A4 T H E BULLETIN • SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 2013
Really old whale fossils litter D.C. region The Washington Post The ancient whale fossil dug from the banks of the Potomac River last month was not the only such object to be excavated in V irginia this year. The bones of a whale believed to be 7 million years old were unearthed in Virginia's Tidewater region in April.
T he r e mains o f man y whales that are about 4 or 5 million years old have been found along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, said Rowan Lockwood of the College of William and Mary. But the whale excavated in April was unusual, said Lock-
Deschutes
Testing the water
Continued from A1 The DEQ has been sampling and studying the water of the Deschutes and its tributaries for decades, with data for some sites going back to 1958. The data comes from 10 sites sampled every other month. From 1999 to 2009, the three sampling sites upstream of Bend and the sampling site at Mirror Pond yielded data that rates as excellent in the Oregon Water Quality Index, which scores a river for eight categories to describe general water quality. Singled out and compared to state standards, certain Deschutes characteristics stand out in the volumes of DEQ data. The amount of dissolved oxygen in the Deschutes is the main concern, said Eric Nigg, DEQ water quality manager in Bend. High levels of nutrients are often the cause of low oxygen levels, as well as high temperatures and high acidity. But the DEQ hasn't found a nutrient overload in the river.
wood, a professor of geology
been saying all along: that it Continued from A1 Ten days ago, the police arrested two left-leaning Canadians — one of them a filmmaker specializing in highly un-Islamic movies about sexual politics — and implausibly announcedthatthey were members of the Brotherhood, the c onservative I s lamist g roup backing M o r si. I n Suez this month, police and military forces breaking up a steelworkers strike charged that its organizers were part of a Brotherhood plot to destabilize Egypt. On Saturday, th e c h ief prosecutor ordered an investigation into charges of spying against two prominent activists associated with the progressive April 6 group. When a journalist with a state newspaper spoke publicly about watching a col-
who killed protesters before o f people and wounded thouMubarak's ouster. sands more." "What is different is that Warning that "our tradithe policefeel for the first tional cooperation c annot time in2'/~years,for the first continue as usual when civiltime since January 2011, that ians are being killed in the they have the upper hand, streets and rights are being and they do not need to fear rolled back," the president public accountability or ques- canceled a planned joint militioning," said Heba Morayef, a tary exercise. He pledged a researcherfor Human Rights review of the $1.3 billion a Watch. year in military aid to Egypt, In the more than seven and the State Department weeks since Morsi's ouster, took steps to hold back some security f orces have c a r- of the roughly $200 million in ried out at least three mass nonmilitary aid. shootings at pro-Morsi street The police appear to be protests, killed more than a rounding u p B r o t herhood thousand Morsi supporters m embers on the basis oftheir and arrested at least as many, a ffiliation, w i t hout o t h e r actions Morayef character- publicly known evidence of ized as"massive police abuse crimes. on an unprecedented scale." But some of t h e r ecent But even beyond the Is- charges, like those against lamists, she said, "anyone the two Canadians, strain who questions the police right credibility. Tarek Loubani, a league's wrongful killing by a now is a traitor." Canadian physician with Palsoldier, prosecutors appeared Prosecutors had a lready estinian roots and a history to fabricate a crime to punish b egun i n v estigating M o - as a liberal and pro-Palestinthe journalist. And the police hamed EIBaradei, the liberal ian activist, was in Egypt on arrested five employees of the former U.N. diplomat, for be- his way to the Gaza Strip to religious website Islam Today traying the public trust. Pros- provide training to Palestinfor the crime of describing the ecutors set a court date to ian doctors. John Greyson, military takeover as a "coup," begin investigating a citizen a liberal Toronto filmmaker security officials said. complaint against E lBara- whose work often focuses on The government installed dei after he quit as interim cosmopolitan sexual themes, by Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi vice president to protest the was with him, documenting has renewedthe Mubarak-era police violence against the the trip for a possible movie. stateof emergency removing Islamists. A conviction could A lawyer for the two said they all rights to due process or carry only a fine, and he had were stopped at a checkpoint protections against p o lice already left the country. near a street battle, trying to abuse. And police officials President Barack Obama walk back to their hotel after have pronounced themselves has said the new g overn- the 7 p.m. curfew. "vindicated." They say t he "Theywerejust inthewrong ment is on a "dangerous path" new government's claim that marked by"arbitrary arrests, place at very much the wrong it is battling Islamist violence a broad crackdown on Mr. time," the lawyer, Khaled Elcorroborates what they have Morsi's associations and sup- Shalakany, said Saturday.
