• 13 Countries Plus United States Will Recover Methane
  
• Greenpeace Asks UN General Assembly to Halt Deep Sea Trawling
  
• Orange County to Build $2.4 Billion Sewage Upgrade by 2012
  
• Wyoming Grizzly Bears Soon to Lose Federal Protection
  
• South Pacific U. Awarded Biodiversity Conservation Grant
  
• Official Shakedown for Earthquake Simulation Network
  
• Reused Wastewater Will Irrigate New Jersey Golf Course
  
• Genetically Modified Wheat Still a Market Risk
  

13 Countries Plus United States Will Recover Methane

The partnership is intended to advance international cooperation on the recovery and use of methane as a clean energy source.

"The Bush administration welcomes this global partnership, a partnership that we believe will deliver significant economic, environmental, and energy benefits," said Leavitt. "Together we will harness the power of collaboration, technology and markets to achieve real, near-term reductions of global methane emissions."

Countries participating in the partnership are expected to undertake activities aimed at capturing and using methane emitted from landfills, coal mines, and oil and gas systems.

It is anticipated that developed countries will work with developing countries to accomplish these goals. The partnership encourages active involvement by private industry, financial institutions and other nongovernmental organizations.

The United States will commit up to $53 million over the next five years to facilitate the development and implementation of methane projects in developing countries and countries with economies in transition.

The EPA will play a lead role in the partnership and coordinate efforts with several other departments including the State Department, the Energy Department, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Methane is a clean burning fuel that is the main component of natural gas and is also the second most prevalent greenhouse gas from human sources. Methane remains in the atmosphere for approximately nine to 15 years and is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

Methane to Markets has the potential to reduce net methane emissions by up to 50 million metric tons of carbon equivalent annually by 2015 and continue at that level or higher in the future. This would be the carbon equivalent of removing 33 million cars from roadways for one year or eliminating emissions from 50 500 megawatt coal fired power plants.

Leavitt says the partnership will increase energy security, enhance economic growth, improve air quality, improve industrial safety, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the world.

For more information on Methane to Markets visit: http://www.epa.gov/methanetomarkets.

For fact sheets and contact information regarding involvement of the financial and industrial extraction sectors in the Methane to Markets partnership, visit: http://www.epa.gov/methanetomarkets/index.htm#inter.

Greenpeace Asks UN General Assembly to Halt Deep Sea Trawling

On the 10th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, Greenpeace policy advisor Karen Sack spoke on behalf of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an international alliance of organizations representing millions of people around the world, which is calling for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling.

"The interests of the few bottom trawling nations have won out over science and common sense," Sack told the UN representatives. "There are deep sea species that are still unknown to science and yet the commercial interests of a few are considered more important. Who knows how many of those species could be wiped out while the politicians sit back reviewing."

Sack explained that high seas bottom trawling literally ploughs up the ocean floor for relatively few fish. The fleets often target seamounts – the least explored mountains on the planet, that rise more than a 1,000 meters from the ocean floor.

Seamounts are teeming with deep sea life, some of which is undiscovered by science and much is unique to individual seamounts. Humans know more about Mars than we know about some of these habitats.

Yet the world’s governments have ignored scientific advice and an international call from the Convention on Biological Diversity to the United Nations for urgent action. Instead they have called for a two year review of the problem.

Sack condemned the resolution as falling "far short of the comprehensive and immediate protection that is so sorely needed to protect deep sea biodiversity."

"It is time to stop calling for urgent consideration," she said, "and actually take action."

Orange County to Build $2.4 Billion Sewage Upgrade by 2012

Wyoming Grizzly Bears Soon to Lose Federal Protection

A coalition of state and regional conservation groups have combined forces to identify specific recommendations to protect Wyoming’s grizzly bears. The coalition hopes these protections will be included in the state grizzly plan, which began its public review process in Green River on Monday. Ten other public meetings will occur throughout the state until the final one is held in Cody on December 9.

Two hundred years ago, during the time of Lewis & Clark, more than 50,000 grizzly bears roamed the American West. Today fewer than 1,300 grizzlies are left in the Lower 48 states. The Yellowstone grizzly bear was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975.

