Well, now is your chance. Go to our 10,000 Reasons discussion on our Facebook page to share your views.

As the world's attention turns to the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen, we are collecting comments from our online supporters. We will deliver these comments to the White House and Congress.

That's why the public needs fair, accurate and useful information — especially those who are not able to attend all public meetings. The public needs to know what is happening and what it means to the fishing industry, to the community and to the health of local fish stocks over time. Unfortunately, readers of the Gloucester Daily Times are not getting a realistic picture of what is happening or why.

EDF, alongside many in New England, is advocating for a different set of fishery regulations called catch shares. This new type of management has been shown elsewhere to maintain sustainable fishing harvests while helping fishermen stay in business. Catch shares, like any management system, must be designed well to fit both the biological constraints and the social and economic goals of individual fisheries. 

EDF has spent years learning from managers and fishermen in well over 300 catch share systems currently operating in the United States and other countries. To help promote best practices and transparent information, EDF put out for public comment a draft 130-page catch share design manual that helps fishermen and managers set goals and craft design options to develop quality catch share systems. We have sponsored fishermen's exchanges with catch share practitioners from British Columbia and Alaska to help New England stakeholders better understand the pros and cons of different catch share systems. Our goal is to provide research and information sharing that can help everyone make decisions that have better outcomes for the resource and for fishermen than status quo management.

However, readers of the Gloucester Daily Times likely don’t know this. Because instead of providing balanced, objective information about the pros and cons of the current days-at-sea system versus other systems, reporter Richard Gaines has focused his coverage almost entirely upon criticisms of this management tool and given voice almost exclusively to those opposed to it. Coverage of those speaking in favor of the program and its potential benefits has been heavily loaded with biased language that questions the validity of the science, the organizations and the credentials of the experts delivering this point of view.

Sadly, the ones who lose most here are his readers—especially those who have a stake in the health of the fishing industry. We hope those who are interested in learning more about the pros and cons of catch shares and other fishery management practices will contact us, contact the Fishery Management Council, or contact fishermen's groups that have been advocating for a form of catch shares called "sectors" for years.

Change is difficult, and can cause undue stress when it’s not accompanied by an open and thorough exchange of information. Those affected by the changes in New England fisheries need and deserve to have the full story of the changes that are occurring—and they're not getting it in the Gloucester Daily Times.

Long an admirer of EDF’s practical approach to solving problems through corporate partnerships, I jumped at the chance to take on an externship with the Green Portfolio Project team as they worked to replicate the early success of their partnership with KKR.

As EDF and KKR’s Green Portfolio Project has proven, sound environmental management can provide a substantial source of value creation for private equity firms and their portfolio companies. So far, that project has focused on identifying and implementing environmental initiatives at companies PE firms already own.

However, by considering environmental management during the due diligence process, private equity firms could identify similar cost saving opportunities in the companies they are looking to buy. The current focus of environmental due diligence is aimed primarily at risk mitigation. By considering environmental initiatives early on in the process, a PE firm might be able to identify a few million dollars in operational savings, which could influence bid prices.

For example, if the PE firm recognized an opportunity for a fleet efficiency project, the resulting decrease in operational expenses would lead to an increase in cash flow, allowing the PE firm to pay down debt more quickly and realize a higher sales price upon exit. Once the deal is consummated, the private equity firm could add the environmental cost saving projects identified during the due diligence process to the hundred-day operational improvement plan.

By looking at environmental management as a way to add value, not just mitigate risk, PE firms can improve their due diligence process and deliver better returns to their investors.

It was sometime in mid-April of 1971, still considerably less than a year after I had ripped up my East Coast roots and taken up residence in a dynamic and pleasant-enough San Francisco law firm, that I received a letter that permanently changed my life. The letter itself was straight-forward and brief. William A. Butler, Washington, D.C., counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, had been given my name by a mutual acquaintance. Mr. Butler inquired if I happened to know anyone who might be interested in helping to open a West Coast office for EDF.

