• Hurricane Sent Cargill Phosphate Wastewater to Tampa Bay
  
• USAID Environmental Whistleblower Granted Hearing
  
• Virginia Governor Opposes Bush Roadless Rule Proposal
  
• Petition Filed to Protect California Spotted Owl
  
• Southeastern Freshwater Fish Get Their Day in Court
  
• Forest Service Sued Over Tennessee Timber Sales
  
• Cold War Technology Could Provide New View of Fault Lines
  
• Federal Research Grants Aim to Strengthen Organic Agriculture
  

Hurricane Sent Cargill Phosphate Wastewater Into Tampa Bay

Water released because of the dike breach at Cargill Crop Nutrition's Riverview facility is being emptied into a storage area with the capacity to hold only 24 million gallons of water. The excess is spilling into Archie Creek, which flows into Tampa Bay.

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is overseeing the emergency operations as Cargill crews work to neutralize the acidic water with caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) to reduce acidity and help remove metals, phosphorus and some fluoride before discharge to Archie Creek. Crews ran out of the caustic solution and more had to be brought in by truck.

Company engineers anticipate the need to discharge up to 120 million gallons of partially treated water. To prevent a spill, the phosphate company may be forced to release untreated water should the breach widen and cause conditions at the site to deteriorate, the DEP said.

DEP Secretary Colleen Castille told reporters at the state Emergency Operations Center that the breach will cause "the release of 120 million gallons of acidic wastewater into a storm water facility that will contain only about 20 percent of it."

The chemicals are potentially fatal if consumed, and could cause chemical burns if touched, said Castille.

"It's a serious spill," Vice President Gray Gordon told a news conference Monday at company offices near Gibsonton. "We're very upset about this."

The wastewater, loaded with phosphorus and nitrogen, causes algae to bloom, depleting the oxygen fish need to thrive. Fish and wildlife in Archie Creek, Hillsborough Bay and Tampa Bay are likely to be affected.

"At this time, the discharge is not expected to impact residential areas or threaten public safety," Castille said.

Processing phosphate into fertilizer creates phosphogypsum as a byproduct, a low-level radioactive substance that the company is permitted pile up to 250 feet high.

In the centers of the piles are retention reservoirs that contain wastewater while it evaporates. The dike that gave way is the top layer of one of these piles. Cargill reported that the breach began as a six foot wide slice cut by storm-whipped waves in the reservoir on Sunday that grew to a 50 foot wide hole on top of the 180 foot high pile.

Hillsborough County officias said it could be days or weeks before a damage assessment is available, but when that assessment is made, Cargill could be fined and told to redesign the company's water retention structures.

On Thursday, Cargill will face concerned environmental protesters who have announced their intention to gather at the Riverview plant with picket signs to protest the befouling of Archie Creek and Tampa Bay.

Tampa Bay is one of the Gulf of Mexico’s largest estuaries, and more than two million people live in the Tampa Bay watershed.

USAID Environmental Whistleblower Granted Hearing

The ruling by the Merit Systems Protection Board finds that John Fitzgerald, a former USAID analyst responsible for overseeing environmental compliance in multi-national development bank projects, made disclosures of legal violations and mismanagement that are protected under the Whistleblower Protection Act.

Fitzgerald filed a whistleblower complaint in September 2002 alleging that USAID blocked congressionally mandated environmental reviews for projects financed by multinational banks.

U.S. delegations to international lending institutions - such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - are forbidden by law from supporting any financial aid to projects that have not undergone environmental review.

The agency charged with monitoring environmental compliance is the USAID.

Fitzgerald says the USAID ignored its environmental review requirements in response to pressure from U.S. Treasury officials determined to secure approval for financing of questionable energy projects in Africa, South America and Eastern Europe.

His whistleblower complaint specifically charges that USAID Treasury officials removed sections that he wrote from draft USAID reports to Congress.

These sections showed that:

• nearly half the money loaned by multilateral development banks received no environmental review at all;
• many of the reviews are incomplete and do not meet the law's standards;
• reviews are often completed after-the-fact, with little consideration of alternatives and are not readily available to outside groups or native populations.

The ruling by the board agreed that these disclosures played a role in the decision to abruptly abolish his position on September 30, 2002.

