WL – Orleans has already secured a state habitat conservation permit to balance public access and plover protection, but is still waiting for federal sign-off. Now funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may help the streamline the federal process.

Orleans’ state permit allows the town to institute a 100-page plan that allows monitored off-road vehicles to drive by two plover nests in order to get to miles of beach, stretching toward Chatham, where buffers to protect endangered species aren’t triggered.

Many in town, and beyond, were pleased that after a decade of failure state officials were able to work with Orleans and approve a plan for the south side of Nauset Beach and people are hoping that other Cape towns can benefit.

To make the process smoother and less expensive at the federal level, the state, backed by a group of Cape towns called the Regional Beach Access Committee, is working on securing a statewide habitat conservation permit from U.S. Fish and Wildlife. If the state secures a permit from the federal government, communities would only need to work with the state. The new funding will help the state develop the permit application.

The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife will receive $188,694 to continue working with towns and private conservation organizations to develop an umbrella conservation plan that allows flexibility in plover management to provide relief to beach managers.

Everyday we get new articles about our ongoing battle with U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and with every one comes more confusion. At this point it is so insane that I can barely wrap my head around it. Basically, what the above article states, is that $188,694 of taxpayer money is going to help the state learn how to deal with the towns complaints against the feds? Read that sentence again. This money is not actually conserving or helping anyone in any way, it is only to assist in the bureaucratic quagmire that has formed between different levels of government.

So after years of regulations in which the feds used our tax money to keep us off of our beaches, towns are fighting back using our money. Orleans has spent countless hours and dollars developing their plan to balance humans and plovers. Chatham just earmarked $300,000 of their budget to block the Fish and Wildlife service from taking 717 acres of their land. Now the state is getting in on the action as well by spending our money just to referee the fight. To recap… the towns are using our money to fight the regulations the feds put in place using our money and the state generously offered to help… using our money.

That is an expensive argument over a fucking bird. No wonder the government wants to save the Piping Plovers, the money we are spending fighting over them is paying peoples salaries.

We’d be better off spending all this money on condoms, because one thing is clear… We are getting fucked by everyone.

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WL – Bourne Selectmen last week approved and signed a lease and legal notice of award that allows Waltham-based Harvest Power to seek local, state and environmental permits in its plan to build an alternative waste-to-energy plant on a town landfill tract off MacArthur Boulevard northbound.

Harvest Power plans an anaerobic-digestion facility similar to what it operates in British Columbia, Ontario, and Orlando Florida. The Bourne plant would burn animal/food waste and other organic material to generate electricity and produce fertilizer pellets.

There was no board discussion, however, about how and when waste would arrive on the Cape, how it would be stored for usage at the landfill plant, daily volume involved, and how the material would be handled. This presumably falls to health board site-assignment review.

The lease signing is the culmination of four years of investigation, review and follow-up legal work by at least two assistant town counsels, working in concert with the landfill business working group chaired by Selectman Donald Pickard. State and federal review, once plant design concludes, is thought to last two more years.

The board of health, meanwhile, remains concerned about odor-control management, air quality at the plant and the handling of plant leachate, which may flow ultimately – in treated fashion – to the nearby Joint Base Cape Cod waste pipeline that empties into the canal at Sandwich Road.

So this place is essentially a bigger version of that food processor that runs the DeLorean after Doc Brown gets Back From The Future? It seems like a no brainer to turn crap and scraps into energy and all but doesn’t that seem a little too good to be true? Haven’t animals already extracted all the energy from their feces? If this is an efficient way to create power than why aren’t these things everywhere? I think I may know the answer…

First off, what the hell is “leachate”, and do we want it being emptied into the canal? Here’s what I found… “In the narrow environmental context leachate is therefore any liquid material that drains from land or stockpiled material and contains significantly elevated concentrations of undesirable material”. Sounds harmless enough. Sure, dump it in the canal. I love Striped Bass with human feet growing out of their faces.

Second, there was no discussion about how and when the waste would arrive on Cape Cod? Hold up… wait a second. We are going to import shit from off cape? We aren’t turning our own shit into energy? This is no good. Given the concerns about the smell of this operation, I think it may be a deal breaker. This would be like going to the bathroom after a stranger took a dump. The smell is so much worse. It’s one thing to be smelling our own crap, nobody wants to smell someone else’s crap.

So basically the plan is to truck in foreign animal shit, try to suck the last bit of good from it, and then dump what’s left in our ocean? Hmmm… I’m no EPA official, but I’m pretty sure you might want to take a hard look at this one Bourne.

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WL – Mill Stores, a Cape Cod-based retailer of unfinished furniture, has announced that it will close nine of its 13 stores in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.

The company declined to comment on the store closings, a store representative said Monday.
Its Canton and Plymouth stores are among the ones that will close.

The other Massachusetts locations expected to shut their doors are in Raynham, West Yarmouth, Westboro and West Harwich.

The company has not said when the stores will close, but it is advertising closing sales.

Oh they declined to comment on the closings of the unfinished furniture stores? Well let me take a stab at it. Maybe they need to shut ’em down because they are selling furniture that isn’t fucking done yet. Throw a couple coats of lacquer on that shit and you might actually sell a few futons once in a while.

