http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/environment/NEPA-gets-flak-over-Falmouth-Port_8318051

Some things never change.  DV

Agency rejects criticism

BY PETRE WILLIAMS-RAYNOR Environment editor williamsp@jamaicaobserver.com

Wednesday, January 26, 2011 

THE National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) has come in for yet more heavy criticism over its monitoring of the Historic Falmouth Port Development in Trelawny.

But NEPA has come out swinging, insisting that it has done all that was within its power to protect the environment.

 

A section of the Historic Falmouth Port Development in Trelawny. (Photo: Marlon Reid)

MCCAULAY… there seems to be no co-ordination between all the various reports and they do not seem to lead to any kind of regulatory decisionmaking or effective action (Observer file photo)

Men at work on the Historic Falmouth Port Development in Trelawny.

A section of the Historic Falmouth Port Development in Trelawny. (Photo: Marlon Reid) 1/3

Diana McCaulay, chief executive officer for the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), is, however, not impressed. She said the environmental regulatory agency had failed to safeguard the historic town’s natural resources, notably the corals and wetlands, from the $7.5-billion development. And NEPA’s failure, she said, is reflected in the monitoring reports for the project.

“Using the Access to Information Act, JET has sought and received a large number of monitoring reports for Falmouth, done by at least four different sets of people — consultants, divers, NEPA officers. “They range from being professional and detailed with appropriate water quality tests and observations — these reports clearly and repeatedly describe the failures to handle the relocated coral properly and the “accidental” damage referred to by Ainsley Henry of NEPA — to reports of such brevity and lack of specificity as to be almost useless,” McCaulay told Environment Watch.

“There seems to be no co-ordination between all the various reports and they do not seem to lead to any kind of regulatory decision-making or effective action,” said McCaulay. “The breaches they describe include illegal removal of wetlands, insufficient dust control, non-functional silt screens, silt screens not deployed in the appropriate area, dredging beginning before corals were removed, silt plumes trailed across coral reefs, repeated failure to handle and relocate corals correctly, debris, and silt running off into the marine environment (as well as) the illegal dumping of sewage on land by vessels carrying out the work.”

The JET boss’ comments come in the wake of NEPA’s assertion that it had invested some $12 million to see to the effective monitoring of the $7.5-billion development.

Henry himself has challenged McCaulay’s statements.

“The statements about (the adequacy of NEPA’s efforts) are disingenuous at best. How much is enough? Recognising the scale of the project before us, the specific conditions mandated by NEPA resulted in monitoring being necessary at three levels — in addition to the regular monitoring capabilities of the agency,” he said.

“The contractors were required to monitor as a part of the contract from the PAJ (Port Authority of Jamaica); the PAJ was also required to perform monitoring independent of that conducted by the contractor; NEPA hired consultants to monitor; and teams from the agency’s permanent staff also supplemented this monitoring force. While it is accurate that there are assertions in some of the monitoring reports that would support some of those statements being made, it is flawed to assume that the entire story is evident as a consequence.”

Henry, the director of NEPA’s Applications Management Division, noted further that “During the course of the relocation of corals, the agency, through its monitoring teams, sought to ensure that due care was being taken with the handling of the corals being replanted and this was in fact evidenced by the regular briefing sessions that were conducted for the divers by the diving company that undertook the work”.

“Also, on every occasion that NEPA had divers in the water, this was an area to which particular attention was being paid. As a consequence, any infringement resulted in discussions with the diving company to modify behaviour/methods to ensure that the desired results would be achieved,” he told Environment Watch.

“The “accidental” damage that I referred to was as a consequence of a dislocated pipeline and grounding by a barge and not the handling of the corals. The Doc Centre at NEPA has a copy of each of the 11 monitoring reports produced by CL Environmental, which can be perused by the public. These reports all make reference to both the handling and corrective steps that were taken during the relocation,” Henry said.

“Action, and effective action at that, was therefore assured in each instance. Further, it must also be recognised that it was the monitoring activities that allowed for the detection of the “accidents” for which restitution has been required and is being implemented,” he added.

More than 145,000 pieces of coral have been relocated, in accordance with provisions to limit the impact on the environment, Henry told the Sunday Observer earlier this month.