"This case is about the Bush administration censoring the information available to the Congress and the American people, who are paying for these loans," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which filed Fitzgerald's complaint. A hearing date has not yet been set.

Since Fitzgerald's departure the required USAID bi-annual reports to Congress have ceased.

Virginia Governor Opposes Bush Roadless Rule Proposal

The public comment period for the proposed rule ends September 14. To comment on this issue log on to: http://roadless.fs.fed.us/#comments

Petition Filed to Protect California Spotted Owl

The petition is the latest salvo in a long running battle by environmental groups to get federal protection for the species, which they believe merits listing as "endangered" under the law.

The California spotted owl is a medium sized owl that inhabits mature and old growth forests in California's Sierra Nevada and southern coastal mountains.

It is one of three recognized subspecies of the spotted owl.

The other two subspecies, the northern spotted owl, which inhabits forests in the Pacific Northwest and northern California, and the Mexican spotted owl, which inhabits forests in the Southwest, have already been designated as threatened species under the Endangered Species Act because of widespread logging of their old growth habitats.

The petitioners say the California spotted owl is also threatened by habitat loss and other factors, and cite studies that find old growth forests in the Sierra Nevada have declined by as much as 90 percent.

Such habitat loss is believed to be a factor in poor survival of adult California spotted owls, which were found by a Forest Service study to be dying at a faster rate than the listed northern spotted owl.

The groups first petitioned for the owl's protection on April 3, 2000. That petition was rejected by the Fish and Wildlife Service based on protections provided by the Sierra Nevada Framework, a plan created by President Bill Clinton to protect old growth forests and old growth dependent wildlife.

But the petitioners contend that in the wake of that decision the Bush administration has weakened the Sierra Nevada Framework, allowing triple the logging and removing most protections for the owl and old growth forests.

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service relied on the Sierra Nevada Framework to deny protection for the owl, even though they knew protections provided by the plan were on the Bush administration's chopping block," says Noah Greenwald, a conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity and primary author of the petition.

"In the absence of protection for old growth forests, the California spotted owl needs the safety net provided by the Endangered Species Act."

The petition was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign and five other conservation groups.

Southeastern Freshwater Fish Get Their Day in Court

The suit was filed by the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Forestwatch, and the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project.

The organizations charge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Interior Secretary Gale Norton with failure to designate critical habitat as required by the Endangered Species Act.

The blue shiner and the goldline darter were designated as threatened species by the Fish and Wildlife Service on April 15, 1992, but the agency has failed to designate critical habitat for either species.

The Endangered Species Act calls on the federal government to designate critical habitat when it lists a species and then develop a recovery plan for that species.

But federal agencies have more often than not failed to carry out this mandate - of the more than 1,300 species listed under the Endangered Species Act, about one-third have designated critical habitat and only 25 percent have recovery plans.

The lawsuit alleges that this failure has allowed further degradation of the fishes' habitat and reduction of their population.

The goldline darter and the blue shiner are species of southeastern freshwater fish whose habitat has been markedly diminished in Georgia and Alabama, and for the blue shiner, also in Tennessee.

Both species face extinction due to habitat destruction and fragmentation from sewage pollution, the construction of dams, sedimentation, and increased development sprawling across their former habitat.

The legal challenge is one of many centered on the designation of critical habitat, which is defined under the Endangered Species Act as areas essential for survival and recovery of a species.

Activities such as logging and mining on federal lands designated as critical habitat must not further imperil listed species.

Private lands designated as critical habitat are only affected if the landowner plans to engage in an action that requires a federal permit - such as a stormwater construction or a wetlands dredge and fill permit.

The Bush administration contends that designating critical habitat does little to help endangered and threatened species, a position refuted by environmentalists.

Forest Service Sued Over Tennessee Timber Sales

The legal action challenges the federal agency's approval of the biggest timber project in the national forest in recent history, the 900 acre Flatwoods sale in Sullivan County, as well as the George Creek sale.

The George Creek sale is in a biologically sensitive area in Carter County and borders Roan Mountain State Park, one of Tennessee's most popular outdoors destinations.

The lawsuit, filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) on behalf of Cherokee Forest Voices, says that both projects fail to adhere to the Cherokee's new land use management plan, which restricts logging and roadbuilding in these areas.

Although the projects were approved before the new plan took effect in March 2004, federal law does not allow the agency to grandfather them in, says SELC attorney Doug Ruley.