After a day or so of cogitation, I responded by calling Mr. Butler. Tell me more about EDF, I asked. And, by the way, I plan to be visiting D.C. with a client next month. Would it make sense to meet at that time?

An early morning D.C. breakfast get-together several weeks later ensued. Later, the same evening, following a full day of Washington meeting on behalf of the client, I boarded an airplane bound for Islip, which was at that time an airfield far enough out on Long Island to be thought of as rural.

I can't remember who met me at the airport. What I do remember is that I was soon ushered into somebody's living room — I'm not sure just whose — filled with six or seven passionate, articulate, and yes, slightly crazy defenders of the environment.

I surely was not at my best. It had been a long day, and just the day before I had flown cross-country with my client, trying to prepare him for what I knew would be difficult meetings with a phalanx of skeptical bureaucrats. So I can't say I had a terribly good answer when Charlie Wurster grilled me about what my scientific credentials were, or when Art Cooley and Dennis Puleston inquired patiently, was I a birder, a backpacker maybe, did I have any trace of eco-advocacy or even environmental interest in my past?

As a more or les conventional 60's liberal, I could pint to a smattering of good works on my record to go along with a solid Ivy League academic and professional pedigree. Still, my actual litigation experience consisted of one trial in a rural county courthouse (that I ignominiously lost) and a few routine motions. And my political experience, such as it was (a year as a lobbyist for New York City on Capitol Hill) had little bearing on what would be hired to do, namely, to sally forth and wage battle — in accord with EDF's then-motto, "Sue the Bastards" — against the major water and energy utilities of California and the Western United States.

Yet as I was put to bed late that night and early next morning on the drive to Kennedy Airport for my flight home, I dimly recall thinking that, despite my obvious failings as an environmentalist, Rod Cameron was giving me the distinct impression that I would be offered a job helping to open EDF's Berkeley office. Berkeley was the choice primarily because Rod thought the proximity to the university would give us more access to prop bono scientific assistance and to a free first-class law library.

That's what happened. On about August 1, 1971, with me and two professional colleagues (each of us briefly trained in an intense, week long series of encounters with the forefathers on Long Island) and an office manager/secretary, EDF-West opened its doors. My two colleagues had diverse backgrounds. Dr. Gerald H. Meral was a fishery biologist by training, a veteran canoeist and already a dedicated environmentalist as conversant as any about the river-ruining policies of the Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation. Rapids on both the Stanislaus (now hundreds of feet under water) and the Tuolumne Rives in California are named after Jerry, who was one of the first ever to paddle through them.

Michael Palmer was the other lawyer. Aristocratic in bearing, a lawyer's lawyer, and generally a cautious and somewhat introverted man, Michael complemented rather well my more plebian, political, impulsive and extroverted style.

Both Jerry and Mike had been hired independently of me and of each other. Our status was that of three equals; none of us could tell either of the others what to do. By any conventional management standards a prescription for disaster, the system worked quite well, since none of us, except maybe for Jerry, who did have a policy agenda, had much of an idea what made sense to do and what didn't, what a golden opportunity in the early days of NEPA litigation and what was a lost cause.

The first thing the three of us did agree on was who to hire to run the office. We found a recently laid-off Latin teacher named Portia Lee (modern languages were in, Latin was dead), and she proceeded to take us three neophytes under her wing, as she helped turn several dorm rooms on the third floor of a former fraternity house into the august West Coast headquarters of the Environmental Defense Fund.

As I said, we really didn't know a lost cause even when it stared us squarely in the face. The first major issue the office plunged into was the construction of the New Melones Dam on the Stanislaus River. Most of the early battles to Save the Stanislaus were waged out of EDF's office, in administrative and judicial litigation quarterbacked by Mike Palmer, with me as frequent understudy. The fact that New Melones was a several hundred million dollar project, duly authorized by Congress, and well into construction by the time we first sued to stop it did not faze us. What mattered to us was that the project made no sense — the waters it backed up still have not been sold seventeen years later – -and that it would drown what was perhaps California's most beautiful and popular white water river.

