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                                          ‘Bye-Bye-Birdie’

                From OOG to Morro Bay California:                                      

           "Marine Sanctuary, not Obscene Cranktuary!"


This project is a serious danger to whale migration/navigation (anchored into the seabed a mile below!) and serves only to keep the power plant 'on ice' for future start up of a large desalination unit or some other very destructive industrial use of the 'once through cooling' seawater intake. Scientists are also concerned with the effect all this vibration will have on marine life. Don’t allow this mass industrialization of our ocean. There's no need for them at all- home rooftop solar panels do the job without all the carnage. These are the same old energy companies and opportunistic profiteers with links to multi-national corporations trying desperately to stay in charge of our energy on/off switch.

                                                            On Facebook: California Marine Sanctuary Alliance
                                                                          www.oceanoutfallgroup.com


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California Coastal Commission to Seaworld: Stop breeding orcas!

U
nder international pressure to free their captive orcas and other marine mammals, Seaworld hatched a plan to go into the orca sales business. They went before the California Coastal Commission in Long Beach October 8th, 2015 to ask permission for a tank expansion. Nothing different for the orcas except a bigger tank, but the landscaping and rock formations would be nice to look at if you were a visitor. Seaworld would be able to hold 94 more orcas if the plan went through.

Ocean Outfall Group opposed the Sea World San Diego orca tank expansion and OOG Director Joey Racano had this to say to the Coastal Commission:

https://youtu.be/CyQwJdW8t0M 

The commission approved the project, but only on the condition that Seaworld San Diego could no longer breed orcas, nor can they send or receive them. Because of the issue of genetic diversity (or lack thereof) this will eventually put them out of the orca business.

Special thanks to PETA, former commissioner Sara Wan (who hatched the brilliant plan, which I disagreed with and refused to go along with, and boy was I wrong on this one), Ingrid Visser, John Hargrove, Steve-o, Sea Shepherd, and all the activist soldiers!


Seaworld plans to appeal and we will be watching!

Don't forget to follow us on Facebook for a daily dose of activist poetry and campaigns!

love and respect,

Joey Racano, Director
Ocean Outfall Group





The Ocean Outfall Group has been protecting California's coast and waters from all threats since founded in 2000, and has played a leadership role or had a hand in more major environmental victories than any group in California history. As the last surviving founding member, it is with great love and respect that I dedicate this wonderful new website to my co-founders and OOG partners in many battles: Doug Korthof, Dr. Jan Vandersloot, Larry Porter, Irwin Haydock. We also thank our past and present OOG Board Members: Traci Theile, Paul Watson, Lisa Rosen, Sandra Brazil and Julie Tacker. See announcement below...
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The Ocean Outfall Group is proud to announce the addition of Marcia Hanscomb to our Board of Directors as of October 5th, 2013. Marcia has long been the #1 Wetlands activist in California with a shining record that includes the historic victory at Little Shell Wetland in Huntington Beach California, and many other stellar efforts. Marcia is a former member of the National Board of the Sierra Club, having served there for a number of years alongside Captain Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. They are together again with us, much to our good fortune. Thank you Marcia!

Marine Petroleum Areas

Saving the ocean
takes people in motion
you’ll have to do more than
sun tanning with lotion

I don’t mean to shake you
but someone must wake you
lip service; there’s only
so far it will take you

Break out of your bubble
Let’s rock on the double
Get out in the streets
and start kicking up trouble

-joey racano


MPA Collaborative Implementation Project

The Resources Agency decided to hold a meeting of the minds from many disciplines to figure out just how we could actually make the Marine Protected Areas recently created off the coast of California work. I for one was baffled because I had them working the instant they took effect, back in 2007. A local prison spilled sewage in a creek, the creek led to the bay, the bay was an MPA (Marine Protected Area) and I harangued Arnold Swarzenegger’s office until they helped me, and we prosecuted the prison, setting an enormous precedent or two. But I guess that just wasn’t good enough, so here we were again, seven years later, pretending we didn’t know what to do.

The meeting, run by a lovely and friendly woman named Calla Allison, started promptly at 3:00PM, Monday, November 18th, in the auditorium of the Morro Bay Museum of Natural History, 20 State Park Road, Morro Bay, California. Many times in the past, I had bad blood there, once holding a sign outside saying NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM- EVERYTHING NATURAL WILL BE HISTORY. But those days were gone, and the place had taken a decidedly excellent green bent!

