Right now, the EPA and NOAA consider fish farms to have essentially no negative effect on wild fish.

Right now, the EPA and NOAA are smoking crack.....

The Wild Fish Conservancy has sent a 60-day Notice of Intent to sue the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for violations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) associated with the agencies’ evaluation of the harmful effects to threatened salmonids from commercial salmon farming in Puget Sound.

LINK (via:King 5)

Judge backs Pebble in dispute with EPA

A federal judge has approved a request for a subpoena compelling a former Environmental Protection Agency official to explain his actions in the agency’s controversial decision to prevent a proposed gold mine from being built in southwestern Alaska.

U.S. District Judge H. Russel Holland signed off on the motion on Thursday in Anchorage, setting the stage for a potentially dramatic confrontation between former EPA biologist Phillip North and the would-be developers of the Pebble Mine.

LINK (via: The Washington Post)

Federal judge rules new EPA water rule should be halted

EPA vows to proceed.

U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson in Fargo issued a temporary injunction requested by North Dakota and 12 other states halting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers from regulating some small streams, tributaries and wetlands under the Clean Water Act.

Erickson, was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2003.

LINK (via:U.S. New & World Report)

Pruning the Mississippi

Credit: USGS and NASA

Hurricane Katrina demolished New Orleans 10 years ago.

Extensive studies done after Katrina verified what lifelong residents of southeastern Louisiana already knew: Unless the rapidly disappearing wetlands are made healthy again, restoring the natural defense, New Orleans will soon lay naked against the sea

So, how does one reengineer the entire Mississippi River delta—one of the largest in the world—on which New Orleans lies?

Three international engineering and design teams have reached a startling answer: leave the mouth of the Mississippi River to die. Let the badly failing wetlands there completely wither away, becoming open water, so that the upper parts of the delta closer to the city can be saved.

LINK (via: Gizmodo)

California water districts sue U.S. over releases to help Klamath River salmon

Two agricultural water providers in the Central Valley of California are asking a federal judge to stop releases of extra water intended to help salmon in the Klamath Basin survive the drought.

LINK (via:Oregon Live)

This is what happened in 2002 when Klamath water was diverted to agricultural interests for political gain.

The Klamath Basin was once the third most productive river system for salmon on the west coast. It supported combined run sizes estimated between 660,000 to 1.1 million adult fish per year. These included spring-run chinook, fall-run chinook, coho, pink, and chum salmon, and winter and summer steelhead. Only the Columbia and the California Central Valley river systems produced more salmon.

It could be worse

Five Western waterways worse than the orange Animas

LINK (via HCN)

If there's any good news to be gained from the toxic spill of mine wastes into the Animas River upstream of Durango, Colorado, it's that public attention has suddenly shifted to the health of rivers in the West.

LINK (via: HCN)