Several books have since been written about the war over New Melones; none suggest that we ever had a chance. Nevertheless, three years later, a statewide initiative election designed to block its construction was organized by Jerry Meral and a few colleagues. And five years after that, Mark Dubois, an early ally in the struggle and co-founder of Friends of the River (now one of the nation's leading river conservation groups) risked his life in an effort to prevent the New Melones Reservoir from being filled. By hiding himself deep in the canyon and chaining himself to a rock below what would otherwise have been the water line, Mark caused the Corps of Engineers to stop filling the reservoir that year. Unfortunately, a few years later, the spring flood filled the reservoir and mooted the issue.

Among the other projects that we began back in that first year was a piece of litigation which finally had its first substantive evidence taken sixteen years later, in the spring of 1987. Had I been able to predict that future, I guarantee that I would never have filed the suit. We also filed an action that set one of the first important precedents under the California Environmental Quality Act (California's junior NEPA) and two suits which challenged the adding of lead to gasoline, a cause that EDF has long championed, with ever-increasing success, in its Washington, D.C office as well.

Before too long, my original colleagues moved on. Mike Palmer left to resume the private practice of law late in 1973. Jerry Meral left to serve the administration of Governor Jerry Brown in Sacramento as Deputy Director of Water Resources in 1975, and Ph.D. economist extraordinaire, Zach Willey, succeeded Jerry. David Roe, lawyer and author-to-be, arrived a year later, following Dick Gutting, who was Mike Palmer's successor. David's arrival resembled mine, long on promise, short on obvious environmental credentials.

Zach, David and I have served EDF for 48 years combined. The office staff is now younger than we are, although office manager Mary Jane Gallagher has guided our office with distinction for nearly twelve years. Four times over, we are no longer the junior office within the EDF family. But the spirit which the founding trustees and early staff imparted lives on in EDF's West Coast incarnation. With a staff of 15, several of whom — Dan Kirshner, Terry Young and John Krautkraemer — have now also been around EDF for nearly a decade of more, the California office has already set EDF records for experience and longevity.

Who could have predicted anything like that in 1971? Not me.

Over the last few months, I was heartened to hear a number of industry stakeholders in the debate over TSCA reform embrace the idea of designating in TSCA reform legislation a "jump-start" or "quick-start" list of chemicals of high concern or priority. The idea was to allow EPA to hit the ground running, by having an agreed-to list of chemicals on which it could immediately initiate action. Well, it now appears many in industry actually have something far slower and far more cumbersome in mind.

The Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection of the U.S House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing yesterday on the question of "prioritization": How a new law could best spur prompt identification of and action on the chemicals of highest concern. Mr. Bill Greggs testified on behalf of three trade associations prominent in the debate over TSCA reform: The Consumer Specialty Products Association, the Soap and Detergent Association, and the Grocery Manufacturers of America.

In Mr. Greggs' testimony and answers to questions from subcommittee members, what industry has in mind when it talks about a quick start became much clearer:

• There would be no list of chemicals in the bill. Nor would there even be a process laid out by which EPA would identify chemicals of highest concern for the purpose of promptly taking action to reduce exposure to them.
• Instead, the bill would merely contain some potential hazard and exposure triggers for EPA to consider. 
• The legislation would then impose a risk-finding requirement on EPA (sound familiar?), by restricting any further effort to only those chemicals that are found – on the basis of existing information, however incomplete – to pose BOTH the highest hazard and the highest exposure.
• Once the legislation passed, EPA would first have to develop specific high-hazard and high-exposure criteria, and then apply the criteria through a review of all chemicals it knows to be in commerce and for which such hazard and exposure data exist.
• Then EPA would have to provide industry with a robust process by which industry could – and surely would – challenge each and every designation of such a chemical by EPA.
• Assuming any chemical made it through that process, such highest-of the-high-priority chemicals would then merely enter a further limbo: a review and risk assessment process as a prelude to a "safe use" determination by EPA.

