The proposed, infamous Pebble Mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay Alaska has been back in the news again. The Alaska Fisheries Board was asked this week to consider creation of a large state refuge to for the protection of Bristol Bay salmon.

For a bit of background, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., a Canadian mining conglomerate has proposed North America’s largest open pit copper and gold mine in the headwaters of two rivers that drain into Bristol Bay. The proposal would create an 896 square-mile mining district in the watershed that supports the world’s largest remaining commercial salmon fishery. The area is home to a 120,000 caribou of the Mulchatna herd as well as large populations of wolves, moose and bear. The company proposes five dams. Two of the dams would be the largest earth-filled dams in the world at more than 700 feet high and several miles long to store tailings and other toxic waste. The earthen dams would be larger than Hoover or Grand Coulee and they would be located in one of the world’s most active seismic areas. In Montana, we are acutely aware of the legacy of such mines. In 1975, a dam at the closed Mike Horse mine in the upper Blackfoot storing a million cubic yards of toxic mining waste, failed killing all fish and aquatic life along ten miles of the Blackfoot drainage. This dam was extremely tiny compared to the Pebble proposal. We also have such problems with the Troy Mine and Zortman-Landusky and others where safeguards were considered to be sufficient when permits were issued. A major spill in the Bristol Bay watershed could be an environmental nightmare of truly catastrophic proportions.

A recent poll of local residents found that 79% believe that the mine would damage the salmon fishery. Only 8% of respondents support the mine, that is 2/3 fewer than support oil and gas drilling. Most felt that the mine would damage their subsistence lifestyle and that a majority of mining jobs would go to outsiders as has happened in the North Slope oil fields. In a letter to the mining officials, local residents reminded them that, they had have stated that they would not pursue the mine if it did not have the support of local communities.

We are consistently asked to trust the process and wait for the plan of operations, but at what point will Anglo American trust that the people of Bristol Bay won’t risk our fishery for this prospect? We know that this type of massive mineral development is incompatible with the preservation of the fish and wildlife habitat of Bristol Bay. With that in mind, we ask you to keep your stated commitment to forego development of the Pebble Mine given the ongoing community opposition. We call on Anglo American to join us in protecting Alaska’s irreplaceable fishery and pristine waters and to relinquish it’s interest in the Pebble Project.

The Alaska Fisheries Board did not rule on Saturday in favor of the fisheries refuge on the Nushagak and Kvichak river drainages, but they did decide “to send a letter to state legislators asking them to consider more regulatory protection for salmon in the Bristol Bay river drainages downstream of the proposed Pebble mine.”

“What harm is there in asking for additional protection when we all know that so many projects around the world have caused so much environmental harm, even in the face of regulations and statutes that provided at the time, to everybody’s belief, adequate safeguards?” said Anchorage resident Karl Johnstone, the board’s vice chair.

Make no mistake, the Pebble Mine proposal is all about corporate profit, not about protecting the environment or providing jobs. The mining companies take no risk in destroying the Bristol Bay watershed. In their 2004 Annual Report, American Dynasty made that abundantly clear with this statement,

Northern Dynasty’s Management May Not Be Subject to U.S. Legal Process. As Canadian citizens and residents certain of Northern Dynasty’s directors and officers may not subject themselves to U.S. legal proceedings, so that recovery on judgments issued by U.S. courts may be difficult or impossible.”

East Rosebud Creek bigskyfishing.com

I’m not entirely up to speed on this, but the timeline is kind of short, so here’s what I know. The Billings Gazette reports that Hydrodynamics Inc. of Bozeman is proposing building two small hydropower projects on East and West Rosebud Creeks near Roscoe. They have filed for preliminary permits to do some drilling and scoping for the projects. Both projects are pretty similar, here are the specs for West Rosebud:

The proposed project would consist of the following: (1) a new 8-foot-high, 100-foot-long concrete diversion dam; (2) a new 7-foot-wide, 30-foot-long intake extending from the left side of the dam; (3) a new 42-inch diameter, 2.3-mile-long steel penstock; (4) a new powerhouse containing one generating unit with an installed capacity of 3 megawatts; (5) a new tailrace discharging flows into West Rosebud Creek; (6) a new substation; (7) a new 50-kilovolt, 300-foot-long transmission line; and (8) appurtenant facilities. The proposed project would have an average annual generation of 21 gigawatt-hours.

