August 2020 – Water Policy Consulting LLC

Department of the Interior Should Take on Climate Change

Public land management agencies have taken a far right turn under the Trump administration, with a strong bent toward energy development and away from their shared mission of protecting lands for the recreational enjoyment of all Americans and, increasingly, as refugia from climate change. The recently proposed appointment of William Perry Pendley as acting director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is just the latest attack on federal lands stewardship.

U.S. Senator Tom Udall lamented the disastrous turn the agency’s leadership has taken during a webinar put on in the summer of 2020 by WildEarth Guardians. Referring to the progressive approach to land and species protection under his father, Stewart Udall – who served as Secretary of the Interior under President John F. Kennedy, Udall said, “The Interior Department should be right at the center of climate, endangered ecosystems, taking better care of the land, coming up with a good land ethic and dealing with the diversity issues and the environmental justice issues.” Udall went on to add “The next president is going to want to do something about climate, the Interior Department is going to be at the center of that.”

Trump Puts the Pause on Pebble Mine

A reprieve in the contentious Pebble Mine project came from an unlikely source, when President Trump paused the permitting process for the gold, copper, and molybdenum mine in Southwestern Alaska after previously backing the project. Located in the headwaters of the lucrative Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fishery, the project is slated to include the largest earthen dam ever built, despite being located in a seismically active region. The 20 square-mile pit mine would require roads and a gas pipeline through pristine wilderness near Lake Iliamna and Lake Clark. Brown bears, wolves, moose, caribou, waterfowl, and all five species of Pacific salmon, along with some 7,500 people, mostly traditional Natives, live in the region likely to be most impacted by the mine.

Trump is calling for additional information from the Pebble Limited Partnership about environmental mitigation from the degradation caused by the project. In a letter to the Partnership, the Corps listed new requirements that would need to occur in order to mitigate the impacts of Pebble to the Bristol Bay ecosystem including compensation for impacts on 2,825 acres of open water and 129.5 stream miles within the Koktuli River watershed and on 460 acres of wetlands, 231 acres of open water and 55 stream miles along the transportation corridor and port sites. The agency gave the partnership 90 days to update their plan to address these impacts. This sudden about-face appears to have been prompted by statements made by Trumps eldest son, an avid fisherman who has fished in the region, as well as other influential Republicans who have Trumps ear.

Arctic Refuge Oil Leasing Approved, Now Come the Legal Battles

Under the Trump administration, the 1.5 million-acre arctic plain on the northern edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is now open for drilling. Next up, a call for oil lease sale nominations and industry and public comment of at least 30 days, followed by a notice of the lease sale.

Home to imperiled polar bears, the vast and far-ranging Porcupine Caribou herd, countless nesting birds, and the Gwich’in Indian Nation, this is America’s last great wilderness. After a forty-year battle to prevent oil extraction on the refuge, the announcement was a blow, but that may not be the end for this pristine ecosystem.

Opponents believe that the process for approval of drilling was rushed for political reasons resulting in a flawed and inadequate analysis of the environmental impacts in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. In addition, they claim the approval is contrary to prohibitions on killing or harassing of polar bears under the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the protection of indigenous subsistence food-gathering rights under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Vast lakes, rivers and wetlands could be affected by drilling in the Coastal Plain through water quality impacts and mining and road building related to needed infrastructure.

Similarly, the Gwich’in Steering Committee which represents members of the Gwich’n Athabascan tribes located on both sides of the Canadian/Alaskan boarder, argues that approval of drilling violates a 1987 treaty that gives the Canadian Government oversight authority into the management of the Porcupine Caribou herd. According to Arctic Today, Steering Committee Executive Director Bernadette Demientieff the “administration has done nothing but disrespect the Indigenous peoples that have occupied these lands. Our ways of life, our food security, and our identity is not up for negotiation. The fight is not over…”^[1]

Due to the impacts of COVID-19 resulting in less transportation, which in-turned caused a drop in oil processes, oil and gas companies’ interest in drilling in remote and difficult conditions of Arctic Plain has been waning. So it remains to be see whether there will be any bids submitted on the leases. Moreover, oil-tax initiative on the ballet in Alaska in November, Ballot Measure 1 would impose a 10 percent base tax on production form large North Slope oil fields and eliminate production tax credits. And finally, major banks, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, have declared that they will not finance any development in the refuge. So the fights to save the Arctic Coastal Plain is not over yet.