Wyoming’s current grizzly bear plan, created in February 2002, already excludes grizzly bears from other parts of the state, such as the Bighorns and Snowy Range. But one possible outcome of the public review process could be to exclude bears elsewhere in the state, warn the groups, who delivered their proposals in a letter to Wyoming Game and Fish Assistant Wildlife Division Chief John Emmerich.

"Right now Wyoming’s grizzly plan allows the bears to occupy all areas within the Greater Yellowstone area that are biologically and socially acceptable," said Meredith Taylor, Yellowstone Program Coordinator of the Wyoming Outdoor Council. "We believe that’s the right way to go, and support that part of the plan."

In their letter to Emmerich, the conservation groups identified three recommendations to keep healthy grizzly bear numbers in the Yellowstone area:

• Allow bear movements to define where they can be, and allow for recovery of grizzlies in all suitable habitat, including the Wyoming and Wind River Ranges, the Northern and Southern Absarokas, the Owl Creeks, Gros Ventres, and Northern Tetons.

• Resolve human/bear conflicts and reduce unnecessary grizzly bear deaths by developing local citizen teams in Wyoming communities that would address problems and develop solutions. Such an effort could reduce chronic problems, improve human safety and promote coexistence with grizzlies.

• Do not raise or eliminate limits on the number of grizzlies killed each year by people. In order to maintain an accurate picture of grizzly bear recovery, all bears should be included in the annual population-wide count, and Wyoming should not exclude bears living in other areas, such as the Wyoming and Wind River Ranges, from the population.

"Wyoming Game & Fish has already answered these questions in their past public opinion research regarding grizzly bears," said Heidi Godwin of the Sierra Club. "The last time they asked the Wyoming public whether or not grizzlies should be allowed to expand into all suitable habitat in the state, two-thirds of residents said loud and clear that the threatened species should indeed be allowed to expand its range."

"We can avoid another wildlife train wreck in Wyoming by locking in a balanced, science based conservation plan for grizzlies now," said David Gaillard of Predator Conservation Alliance. "This state doesn’t need another round of wildlife lawsuits."

No date has yet been set for removing the bears from the federal Endangered Species List.

The public can provide comments on the Wyoming grizzly management plan by visiting the Wyoming Game and Fish Department website at: http://gf.state.wy.us

Or attend a public meeting. The schedule is posted here.

South Pacific U. Awarded Biodiversity Conservation Grant

"The South Pacific is one of the world’s richest repositories of endangered marine life, home to some 400 species of coral and 900 species of fish," said Jonathan Fanton, president of the MacArthur Foundation.

"The University of the South Pacific is one of the most important academic institutions in the region, leading efforts to conserve this abundant biodiversity. A proud partner in their work for over a decade, the MacArthur Foundation is delighted to announce this grant, which will help anchor USP’s conservation efforts for the future."

The university will use the grant to establish an endowment to help fund postgraduate fellowships in conservation and taxonomy for Pacific Islanders, and to host outside experts for short term visits.

Grant funds will also be used to design a new herbarium facility, purchase equipment for monitoring the health of the region’s reefs, and fund efforts to explore extending Institute services.

"Pacific peoples are largely dependent on their biodiversity for their subsistence needs as well as for economic development," said Dr. William Aalbersberg, director of the Institute.

"The university strategy is to develop skills in taxonomy and conservation to help understand what these resources are and how they can be sustainably utilized, while at the same time working at the community level to build on traditional knowledge to develop resource management plans," said Aalbersberg.

"This approach is showing initial success in raising community incomes and conserving biodiversity in Fiji. The MacArthur Foundation grant will allow more talented Pacific islanders to be trained and to extend the geographical area of the work," he said.

The 12 countries that have campuses as part of the University of the South Pacific are: Cook Islands, Fuji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

Official Shakedown for Earthquake Simulation Network

The $2.1 million Cornell facility is one-third the size of a football field and uses hydraulic presses to apply hundreds of thousands of pounds of force on pipelines buried in many tons of sand.

The facility tests the lifelines that make modern life possible - pipelines carrying water, natural gas, liquid fuel and telecommunications cables - to see how well they can withstand the ground motion and enormous forces exerted by earthquakes.

