“The American people want and deserve accountability in their elections,” said Whitehouse, “Unchecked secret corporate spending has tipped the scales of power away from ordinary Americans and in favor of big special interests. If Congress is going to make meaningful progress in the months and years ahead on important issues that matter to Rhode Islanders like addressing climate change, reforming our broken campaign finance system is the first step.”

Whitehouse’s DISCLOSE Act, which has been supported by Langevin and Cicilline in the U.S. House of Representatives, is part of the “We the People” legislative package to deal with secret corporate political spending, lobbyist influence, the revolving door, and other facets of the campaign finance system. Whitehouse touted the suite of legislation as a solution to the corporate spending blocking meaningful legislative action on issues like ensuring economic security for the middle class and addressing climate change.

It seems that Whitehouse mentioned climate change and chose Save the Bay’s headquarters in Providence as the location of his round table discussion because, as the Senator said in response to Meghan Kallman, chair of the RI Sierra Club, “I think it’s pretty safe to say, that at a national level, the climate battle is the campaign finance battle. They’re totally married together into one thing.”

Notably, there were protesters outside Save the Bay holding signs reminding their elected representatives about both Invenergy’s proposed $700 million fracked gas and diesel oil burning power plant and National Grid’s proposed LNG liquefaction facility for Fields Point in the Port of Providence, a stone’s throw away. They were there to remind elected officials that their jobs in Washington do not absolve them from taking positions on local issues. None of the elected leaders in the room, aside from State Senator Juan Pichardo, who has publicly taken a stand against the LNG plant in Providence, have thrown their considerable political weight behind the opposition to these projects.

“This is a national package, [but] many many many issues are local,” said Kallman, “We’re watching Dakota. We’re watching Burrillville. We’re watching Fields Point… We have something of a disconnect between what’s happening on the national level and where the front line battles are being fought.”

The influence of corporate spending on elections since the 2010 Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court is a major concern to all who attended the event. Citizens United unleashed a previously restricted torrent of special interest money into the political system.  More than $1.5 billion in unlimited contributions, including more than $500 million in secret contributions, have been poured into federal elections since the decision was issued.

“It didn’t take long after Citizens United for secret money has find its way to the shores of Rhode Island,” said John Marion, Executive Director of Common Cause Rhode Island. “We know that Rhode Islanders don’t want unlimited undisclosed money in our elections. We are fortunate to have a congressional delegation that has taken this issue seriously and has offered real solutions for the problems posed by big money in our politics.”

“Senator Whitehouse is a national leader fighting to make our elections and government work for everyday people again through the We the People Act,” said Aquene Freechild, campaign co-director of Public Citizen‘s Democracy Is For People Campaign. “He’s pushing the current congressional majority to snap out of their campaign cash-induced paralysis and stand up to the tiny but influential donor class: by overturning Citizens United, disclosing all spending in elections, and slamming shut the revolving door that transforms public servants into corporate shills.”

Also in attendance at the roundtable discussion were RI Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, RI State Representative Art Handy, state director of Clean Water Action Jonathan Berard, Save the Bay’s Topher Hamblett and Dean Michael J. Yelnosky of the Roger Williams University School of Law. You can watch the rest of the video from the event below.

Providence City Councillor Seth Yurdin introduced a resolution Thursday evening that would strengthen the City Council’s opposition to National Grid’s proposed Fields Point liquefaction facility. Immediately after introducing his resolution Councillor Sam Zurier rose to co-sponsor, as did councilors David Salvatore, Carmen Castillo, Wilbur Jennings, Jo-Ann Ryan and Terrence Hassett.

Noting that it seemed as if a majority of the council was co-sponsoring the resolution, Yurdin moved that the resolution be voted on immediately. This caused councilors Jo-Ann Ryan and Terrence Hassett to suddenly flip their support. Yurdin’s move for passage failed, and the resolution was passed onto the Ordinances committee.

Reached for comment, Hassett wrote, “I voted no to have an immediate passage on the floor without a Council committee review. I co-sponsored it but a committee review is necessary for a proper vetting and discussion before it is transmitted to the full Council.”

Ryan wrote, “I requested to be a sponsor of the resolution last night. It was sent to ordinance committee by a majority vote. I voted to send it to committee to provide an opportunity for community input at an open public meeting of the council. You can and should attend and voice your concerns. And encourage others to attend and participate in the process.”