Hardly the quick start I had hoped for. 

If the last decade of voluntary programs and ChAMP has taught us anything, it's that it's time to move beyond the endless cycle of having one round of assessment to identify chemicals of highest concern lead to nothing more than a further round of assessment.

The re-energized new leadership at EPA recently took upon itself to identify an initial handful of bad-actor chemicals, for which it is developing action plans to reduce the harm those chemicals are causing. EPA didn't ask for industry's blessing before listing those chemicals. Can you imagine what would have transpired had it done so?

Nor should EPA have to provide an opportunity for industry to challenge such listing decisions: Under Greggs' scheme, any listing of chemicals is pre-regulatory – indeed, it's arguably pre-pre-regulatory or even pre-pre-pre-regulatory. The notion that EPA's mere identification of a chemical through such a process should be eligible for challenge by the very companies that make or use the chemical is preposterous – not to mention a recipe for endless delay and fights.

And hey: Wasn't avoiding all that the motivation behind having a quick-start list in the first place?

Lest you think I'm reading too much into a 5-minute statement at a hearing, I'll point you to a detailed proposal these same three trade associations (joined by a dozen others) gave to California earlier this year, as a "model" for regulations under the state's Green Chemistry Initiative. By my count, that proposal would provide no fewer than six – 6 – opportunities for industry input into and challenge of the state agency's process for designating and prioritizing a chemical of concern.

Talk about greedy: In addition to requiring formal notice and comment on any proposed listing of chemicals, that proposal would require another round of notice and comment on the "final" list. And it would repeat that dual-intervention opportunity at each of several steps in a process that would precede any regulatory action to restrict the use of the chemical.

That makes the federal rulemaking process under the Administrative Procedures Act look like a cakewalk in comparison, even after factoring in the interventions by the Office of Management and Budget called for under Executive Orders and such.

A prominent refrain in the industry's new TSCA hymn book has been to say that EPA needs more authority. I, for one, would like to hear that tune sung more than just in Sunday choir and have it enter the actual work week.

The event I attended, hosted by Siemens Healthcare, offered several interesting presentations, including one on the major drivers of sustainability action. One of the presenters mentioned that California and Europe were driving companies to adopt increasingly stringent requirements on their direct and indirect operations. This was not an entirely unexpected observation, as Europe and California have consistently led the United States in their approach to environmental regulation.

But then a member of the audience raised his hand and said that this status quo has changed. Now, it's Wal-Mart, not federal or state regulators that are driving corporate environmental performance. The environmental manager noted that Wal-Mart’s recently announced Sustainability Index and other corporate goals are trickling down to the supplier level (a big chunk of the US economy) and driving corporate environmental actions more than anything else.

If this thinking is true, it represents a monumental step-change in the way that companies think about environmental regulation and improvements in environmental performance over time. What do you think? Is Wal-Mart a bigger driver for environmental innovation than EPA?

Growing up in the 1970s, Mischief Night was a big deal for me. When I was in grade school, hoards of us kids took to our neighborhood just after dark to wreak innocent havoc. More fun than Halloween, I recall soaping up car windows and decorating neighbors' trees with toilet paper. (What were our parents thinking?)

When a wonder toy called Silly String hit the stores, Mischief Night turned psychedelic with crazy vibrant colors issuing in long streams from an aerosol can! And what was the harm? Silly String simply dried up and blew away. Who knew that we might actually be spewing a brew of toxic chemicals? 

Polyisobutyl methacrylate, hexabromobenzene, dibutyl phthalate, dimethyl siloxane, dichloromethane and sorbitan trioleate. While the current formulation of Silly String is claimed to be confidential business information, these are some of the ingredients in the product's original formula. This, according to a fun little fluff piece that ran in a recent issue of Chemical & Engineering News titled “Silly String: It’s a party for polymer chemistry, all in a can.”

