Biodiversity and Climate Change Part II- WNY Primacy

Biodiversity and Climate Change Part 2

WNY Primacy

by Jay Burney

Preserve, Protect, and Defend, -biodiversity

In part 1, we explored that the fundamental cause of human created climate change is the eradication of biodiversity.  Eradication is enriched by the economic exploitation and the characterization of these resources as commodities.   The harvesting of forests and the use of our waterways as waste repositories have dealt fundamental blows to our planets ability to support life.  The ecological services provided by ecosystems are marginalized as economic “externalities”.  Ecological and social contexts have to be woven in to the sustainability equation with the real bottom line being biodiversity. A purely economic definition of “sustainable development” remains an oxymoron.  We have to change this.

The potential negative impact on our region’s biodiversity by climate change is substantial.  The positive contribution to atmospheric stability by biodiversity is fundamental science.  We must recognize the overwhelming significance of habitat destruction and the exploitation of natural resources. This is a very addressable strategy.

We Can

-Rethink, redefine, and react to fundamental causes of climate change. This will characterize the value of our current generations. 

-Identify, catalog and reverse the unprecedented human evisceration of biodiversity.

WNY is located in one of the most historically biodiverse regions on the planet. Our Great Lakes, rivers, creeks, streams, wetlands, forests, uplands, and meadows are vital components of a rapidly vanishing bioregion of global significance.

Although most of our natural assets have been urbanized or seriously altered by human activity there remain significant areas that are ecologically productive.   Most areas can return to ecological productivity with planning and investment.

The Sweetwater Seas

The Great Lakes contain nearly 1/5^th of the world’s fresh surface water.

The Great Lakes Basin is a bioregion that supports nearly 10% of the US population and 25% of the population of Canada.  Urbanization, industry and agriculture have diminished our ecologically productive capacity.

Our waters are a valuable asset.   They face growing threats championed by economic activities with a laser focus on growth and development.  We can enhance our planets capacity to support life and atmospheric stability if we continue to provide opportunities for biodiversity.  But only if we engage conservation as a primary first line of defense.

One of the most significant threats to our waters involves waste treatment and disposal. For example, just seven sewer authorities throughout the Great Lakes including the Buffalo Sewer Authority (BSA) discharge almost 20 billion gallons of untreated sewerage and storm water through Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs). The BSA is responsible for releasing almost 2 billion gallons per year of our untreated material into the Niagara River, Buffalo River, Black Rock Canal, Scajaquada Creek and 52 other permitted outfalls. 

The good news is that currently the BSA has a 19 year plan developed in conjunction with RiverKeeper to address CSOs.  The BSA is one of the only sewer authorities in the Great Lakes with a “Green Infrastructure Plan”.  It comes with a $500 million plus price tag. 

The bad news is that the BSA plan is not enough and there is no guarantee that the money can be raised. Our culture is in a current suicidal cycle of downplaying infrastructure investments of this kind. Maybe we will build a new football stadium instead.

The bad news goes deeper with the BSA. It is a “self-permitting” Public Authority.  The BSA alone determines and monitors what it processes through its system.  This is not a unique situation. The political and economic underpinnings of a Public Authority give the BSA extraordinary legal powers and can keep public scrutiny at arms length. Contentious issues involving permitting disclosures  result.

-The BSA is the sole authority for Buffalo Pollution Discharge Elimination System Permits (BPDES), issues permits for “Trucked in Waste” and permits for “Temporary Discharges”.

While the BSA is on record as saying that it is doing nothing illegal, permit applicants “self-identify” the materials that they are seeking to discharge into the lake.

This means that the potential for deliberate or unintentional misidentification of materials permitted for release by private entities is there. Public scrutiny of these permits does not include public review of permit applications prior to permitting.

We would be shocked, just shocked if illegal activity takes place, but the potential is there.

