Usually, I write a piece like that once every year or so,
then get back to more specific fisheries management issues, because there’s
only so much you can say about pollution.
We know that it’s bad for the nation’s fishery resources, and we know
that it pays—it pays for the polluters, because it’s cheaper than responsible
disposal of waste, it pays for the politicians who oppose clean water actions, because
the polluters will donate a lot to their cause, and it pays for organizations
who support such politicians, and even call them “conservationists,” because that sort of ass-kissing helps convince folks to adopt the sort of policies that support corporate profits and other institutional
goals.
Once I acknowledge that, which is something that I suspect
most readers already know, I let the issue go dormant for another year, until a
piece in the news convinces me that there’s a reason to address the topic once
again.
However, in the past week, there has been enough action on
the pollution front to revisit the topic about 12 months early.
Some of the news is good. The rest is…typical.
I’ll start with the good, because in today’s polarized political world, we too often think in
black and white.
We label one party “good”
on an issue, and one party “bad.”
That’s
certainly true with pollution. Because
most of the representatives from what I often think of as “the pig shit states,” that is, the states where people consider dumping manure, fertilizer runoff, pesticides
and such into public waters to be a God-given American birthright, are
Republicans, and actively support a pro-pollution
platform that’s “good for jobs, growth, expanded trade and prosperity”
(even if it kills fish and might
result in people contracting any one of a number of loathsome diseases),
that all Republicans are hostile to concepts such as clean air and clean water,
while Democrats are consistent champions of the environment.
It’s a convenient stereotype, but like most stereotypes, it
hides a deeper truth.
The
Republican Party has a rich history of conservation that extends back to when
Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, while a number of Democrats
have historically opposed clean air and clean water initiatives that might
hamper home-town industrial plants. Even as recently as last year, there were a few Democrats
in the House of Representatives who were foolish enough to vote for H.R. 200, which
would have severely weakened federal fisheries laws.
Now, it appears that some Republicans in the House and
Senate, tired of being labeled anti-conservation, have stepped out of the shadows
to form what they call the “Republican Roosevelt Conservation Caucus,” which
will work to resolve important environmental issues.
The new caucus will look at such issues from a traditional
Republican standpoint, seeking to solve problems through innovation rather than
by more revolutionary approaches that would disrupt the existing economy. According
to The Hill, no less a Republican than Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina
has said
“From a Republican point of view, I think we need to showcase
that we care about conservation, we care about the environment, and we have
innovative solutions that are not top-down regulatory solutions…
“[With respect to climate change], I believe the nine out of
10, not the one. I would encourage the
president to look long and hard at the science and find the solution. I’m tired of playing defense on the environment.”
Of course, it’s possible that could be all talk. But with conservation/environmental
issues becoming a top issue for many voters, it would be wise for
Republicans seeking election in swing districts, and in a number of
Republican-leaning districts as well, to build some pro-conservation
credentials. While such credentials
might not get them very far in some mining-country districts where it is still
considered perfectly fine to strip
off the tops of mountains and dump them into once-pristine brook trout streams,
it will undoubtedly do the party some good in much of the United States.
And, more importantly, it will do the United States—including,
hopefully, the nation’s coastal ecosystems, some real good as well.
But before then, business as usual goes on.
As I write this, there
is a tropical storm, which may soon become a weak hurricane, approaching the
Louisiana coast. While that’s typical
of a Gulf Coast July, this storm presents a unique threat, as a fast-flowing
Mississippi River is already swelled with water from inland rains, which have
been pouring into the Gulf of Mexico and bringing pollution and devastated
fisheries in their wake. As the Huffington Post
describes it,
“A historic slow-moving flood of polluted Mississippi River
water loaded with chemicals, pesticides and human waste from 31 states and two
Canadian provinces is draining straight into the marshes and bayous of the Gulf
of Mexico—the nurseries of…fishing grounds—upsetting the delicate balance of
salinity and destroying the fragile ecosystem in the process. As the Gulf waters warm this summer, algae
feed on the freshwater brew, smothering oxygen-starved marine life.”
The pending storm can only make things worse.
Two
Louisiana congressmen, Senator Bill Cassidy and Rep. Steve Scalise, are asking
the Secretary of Commerce to declare a fishery disaster, which would then allow
Louisiana fishermen to seek financial relief for losses connected to the influx
of polluted fresh water. Yet, even
if they are successful, any relief that Louisiana fishermen and fishing-related
businesses obtain will, at best, be temporary.
The problem will recur.
“more intense and frequent rain storms leading to more nutrient
runoff and warmer waters which are not able to hold as much dissolved oxygen.”
“Gulf hypoxic areal goals…will be very difficult to achieved
if nitrate retention cannot be improved in Iowa.”
In other words, the best way to prevent nitrate pollution in
the Gulf of Mexico is to prevent states all along the Mississippi watershed
from letting their “stuff” end up in the river, from whence it all flows
downstream.
Given Sen. Cassidy’s and Rep. Scalise’s seeming concern for Louisiana
fishermen hurt by polluted Mississippi water, someone might be tempted to
believe that they’d have been foursquare in support of the Obama administration
rule. But such belief would be wrong.
While both of those legislators are apparently more than
willing to use funds paid into the public purse, by taxpayers throughout the country, to bail out the troubled fishermen that they represent, they are not willing to compromise their unwavering
support of the right of private property owners to befoul public waterways
while in pursuit of a profit.
“[The Environmental Protection Agency’s] attempt to redefine ‘navigable
waterways’ as every drainage ditch, backyard pond, and puddle is radical
regulatory overreach that threatens to take away the rights of property owners
and will lead to costly litigation and lost jobs.”
Because every private property owner between
Missouri and Mississippi has an inalienable right to pile up a few tons of
manure in a dry drainage ditch, secure in the knowledge that the next heavy
rain will wash it away and start it on its long trip to the sea...
“When I’m in Louisiana, I constantly hear about the impacts
this rule could have on private property, private property development, timberland,
farmland and water bodies that would be subject to economic control…Instead of
people in Louisiana deciding how to best use their property, the federal
government will be able to dictate many land-use decisions…”
Of course, if people are deciding that the right use of their
property is to pile up manure, pesticides, sewage or other pollutants, maybe
the federal government ought to take a more active role.
If Sen. Cassidy asked
fishermen, when he’s in Louisiana, whether they’d like to see a rule that
caused pollution to abate, they might say something that he doesn’t really want
to hear.
But in a way, it’s hard to blame such legislators. The polluters pay their campaign expenses,
and many of the most impacted industries, like those who support recreational
boating and fishing, aren’t making them pay any price for abetting the destruction
of the Gulf’s, or the nation's, natural resources.
From what I can gather from the article, the need to keep
farmers, ranchers and others from dumping their unwanted crap in the rivers
never came up. Neither did the administration’s seeming support for
the “Pebble Mine,” which would see toxic tailings pools
built in the pristine watershed of Alaska’s salmon-rich Bristol Bay, nor the
health problems created when coal-burning power plants cause organic mercury
levels to rise in the flesh of pelagic fish such as bluefin tuna.
Instead, the boating and recreational fishing reps continued
to be the polluters’ enablers, praising the politicians for
“expanding outdoor recreation activities on our public lands
and waters,”
promoting (but not necessarily spending any money to
actually take) international action to reduce marine debris and, in the incredibly false words of
Center for Sportfishing Policy’s President Jeff Angers,
“good stewardship of public resources.”
If moving toward opening the Pebble Mine, and allowing
pollutants to flow, unablated, into the Gulf of Mexico is Angers’ idea of “good
stewardship,” then I think that I have a
manure pond in Iowa that he might want to buy…
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