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Left of the Hudson: The river is dying

Sunday, May 25, 2008

The river is dying


I'm a few days late in my reading of the New York Times, but an editorial about the Hudson River from a few days back caught my eye:

On the surface, the Hudson River is looking good. The sun on a spring morning glints off the water, off bridges and boats, off river bluffs groaning with new condominiums. The blue crabs are big, and the striped bass are bigger. If it weren’t for the PCB’s in the river mud, which General Electric might get around to dredging someday, you would think the Hudson was about as healthy as it has been since Indian times.

Sadly, it isn’t. A study by the environmental group Riverkeeper examined an important indicator of the life of any river — fish — and found discouraging, even dire, news. Ten of 13 species it examined are in decline, and one — the great and delicious shad — is at historic lows.

The report blames the usual suspects and a few new ones. The river is getting warmer, and the heat helps starve the water of oxygen. Power plants kill untold millions of fish and roe when they suck up river water to cool their machinery. Invasive species, sewage and fertilizer runoff and overfishing in the ocean, where species like shad spend much of their lives, all take their toll.


Before I finished the editorial, my knee-jerk reaction was to blame Indian Point, but it's not only the nuclear power plant that's to blame in the loss of shad and other creatures of the estuary. Riverkeeper says that even the older, conventional power plants have to adapt as their cooling systems aren't up to snuff and they're also contributing to the marked increase in water temperature that's starving its wildlife.

You can read Riverkeeper's full report here.

Riverkeeper’s report shows how little we understand the biology of one of the country’s most historic and important estuaries. It is a sobering reminder that even the hardest-fought conservation victories may look, in retrospect, like the easy ones, and that complacency can be the death of environmental progress.


Again, I'm guilty of falling behind. I've let my Riverkeeper membership lapse. I'll fix that today.

Read about Riverkeeper's good work below the fold.


Many of us who live in the river villages enjoy the river. I can often be seen kayaking between South Nyack and Upper Nyack (I'm the guy in the bright yellow sit-on-top that looks like a banana). But if it wasn't for Riverkeeper, the Hudson would be nothing much more than a large sewage ditch today.

In the 1960s a journalist and ex-Marine named Robert H. Boyle was disgusted by the conditions of the River and the rampant and flagrant pollution by the municipalities and businesses in the area. Joined by other area fishermen, he decided to go after the polluters using two rarely enforced federal laws, the Federal Refuse Act of 1899 and the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1888. Using these laws, Boyle and the other locals became whistleblowers, pointing out polluters to the government. Soon, they were joined by scientists and environmentalists and Riverkeeper was born.

And they scored some major victories for the Hudson River since. They include:

* Stopping Consolidated Edison from building a hydroelectric facility near Storm King Mountain that would have destroyed a major striped bass spawning area.

* In the early 1980s, they launched a watchboat on the Hudson and soon discovered that oil tankers were regularly discharging large amounts of petrochemicals from their holds. To add insult to injury, these ships also tanked up with clean Hudson River water to sell to the Caribbean island of Aruba.

* In the 1990s, Riverkeeper took on developers and the government to protect the reservoirs and streams that constitute the water supply for nine million New York City and Westchester County residents.

* Over the years, Riverkeeper has challenged, with a great deal of success, our area's most notorious polluters, including Exxon/Mobil, General Electric, Consolidated Edison, the MTA, New York City, and the NYSDOT.

Today, they continue their good work in protecting the river and other bodies of water that affect the greater New York water supply. Its lawyers, lead by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are continuously litigating on behalf of the Hudson. They also provide environmental reviews and opinions on ongoing development projects, such as the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement. And last, Riverkeeper provides educational and empowerment tools for the public.

Join me in donating to Riverkeeper today.

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posted by Cliff Weathers at 10:14 AM

1 Comments:

Blogger 22a-rbZD.007 said...

The Hudson is a drowned river. Rises in sea level have caused the Hudson to be invaded by salty seawater, or estuary water, up to about the area around West Point. Truly fresh water does not exist in the Hudson below this line.


