'Good enough for government work'
To PEER executive director Jeff Ruch, the debate over the noise data is irrelevant. Even
if NPS made mistakes in presenting the data -- by not clearly marking the sound levels as
estimates -- it falls short of scientific misconduct, he said.
The Park Service has limited funds and limited time. The draft EIS is "good enough for
government work," he said.
"It's a minor mistake. It doesn't invalidate the larger product," he said. "This is a game of
academic gotcha that misses the broader point."
Greenwire
3. INTERIOR:
Battle escalates over allegations of NPS misconduct
Emily Yehle, E&E reporter
Published: Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Environmental groups are pushing back against allegations that the National Park Service
falsified data in an effort to oust a California oyster farm from a wilderness area.
The Interior Department -- which houses NPS -- is looking into allegations that officials
purposely misled the public by using 1995 data from New Jersey police boats to represent
the noise coming from Drakes Bay Oyster Co. A table in the draft environmental impact
statement (EIS) appears to imply the data were collected at the farm, and it misled a
scientist who reviewed the document as part of a peer review Interior commissioned
(Greenwire, March 27).
The controversy is the latest in a string of headaches for Interior over NPS research on
Drakes Bay Oyster Co., which is fighting to renew its lease in a national wilderness area.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has closely followed the controversy, has since
accused the service of building a "deceptive and potentially fraudulent" case against the
company (E&ENews PM, March 29).
But Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Environmental Action
Committee of West Marin say the charges are overblown. They point to the fact that the
EIS fully cites the sources of the noise data in its references, even if such clear citations
are not on the table itself.
In a recent letter to Interior Scientific Integrity Officer Ralph Morgenweck, EAC
executive director Amy Trainer calls the allegations "unfounded."
"We are particularly concerned about the recent claims both because of the manner in
which they have been politicized by Senator Feinstein, and, like previous ones, are
baseless, unscientific, and distract from the real issue facing Secretary Salazar: whether to
uphold long-standing national park laws and policies, or roll them back to allow private
industry to commercialize the heart of a national park," she wrote.
A Feinstein spokesman did not return a request for comment. But in her letter to Salazar
last month, Feinstein referenced the repeated problems found with NPS research on the
farm; that includes a 2011 report from Interior's solicitor's office that found park
scientists mishandled evidence and acted improperly (Greenwire, March 23, 2011).
Guessing game
The mystery over how NPS came to its estimates lingers. Interior is refusing to detail
how NPS extrapolated the sound levels of the farm's equipment from the 1995 New
Jersey study and a 2006 "Construction Noise Users Guide" from the Federal Highway
Administration.
Most puzzling is the sound level for the farm's oyster tumbler. Five items in the 2006
guide match the sound level attributed to the tumbler in the draft EIS: a concrete-mixer
truck, a drill-rig truck, a front-end loader, a rivet buster and a ventilation fan.
None come close to the tumbler, a piece of equipment that uses a small electric motor to
sort oysters. In her letter to Interior, Trainer suggests that a concrete mixer is the most
likely substitute.
But she also presents a seemingly random hypothesis. NPS, she writes, could have taken
the 85 decibels attributed to "all other equipment" in the 2006 users guide and then
"conservatively decided to reduce the loudness attributed to the oyster tumbler" to get the
79 decibels cited in the draft EIS.
Trainer uses similar logic in her defense of the 71 decibels the draft EIS attributes to the
oyster farm's motorboats, the loudest of which has a 40 horsepower engine. The only
number that matches in the New Jersey study -- which is cited in the EIS as the source -is the sound level for a 1995 Kawasaki Jet Ski.
But in her letter, Trainer hypothesizes the Park Service instead based the loudness of the
farm's motorboats on the sound level for a boat with a 175 horsepower engine. That
engine is far louder than those of the farm's boats, and the New Jersey study measured its
sound level at 81 decibels.
Trainer contends that NPS just took off 10 decibels to reach the 71 decibels that is
attributed to the farm's boats in the EIS.
When asked how she came to these calculations, Trainer said her group "took an
objective, reasonable approach to consider what equipment the NPS was likely
comparing to like."
But Interior is keeping silent on how NPS actually came to its numbers, which are used in
the EIS to make a variety of assertions. Among them is that the farm's motorboats can be
heard more than 1.3 miles away. The draft EIS also contends that the oyster tumbler -which sorts the shellfish with a far quieter engine than that of the boats -- can be heard
2.3 miles away.
'Good enough for government work'
To PEER executive director Jeff Ruch, the debate over the noise data is irrelevant. Even
if NPS made mistakes in presenting the data -- by not clearly marking the sound levels as
estimates -- it falls short of scientific misconduct, he said.
The Park Service has limited funds and limited time. The draft EIS is "good enough for
government work," he said.
"It's a minor mistake. It doesn't invalidate the larger product," he said. "This is a game of
academic gotcha that misses the broader point."
That point, to environmental groups, is that the oyster farm sits in an area that Congress
designated as wilderness decades ago. If Interior allows the company to stay, they
contend that it would go against policy and set a precedent that could endanger
wilderness areas throughout the country.
Indeed, the Park Service was poised to kick out the farm before Feinstein intervened in
2009, inserting language in the fiscal 2010 spending bill that explicitly allowed Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar to grant the farm a 10-year renewal. The EIS process began after
that.
Feinstein, Ruch said, "appears to be upset by the process her own legislation created."
"This is not rocket science -- motor boats and machinery make noise and this location,
Drakes Estero, is supposed to be wilderness," he said. "Senator Feinstein's repeated
personal interventions for this one company have become the very epitome of political
interference with science to which she claims to be objecting."
Ruch and Trainer have taken particular aim at Corey Goodman, a scientist who has long
criticized NPS for its research on the oyster farm. Goodman became involved in the
controversy when he gave expert testimony to the Marin County Board of Supervisors in
2007; since then, he has spent countless hours scrutinizing the Park Service's research.
Goodman publicized the noise data issues last month, sending a letter to Salazar that
requested an investigation into possible scientific misconduct.
In a recent interview, Goodman said Trainer's letter responding to his allegations raised
more questions than answers. The assertion that the sound levels in the EIS were the
result of random calculations would be a more serious problem than his assumption that
NPS based them off louder equipment.
"Whatever it is, it was a completely inappropriate number to pick that completely
misrepresented what the engine sounds like and it clearly bamboozled the peer reviewer,"
Goodman said.
Interior spokesman Adam Fetcher said the department is conducting a review of the
allegations. The agency's scientific integrity policy requires Interior to launch a
preliminary review to determine whether such allegations are substantiated and thus
necessitate a larger investigation.
But all sides of the controversial issue seem to agree to one thing: NPS should make it
clear how they calculated the noise levels of the farm's equipment.
"I do think it would help in the final EIS to list all of their assumptions and specify how
these numbers came about," Trainer said. "There's room for improvement."