Both streams are excellent high-mountain habitat. The projects could run the hazard of dewatering portions of the creeks during low flows not to mention the disruption of roads, powerhouses, transmission lines and construction sediments. Here is the proposal by Hydrodynamics. You can see the permit applications by doing a search on the FERC website. The Docket numbers are P-13531 for East Rosebud and P-13532 for West Rosebud. Sub docket is 000 for both. Comments are only open until Dec. 21, as the permits were filed in October. Big Sky Fishing has a good overview writeup on Rosebud Creek.

I’m all for clean power, but I’m not sure we need to be chopping up what’s left of our small mountain streams for a few megawatts of electricity. The Bugle will be all over this issue and we will keep you updated when/if the projects move forward.

Update 12/03/2009: I just found a link to a pdf of the 40-page petition filed by the Montana ranchers. It is extremely fascinating reading. Gives a good quick and dirty outline of the history of exempt wells as well as outlining their case for a declaratory ruling changing the definition of  “combined appropriation“.

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Exempt groundwater wells are back in the news this week. Five Montana ranchers filed a petition Tuesday with the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation claiming that the overuse of exempt wells has become a direct threat to their livelihood. The practice of exempting small groundwater withdrawals from the normal permitting process has turned into a large problem across the West as ranch and farm communities are seeing major subdivisions gobble up adjacent land. The Bugle delved into this growing controversy back in October highlighting a story about the Yakima basin in Washington.

In Montana, nearly 30,000 exempt wells were drilled between 2000 and 2008, mostly in our fastest growing counties. A well is exempt from the normal “first in time, first in right” doctrine, outlined in the water permitting process in Montana, if it produces no more than 35 gallons per minute (GPM) or 10 acre-feet per year. The original intent for the use of exempt wells was for household use in sparse, rural populations that would have little effect on aquifers or surface waters. In recent years, we have seen five Montana basins become “closed“, where the amount of allocated water now matches the amount available. Additionally, exempt wells are not monitored, tested or mapped so we really have very little data on their effect. With thousands of such wells drilled each year at urban densities and with their associated septic systems, we do know that there is a real effect on our water.

During the last legislative session, House Bill 52 directed the Water Policy Interim Committee and the Montana Bureau of Mines to establish a groundwater investigation program “for the purpose of collecting and compiling ground water and aquifer data“. The program would “gather data, compile existing information, conduct field studies, and prepare a detailed hydrogeologic assessment report for each subbasin” in order to develop models and a monitoring plan. At their meeting on Jan. 13, 2010, the Water Policy Committee will take up the issue of exempt wells, collecting information and listening to “interested parties”.

DNRC is reviewing the petition by the five ranchers, but a similar petition by the Gallatin County Commission in 2006 was rejected by DNRC, saying that “water rules proposed by the county would have ‘completely halted development’ across large areas of the state where all water rights already have been allocated.” Hopefully, the results from HB52 will give us some real data on which to base new rules for exempt wells. This is an issue that continues to play out across the West and answers are slow in coming. It shouldn’t be a question of development or agriculture, but rather, how the two can live together.

Does this make any sense? A proposed coal-gasification plant in Indiana would capture it’s CO2 output and sell it to a big oil company who would build a pipeline costing more than a billion dollars to pipe the gas to the Gulf of Mexico to be used to force oil out of depleted oil wells. Under cap and trade policies, taxpayers would pay the coal plant for capturing CO2 which is actually used to produce more CO2 from more dirty fuel.