“We have relocated all the corals that met the size class limitations that were in the impact footprint (the area affected by the project). The size class limitations in the permit were for all corals at five centimetres and above (to) be relocated, and there was a concession granted during the process for 10 centimetres and above to be relocated first,” he said at the time.

But the relocation is itself something with which JET and other conservationists have also taken issue.

“Relocation of some of the larger corals is considered a mitigation measure to coral reef destruction and this is what was supposed to be done in Falmouth. In fact, the success of coral reef replanting in general is by no means assured and there are many cases where it was completely failed. In the case of Falmouth, all corals over five centimetres in size were supposed to be removed. This was arbitrarily changed to all corals over 10 centimetres in size,” McCaulay said.

“The corals were supposed to be secured with a certain type of adhesive; this too was arbitrarily changed to cement. The corals were supposed to be relocated in specific areas before dredging some of the days divers went down to tag the corals for removal, the visibility was so poor from the dredging taking place that they had to abandon their efforts,” she added.

Henry has offered no guarantees concerning the survivability of the relocated corals, but said the relocation had been the best option.

“There are no guarantees that are possible. As with any other sessile organism, when moved they are subject to some stress and as a consequence some mortality is expected. Despite this however, the degree of mortality expected is still far less than that which would have occurred if the project had not been mandated to do the relocation,” he said.

“There is an ongoing monitoring component to the relocation works that will seek to determine the levels of survival over a five-year period and this will also help the agency to refine these processes. The relocation activities that were attempted at Rackham’s Cay in Kingston had served to teach us many lessons that were applied to Falmouth and that we believe served to enhance the activities that were done there and which ought to result in higher rates of survival,” he added.

McCaulay has also protested the use of corals, dead or alive, the dredge material being used for land reclamation in the historic town.

“Coral reefs do have a mixture of live and dead corals. A pristine coral reef would have live coral cover of between 50 and 70 per cent. A relatively healthy coral reef in Jamaican today would have live coral cover between 20 and 40 per cent because most of our reefs are somewhat to severely degraded. It is incorrect, however, to say that the dead coral is of no value and can be dredged and used as fill on land without there being any effect on the marine environment,” the JET boss said.

“A coral reef is a community of plants and animals interacting with each other — the parts of the reef that are dead still provide habitat for a range of organisms. Dredging of a reef, both its live coral and its dead coral on which the live coral attaches and grows, destroys the entire reef structure, plain and simple, and NEPA knows or should know this,” she added.

To this Henry said that the dead corals being used for land reclamation were those that formed a part of the “dredge spoil”.

“At no point did I suggest that only live corals serve an ecological function and in fact I was at pains to point out that it was in recognition of this fact that the agency mandated that artificial reef “superstructures” be included as a part of the mitigation,” he said.

“The dead corals that were used in the development works are those portions that would have been dredge spoil, that is, material that would have otherwise been dumped. The agency is by no means suggesting that it is acceptable to use corals as fill material under ordinary circumstances,” Henry added.

JET is, nonetheless, insistent that NEPA has not adequately done its work.

“Despite the many breaches, the only recorded responses from NEPA were verbal and written warnings — paperwork, in other words. The natural resources NEPA is supposed to protect were simply a casualty of the construction work and that for NEPA was the end of the matter… (The project) has devastated a functioning, reasonably healthy coral reef, destroyed 40 hectares of functioning wetlands and will remove over 20 hectares of reasonably healthy seagrass beds,” McCaulay said.

“NEPA’s extravagant promises of the permit conditions being strictly enforced were broken and many permit conditions were breached without meaningful sanctions. The effects on the town of Falmouth and the success of the environmental mitigation measures can only be evaluated in the future, but even were they to be miraculously successful, the fact still remains that Falmouth has lost a significant portion of its natural resources because of this cruise ship pier,” she added.

Henry contends that NEPA has done its job.

“Throughout the project the agency utilised many of the tools in our compliance arsenal to encourage compliance — several stop orders were issued, modifications of processes ordered, additional mitigation and restitution negotiated and implemented, all of which were “legal”,” he told Environment Watch.

“The agency does not view the “court” as the only mechanism to achieve desired results and in the interest of the protection of the environment viewed the immediate modification of the activities/situation on the ground as preferable to engaging in a protracted and slow court proceeding. It must be highlighted that in each instance where there was an injurious activity identified, it was brought to a stop quickly and hence prevented further damage from occurring,” Henry added.

