 mailbag
Dear Making Waves,
I had just received my most recent issue of Making Waves. Each issue I read, I am convinced that you can't top that, but I'm proven wrong with each new edition. The August 2003 issue was no exception.
The timing for Making Waves to include a primer on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) couldn't have been better. Florida's Atlantic and Gulf coastal waters are under assault from a barrage of shallow and deep injection wells that are on the verge of tripling the volume of injected fluids if action is not taken immediately. Fish, sea turtles, and the coral ecosystems that have not been killed outright in Florida's waters have succumbed to "mystery" diseases ranging from rotting flesh on still-living organisms to various herpes viruses (most recently documented in juvenile lobsters in the Keys). Red Tide and other harmful algal blooms have increased in frequency and intensity. These outbreaks have resulted in illnesses to humans in proximity to Florida's beaches, in addition to massive kills of native coastal organisms. These injection wells are permitted under the "Underground Injection Control" ("UIC") Rule, which was adopted by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), then delegated to states like Florida and Hawaii for implementation.
Did the EPA comply with NEPA, to give a hard look at all of the adverse impacts of aquifer injection, including impacts to surface waters, before adopting their "UIC" Rule? No! The rule was adopted under the "Safe Drinking Water Act" and did not consider impacts to surface waters or federally-listed species.
Is the volume of aquifer injection in Florida (and worldwide) increasing astronomically, despite scientific evidence that the hazardous injected fluids are surfacing throughout near shore areas? Yes! Congress has appropriated $8 BILLION of our tax dollars (under the Everglades "Restoration" Plan) to increase aquifer injections in Florida from approximately 1 billion gallons per DAY to approximately 3 billion gallons per DAY.
Injection wells in states like Florida and Hawaii are nothing more than "subterranean ocean outfalls" because of the characteristic conduit flow of Florida's Karst aquifer system and Hawaii's lava tubes. I look forward to National SF's effort in educating the public about this heinous practice.
Keep up the great work,
Sydney T. Bacchus, Ph. D. (Athens, GA)
Dear Making Waves,
As a long time Surfrider Santa Cruz member and volunteer, I was so pleased to see the surfing community address sustainable seafood issues (August 2003, Making Waves). The list you provide that identifies the sustainable and unsustainable seafood is so useful for people who want to make wise choices.
However, this type of black-and-white decision making has a downfall. It doesn't address the issues that make a fishery unsustainable, and it punishes the entire fishery, not just the people who are fishing in an unsustainable manner. This simply closes a fishery down (although there are some that need to be closed down) rather than changing how people fish. To address this, I've co-founded a non-profit here in Santa Cruz called Sustainable Fishery Advocates (www.sustainablefishery.org). We work with markets to provide the necessary information about sustainability where people buy fish. This allows the market to correctly identify the sustainability level of their seafood on a case by case basis, instead of using a blanket measure over the entire fishery. While we currently only operate in Santa Cruz county, the information on the website is useful in helping determine why certain fish are unsustainable so we can begin to ask the right questions. If we hope to continue to have fish in both our bellies and the oceans we need to start thinking about what is happening in fisheries, rather than just shifting our harvests around, depleting one fishery at a time.
Keep up the good work,
Teresa Ish (Santa Cruz, CA)
Making Waves welcomes letters from our readers. Send your hoots, hollers and
hassles
to makingwaves@surfrider.org.
Please make sure to include your name and location. In order to print as many
letters as possible, some letters may be edited for length.
|
|