"This project would pockmark the northwest face of Holston Mountain with timber cuts, marring one of east Tennessee's favorite recreation areas for an entire generation," Ruley said. "This project clearly conflicts with the current forest plan, and that's against the law."

In both projects, the Forest Service says the timber cuts are needed to improve forest health and to create habitat for species that prefer open areas.

Conservationists argue that historical records show that the natural state of the Southern Appalachians is a relatively undisturbed forest with very few large openings in the canopy.

They contend private forestland throughout the region provides ample habitat for species that prefer forest edge areas or relatively open areas.

While the lawsuit is based on the project's inconsistency with the new plan, SELC and Cherokee Forest Voices, along with others, had appealed the Cherokee's new management plan back in April.

The groups say that despite some improvements, the overall plan is deficient in many regards, including increasing the overall timber harvest for the next 10 to 15 years.

Cold War Technology Could Provide New View of Fault Lines

The researchers will gather data that could give scientists a much clearer picture of the fault's "gouge zone," a region two to three kilometers beneath the Earth consisting of gravel sized rock created when continental plates grind against one another.

Little data has been collected on the deep underlying structures of fault lines, the researchers explain, because it is very expensive to drill deep wells and install instruments that far below ground.

For this week's experiments, the research team will use sophisticated instruments developed during the Cold War to measure the gravity gradient, or the rate at which gravity changes from place to place along the San Andreas.

The gravity gradiometer was originally developed by Lockheed-Martin as a silent navigation system for nuclear submarines - some of the underlying technology of the instrument remains classified.

The instrument will be flown over the site in an airplane, allowing the research team to cover a 38 square mile region of the San Andreas near the town of Parkfield, in central California.

The experiments take advantage of the fact that gravity varies slightly over the Earth's surface, due to small changes in the mass of subsurface rock and sediments.

"If this technique works, it will open the door for geoscientists to affordably gather information about fault lines and other subsurface areas of interest," said team leader Manik Talwani of Rice University.

The flights are expected to set a baseline measurement that can be compared with future surveys to detect changes in the shallow crust beneath the surface of the fault.

Federal Research Grants Aim to Strengthen Organic Agriculture

Organic agriculture is predicted to grow to 10 to 20 percent of California cropland by 2024.

The $571,000 grant will help bolster scientific knowledge about organic systems and to strengthen the Central Coast network of organic farmers and agricultural researchers.

In collaboration with farmers, agroecology researchers at UCSC have pioneered organic production methods for strawberries and other important regional crops.

This project will build on those successes and prepare the organic industry for continued expansion by developing baseline nutrient management tools and addressing stubborn challenges, such as soil pathogens and pest management.

"Conventional farmers have decades worth of research to draw on, while organic growers have very little scientific data to rely on," said environmental studies professor Carol Shennan, director of the UCSC Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems and one of four UCSC leaders of the project.

"Organic production is a complex system that integrates soil fertility, crop rotation, water management, and pest and disease control," Shennan said. "It requires a systems approach, but agricultural research has historically tended to focus on narrow, single issue problems."

The grant will fund a series of coordinated experiments at multiple locations. The results will be dispersed throughout the farming community with the help of organizations such as California Certified Organic Farmers, the Organic Farming Research Foundation, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, and the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association.

UCSC environmental studies professor Stephen Gliessman recalled the skepticism that greeted early collaborations.

"When we started this work 17 years ago with Jim Cochran of Swanton Berry Farms, people said, 'You're crazy. You aren't going to grow strawberries organically,'" Gliessman said. "Now, the USDA is saying, 'This is important. It has to be done.' It is the farmers who took the risk."

In Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties, more than $140 million, or six percent, of the region's $2 billion vegetable production in 2001 was certified organic, according to Shennan, and the two counties generated more than $400 million gross value in strawberries.

The California organic agriculture industry has grown quickly, producing sales of $340 million in 2003, according to the California Department of Agriculture Organic Program.

The state produces nearly half of the total organic vegetables certified in the United States - strawberries are the most lucrative organic commodity in the state on a per acre basis, valued at $17.5 million.

"Organic farmers face the same production challenges as conventional growers, but the research community has overlooked their needs," said Shennan. "UC Santa Cruz is in a good position to help fill in the gaps of scientific knowledge."