Shad only spawn in 100% fresh water. At sea, shad stay far below 300 feet, preferring low light conditions. They seek 100% fresh water well above the estuary salt line, to lay their eggs. Their vulnerable run, up the Hudson to reach fresh water, was when easy takes of thousands of fish made them a part time job that Hudson men would play hookey from their regular work to pursue for a month each spring. During the upstream run, the fish do not feed, so they do not explore shorelines, but concentrate in fast moving schools in the midriver deep, to swim upstream en masse, as quickly as they can get there. On the Hudson... Troy, N.Y. is "there". At Hudson River mile 153, the Federal Dam effectively cuts off the shad from its ancestral freshwater spawning grounds further upstream.


Once there, they spawn, and the fertilized eggs drift for about 8 days before hatching. These drifting eggs never reach the brackish, salty estuary water, because the Hudson flows both up and downstream depending on tides, taking 126 days for water to completely clear the estuary from north to south. 8 days divided by 126 days gives 0.0635, about 6 percent. Those eggs are only able to drift, in a back and forth motion, about 6 percent of the Hudson's length between the Troy dam and the sea, or about 10 miles, more or less in the vicinity above Castleton NY, before hatching out as larvae. Growing a bit, the juvenile fry display the genetic preference of shad for large groups and deep water, heading for mid river pools in large schools, to filter plankton.



Please note that none of this behavior brings shad, either adult or juvenile, into the vicinity of Indian Point.


Yes, fish are free agents, and can go anywhere in the river, but the deep water parade of the shad run participants avoids the shore in the main, and the eggs remain well north of IPEC. The juveniles are known to avoid the shore, and filter feed in the deepest pools available.


You can research this yourself at http://www.asmfc.org/, the official website of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the main research and enforcement agency, empowered under law to protect the shad and all its variants, the alewife, hickory shad, and others, under the Atlantic Coast Fisheries Cooperative Management Act of 1993. In fact, in their FMR, or fishery management report "Amendment 1", they say just the same thing. Read their words:


FISHERY MANAGEMENT REPORT OF THE
ATLANTIC STATES MARINE FISHERIES COMMISSION


http://www.asmfc.org/


Amendment 1 to the interstate fishery management plan
for shad & river herring page 13, paragraph 2:


"Impacts of power plant impingement upon shad & river herring, expressed as reductions in abundance, were calculated for Hudson River American shad in 1974 and 1975.



(Indian Point I, Indian Point II and Indian Point III were all in operation during those years, and had not yet installed protective fish bypass weirs which were to be added after 1981.)



The maximum estimated reductions in abundance were 0.04 in 1974 and 0.06 in 1975. These extremely low impingement impacts on American shad is related to the brief period that this species is concentrated in the vicinity of major power plants during their emigration from the estuary in autumn. It was determined that impingement is probably not a biologically important source of mortality except, perhaps, when added to other, more serious stresses (Barnthouse and Van Winkle 1988)."


They then go on to name the largest stressor, and it is in Canada:


"A large tidal hydroelectric project is currently in use at the mouth of the Annapolis river in the Bay of Fundy, Canada. Dadswell et al. (1983) have found that these waters are used extensively by American shad from all runs along the east coast of the United States as foraging areas during summer months. Since these are tidal hydroelectric projects, fish may move into and out our the impacted areas with each tidal cycle. Thus, although these turbines cause a relatively small percentage mortality with one passage, the cumulative mortality resulting from repeated tidal passage into and out of these impacted areas would result in substantial mortalities (Scarratt and Dadswell 1983)."


In 2006, advanced sonar imaging, coupled with previous tagging, allowed scientists to declare definitively, that all shad from the entire east coast of North America , regardless of place of origin, gather in the Bay of Fundy, as their main summer feeding ground. How unfortunate, then that the tide power turbines on the Bay of Fundy have the entire summer to suck up shad twice a day, over & over, every day, all summer.

Perhaps Riverkeeper ought to be exerting its influence up in Halifax, where the damage is done, rather than down here, where the deep pockets are.


But the Atlantic States Fishery Commission itself seems to have gotten the jump on Alex & Riverkeeper both timewise, and targetwise, by phasing out the coastal intercept fishery between 2000 and 2005, ending the massive coastal harvesting ( 2 million pounds in 1989) of shad returning south from the Bay of Fundy in the fall. This harvesting is now illegal.