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/environment/NEPA-gets-flak-over-Falmouth-Port_8318051#ixzz1CSuH04py

http://keysnews.com/node/28295

December 8th, 2010

BY ROBERT SILK Free Press Staff
rsilk@keysnews.comKEY LARGO — Most would agree that preserving the reefs of the Florida Keys are important for reasons ranging from the economic to the esoteric to the ecological.

But the discovery of a compound off Key Largo that could help cure colon cancer is illustrative of a less discussed imperative for preserving the reefs: the potential their genetic diversity holds for medical science.

“I think we’ve just skimmed the surface of what is out there,” says Kate Semon, a coral research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, who has been involved with the emerging field of marine biotech.

Humans have used plants for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. In fact, plant compounds are the genesis of many modern pharmaceuticals. Quinine, used to treat malaria, for example, comes from the bark of a tree native to the South American rainforest. Aspirin comes from willow tree bark. Numbing agents, like Novocain and its more infamous cousin cocaine, come from the coca plant.

But it is only in the past few decades that scientists have turned toward the sea in search of new medications.

Part of that quest includes scouring the coral reefs, where species ranging from sponges to cyanobacteria, often called blue-green algae, are engaged in chemical warfare to fight off predators as well as competitors.

It was on Pickles Reef off of Key Largo in 2003 that Valerie Paul of the Smithsonian Marine Station in Fort Pierce gathered a sample of a seaweed called symploca, which uses its own witch’s brew of toxins to compete for space on the reef.

Her team took the puff-ball like plant back to the lab and extracted the active ingredients. Those ingredients were eventually sent off to the lab of Hendrik Luesch, an assistant medicinal chemistry professor at the University of Florida, who found that the extract was potent to cancer cells but far more benign for healthy ones.

In 2007 Luesch isolated the compound that was taking down the cancer cells. He called it “largazole” after Key Largo. Just months later, Duke University chemist Jiyong Hong was able to synthetically reproduce largazole, a crucial step that allows the drug to be manufactured in large quantities, and without constant trips to the reef.

Armed with enough of the synthetic compound to begin experimentation, Luesch tested largazole first in Petri dishes. Then he implanted it in tumor-bearing mice. In a study published last month in the peer-reviewed Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, he and seven co-authors reported that screening the compound against the National Cancer Institute’s 60 cell lines “revealed that largazole is particularly active against several colon cancer cell types.”

The benefits could well be major, as colon cancer is the second largest cancer killer in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute.

“It is potentially an additional weapon in the fight against cancer,” Luesch said, adding that he plans to do more research on how other cancers respond to largazole.

He’ll also eventually up the ante on his studies to include human cancer patients. And if all goes well he estimates largazole could be approved by the Food and Drug Administration in about a decade.

If so, it would join Yondelis and eribulin mesylate as FDA-approved cancer fighting medications that were derived from the marine environment. The active ingredient in Yondelis is modeled after the extract of a sea squirt while eribulin mesylate is a synthetic remake of a toxin found in a type of sea sponge.

Paul, from Smithsonian, says that with the oceans so vast, compounds like largazole, culled from an obscure type of seaweed on a coral reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, are most certainly just the tip of the iceberg.

“I think there is really tremendous potential,” she said.

For FKNMS Superintendent Sean Morton it is one more reason to preserve healthy ecosystems and coral reefs in the Keys.

“I think it is fantastic,” he said. “Biotech is certainly a growing field and I’m happy that preserving the coral reef can contribute to that.”

