|
Next steps for the Cook Inlet beluga NMFS starts ESA consulting and moves towards completion of a recovery outline, while wastewater utility takes stock of its position Alan Bailey Petroleum News
While the elusive beluga whales of Alaska’s Cook Inlet overwinter in the inlet’s grey and murky waters, oblivious to the war of words surrounding their future well being, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service has started applying the various procedures that result from the whales becoming listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The October decision by NMFS to list the whales as endangered fueled an intense debate, with some people supporting the listing and others saying that it was premature. And on Jan. 14 the State of Alaska announced that it would sue to challenge the listing, expressing concerns about economic impacts and saying that the listing was not necessary.
Consultations started Brad Smith, Anchorage office supervisor for the NMFS protected resources division, told the Alaska Association of Environmental Professionals in Anchorage on Jan. 21 that his office had already started beluga whale consultations with other federal agencies — under the terms of section 7 of the ESA any federal agency involved in an action or funding an action that might impact the whales must consult with NMFS to determine how to avoid jeopardizing the whales’ survival.
“Basically it encourages us and the (other) federal agencies to work together and try to come up with ways to mitigate a plan so that it doesn’t result in a take,” Smith said. A “take” is generally prohibited for an animal with an endangered status and includes harassment or harming of an animal, as well as more lethal actions such as hunting or shooting.
Consultation generally starts informally, to determine whether a take is likely to occur during the planned action. If a take is unavoidable, a formal consultation would ensue to develop a biological opinion on whether an incidental take could be allowed. And the consultation needs to take into account both the direct and indirect consequences of the action, Smith said.
However, despite the NMFS view that the future of the Cook Inlet beluga whales is already in jeopardy, Smith sought to dispel concerns that NMFS would seek to prohibit all activity in Cook Inlet.
“That’s not the case and we certainly aren’t going into the consultation process from the position that nothing further can go on in the Cook Inlet,” Smith said. The focus will be on identifying those actions that would increase the risk to the whales.
And, given the size of the emerging consultation workload, the Anchorage office is having to prioritize what consultation to do first, Smith said.
Critical habitat Also under the terms of the ESA, by October 2009 NMFS has to designate the beluga whales’ critical habitat. Federal agencies are then required to avoid adverse modifications to that habitat.
The critical habitat consists of those parts of the animals’ range where there are physical and biological features that are essential to the conservation of the species and which may require management, Smith explained.
“This has been tested in court and the operative phrase … is ‘essential features’,” Smith said. “It’s not enough to draw a circle around an area and say that this is critical habitat because this is where the whales are. Rather we have to be able to identify and describe those physical and biological features.”
Smith said that NMFS does not yet know where the Cook Inlet whale critical habitat would be — the range of the whales encompasses the whole of Cook Inlet. However, he showed a couple of maps that provide clues as to where critical habitat might exist.
One map consisted of a habitat model based essentially on the marine substrate, the water depth and the proximity of drainage basins. The habitat areas in this map occur in discrete locations around the Cook Inlet coast and appear to correspond quite closely with high densities of whale observations from NMFS annual beluga whale surveys.
The other map, from an NMFS Cook Inlet whale conservation plan, showed three levels of habitat importance, with the most important habitat occurring in the upper Cook Inlet near Anchorage, and in the Knik and Turnagain arms.
However, the ESA does require NMFS to take into account the economic impact of designating critical habitat.
“That’s no small endeavor and we’re working with our regional economist right now as he begins to get his hands around this,” Smith said.
An area can be removed from the critical habitat if the economic benefit of removing it exceeds the benefit of including it. That tends to lead to an “apples and oranges” type of comparison, in which the agency may have to drop an area from the critical habitat because of cost and then come up “with something on the other side of the ledger,” Smith said.
Recovery plan NMFS also has to prepare a recovery plan for the Cook Inlet beluga whales and anticipates using a conservation plan that it had already developed as a starting point.
“We’ve already prepared a conservation plan that looks and acts a lot like a recovery plan, so we’ve got a leg up on the process,” Smith said.
However, NMFS developed the conservation plan in house and anticipates involving a wider participation in the development of the recovery plan. So, to formulate the recovery plan, the agency expects to form a recovery team that includes a range of stakeholders in the beluga whale conservation issue.
“I would anticipate that we will need a recovery team for the purpose, just because of the visibility and controversy that surrounds the listing and probably because of some of the actions that are going to be necessary to hopefully begin the recovery process,” Smith said.