First off, a study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) found that fuel from gasification plants would produce about twice the amount of greenhouse gases as oil without carbon sequestration. With sequestration, the greenhouse gas output would be about the same as oil. So, we are using our dirtiest fuel to produce more of our second dirtiest fuel both of which would be burned to increase greenhouse gas output. The only way the plant can become feasible is with massive investments of tax money. A spokesman for the project “said he hopes to obtain the federal government’s promise to pay off $1.87 billion in debt should the plant fail.” Gas from the plant would have to sell for about $7.50 per therm (100,000 BTU). Current market price is $3.79 per therm. A similar Indiana plant, under construction just upped it’s building cost estimate to about $2.5 billion from original estimates of $1.3-$1.6 billion and is expected to rise further. “Duke’s Indiana customers have been expected to see about an 18 percent rate hike to pay for the project, which is receiving more than $460 million in government tax incentives. But that rate increase doesn’t reflect the latest cost increases.” The plant by itself won’t produce enough CO2 to support the pipeline, so they have to get at least one more plant to buy into the project.

There isn’t enough coal currently being mined to support large gasification efforts. The NAS report found that “The U.S. transportation sector consumes 14 million barrels of oil per day. If coal mining activities in the U.S. increase by 50 percent – an additional 580 million tons of coal mined each year – up to 3 million barrels of fuel per day could be produced. To achieve this, two or three new coal-to-fuel plants would need to be built each year over the next 20 years…” Costs of fuels produced by gasification could be competitive with current fuel costs only if the costs of carbon sequestration and pollution isn’t added in. It costs about a third more in power to sequester CO2. It only becomes anywhere near economically feasible if the gases are secondarily used to produce oil from depleted fields. Capturing CO2 to produce more CO2. That doesn’t pass the smell test.

This is just another example of using massive infusions of public money to support coal technologies that have never been proven and may never be economical. Have we come to the point where using more coal to produce more oil is a good idea? Why do we keep subsidizing this crazy stuff and skimping on funding for renewables and conservation?

A study of Congressional Budget Office data by a respected MIT economist finds that the Senate health care bill will save consumers money. The new study found savings of $200 on health insurance premiums for single folks and savings of $500 for a family of four in 2009 dollars once the new plans become available. Savings would be significantly more for lower income people because they would receive tax credits to help pay for premiums. These savings come on top of more generous benefits packages that will be available through the exchanges along with protections against losing coverage and against not being able to find coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

You can bet that Republicans will continue the false drumbeat of higher costs, but then we all know that Republicans don’t believe in science in the first place and would rather you just go ahead and die.

A recent poll found that 90% of Canadians support, or somewhat support the Canadian health care system. The Canadian Institute for Research on Public Policy found that while the Canadian system may not be perfect, they want to keep what they have and Canadians praise President Obama for trying to reform the U.S. system. The poll found that 61% of Canadians think that the best thing about their system is that it is free and available to everyone while only 33% criticized the wait times for treatment. That doesn’t sound at all like what we are hearing from the right in this country at every opportunity.

Another poll by the same organization found that seven in ten Canadians are not at all worried, or not very worried about the H1N1 flu virus and most feel that Ottawa is doing an adequate job of distributing the vaccine. I wonder what those numbers would look like in the U.S.?

Moving Montana away from dirty extractive energy production will not only help the earth, it will help Montanans. A new study by a team of researchers at the University of California, using a state-of-the-art forecasting model predicts that “comprehensive clean energy and climate policies would create jobs, increase consumers’ income, and strengthen the U.S. economy as a whole.“

For Montana, the model predicts that we will experience a baseline employment increase of 76,000 jobs between 2010 and 2020. On top of those numbers, policies implemented under cap and trade policies such as those set forth in the American Clean Energy and Security Act or the Senate Clean Energy and American Power Act would create an additional 5,000 to 13,000 new jobs. We could see an increase of $0.1 to $0.5 billion in Montana’s GDP over and above growth without the legislation. Comparisons of a “moderate efficiency case” and a “high efficiency case” showed that the bills would lead to an increase in real household income in Montana of $599 to $1,736 per year more than without clean energy legislation. An earlier study by EPA found that the cost of such legislation nationwide would be around $100 per household on average. Sounds like a pretty good tradeoff to me.