rsilk@keysnews.com

Here’s the link to all the presentations….DV

http://www.oceansday.org/presentations.html

UN Climate Change Conference – Cancún
Dear W2O Subscribers, 

UN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE-CANCÚN-OCEAN DAY
The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place in Cancún, Mexico, now through the 10th of December. The two-week meeting is the sixteenth Conference of the 194 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the sixth meeting of the 192 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. Close to 15,000 participants, including government delegates from the 194 Parties to the UNFCCC and representatives from business and industry, environmental organizations and research institutions, are attending the two-week gathering in Cancún.
Today, Monday, December 6, the Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Small Islands, along with other partners, will host an OCEAN DAY event to present and discuss ocean issues relevant to the discussions and to advocate for inclusion of such issues in the Conference outcomes. For additional information and reports on the meeting, go to www.global-forum.edu.
The WORLD OCEAN OBSERVATORY, in collaboration with the Global Forum, has created a special website—oceanclimate.org—to  address the profound interrelation between ocean and climate to include video interviews, on-line links and resources, a new feed, and interactive forum for comment. Issues addressed are: CO2 emissions, polar melt, extreme weather, acidification, fresh water, disease, biodiversity, coastal resources, economic effects, and impacts on small island nations. Responses addressed are: mitigation, adaptation, invention, and public participation.
We hope you will visit and use these resources in your educational and outreach endeavors.
 
 
 
OCEAN CLIMATE AND THE W2O SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE FOR PUBLIC OUTREACH
During the past year, the W2O has been building upon a concept–an institutional cost sharing for the production of audio-visual and educational services on key ocean issues for use by aquariums, maritime museums, and other ocean-related organizations worldwide. The W2O Subscription Project offers two such modules per year at an astonishingly low cost, pro-rated among what we hope will be many institutions around the world. The first module on OCEAN CLIMATE is complete and contains a  video overview and interviews on ocean climate issues; a second video on Ocean Acidification, narrated by Sigourney Weaver, and produced in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council; a live webcast event (to be scheduled) on Extreme Ice; and a catalogue of related educational resources.

The second module—on marine biodiversity and coral reefs—is now in production. Thus, both modules will be available to you for your 2011 program. Watch the trailer for OCEAN CLIMATE here.

This new resource is an on-going series of provocative, affordable, up-to-date video and associated materials to enrich your audio-visual presentations on key ocean issues. Our materials are produced (in HD and additional formats) to be viewed in your theaters, in exhibits, on kiosks, on your website, and in your educational programs. Our license restricts you only from any commercial use or transfer for any reason in any form to any third party. A full contract document and access to the current module is available upon request.

As a subscriber, your institution will gain not only valuable interpretive resources but also contribute to the self-sustaining continuity of these materials into the future. In these times of financial restriction, I submit this unique cooperative approach will efficiently and economically improve your educational services and extend the presentation of responsible ocean science and policy through your aquarium, maritime museum, science center, or environmental organization to a collective audience of millions worldwide committed to the sustainable ocean. For further details, and to subscribe, please contact : director@thew2o.net.

Best wishes,
Peter Neill, Director
 
You may also find this newsletter online at: http://www.thew2o.net/newsletter/un-climate-change-conference-canc-n

http://keysnews.com/node/28125

I am so happy to see that this rule is finally being adopted to improve water quality for the Florida Keys coral reefs.    Craig Quirolo first proposed it in his comments on the creation of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in the late 1980’s.  While a director at Reef Relief, I pursued the creation of a No Discharge Zone in the Florida Keys by drafting and helping the City of Key West establish the first Keys No Discharge Zone in the late 1990’s. Next we supported the effort to extend it to all waters of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary–and it was done for state waters of the sanctuary by 2002. At that time, I was part of a sanctuary working group effort and directed the launch of an educational campaign entitled Pump it. Don’t Dump it.   As a member of the county Marine and BOating Committee, I  worked to find funding to install additional pumpout facilities in the Keys to make compliance easier.  Next my focus went to all county waters of the Florida Keys (including marinas and liveaboards)—and that was adopted by the county commission in 2008.   Now—finally—after many years of pressing sanctuary officials and promises to do so (and almost two years after my retirement from Reef Relief), the NDZ  is being extended to all federal waters of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary this year,  2012.  What a long road to cleaner water.   DeeVon Quirolo

To read the final rule, go to: http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#documentDetail?R=0900006480ba42c0

Feds adopt clean water rules

BY TIMOTHY O’HARA Citizen Staff
tohara@keysnews.com

Marine sanitation treatment devices do not kill all pathogens found in wastewater, nor do they remove nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen. The new rule will help prevent these pollutants from entering the ecosystem, said sanctuary spokesman Emily Crum.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries received more than 1,400 written comments during a 90-day comment period for the proposed rule, which was published in the Federal Register on Nov. 16, 2009.

