Annual Report to the Pennsylvania Senate Game and Fisheries

Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission
Annual Report to the Pennsylvania Senate
Game and Fisheries Committee
Presented by John Arway, Executive Director
May 12, 2015
Good morning, Chairman Scavello, Chairman Brewster, and members of the Senate
Game and Fisheries Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to present the Pennsylvania Fish
and Boat Commission’s (Commission or PFBC) 2014 Annual Report on behalf of our staff and
10-member Board of Commissioners (Board). Today, I will go over some of the highlights from
2014, tell you about how we are continuing to introduce new ways to engage more people in
fishing, boating and conservation, and discuss three timely subjects facing our agency and our
Commonwealth’s anglers, boaters and aquatic resources in 2015.
In addition to the hard copies we gave to you, the report is also posted at
www.fishandboat.com.
In September, our Board unanimously voted to reduce the price of a fishing license for
the first time in the history of the agency. The historic decision to reduce the price of a fishing
license is designed to increase sales of fishing licenses by attracting people back to the sport or
giving them a reason to try it for the first time.
We selected Catch the Value! as the promotional slogan since it represents both the
reduced cost of the fishing license and, even more importantly, the improved value of the
tremendous fishing opportunities that we have here in Pennsylvania. I often say that the fishing
is better now than at any point in my lifetime. The exception is the ongoing problems with the
Susquehanna’s Smallmouth Bass, which I’ll discuss later in my testimony.
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I am happy to report that as of yesterday, the number of licensed anglers – including
multi-year license holders whose licenses are still valid in 2015 – is up over 3% from last year.
We will be reporting on the final results of the year-long campaign to our Board this fall.
2014 also marked the return of the Commission’s popular fishing license button as an
alternative to the display requirement. In November, nearly 5,000 votes were cast in an on-line
ballot, and by an overwhelming majority, pink was chosen as the new button color for the 2015
fishing season. Last year we sold over 6,600 of the $5 buttons, and sales have already eclipsed
that number, with over 26,300 anglers purchasing buttons so far this year.
In 2013, we piloted a program in southeastern Pennsylvania where we allowed children
under 16 and their adult mentors to fish in select waters a week before the opening day of trout
season and keep two fish apiece. The 2013 Mentored Youth Trout Fishing program was a huge
regional success, and we took it statewide in 2014 and tried it again on specific waters around
Pennsylvania. Unfortunately we lost the momentum of trout season since we had to reschedule
the day into May due to cold weather and ice cover.
We learned a lot from the first two years of the program, with perhaps the most important
lesson being that we should offer the youth day as an opportunity rather than an event.
In an unprecedented effort to get more kids involved and keep them engaged in fishing,
this year we opened all stocked trout waters on two dates in advance of the traditional openers
for children and their mentors. On March 28 in 18 southeastern and southcentral counties and
April 11 in the rest of Pennsylvania, kids and their mentors were permitted – and encouraged – to
go trout fishing before the usual rush of traditional opening day crowds.
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To participate, youth anglers obtained a free permit or a voluntary youth fishing license
(only $2.70 including all fees) and had to be accompanied by a licensed adult. By the second
mentored youth trout day, we issued over 17,500 free youth permits and sold nearly 8,500
voluntary youth fishing licenses, and the responses from participants were overwhelmingly
positive.
For every voluntary youth license sold, the PFBC is eligible to receive approximately $5
in federal aid from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Sport Fish Restoration Act program. The
federal program levies an excise tax on fishing equipment and provides funds to states based on a
formula that is driven by the number of licenses a state sells. All revenues earned from the
voluntary youth fishing license are dedicated to youth programs.
When this Committee met last October in Erie, I thanked you for including the
Commission in Act 89 of 2013 and directing the full amount of taxes paid on motorboat fuel to
our agency. I explained that the key word to remember for the high-hazard dam projects like
Meadow Grounds Lake in Fulton County and Somerset Lake in Somerset County is “leverage.”
Every project is different, but they all require creativity and flexibility to identify and secure
funding sources necessary to design, repair, and construct these multi-million dollar,
Commonwealth-owned facilities over the course of many years.
Thanks to Act 89, we have begun the repair process on some facilities and have a plan in
place to complete designs for all of the high-hazard, unsafe dams that we manage and operate on
behalf of the Commonwealth. Having completed designs is a necessary step in the process of
leveraging local contributions, capital budget money, and other sources of funding so we can
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stretch Act 89 dollars as far as possible and make the facilities safe for the anglers and boaters
who use them and for downstream communities and property owners.
Throughout 2014, we continued to dedicate significant time and energy to the
Susquehanna River. In October, we joined the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection (DEP), the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and a broader
workgroup of agency and academic experts to begin a Causal Analysis/Diagnosis Decision
Information System (CADDIS) process to help identify causes of health issues with Smallmouth
Bass (SMB) in the Susquehanna and its tributaries.
