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Proof or Consequences: Latest cleanup plans must meet goals
Cleanup funds,in change of tactics, will be targeted
Report outlines future course for Potomac watershed
Largest stockholder puts Omega Protein up for sale
A New York company wants to sell its interest in Omega Protein Corp., owner of the Reedville, VA-based menhaden fishing operation, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
Houston-based Omega also owns three menhaden-processing factories on the Gulf Coast. The fishing empire makes it the largest U.S. manufacturer of what it calls “heart-healthy” Omega-3 oils, as well as specialty fish meal and oil for livestock feeds and aquaculture rations. Its Reedville fleet contains 10 ships; its Gulf Coast fleet 30. It employs about 900 people companywide.
Zapata Corp. of Rochester, NY, in December announced its intention to sell its 58 percent interest in Omega. Omega is the only operating business that the holding company owns.
The Omega sale announcement follows a devastating year for Omega. The company felt the fury of Gulf Coast hurricanes and suffered a political defeat on the East Coast, where a coastal management board voted to limit its take of menhaden from the Chesapeake Bay.
Damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita forced Omega to write off $13.2 million in uninsured losses. That left the company $6.1 million in the red at the end of the third quarter. By comparison, Omega showed a net income of $1.8 million after the third quarter of 2004.
Omega resumed fishing from its Abbeyville, LA, and Moss Point, MS, plants last fall and is rebuilding its Cameron, LA, facility, which was destroyed by Rita.
“Hopefully, we’ll have Cameron up and running after the season starts” this spring, Toby Gascon, Omega’s director of governmental affairs, told the Times-Dispatch. He is taking a detached view of Zapata’s plans. “It’s no guarantee they are going to sell or if they are aggressively seeking a buyer,” Gascon said.
Zapata has expressed an interest in selling its share of Omega before, said Omega Chief Financial Officer Bob Stockton, but never made an announcement “as explicit as this recent one. “
“But, from the Omega perspective,” Stockton added, “it really doesn’t make any difference who owns us in that we report to all the shareholders.”
The company was in the news last August when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission agreed to limit its landings as a precaution against overfishing menhaden in the Chesapeake.
The commission voted to cap Omega’s annual Bay harvest at its past five-year average of about 106,000 metric tons for five years beginning this year while scientists study whether the lack of menhaden is affecting the Bay’s striped bass. Omega had sought a 131,000-metric-ton cap.
Potomac cleanup a united effort
Officials from Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia are waging war against trash in the Potomac River. They’re enlisting an army of environmentalists, citizens groups and government agencies to meet a commitment for a trash-free river watershed within seven years.
“That doesn’t mean getting the trash out once, it means keeping the trash out,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-MD. The plan primarily focuses on the Potomac and Anacostia rivers but could also involve cleanups on every stream and river in the Potomac watershed.
“Once you remove the most visible signs of blight—the tires, the trash, the garbage— you can get people to invest in totally cleaning up the river,” Van Hollen said.
The World Bank will host the Potomac Watershed Trash Summit at its Washington headquarters on March 16. Representatives of government agencies, nonprofit groups and educational institutions will be asked to commit personnel and other resources to developing an action plan by 2008. Organizers suggest that this could lead to policy changes on how communities deal with stormwater runoff and public sanitation.
Rep. Steney Hoyer, D-MD, also signed the Potomac River Watershed Trash Treaty, along with officials from six Maryland and Virginia counties; Alexandria, VA; and the District of Columbia.
While no budget has been established for a massive cleanup, supporters say the agreement represents a commitment to obtaining the necessary funding.
“If these communities cannot address litter and trash debris, how are they going to address the bigger water quality issues in the region?” asked Tracy Bowen, executive director of the Alice Ferguson Foundation. The environmental group has sponsored at least one Potomac River cleanup in each of the last 17 years and will mobilize volunteers from four sites on April 8. Since 1989, more than 35,000 volunteers have removed 2.5 million pounds of trash from streambeds and shorelines.
