's snowboarder Tara Dakides, the video features professional surfers Donavon Frankenreiter, Brad Gerlach and Jodie Nelson. The video is narrated by renowned ESPN and X-Games commentator Sal Masakela.

"Our goal was to have the material presented to kids by those athletes and individuals whom they respect and figure prominently in their lives," said Karin Moran, program manager for the Surfrider Foundation's national headquarters. "We were thrilled by everyone's willingness to donate their time and make a commitment to the project."

The video will be distributed to classrooms throughout the country as part of Surfrider Foundation's Respect The Beach (RTB) program. The video is designed to be used as both a companion piece to RTB's multi-workbook Watershed Works unit and a stand alone educational piece.

The Surfrider Foundation is a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world's oceans, waves and beaches, for all people, through conservation, activism, research and education. Surfrider Foundation now has 56 grassroots chapters and 30,000 members in the United States.

Individual copies of the video are available for sale through the Surfrider Foundation website at: http://www.surfrider.org