Bush May Open the Nation's Largest Fishery to Oil Development
    By Elise Wolf
    t r u t h o u t | Guest Columnist

    Friday 01 December 2006

    Anchorage, Alaska - According to a number of separate sources, President Bush plans to rescind a ban on oil and gas drilling in the fragile, salmon-rich waters of Bristol Bay. The decision coincides with plans by the Minerals Management Service (MMS) to open almost 50 percent of Alaska's outer continental shelf to the oil industry. Bristol Bay's enormously productive marine ecosystem was protected by congressional moratoria - along with most of the US outer continental shelf - as a reaction to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. President George H.W. Bush further protected the bay with an executive withdrawal in 1990 and President Clinton extended those protections.

    Bordered by the Aleutian chain on one side and Alaska's southwest coast on the other, the Bristol Bay region is one of the world's most productive marine ecosystems. The region supports unparalleled fisheries, including the world's largest wild run of sockeye salmon. The proposed lease area also overlaps a recently designated critical habitat for the highly endangered North Pacific right whale. Huge numbers of waterfowl and shorebirds use the region's coastal wetlands, lagoons and sheltered bays as migratory hubs, staging areas and wintering grounds. Humpback, fin, gray and minke whales seek out these rich waters in annual migrations, and walrus, seal and otter line the Aleutian coastline in abundant numbers.

    Putting such a fragile and important marine habitat in the hands of the oil industry is not a relished idea. The oil industry, known for its corrosive pipes and land-leaning tanker captains, does not have the greatest reputation for environmentally clean development. A letter written in response to the proposed lifting of the ban states, "The presidential withdrawal, currently in effect until 2012, serves a vital role in protecting the world-class marine resources, sea life, fishing livelihoods, and resource-dependent coastal communities of the region from the potentially devastating ecological, economic, social, and cultural impacts of offshore oil and gas development."

    The letter was written by a diverse set of people and groups, including Alaska Native, fisheries and conservation representatives. It is difficult to find supporters of this improvident plan. Alaska's Bristol Bay supplies 50 percent of US seafood. Just the thought of oil development with its associated discharges could be enough to impair a fishery already fighting the economic effects of farmed salmon. Economically, culturally and environmentally, these communities are wholly dependent on the region's viability as a productive and clean ecosystem.

    "In addition to its vital ecological importance, Bristol Bay's renewable marine resources have long supported coastal economies and subsistence ways of life in Alaska. If protected and properly managed, they can continue doing so for generations to come," notes Eric Siy, executive director of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council (AMCC), who works with the varied local individuals whose lives would be affected by such development.

    That Bush would want to allow oil development in an area renowned as one of the world's most productive marine systems should not be surprising. However, this particular area, and in fact the exact proposed leases were bought back by taxpayers in the mid-1990s. The exact figures have never been fully worked out, but between $95 million and $300 million was paid to the oil companies who bought Bristol Bay leases in the late 1980s. Now the taxpayer is again being asked to gamble with the lives of a host of people and communities and risk the environmental future of an irreplaceable region.

    Taxpayers demanded the leases be bought back because the Exxon Valdez spill evidenced the lack of preparedness the industry faced in oil-spill response. Notably, that spill occurred in the fairly protected and relatively calm waters of the Prince William Sound. Responding to and cleaning up an oil spill in the rough sea conditions, ice, and strong tides and currents of Bristol Bay - or any other outer continental shelf region of Alaska - is a whole different story. No successful oil-spill response drill has been performed off Prudhoe Bay in the Beaufort Sea. To pursue development in Bristol Bay would be an unprecedented experiment. The entire MMS process for making such long-term decisions as what oceans and shores the country should sacrifice for oil development is an ethical quagmire. What is most concerning is the secrecy with which such a large and admittedly nationwide decision is being made. The Minerals Management Service has treated the sale process of this unique ecosystem as if it were just a standard part of its leasing plans. Rather than making the decision part of an open and transparent process, MMS slipped the proposed opening of the bay into the Five-Year plan and began its plans to lease even before the presidential withdrawal was lifted or the OCS Five-Year Plan was finalized. In Anchorage this week, November 28-30, MMS met with various agency scientists to discuss the monitoring aspects of leasing - months before the Five-Year Plan is due to be finalized.

    Every five years the MMS, with the instruction of the current administration, puts together the oil and gas leasing plans for the nation's outer continental shelf. The comment period for the 2007-2012 plan just ended. And, although the MMS is chartered to plan and regulate one of the most environmentally risky developments - oil - in our most sensitive regions - our oceans - this agency receives little to no attention on a national scale. Existing in near-obscurity in the public eye, the agency can produce environmental impact statements (EIS) that befit a comedy routine starring Lee Raymond (the previous CEO of Exxon). In the Draft EIS for Bristol Bay, impacts were concluded to be "limited" and "unlikely." Yet, MMS predicts at least one large spill (1,000 barrels or 42,000 gallons plus). The EIS lists innumerable damages that could impair permanently the ecosystem and the communities of the region, yet in its final conclusions MMS vastly minimizes and underrepresents the true risks at stake. Sadly, the secretary of the interior, the final decision-maker in the Five-Year Plan process, undoubtedly will look to the falsely optimistic conclusions of the MMS, rather than dig through 800 pages of countless impacts.

    At both this week's science meetings on Bristol Bay and those held a month ago on the proposed Chukchi Sea leasing area, scientists were virtually unanimous that there simply are not enough baseline data about Alaska's marine ecosystems to make viable decisions on how to monitor or mitigate impacts. Such baseline data would include information such as distribution, abundance and behavior (calving and foraging, for example) of species utilizing the region. The agencies that monitor the fishing industry - National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, US Fish & Wildlife Service, and National Marine Fisheries Service - have developed some data over the years in Bristol Bay. However, according to several scientists at this week's MMS meetings, there simply is not enough information to even begin to make monitoring plans. It is a bizarre twist that this administration can hold off forever "waiting for the science to be certain" on an issue like global climate change, but then totally cast to the wind any idea of waiting for appropriate scientific evaluations with this proposed plan. Adding another quirk to the whole idea of oil development on Alaska's outer continental shelf is the fact that Alaska is undergoing severe changes due to global warming. Newsweek called Alaska the "poster child" for climate change. And it is. The state is showing significant alterations in its animal populations and behaviors, weather patterns, and ecosystems. Higher water temperatures are bringing new species into Alaskan waters and causing changes in wildlife behavior. Changes in the ocean's benthic (bottom ocean) and pelagic (upper-water) systems are being noted as well. Many of these changes directly affect future development on the outer shelf.

    The White House has yet to confirm the lifting of the ban and states that no decision has been made. However, Gray Strasburg, with the MMS, said, "There may be some information coming out about it soon. We are working on a response about the questions that have come in about whether he is going to lift it." The White House is likely getting calls by any number of reporters and perhaps Congress members on the issue. If President Bush ultimately chooses to open the fragile waters of Bristol Bay, he will be setting in stone an environmental legacy that will have reached a new low in decision-making.