The purpose of the plan will be to identify the threats to the whales, specify conservation actions and determine the criteria for downlisting the species. The plan also requires a time and cost estimate for recovery of the whales.
However, since it may take four or five years to develop the recovery plan, NFMS is in the process of completing what it terms a “recovery outline” to specify interim steps to take while the recovery plan is being developed, Smith said.
Sizing up
Meantime, people in Anchorage and on the Kenai Peninsula are sizing up the potential impacts on their activities of the beluga whale listing decision. Effluent discharges from the Anchorage sewage system, for example, have been mentioned as something that requires study in relation to beluga whale conservation.
Brett Jokela, assistant general manager of Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility, told the AAEP meeting that he is confident that Anchorage sewage is not polluting the waters of the Cook Inlet and that AWWU will support efforts to restore the beluga whale population.
“We’re not going to contest the listing,” Jokela said. Fighting the listing would be a waste of AWWU resources and the utility respects the science that NMFS carries out, he said.
AWWU has three sewage treatment plants. Two small plants treat sewage from Eagle River and Girdwood. The main plant, which treats Anchorage sewage, is the John Asplund plant at Point Woronzof, on the Cook Inlet coast. The three AWWU plants fully meet the requirements of the Clean Water Act, Jokela said.
There are relatively few industrial discharges into the Anchorage sewage system and any industrial discharges in the city are subject to a rigorous permitting process, with limitations on what can be discharged, Jokela said.
“We have a very vigorous program for industrial pre-treatment,” Jokela said.
And because the city has low levels of contaminants in its wastewater, the Asplund plant operates under the terms of a waiver under section 301(h) of the Clean Water Act. That waiver enables the plant to operate without secondary biological treatment or tertiary nutrient treatment — essentially, the plant filters the wastewater and then puts the water in clearing ponds, to remove solids and scum. However, the effluent is sterilized using chlorine before being discharged through a diffuser located about 800 feet offshore.
The strong Cook Inlet tidal currents sweep the discharges from the plant more than 20 miles up Knik Arm or down the inlet in a single day, Jokela said.
And AWWU’s comprehensive monitoring of potential contamination both around the Asplund plant outfall and in the tidelands of Knik Arm and elsewhere indicate that the sewage plant is not causing any environmental harm, Jokela said. In addition, there is no sedimentation around the outfall, he said.
“The results show that we don’t have any distinct differences between the biota that exist near our outfall and the biota that exist far away,” he said. “… We have no water quality standard issues.”
Permit renewal However, the Environmental Protection Agency wastewater discharge permit required to operate the Asplund plant runs on a five-year cycle and AWWU is currently in the process of renewing the permit. And, because EPA is retaining federal administration of 301(h) waivers, the permitting of the plant will not move to the State of Alaska as part of the state’s takeover of permitting under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System.
The consequence of all of this is that EPA and NMFS have already started informal ESA section 7 consultations regarding the Asplund plant permit application, as a consequence of the beluga whale listing. A determination that the plant could have an effect on the beluga whales would trigger a formal consultation, Jokela said.
And the stakes are high. The loss of the 301(h) waiver would trigger the need for a plant rebuild at a cost in the range of $500 million to $800 million, Jokela said.
There’s also the possibility that some as yet unknown contaminant from the plant is causing a problem.
“Advanced waste treatment, which could be necessary in order to get at some specific contaminants that might be identified at some point as being significant, could run into the billions,” Jokela said. “However, at this point the benefit of providing any higher level of treatment is really questionable.”
And Jokela urged the need to focus on determining whether there are any specific contaminants that need to be investigated, rather than conducting a blanket search for every possible item of information.
“Our approach and our philosophy towards the assistance with recovery are going to be open and pragmatic,” Jokela said. “We have 56,000 customers that depend on us to provide efficient wastewater service and the cost of that wastewater service is large.”
But what of the controversy surrounding the Beluga whale listing and the state’s lawsuit against it?
Smith was adamant that the various criticisms of the listing are unfounded. The listing decision came after a more than 20 year investigation of the Cook Inlet beluga whale issue and was based on sound science, he said. NMFS has determined the Cook Inlet belugas are genetically and physically isolated from other beluga populations. And the Cook Inlet beluga whales are subject to some well-documented threats, he said.
“Our scientists have accomplished four status reviews since 1988,” Smith said. “Those have looked at the viability of the population, some of the threats associated with it and some of the science that we felt was necessary to understand the ecology of these whales and to hopefully bring about their recovery.”
| 