The Delaware and Chesapeake communities seem far advanced over Hudson's Riverkeeper, having been reduced in 1951, 1952, and 1953 to an absolutely zero shad count, they found that sewage fouling, purely biological pollution, had reduced the dissolved oxygen in their estuaries to negligible levels, heavy coliform bacterial infestations effectively choking returning shad, who suffocated and died by the tens of thousands. Cleaning up the big city sewage outlets from Wilmington, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, they embarked on a multi-pronged effort, which has returned the shad to the Delaware and the Susquehanna. (Few people are aware that many Hudson towns have been grandfathered in, with raw sewage outlets into the Hudson, about which Riverkeeper utters nary a word. More than that, many marginally adequate municipal sewage systems on the Hudson are easily overwhelmed by rain, becoming yet more raw sewage outlets.) The curing of human bio-fouling was step number one in rescuing the shad in Delaware..... why not take a lesson from success?



The mid Atlantic states then built a series of fish ladders, or dam bypasses, allowing fish to pass over obstructing dams, and access their ancestral breeding grounds. Why does Matthiessen appear blissfully ignorant of a problem solved, a mere 300 miles to the south? Why not look 153 miles north, and push for fish ladders at Troy?


Then there is intentional breedstocking. Indian Point itself operated a fish farm at Verplanck for 20 years, contributing substantially to the resurgence of Hudson species that are now on the ascendant. The Delaware and Susquehanna shad rescue effort now includes a yearly take of about 900 roe shad (females), whose roe sacs are carefully fertilized by the milt of a broad array of buck shad in fish hatcheries, before being tagged and released. Each sac can harbor up to 500,000 eggs, producing a quarter of a billion new shad each year, in an effort which seems to not have overtaxed the state agencies paying for it, but which has resulted in 75% of counted shad now being hatchery-bred, while absolute numbers of counted shad climb every year.



Yet here on the Hudson, Mr.Matthiessen beats his breast, rehashes old woes solved elsewhere as if newly-found, and tells us to send in donations, so he can urge Entergy to install cooling towers in Peekskill. It only makes sense, if you view both Riverkeeper and Matthiessen, as suffering "End-Of-Mission" malaise, not able to broaden tactics beyond the old "Sue 'em, and Screw 'em" attack mentality, and either incompetently or maliciously suppressing the truth about shadfish, to push yet more quixotic antinuke campaigning down the public's throat. I guess Mr. Matthiessen figures its a known maneuver, it worked before, why do anything expensive or un-branded now? Why confuse the faithful.... it might make the organization seem weak, ill focused, preoccupied with antinuclearism....

This plan's downfall is it simply does nothing at all to help the shad- just Riverkeeper.


Meanwhile, in Delaware, and in California, where people were more comprehensive in their vision, shad are on the ascendant. So just who is misleading whom?


Interested readers might check out:

http://www.fish.state.pa.us/pafish/shad/migratory_fish.pdf

to see how Pennsylvania has been handling these issues.


When Riverkeeper announced its report, I began waiting for the secondary articles, ones not directly traceable to Riverkeeper, to begin to run with the distortions presented in the report, all done for the sake of Riverkeeper.

And here we are.

In any river, lake or estuary, one might catalog at this time, declines in certain species. In the Hudson, the striped bass is on the ascendency, and bass eat shad, plain and simple. Why do some decline and others take over?

An article from "The Daily Green" notes a recent study found that fully 25% of fish species worldwide, are invasive non-original species, and that all native species are now in decline. Read the article yourself at

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/invasive-fish-47020405
The decline is worldwide.

A similar article found at

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/2585
tells us how a National Audubon Society study found that fully 80% of common bird species in the USA have declined in numbers up to 54% since 1967. The report blames human development as the cause of this plummet in bird numbers. This decline is continent-wide.

These are global realities, now that human civilization has spread, supplanting archaic biosystems, with new diversified biosystems, adapted to the presence of humanity.To attempt to jawbone this planetary fact, into a call for donations to Riverkeeper, is not only bad science, but skewed bio-ethics, diverting or preventing needed action, by injecting Riverkeeper's own needs into a much larger issue, one not solvable by Riverkeeper's narrow abilities.