On Monday the $81.8 million the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) was officially opened in a national webcast from NSF headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. The webcast included live demonstrations from four of the network's research sites, including Cornell.

The George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation will provide a national resource that will shift the emphasis of earthquake engineering research from current reliance on physical testing to integrated experimentation, computation, theory, databases, and model-based simulation.

NEES is named in honor of four-term Congressman George E. Brown Jr., a California Democrat, who died in 1999.

NEES is intended to improve the seismic design and performance of U.S. civil and mechanical infrastructure systems by enabling computation and distributed simulation for earthquake engineering experimentation.

The facilities will enable participation from a broader earthquake engineering community, including educators, students, practitioners, and public sector organizations and individuals, who will have access to the equipment, data, models and software from NEES, the network says..

Reused Wastewater Will Irrigate New Jersey Golf Course

On Monday, DEP Commissioner Bradley Campbell ordered Gloucester County to pay the state $10,000 and create a wastewater reuse system to irrigate the Pitman Golf Course, which is located in Mantua Township.

The order settles water allocation permit violations that occurred in the years 1999 to 2002. On July 28, 2003, DEP issued a Notice of Violation to Gloucester County Parks and Recreation, which owns and operates Pitman.

"This settlement underscores the importance of protecting New Jersey's water resources and identifying alternative water supply strategies," said Campbell. "By developing a wastewater reuse system, Gloucester County can continue to provide excellent recreation opportunities at its golf course while adhering to the limits of its water allocation permit."

Reuse reduces demand on public water supplies and keeps water in the natural hydrologic system, which can be beneficial under drought conditions.

Gloucester County will work with Rowan University to construct a wastewater reuse/reclamation project that will provide an alternate irrigation source for the golf course.

Reclamation of water for reuse involves using highly treated, reclaimed wastewater to offset withdrawals of potable ground and surface water. To protect public health, treated water for use in public areas such as golf courses is subject to strict safety requirements.

Gloucester County will tap into a wastewater line used by Gloucester County Utilities Authorities, extract raw sewage and treat the raw sewage at a small satellite plant. The treated wastewater will then be used to irrigate Pitman Golf Course. Gloucester County will begin operating the wastewater reuse/reclamation project by July 31, 2009.

Genetically Modified Wheat Still a Market Risk

Widespread opposition from farm organizations, environmental groups and consumers forced Monsanto to terminate its research and promotion of genetically modified (GM) wheat six months ago. In a news release dated May 10, 2004, Monsanto announced it "will discontinue breeding and field level research of Roundup Ready wheat." Roundup is Monsanto's herbicide product, and the wheat was engineered for tolerance to Roundup.

"No new policy changes or trends have significantly lowered the market risk of introducing genetically modified wheat," said Dr. Robert Wisner, University Professor of Economics at Iowa State University. "Consumer resistance remains strong in Europe and Asia, and consumers remain the driving force in countries where food labeling allows choice."

Dr. Wisner’s conclusions are in an update released today of his October 2003 report, Market Risks of Genetically Modified Wheat, prepared for Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC), a regional network representing farmers and ranchers in Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon.

A survey by EuroBarometer published in March 2003 found that most Europeans do not support GM foods or crops, although the European Union has just lifted its five year de facto moratorium on genetically modified crops.

Food safety is the main concern of foreign consumers, said Wayne Fisher, a wheat grower near Dickinson, North Dakota, and WORC spokesperson. "They don’t trust genetically modified crops because there is no independent testing by third parties or the U.S. government. We need mandatory, independent testing."

Fisher said farmers are in jeopardy because food policy has not kept up with the new environmental, legal, and economic developments arising from GM crops.

"The companies developing genetically modified seed have shielded themselves from risk, placing all liability on farmers if something goes wrong," Fisher said.

Montana wheat grower Helen Waller called for a time-out on GM crops. "The biotech industry needs to slow down, and policy makers need to catch up," Waller said.

"We’ve seen a drop in the U.S. share of soybean exports to the European Union since commercialization of GM soybeans and a loss of the EU corn market, said Waller. "We can’t afford to jeopardize our wheat export markets. We need legislative solutions to protect our wheat farmers."

Waller and Fisher called on the Montana and North Dakota legislatures to address liability issues in the 2005 sessions.