There are no ordinance committee hearings on the current schedule. Hassett is the chair of ordinance and Ryan is a member of the committee.

National Grid wants to expand its LNG footprint in the Port of Providence with the new liquefaction plant. Environmental groups such as the RI Sierra Club and the Environmental Justice League of RI oppose the plan. Curiously, Save the Bay, whose offices are not too far from the proposed site, have not come out against it.

Mayor Jorge Elorza and a large group of state level Providence legislators have recently publicly come out in opposition to the project.

The City Council unanimously approved Yurdin’s previous resolution opposing the site in March. That resolution called for public meetings to be scheduled to address environmental and health concerns of the project. “Unfortunately,” said Yurdin, here we are in the Summer and no such meetings have been held… This resolution is stronger than the previous resolution.”

The previous resolution called for studies and review. The new resolution is a call to strong action.

The new resolution says, in part, “That the City shall take all necessary actions to oppose the proposed Fields Point liquefaction facility, including ceasing to act as a cooperating agency with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and shall not grant any tax stabilizations, subsidies, or any other forms of support to the project.”

“Under the Resilient RI Act of 2014, the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4) is required to submit to the Governor and General Assembly a strategy for achieving greenhouse gas emission (GHG) targets set forth in the Act. The deadline for this report is December 31, 2016. Until this strategy has been developed and adopted and the Invenergy proposal is shown to be consistent with the GHG reduction goals of the Resilient RI Act, it is premature for the RI Energy Facility Siting Board to issue a decision on Invenergy’s proposed power plant,” said Save the Bay Executive Director Jonathan Stone.

“Save The Bay expects the EC4 to consider carefully and thoughtfully a number of important questions in charting the state’s energy course. Among them: benefits and impacts of investments in renewable energy generation and energy conservation on energy system supply, distribution and reliability; the role of hydroelectric power in replacing nuclear power as part of the region’s energy mix; and whether or not the power generation capacity of the proposed facility is needed.

“Climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels and poses profound threats to the health and resilience of Narragansett Bay,” said Stone. “The pace of climate change is expected to accelerate. Already, rising sea levels are degrading the health of coastal wetlands, worsening coastal erosion and threatening public access along the shore. Warming temperatures contribute to harmful algal blooms, low oxygen levels in the Bay, and the loss of native species.”

If the Invenergy project moves forward and specific site plans and required permit applications are submitted to the RI Department of Environmental Management, Save The Bay will evaluate the proposed plant’s impacts on water quality, wetlands, and habitat conditions, in keeping with its role as steward of Narragansett Bay.

[Note: an earlier version of this piece was released with an incorrect Save the Bay logo.]

In a short interview with Ted Nesi, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, widely considered to be the most environmentally conscious member of the US Senate, threw his support behind Invenergy’s Clear River Energy Center in Burrillville, a power plant to be run on fracked methane.

Whitehouse said, “Rhode Island and a large part of Southern New England are on the wrong side of a couple of gas pipeline choke points, with the result that at certain times costs soar in Rhode Island because the choke point creates a supply-demand imbalance which causes prices to soar, and in other states that’s not happening.

“I don’t think it’s valuable from Rhode Island’s perspective to make Rhode Islanders pay high winter gas prices when it doesn’t change the overall complexion of the gas market. So I am not objecting to that particular plant, because it’s a choke point issue.”

When Nesi asked Whitehouse if he’s received any blowback  for his refusal to oppose the plant, Whitehouse said,  “Some. There’s a small group of people who would like to have me change my position.

“From the larger environmental movement – the Save the Bays and the League of Conservation Voters and the Nature Conservancies and all that – there’s no blowback whatsoever. They understand the difference between the national and the local concern.”

So do Save the Bay and the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) really support Whitehouse’s position on the new Burrillville power plant as the Senator implies?

Not quite.

I asked both Save the Bay and the League of Conservation Voters for comments on what Whitehouse said. Neither group came close to backing the Senator up.

Seth Stein, National Press Secretary for the League of Conservation Voters, said, “LCV does not have an RI state league partner. We focus on Federal policy, and do not generally weigh in on local politics in states where we do not have a state league.”

