WASHINGTON (AP) - Journalist and scientific organizations accused the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday of attempting to muzzle its independent scientific advisers by directing them to funnel all outside requests for information through agency officials.

In a letter Tuesday, groups representing journalists and scientists urged the EPA to allow advisory board members to talk directly to news reporters, Congress and other outside groups without first asking for permission from EPA officials. An April memo from the EPA's chief of staff said that "unsolicited contacts" need to be "appropriately managed" and that committee members should refrain from directly responding to requests about committees' efforts to advise the agency.
The scientific advisory board's office had asked the EPA to clarify the communications policy for board members, who are government employees.
"The new policy only reinforces any perception that the agency prioritizes message control over the ability of scientists who advise the agency to share their expertise with the public," the groups wrote.
The EPA relies on independent advisory boards to weigh complex scientific information and to advise the agency on policy, such as setting new standards for air pollutants. Recently, Republicans in Congress have been critical of the scientific advisory board overseeing the review of the ground-level ozone standard, saying it failed to evaluate the consequences of recommending a tougher limit.
The chair of that panel, H. Christopher Frey, said in an interview with the Associated Press Tuesday in which he stressed he was offering his personal opinion, that he found the tone of the EPA memo to be unnecessary.
Frey, a distinguished university professor in North Carolina State University's environmental engineering department, said that many of the scientists that serve on the committees are national and internationally-renowned experts and that EPA "need not be too strong in precluding interactions with the media or others."
For journalists, it's the latest skirmish involving transparency issues and the Obama administration. Last month, more than three dozen groups wrote to the White House about what they described as growing censorship throughout federal agencies. Last year, dozens of leading news organizations protested restrictions that sometimes keep journalists from taking pictures and video of President Barack Obama performing official duties and two press groups urged members to stop using official photos and video handed out by the White House, dismissing them as little more than "government propaganda."
An EPA spokeswoman said there are no constraints on members fielding requests in a personal or professional capacity. She said the memo was designed to assure transparency.
The groups signing the letter include the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of Environmental Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Society for Conservation Biology, American Geophysical Union and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Link to EPA memo: http://1.usa.gov/1q6QG7o

Don't miss this RAS, Hydroponics and Aquaponics Short course at Cornell University June 23-27. Learn how to design and build and maintain a system of any size and tour Continental Organics. Workshop is led by Dr. Michael Timmons and Dr. James Ebeling authors of Recirculating Aquaculture.

1.    With a RAS you can earn a small fortune – if you beforehand invest a large one, people say half-jokingly. Indeed we’ve seen lots of projects go bust. You, Prof. Timmons, even pledged a mortgage on your house ((if I understood that correctly from the cv in your book??)) to get the money to co-finance a RAS for Tilapia. Apparently you were optimistic … So please tell us: Which conditions must be fulfilled for a successful project?

In June of 1996, four individuals created Fingerlakes Aquaculture, LLC, including Dr. Michael B. Timmons of Cornell University, who mortgaged his own house to get the initial capitalization.  After a rocky startup, Fingerlakes Aquaculture stayed in business for 12 years and produced over 3,000 tonnes of tilapia. By those statistics, Michael can claim a success.  This success or at least FLA’s longevity at being in business for such a long time can be attributed to several factors:

• Implemented in a series of stages (university prototype, small 100 tonne farm, followed by larger 500 tonne farm)
• Large scale operations, economy of scale and market
• Trained and motivated workforce
• Improved technology
• Adequate water
• Electrical rates below typical market prices ($0.04/kwh)
• Targeted marketing approach

Probably the most important of these was a phased production program, i.e., a ramp up over time. Many business plans start with some large scale operation, which is usually necessary to show a positive cash flow. Unfortunately, almost always, these operations, if funded, are unsuccessful. It is extremely difficult to achieve large scale success without having first built this capacity incrementally from smaller operations. This incremental increase in size and complexity of operations enables your management team to learn-by-doing wherein the inevitable mistakes will have a less devastating impact on a smaller operation than they would on a large scale operation.

Given a sound technical approach, the ability of the management team to operate the business is the single most important factor in the determination of ultimate success or failure. Simply adding additional like-item systems of a proven and fixed design that is already working well is the best way to increase the size of the operation. If you choose to incorporate untested and unproven designs into your expansion plans, you will undoubtedly face unexpected problems that will compromise your ability to achieve the cost effectiveness that is predicted. On the other hand, once you have a working system and management protocols refined at some reasonable scale, e.g., 200,000 lb (90 ton) per year, then this system or farm can be replicated as many times as necessary to reach the desired production levels and obtain the economies of scale necessary to achieve an economically competitive position.

In addition to be successful these four aspects need to be carefully researched: a) thorough preparation (engineering analysis, fish species management, and market analysis), b) reliable source of stocking fingerlings/eggs, or breeding stock, c) cost effective design and cost competitive prediction of costs of production, and d) superb management staff.  A lack in any of these four aspects will guarantee financial failure and most likely technical failure.  Note there is a difference between producing fish/seafood successfully and doing the same in a profitable manner.