Winners and Losers Among Northern Fish as Climates Change

A recent Canadian study, undertaken by York University and the University of Saskatchewan, studied climate resilience among northern fish species with some surprising results. Northern fish are, by nature, remarkably resilient, adjusting to a range of conditions including short summers with 24-hours of daylight and abundant food followed by long dark winters with little or no food availability. But as streams warm, prompting an increase in the invertebrates on which salmon feed, salmon species are tending to grow faster and have greater reproductive success. That’s the surprise, and could be a boon to indigenous communities, especially as salmon expand their ranges further north. But for some fish, mainly dolly Varden and Arctic grayling, which are specialized to thrive in cold Arctic waters, there may be no adaption or migration option at hand as rivers warm and summers grow longer.

Opinion – Alaska Faces an Economic Year Like no Other

Jessica Shepherd

Back in late March, when Alaska was reporting its first spate of Covid-19 cases, Reuters published a synopsis of the state’s economy. In the article Alaska State Senator Natasha von Imhof, co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee, was quoted as having said, “We are being hit on all sides with the stock market crash, oil prices plummeting and the tourism and fishing season all but idle.” To see the original article see here.

Now, nearly six months later, we wondered how Alaska was faring based on the parameters von Imhof used to measure the state’s economic resiliency. Following is an assessment of the oil industry, the Alaska Permanent Fund, tourism, and the seafood industry for mid-August. The picture is grim, but perhaps not as dire as it looked back in March.

On March 23^rd, due to a Covid-induced stall-out in all things travel-related, oil prices plummeted from a high of $69 a barrel at the first of the year to just $23 a barrel. This equated to an overnight loss to Alaska’s treasury of some $500 to $700 million dollars. Given that the industry break-even cost of production is $39 a barrel, it was cheaper to leave oil in the ground. But the worst was ahead of us. In late April oil briefly dropped to below zero due to a glut on the market. In response, ConocoPhillips, Alaska’s biggest oil producer, announced plans to reduce production by 2,000 barrels per day and institute layoffs for 250 staff. This was followed shortly thereafter by Doyon’s announcement of 300 layoffs. As we all know, oil drives Alaska’s economic engine. As of this writing, on August 10^th, oil is back up to $45 a barrel. Still well below the price at the beginning of the year, but significantly better than the March-April outlook.

Then there was the stock market dive, which sent the Permanent Fund in a tailspin. In two weeks, the fund declined by 10% to a value of $58.7 billion. Today, even after paying out a $992 dividend in July to all eligible Alaskans, the fund is back up to $64.7 billion. The stock market, which has been oddly resilient during the pandemic, has, to date, spared the fund from a sustained loss.

The tourist season was all but on hold in the spring as cruise ship companies canceled summer sailings and Canada closed the boarder to independent travelers. As a result, it’s been a quiet summer in Alaska’s tourist destinations. Restaurants remain closed or subsist on a subdued cliental of locals and in-state travelers. Alaska’s usually clogged highways are pleasantly uncongested, and towns like Cooper Landing, Telkeetna, and Skagway are eerily quiet. And the skies over communities like Homer are oddly still now that RavnAir has folded. There’s something to be said for uncrowded sidewalks and ample parking at the grocery store, but the loss in tourist dollars has many small business owners spooked. Even with relief funding and small business loans, places like the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward, the Egan Center in Anchorage, and Chena Hot Springs Resort outside of Fairbanks, along with hundreds of bed and breakfasts, hotels, restaurants and shops have laid off staff and cut expenses to the bone, and they still aren’t making ends meet. Recovery, when it comes, will take a long time, and many of our favorite small businesses may no longer be there.

Finally, the seafood industry, which, as the second largest revenue stream in the state, contributes 5.2 billion dollars to the economy annually, faced a shortage of processing plant workers early in the season due to travel restrictions placed on the non-U.S. citizens who make up a large percent of seasonal workers. Citing concerns about Covid-spread among small, medically-underserved villages, local lawmakers in the Bristol Bay region went so far as to ask the governor to cancel the fishing season this year. In response, the state mandated a 14-day quarantine for out-of-state workers, and still, cases erupted aboard fishing vessels and at processing plants in Cordova, Whittier, Seward and Kodiak. In fact, the majority of non-residential cases in Alaska have been among seafood workers. Read more about Alaska’s fishing industry and Covid-19 cases here. Salmon runs in Bristol Bay were respectable, but the initial price came in at just 60 cents a pound, compared to $1.54 last year. And in Kodiak, Prince William Sound and Cook inlet sockeye runs were disappointing. Read more about Alaska’s 2020 salmon harvest here.