and a paleontology specialist who helped excavate the fossil. It was older and bigger, and more of it was intact. "It is one o f t h e b iggest whales of its kind found on the East Coast," she said. The intact whale could have been 60 feet in length. Even a "very rare"flipper was found.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has10 water monitoring sites around the basin feeding water into the Deschutes River and in the river itself. The DEQuses the Oregon Water Quality Index, which is based on eight factors ranging from temperature to nitrogen levels, to rate the water around the river system. The ratings below are based on bimonthly sampling from1999 to 2009. The ones on the Deschutes downstream of
Bend andalong theCrooked Riverare "poor" in part because of water diversions causing low flows, according to the DEQ.
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Moo The 0 es KEY • Poor (60-79) • Fair (80-84) • Good (85-89) • Excellent (90-100)
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The agency has been checking for nitrates in particular. F or decades, nitrates i n groundwater near the r iver has been a concern around La Pine in south Deschutes County, an area with a high density of homes using septic systems. Testsofthe groundwater there by the DEQ in the mid-1990s, followed up by the U.S. Geological Survey last decade and the DEQ again in 2011, show increasing levels of nitrates, an indicator that septic contamination is likely seeping into the aquifer. In a2007 report,USGS scientists said nitrates from septic tanks in La Pine could eventually reach the Little Deschutes and Deschutesrivers and trigger increases in the amount of algae growing in the rivers. The same report noted some reaches ofthe river already show excessive algae. The DEQ has found no evidence that nitrates are reaching the rivers, Nigg said. "We don't see anything that would indicate a plume coming in at any point along the river," he sard. Curves and wetlands could be filtering out any nitrates in the rivers, but Nigg said the river needs further study to understand what is really happening in the water. "We don't know that nitrates is a central issue at this point," he said. The Upper Deschutes Watershed Council, a Bend-based nonprofit focused on collaborative restoration of the Deschutes River, also keeps watch on its water quality. The group has sampled riverwater over the past decade and noted results matching those of the DEQ, with some parts of the river not always meeting state standards. Ryan Houston, executive director for the group, said he wouldn't be surprised if the septic situation in La Pine is contributing to the problems in th e r i ver. Houston, like Nigg, said the river needs more study. "We don't have a s moking gun that would connect groundwater issues in south county with problems in the Deschutes River," he said. While t h e te m p erature, acidity and dissolved oxygen readings don't impact public health,they are a concern for fish in the river, Houston said. "They matter for the ecological integrity (of the river) more than they do for the direct water contact type of health issues." The city of B end i s also sampling D e schutes R iver water but has seen nothing that indicates a problem, said Drexell B arnes, l aboratory supervisor for the city. Samples are taken at least twice a year from 10 sampling sites. So far, the city lab has found no sign of the problems noted upstream. "We haven't seen any declining water quality," Barnes said. — Reporter: 541-617-7812, ddarling@bendbulletin.com
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FLOOR MOOELSALE -EVERYZHIIG NUST GO! gy$R >0 ~~pggW So
STATIONDESCRIPTIONS 0 Deschutes River at Deschutes River Park 9 Deschutes River at Highway 26 (WarmSprings) 9 Metolius River north of CampSherman (Bridge 99) 9 Deschutes River at Lower Bridge 0 Crooked River at Lone PineRoad(Terrebonne) 0 Crooked River at Conant Basin Road Q Deschutes River at Mirror Pond (Bend) 0 Deschutes River at Harper Bridge (Sunriver) 0 Little Deschutes River at Highway 42 (Road2114) Q) Deschutes River at Pringle Falls
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Source: Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
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Andy Zeigert/The Bulletin
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