 tohara@keysnews.com

http://www.keysnet.com/2010/12/01/284149/no-discharge-zone-expanded-to.html

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/health/fl-waste-outfall-broward-20101025,0,2211108.story

Reef Relief’s Paul Johnson worked hard to get this bill passed using rigorous science that demonstrated the negative impacts of sewage on coral reefs; the benefits of meeting fresh water demands alone, beyond the obvious issue of providing clean water for the area’s coral reefs, make it a win-win for any responsible community. What are they thinking?  DV

County says state law would double residents’ sewage bills

6:08 p.m. EDT, November 1. 2010

The pipe is one of six in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties ordered closed by a 2008 state law, after a campaign by environmentalists who argued the pipes were polluting coral reefs and wasting fresh water.

The law, which set a deadline of 2025, requires wastewater authorities to improve treatment systems so the water can be used for purposes such as irrigating golf courses, watering lawns and recharging underground water supplies.

The Broward County Commission learned last month that it would cost about $800 million to construct such systems. Sewage bills for the pipe’s northern Broward users would more than double, with the average customer’s bill rising from $33.09 to $69.48.

Now the county is aiming for a way around the requirement — by a change in the law, a waiver or some other exemption.

Thomas Hutka, Broward’s public works director, said spending hundreds of millions to pump the water into the Floridan aquifer or to lay pipes to spray it on lawns “is not a cost-effective use of taxpayer funds.”

“The county will continue to work with the state as we have since the year 2007 so that we can continue using the ocean outfall, which we believe to be both cost-effective and environmentally sound,” Hutka said.

Alan Garcia, the county’s water and wastewater director, said the water already is 90 percent clean.

“If you take a jar out of our treatment plant it’s as clear as can be,” he said. “There are no solids in it. It’s not yellow or green.”

Ed Tichenor, director of Palm Beach County Reef Rescue, an environmental group that led the campaign to close the pipes, said environmental advocates would put up “quite a fight” to prevent Broward from keeping the pipe in service.

“Solids aren’t the problem,” Tichenor said. “It’s the nutrients, it’s the pharmaceuticals, it’s the pathogens and viruses that survive the initial treatment. And one reason they passed this legislation was a water shortage in southeast Florida, and southeast Florida doesn’t recycle water like the rest of the state.”

The pipe off Delray Beach shut down last year. Boca Raton expects to be reusing 100 percent of its water by 2015, using the pipeline only for seasonal overflows, said Chris Helfrich, the city’s utilities director. Hollywood and Miami-Dade County are exploring options, both saying the change would require a massive investment in new treatment systems.

The Broward-operated pipe, installed in the mid-1970s, discharges 32 million to 34 million gallons of treated sewage daily from Parkland, Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach, Coral Springs, Tamarac, Oakland Park, Lauderhill, North Lauderdale, Coconut Creek, Lauderdale Lakes, part of unincorporated Broward and a small part of Fort Lauderdale.

Environmentalists have blamed this and other pipes for discharging nutrients such as ammonia that fertilize the growth of algae that smothers coral reefs. State legislators said the region can’t afford to dump that much fresh water at sea when the region is facing permanent water-use restrictions.

Broward Vice Mayor Sue Gunzburger said, “If there’s anything we can do to avoid meeting that standard by 2025,” Broward wants to do it.

“It’s a very expensive, unfunded mandate that I don’t think would make much difference when it comes to the ocean,” Gunzburger said. “The most telling fact is that most of the nutrients that go into the sea are not from the wastewater effluent but from storm water discharge.”

Although there have been several swimming advisories in Broward for high bacteria levels over the past year, environmental officials inspected the pipes and plants and found no malfunctions. Health officials say the more likely source of contamination was animal waste washed into the water from birds and other wildlife.

Broward Commissioner Kristin Jacobs, who is known as an environmentalist, said the state mandate was not based on sound science and the alternatives have their own environmental issues.

“It is not the intent of Broward County to slip one past the people,” said Jacobs. “What we’re looking for is a science-based solution.”

But she said she doubts the county will be allowed to keep using the outfall.

“There are politicians who used this in their brochure for their next election: ‘I shut off the ocean outfall.’ They’re going to come back and give us some grace to deal with this issue? I’m skeptical.”

David Fleshler can be reached at dfleshler@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4535.