We introduced ourselves, and spouted ideas as Calla wrote them down feverishly. I suggested all law enforcement agencies be sent to MPA training, so they could keep a Peregrine’s eye on poaching polluting or extracting. When asked what agencies we may have forgotten to include, I said the Chumash Indians. Eric Endersby of Morro Bay Harbor Patrol informed me the Chumash have no land and so were not ‘federally recognized’. I took a moment to educate him about how differently indigenous peoples look at the world. The land they have is underwater, out past the surf zone, where ancestors were buried thousands of years ago, before the glaciers melted and oceans rose.

“I know, I know” he dismissed me, “but they aren’t federally recognized” he repeated. So I asked him, “Eric, Harbor Department was created by an act of the Legislature, right?”
“Yes” he answered.
“And that’s the California State Legislature, right? So, you’re not federally recognized!”

We were broken up into groups, and I laughed to see cops in one corner trying to figure out how to milk money out of it all, and scientists and academics in other corners trying to do the same. I asked who had worked on the otter implants that had killed many of them, and found out that Biologist Don Canestro was housing them at Ken Norris Reserve. “You’re sheltering criminals?” I asked.
“I’m housing them and they are only monitoring the otters. That’s Dr. Tinker whose doing the electronic implants on them” he answered. He winced as I took his picture.
I announced to the room that the otters were illegally being carved up and with stolen money. Former State Senator Sam Blakeslee lied to the people in the CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) office, telling them his bill ‘mandated’ seismic testing (not true, Arnold vetoed it) and the seismic tests would go forward (they didn’t, we beat them with the Coastal Commission). So now, there are otters out there who need our help and we need to go after that 64 million dollars!

Finally, I asked how the Chair of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Panel, also President of Western States Petroleum- could not have known that offshore fracking was already going on at the time!!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/16/1256123/-Big-oil-lobbyist-marine-guardian-praises-draft-fracking-regulations

All in all, it was a well run meeting by Calla Allison, and the Resources Agency, with great activists, eco groups standing up for Marine Protected Areas and those long-suffering Southern Sea Otters.

Stay tuned next for:

‘Nuking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’

with love and respect

joey racano

photos: Racano



And the Waste Burns On

The Waste Burns On

Kingdoms fall and kingdoms rise
Winds sandblast a Sphynx’s eyes
Seedlings sprout and touch the skies
and the waste burns on
and the waste burns on

A river flows and then relents
Species hop-scotch continents
But through the course of these events
the waste burns on
and the waste burns on

jr

Last night, in the very path of creeping Fukushima radiation, a meeting was held in San Luis Obispo by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They had come to the begrudging home of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant to ask citizens for their input on storage of spent fuel, better known as nuclear waste. Or, as their spin doctors presented it, ‘waste confidence’.

“Define confidence!” a man shouted from somewhere back among the many hundreds in attendance.

SEND THEM AN EMAIL TELLING THEM TO STOP MAKING NUCLEAR WASTE IMMEDIATELY:

E-mail:   rulemaking.comments@nrc.gov
FAX:  secretary, NRC  301-415-1101
Snail mail: Secretary US NRC
Washington DC 20555-0001
attention- Rule making and Adjudications staff

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s own mission statement admits their job is to create rules allowing for the continued burning of the nuclear fires. But they were up against it last night, at a gigantic meeting attended by an American cross-section of colorful characters, sick to death of the lies, death and danger that are the legacy of a failed experiment called nuclear power.

It was my great double-honor to speak beside the famed Mothers for Peace as well as the Chumash peoples who have inhabited –and lay rightful claim to- the Diablo Canyon area for thousands of years. At one point, I asked Jane Swanson why men can’t join Mothers for Peace, and she corrected me, saying there were ‘plenty of men mothers’.
“How do I join?” I asked, at which point she grasped my wrist and said, “I know about your great love for the Earth, and you are now a mother.” I was humbled.