The CADDIS process is ongoing and will culminate in September 2015 with a
collaborative report of the group’s findings on causative factors associated with the reduction in
recruitment and abundance of SMB in the middle Susquehanna and lower Juniata Rivers. This
report can then provide direction and support for DEP to use to complete their Integrated Water
Quality Monitoring and Assessment Report (305b) in January 2016. We also understand that
DEP will make a decision about whether the river should or should not be listed as an impaired
water and added to the 303d list at that time.
As you have likely heard, we announced last week that two independent laboratory tests
confirmed a malignant tumor on a Smallmouth Bass caught in the middle Susquehanna River by
an angler late last year. I was actually on the boat when he caught it and was shocked by its
appearance when we first saw it.
Cancerous growths and tumors on fish are extremely rare in Pennsylvania and
throughout the U.S., but they do occur. This is the only documented case of this type of tumor
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being found on a Smallmouth Bass in Pennsylvania. The finding was confirmed by the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service and the Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory at Michigan State University.
Since 2005, PFBC biologists have observed more than 22,000 adult SMB as part of
routine surveys in the Susquehanna River basin and have not documented any other fish with
obvious signs of similar tumors. However, our biologists continue to find sores and lesions on
young-of-year (YOY) bass during late spring and early summer surveys at alarming rates.
Although the finding represents only one individual fish from the overall population, it
provides additional evidence that the health of the fish community residing in the river is being
compromised. As we continue to study the river, we find young and adult bass with sores,
lesions, and now a cancerous tumor, all of which continue to negatively impact population levels
and recreational fishing. The weight-of-evidence continues to build a case that we need to take
some action on behalf of the fish.
Acting Department of Health Secretary Dr. Karen Murphy noted that there is no
evidence that carcinomas in fish present any health hazard to humans, but she advised that
people should avoid consuming fish that have visible signs of sores and lesions.
While anglers must make personal decisions about whether or not to consume fish,
catch-and-release regulations for Smallmouth Bass are already in place on 98 miles of the middle
portion of the Susquehanna River where the symptomatic fish was caught and on the lower 31.7
miles of the Juniata River from Port Royal to the mouth.
Our agency first documented disease-related mortality of young-of-year Smallmouth
Bass in the Susquehanna River in 2005, and continued mortality has contributed to the decline in
the fish’s abundance. The dramatic declines in YOY and adult Smallmouth Bass abundance are
shown graphically in the attached charts.
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Since 2012, we have unsuccessfully petitioned DEP to add the river to the state’s biannual list of impaired waterways. The impairment designation is critical because it starts a
timeline for developing a restoration plan. We’ve known the river has been sick since 2005,
when we first started seeing lesions on the YOY smallmouth. Now we have more evidence to
further the case for impairment.
If we do not act to address the water quality issues in the Susquehanna River,
Pennsylvania risks losing what is left of what was once considered a world-class Smallmouth
Bass fishery. When DEP releases its next list of impaired waters, we are hopeful they will
follow the science and add the Susquehanna River to the list. We have been gathering and
following the science since 2005, but at some point in time, the science must lead us to some
conclusion. I am confident that once we can agree that the river and its bass are sick, we will
begin the next chapter of the story which will put us on a path for recovering the mighty
Susquehanna.
At the same time that many of our staff have been diligently working on the
Susquehanna, other staff have been reviewing applications for permits to drill unconventional
gas wells using the $1 million we receive each year from the impact fee imposed by Act 13 of
2012. With the support of Act 13, we are working with other agencies and industry to discuss
project details and potential regulatory concerns that could delay permit issuance before permits
are applied for, ultimately allowing all parties to work together to identify and implement timely
solutions. For example, we are proud to report that the dedicated funding for natural gas permit
review work has allowed us to reduce the average time our staff need to review a gas pipeline
project from 85 days before Act 13 to 10 days today.
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As we continue to remind those who rely on our services, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat
Commission depends almost entirely on fishing license sales, boat registration fees, and the
federal funding tied to fishing and boating to pay for almost everything we do. This includes
enforcing water pollution laws with our network of locally-based Waterways Conservation
Officers (WCOs) and minimizing or preventing further negative impacts on local aquatic
communities. In 1909, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a law forbidding the
emptying of any waste deleterious to fish into any waters of the Commonwealth and assigned the
responsibility to enforce that law to the PFBC. That makes us the oldest water pollution
enforcement agency in the Commonwealth, and one of the oldest in the nation.