One indicator von Imhof did not take into account during her March economic assessment pertains to the state’s population. Alaska’s population has decreased for three consecutive years, declining from an all-time high of 741,456 on July 1 2016, to 731,545 on July 1, 2019. Figures for 2020 will come out later this month, but given the downturn in oil revenue and jobs, tourism, and, to a lesser degree, in fisheries, it’s likely the downward trajectory will continue.

So what do we make of this information? Alaska has ridden out the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic a little better than expected, thanks to the whims of the stock market and oil prices. Unfortunately, the private sector hasn’t fared as well, and as we approach the fall and winter with no further federal support in sight, the difficulty of keeping small businesses afloat until next year may be prove to be too much for many shops, restaurants and other service industries. They will only survive to the degree that we, as consumers, support local businesses rather than relying on Amazon.com and Walmart. Please think on that the next time you shop.

House Democrats Deliver an Ambitious Climate Action Plan

In mid-June, U.S. House Democrats released a comprehensive 538-page climate crisis action plan. The goal of the plan is to bring U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. The plan is built on the following 12 pillars:

Invest in Infrastructure to Build a Just, Equitable, and Resilient Clean Energy Economy
Drive Innovation and Deployment of Clean Energy and Deep Decarbonization Technologies
Transform U.S. Industry and Expand Domestic Manufacturing of Clean Energy and Zero-Emission Technologies
Break Down Barriers for Clean Energy Technologies
Invest in America’s Workers and Build a Fairer Economy
Invest in Disproportionately Exposed Communities to Cut Pollution and Advance Environmental Justice
Improve Public Health and Manage Climate Risks to Health Infrastructure
Invest in American Agriculture for Climate Solutions
Make U.S. Communities More Resilient to the Impacts of Climate Change
Protect and Restore America’s Lands, Waters, Ocean, and Wildlife
Confront Climate Risks to America’s National Security and Restore America’s Leadership on the International Stage
Strengthen America’s Core Institutions to Facilitate Climate Action

More specifically, from the perspective of water policy, the plan calls for “Water infrastructure resilience” standards to provide clean water and mitigate flooding, droughts and erosion. The plan also calls for the reduction of water pollution through the safe disposal of hazardous wastes from the oil and gas industry, and a recommendation to protect “at least 30% of all U.S. lands and ocean areas by 2030.”

To view the plan in its entirety, click here. To read more about the development and implementation of the plan click here and here.

Is Federal Disaster & Hazard Mitigation Aid Getting to Those Communities Most in Need?

In August 2020, National Public Radio’s Ted Talk broadcast an episode entitled “Our Relationship with Water” in which Colette Pichon Battle who is an attorney turned climate activist who grew up in Bayou Liberty just north of New Orleans.[1] She says she was thrown into her new role because rising sea levels, flooding and other climate factors are threatening the land that has been in her family for generations. Pichon-Battle says “’I work at the community level to make sure that black folks, poor folks and native folks are part of thia climate conversation’” including to communicate the policy and science of climate change to her neighbors and that the scientific community and policy makers listen to the traditional knowledge that the community can provide about the area.[2]

After Hurrican Katrina caused a tidal surge from the Gulf that swept her entire community into Lake Pontchartrain, she found that the surge was caused by sea level rise and the absence of barrier islands, now gone because of oil and gas drilling, which use to block such surges. Once she realized that hurricans like Katrina and likely worse are her to stay and in looking at flood maps of Lousiana she realized that her community along with other African American, Native American and impoverished communities would likely simply disappear before the end of the century. Quechon-Battle, notes that she was invited to the Whitehouse during the Obama administration to talk with the Federal Emergency Management Service, the agency primarily responsible for assisting communities with disaster and hazard mitigation preparedness in relation to flooding and other natural events, about how her community could obtain assistance to prepare for future flooding events. She says that during this conversation “the FEMA administrator said ‘I understand what your saying, but the FEMA regulations are’nt ment for the most vulnerable communities.’ The disaster assistance process for this country are ment for the middle class.” Despite the double take she made when she heard this statement she firmly believes that “This was an honest comment from FEMA. This is what you realize when you recognize that you recognize that the structures that are in place right now are absolutely not meant for me.”[3]