We spoke in turn as our names were called, a Chumash warrior, a lawyer, a woman named ‘Willow’ with a turtle-carved cane and a sweater of shining sequins. When my turn came, I spoke representing a ‘religious order’ known as Nukes Templar, and presented a ‘5-point plan’ to remove the scourge of nukes forever. “No one has the right to light a match that won’t go out for a quarter million years” I said. I finished by calling for the prosecution of ‘those responsible for this crime against the future.’

As I write these words, the once mighty Diablo Canyon Plant is no longer so imposing viewed in the wafting radioactive shadow of the Fukushima conflagration. “It’s time has come” I said more than once. “Diablo is done.” And people listened with hopeful, hungry eyes.

With love and respect

joey racano

Special thanks to Mothers for Peace


photos: Racano  
 

National Park Service: say no to ranchers at Point Reyes National Seashore!

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Thank You! Scoping letter with draft purpose, need and objectives attachment Your comments were successfully submitted. June 01, 2014 07:00 PM Mountain Time

Park: Point Reyes National Seashore Project: Comprehensive Management Plan for Lands under Agricultural Lease/Permits Environmental Assessment Document: Scoping letter with draft purpose, need and objectives attachment     Name: Joey J Racano Address: 1487 Nipomo ave Los Osos Calif City: Los Osos State: CA Postal Code: 93402 Email Address: talkaboutthebay@yahoo.com Organization: Ocean Outfall Group    

Comments:

Honorable friends,

Please remove the oyster farm and all cattle grazing ASAP. The Tule Elk are of paramount importance. The #1 cause for loss of biodiversity in North America is cattle grazing on public lands. It needs to end now.

Thanks for your attention to this important issue,

Joey Racano, Director
California Ocean Outfall Group
www.oceanoutfallgroup.com
(805) 540-8970

    Comment ID: 906340-58782/2703

Dedicated to activists the world over- victory for the whales!

Message received from Phil Kline, Senior Oceans Campaigner, Greenpeace, USA: “What an unstoppable force captured in a photo, GP, SS, Joey - Congrats on a huge victory! Our oceans and everyone who loves them thank you all and so do I.”


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CA Coastal Commission Denies PG&E Seismic Testing Permit Great Whale Conservancy Applauds California Coastal Commission Decision!

By Gershon Cohen

On November 15th, the California Coastal Commission voted unanimously to deny a permit to Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) to conduct seismic testing off the coast of California near the Diablo Canyon and San Onofre nuclear power facilities.

Both facilities were approaching relicensing deadlines, and a recently passed California law requires more analysis of the fault lines located near the remaining plant, both having been built in seismically active areas in the 1970 -1980’s.  While several options exist for conducting the sea-floor mapping analysis, PG&E proposed dragging an array of 18 air canons below the surface and emitting blasts of 250dB every 20 seconds for 42 days. 

The company’s proposal acknowledged there would be hundreds of “takes” of marine mammals during the testing procedure, which would be used to map the fault lines a few miles off-shore from the nuclear facilities.  “Takes,” as described by the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, are anything from an annoyance that alters the behavior of the animal to more serious impacts and even death.  Given the size and repetitive nature of the blasts, there was a significant chance that many whales and other marine mammals would have been killed from ruptured eardrums.  They would almost certainly have been driven from the area, which at minimum would have forced them to leave critical feeding areas as winter approaches.  It was also acknowledged by the company that there could be a serious impact on local fish stocks.

A coalition of local citizens who love and respect these magnificent animals, along with fisherman, tourism companies, and civic leaders led by an ad hoc steering group formed by Joey Racano of Avila Beach, (see the Facebook page “stop the diablo canyon seismic testing”) held numerous meetings and actions to get people to write letters and testify in person as the issue was debated by State agencies.  GWC offered to help, and in October we went to Avila Beach with Mz Blue (see photo) to help Joey and his group educate and motivate the public to get involved. 


On November 15th, the California Coastal Commission met to review the application.  With hundreds of people in the room and thousands of letters in hand, the Commission voted unanimously to deny the permit!  It was a remarkable victory over the biggest energy utility corporation in California.

Our sincere thanks to Joey Racano and his team in California and everyone else who participated in this wonderful effort.  Stay tuned to our website www.greatwhaleconservancy.org and Facebook page (greatwhaleconservancy) for updates on this issue, and many other matters of importance regarding the protection of great whales and other marine mammals around the world.

Gershon Cohen PhD
Co-Director, GWC