EPA: States Should List Coastal Waters As Impaired Due To Rising Ocean Acidification

SEATTLE — States with coastal water that is becoming more acidic because of carbon dioxide should list them as impaired under the Clean Water Act, the U.S. Environmental Agency said.

The federal agency's memo Monday to states recognizes carbon dioxide as not only an air pollutant but a water pollutant, and notes the serious impacts that ocean acidification can have on aquatic life.

Ocean acidification refers to the decrease in the alkalinity of oceans, which is caused by the absorption of excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As water becomes more acidic, scientists have raised concern about dissolving coral reefs and potential effects on fish and other sea life.

"Ocean acidification is one of the biggest threats to our marine environment," said Miyoko Sakashita, a senior attorney at Center for Biological Diversity. This EPA action "really gave the green light to using the Clean Water Act to address ocean acidification," she said.

The EPA's memo stems from a legal settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity, which sued the EPA last year for not requiring Washington state to list its coastal waters as impaired by rising acidity.

The memo said in 2012, states should begin to list bodies of water that suffer from ocean acidification as impaired, but it also acknowledged there's currently not enough information in many states to support listings for that reason.

Currently, about 40,000 bodies of water are listed nationwide as impaired.

Sandy Howard, a spokeswoman with the Washington Department of Ecology, said Tuesday the state is working with federal agencies to find more accurate and reliable methods of measuring pH, which shows how alkaline or acidic something is.

She said the listing program, however, is not the correct tool to fix the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

The program focuses on local water quality fixes, she said, while the issue of greenhouse gas emissions is a global one.

Comments

[econ1]

01:31 PM on 11/19/2010

Too many people.

[Marcospinelli]

01:05 PM on 11/18/2010

A reminder of what Obama said after the DeepwaterHorizon blowout in an exchange with reporters following a tour of TheodoreIndustrialPort in Theodore, Alabama on June 14, 2010:

"It turns out that if the oil hits the beaches, that's actually probably the easiest to clean up. So it's a concern obviously for tourism, it's a concern for an entire Gulf region that economically depends on the tourist season and this period of time when people are out of school. But those beaches will recover because those big globs of oil, when they hit the beaches, we can send a bunch of people out there and scoop them up, dispose of it properly, and those beaches will look pretty pristine a year or two years from now."

Obama really said that.

Really.

In 1969, a blowout on a UnionOil platform six miles off of SantaBarbara "spilled" an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil onto the beaches, fouling the coastline from Goleta to the Rincon & all four of the northern Channel Islands. 

Forty years later, hotels around SantaBarbara include Tar-Off Towelettes ("Pleasantly Scented Tar Remover: Removes Tar, Grease & Oil") in their baskets of complementary bath products ("Once the gooey stuff gets on your shoes or feet, it’s almost impossible to get off. We recommend that you don't go barefoot, & you may want to take an old pair of shoes or buy some inexpensive ones that you won’t mind throwing away").

Tar is a known carcinogen & should be removed from your skin ASAP; easier said than done. Some swear by Vaseline, Baby Oil, mineral/vegetable oil, kerosene, GOO Gone! to get the tar off. I've never had much luck getting it off with anything but nail polish remover (acetone), which while helping to get the clumps of tar off, still leaves a tar stain or residue on your skin that just has to wear off over time (1-2 weeks).

Nail polish/acetone/kerosene doesn't work to remove the tar from shoes. Throw them out (& do it before you get home & walk inside your home -- You'll never get tar out of carpeting or wood floors without destroying the finish).

This here is what sticks to your feet/shoes after you walk on a SantaBarbara beach today, 2010 -- You won't see it; it's just below the surface of the sand.

So the question is: Is Obama, with the best and the brightest advisors surrounding him, just horribly misinformed?  Or is he a corrupt Iiar?

[mamacat]

11:35 AM on 11/18/2010

One of the consequences of the Industrial Revolution and of the ongoing population explosion is that the life style of some humans has gotten better and the lifespan of most humans has gotten longer.

Another consequence is that we are reversing the trend that has resulted in the sequestration of massive amounts of Carbon. Since the explosion in the number of multicellular lifeforms over the last half billion years, the natural burial of dead lifeforms has resulted in large coal and petroleum deposits being formed.
Since 1750 in Britain, and since about 1850 in the rest of Europe, and since about 1960 in China and India, the principle power source of the Industrial Revolution has been coal and petroleum.