Sale of oyster knives carved from Wye Oak to benefit charity
A famed oak tree that stood on Maryland’s Eastern Shore for more than four centuries is helping to raise money to restore oysters in the Chesapeake Bay — more than three years after the Wye Oak fell.
A group of Baltimore woodworkers have acquired scraps from Wye Oak and are making Chesapeake-style oyster knives from the wood. The group plans to make 1,000 commemorative knives and sell them for $200 and up to raise money for Bay cleanup efforts, including oyster restoration.
“This is an opportunity to take advantage of the great tree’s falling and turn it into something good for the Chesapeake Bay,” woodworker Dale German told The (Baltimore) Sun.
Wye Oak grew for about 450 years along the old Choptank Trail north of Easton. At one point it was America’s largest white oak, soaring 10 stories in a state park named after it, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. The tree was stabilized by cables before finally succumbing to a lightning strike in 2002.
Wood from the famous tree was immediately tagged for special projects. The state took some of it to fashion a desk for the governor’s office. Other sections were donated to local churches for crosses, set aside for artisans who wanted to carve sculptures, and given to Talbot County for the carving of an official seal for the courthouse.
German, the woodworker, also wondered what would become of the oak tree.
“My surprise, when it fell, was quickly followed by a woodworker’s natural curiosity about what might become of the wood from this miraculous giant,” he said.
The knives will be sold by the Oyster Recovery Partnership, a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring the Bay’s oysters.
Trust pledges to increase Bay funding 40 percent
The Chesapeake Bay Trust, a non-profit grant-making organization, marked its 20th anniversary in January by announcing its largest financial commitment ever–$10 million over the next three years for Bay restoration. That’s a 40 percent increase over the past three years.
“We have substantially increased our funding to $10 million over the next three years because we are serious stewards of the Chesapeake and we can do more to help the Bay,” said Midgett S. Parker Jr., chairman of the Chesapeake Bay Trust Board of Trustees. “We hope that our increased commitment will inspire and stimulate others to do more for the Bay.”
The trust also announced that sales and renewals of Bay plates–the single most significant source of funding for Trust-supported, Bay projects–reached nearly $2 million in 2005. More than a million plates have been sold since the program’s introduction in 1991.
The trust is dedicated to the protection and restoration of the Chesapeake Bay.
Kaine names key officials for VA environmental posts
Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine recently announced several appointments to several Cabinet-level offices and state agencies affecting the environment.
Nicole M. Rovner will serve as deputy secretary of natural resources. She previously served as director of governmental relations for The Nature Conservancy of Virginia and as a staff attorney at the Virginia Division of Legislative Services, where she was counsel to five legislative committees that consider natural resource-related issues.
Jeffrey M. Corbin will serve as assistant secretary of natural resources. He has worked since 1996 at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, where he has been its Virginia deputy director and senior scientist. Before his CBF tenure, Corbin worked for three years as an environmental geologist and water quality specialist at the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission.
David K. Paylor will serve as director of the Department of Environmental Quality. Paylor has served as deputy secretary of natural resources since 2002, after 25 years of service at the Department of Environmental Quality and the Virginia Water Control Board.
In addition, Kaine announced that Joseph H. Maroon will continue to serve as director of the Department of Conservation and Recreation. Maroon was appointed to the DCR post in 2002. Also, William P. Dickinson, Jr. will continue to serve as deputy secretary of agriculture and forestry. Dickinson has served 34 years in a variety of roles across state government.
Kaine earlier named Del. Preston Bryant, an environmental leader in the General Assembly, to serve as his secretary of natural resources.
MD crab harvest up in 2005
The final numbers are in, and they confirm expectations about 2005’s blue crab harvest reported in January. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources says watermen caught an estimated 32.3 million pounds of crabs in the Chesapeake Bay in 2005, up from 30.8 million pounds in 2004.
This season ended Dec. 15. It was the fifth consecutive year the crab harvest has increased.
