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Tuesday, August 26, 2008

With Concessions to Industry, Right Whale Rule May Be Moving

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may be making long-overdue progress on a rule to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. A draft of the final rule has been stuck at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — the White House office that must approve major agency actions — since February 2007.

However, the proposal NOAA is now floating is weaker than the proposed rule first unveiled in June 2006. NOAA now says it wants to enforce the would-be regulation in waters 20 nautical miles off the east coast. The original proposal called for a 30 nautical mile protection zone. Ships traveling in these waters would have to slow down in order to reduce the risk of striking a whale. Collisions with ships are a significant cause of right whale deaths.

In surprising yet unfortunate candor, NOAA officials acknowledged they are weakening the proposal at the shipping industry's behest. An agency spokesman told The Washington Post: "Time is money in shipping. There was a concern about the increased cost to carriers … We accommodated that by reducing the speed zones."

But the World Shipping Council, the trade group that has been lobbying NOAA and the White House, is still unhappy. Their biggest beef with the proposal is not the area in which NOAA will enforce the speed limit, it's the speed limit itself. The Council says, "We continue to see no scientific or statistical support on the record of the rulemaking to show that a 10-knot speed limit for large ships around East Coast ports will help protect right whales," according to the Post.

That argument is totally bogus. NOAA marine science experts have examined the latest science and conducted statistical analyses that show fast-moving ships increase the chances of right whale deaths.

The Council's statement attacking the science behind the rulemaking is eerily similar to the arguments being made by political forces inside the White House. Several White House offices, including the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, have been questioning NOAA's scientific findings and have gone so far as to meddle with NOAA data sets and rerun analyses.

NOAA yesterday revealed its decision to reduce the protection area to 20 nautical miles when it released a draft environmental impact statement that will accompany the final rule. The draft regulation is still stuck at the White House, but the release of the impact statement and the policy change signals that NOAA may be moving forward with the rulemaking.

Of course, the White House can continue to hold up this rule for as long as it wishes. Political forces including those in Cheney's office may pressure NOAA experts to abandon the speed limit, or they may be content to let the draft rule gather dust while the shipping industry continues to move ships through the Atlantic unfettered by new requirements.