Pollution and Encroachment of Coastal Habitats in California - Essay Example

Your full here Your here here here Pollution and Encroachment of Coastal Habitats in California The coastlineof the State of California occupies a stretch of 1100 miles, from Oregon to Mexico. The breathtaking landscapes of the California coast range from forested areas, wilderness areas, dramatic cliffs, sandy beaches, and rocky outcrops to coveted ocean-side communities, and are home to many different species of flora and fauna that are endemic to the specific habitats that exist in the region. In the past three decades, the coastline has seen some major changes as a result of new governmental policies and increases in human population, most of them not beneficial to the beaches or the marine waters. Policies have been implemented that allow for greater leniency in the granting of permissions for off-shore oil drilling, and with a reduction of personnel in organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the strict guidelines that have survived are not being sufficiently enforced. The increasing number of people inhabiting areas near water sources such as rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands has caused greater pollution due to more runoff, which ultimately contributes to the pollution of harbors and bays. Polluted runoff and the occasional oil spill threaten coastal resources and often cause beach closures, resulting in risks to public health and significant impacts to local economies. With the advent of the deterioration of California’s coastal environment, some specific programs and organizations were created, such as the Critical Coastal Areas program, which delineates specific land areas of the California coast “where state, federal and local government agencies and other stakeholders have agreed to improve degraded water quality or protect exceptional coastal water quality from the threat of pollution” (CCA Draft Strategic Plan 1), and the California Coastal Commission, established in order to “protect, conserve, restore, and enhance environmental and human-based resources of the California coast and ocean for environmentally sustainable and prudent use by current and future generations” (California Coastal Commission), to name just a couple. However, the proliferation of such agencies and programs has been insufficient to curb the negative effects of pollution and encroachment by humans on natural coastal habitats. According to an assessment of California’s coastal waters done in the year 2000, 98% of the state’s estuaries and bays were unable to fully support aquatic life, more than 90% carried warnings about eating fish and shellfish, and 86% could not support recreational uses like swimming and surfing (National Water Quality Inventory 85). The habitats of sea otters, least terns, rockfish, and vital plankton, just to mention a few, have been undermined to the point where their populations have greatly diminished. Human encroachment is the number one contributing factor to the pollution of sea water, reduction in the size of beaches, and negative impacts on the habitats of endemic wildlife. Human activities such as offshore drilling, cruise ship travel, housing development, commercial development, and the increased use of off-road vehicles have put California’s coast in the precarious position that it is today. The effects of off-shore drilling are evident to beachgoers. The once pristine waters of, for example, the Ventura and Santa Barbara beaches, now carry patches of tar that reach the shore and stick to anything they touch. In 1969, the large oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara due to the blowout of a drilling rig left a huge black spot in its wake that had tragic effects on marine life and birds, marring 35 miles of coastline. Fish and birds were caught in the muck and died. Incoming tides brought the corpses of dead seals and dolphins. Oil had clogged the blowholes of the dolphins, causing massive lung hemorrhages. Animals that ingested the oil were poisoned. Diving birds which must get their nourishment from the waters themselves became soaked with tar. The oil spilled amounted to approximately 200,000 gallons and was spread into an 800-square-mile slick by winds and swells. Oil flowed freely into the Santa Barbara Channel, at varying rates, for the better part of the year (Haier). On the upside, it is believed that the Santa Barbara oil spill spurred the birth of the modern environmental movement. In fact, it was following a visit to the oil-drenched Santa Barbara Channel and shoreline that Senator Gaylord Nelson conceived the first Earth Day event in the form of a nationwide teach-in on the environment. Then in 1970, the first efforts were made for a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment. With the union of over twenty million people in the first ever Earth Day, attention was achieved at the political level and the federal government subsequently passed the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts. Earth Day was officially born and has spread around the world to become an annual international celebration, on April 22. In addition, an immediate effect of the oil spill was the postponement of further lease sales of coastal water regions in the Pacific for five years while, as a partial result of the spill, at the end of the decade of the ‘60s and throughout the 1970s other Acts were passed for protecting the environment, and particularly ocean and coastal resources, among them the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. §§4321-4347), the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (16 U.S.C. §§1361-1407, 50 CFR 