Given the large changes that have been observed in the biosphere, and given the long half-life of carbon dioxide in the biosphere (about 100 years), we can expect any changes we make to our means of power production to have little or no effect on the biosphere in our lifetimes. So, we are left with an important decision; do we enact changes in our means of production that will have no measurable effect in our lifetimes, but which will have huge costs in our lifetimes, or do we go on as before, and in essence leave a message for our grandchildren that we did not care about the consequences of our life-style upon their lives?

Earlier generations could plead ignorance of the consequences of their actions, but we cannot.

[EcoCatLady]

04:46 AM on 11/19/2010

I agree with almost everything you said. I fear it is a sad fact that humans do a great job responding to immediate crisis (think Chilean miners) but can't seem to muster the slightest interest if the problem is even a few years away (think Obesity epidemic.) I mean, if we can't even get people to stop over-eating to save their OWN lives, how on earth do we expect them to make "sacrifices" to save future generations?

Which brings me to the point where I disagree with your statement. I'm just not sure that making the necessary changes will amount to "huge costs in our lifetimes." I think we really need a shift of mindset. It's like we're always trying to figure out how we can live exactly the same as we do now with less impact, and the answer always sounds like sacrifice. But I think that we really need to ask a different question. Is the way we're living now really making us happy?

I had the unfortunate experience of driving in rush hour traffic yesterday to pick up something I got on Craigslist, and I seriously can't believe people do that every day! Why on earth would anybody want to find ways to keep doing THAT?

Check out this video of a talk by Colin Beavan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAQE_WUGZrs&feature=player_embedded Pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject.

[snowballinhell]

10:30 PM on 11/19/2010

Yes, I'm with you 100%. When you end up in rush hour traffic - and you don't see anyone complaining - you know we're on the wrong boat. Oil companies don't mind if you do, of course.

I think pushing alternative energies gets people thinking about 'new' ways to live. All our houses should be producing much of their own energy. If you can eliminate the need for energy in our homes, we might not need to work 9-5 and create all those traffic gridlocks. Seen one gridlock, seen them all, I say.

F&F

[garder54]

10:13 AM on 11/17/2010

Many streams are impaired in PA due to agriculture and abandoned mine drainage. Sadly, the nutrient content and pH levels in these streams are simply not capable of permitting fish to live. It is my job to regulate discharges into PA streams/lakes, but it gets harder every year as our budget is cut further and further (half of what it used to be 8 years ago).
It is sad day when not only streams and lakes are impaired, but the oceans themselves.

[Gregory D Mellott]

08:41 PM on 11/17/2010

It is sad that farming doesn't get more support for organizing ways to prevent fertilizer and manure run off. It seems like everything is against the farmer being able to survive. And the last thing that is needed is for them to sell out and it all become a housing development.

As for being able to deal with drainage from old mines. I wonder why deep geothermal doesn't get more focus as a viable energy source. From my basic calculations, it would be very hard for it to be used up before the earth is swallowed by the sun becoming a giant red star billions of years from now. With a bit of energy the seepage could be concentrated enough to be of value, or more readily contained. Beyond that, with enough energy; high carbon fossil fuels value as a source for making products like strong carbon composite cars and building materials (that won''t rot in the jungle or other wet conditions) would like give such sources more value and allow their recovery to perhaps even help address some future need to have viable ways to survive underground. If nothing else, ice ages will happen again. Some are saying that we should colonize space for survivalbility against gamma ray bursts destroying all surface life. Conquering earth's depths may be much wiser. A Lakota Indian visionary said once, when 'all this' is 30 feet 'under [ground]' they will have their land back. Raw nature is tough.

[jetle25]

11:15 AM on 11/18/2010

Sustainable farming practices would probably mean less dependency on artificial fertilizers that introduce huge amounts of Nitrogen into the water table and oceans. Hence the giant dead zone in the gulf coast growing bigger and bigger.

Nobody is against farming or raising animals. But the way they do it is not sustainable and seriously polluting the environment for substandard meat and produce.

and that second paragraph.

sorry but I have no clue what you are talking about.

[nellre]

09:10 AM on 11/17/2010

People often forget how much we depend on the ecosystem to survive. With a dead ocean comes a dead planet.

