We request you declare a federal investigation of the Whale Deaths in the Atlantic off the east coast. All plausible causes of the whale deaths should be investigated, including but not limited to the hypothesis that the widespread use of sound-generating equipment to explore the sea floor may have affected whales' ability to perceive their surroundings or may have had other direct or indirect physiological impacts that have harmed them. A whale's hearing is fundamental to its very ability to be able to perceive its surroundings. Even a temporary loss of hearing may subject a whale to unusually high risk from otherwise ordinary hazards, such as ship strike. Most equipment used to explore the sea floor and under bed has not been tested for effects on marine life. Deregulating the use of such equipment (i.e. not requiring an ocean lease for its use), as has been proposed by the "Modernization Rule", turns the ocean into the "wild wild west" for sonic exploration and serves to relieve developers of liability for any damage such equipment may cause marine life. Don't deregulate. Do investigate.
The impacts of installing large steel infrastructure on three million acres of sea bed is expected to cause an explosion in the population of attached, filter-feeding animals which reduce the phytoplankton that helps protect us from global warming and serves as the base of the food web for all life in the ocean. Phytoplankton enable the ocean to serve as a carbon buffer by removing dissolved inorganic carbon from the water in order to make more phytoplankton out of it. We ask you not continue to disregard the massive "trophic footprint" of the U.S. Offshore Wind Program, and require the effects of marine infrastructure on ocean productivity over the continental shelf to be counted. Wind turbines can also induce condensation cloud cover, which increases shading, and abates proliferation of phytoplankton (light-using plankton) over the outer continental shelf, and can mix discrete layers of the ocean important for the flourishing of tiny animals eaten by filter-feeding whales.
Commercial Power Plant Developers must be required to disclose emission quantities of all greenhouse gas that the creation of wind-turbine power plants are expected to require, including from mining and steel refinement, which is currently *NOT* being quantitatively reported as greenhouse gas ("GHG") contributors for wind projects, even though these projects require coal burning to produce the extensive, massive steel infrastructures, and large quantities of other metals required. Corporations should not be given a free pass from--and should disclose--the total emissions resulting from their projects, not just from within a 25-mile radius of the site of power generation, but also steel and concrete production. Knowing how much GHG emissions is being spared as a result of each project allows the value of the emissions reduction in terms of spared harm to marine and other wildlife to be weighed against harms to marine and other wildlife expected to result from the project. This assessment is critical because the Climate Crisis is urgent and reducing adverse environmental effect has been presented to the public as the primary driver of the offshore wind program.
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Only if a federal investigation is declared would public transparency be required about what tissue exams were performed on the dead whales, how the conclusions were drawn from results, what hypotheses were tested, and what results were expected from the hypotheses tested.
If offshore wind activity is unrelated to the unexplained mortality even, no spatio-temporal correlation would be expected between the deaths and the use of sound-generating equipment.
Scientific inquiry involves seeing how alternative hypotheses stack up when compared with oneanother. That is, whether their predictions are met by tests and observations. Unless a federal investigation is declared, the results of the physiological and statistical tests (and even which tests were and weren't performed) is private or "proprietary" - i.e. not subject to disclosure. Declaring a federal investigation would require the results to be disclosed. Scientific inquiry involves dispassionately testing facts and observations against different plausible hypotheses, to see which hypothesis best fits the facts.
Deference to short statements announced by officials without diligent inquiry and examination is not science.
TO : CHIEF, OFFICE OF SPENT FUEL AND WASTE DISPOSITION, US ONE A team of Australian researchers has figured out how to capture radioactive waste from contaminated water, concentrate it, and literally bake it into clay minerals in a way that is stable so it can be put in safe storage. Before this amazing breakthrough, attempting to remove radioactivity from water was difficult; Liquid has to be passed through filters packed with minerals that can attach to the contaminants. But that's a very slow and cumbersome process. The Australian team has come up with a better way to do it. They produced a type of clay that can be added to the water. It quickly absorbs a large variety of radioactive substances and creates a mineral which can be easily filtered out of the water. The radioactive compounds are then concentrated in the mineral, but it's an unstable compound that'll crumble away within a few years, which is not desirable for safe storage. The reasearchers then stabilized it by heating it up to more than 1300 degrees Celsius. This produced a stable material in which the radioactive substances were even more highly concentrated. The removal was so effective, the radioactive substances after removal were about 50,000 times more concentrated in the clay than in the original wastewater! The stabililty of the resulting material makes it easier and safer to transport.
