7/17 Bee, Vic sewer, tug spill, heat wave, plastic ban, Roundup, Trump's EPA, BC volcano, Fraser rockslide

Honey bee [WSU]

Honey bee Apis mellifera
Honey bees collect pollen from many different plant groups. Over a season, honey bees may visit upwards of 90 different plant groups. Some of the most frequently visited are smartweed, sunflower, white clover, squash, borage, tomatillo, oregano, cilantro, and sow thistle. (A Field Guide to Common Puget Sound Native Bees/WSU)

Operating costs rise by millions for new sewage treatment plant: staff report
Costs to operate and maintain the Capital Regional District’s new sewage treatment project will be millions of dollars a year more than originally forecast, CRD directors are being told. The approved budget for operation and maintenance costs for 2021, including sewage treatment plant operations, residuals treatment, capital costs, debt servicing and asset replacement/maintenance reserves is $40 million.  But a report going to the CRD’s sewage committee has increased that estimate to $42.7 million — a seven per cent increase. That seven per cent would be closer to 12 per cent, except the operating budget proposes deferring a $2-million annual allocation to an asset replacement reserve. Bill Cleverly reports. (Times Colonist)

U.S. company fined nearly $3M for 2016 fuel spill in B.C. First Nation's fishing territory
A Texas-based company has been fined over $2.9 million in penalties after pleading guilty to a diesel spill from a tugboat that ran aground and sank in a First Nation's fishing territory on B.C.'s Central Coast. The decision against Kirby Offshore Marine Corp. was handed down Tuesday in Bella Bella, B.C. The Nathan E. Stewart tugboat spilled 110,000 litres of diesel and heavy oils in October 2016. Last year the Transportation Safety Board found that a crew member missed a planned course change because he fell asleep while alone on watch. (CBC)

Widespread, dangerous heat wave to expand across much of the U.S.
A stifling heat wave has begun to take shape across large portions of the United States, with millions likely to see temperatures creep toward the century mark, along with even higher heat indexes by this weekend. The heat wave is already generating excessive heat watches in the central United States, and by Wednesday the national weather map is likely to feature a blanket of heat advisories from the National Weather Service. The combination of sultry dew points and scorching air temperatures approaching will help make this event a dangerous one from a public health perspective. Cities including Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Nashville and Kansas City, Mo., are likely to see at least three days with temperatures between 95 degrees and 100 degrees, along with dew points — a measure of the amount of moisture in the air — above 70 degrees. Andrew Freedman and Jason Samenow report. (Washington Post)

Majority of Canadians support a ban on single-use plastics: poll
Canadians are heavily in favour of a ban on single-use plastics such as cutlery and straws, and most would be willing to pay a small premium for environmentally sustainable products, a new Nanos Research survey has found. Last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government announced a plan to regulate plastic waste as part of a national strategy to limit the amount of plastics that are polluting Canada’s environment. Janice Dickson reports. (Canadian Press)

Judge Reduces $80M Award In Roundup Case; Cancer Patient, Monsanto Both Consider Appeal
A federal judge in San Francisco on Monday reduced an $80 million award levied against Monsanto Co. to $25 million for a Sonoma County man who claimed the company’s Roundup weedkiller caused his non-Hodgkins’ lymphoma. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria upheld a jury award of approximately $5 million in compensatory damages to Edwin Hardeman, 70, of Santa Rosa, but said guidelines set by the U.S. Supreme Court required him to reduce the jury’s $75 million in punitive damages to $20 million.... Chhabria said a punitive award is appropriate because evidence at the trial “easily supported a conclusion that Monsanto was more concerned with tamping down safety inquiries and manipulating public opinion than it was with ensuring its product is safe.” The judge said there is evidence on both sides as to whether or not glyphosate, the main ingredient of Roundup, causes cancer, but Monsanto’s behavior showed “a lack of concern about the risk that its product might be carcinogenic.”

E.P.A. Plans to Curtail the Ability of Communities to Oppose Pollution Permits
The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to weaken rules that for the past quarter-century have given communities a voice in deciding how much pollution may legally be released by nearby power plants and factories. The changes would eliminate the ability of individuals or community advocates to appeal against E.P.A.-issued pollution permits before a panel of agency judges. However, the industrial permit-holders could still appeal to the panel, known as the Environmental Appeals Board, to allow them to increase their pollution. Coral Davenport reports. (NY Times)

Canada's biggest underwater volcano is just off B.C.'s coast — and scientists are finding new species there
Canada's largest underwater volcano is off the coast of British Columbia and, over the next two weeks, a team of national scientists will be doing a deep-sea exploration mission of the area.  The team from Fisheries and Oceans Canada set off Monday on the deep-ocean journey to research the Explorer Seamount ⁠— an underwater mountain west of Vancouver Island. "The biodiversity and the abundance of life we see there is much like a tropical rainforest, except you just replace the birds with fish and the grizzly bears with a shark," said Cherisse Du Preez, a deep-sea marine ecologist. Clare Hennig reports. (CBC)

Rock scalers making 'considerable progress' clearing area above Fraser River rock slide
Rock scalers are making "considerable progress" stabilizing the area above a rock slide that is blocking a narrow part of the Fraser River, according to the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. The slide, which happened in a remote area west of Clinton — about 100 kilometres northwest of Kamloops — has created a five-metre waterfall. It has been blocking salmon from migrating upstream and spawning since late June, grabbing the attention of provincial and federal politicians. According to a written statement from the ministry, rock scalers removed about 20 dump trucks worth of material from the rock face between July 4 and July 11. (CBC)

Florida's Corals Are Dying Off, But It's Not All Due To Climate Change, Study Says
Brian Lapointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, has spent his career studying corals at the Looe Key Reef, in a National Marine Sanctuary in the Florida Keys. Over that time, he’s witnessed an alarming trend. In the past 20 year, half of Florida corals have died off... Lapointe is lead author on a new paper in the journal Marine Biology. It analyzes 30 years of data he’s collected. When he started his research, in 1984, coral covered 33% of the Looe Key Sanctuary Preservation area, 5.3 square nautical miles of protected ocean at the southern tip of the Florida Keys. By 2014, the coral cover had dropped to just 5%. But the news may not be entirely bad. Lapointe thought his study would show that warming temperatures were killing off corals. Instead, the data show that the coral’s biggest problem has been another human source: nitrogen. Pien Huang reports. (NPR)



Now, your tug weather--
West Entrance U.S. Waters Strait Of Juan De Fuca-  256 AM PDT Wed Jul 17 2019   
TODAY  SE wind 5 to 15 kt becoming SW in the afternoon. Wind  waves 2 ft or less. SW swell 4 ft at 18 seconds. Rain. 
TONIGHT  W wind 10 to 20 kt rising to 15 to 25 kt after  midnight. Wind waves 2 to 4 ft. SW swell 5 ft at 18 seconds  building to 7 ft at 14 seconds after midnight. A slight chance of  rain in the evening then a chance of showers after midnight.



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