In essence, it would be possible anywhere, on any river or lake, to fund a "designer science" study, finding some species were declining. To stop there, would be meretricious misuse of the methods of science, for narrow aims. In fact, older species are giving way to new species, diversifying native fauna, to a more global mix. If we were to leave out the broader picture, it could only be that we were hoping to advance a narrow local agenda, at the expense of truth.

Seeing as shad, a form of herring, and Riverkeeper's central species of concern , is anadromous, spending most of its life at sea, any blame for reduction in numbers has to be layed at the feet of the countries sending huge factory ship fleets out to decimate fish populations in mid ocean. Once satisfied with large hauls of mid-ocean herring species, these fleets had put themselves in a bind by fishing those species to depletion. Now, just to continue their own profitability, they've turned to the shad (which they once ignored). Thus the shad are pursued, and depleted, by a vastly efficient high tech enemy, one who could easily fish them to extinction at some point.

Riverkeeper, not truly interested in the survival of shad, downplays this fact.

Meanwhile, in the Hudson estuary, everything has changed.

Invasive species, led by the Russian zebra mussel, have conquered the river, and usurped the places in the food chain formerly inhabited by declining species. Zebra mussels alone, are said by the Lamont Dohery laboratory, to filter the entire mass of water in the estuary once every 1.4 days.

This is a truly massive diversion of the Hudson's waters, dwarfing by several thousand times, the amount of water used by power plants for cooling. Moreover, it is a scouring of the water with absolutely no benefit for mankind, for other species, or for anything at all, except the increase of the monstrous zebra mussel plague, which so far has been unstoppable worldwide.

Were Riverkeeper truly an estuarine protector, it would put its weight behind the search for solutions for the zebra mussel. owever, its search for deep pocketed opponents, marks it clearly as a pure public relations political organization, overlawyered, thinking only of its own prosperity, and setting up its own peculiar straw men, so as to appear to be knocking them down, while asking the public for charity donations, that they might continue this "campaign".

Actually, what Riverkeeper does best, is collect money, having recently filled its own corporate grants chair, to seek larger donations from larger donors. This is bad news for the shad, who will not get any help from this quarter, and will only be used as bait, to catch these larger, corporate fish.


read the text of the articles I Cited, below:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/invasive-fish-47020405
all our rivers are invaded

Biological Pollution Decimating Lakes and Rivers
Study Ties Invasive Fish to Urban Commerce 2/4/2008

Up to one in four fish species inhabiting lakes and rivers near human settlements is foreign, according to the first global analysis of invasive species in freshwater ecosystems.
Invasive species are often called "biological pollution" because they have far-reaching effects on native wildlife. When a foreign species is introduced into a new ecosystem, it often thrives in the absence of predators, out-competes native species for a finite food source or otherwise disrupts the web of life that had evolved in that location.
Zebra mussels, native to the Caspian Sea area of Europe and Asia, for example, have invaded many freshwater ecosystems in the United States. In the Hudson River, zebra mussels have led to the extinction of native clams and so altered the ecosystem by filtering out massive amounts of plankton that young fish may not be surviving because they can't eat enough.
The new study, led by Fabien Leprieur, Olivier Beauchard and published in the Public Library of Science, found that in 1,000 river basins studied, population density, degree of urbanized land, and that area's gross domestic product were most clearly related to the number of invasive fish.
The authors of the study warned that rivers that have remained relatively unharmed are unlikely to remain so as more developing nations modernize, and world population continues to grow.
Find this article at: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/invasive-fish-47020405




