11/18 Nooksack dace, Stanley Park seawall, stormwater fees, BC pipe, climate change, BC LNG, Big Oil, El Nino

Nooksack dace (PHOTO: Mike Pearson)

Stoney Creek spill leaves endangered fish either homeless or 'buried alive', biologist fears
Washouts along the banks of a fish-bearing creek in Burnaby may have seriously harmed a rare little fish that's so endangered in Canada it's found in only four streams, says biologist Mike Pearson. The fish is the Nooksack dace, and one of those four streams — Stoney Creek on Burnaby Mountain — recently had a bank cave in at a City of Burnaby construction site, sending sand and silt into the water….. You might not be familiar with the Nooksack dace, but streamkeepers and environmentalists have been working since the 1990s to stop the freshwater fish from going extinct, even taking the federal government to court over its failure to protect it. (CBC)

If you like to watch: Photos: Section of Stanley Park Seawall collapses from wind, waves
 A large section of the seawall — from Third Beach to the Lions Gate Bridge — will be closed for up to a month while crews repair Monday’s damage. Wind and waves are being blamed for the collapse, with climate change a major contributing factor. Here are pictures from Monday's collapse. (Vancouver Sun)

New stormwater fees set to address flooding, drain problems
A new stormwater fee is set to appear on next year's tax statements for about 4,800 property owners in unincorporated Snohomish County. That and other changes to stormwater fees were approved by the County Council on Monday. The county's Surface Water Management Division is expected to receive an extra $1 million per year as a result. The money will pay for projects to lessen problems with drainage and flooding. Noah Haglund reports. (Everett Herald)

Efforts to stop Kinder Morgan review unlikely to succeed
A lobbying campaign calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to stop the federal review of Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion is doomed to fail, experts say. There is no clear legislative basis for Ottawa to agree to the suspension requests sent earlier this month from Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan and from a coalition of environmental groups, they say. Peter O'Neil reports. (Vancouver Sun)

State of Knowledge: Climate Change in Puget Sound
A 2015 report from the University of Washington provides the most comprehensive assessment to date of the expected impacts of climate change on the Puget Sound region. (Encyclopedia of Puget Sound)

Climate change stickers mandatory on North Vancouver gas pumps
North Vancouver, B.C. is believed to be the first city in the world to make climate change warning labels mandatory on gas pumps. The city council passed the bylaw unanimously in a vote on Monday night.  Rob Shirkey, the founder of the Our Horizons not-for-profit group championing this cause, called the vote a "historic global first." He said other Canadian and American cities have come close by supporting similar initiatives, but the City of North Vancouver is the first to make it mandatory. Tamara Baluja reports. (CBC)

LNG terminal ‘not likely’ to harm Flora Bank
Flora Bank is a resilient area that would emerge unscathed in the event that liquefied natural gas is produced on Lelu Island, a report commissioned by Pacific NorthWest LNG concludes. Visible at low tide, Flora Bank contains eelgrass that nurtures juvenile salmon in the Skeena River estuary near Prince Rupert. Pacific NorthWest LNG, led by Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas, wants to build an $11.4-billion export terminal on Lelu Island, which is located next to Flora Bank. Brent Jang reports. (Globe and Mail)

Will the "tobacco strategy" work against Big Oil?
According to InsideClimate News, the office of New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman had been investigating ExxonMobil for a year before it issued a recent subpoena for “documents on what Exxon knew about climate change and what it told shareholders and the public.” The subpoena compelled ExxonMobil to hand over scientific research and communications about climate change dating back to 1977. (Exxon and Mobil merged to become a single corporation in 1999.) The investigation is based on New York State’s consumer-protection and general-business laws and, crucially, the state’s Martin Act, InsideClimate News reported. That statute prohibits fraud or misrepresentation in the sale of securities and commodities, and gives the Attorney General extraordinary power to fight financial fraud. Lincoln Caplan reports. (The New Yorker)

Pacific Ocean temperatures hint at a record El Niño
Temperatures in a key area of the Pacific Ocean west of Peru rose to 5.4 degrees above average for the week of Nov. 11, exceeding the highest comparable reading for the most powerful El Niño on record, in 1997. Rong-Gong Lin II and Rosanna Xia report. (LA Times)

Now, your tug weather--
WEST ENTRANCE U.S. WATERS STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA- 250 AM PST WED NOV 18 2015
SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 AM PST EARLY THIS MORNING
 SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY FOR HAZARDOUS SEAS IN EFFECT FROM 10 AM PST THIS MORNING THROUGH THIS AFTERNOON
TODAY
NW WIND 15 TO 25 KT IN THE MORNING...BECOMING LIGHT. WIND WAVES 2 TO 4 FT IN THE MORNING...BECOMING LESS THAN 1 FT. W
 SWELL 14 FT AT 12 SECONDS...SUBSIDING TO 11 FT AT 12 SECONDS IN THE AFTERNOON. A CHANCE OF SHOWERS.
TONIGHT
LIGHT WIND...BECOMING E TO 10 KT AFTER MIDNIGHT. WIND WAVES 1 FT OR LESS. W SWELL 9 FT AT 11 SECONDS. A CHANCE OF RAIN.

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