2/23 Culverts, Pruitt emails, KM review, DAPL, quake, Sound math, sewage, bug fish feed

(PHOTO: Petras Abromavicius/BirdNote)

Swan Song
Does a swan really lament its death in song? The idea of the "swan song" recurs from Aesop to Ovid to Plato to Tennyson. Ovid described it, "There, she poured out her words of grief, tearfully, in faint tones, in harmony with sadness, just as the swan sings once, in dying, its own funeral song." But it's based on a sweet fallacy - that a swan sings only when it nears death. And calling the sounds that a swan makes a "song" might be a bit off, too! (BirdNote)

Making Sure Salmon Can Cross (Under) The Roads In Washington
Steve Hinton has a pretty unusual mindset when it comes to his job. “I try to think like a fish,” he says. That’s a crucial part of Hinton’s job as the director of habitat restoration for the Swinomish Tribal Community and the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe. He spends a lot of his time trying to figure out how salmon will respond to obstacles in their way as they return from the Puget Sound, up the Skagit River, into little creeks and streams to spawn. One of the problems they encounter are road culverts. Eilís O'Neill reports. (KUOW/EarthFix)

The Pruitt Emails: E.P.A. Chief Was Arm in Arm With Industry
During his tenure as attorney general of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt, now the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, closely coordinated with major oil and gas producers, electric utilities and political groups with ties to the libertarian billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch to roll back environmental regulations, according to over 6,000 pages of emails made public on Wednesday. The publication of the correspondence comes just days after Mr. Pruitt was sworn in to run the E.P.A., which is charged with reining in pollution and regulating public health. Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton report. (NY Times)

City of Vancouver to request judicial review of Kinder Morgan expansion
Vancouver city councillors passed a motion Wednesday to request a judicial review of the B.C. Liberal's environmental approval of the controversial Kinder Morgan expansion project. The motion, introduced by Green Party Councilor Adriane Carr, was passed by an eight-two vote inside Vancouver City Hall after several community speakers highlighted a lack of public consultation from the province. Speakers also maintained that no comprehensive studies have been done to model the damaging effects of a bitumen spill along the B.C. coast. Jon Hernandez reports. (CBC)

Police arresting holdouts, more than 100 demonstrators refusing to leave protest camp
Some opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline were dug in and defiant as night fell over their besieged camp Wednesday. Police had made 10 arrests of pipeline protesters for failing to follow orders to leave the camp by 2 p.m. local time. Officials have said they did not intend to enter the camp overnight. State authorities estimated the hold outs at 50, but activists estimated double that. Most had left earlier Wednesday, marching arm-in-arm out of the camp, which was so muddy officers could not enter it with their cars. Surrounded on all sides by roadblocks and under threat of arrest, demonstrators burned their tents and shelters rather than see them destroyed by police. Lynda Mapes reports. (Seattle Times)

Magnitude 4.4 earthquake hits on Vancouver Island 
A magnitude 4.4 earthquake rumbled off the coast of British Columbia late Wednesday night. Natural Resources Canada says it struck southwest of Port Alice on Vancouver Island at a depth of about 10 kilometers…. The U.S. Geological Survey has pegged the quake's strength at magnitude 4.8 and centred it 166 kilometres southwest of Port Hardy, B.C. The USGS also says a magnitude 4.2 earthquake struck western Washington about 54 kilometres west-southwest of Seattle. See also: Earthquake near Belfair shakes Puget Sound area  Kenny Ocker reports. (News Tribune of Tacoma)

Sum of their parts: Researchers use math to foster environmental restoration
The oft-quoted proverb, "Too many cooks spoil the broth," is apt wisdom for describing challenges facing policy makers, public resource managers, ag producers, industry, residents and other stakeholders in attempts to jointly tackle major environmental restoration projects. The myriad of varied interests—some conflicting; some aligning - results in a confusing tangle of authority and responsibility. "Resource management boundaries seldom align with environmental systems," says Utah State University researcher Jacopo Baggio. "This can lead to a variety of social and ecological problems."… With colleague Jesse Sayles of McGill University, Baggio employed analytic modeling to unravel the confusion in a case study of estuary watershed restoration efforts in Washington's Puget Sound. The team reports development of quantitative tools to foster collaboration and efficient coordination of resources in the Feb. 20, 2017, Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Phys.Org)

Health district lifts advisory for Bainbridge, North Kitsap shorelines
Several stretches of shoreline that were closed after a Seattle plant spilled millions of gallons of sewage and stormwater into Puget Sound have reopened, the Kitsap Public Health District announced Tuesday. Bainbridge Island's east side, as well as shoreline between Jefferson Point and Restoration Point, including Port Madison Bay, have been closed since Feb. 9, when a Seattle plant spilled between 150 and 200 million gallons of sewage and stormwater into Puget Sound. Another spill Feb. 15 dumped an additional 10 million gallons of effluent into the sound. Christian Vosler reports. (Kitsap Sun)

B.C. farmed fish feed: Bug-based Enterra product boosts sustainability
Federal approval of a B.C.-made, insect-based feed for farmed fish may help take pressure off wild ocean fish stocks. The high-protein product, made in Langley by Enterra, is the brainchild of environmentalist David Suzuki and CEO Brad Marchant.  The Canadian Food Inspection Agency approved dried black soldier fly larvae for use as a feed ingredient for farmed salmon, arctic char and trout, following the lead of U.S. regulators who approved the product last year. The feed is also approved for poultry. Randy Shore reports. (Vancouver Sun)

Now, your tug weather--
WEST ENTRANCE U.S. WATERS STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA-  254 AM PST THU FEB 23 2017  

TODAY  SE WIND TO 10 KT. WIND WAVES 1 FT OR LESS. W SWELL 5 FT  AT 9 SECONDS.
TONIGHT  W WIND TO 10 KT BECOMING SW AFTER MIDNIGHT. WIND WAVES  1 FT OR LESS. W SWELL 5 FT AT 12 SECONDS. A SLIGHT CHANCE OF  SHOWERS IN THE EVENING THEN A CHANCE OF SHOWERS AFTER MIDNIGHT.

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