[PWM]

08:06 AM on 11/17/2010

Eventually in the name of profits we will break the food chain and humans will go extinct.

[tnlcallen]

06:03 AM on 11/17/2010

It's surprising that the ocean would be able to absorb enough CO2 to change the alkalinity all that much. I'd be interested to find out how much it changes, and what the effect would actually be.

[Gail Zawacki]

08:14 AM on 11/18/2010

This is a beautifully filmed video from the Natural Resources Defense Council, narrated by Signourny Weaver, that explains the process very clearly.

http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2009/10/you-cant-fish-and-not-have-hope.html

[Gregory D Mellott]

03:40 AM on 11/17/2010

There was shown on TV a wave pump system that help to feed diatoms in the ocean, by simply bringing up more nutrient rich (mainly iron I suspect) water to the surface. It seem to work quite well. In fact there was also a big increase in the number of fish rather quickly as they found a food source there also. Where deep waters naturally come to the surface it there is alot of life. Anyway, the deep ocean is richer in nutrients. It may be partly do the the fact that hot water vents there are feeding it and making new copper deposits and the likes while its at it.

[Gregory D Mellott]

03:55 AM on 11/17/2010

By absorbing CO2 and making limestone (Calcium Carbonate) from it the CO2 levels go down. The one might wish to note that should our present climate change be mainly a natural cycle. Reducing the CO2 levels may not stop it from happening. Methane ice released from beneath the ocean and perma-frost areas of the earth was likely a major factor for the most similar natural cycle 400,000 years ago. Methane is a very strong (50 time more than CO2) green house gas that eventually becomes CO2 also. I cannot say getting the CO2 down will not help. It just may not be enough by itself. Another idea shown on the same TV program was to generate clouds from sea water. It reflected more heat back into space than normal clouds. That idea seemed to work some also. Though they were having troubles getting it to work precisely as planned.

[snowballinhell]

12:58 AM on 11/20/2010

Yes, I saw that pump on the Discovery Channel. It was experimental, but it did perform as you state. All during the DeepwaterHorizon debacle, I saw the pump as a good model for a riser that could have been used in the Gulf to contain the oil from the sea floor all the way to the surface where it could have been collected. It could be a multi tasking design - one for bringing up life, and the other for brining up contamination. Too bad we are so unwilling to accept new ideas and technologies - even when we say we do.

[Brian Rowe]

02:32 AM on 11/17/2010

game over man!!

[Brian Rowe]

02:31 AM on 11/17/2010

were done

[sabelmouse]

07:00 AM on 11/17/2010

do you mean we're done? i think you might be right.

[stephenlight]

01:23 AM on 11/17/2010

Don't worry, as soon as the GOP de-funds the EPA, this problem will go away......

[rotorhead1871]

09:51 PM on 11/16/2010

YOU need to get going with plan B ASAP...you are not going to stop the combustion processes.around the world.......you are not going to stop CO2 and other combustion processes from happening....

so get going with figuring out how much NaOH its going to take to get the oceans back to neutral....good luck!!

[Steelheadangler]

11:31 PM on 11/16/2010

Ocean water is not neutral. The average is around a pH of 8.1

[Kevin Robles]

11:50 PM on 11/16/2010

I thought it was 7? Or is the """""normal""""" water @ pH 7?

[mamacat]

11:45 AM on 11/18/2010

It has been estimated that the alkalinity of the oceans has reduced about 30% since the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1750.
As the ocean becomes more acidic, its ability to sequester carbon through aiding in the formation of the various forms of calcium in the ocean is reduced.

[mamacat]

11:53 AM on 11/18/2010

The point is not that we cannot stop the combustion processes ongoing around the world, but that we must change the way we power our lifestyles. Eventually, and hopefully sooner rather than later, that may mean effectively stopping many of the combustion processes going on around the world.

Currently, it looks like we may be able to move toward generating electricity through processes that either do not generate CO2, or which generate much less CO2. We can do it, the question is whether we will do it sooner or later. It is already too late to prevent the ongoing climate warming, as the CO2 already in the air will be there much longer than a human lifespan. If we continue with our efforts to develop alternative energy sources, the changes that are caused to the biosphere long in the future as a result of what we do now may be less radical.

[Spazoid-droid]

09:19 PM on 11/16/2010

so if the GOM gets listed as impared will that stop deepwater drilling for oil? fat chance!