{"id":11255,"date":"2019-05-01T01:15:12","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T01:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=11255"},"modified":"2019-05-06T21:54:19","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T21:54:19","slug":"new-clean-water-act-aina-lea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=11255","title":{"rendered":"New & Noteworthy: Another Whale Death; Clean Water Act; \u2018Aina Le\u2018a"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
False killer whale. Credit: Robin Baird<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another Whale Death: <\/strong>For the second time this year, a Hawai\u2018i deep-set longline vessel killed a false killer whale while fishing for bigeye tuna. The first incident occurred in January within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone around the state and contributed to the National Marine Fisheries Service closing a large section of the zone south of the islands in February. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On March 1, a vessel fishing outside the zone hooked and killed another false killer whale. According to an incident report, the animal was initially seen floating motionless at the ocean surface and upon closer inspection, was found to have been hooked in the tail, with the wire leader and branch line cinched around it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite a federal observer asking the crew to retrieve the captain, the captain chose not to come on deck, telling a crew member that he did not see the whale, the report states. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs the animal was pulled closer to the\nboat, bubbles came out of the animal\u2019s\nmouth, likely from trapped air released as the\nanimal was pulled from the tail. This caused\nthe crew to question whether the animal\nwas still alive,\u201d the report states. Before the\nanimal could be biopsied, the crew decided\nthe animal was too heavy to bring any closer\nand cut the branch line.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several days earlier, the fishery hooked what may have been another false killer whale, but the crew kept the line taught and the animal managed to free itself by straightening the hook, which is what is ideally supposed to happen under measures required by the whales\u2019 take reduction plan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clean Water Act Watered Down: <\/strong>The\nEnvironmental Protection Agency has issued\nguidance undermining protections that were\npreviously afforded the nation\u2019s waterways\nunder the Clean Water Act.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The guidance, issued April 16, holds that\npollution that reaches waters of the United\nStates by means of groundwater flows is\nnot subject to regulation under the Clean\nWater Act. As the law firm Earthjustice\nnoted, \u201cThis formally reverses the [Trump]\nadministration\u2019s position in an upcoming\nSupreme Court case, Hawai\u2018i Wildlife Fund\nv. County of Maui<\/em>.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That litigation resulted in a finding by the federal district court in Honolulu, upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, that the county had violated the Clean Water Act by discharging effluent from the Lahaina sewage treatment plant into\ngroundwater, which carried the effluent to\nnearshore waters.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The county appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed in February to hear the case. While the EPA had filed an amicus brief with the appellate court agreeing that the county\u2019s practice was a violation of the act, the EPA\u2019s new guidance reverses that position. This, Earthjustice stated in a press release, \u201ceffectively [gives] chemical plants, concentrated animal feeding operations, oil refiners, and other industrial facilities free rein to discharge pollutants indirectly into the nation\u2019s waterways without Clean Water Act permits.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the Hawai\u2018i Wildlife Fund,\nthe Sierra Club-Maui Group, Surfrider\nFoundation, and West Maui Preservation\nAssociation are plaintiffs in the lawsuit\nagainst the county.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Henkin, the Earthjustice attorney\narguing the case, said, \u201cWhile unsurprising,\nit is nevertheless disappointing that Trump\u2019s\nEPA has reversed the position that every\nother administration \u2013 Republican and\nDemocratic \u2013 has consistently taken since\nthe Clean Water Act was enacted.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Aina Le\u2018a Emerges from Bankruptcy: <\/strong>As the hearing date approached for the bankruptcy court hearing on the reorganization plan of \u2018Aina Le\u2018a, Inc., one lone secured creditor was still a holdout. Romspen Investment Corp., which was owed more than $13 million, was unhappy with the debtor\u2019s proposal to pay off its note. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By April 8, however, the date of the hear-\ning, \u2018Aina Le\u2018a and Romspen had come to\nterms acceptable to Romspen, just as the\nother two major creditors \u2013 Bridge \u2018Aina\nLe\u2018a, LLC, and a Chinese woman, Libo\nZhang \u2013 had done.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now all that remains is for \u2018Aina Le\u2018a to give the court evidence of its exit financing and other documents. That will clear the way for final approval of the plan and allow the company to move forward with its efforts to develop the roughly 1,000 acres of land it owns in South Kohala. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

If you like what we do, please consider supporting Environment Hawai<\/strong>\u2018i with a tax-deductible donation.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donate<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another Whale Death: For the second time this year, a Hawai‘i deep-set longline vessel killed a false killer whale while fishing for bigeye tuna. The first incident occurred in January within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone around the state and … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,8,338,453,18,341],"tags":[7,3],"class_list":["post-11255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-endangered-species","category-fisheries","category-land-use","category-may-2019","category-new-noteworthy","category-pollution","tag-patricia-tummons","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}