Some of these chemicals — hexabromobenzene (a brominated flame retardant), dibutyl phthalate (an endocrine disruptor) and dichloromethane (also known as methylene chloride, a carcinogen) — ought to rank high on anyone's list of chemicals of concern.

But am I just being a killjoy when I ask why we should be letting our kids play with this stuff?

I don’t think so, and here is why: While thousands of synthetic chemicals are integral parts of our modern lives, this does not mean that any chemical can and should be used in any product. In particular, how chemicals like the ones I just noted are used should get intense scrutiny, to say the least.

It may be that some of the offending chemicals are no longer used in the current Silly String formula – but that's something we don't know because its maker is allowed to claim such information proprietary. It may be that some of the toxic chemicals used to make the polymer fully react, so that they aren't present in the Silly String itself, at least in normal use – but we can’t know this either, because no one requires such testing for residuals.

Whatever the risk, I would still assert the following:

• Chemicals with such clear toxicity should not be used in children’s toys. Period. 
• Workers should not have to risk being exposed to such chemicals for the purpose of making toys.
• Society should not have to risk having such chemicals released into the environment as a consequence of making toys, whether during the chemicals' or product's manufacture or transport or after disposal of the product itself.

The C&E News article highlights an unplanned and highly novel use of Silly String: Soldiers in combat zones have learned to spray it ahead of themselves when in confined spaces to help detect the presence of deadly trip wires. Another possible future use is as an adhesive for medical use. 

Those potentially life-saving applications for this admittedly nifty polymer technology certainly call for a different calculus, where the outcome could be quite different than for its use as a children’s toy. (I'm not suggesting, however, that the hazards of such uses should not also be scrutinized, or that safer alternatives not be identified or sought.) 

But the problem is that, at this point, no one is even bothering to do the calculation. It is telling that the obvious questions as to whether this use of these kinds of chemicals might pose a risk to kids, or whether it is worth taking any such risk, were not even raised by the article's author. Nor does our current chemicals management system effectively raise them, let alone demand they be answered.

This "silly" example is yet another reminder of why EDF believes we must fundamentally reform the law that governs how we manage these kinds of chemicals.

Today we celebrate the remarkable recovery of the brown pelican from the brink of extinction.

The state bird of Louisiana, the brown pelican was nearly wiped out in the state and throughout its ranges along the Gulf Coast, the Atlantic coast and in southern California.

Today, more than 650,000 can be found across Florida, and the Gulf and Pacific coasts, as well as in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Please take a moment to share your views on this landmark conservation victory.

The following account of Tom’s professional life was written by longtime friend and colleague Tom Philp. Readers are invited to share memories of Tom in the comment space below.

Thomas J. Graff
Thomas J. Graff, a Harvard-educated attorney whom California Lawyer once dubbed “The Godfather” for transforming the politics and policies of California water and power through a unique style of litigation and persuasion via his Rolodex of trusted inside connections, has died after a prolonged battle with cancer. Graff was 65.

Graff in 1971 founded the California office of the Environmental Defense Fund. There, he pioneered a new style of environmental activism by hiring PhD economists and computer specialists who developed a mastery of energy and water issues that would rival their many adversaries. Whether by using the courts, regulatory proceedings, legislation or public opinion via national media contacts that he assembled over the years, Graff advanced EDF’s trademark philosophy that embraced a positive role for markets in solving environmental problems.

“If a resource is scarce, we ought to put a price on it that reflects its value,” Graff said in an interview last year. “Otherwise there’s an incentive to over-consume the resource.”

“Tom was the thought leader of a new wave of environmentalism that uses market incentives to solve some of the most intractable environmental problems.” Fred Krupp, president of EDF.

Graff is survived by his loving wife, Sharona Barzilay, daughter Rebecca Graff; son Benjamin Graff; daughter Samantha Graff, son-in-law Miguel Helft, and grandchildren Avi and Rafael Helft, and sister Claudia Bial and her family.