Topher Hamblett, director of policy at Save the Bay, said, “Save The Bay has not taken a position on the project (we’re focused on a host of Bay issues). On development projects like this we usually evaluate potential impacts to water resources, wetland systems and Bay/coastal eco-sytsems.”

Save the Bay’s executive director Jonathan Stone wrote, “Save the Bay has not taken a position on the plant. On energy development proposals like this we always evaluate impacts on water quality, wetlands habitat, public access, and other impacts on the health of the Bay and coastal Rhode Island.”

Burrillville is not positioned near the Bay.

Given that two of the three groups that Whitehouse named have no position on the project, and the third group, “the Nature Conservancies and all that” doesn’t specify any particular agency, it appears that Whitehouse’s answer was intended to minimize the importance of local opposition to the power plant, not honestly appraise the support for natural gas infrastructure expansion that exists in the wider environmental community.

One nature conservancy that does have a strong position on Invenergy’s plans is one that will be directly impacted by the plant. The Burrillville Land Trust, has been granted intervenor status in the process to determine the power plant’s fate and has filed a motion to shut the application process down.

So none of the environmental groups that Whitehouse implied would support him, do. Instead, we have wide ranging opposition to the plant from a host of groups that understand what is at stake in allowing Rhode Island to continue to depend on fossil fuels for its energy.

The Conservation Law Foundation, the Burrillville Land Trust, Burrillville Against Spectra Expansion  (BASE), Fighting Against Natural Gas (FANG), Fossil Free RI, Rhode Island Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Green Party of RI, Occupy Providence and the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats have all come out against the plant.

In his interview with Nesi, Whitehouse cavalierly dismissed the concerns of local environmental groups, and could name no environmental groups that support his position.

If Whitehouse is truly the Senate’s climate champion, we are all in serious trouble.

Better known as river herring – or, as the old timers call them, buckies – these small and once-abundant anadromous fish spend their summers, autumns and winters in the Atlantic Ocean and as soon as the weather shifts to warm, they swim into our fresh water streams to mate and hatch their young.

They are silvery, with purplish backs and are only about six inches long. At first they can be tricky to spot in the water. But once your eye picks them up, it quickly becomes evident that a river is flush with them, swimming against a sometimes swift current to get to their spawning grounds.

They can be found all over coastal Rhode Island this time of year – Nonquit Pond in Tiverton, Buckeye Brook in downtown Apponaug and even the Woonasquatucket River in Providence.

By far the biggest and best-known buckie run has always been on the Mattatuxet River, said Department of Environmental Management biologist Phil Edwards. On Sunday, the caretakers of Gilbert Stuart’s birthplace, a colonial-era homestead 5 five miles upstream from Narragansett Beach, noticed they were back.

For the next several weeks, thousands of river herring will navigate a fish ladder that circumvents the waterfall and swim into Carr Pond to hatch their young. The adults will head back out to sea in May and the next generation will follow when the weather cools down in September.

The buckie runs were once the stuff of legend in Rhode Island. The precolonial Narragansett Indians harvested them for fertilizer and up until the 1950’s hundreds of metric tons were caught annually for bait or for early season fish fries.

As late as the 1980’s and 1990’s kids and adults could collect buckets of buckies with a net. Even in the early years of this century, the tenants at the Shady Lea Mill, less than a mile and a half upstream of Gilbert Stuart had access to all the herring they could eat.

But then the population of river herring in Rhode Island pretty much dried up. The Gilbert Stuart run went from 290,000 in 2000 to just 17,000 in 2004 – a 95 percent reduction. So far this year I haven’t seen one herring at the Shady Lea Mill. The National Marine Fisheries Service listed them as a “species of concern” and imposed a moratorium on their catch.
“We still don’t have a good handle on the cause, and it is probably related to a number of things including water quality, lack of spawning habitat, climate change, predation, and by-catch,” said Rachel Calabro of Save The Bay. She’s written about the river herring here and here.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the overall population began to drop off in the late 1960’s when “distant-water fleets began fishing for river herring off the Mid-Atlantic coast.” In Rhode Island, the decline quickened in the years after a Russian off-loader boat parked off Jamestown and bought mackerel and herring from local fishing boats.