 2.    To pose the question once more in another way: What are from your point of view the three main mistakes people can make when setting up a RAS?

 One: Starting too big, without a successful commercial size prototype

Most business plans start with some large scale operation, which is usually necessary to show a positive cash flow. Unfortunately, almost always, these operations, if funded, are unsuccessful. It is extremely difficult to achieve large scale success without having first built this capacity incrementally from smaller operations. This incremental increase in size and complexity of operations enables your management team to learn-by-doing wherein the inevitable mistakes will have a less devastating impact on a smaller operation than they would on a large scale operation. Given a sound technical approach, the ability of the management team to operate the business is the single most important factor in the determination of ultimate success or failure. Simply adding additional like-item systems of a proven and fixed design that is already working well is the best way to increase the size of the operation. If you choose to incorporate untested and unproven designs into your expansion plans, you will undoubtedly face unexpected problems that will compromise your ability to achieve the cost effectiveness that is predicted on paper.

 Two: Starting without an experienced and will trained management team

Management is the most critical component of any aquaculture venture.  You can overcome just about any challenge if you have a good management team

 Three: Forgetting the basic rule of any start-up, the 2,2,2,2 Rule

• It will take twice as long
• Cost twice as much
• Be twice as hard
• And you will get 1/2 as much (revenue)

3.    What about the wellbeing of the fishes, crustacean or mussels: Is it in respect to animal welfare ok to raise them in a bounded plant without at least some ingredients of their natural habitats?

 The beauty of RAS is that you can provide the fish/animals any environment needed; the question is always whether this can be done in an economically competitive fashion. Nutritional quality of the fish's diet is of course critical and there can be differences between a fish diet for a RAS animal vs. an outdoor or net pen reared fish.  And remember that this is a commercial venture, which means that it is especially important to maintain the highest possible water quality and living conditions to provide for the maximum growth and feed conversion potential of the species being cultivated.

4.    Denitrification is one of the difficulties in RAS-technology. The aim to simplify this process is one cause ((as far as I understood a german expert!!)) to search for different feed. To what kind of feed belongs the future?

Maintaining a productive water quality environment is the difficulty, not just denitrification. Especially in saltwater systems, denitrification is one of the many unit processes that need to be mastered successfully.  Denitrification in freshwater systems is generally not needed, depending upon the species (salmonids are more sensitive than most species) and the amount of fresh water that can be added to the system on a daily basis.  While in saltwater systems, denitrification of both the production water and effluent discharge may be mandatory with either limited water supply or stringent discharge requirements.

There has been a great deal of research conducted on denitrification in the wastewater treatment industry and to a limited extent in intensive recirculating aquaculture systems.  Because of the recent requirements in the USA for nitrogen removal from the discharge of wastewater treatment plants, several options have been developed over the past 10 years based on the suspended sludge, denitrification process and more recently fixed film bioreactors. These have been included in the sequence of unit processes used to treat the wastewater either by using the digesting sludge (organic solids generated in the fish system) as the organic carbon source or adding an exogenous electron donor such as methanol or even sugar.  Although there still exists a great deal of work to make these denitrification process commercial viable for large scale saltwater aquaculture, their commercial availability is only a short time away in the future if not currently in some situations.

5.    Apart from denitrification: Which are the major problems that are currently not satisfactorily solved – and when will they all be adequately manageable?

Both Dr. Timmons and I have been involved in aquaculture engineering research, system design and education and extension for over 25 years.  Over the years, it has been fascinating to watch as one after another engineering problem have been identified, extensively researched by university, government and commercial research centers, solutions proposed and proto-typed, then commercialized and finally become the  ‘standard technology’.  In the early days, most of the water treatment systems were adapted from the waste water treatment industry.  But over time, these systems were adapted to the unique requirements of aquaculture, so that today, very few of these original system designs and equipment are in use.  Production systems originally utilized raceways, moved to round tanks with better hydraulics, mixing and solids removal and now just might move to a combination of the raceway and round tanks, called mixed-cell raceways.  Solids capture has moved from inefficient settling basins to bead filters and rotating microscreen filters.  There was once a wide diversity of biofilters, which are almost all being replaced with the simple Moving Bed BioReactors.  Design changes even include something as simple as air stones being supplemented or replaced with micro-diffusers with significantly higher transfer efficiency.  Finally, the incredible advances in computers, the internet and cell phones has made monitoring and controlling even large commercial operations reliable, inexpensive and most importantly ‘User-Friendly’.

