November 6, 2001

Environmental Watch: Corps releases new guidelines for piers

SEATTLE --- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in conjunction with the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has issued guidelines for the construction of new or replacement piers in Lake Washington, Lake Union, Lake Sammamish and the ship canal.

The guidelines are designed to assist applicants and expedite project review while protecting threatened fish species.

Generally the recommendations call for the reduction of pier sizes, reduction of shade impacts, nearshore habitat enhancement and minimization of water quality impacts. Also, specific fish windows for construction are also listed.

The report is available online at www.nws.usace.army.mil/reg/reg.htm.

Proposals due Nov. 30 for salmon work

SEATTLE -- A new $200,000 fund for small-scale salmon habitat enhancement has been created in King County.

The King County WaterWorks grant program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation have teamed up to form the Community Salmon Fund.

The fund anticipates awarding $200,000 in grants by March 2002. The grants are available to nonprofit and government groups. Projects on private land are eligible, but land acquisition is not. The deadline for proposals is Nov. 30. Contact Ken Pritchard at (206) 296-8265 for more information.

Dalrymple to talk business models at NEBC

SEATTLE -- Waite Dalrymple, the founder of Parametrix will discuss business succession models at this month's Northwest Environmental Business Council Professional Marketing Committee lunch.

Dalrymple is also on the board of the National Association of Employee Stock Ownership Programs.

The lunch will be held at McCormick & Schmick's, 1200 Westlake Ave. N. in Seattle on Wednesday, Nov. 7, beginning at 11:30 a.m. Cost is $25 for NEBC members and $40 for others.

DOE spends $4M marketing hazmat training

RICHLAND (AP) -- A training complex at Hanford nuclear reservation has spent $4 million to earn $627,000 from clients outside the U.S. Department of Energy site, a new report says.

The $29 million Volpentest Hazardous Materials Management and Emergency Response training center, commonly known as HAMMER, opened in late 1997.

Its original purpose was to train firefighters, emergency rescue workers and others to deal with emergency situations, especially those involving radioactive materials and chemicals.

More recently, it has been used to train people in a variety of specialties, such as fighting drugs or nuclear materials smuggling, or doing power-line work.

The complex has a classroom building and about 40 outdoor training areas that range from a chemical storage pad to an overturned rail tanker.

When the center opened four years ago, it was anticipated that HAMMER would attract clients from around the Northwest and that about 60 percent of the business for the training center would come from outside Hanford.

But a recent report from the Energy Department's inspector general concludes: "HAMMER is not attractive to external users."

The inspector general's report says HAMMER's non-Hanford users have never exceeded 5 percent of the yearly business at the center.

HAMMER spends an average of $750,00 a year to market the complex to non-Hanford agencies, while those agencies spend an average of almost $157,000 a year on HAMMER's services.

The report said that since HAMMER's non-Hanford customers usually must provide their own instructors, the site is less attractive.

HAMMER's remote location on the 560-square-mile reservation in south-central Washington also means extra expenses for agencies outside the area.

Paul Kruger, DOE's associate manager for science and technology at Hanford, on Tuesday agreed with the report's broad conclusions but disputed some of the specifics.

HAMMER's figures show a steady increase each year in both Hanford and non-Hanford trainees. The number of Hanford students have grown from 20,232 in fiscal year 1998 to 31,169 in fiscal 2001. During the same period, its annual non-Hanford students went from 2,977 to 9,353.

Klamath reaps $31.5M in federal funds

PORTLAND (AP) -- The $31.5 million approved by Congress for water and energy projects in Oregon includes funding to screen endangered fish out of Klamath Basin irrigation canals and money to design a pumping system to replace the Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River.

The funding was contained in the Energy and Water Development Act, which is awaiting President Bush's signature after gaining the approval of Congress this week.

The Klamath Reclamation Project, serving 200,000 acres of farmland outside Klamath Falls and Tulelake, Calif., will receive $15 million for operations in the coming fiscal year, including $5 million to install screens to keep endangered suckers out of irrigation canals.

The screens have been demanded for several years by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but funding did not come until after farmers were denied water last summer to maintain water quality for the suckers in Upper Klamath Lake, as well as threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River.

The bill appropriated $500,000 to cover the design pumps to draw water out of the Rogue River for the Grants Pass Irrigation District, opening the way to remove Savage Rapids Dam to improve conditions for salmon.

The district recently signed a consent decree that allows it to keep its water right and end its legal battles over the dam in exchange for continuing to push for dam removal. The consent decree also forces the district to stop using the dam by 2006.

The bill also includes $9 million to cool off water temperatures in the Willamette River, $3 million to finish repairs to the breakwater at the Astoria Boat Basin and $1 million for the Springfield Millrace.

The bill provides $300,000 to the Bend Feed Canal for piping to prevent the loss of irrigation water to evaporation and seepage, and $750,000 to improve habitat and water quality in the Deschutes watershed.

$21M cleanup hits a hole-in-one

ERIE, Pa. (AP) -- No golfer would have wanted to contend with the hazards that covered the fairways of this course two decades ago: water tainted with heavy metals, rusted hulks of automobiles, abandoned appliances and leaky 55-gallon drums of industrial waste.

It took 17 years and $20.7 million to erase or cover the damage.

From that 80-acre former waste dump just west of Erie, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection have created a green space -- complete with eight acres of restored wetlands and a nine-hole golf course.

The golf course, still unnamed and set to open this spring, is the 100th Superfund site cleaned up in the EPA's Mid-Atlantic Region and the seventh converted to an athletic space, said David Sternberg, an EPA spokesman.

While the construction of a golf course on a landfill might sound strange, it has been going on since the 1960s, said Judy Thompson, a spokeswoman for the National Golf Foundation. She said the foundation does not keep records on how many there are.

In Montana, golfer Jack Nicklaus designed Old Works Golf Course on a former copper smelter which was also a Superfund site.

In all, the EPA removed 100 drums of hazardous waste, crushed 600 other drums, and removed other debris and contaminated soil. Since the land was so contaminated, a cap consisting of a layer of clay with a plastic liner on top was added to separate the golf course from the underground contamination.