The method is a brand new, extremely efficient way to capture, contain, and remove heavier radionuclides from coolant wastewater. It profoundly lowers the concentration of radioactive material in water.
The removal process is so effective at making a stable, concentrated waste that it can easily be transported and can be placed in a deep geological repository hundreds of meters deep. A deep geological repository is safe, long-term storage that isolates stored materials in geological structures that are expected to be stable for millions of years, and in which the stored material does not have the potential to affect any life forms during decay because of the depth of the facility. We ask the DOE and other named agencies to promote this development to make this new method of removing radioactive waste widely available to reduce the potential for harm from nuclear waste.
We seek to protect freshwater and tidal wetlands, and marine life. The concentration of radioactive material in water must to be far far lower than the safe drinking levels for humans in order to be safe for aquatic animals. This is because aquatic animals maintain continuous skin contact with water (fish and other animals also at the high-surface-area gills) and have higher levels of gastrointestinal contact as all their consumption involves consuming surrounding water.
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TO : DANIEL MACKAY, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF NYS PARKS Fox are known to reduce the number of ticks rodents carry, reducing rates of tick parasitism of rodents by 80-90% [footnote 1]. Ticks are a known health risk to humans engaged in outdoor recreation. Fox eradication is likely to affect public health by increasing the incidence of tick borne illnesses, including but not limited to Lyme’s Disease (Borrelia burgdorferi infection) which is quite common and Powassan encephalitis, which is rare but has a 10-15% fatality rate, with many survivors suffering permanent altered mental states from neurological damage [footnote 2].
The New York State Open Space Conservation Plan published jointly by the State Parks Agency, by the NYS DEC, and by others, formally identifies “Encourage and enhance watchable wildlife opportunities throughout the State” as an action it will take to further the stated goal of promoting public outdoor recreation in its current formal New York State Open Space Conservation Plan [footnote 3], a plan published jointly by PARKS, NYSDEC, the NYS DOS, and others.Of all the animals that could have been pictured on the hard cover of the New York WildlifeViewing Guide published by Watchable Wildlife Inc and whose cover has been promoted on aNew York State website [internet source:web.archive.org/web/20181018120713/http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/55423.html]
Footnotes:
1 https://www.carvinstitute.org/news-insights/media-coverage/lvme-diseases-worst-enemv-it-might-be-foxes;accessed 9/24/22; and https://www.nvtimes.com/2017/08/02/science/ticks-iyme-disease-foxes-martens.htmlaccessed 9/24/22: Also see Cascading effects of predator activity on tick-borne disease risk, by Tim R. Hofmeester,Jan H.J. Wijnen, Patrick A. Jansen, Elena Claudio Coipan. Proc. Roy. Soc. B: Biological Sciences July 2017. InternetSource: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318531715, last accessed: Sept. 21, 2022
2 Powassan Encephalitis: A Case Report from Long Island, New York, USA (P18-1.002). Danielle Bazer, MatthewOrwitz, Nicholas Koroneos, Olga Syritsyna, Elizbieta Wirkowski. Neurology May 2022, 98 (18 Supplement) 1045https://n. neurology.org/content/98/18_Supplement/1045
3 [internet source https://www.dec.ny.gov > docs> lands_forests_pdf; last accessed on 10/1/2022]
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Fox at Jones Beach State Park's west end are not always easy to come by, but sightings are revered by visitors to the barrier island, especially by fishermen, who, like the fox, are out at dawn and dusk.
On the suggestion of the piping plover "stewardship" team, Regional Director George Gorman agreed to conduct an eradication program whereby all fox at west end Jones Beach State Park, a 281-acre area, would be killed by park employees.
The reason stated for creating a killing program is it's an effort to further raise survival rates of piping plover chicks above the rates achieved by the current intervention efforts of caging the nests and creating roped-off areas to bar entry.
However, plovers are not a mainstay for fox at Jones Beach State Park, who primarily eat rodents such as mice, skate (ray-like fish), beetles, crabs and other crustaceans, and clams. The fox population and plover population have coexisted for decades at the west end of this barrier island. The public is in shock.
The environmental assessment was criticized by environmental groups. Park-goers object to the killing and say west end is a wildlife watching area, not a wildlife killing area.
Fox have been proven to suppress tick parasatism in rodent populations and help humans by reducing prevalence of lyme's disease and the risk of other tick-borne illnesses.