Common Birds in Drastic Decline
A new study by the National Audubon Society has found that many of America's most well-known and well-loved birds are disappearing. Some species have declined as much as 80 percent. Loss of habitat is the biggest reason for the trend, as suburban sprawl, farming, mining, energy exploration and logging have radically altered the American landscape over the past 40 years. Grasslands, healthy, mature forests and wetlands are all in decline, in part due to human development and industry and in part due to the introduction of foreign, invasive plant species.
While declines in grassland species of the American Midwest have been documented before, certain boreal forest species now show new declines due, in part, to logging. Global warming, too, poses a serious threat, as the changing climate alters habitat, food and disease dynamics. For the first time, declines in birds on the tundra could indicate that global warming is already having an effect, according to the study's lead author, Greg Butcher.
“These are not rare or exotic birds we're talking about...these are the birds that visit our feeders and congregate at nearby lakes and seashores and yet they are disappearing day by day,” Audubon chairwoman and former EPA Administrator Carol Browner said. “Their decline tells us we have serious work to do, from protecting local habitats to addressing the huge threats from global warming.”
Species on Audubon's list of Common Birds in Decline have seen their populations plummet at least 54 percent since 1967. For a list of the hardest-hit birds, click here. The results have not been peer-reviewed, but the scientists plan to submit the study to a scientific journal for review. Some trends leading to the declines may become worse in the near future. Industrial-scale agriculture has greatly reduced grassland habitat, and the recent boom in ethanol — fueled by government subsidies — has led to a big increase in corn planting.
Audubon's Common Birds in Decline list stems from the first-ever analysis combining annual sighting data from Audubon's century-old Christmas Bird Count program with results of the annual Breeding Bird Survey conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey. These surveys are executed by volunteers around the country and world, who submit records of their observations. "This is a powerful example of how tens of thousands of volunteer birders, pooling their observations, can make an enormous difference for the creatures they care the most about," natural history writer Scott Weidensaul said in a prepared statement. "Thanks to their efforts, we have the information. Now all of us — from birders to policy makers — need to take action to keep these species from declining even further." Weidensaul said the decline of game birds — like scaup, pintail and grouse — shows that even species that are the subject of extensive planning and conservation efforts are suffering. That shows that "the time to save species is when they are still common." "Really," he said, "no species is safe from the sweeping landscape changes we're seeing."

As far as the relative impact of power plants, compared to the impact of these global forces, power plants have almost no impact at all. Read the numbers below:



According to the State University at Stony Brook, at URL
http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/marinebio/fc.1.estuaries.html

The majority of water flow in the Hudson estuary is tidal, amounting to some 425,000 cubic feet per second at the battery. Fresh flow is much less, reaching a maximum of 30,000 cubic feet per second in April. The estuary flushes itself every 126 days. That is to say, after 126 days, all the water is new.

At its maximum, 425000 plus 30000 gives 455000 cubic feet per second total water flow, fresh plus tidal. 126 days contain 10,886,400 seconds. Therefore a rough calculation of the total mass of water in the estuary equals: (455000 cubic feet/second) X ( 10,886,400 seconds) = 49,533,122,000,000 cubic feet of water.

Indian Point's circulating Water Pumps are 140,000 GPM pumps. There are 12 pumps ( all 12 are seldom used at once). 140,000 GPM is 2333 gallons per second. (2333) X (12 pumps) = 28,000 gallons per second, or 3740 cubic feet per second intake water for both units running at ultra maximum capacity. If all 12 pumps are run for the entire 126 days needed to replace the estuary water, (one flush) they will process 40,715,136,000 cubic feet of that water.

(40,715,136,000) divided by ( 49,533,122,000,000) = 0.008
At its maximum capacity, Indian Point touches less than one percent of the Hudson estuary's water.

That means that 99% of the estuary's water mass never encounters Indian Point. To a fish, or an egg floating in the estuary that means more than 99% live their entire lives as if Indian Point did not exist.

To give up the 2000 megawatts powering New York's stock exchange, Metro North, Yankee Stadium, the Meadowlands, Madison Square Garden, every single shopping mall, and all the local airports to save 1% of the fish larvae may seem worthwhile to dedicated career ecologists, who want to see every egg miss Indian Point, but it may not be worthwhile to anyone else, not even to the fish.

Fish lay eggs in a vast overkill, to compensate for predation and bad luck. Fish eggs are in no way comparable to human babies. Fish eggs are more accurately compared to human spermatozoa, the vast majority of which are expected to die, and which do die off, in a very normal and natural reduction that leads to a stable and healthy population.

Moreover, Indian Point has a Fish Return System in place, which guides anything swimming in that 1% of the estuary's water at the intake, along an escape weir that returns fish to the river downstream of IPEC, so that in effect far, far less than 1% of the estuary's swimming inhabitants ever encounter Indian Point's machinery, just the fish weir.