Graff was born in Honduras in January of 1944, the son of German Jewish refugees. He grew up in Syracuse, New York, where he excelled at both academics and athletics even before attending Phillips Exeter Academy. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He was a clerk for federal judge Carl McGowan in Washington D.C. and a legislative assistant to New York Mayor John Lindsay before moving in 1970 to California to work for Howard, Prim, Smith, Rice & Downs, a San Francisco law firm.

Graff later would confide that his father wondered if he was “making a big mistake” by leaving a private law practice and launching the California office for the Environmental Defense Fund. But it would not take long for Graff to begin leaving his mark on state resource policy.

Graff laid the groundwork in the 1970s for California to become a world leader in battling climate change by reducing carbon emissions. Concerned about plans of the state’s largest investor-owned utilities to construct a fleet of coal-burning power plants, Graff took on the utilities by challenging rate proposals before the California Public Utilities Commission. This stiff resistance prompted the utilities to abandon coal as a major source of baseline power for California. Years later, in 2006, Graff and EDF were at the center of the effort to pass landmark state legislation (Assembly Bill 32) that would require California by 2020 to cap its total greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels.

But it was California water, from upstream battles on the American River to numerous conflicts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where Graff arguably left his greatest mark on state and federal politics.

With Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey and Congressman George Miller of Martinez, Graff was a guiding force behind the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1991, a milestone in the environmental movement to protect the Delta.

In terms of policy, the CVPIA established a new accounting system to ensure additional water for the environmental needs of the Delta from the Central Valley Project, which captures water upstream of the Delta via Shasta and Folsom dams and diverts the supplies from the Delta to Central Valley farms and communities via an aqueduct system. The CVPIA also established important ground rules for a “water market” so that the dam and aqueduct system could be used to connect buyers and sellers of water. Graff’s hope was to encourage farmers to both conserve and sell supplies to cities as a more efficient, environmentally-friendly approach to securing new supplies rather than additional, costly reservoir construction.

But in terms of politics, the CVPIA represented a new alliance in political power between the environmental movement and the urban water community, particularly the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Both supported the CVPIA and the concept of water markets.

The CVPIA was staunchly opposed by Central Valley agriculture and would have likely been vetoed by then-president George Herbert Walker Bush had it been a stand-alone bill. But Graff and its authors maneuvered the CVPIA into a broader piece of legislation that was known to be popular with the president, assuring its package. It was one of many moves that develop Graff’s mystique as a master of both politics and policy.

Closer to home in Alameda County, Graff fought his own water provider, the East Bay Municipal Utility District. With its primary supply from the Sierra Nevada’s Mokelumne River, EBMUD had sought a second source above Sacramento from the American River, known for its crystal blue water and abundant fall salmon run. Concerned for the health of the river, Environmental Defense Fund filed suit against EBMUD. Seventeen years later, a landmark decision would designate a baseline environmental flow need for the American River that stands to this day as a benchmark in river policy.

The utility eventually abandoned its effort to divert water upstream on the American River and is now in the final stages of constructing a diversion facility downstream on the Sacramento River with Sacramento County, which along with Environmental Defense Fund had fought EBMUD for years.

Graff spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony of the Sacramento River diversion facility in May of 2007, battling at the time a scratchy throat condition that would later be diagnosed as cancer. In that year he was awarded the Jean Auer Award for a lifetime of service to protecting the Delta, among his many honors. An endowed professorship is in his honor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he had been a guest lecturer.

The years of activism taught Graff that it wasn’t necessarily about winning wars, but avoiding them. “We can not repeat the water wars of the past,” he said in an interview last year. “We have to find a way to work together, or we’ll all lose.”