A recent example of the kinds of problems that exist under this current system include an investigation of fracking wastewater permits undertaken by ArtVoice in the late winter of 2011-12.

http://artvoice.com/issues/v10n6/week_in_review/seven_days

Hydrofracking

Despite all the industry hype about the environmental benefits of a transitional natural gas economy, one of the least reported aspects of hydrofracking is that the activity releases huge amounts of methane, a less reported but highly significant greenhouse gas. Coupled with the documented consequences of using billions of gallons of water, concocting and injecting proprietary chemical soups that are highly toxic that appear in groundwater, aquifers, and other drinking water sources, hydrofracking is not the answer. Even on a purely economic basis hydrofracking does not live up to industry hype. Mix in the development of landscapes eaten by roads, well heads, lagoons, and other infrastructure demands, it becomes more clear that this energy strategy does not support biodiversity and is instead another nail in the coffin of atmospheric stability.

Land Use

Land use models that transcend traditional economic factors are being developed locally. Riverkeeper has  introduced a GIS land use database focusing on watersheds. This groundbreaking approach to identifying value is transforming our ability to promote conservation and protection. Other local working groups are focusing on expanding the concept and identifying areas that have  economically quantifiable ecological services values such as intact or partially intact ecosystems on both public and private lands. County Forests, parkland, land banks, abandoned farmland, trails, wood lots, and other areas are strategic places.

A new database approach could form the basis of quantifiable analysis of critical habitat and biodiversity generators. The objective is to create a tool to build upon traditional land use concepts that help citizens and governments determine planning, zoning, conservation, and land protection. One potential outcome is incentives that would target keeping public and private land ecologically productive.

Buffalo Waterfront

We can recreate an ecologically productive waterfront by avoiding industrial, commercial or inappropriate mixed use development.  Only if we make significant public investments does this land become valuable land for the developers. Instead of driving profits just to the developers, lets invest in an economic plan that benefits a broader spectrum.

By concentrating development on the downtown side of the river and harbor and we will build a better city. The outer harbor should remain as open space with public access. How about a National Marine Sanctuary just off shore? An economic plan that encourages conservation through recreational and tourism will make us wealthier as a sustainable community.

Urban Greenscaping

Community owned lands such as parks and streetscapes can contribute to biodiversity. If you have a yard you can make a difference.  Here is how- Learn about the kinds of beneficial animals such as pollinators, local birds, and butterflies that depend on native plants, and then landscape with those plants! There are plenty of local organizations that promote this kind of gardening. One word of caution, -avoid using native plants in rain gardens that collect street runoff.  Toxic materials from automobiles, lawn chemicals and other poisons can accumulate in these gardens and if you are using plants that attract native butterflies, birds, and bees, they will absorb the toxins, which can be counterproductive.

Living Waters, A Book Review

From March of 2009- ArtVoice

Living Waters

A Book Review by Jay Burney

By almost any measure Margaret Wooster should be celebrated as a hero of our planet.  For a couple of decades she has been one of the most outspoken and out front environmental advocates in our region. Her professional and personal brilliance shines very brightly in her newest book, Living Waters, Reading the Rivers of the Lower Great Lakes, published by The State University of New York Press.

As the title implies, the focus of the book is in the bioregion centering on the lower Great Lakes.  Buffalo, Niagara, and the St. Lawrence areas are epicenters of her research and knowledge.  This book is an easy to read tour de force of the complex issues, people, and cultures that have shaped our current ecological conditions.  On display is Wooster’s unabashed passion and love of one of the primeval forces of our existence, -that of water and its influence on the life and health. The stories are told with a studied, energetic, and intuitive knowledge of human history and the fragile conditions of our ecological standing here on mother earth.

Wooster’s background as community activist and leader, mother, spouse, neighbor, and friend serves her well as she explores her life long dedication to revealing nature and human and natural history. Her examination of culture and her pointed portrayal of related ecological conditions tells a critical story that is sad, consequential, and instructive. She is an authority of persistent toxic substances. She is an authority on local place. She knows water as well as anyone.