The new study reveals that states like Montana will actually tend to benefit more than others due to our higher energy costs,

Contrary to what is commonly assumed, comprehensive national climate policy does not benefit the coasts at the expense of the heartland states. In fact, heartland states will gain more by reducing imported fossil fuel dependence because they are generally spending a higher proportion of their income on this low employment, high price risk supply chain. Demand side policies make a bigger difference for more carbon-dependent states, and carbon reduction opportunities represent riper and lower hanging fruit.

Implementation of energy efficiencies and cleaner power helps Montana because “energy efficiency reduces import dependence and the costs for transportation, heating, electricity, etc., saving households and businesses money — money they can spend on domestic goods and services, which will create jobs for Americans.” There are a lot of things I don’t like about these bills. Industry has had way too much input on the legislation and a lot of money will be wasted to support coal and oil, but we are running out of time to address critical climate issues and we need a national clean energy policy sooner rather than later.

Lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) are not evil. Lake trout are weeds, a pelagic version of spotted knapweed. Weeds do fine in their native habitat, they have predators and natural controls that keep them in control. Outside their natural range, weeds and lake trout alike tend to decimate local populations. Lake trout out-compete, outlive and consume native species. We spend millions every year to control invading weeds and save natural habitats. Fish seem to be different. Once lake trout become established they tend to develop a constituency. Fishermen fear that if we try to eradicate the invaders, fishing opportunities and fish populations will decline. Just the reverse is actually true.

Lake trout are native to a small part of Montana. Following the last glacial retreat, isolated populations of lake trout remained in a few lakes that drain into Hudson Bay. In the past century, lake trout have been legally and illegally introduced into many waters throughout the West. In order to salvage populations of native fish, several large projects are now underway to reduce populations of invasive lake trout. Millions of dollars have been spent to net lake trout from Yellowstone Lake where their presence in only the last two decades has reduced one of the last strongholds of Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout to less than 10% of its historic population. Lake trout were introduced into Lake Pend Oreille in northern Idaho in 1925, but only in the last decade has their presence, along with other factors, led to declines in Kokanee salmon populations along with reductions in native trout species. In Flathead Lake, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks now estimates that the lake trout population has reached nearly 400,000 fish in the lake and native bull trout have declined to only 3,000 to 4,000 in the entire drainage. An experimental lake trout netting program was begun in Swan Lake last year that will, hopefully, show positive results in one of the better strongholds of bull trout in northwest Montana. Glacier National Park has seen populations of it’s native fish in precipitous decline along the western slopes due to invasion by lake trout from Flathead Lake. The Park has committed to netting lake trout in Quartz Lake where they believe that they have a reasonable chance of saving a small, distinct native bull trout population.

The time has come to make a tough decision on how to deal with lake trout in Flathead Lake. Following the crash of the kokanee population during the 1980s, due in part to the introduction of opossum shrimp, lake trout numbers have exploded leaving native populations of bull trout and cutthroat trout on life support. Flathead Lake is co-managed by Montana FWP and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. So far, lake trout control has relied on sport fishing through both fishing contests and regular fishing. Conventional wisdom among fisheries managers maintains that a population reduction of at least 50% is needed to affect any meaningful reduction in fish populations. Current techniques have removed only 40,000 to 50,000 fish annually with no noticeable affect on the lake trout. Since 1998, western bull trout have been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Recent bull trout redd counts in all Flathead River tributaries continue to show that the precarious populations are headed toward a local extinction. We must act and act soon. It is time to take the next logical step and move toward a lake trout netting program on Flathead Lake to reduce lake trout numbers. We cannot allow a burgeoning population of invasive species in the big lake to continue to endanger our native fish throughout the entire drainage.

According to MTFWP, the crash of the kookanee and bull trout populations led to a reduction in fishing interest in Flathead Lake from over 89,000 angler-days in the 1980s to around 54,000 angler-days currently. Some would say that anglers only want to catch fish and don’t really care about the type of fish they catch. That seems to me, akin to saying that hunters would just as soon shoot Jersey cows as elk since they are easier to kill and provide more meat. Fishermen are interested in the overall health the local environment. As we have seen in other areas, fishermen are drawn to healthy waters with vibrant multi-species fishing opportunities. Allowing bull trout to decline further could result in severe federal fishing restrictions under the ESA. Removing a few more lake trout will not affect fishing opportunities, it will only add diversity along with protecting our native fish.