Glen Goodwin, captains the trawler the Persistence out of Davisville and sells his catch to Sea Freeze, a Quonset-based seafood freezing company that sells seafood all over the world. He fishes for herring, but not the anadromous kind that spawn in rivers. He and other local fishermen catch sea herring, a different species of fish altogether.

“Sea herring has the largest quota on the coast that actually realizes its quota,” he told me.

The problem is the two kinds of herring congregate together, so fisherman have to be much more meticulous about which species they pull up in their nets. “River herring are taken as bycatch in other ocean fisheries in various gear types including gillnets, bottom otter trawls, and menhaden purse seines,” according to NOAA.

Goodwin says fishing boats have sensors that can identify a species before dragging the net, and the two kinds of herring don’t mix together as much during the day as they do at night. “It’s not 100 percent, but in the last ten years we’ve put a lot more effort into avoiding them,” he said.

“I realize that they try very hard to not catch river herring,” Calabro said. “There may be ways to avoid them better, like fishing farther out, because the river fish tend to stay in close waters, but it is a challenge.”

If you aren’t familiar with it from the water, this is what it looks like:

And some pictures:

There are two lighthouses in the Providence River/upper Bay area:

These next few pictures are of a giant road salt pile at Field’s Point that I fear is probably contributing to the pollution in Narragansett Bay. The salt probably isn’t as bad as whatever the salt is mixed with.

The group calls themselves the Insomniacs, because they used to do their research at night, and their work is critical if the Ocean State is to know when the oxygen levels in Narragansett Bay get low enough to leave millions of fish dead, as happened in 2003 in Greenwich Bay.

“All it will take is a school of blues to chase a school of pogies into a low oxygen zone and trap them there for a few hours and we could see another fish kill,” Kutcher said. “The conditions are as bad as they were but we aren’t seeing that big signal that gets everyone’s attention. Why should we wait for the fish to die? Let’s take action.”

DEM and URI officials told me the same thing last week.

Beach closures and hypoxia, the scientific term for low oxygen events, are part and parcel of the same environmental problems. They are both fueled by heavy rains, hot weather and stagnant water mixed with high levels of sewage and suburban runoff. Beaches close because of bacteria levels in The Bay are harmful to humans, but some of that same pollution, namely lawn fertilizers and pet poop, also causes rampant underwater plant growth. When those floating plants die, they sink to the bottom and starve Narragansett Bay of oxygen. When Narragansett Bay doesn’t have sufficient oxygen – as has been the case this summer – fish die.

David Murray, an environmental science professor from Brown University who leads the Insomniac team, helped design a meticulous monitoring system in order to stave off a disaster like Greenwich Bay experienced in 2003 when more than a million fish died because of low oxygen levels in The Bay.

His group tests 25 different spots on the upper Narragansett Bay – from the Seekonk River to Conimicut Point in Warwick. At each spot they slowly lower a $20,000 piece of equipment from the surface to the bottom. The monitoring machine is attached to a laptop, and it instantly communicates the oxygen levels in the water.

Another group, the Day Trippers, similarly monitors the East Bay. URI and state researchers use semi-permanent buoys to take similar readings in the West Bay and lower Bay. Everyone’s research says the same thing: increasingly hypoxic waters pose a major threat to sea life in Narragansett Bay ecosystem, and by extension the Ocean State economy.

Chris Cifelli is the general manager of the Iggy’s, the West Bay’s best-known clam shack that abuts Oakland Beach. He wouldn’t go on camera but he told me beach closures have a significant affect on business. “There’s no doubt. People don’t come if the beach is closed.”

He said they still get a healthy lunch and dinner crowd “but in the afternoon, when people stop in after going to the beach, we don’t have that anymore.”

Beach closures due to heavy loads of sewer and road runoff have become commonplace in the West Bay. Warwick beaches dominate the list of most days closed due to pollution both this year and since the state began keeping records in 2000. City officials acknowledge Warwick has far too many failing suburban septic tanks.

The General Assembly this year, as in past years, failed to act on legislation that would require septic system upgrades for failing systems if and when the real estate is sold. There are more than 25,000 septic systems in Rhode Island that fail to prevent waste from leeching into groundwater and, by extension, Narragansett Bay.