Our front line of WCOs have been seeing changes in the ways our waters are being
impacted by the Marcellus industry. Initially, surface and ground water contamination problems
were occurring around well pad sites, with soil erosion and stream sedimentation (E&S)
problems occurring during the construction and drilling. Now, an increasing number of E&S
violations from pipeline construction and maintenance are being found by our WCOs. One
pipeline project might cover multiple counties and include hundreds of stream and/or wetland
crossings. These are all reviewed as part of a waterway encroachment permit but do not receive
regular visits from WCOs or DEP inspectors during construction to determine whether aquatic
resources are being adversely affected.
Our agency may be reimbursed for our time and natural resource damages after the fact,
but we may not use Act 13 revenues nor may we charge a fee to support our work to enforce our
laws. We take our enforcement authorities and responsibilities very seriously, and accounting
for those agency needs and the long-term health of aquatic resources are fundamentally a cost of
doing business for which the industry should be paying. Unfortunately, we do not have the
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resources to proactively patrol sites, so we are primarily performing enforcement and rapid
response activities reactively. We have recently been invited to participate as a member of the
Pipeline Infrastructure Taskforce being coordinated by PA DEP to attempt to better plan these
pipeline routes in a coordinated way.
In its 2010 triennial performance audit of the agency, the Legislative Budget and Finance
Committee (LBFC) recommended that the General Assembly “consider providing additional
resources to the PFBC so it can continue to make efforts to protect water resources from
potential degradation by Marcellus Shale drilling efforts.” Citing threats to water quality, the
LBFC “recommend[ed] the General Assembly take action…to ensure the PFBC…has sufficient
resources to carry out its mission.”
This recommendation was bolstered by the July 2011 report of the Governor’s Marcellus
Shale Advisory Commission. Specifically, Recommendation 9.3.9 stated that “Impacts
identified by the Commission as appropriate for compensation include...State natural resource
agency oversight, permit review and enforcement.” (emphasis added)
If a severance tax or other funding mechanism related to natural gas development is
passed this session, we respectfully request the inclusion of an additional $1 million annually to
the PFBC to adequately perform our enforcement role for natural gas projects, as well as support
training a new class of WCOs.
These costs are in addition to those covered by the $1 million annually from Act 13. The
Act 13 revenues are critical to timely and adequate service to the industry and should be
maintained if a severance tax is implemented to supplement or replace the impact fee.
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In early April of this year, we were thrilled to unveil a new mobile device application
(app) to help anglers and boaters better navigate the Keystone State’s streams and lakes. The
free FishBoatPA app helps Pennsylvania’s anglers and boaters to see which streams have been
stocked with trout, how to get to those locations easily, and what other access areas are near their
current location. The app has been a resounding hit among anglers, with over 18,700 downloads
by users in 44 states and 32 countries by the middle of last week.
The app meets the needs of anglers who are increasingly using smart devices, making it
as easy as possible to access our stocking information, purchase a fishing license, and generally
improve the fishing and boating experience. Now users can spend less time looking for
information and more time fishing and boating.
The reason we feature trout so prominently in the app is that about 70% of all license
buyers consistently purchase a permit to fish for trout. Trout continue to be an integral driver
behind the $1.2 billion spent by anglers in Pennsylvania each year. But they are a commodity
that costs a lot of money to produce.
Trout hatchery expenses comprise over 30% of Fish Fund expenditures and about 23% of
all annual spending by our agency, and the costs of trout production continue to rise without a
corresponding increase in fish production. (Please keep in mind that fish production is
ultimately limited by infrastructure capacity and corresponding permit limits from DEP.)
We annually produce approximately 3.2 million adult trout (totaling 1.9 million pounds),
about one million Steelhead smolts for Lake Erie, and nearly one million eggs and fingerlings for
cooperative nurseries to stock throughout the Commonwealth.
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The primary cost driver is personnel, currently totaling over 60% of trout hatchery
expenditures which are expected to climb to nearly 70% by FY 20-21. Other significant
expenditures include fish feed, which has almost tripled in price in the past decade, and increased
operational costs associated with new effluent treatment systems.
We also burn a lot of fuel each spring when our staff travel about 285,000 miles
delivering adult trout to 1,200 waters. Many of these waters are stocked multiple times each
year. The distance our stocking truck drivers travel is equivalent to driving from New York to
Los Angeles and back 51 times. In other words, if you traveled around the world along the
equator of the earth, you would have to go around almost 11 ½ times to accumulate the number
of miles traveled by our staff each year to stock adult trout for anglers of the Commonwealth.
Annual trout (including Steelhead) hatchery costs are approximately $11.5 million and
are expected to rise to $15.8 million by 2021. These figures include substantial reductions in
staffing levels in recent years. We are currently at the minimum staffing levels to sustain and
operate our fish hatchery system. We cannot reduce staffing levels any further without
negatively impacting our ability to produce the same number of fish within infrastructure and
permit limits.
