To Drill or Not to Drill?

Hi all,

Another piece in the North Slope drilling debate. Read EPA’s new press release.

If folks want to file petitions for review of the revised permit
the deadline is in one month: July 21, 2008.

Here’s the news release:

“EPA Issues Revised “Minor”Air Permit to Shell for Drilling in
Arctic’s Beaufort Sea

(Seattle, WA – June 19, 200 The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency has issued a revised minor air quality permit to Shell
Offshore, Inc. (Shell), to regulate air emissions from the Kulluk
floating drilling rig and its support vessels to conduct
exploratory oil and gas drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf
(OCS) of the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska.

According to Rick Albright, Director of EPA’s Air, Waste & Toxics
office in Seattle, the Agency is satisfied that Shell’s permit
application met all EPA requirements.

“This project has undergone extraordinary scrutiny,” said EPA’s
Albright. “Because local communities in the North Slope Borough
have expressed a wide range of important social and public health
concerns, we’ve taken an extra hard look at the complete
application package. We believe that from an air quality
standpoint, this project, as permitted, will meet all health-based
ambient air quality standards.”

EPA conducted informational meetings and public hearings in three
North Slope communities (Nuiqsut, Kaktovik and Barrow) between
March 25 and 27, 2008.

Shell’s revised permit will limit emissions of any single air
pollutant to 245 tons per year at each exploratory operation,
which includes a single planned well and any of its associated
replacement or relief wells. Above those limits, the project
would require a “major” source permit, which requires a more
rigorous permitting process and limits based on the best available
control technology.

According to EPA’s Albright, another important step in the permit
process involves the recent listing of the polar bear as
“threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act.”

This last part may be of particular interest to some:

“While we have issued this revised permit to Shell today, it does
not become effective until consultation with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service regarding Endangered Species Act protection for
the polar bear has been completed.”

Isn’t She Lovely in Maps and Microfiche Envelopes?

How many times have you thought there must be some second life for all of those GPO wrappings as you dropped them into the trash? Here’s one use: Government Documents are wearable art, and three government documents divas set out to prove that have gov docs, will travel down the runway. In December, Kathleen Wiechelman at the UAS Ketchikan Campus Library asked us to send them our gov docs envelopes, and we were happy to have them recycled into well-tailored ball gowns. Here’s what Kathleen said about the event:

Here are a couple of photos of the gown that my library assistant [Kathy Graham] made me out of those lovely gov doc envelopes, as well as a shot of us all… The beauty queen librarians were a big hit in our Wearable Art Show this year! My boss, Judith, is wearing a skirt of nautical charts, and Lisa, the Adult Services Librarian at the Ketchikan Public Library, is wearing book covers. What fun.

Kathy, amazing talent! And the models all look splendid. Please click the image for a larger picture.

Blast (not quite) from the Past

With soaring energy prices, people around the country are talking up nuclear power. This might be a good time to pull the following item out of your depository collection:

Report on the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station
by United States. Dept. of Energy.; U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.; et al
Publisher: Washington, DC : U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission : Available from Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., [1987]
Edition: Rev. 1
SuDoc: Y3.N88:10/1250
WorldCat Link: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/25206856

This report is based on both American and Soviet sources. The report has chapters that expound on the following points:

• The unique design of the Chernobyl reactor.
• That the accident happened during a test where …
  • the test procedure had not been reviewed for safety
  • management control of the test was not maintained
  • the test procedure was not followed
  • safety systems were bypassed

The report also details post accident actions taken by the Soviet Union. This shouldn’t be considered the final word on Chernobyl, but might add information to the ongoing debates over nuclear power.

If Elected …: Unsuccessful Candidates for the Presidency

What do Thomas Jefferson, Charles C. Pickney, Rufus King, Alton Parker, Charles Hughes and Hubert Humphrey all have in common?

They are all profiled in:

“If elected–” : unsuccessful candidates for the presidency, 1796-1968

by Lillian B Miller; National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution). Historian’s Office.; et al

Publisher: City of Washington : Published for the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, by the Smithsonian Institution Press : For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 1972.

This book provides portraits, biographies and context for people who ran on major party tickets but who lost the presidency from the start of the Republic through 1968. Not all are losers. This volume from the Smithsonian Institution points out that one third of the men who have held the office of President also lost it. Several, like Jefferson and Nixon, had to run more than once before finally being elected.

This volume, which may come in handy for election year displays or civics classes, is available in a number of Alaska libraries. To see which ones, please visit http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/278385.

If you’re familiar with this book, please leave a comment and let us know what you think about it.

New EPA Senior Tribal Policy Advisor

Jim Woods, a Makah tribal member, was appointed to EPA Region 10 as Senior Advisor for Tribal Policy. An EPA news release from this morning quotes Elin Miller, EPA regional administrator in Seattle as saying that “Mr. Woods brings a wealth of tribal and environmental experience to EPA that will help us build stronger partnerships with our Pacific Northwest and Alaska tribes…We’re looking forward to working with him to help build tribal capacity, strengthen our communication networks with tribes, and better protect our natural resources.”