The stories if the Cattaraugus, Scajacquada, Niagara, and Buffalo Rivers, the Zoar and Genesee Valleys, and the St. Lawrence are the meat of this book. The stories are told gracefully and yet impart a great deal of discomfort as she lays bare the horrific truths of how we have been significantly less that ideal stewards in the Great Lakes basin which embraces nearly 1/5 of the fresh surface water on the earth. Essentially, this book is a powerful chronicle of humanities war upon ourselves.

Throughout the book Wooster refers to others that have influenced her thinking.  These include Aldo Leopold the great Wisconsin conservationist, Theo Colburn, author of “Our Stolen Future, Seneca scholar John Mohawk, West Valley Activist Ray Vaughan, Cayuga Faithkeeper Allan Jamieson and literally dozens of others. These voices ring as authentic and all reflect both her wide circle of friends and her long held trust in giving credit to local experience and wisdom.

She tells us stories that make me sit up and pay attention. Her stories of people that have come before us, her encounter with a family of chattering Beluga Whales near the mouth of the St. Lawrence, the story of the dark trace of the “Indian cave” (near the present day nudist colony) in Zoar Valley, her canoe journeys with her husband Neil on the Buffalo River, her magical encounter with the soon thereafter demolished Scajacquada  embryonic headwater spring -bubbling up from deep beneath the earth, and the stories of her own ancestral homeland in Central NY as both powerful pre-European human habitat, and in more recent times the victim of a horrific salt mine collapse are absorbing.

And there is so much more.  There are stories of pollutions and despairs, development and generations of bad decisions involving how we treat our most precious assets.  There are stories of politics and international treaties. Margaret has a long professional history including several years as the Executive Director of Great Lakes United, a binational environmental organization that is located in Buffalo? Besides being a favorite Buffalo daughter, Margaret is known and even sometimes welcomed in the halls of Congress and Parliament?   She is a keeper.

A favorite passage involves the memory of Stan Spisiak, one of Buffalo’s most outspoken “water keepers” from the early 60’s. This local business and family man became concerned about the condition of the Buffalo River and was able to go all the way to the White House. Spisiak’s efforts on behalf of the River were embryonic and led to worldwide recognition of environmental issues.

Another favorite passage involves science, which one will find plenty of in this book. Science can tell us how little we know about nature, and how difficult it is to “restore” or “remediate” environmental damage. Our culture gives lip service to this when we must “take” an ecological community for something that we determine is for the greater good, -for instance some sort of prioritized economic benefit like a shopping center or a shipping channel. To my way of thinking, we don’t come close to understanding the true economic consequences of environmental destructions which are in our economic system still mostly considered “externalities”.   Some excerpts:

 “Most of us know comparatively little about the natural processes that sustain Earth’s creeks, rivers, lakes, and groundwater. Most of us think that someone else is minding the water.  Based on my own explorations of these Great Lakes Waters, I would say that this is a dangerous delusion.”  

“Within the last two decades, research on aquatic ecosystems …..challenges our most basic views of how rivers work- though this remains unknown to the engineers in charge of our waterways.  These studies reveal that every stream is actually two interacting waterbodies; one above the ground and one below.  The groundwater does all of the invisible housework of cleaning and providing storage, recharge, and nutrients to the waters above.  Groundwater systems……also serve as a refuge for creatures during all parts of their life cycles and assist…in recovery after floods or droughts.

Finally, I think that Wooster leaves us with a feeling of hope.  The last chapter “Leopold Revisited” reminds us that we can still think of a land ethic. Whether it is trying to understand the potential for unintended consequences, or pushing what Leopold called “intelligent consumption” this book leaves me gazing joyfully at the final image of the book.  It is a Red-headed woodpecker hammering away at a dead pine.  That is life. That may be a hopeful vision of a future that works.