______________________________________________________

Other words of tribute to Tom:
“Without Tom Graff, whose good sense and judgment guided its path, there never would have been a major reform of California’s water law in 1992, the Central Valley Improvement Act. He was also a personal friend and a very special human being.”
Senator Bill Bradley

“On the Central Valley Improvement Act, no person was more important than Tom Graff. It wasn’t just his knowledge of water. It was his knowledge about the stewardship of the environment and what this state had to consider if it really thought about its future.”
Congressman George Miller

“Tom Graff was the architect of the best aspects of California water policy. I hope that his vision on that water policy becomes reality as part of his legacy.”
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom

At this point only a few of the costs are known or even quantifiable, particularly the transmission and fossil fuel costs to the system. In looking at Austin Energy's report, the cost for new transmission to bring more wind to Texas will be less – about 0.7¢/month for the average customer in 2015. If fossil fuel prices don't increase more than they have over the past six years, the General Fund Transfer costs associated with fossil fuels might be only 0.4¢/kWh by 2015. Of course, that's assuming that Austin Energy stays smart and doesn't put too many more eggs in the fossil fuel basket.

The rate increase doesn't really have a direct relationship with Austin Energy's forward-looking generation plan because rates are based on historical costs, not future costs. Still, in recognition of increased conventional utility costs, Austin Energy has developed an investment plan that will use zero fuel sources such as wind, solar and energy efficiency to contain future costs. Some people discuss Austin Energy's plan by comparing it to our current costs, as if by doing nothing we will ensure that gas prices won't rise 300 percent again and Texas power prices remain at their lowest point since 2001. The comparison to current costs is important as a place marker, but I think it's more informative to look at what could happen down the road if Austin Energy makes no changes.

As our analysis shows under a "business as usual" scenario, following the historical trends of the last 10 years, average residential power prices in Austin could increase another $60 per month excluding carbon costs. This is due largely to an increasing dependency on fossil fuels and buying electricity on the Texas deregulated marketplace. Similar proposals to "save money" would only do so in the near term at the expense of future exposure to volatile fossil fuel and deregulated market prices.

The Austin Generation Task Force – whose members include Austin's business, environmental, and industrial communities – acknowledged those risks in a milestone vote last week. The board voted unanimously on several recommendations to the city council, including increasing energy efficiency goals, and developing a solar market in Texas to bring at least 300 MW of distributed solar to the city by 2020. While members couldn't come to an agreement on a specific quantity for Austin Energy in 2020, all members strongly reaffirmed Austin's commitment to a solar goal.

All of this is to say that it's important to keep future plans in the perspective of future costs, and avoid the trap of comparing them to present costs. Most forecasters acknowledge that as our economy recovers, the price of oil and natural gas will resume its upward climb. With carbon regulation sure to happen one way or another, the cost of coal will increase as well, leading to an overall increase in fossil fuel prices for a utility that already shells out plenty for those fuels. Energy efficiency and renewable energy have a proven track record of saving Austin customers money over time, even if they have some upfront costs.

I commend Austin Energy both for its clean energy leadership and its recognition that to save customers from dangerously high future costs, some upfront investment is needed.

The Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign today released the results of a nationwide poll conducted in August by renowned pollster Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners. The most striking finding: Majorities of Republicans and Independents as well as Democrats strongly support adoption of new legislation that would give EPA the power to immediately restrict the use of dangerous chemicals.

It seems that all that's left is for Congress to act … 

The poll reached a demographically and geographically representative group of 1,000 registered voters across the country. It found that voters across political affiliations are seriously concerned about the limitations of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), including that:

• TSCA did not require testing and a demonstration of safety of the tens of thousands of chemicals in commerce in 1976 (87% of voters are concerned);
• EPA is unable to take dangerous chemicals off the market, even ones as dangerous as asbestos (80% concerned); and
• TSCA has allowed EPA to require testing for only a small fraction of chemicals on the market (84% concerned).