The release quotes Mr. Woods as saying: “I look forward to improving the effectiveness of government-to-government consultation between EPA Region 10 and tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. It is my hope that we will be able to strike a good balance among treaty guaranteed rights, sustainable resources and overall environmental protection throughout the northwest and Alaska

According to the news release, Mr. Woods has been working on natural resource management and tribal policy issues related to toxics, natural resource management, fisheries and marine ecosystems.
To read the full release, more detail about Mr. Woods’ career, and a quote from the Makah Tribal Council: http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d96f984dfb3ff7718525735900400c29/8a87e77cb3bd1031852574560065079c!OpenDocument

For more information on EPA’s Tribal Programs in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, visit:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/r10/tribal.NSF

For more information about the Makah tribe, visit:
http://www.makah.com/

For more information on the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission,
visit:http://www.nwifc.org/

Searcher Article on Government Blogging

Thanks to our statewide databases contract, the following article in Searcher Magazine is available to any Alaskan interested in federal government blogging efforts:

Government Blogging. By: Garvin, Peggy. Searcher, May2008, Vol. 16
Issue 5, p40-42, 3p

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&an=32056387&db=tfh&site=ehost&scope=site

Agencies covered include Health and Human Services, Library of Congress, and of course the GSA blog GovGab. Have you visited one of these blogs? What did you think of it? Leave a comment and let us know.

If you’re an AkLA Docs Roundtable member interested in joining the blogging revolution by participating in this blog, please e-mail Daniel Cornwall.

Memorial Day History and Other Resources

Have you wondered how long we’ve been commemorating Memorial Day? Are you looking for memorials for WWII, Vietnam or other wars? Are you looking for a way to support the troops on Memorial Day? Or maybe you’re wondering what you’re going to cook. All these questions and a number of others are answered at USA.gov’s page for Memorial Day and Memorial Day Weekend at http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Memorial_Day.shtml.

Where to Find AGIA/TransCanada Documents

This past week, the Palin administration recommended Trans-Canada as an Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) licensee. There is extensive documentation of this decision on the governor’s AGIA website at http://www.gov.state.ak.us/agia/. Currently this page hosts an executive summary of the “findings and determinations”, but the full documentation is scheduled to be posted by May 28, 2008.

Alaska Related Federal Pubs in April 2008

We haven’t done this for awhile, but I wanted to let you know that the Government Printing Office cataloged 19 publications mentioning Alaska during April 2008. You can find a list of these documents at:

http://catalog.gpo.gov/F/?func=find-c&ccl_term=005%3D200804*+AND+WRD%3DAlaska&x=0&y=0

A few selected items of possible interest are:

National Visitor Use Monitoring implementation in Alaska [electronic resource]
2008
White, Eric M.
A 13.88:PNW-GTR-740
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS92371

This document talks about visitor usage of federal recreation sites in Alaska and provides information on a nationwide visitor monitoring program.

Preliminary research findings from a study of the sociocultural effects of tourism in Haines, Alaska [electronic resource] /   
2004   
Cerveny, Lee K.   
A 13.88:PNW-GTR-612   
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS92696

This is a 2004 document studying the effects of cruiseship tourism on the city of Haines.

Tributes delivered in Congress : Ted Stevens, United States Senator, 1968-.   
2007   
Y 1.1/3:110-4  
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS89316

This is document is a compilation of tributes to Senator Stevens from his colleagues on the occaison of his becoming the longest serving Republican Senator in April 2007.

————-

The federal government produces a lot of documents that relate to Alaska and yet many slip by unnoticed by the majority of Alaskans unless it makes the headlines. What do you think we can do to change this?

Environmental Justice Grants for AK Communities

EPA is offering grants to Northwest communities with public health concerns due to inadequate environmental management practices. According to a recent Region 10 press release:

“(Seattle, Wash. – April 10, 200 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now seeking grant applications for projects to assist low-income and minority communities to develop locally-based solutions to their sometimes disproportionate share of environmental and public health issues.

Nationally, up to $800,000 is available to non-profit organizations, a city, township, county government, or Native American tribal government through EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice. Grants will be awarded through the Environmental Justice Small Grants Programs (EJSG).

For the Pacific Northwest, EPA anticipates awarding up to four grants in the amount of $20,000 per award. Grants are awarded on a competitive basis. The deadline for grant applications is June 30, 2008.”

Read the entire press release

Interested? Contact Information: Running Grass, EPA Environmental Justice Program Manager, (206) 553-2899, grass.running@epa.gov Tony Brown, EPA Public Affairs, (206) 553-1203, brown.anthony@epa.gov