The last two remaining bottlenecks relate to the increased demand and production of saltwater species and the problems of controlling the build-up of potentially toxic nitrate in the systems and the difficulty of managing the waste product, i.e. 25 to 30% of the feed fed results in this much solid waste.  In freshwater, we have seen an explosion of interest in aquaponics,the integration of aquaculture and hydroponics, where the excess nitrate is used to grow a second crop of leafy greens, herbs, and almost anything green!  Even in saltwater systems, there are options to that produce grains comparable to wheat include Eelgrass (Zostera marina) and Palmer saltgrass (Distichlis palmeri).  Pearl millet (Pennistum typhoides) can produce from 1.6 MT/ha to 6.5 MT/ha as fodder for animals.  Potential biofuel crops include Seashore mallow (Kosteletzkya virginica) and Salicornia spp. Both Salsola, spp. and Salicornia spp havebeen used raw for salads, processed as biofuel seedstock and animal feed.   

Denitrification was discussed above, so the second major hurdle for both freshwater and saltwater systems is going to be effluent waste management.  Although we have come to refer to it as byproduct utilization, since it can easily become a significant revenue source if properly managed.  Over the past several years, the EPA and EU has initiated stringent environmental discharge regulations for aquaculture wastewater, making environmentally sound waste management and disposal increasingly important for all agriculture/aquaculture operations, especially marine recirculating systems whose effluent contains considerable concentrations of salt. Development of practical dewatering technologies for this waste stream are critical to meet new and proposed effluent guidelines and address this problem in an environmentally sound management way.  In addition for marine RAS it is critical that a significant percentage of the effluent by-products be recycled back into the production system to conserve salts and reduce and/or eliminate the environmental impact of salt discharges.  Finally from an economical viewpoint, it is important to utilize the solid waste component of the effluent discharge, since this waste stream should be treated as a potential revenue generating by-product and not as a just a difficult to dispose of waste stream.

One promising new technology for dewatering aquaculture solid waste is geotextile tubes.  Geotextile tubes are porous sealed tubular containers constructed of a woven polyethylene material.  Geotextile tubes can dewater wastes to over 10% solids in less than a week, and can achieve final solids content over 30%. Geotextile tubes have been used successfully in dewatering animal wastes, municipal wastewater sludge, hazardous wastes, industrial by-products, and dredge spoil.  Geotextile tubes are cost effective, site-specific and mobile, require little maintenance, and can be manufactured for both small and large containment volumes. Their disadvantage is that a significant part of the nitrogen waste is converted into nitrogen gas and is lost to the environment.  These lost nutrients are more important to some than others.

6.    RAS is considered to be the most environment-friendly variant of aquaculture as you need less water and there is no nutrient discharge into the environment. So we have to hope that in the end the technology would dominate classic aquaculture. Can this idea actually be a future scenario – or is it totally unrealistic?

In 2009, FAO reported that over half of all fish consumed as a food source worldwide were produced by aquaculture, as compared to only 9% in 1980.  FAO also estimated that as a result of a variety of factors, including overfishing, wild fisheries were incapable of sustaining current production and that worldwide aquaculture production would need to double by 2050 to simply maintain current per capita consumption levels.  Trade deficits, questionable political stability in various producer countries, the recent recalls of tainted imported products and concerns over bioterrorism raise serious questions about the long-term safety of a seafood supply that is dependent on imports and lends strong support to the contention that the many countries needs a strong, domestic aquaculture industry.  As health conscious consumers continue to increase the per capita consumption of seafood and demand cleaner, greener and safer seafood, there are few sustainable choices other than to commit to the development of freshwater and marine aquaculture and encourage the development and acceptance of sustainable practices for this industry.

July 31 - August 1, 2014

For U.S. tilapia producers, there is one big question regarding the live tilapia market in this country. This important question is: Will history repeat itself as dramatically as it did in the 1980s when U.S. fillet producers lost their businesses to lower tech, lower cost producers from Central and South America?

Click HERE to download the Aquaculture Magazine article by Mike Picchietti

Magdalena Wallhoff has quite a fish story to tell. But this is about the one that didn’t get away.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/03/09/3981851/the-king-of-fresh-tilapia.html

Click HERE to download and read the complete paper.

The Fresh Catch Tilapia Farm in La Democracia will be going back into operation and the man at the helm will be developer Mike Feinstein. Feinstein told 7News that the deal was finalized last Friday and his group will bring everything back into operation and expects to be harvesting in about a year.

That's a dramatic change for the company that's been in receivership after the First Caribbean Bank foreclosed on it in 2010. That was under the Mena group. The Mena's had financing difficulty but still they were doing 4.3 million pounds of fish at their peak in 2008 - and Feinstein told us he is confident he can bring it back.

Feinstein says he will be rehabilitating the farm and within three to four weeks he will be importing fish and putting them back into the ponds.

And so what's the price? Well, Feinstein is sure to be getting it on the cheap at a distress price. At its inception, before expansion the farm was valued at 36 million Belize dollars and in 2011, the Mena's tried to bring it back with a 15 million dollar buyout form the bank, which was said to be a price of 38 cents on the dollar. That attempt failed.

Feinstein told us that pond rehabilitation started yesterday. The buyout is seen as a major shot in the arm for a fish farming industry that had died off.

See the original post here http://7newsbelize.com/sstory.php?nid=28076