Standing at Indian Point's dock, one can see the ripples in the surface where a great gathering of creatures seek out the warm water flow from IPEC's discharge. Gulls, herons, and other birds hover there, and underwater species such as the blue crab are allowed to live in this part of the Hudson, which otherwise would be too cold for them to survive. (Without IPEC, they would not be found north of the Chesapeake). So IPEC is supporting a flourishing micro-ecosphere at its discharge, one never mentioned by ecological opposers.

Add to this, the recent invasion of the Hudson by non-native species via the great lakes shipping lanes, and it becomes unclear just what ecologists are striving to "protect". Are we to give up our electricity, so that a melange of invasive "bum fish", swamp grass and Russian zebra mussels can be more at home in their newly stolen North American habitat? Are some ecologists simply pandering for grant money? Is their focus unnaturally narrow and negative?

The native Shad and Bass species are stable but inedible, because of mercury and PCB contamination endemic to the Hudson, and having nothing to do with Indian Point. Many of these fish are lineal descendants of the billions of fish hatched at Indian Point's own fish hatchery over 25 years. So does IPEC threaten the Hudson biosphere, as some claim, or has it instead become an integrated, supportive part of the ecological mix now found in the estuary? Arguments can be made both ways.

The Western coast of the United States is overrun with shad, all of which are descendants of a single importation in 1871.

On June 19, 1871 Seth Green embarked on a cross country railroad trip bearing 12,000 eastern shad hatchlings that had been born the night before.The hatchlings were kept in four 8-gallon milk cans, and 10,000 of them survived the seven day rail trip, to be dumped into the Sacramento river at 10 PM June 26 1871.

By the 1980's shad runs numbering 3 million were reported on the West coast, where shad now flourish from Mexico to Alaska, thanks to Mr Green's action. One can only imagine the possibilities open to Alex Matthiessen and Riverkeeper, who have much more sophisticated travel and preservation technologies at their disposal, and millions of dollars in donated funds available , to make such a trip in reverse. But They do not.

One can only ask why. Could it be that an unrescued, decimated Hudson shad population is of benefit to Riverkeeper, as an advertising banner, eliciting emotional responses geared to misleading people into making contributions?

What would it cost to develop, let's say, 500,000 hatchlings? With each roe shad (fertile female) harboring up to 300,000 eggs in her roe sacs, the cull from a mere 6 or 8 females could easily provide the 500,000 eggs. The milt (sperm) from even a single buck shad could fertilize all of them, giving Mr. Matthiessen 50 times the number of hatchlings Mr. Green carried in 1871.

A quick charter flight east, and the 500,000 new shad could be released the next morning at New York harbor. Two or three such flights would restore almost the entire eastern shad run. But Matthiessen is not going to do it. Matthiessen wants shad on the brink, so he might misdirect people to giving him money to carry out quixotic, off target PR campaigns he cannot ever win.

An article on National Public Radio is a garish, bittersweet reminder, of how we need to be educated about shad. At http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=48730288&sc=emaf
Bonny Wolf tells us just how to prepare shad roe, being careful not to break the delicate egg sacs, (each containing 100,000 roe eggs).Ms. Wolf goes on to advise dipping the sacs in batter, and frying them in lemon butter, and tells us how much she loves the dish. A picture of a prepared plate in this article shows us 6 shad roe sacs on a plate........Delicious as it might be, this single gourmet meal destroys the same amount of shadfish, as Mr. Matthiessen's nonexistent rescue flight could transplant back to the Hudson. Let two privileged people order up such a meal, and their delectation will have destroyed more shad than ever ran in the largest Hudson shad run, all before ordering desert.

Therefore, do not be misled.

Riverkeeper's "designer Science" report, and Bonny Wolf's recipe both emanate from the same callous, shallow, elitist presumptions, and self-congratulating tunnel vision. If you want to rescue shad, its easy. Do as Seth Green did 137 years ago. Do be misled by a callous set-in-its-ways Riverkeeper second-string management, simply wishing to re-ignite lost causes from 2001, without doing new, needed work, or losing old captive audiences.

May 28, 2008 10:07 AM  

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