216), […] the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 (33 U.S.C. §§1401-1445; P.L. 92-352), the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. §§1531-1543, 50 CFR 17), the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976, and the OCSLA (Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act) amendments of 1978 (43 U.S.C. §§1801-1866) (Assessment of the U.S. Continental Shelf 110). But there were also major offshore oil spills in San Francisco in 1971, and in Los Angeles in 1997, which only served to reinforce people’s opinion that any oil development activities carried out in the ocean were dangerous and wrong. However, also as noted in the assessment done of the U.S. Continental Shelf in 1992: […] the situation was to significantly change again in the mid-1970s as new pressures for accelerated development of the outer continental shelf were prompted by the oil embargoes of 1973 and 1974. The embargoes resulted in significant shortages and long lines at gasoline pumps for U.S. consumers and in a dramatic rise in the price of crude oil. Many human activities reduce the supply of sand that reaches the ocean and, in turn, deprive beaches of replenishment. These activities include dam construction, river channeling, and other developments. The vast majority of the California coastline is actively eroding at a rate that is determined by many human alterations to the environment and by natural events such as landslides, earthquakes, rainfall and runoff, storms, and swells. As for construction of protective structures, breakwater, jetties or groin fields built to protect harbor entrances, maintain beaches or protect coastal structures such as housing have had both positive and negative effects on sand movement along the shoreline. Protective structures trap sand and allow beaches to expand upcoast from the device in question, but can interrupt the flow of sand to other beaches. However, few adverse effects have been documented and the major impact is, apparently, an increased width of narrow beaches, which is actually a positive outcome for recreational and property-related purposes. In the not so remote past, cruise ships would dump waste and burn dirty fuel and garbage close to the California coast. It was completely legal for cruise ships to dump their waste, even in marine sanctuaries, compromising public health and sensitive marine life, not to mention the economic livelihood of coastal communities dependent on the ocean for their sustenance and prosperity. According to the Bluewater Network, a typical seven-day cruise can generate up to 50 tons of garbage and over 200,000 gallons of sewage. During a single port visit, cruise ships can produce emissions equivalent to those from 12,240 vehicles, resulting from the burning of garbage and the use of dirty diesel fuels during their voyages. Thankfully, on September 23, 2004, the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, took an initial step to prevent further pollution from this source by passing a bill that prohibits cruise ships from dumping sink and shower wastes within three miles of the California coast. Then on September 27, 2004, California became the first state to prohibit the dumping of sewage from cruise ship toilets with Schwarzenegger’s approval of Law AB2672. Both bills were authored by Assemblyman Joe Simitian. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the two-stroke engines that power dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), snowmobiles, jet skis and other mass produced off-road vehicles discharge between 25 and 30% of their oil-gas mixture directly into the environment. These emissions contain a host of toxic and cancer-causing chemicals, including benzene and methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), which pollute the air and water and injure, kill and potentially mutate plants, animals, fish and microscopic marine life. However, so far the EPA has been rather lenient in providing limits for the emissions from these vehicles, letting the factories that make them off quite easily, according to The Wilderness Society, when in September of 2002, it approved a final rule setting air pollution standards for snowmobiles, dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), and certain industrial equipment. Unfortunately the rule was issued under intense industry pressure, and fails to substantially reduce air pollution or better protect public health with readily available technology that can be applied at no great expense to the manufacturers. Also, greater permissiveness and the opening of trails and routes previously closed to off-road vehicles has contributed to the damage of habitats. To add insult to injury, it was also just recently discovered that between World War II and 1970, the U.S. Army secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, landmines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste (dailypress.com). These weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have the country practically surrounded, concealed off the coast of California, among other sites such as Florida, Hawaii and Alaska. Due to secrecy laws and plain bungling, the Army claims that it has no idea where all the ocean dump sites are located and has refused to adequately fund a program that would investigate and uncover as much information as possible as to where exactly these coastal WMD dump sites are located. Needless to say, the Army isn’t planning any kind of real cleanup of this dangerous waste. On a more political note, in the famous or infamous (depending on your particular political allegiances) article published in Rolling Stone on December 11, 