Seriously, what kind of lunatic buys a bunch of firewood with a cushion hanging off it? Do these people go to Italian restaurants and order a half dozen tomatoes, a bag of flower, two eggs and a rolling pin? Maybe Mill Stores should team up with Sherwin Williams and offer some painted crap you don’t need to invest 28 man hours into before you can sit on it. It’s furniture for christ’s sake, not a Frisbee at the Barnstable County Fair, nobody wants to paint their own.

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Mlb.com – Steve Cishek doesn’t seek much individual attention, but the Marlins closer fully embraces the honor of being named Miami’s 2014 nominee for the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award.

“It’s an awesome award,” Cishek said. “It’s something I’m really thankful for; to have your name tied in with Roberto Clemente is a humongous honor. It’s probably the greatest award I’ve ever received. The way he demonstrated himself on and off the field, it is something every player wants.”

The Marlins will recognize Cishek’s nomination pregame at Marlins Park on Sunday before they face the Nationals.
Cishek is one of the 30 club finalists for the annual honor, which recognizes an MLB player who best represents the game of baseball through positive contributions on and off the field, including sportsmanship and community involvement.

The past three seasons, Cishek has served as the spokesperson for the Bunkers in Baghdad program, which provides golf supplies to the troops.

“It piqued my interest because I like golf, but I talked to one of my friends who is on a naval ship,” Cishek said. “I told him about the organization, and he was just ecstatic about it. It surprised me.

“He said, ‘Anytime we can get something sent from back home, it means the world to us, because we’ve been on the ocean for three to six months.'”

How about Falmouth’s own Steve Cishek? Not only is he having a career year as the Florida Marlins closer, he’s also making a difference off the field. No biggie, The Cape is just spitting out talent resulting in Billboard chart topping songs and dominant Major League Baseball closers. Not bad for a peninsula full of drug addicts.

Voting opened today for the Roberto Clemente award, take a minute out of your day and go vote for Steve. He’s out there representing Cape Cod mowing down batters and supporting our troops, let’s show our appreciation as a community by supporting him at the ballot.

CLICK HERE to vote for Steve

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Capecodonline.com – Chatham voters quickly raised $300,000 to fight the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s draft comprehensive management plan, which claims ownership of 717 acres of South Beach, during a special town meeting tonight.

The selectmen and the Finance Committee both recommended raising $300,000 to fund the town’s response to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s management plan for the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge. The voters agreed with the elected officials Monday without a single question or a word of debate.

The town has hired consultants and lawyers to represent its point of view in what has become a battle over Fish & Wildlife’s assertions in the draft plan that it owns 717 acres of South Beach. The town also wants to counter claims by the service that the federal agency can regulate who fishes, with what gear and what they can fish for within park boundaries, including the waters off its shoreline.

Did you hear that Feds? Not a single question or word of debate, no more talkie talkie. Chatham voters sensed a clear and present danger, just rolled up its sleeves and is ready to go 12 rounds. You think you can just take 717 acres of beach from the people and not be in for a fight?

This could be the moment the pendulum starts swinging the other way folks. Things have gone a little past ridiculous around here as of late. We are tired of being told that birds are more important than humans. We are tired of being told we can’t use our beaches. We are tired of being told where we can fish and what gear we can use.

For decades they having been taking more and more away from us. Well it’s time we start taking back. People of The Cape unite! Today we are all Chathamites! (Chathamanians?) A unified Cape Cod will not be defeated by bug counters! TAKE BACK CAPE COD!

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Full story at HyannisNews.com

Well that should do it right? Once the powers that be see this video and hear this gentleman’s concise and eloquent argument, they will have no choice but to put an end to all civil and human rights violations immediately. This is democracy in action folks, some people sit on their asses waiting for change, some people wander aimlessly and scream incoherently at nobody in particular while foaming at the mouth to force change.

Leaders aren’t born folks, they are made… apparently by taking bad acid in Hyannis.

P.S. Democracy now!

P.P.S. Best moment is at 1:12 when he says to the second officer, “I thought we talked to that issue… I was… nevermind.”

Nevermind indeed my friend, nevermind indeed.

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uscgnews – An off-duty Coast Guardsman assigned to Coast Guard Station Chatham in Chatham, Mass., responded to six distressed mariners in the water near Jones Inlet, N.Y., today.

Coast Guard Sector Long Island Sound Command Center was notified at approximately 5:20 p.m., via VHF Channel 16, saying that a 38-foot pleasure craft was tipped over with the motor still running and six mariners in the water just south of the Greenport Ferry North Terminal.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick O’Halloran, 27, a boatswain’s mate at Station Chatham, was nearby on a private vessel and was the first on scene at 5:24 p.m., to assist the mariners out of the water.

“I’ve been in the Coast Guard for three years and it was unreal watching this happen in front of me,” said O’Halloran. “I realized I needed to make sure they were safe and that the boat was away. Once I saw they were okay, I made my approach and pulled them out of the water.”

Oh no biggie, just Cape Cod saving lives by the half dozen. Our Coasties are so bad ass that they keep the waters safe in other states. Just Cape Cod doing Cape Cod things right in New York’s face.

 

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