When various proposals for TSCA reform were described, large majorities of voters expressed strong support:

• "If a chemical is detected in babies at birth or in infants, it will be taken off the market"
  • 84% of voters support
  • 60% strongly support:
    • 66% of Democrats
    • 52% of Independents
    • 59% of Republicans
• "Exposure to other toxic chemicals, such as formaldehyde, that have been extensively studied, will be reduced to the maximum extent possible"
  • 85% of voters support
  • 59% strongly support:
    • 69% of Democrats
    • 51% of Independents
    • 57% of Republicans

Voters also express strong support for a systematic overhaul of TSCA that requires the safety of all chemicals to be demonstrated:

• "A process will be created so that all chemicals in use must be tested and shown to be safe over the next 15 years"
  • 81% of voters support
  • 57% strongly support (breakdown by political affiliation not available to me)

It seems that all that's left is for Congress to act! Click here to help make sure they get the message: EDF Action Alert: Help Strengthen America's Toxic Chemicals Standards

 And to learn more about this issue, visit our website and blog.

As our recent blog highlights , there are many reasons to be pleased about the recent passage of the water policy reform package[1]. As a member of the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan Steering Committee, I think it’s also worth enumerating how the legislation provides significant environmental safeguards for this process. After all, the BDCP is where new conveyance around the Delta, (otherwise known as the peripheral canal) is being analyzed as part of a habitat conservation plan with the aim of ensuring both water supply reliability and ecosystem recovery.

 What does the legislation mean for the BDCP?

It doesn't authorize a canal.

Many are concerned that the legislation authorizes a peripheral canal. This is simply not true. In fact, the legislation includes an important new layer of oversight of the BDCP—the Delta Stewardship Council. Before it can be implemented, the BDCP will need to demonstrate to the Council that it meets both the water supply reliability and ecosystem recovery goals it set out to achieve, and will have to consider Council recommendations on both the design and implementation of the Plan (Sec 85320 (g)). In addition, the BDCP will have to show that it is consistent with the overall Delta plan and other existing environmental mandates. The legislation also requires the Department of Fish and Game to report regularly to the Council on results from monitoring and adaptive management to make sure BDCP implementation is moving in a positive direction (Sec 85320 (f)). 

It outlines a process to resolve the instream flow debate.

Another key provision related to the BDCP is the requirement for the State Water Resources Control Board to conduct a public trust needs assessment to determine instream flows for the Bay-Delta (Sec 85085 (c) 1) within nine months of the effective date of the bill. The BDCP has grappled with this tough question for a few years and still has yet to provide an adequate answer. These newly developed flow criteria will be informed by biological objectives developed by state and federal fish agencies and will specify the volume, quality and timing of water necessary for a healthy Delta ecosystem under different conditions. Existing bond moneys will be allocated to strengthen the Board’s ability to make these flow determinations in a timely manner so that they can be incorporated into the development of the BDCP.

It establishes the highest environmental standards for the BDCP.

The legislation requires that the BDCP meet the high recovery standards of the Natural Communities Conservation Planning Act. If the plan doesn’t meet the NCCP standard, no public funding will be allocated to its implementation (Sec 85320 (e)). 

It improves the decision-making ability of the fishery agencies related to water operations

Historically, there has not been an understandable and transparent process that allows the fishery agencies to make necessary decisions to provide flows for fish without, at times, being overruled by the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR). The legislation improves this by requiring that the BDCP include transparent real-time decision-making of water operations that allows the fishery agencies to take protective actions in the Delta so that biological performance objectives are achieved (Sec 85321). More simply put, if it is determined that salmon need more water at a specific time within the prescribed range of flows, the fish agencies, after consultation with DWR and BOR, get to make the ultimate call on the action. I think his is a clear improvement on the way some decisions have been made in the past.

For all these reasons, it’s clear to me that the legislation sets out specific guidelines that hardly make the BDCP or the approval of a canal a slam dunk. Indeed, the BDCP must complete many critical steps in order for the plan to be approved. I, for one, think this is a huge step forward and provides necessary direction and oversight that is critically needed.