Arctic Native communities which have been experiencing increased permafrost melt, loss of sea ice, extreme weather events, flooding and erosion that may make current residences and settlements uninhabitable in the near future, no all to well about competition for limited federal disaster and hazard mitigation funding to defend against the inevitable march of climate change. In addition to what communities like Quechon-Battle’s experienced when approaching FEMA for help, in many cases, agencies require cost-benefit analysis, plans, environmental analysis, or other measures above and beyond analysis or strategies contained in Hazard Mitigation Plans (HMPs) or other plans before such communities qualify to apply for funds. Similarly, because standard arctic community HMPs do not contain a detailed cost-benefit analysis of natural hazards affecting water resources, such communities cannot obtain high rankings that larger cities can to qualify for competitive funding or other federal or state assistance needed to address such impacts. Finally, the villages cannot afford to hire consultants or even staff to conduct climate adaption planning on behalf of such communities to include more meaningful consideration of economic impacts and risks associated with coastal water resource management resiliency strategies, in order to move beyond the planning phase and into on the ground project implementation.

There is a need, therefore, to conduct economic risk-benefit and environmental analysis and otherwise close the gap between Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other governmental funding and technical assistance programs such so that North Bering Sea communities can implement on-the-ground projects that will address the Villages’ climate-related coastal water resources management challenges.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/899845219/our-relationship-with-water.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

EPA Should Veto Pebble Permit

In 2017, the US Army Corps of Engineers released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) to develop the world’s largest copper mine in the Bristol Bay watershed, located in the sensitive headwaters of Bristol Bay in Southwestern Alaska. The Mine which is proposed by the foreign-based Pebble Limited Partnership would destroy several miles of streams which are critical the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world and upon which twenty-five federally recognized tribal governments depend for subsistence. In compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Corp was chartered with drafting the EIS to analyze in detail, the environmental impacts of proposed projects.

Next to the Project Chariot when, in the 1950s, the United States Atomic Energy Commission proposed to detonate an atomic bomb off the coast of the Chukchi Sea in order to create harbor there, the Pebble Mine could be the most contentious industrial development activity ever proposed in Alaska. Due to its potential impact on water and salmon resources, it risks the economic and cultural lifeblood of the region. As a result, the mine is opposed not only by 80 percent of Bristol Bay’s residents but also by a broad spectrum of entities that include commercial fishermen, businesses, sportsmen, and conservation groups.

Yet, despite the fact that public citizens, commercial interests, tribes, conservation organizations, and even an international mining corporation oppose this environmentally and economically disastrous Mine, the Corps under the Trump Administration, established a flawed NEPA analysis in its rush to permit it. As a result, the Pebble Mine has been referred to by the conservation community as “quite simply one of the most reckless Projects anywhere in the world today.” Last year, when opening the Oversight Committee hearings regarding the mine, Congressman Peter DeFazio, Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, called it “an abomination” and stated that “the Pebble Mine proposal is a bad idea made even worse by the sham review process currently underway.”

Under the current proposal and future development plans, the mine would be so destructive to the environment and the Alaska economy that there has been a consistent pattern of major investors walking away from the project once they understand the overwhelming opposition and unavoidable environmental and economic risks. The fourth major firm to abandon the project since 2011, First Quantum Minerals Ltd., which had provided $37.5 million upfront and pledged $150 million over the following three years to fund the permitting process in exchange for a 50 percent share, pulled out in late May of 2018.

When the Final EIS for the project was released last month, a string of politicians, and other public figures came out in opposition to Pebble. For the first time cracks in the Trump Administration’s relentless anti-environmental regulatory strategy arose when Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted “As a sportsman who has spent plenty of time in the area I agree [that] the headwaters of Bristol Bay and surrounding fishery are too unique and fragile to take any chances with…Pebble Mine.” Similarly, long time extraction industry supporter, Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan, who after reviewing the Final EIS stated:

“… I am increasingly concerned that the final EIS may not adequately address the issues identified in the draft EIS regarding the full risks of the project as proposed to the Bristol Bay watershed and fishery… These processes should also not be rushed or fast-tracked, especially given the size and complexity of this particular project.”

While Sen. Sullivan, however, has expressed concern for the obviously flawed EIS process, so far, he is not off the fence yet as indicated by his statement that “While it is a major step in the permitting process, it must be emphasized that the Final EIS is not a decision document. The final EIS for the Pebble Mine is the first step in a long, demanding permitting process….”

In 30 years of working in the area of environmental law and policy, however, unless stopped by a lawsuit or legislation, I can’t remember a single project that was not given the go-ahead after it was recommended in a Final EIS.

When the FEIS was released on July 24, there are now, less than a couple of weeks remaining before the final decision on the permit and for the Environmental Protection Agency to veto the project. Dan Sullivan and other politicians need to take a firm stand and pressure the agency to do just that.