But this year beach closures are no longer an isolated issue in the upper areas of Narragansett Bay. Climate change is warming our water and causing more summertime moisture all alonf the East Coast; as a result the pollution problems of the warmer, shallower, upper parts of Narragansett Bay now belong to the lower Bay too.

Narragansett and Newport, two of the Ocean State’s most iconic beach towns whose reputations and economies are directly linked to the success of the summer crowd, have both experienced a record number of beach closures this summer.

Rep. Teresa Tanzi, Narragansett/South Kingstown, said the economic effect is bigger than just individual dollars not spent because of beach days missed.

“It’s a loss of confidence that people have in our reputation,” she said – those who vacationed in Rhode Island this year and missed a day of swimming at Bonnet Shores or Narragansett Town Beach might decide to go to Connecticut or Massachusetts beaches next year.

“It affects all of Rhode Island,” she said.

This loss of confidence certainly seems to be having an effect on Oakland Beach this year. It was a perfect beach day, and the water was deemed clean, but there was almost no one swimming.

State legislators from around the West Bay and Save The Bay are holding an event Wednesday to bring attention to the high number of beach closures this year and the potential of another devastating fish kill in Upper Narragansett Bay and Greenwich Bay this summer.

“Beach closures are running at a record-breaking pace this summer. Growing dead zones are setting up the Bay for a low-oxygen event as severe and widespread as the Greenwich Bay fishkill that occurred 10 years ago,” according to a press release from Save The Bay. ”

Tom Kutcher and Jonathan Stone of Save The Bay will be joined by progressive state Reps. Teresa Tanzi, of Narragansett, Frank Ferri, of Warwick and Art Handy of Cranston at Oakland Beach on Greenwich Bay in Warwick, not far from where similarly hypoxic conditions in 2003 killed more than million fish.

Hypoxia is the scientific term for low oxygen levels in water. In Narragansett Bay, it is caused when lawn fertilizer pet waste and other non-point sources of nitrogen leach into The Bay and cause rapid plant growth that starves fish and other sea creatures of oxygen.

“Rhode Island depends on Narragansett Bay for recreation and commerce,” said the release. “An unhealthy Bay limits economic and recreational opportunities.”

RI Future early last week that beach closures “have been alarmingly high this year.” We also reported last week that DEM officials were concerned about the potential for another fish kill, like the one that happened in 2003.

“Right now we are in the midst of a low-oxygen event more severe and widespread than the one that spawned the famous 2003 fish kill in Greenwich Bay,” reported Save The Bay Baykeeper Tom Kutcher in the Providence Journal yesterday. “No dead fish yet, but we’ve been seeing dead blue crabs around Prudence Island.”

I’ve been seeing dead blue crabs here in my neck of Narragansett Bay, too. Picture to follow. But dangerously high levels of pollutants in Naragansett Bay is a state-wide crisis.

Beach closures, as RI Future previously reported, have been alarmingly high this year. They’ve happened as far south as Narragansett Town Beach and three East Bay beaches were closed yesterday.

“Obviously this is an indication that something is not right with our water,” said Dara Chadwick, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health, the state agency that monitors water quality for human safety. DoH maintains an interactive map of beach closures. It also has an overview page for beach health concerns.

When it rains all the toxic chemicals we put on our lawns, on our roads and into our old septic systems drain into the Bay. This causes plants to overproduce and fish to die. When fish die, two of the Ocean State’s most important economic sectors are severely hampered: commercial fishing and tourism/recreation.

Here’s how Kutcher put it in his ProJo piece:

In areas surrounding the Bay, we have innumerable streets, driveways and parking lots. During all weather, these surfaces collect pet waste, fluids dripping from our cars and chemicals running off our lawns. During a rainstorm, this all runs directly into the water at your local beach; that is, unless your town has adopted a storm-water-management strategy, such as tearing up pavement and replacing it with soil and plants that clean the water before percolating toward the Bay. But this probably isn’t the case.

Earlier this week I reached out to Meg Kerr, a local environmental scientist and president of the Environmental Council of Rhode Island, about this very same issue. She is organizing a conference call with other experts to speak to the issues.

Save The Bay has successfully saved The Bay from the detrimental effects of industrialization, but now Save The Bay needs to save The Bay from the equally detrimental effects of suburban sprawl.