Understanding Government

Six years and thousands of miles away from the poorly designed flood walls and levees whose post-Katrina failure inundated New Orleans, environmental groups in California have filed a federal lawsuit to prevent what they contend is an unproven, costly and potentially damaging flood protection strategy ordered by US Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps, under scrutiny after a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe, decreed in 2007 that local levee districts would in the future lose guarantees of federal aid and loans unless all trees and shrubs were removed from levees under its nominal jurisdiction around the nation. (more…)

An Icelandic aquaculture entrepreneur has staked his claim in the waters off Baja California, Mexico in the form of giant offshore fish farms, and if federal regulations now under review are significantly altered, the far-sighted project could migrate north of the border, off of San Diego.

That’s the bottom line of one heck of a fish story by Mike Lee in today’s edition of The San Diego Union-Tribune. The plan, by Oli Steindorsson, chief executive of Umami Sustainable Seafood, is to raise giant tuna in offshore pens for sale to the Japanese market and consumers in general. (more…)

The Associated Press reports that the House voted against a budget bill amendment by Michigan Rep. Dave Camp that would deny funding for the Army Corps of Engineers to keep open the locks that connect Lake Michigan to Chicago waterways. Camp argued that if the Corps let the locks close it would prevent invasion of Asian carp from the Mississippi River into the Great Lakes. But the notion that closing the locks would damage the Illinois shipping industry carried the day. (more…)

The tiny, mid pacific islands known as American Samoa has succeeded in an effort that remains elusive in California: banning plastic shopping bags.

The law, signed just days ago, goes into effect in February.

The move taken by the American territory was applauded by the federal EPA, according to Guam’s Pacific Daily News. While plastic bag bans or fees have been enacted in a number of municipalities, American Samoa is the first state government or territorial administration to take such an action. (more…)

The National Marine Fisheries Service was ordered to go back to the drawing board by a federal judge in California, the latest inconclusive skirmish over fish habitat in an important tributary to the Sacramento River, Denny Walsh of the Sacramento Bee reported Monday.

The battle is over the fate of two dams on Northern California’s Yuba River, which were constructed to prevent remnants of mountains blasted away by hydraulic mining during the gold rush from fouling waterways downstream.  According to the agency, populations of endangered salmon, steelhead and sturgeon are all stable in the river, facts certified in a required ‘biological opinion.’ However, environmental groups convinced the judge that the agency’s opinion was rife with contradictions and flaws that the agency was well aware of. (more…)