Posted on 06/08/2007 6:18:25 PM PDT by csvset
State, federal agencies expect to have spent at least $240,000
Although analysts haven't finished calculating the total cost of rerouting two humpback whales that strayed into the Delta last month, the bill to taxpayers is in the six figures.
The massive rescue effort spanned more than two weeks and involved 35 groups, including agencies at every level of government and multiple nonprofit organizations.
Five Delta counties and as many U.S. Coast Guard stations took part; so did a handful of universities, a couple of pharmaceutical manufacturers, and even a business that customizes medications for animals and a San Diego theme park.
Three of the operation's most visible agencies were the state Department of Fish and Game, California Highway Patrol and the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, which together spent an estimated $240,000 on the effort, according to OES spokesman Eric Lamoureux.
He emphasized that the amount isn't entirely extraordinary expenses, however. Although it includes overtime pay and unforeseen extras such as gasoline for boats, Lamoureux said the amount also includes straight-time wages for employees who would have been working even if they hadn't been needed for the whale rescue.
About 60 percent of the $240,000 was incurred by the state Department of Fish and Game.
The CHP dipped into its emergency contingency fund, to the tune of about $50,000, so that eight officers a day could control the sightseeing traffic the whales drew, said agency spokeswoman Fran Clader. The funds also covered the use of an airplane and, on occasion, a helicopter.
The OES spent approximately $47,000 to help the multi-jurisdictional effort run more smoothly, which meant setting up command centers, getting some of the equipment that other agencies needed, and installing additional telephone lines in a satellite communications trailer, Lamoreaux said.
One of the highest-profile agencies was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which sent 22 scientists and other personnel from its National Marine Fisheries Service over the course of the rescue to track the whales' odyssey up and down the Sacramento River.
In addition to paying its own overtime, travel and equipment-related costs, the federal agency will tabulate the expenses that local cities, counties and other involved parties submit and will reimburse up to $100,000 of those costs, said Monica Allen of NOAA Fisheries' public affairs department in Silver Spring, Md.
She said the largest bill is expected to come from Sausalito's Marine Mammal Center, which provided the lead veterinarian to monitor the two whales.
One key player that won't be calculating how much taxpayers paid to save the whales is the U.S. Coast Guard.
Day after day, its boats were on the water keeping commercial and recreational vessels a safe distance from the female humpback and her calf.
"It would be sheer speculation," said Petty Officer Jonathan Cilley of the cost, noting that the federal agency doesn't usually itemize the cost of individual
missions.
I live in the Bay Area and I don’t mind the expense for this research.
It’s a lot less than the money we spend every year policing the braindead and their “protests”.
So CA spend a quarter mil on a couple of whales that will probably end up in the hold of some Japanese fishing vessel. How nice.
Shoulda let the Japs make sushi! It was a sad story, but, come on! The expense is unjustified!
You can pick up my part of the bill since this is mostly Federal money
What is your remittance address
State, expect to have spent at least $240,000
On the plus side of the ledger, you’ve got a bunch of happy sightseers. And two happy whales, who may tell the story to other whales.
Maybe next year, some more whales will go to California on their vacation.
But here's a story about one who died and the hassle of trying to get it hauled away.
POINT RICHMOND Burial at sea for hulk Red tape delayed earlier disposition of rotting remains
Those two wayward humpback whales might be back out to sea, but the dead gray whale that washed ashore two weeks ago in Point Richmond has maintained a pungent presence, creating a big political stink over exactly who should be responsible for removing it.
But now the blubbering can stop.
Parker Diving Service of Sausalito plans to wrap the putrefying whale in a cargo net and pull it off the beach during the high tide late today and take it to an abandoned slip at nearby Ferry Point. At first light Friday, Marine Express of Alameda will then tow it out to sea, 60 miles beyond the Golden Gate Bridge, where it most likely will be devoured by sharks.
"It was frustrating to work through the bureaucracy," Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, who played a key role in the process, said Wednesday. "Now that we've done this one, we know what to do next time. I feel for the residents who have had to put up with this whale."
The 20-foot whale, a nursing calf less than a year old and estimated to weigh between 5 and 15 tons, washed up just north of the Miller-Knox Regional Shoreline on May 24, with its entrails hanging out and at least one large cut along its underbelly, apparently caused by a boat propeller.
Tests couldn't determine whether the injury happened before or after it died because the whale had already been dead for at least a week, Jim Oswald, spokesman for the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, said Wednesday.
There was hope that the tide would wash the whale back to sea, where it would be eaten by other animals. But instead, the water lodged it onto some rocks, where it has continued to decompose and turned orange in the sun.
Residents of Western Drive have been worrying over whether the smelly, bloated carcass poses a danger to public health. Some have worried that curious onlookers or children would get sick or fall on the rocks, creating liability issues.
Linda Neuhauser, a UC Berkeley public health professor who lives on Western, said Wednesday that she found it ironic that the whale has been cordoned off with red tape -- literally and figuratively.
"It's very difficult to bring the pieces of the bureaucracy together to solve the problem," said Neuhauser, who estimated that she made some 100 calls to different agencies, including the public health department and animal services. "People were polite, but they said, 'You have to move it yourself,' " she said.
Her husband, Craig Buxton, e-mailed a host of local, state and federal officials, pleading for a straight answer as to who would dispose of the remains and when.
"At center is the question, 'Whose jurisdiction is this?' " Buxton wrote. "The response to date is 'Call someone else, not me.' "
"It's bureaucracy," Walter Brooks, 80, whose property was the behemoth's final resting spot, said Wednesday as a decidedly rank smell wafted in the air. "If there was an enemy agent inside the whale, this would have been settled in one day," he joked.
Contra Costa County officials were ready to move the whale Friday, but the U.S. Coast Guard warned that because the animal was a federally protected species, special approval had to be obtained before it could be moved. Whether alive or dead, cetaceans, such as whales, dolphins and porpoises, and pinnipeds, which include sea lions and seals, are all protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the county a permit to move the whale, said Gioia, who along with Lt. Joe DeCosta of Contra Costa Animal Services finalized plans Wednesday for the whale's removal at a cost of about $20,000. Gioia said he didn't know who'll pay the bill but said it won't be the property owner.
The state had no jurisdiction because the whale didn't land on a state beach, said Carrie Wilson, a marine biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game.
In previous cases of stranded dead whales, officials have tried burying them, but animals or the weather can uncover the animals. In one notorious case that was captured on video, officials detonated one whale on-site. But pieces of the whale rained down on onlookers and cars, turning one big mess into many small ones.
At least they didn't try to blow it up.
The sightseeing was a plus for some local businesses.
Not all seek a government bailout.
If only more of our taxes were spent on things like this. Instead of on incentivizing illegal aliens to swarm over our borders and our homegrown lowlifes to lie around in their free housing drinking alcohol and doing drugs and our clueless college kids to spend 4 years apiece “studying” all sorts of politically correct mumbo-jumbo that will ensure their long-term un- or underemployment . . . Helping out navigationally challenged whales is something I don’t mind paying taxes for (though in a perfect world, we’d all have a lot more money in our pockets since our taxes and regulation-compliance expenses wouldn’t be so high, and so there would be plenty of privately funded groups to handle this sort of thing).
We were out in the SOCAL oparea once and saw this big orange object in the water. It looked like a half-inflated life raft so we went over to investigate but when we got close we saw it was a big, dead, bloated sea lion carcass. And man, did it reek.
I wounder how much revenue they could have generated if they simply opened up a whale burger stand.
“Maybe next year, some more whales will go to California on their vacation.”
LOL! Thanks!
Some don’t even know there is a gov’t. Naples is one such place.
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