Tuesday, March 21, 2006

For immediate release March 21, 2006

St. Andrews …The Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF) welcomes a U.S. federal appeals court decision announced on March 17 in Washington. The decision overturned a clean-air regulation issued by the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) to relax rules on applying new anti-pollution technology to older power plants when they upgrade or expand production.

“We can all breath easier when a decision is made in favor of clean air so vital to the health of people and nature”, said ASF President Bill Taylor. ASF supported the Petitioners, State of New York, et al, in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. ASF’s Friend of the Court brief outlined how the organization’s progress in conserving wild Atlantic salmon and their environment would be significantly threatened if the EPA were permitted to implement such a ruling.

The U.S. Clean Air Act calls for companies to build plants with up-to-date control technologies, and the new source provision is a way to ensure that as time goes by, pollution controls will be modernized along with the plants themselves. Under the EPA “Final Rule”, utilities and other sources of industrial pollution would have been allowed to replace old equipment without triggering New Source Review (NSR), even when the replacement would lead to an increase in air pollution.

The EPA’s final action came at a critical time for the survival of wild Atlantic salmon. By exempting from NSR review an entire category of equipment replacement projects that have the effect of increasing the total amount of air pollution from a source, the Final Rule would have exacerbated the acid precipitation problem and threatened the very survival of wild Atlantic salmon.

"This is especially good news for endangered populations of wild Atlantic salmon in Maine and for 54 rivers along the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, which are downwind of acid rain pollution coming from the American Midwest, especially the Ohio Valley,” said Mr. Taylor. “The Nova Scotia rivers are in various stages of losing their wild Atlantic salmon, the acidity having already killed populations in 14 of them.”

Last fall, ASF and the Nova Scotia Salmon Association became North American leaders by applying technology to mitigate the acidity of the West River, near Sheet Harbour, one of the affected rivers in N.S. A project that utilizes a “doser”, sophisticated Norwegian technology, to apply lime to a stream, is raising the stream’s pH, which will allow an important remnant salmon population to reproduce and its juveniles to survive to the smolt stage, when they begin migration to the sea.

“Liming is meant to improve the salmon’s chances of survival until lakes and rivers can restore themselves naturally. This court decision helps ensure that emissions in the United States will be lowered to levels that will make this happen eventually,” concluded Mr. Taylor.

The Atlantic Salmon Federation is an international, non-profit organization that promotes the conservation and wise management of wild Atlantic salmon and their environment. ASF has a network of seven regional councils (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Maine and Western New England) which have a membership of more than 150 river associations and 40,000 volunteers. The regional councils cover the freshwater range of the Atlantic salmon in Canada and the United States.

The U.S. Government has 45 days to decide whether to seek a review of the ruling by the entire appeals court.

Go to:

http://www.asf.ca/ to access the pdf of the court decision and ASF’s Friend of the Court brief.

ASF contacts:

Sue Scott, VP Communications Muriel Ferguson, Communications

(506)529-4581 (switchboard)

(506)529-1027 (direct) 506 529-1033

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