We can never fully remove lake trout from Flathead Lake any more than we can completely eradicate spotted knapweed from Montana, but we can reduce this threat to Montana’s indigenous fish and hopefully give our native species a chance to thrive into the future. We simply can’t stand by and watch as individual genetic components continue to “blink out” due to a basin-wide contamination from Flathead Lake. Contact Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and let them know that you are  interested in the health and strength of our native fish populations and that you support reducing lake trout numbers in Flathead Lake.

FWP Region 1 Headquarters
490 North Meridian Road
Kalispell, MT 59901
Phone: (406) 752-5501
Fax: (406) 257-0349
E-mail: fwprg12@mt.gov

I admit it. I’m unduly impressed by geology and if there’s one thing Montana and the West has in abundance, it’s rocks. Some of the most interesting geology I know of lays in the channeled scablands of eastern Washington. There is a great article in the current issue of High Country News about the Glacial Lake Missoula floods.

If you haven’t been, I highly recommend that you schedule a weekend trip over to the scablands and take in as much as you can. The story is truly impressive. Failure of a 2,000-ft. high ice dam releasing 500 cubic miles of water. Two trillion tons of water flowing down the Clark Fork Valley at speeds of up to 80 mph. Ten times the flow of all the rivers in the world emptying out through the Columbia Gorge in three days. And this happened as many as 100 times over 3,000 years. How could you not be impressed. The Ice Age Floods Institute, a volunteer organization sponsors lectures and field trips and is working to make materials available to the public. In 2001 they began work on The Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail an interpretive route around important landmarks of the flood area. You can get books and videos from the IAFI website store.

Dry Falls in the Grand Coulee

At Dry Falls, near Coulee City, WA you will see the remnants of a waterfall ten times the size of Niagara, created by the floods (the plunge pools are pretty good fishing by the way). Many of these features were first cataloged by J Harlan Bretz who spent nearly his entire life convincing the community of geologists that the features were created by the catastrophic floods. There is an excellent recent biography by John Soennichsen, Bretz’s Flood that I heartily recommend. For another good description of the floods, you might also look for Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods by UM geology professor David Alt. The books and videos are great, but this is stuff you just have to see in person to fully comprehend the gigantic scale. Just one more reason why the Northwest is such an interesting place to live.

John Muir & John Burroughs

The work in the field is at an end for the present season, and I am now busy preparing my report. Two alternatives present themselves for the treatment of the reserved public timber lands. One is to reserve all such lands at one blow by refusing to allow any forest lands of the United States to be disposed of hereafter. This course would probably require Congressional action, and it is by no means certain that such action could be obtained. The other course is to secure the reservation of considerable bodies not now reserved, so as to include, as far as possible, all mountain ranges and any other considerable bodies of government timber land which may exist . The President has the necessary authority, and Congress would not require to be directly consulted… Letter from Gifford Pinchot to John Muir, Dec. 15, 1897 on establishing the National Forests

Now this is just cool! The University of the Pacific has made available on the internet 6,500 pieces of correspondence to and from John Muir. The letters become part of the Holt-Atherton Special Collections which includes Muir’s Journals and drawings as well as an extensive collection of photographs. The collection gives images of the original correspondence along with full-text transcriptions.

John Muir, of course, was the heart and soul of the early conservation movement. Around the turn of the century he advised and tutored scholars, educators and politicians such as Louis Agassiz, John Torrey, Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot and on the inherent value of wild places. As co-founder of the Sierra Club, Muir fought tirelessly for preservation of wilderness.

The new collection provides valuable insight into the personal side of John Muir as well as perspectives on his influence on the creation of our national parks, national forests and wilderness system. This is one web place I would certainly be sure to visit, but make sure you have at least a couple of hours to devote before you start to peruse the site.

“God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.” John Muir