Like other license and permit fees, the fees for the trout/salmon permit and combination
trout/salmon permit and Lake Erie permit (combination permit) are established by law. The
current fees for the trout/salmon and combination permits are $8 and $14, respectively. Since it
was introduced in 1991 for $5, the fee for the trout/salmon permit has only been raised once, by
$3 in 2005.
The combination permit fee has not been raised since it was established in 2005. $8 of
each combination permit is deposited into the PFBC’s Fish Fund and may be used to help offset
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the cost of the agency’s operations, and the other $6 is deposited into a restricted revenue
account that may only be used for public access and habitat in the Lake Erie Watershed.
In 1991, over 737,500 trout/salmon permits produced nearly $3.7 million in annual
revenue, representing 57% of the costs of raising trout (and Coho salmon at the time). Please
remember the 57% figure.
In 2014 (the last complete license year), we sold nearly 593,500 trout/salmon and
combination permits that generated over $4.7 million, but increasing costs meant that the
revenue amounted to only 46% of the cost to run the trout hatchery program. If the cost of the
permits and the number of trout anglers remain unchanged, that percentage is expected to drop to
30% by 2021 as the costs of production continue to rise.
As less of the relative cost of the trout hatchery program has been supported by the
trout/salmon permit, a greater portion has been provided by revenues from general fishing
licenses. This greater reliance on the use of general license dollars to support the hatchery
program is further compounded by the fact that license sales have declined from 1.2 million in
1991 to about 860,000 today. A smaller pool of general license buyers is being asked to pay
for a greater portion of the trout hatchery program.
Adhering to the user pays/user benefits model suggests that trout anglers should bear
more of the true cost of the program. We realize that any legislative effort to increase the price
of the permit takes time and requires discussion and compromise to arrive at an increase that can
be supported by Pennsylvania’s trout anglers. In the spirit of starting that conversation, we have
calculated the amount of revenue that is expected to result from different increases. I will
highlight a few of those for illustrative purposes and look forward to discussing them and other
options with you in an effort to settle on an acceptable amount that could be voted on and
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approved by the Governor in time to take effect for the 2017 license year that begins December
1, 2016.
If the cost of the trout/salmon and combination permits were each raised by $5.00 for the
2017 license year, we project that it would generate about $1.7 million annually in new revenues.
This figure accounts for a projected 5% drop in license and permit sales associated with the fee
increase. The additional revenues from the resulting $13.00 trout/salmon permit and $19.00
combination permit would equate to about 49% of the projected $13 million needed to operate
the trout production facilities in 2017, which is still below the 57% of trout hatchery costs
generated by the fees in 1991.
If the cost of the trout/salmon and combination permits were each raised by $8.00 to be
$16.00 and $20.00, respectively, for the 2017 license year, we project that it would generate
about $2.6 million annually in new revenues. This figure accounts for a potential 8% drop in
license and permit sales associated with the fee increase. These additional trout/salmon permit
revenues could be used to help cover approximately 56% of the projected $13 million needed to
operate the trout production facilities in 2017, and the permit revenues would support roughly
the same percentage of the trout hatchery costs as they did in 1991 when the permit was first
introduced.
To keep up with escalating costs, one option could be to build automatic incremental
increases into the legislation. For example, annual $1.00 increases in the permit fee during each
of the four subsequent years could be expected to generate roughly $300,000 more per year
regardless of the initial price increase.
If four annual $1.00 increases followed a $5.00 increase in 2017, we would expect the
revenues to still only make up about 49% of the hatchery costs due to ever-rising costs of
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production. Four subsequent $1.00 increases following an $8.00 increase are projected to yield
total revenue from the permits equaling about 54% of the trout production costs by 2021.
Without the annual increases, higher costs would quickly erode the percentage of the
trout program that could be covered by the permit fees, and we would soon need another
multiple-dollar increase.
Again, there are countless funding scenarios we could analyze for different increase
amounts. Simply put, the PFBC needs a trout/salmon and combination permit fee increase or
some other source of revenue to continue providing the Commonwealth’s anglers with 3.2
million adult trout, one million Steelhead smolts, and one million eggs and fingerlings to
cooperative nurseries each year.
We welcome the chance to work with you and your colleagues to arrive at a proposed
trout permit fee increase that can be introduced, debated, and passed during the current
legislative session.
In closing, I invite all committee members to join our staff in the field to get a first-hand
look at what we do. For example, you could help us stock trout, ride along with one of our
WCOs to observe how they help to keep fish and boaters safe, join us on a lake or river to see
how we assess fish populations, or hike to a mountain stream to watch the rigor with which we
electrofish for wild trout. As those of you who have accompanied us in the field can attest, being
there in person is the best way to fully appreciate the scope and importance of the work that we
do every day on behalf of Pennsylvania’s anglers, boaters, and aquatic resources.
Thank you again for your continued interest and support. I would be happy to answer
any questions.
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