2003, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes a scathing commentary of the Bush administration and his track record since coming into office in the year 2000, opening the article by stating that “George W. Bush will go down in history as America’s worst environmental president. Also according to Kennedy, Bush had the worse environmental record of any governor of the state of Texas, which became number one in air and water pollution and the release of toxic chemicals, championing short-term pollution-based prosperity. Among the many harmful actions the Bush administration has taken, there is the excuse given to coal-burning power plants from complying with the Clean Air Act, the growing inefficiency of the Environmental Protection Agency, which halted work on 62 environmental standards and proposed the elimination of 270 enforcement staffers, and the appointment of John Graham as Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. According to Kennedy, Graham specializes in recalculating cost-benefit analyses to benefit polluters. He cites Graham’s work prior to employment with the White House for the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis -where he was funded by major polluters such as Dow Chemical, DuPont, Exxon and General Motors- as the basis for this statement. He also mentions the ironic names given to initiatives that don’t live up to there titles, such as the Healthy Forests initiative, which promotes destructive logging of old-growth forests, and the Clear Skies program, which repealed key provisions of the Clean Air Act, allowing more emissions. He mentions that President Ronald Reagan, a confessed ardent follower of the “Sagebrush Rebellion”1, and Coors brewery owner Joseph Coors are anti-environmentalists, further writing that the Rebellion helped elect Reagan president. Also, both socially and economically, human encroachment and pollution have an effect on everyone. The enjoyment of beaches is greatly hindered when, upon going into the water, you risk ruining your bathing suit or get stains on your skin that take days to come out. Furthermore, many sources sustain that the amount of oil being extracted or that could be extracted in the future from off-shore drilling is minimal compared to the potential damage to the environment that would most likely be caused by these activities. Beach tourism in California is an important source of state and coastal community revenues and greatly depends on the cleanliness and natural integrity of the areas visited, and it’s not worth sacrificing places of beauty and recreation for a relatively small amount of oil that would not in the least help alleviate the oil crisis. Furthermore, successful harvesting of ocean products such as fish, shrimp, crab, etc. also depends on the quality of the seawaters, which have the greatest influence in determining whether they will be fit for human consumption or not. Historically, man has sought to live near water sources such as rivers, lakes and oceans. But with technologies that allow to bring water to us, without us having to go to the water, densely populating river banks, lake shores and sea shores is unnecessary and harmful to the very sources that allow us to survive. Coastal inhabitance has reached a peak and there are many groups in California in favor of instating laws that would provide for a population cap not only applicable to the coastal region, but also to the entire state. Although in appearance this measure would be extreme, if the number of coastal inhabitants continues to grow at the rate which it has during the past 20 years, public access to California’s coastline would be more difficult and problems originating from human encroachment would increase. In short, there are many risks and not many benefits to human encroachment of coastal areas. Seafood is obviously one of the benefits to be had from our sea-harvesting activities, but they need to be carried out responsibly in order not to harm threatened and endangered species that sometimes get netted or speared by accident. Oil is unfortunately a commodity we cannot live without due to the lack of development of alternate sources of energy such as solar, wind and electric power for our vehicles so exploitation will continue, but it would not be at all detrimental to stop off-shore drilling altogether, as the amount of crude extracted is not representative enough to justify the negative effects this brings to the environment. Housing and resort development allows for a small percentage of people to inhabit or pay a prolonged visit to spectacular beachside locations with incomparable vistas and scenery, but must always be limited so as to avoid affecting coastal flora and fauna. If we respect and take care of nature, nature will continue to take care of us. Works Cited Assessment of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Studies Program: III. Social and Economic Studies (1992) Commission on Geosciences, Environment and Resources (CGER) Bull, John M.R. “SPECIAL REPORT PART 1: The Deadliness Below.” The Daily Press. (October 30, 2005). Haier, Daniel. “‘69 Oil Spill Leaves Mark on SB Environmentalism” Daily Nexus Volume 85, Issue Number 67 (January 28, 2005) Long, Russell. “California Lawmakers Urge Passage of Cruise Ship Pollution Bills.” Bluewater Network. (August 20, 2003) “Program Overview”. California Coastal Commission http://www.coastal.ca.gov/whoweare.html (November 4, 2005) “Protecting Coastal Waters: State of California 2002 Critical Coastal Areas Draft Strategic Plan.” February 1, 2003. www.coastal.ca.gov/nps/cca-strategy.pdf (November 6, 2005) U.S. EPA, National Water Quality Inventory: 2000 Report, p. 85 (2000) Read More