Nice find of the day: A page on the Yosemite website describing the work they did over the past two summers to assess the soundscapes in the park.

http://www.nps.gov/yose/naturescience/soundscape.htm

And that’s not all!  There’s also a link to a half-hour MP3 file/podcast featuring the NPS Natural Sounds Program’s lead scientist, Kurt Fristrup, talking about his studies of the effect of noise on predator-prey relationships (a line of research that I tell people about more often than nearly any other), as well as noise effects on animal communications and human physiology. The audio feature also addresses the acoustic health of Yosemite as well as some interesting discoveries made possible through recordings made in the wilderness.  See the webpage here, and listen to the MP3 story here.

It seems like every time I turn around, there’s a new global sound mapping site popping up in my browser!  If you want to take a listen to the everyday sounds of this aural adventure called Planet Earth, here are three quite varied options–a click on each image below will take you to the site.  All of these sites accept any sound file you care to upload.

Radio Aporee

http://aporee.org/maps/

By far the most ambitious and creative of the bunch, this site is beautiful, if a bit opaque to navigate.  Clicking into the site will land you smack-dab into a fairly close up view of a city streetscape, with a few red dots denoting sound files uploaded from particular locations. Zoom out and you’ll see this neighborhood shrink down, while the red dots proliferate across the country, continent, and planet.  Click on any dot to listen in.  One of the cooler features is soundwalks, in which the “red dot soundfiles” fade out and in as you wander down the street!

Save Our Sounds BBC project

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specialreports/saveoursounds/index.shtml

The newcomer to the block, this BBC soundmapping project just launched in June, and is rapidly gathering sound files from around the world.  In addition to the sound map, the main site features radio features from the concurrent series on BBC radio and a Desperately Seeking Sounds feature, in which visitors ask the global recording community to help them find sounds that they miss from their past or need for a current project.  Despite the big sponsor, this site’s sounds load more sluggishly than many other grassroots soundmaps out there, but there are some nice clips being sent in.

Uboo.tv

http://uboo.tv/

A map interface to track sounds submitted via AudioBoo, an iPhone app that lets users record sounds on their iPhone and upload it for the world to share.  Not surprisingly, this format leads to more random sounds (parties and moments that may not really “deserve” global attention) and more than a few oral ramblings on new projects or, whatever…

All of the maps end up being somewhat Euro/NorthAmerica-centric (especially Uboo), but each has some reach into Asia, Africa, and South America.  The sounds tend toward urban ambiences (that’s where the people with recording equipment do tend to live!), with a few natural settings as well.

Conservationist fears that the end is neigh for the decades-long moratorium on oil and gas exploration off most of America’s coastlines were ratcheted up this month by the passage of the American Clean Energy Leadership Act in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.  While Senate Democrats highlight the alternative energy elements in the bill, the oil and gas industry is clearly focused on the openings for new offshore development that it contains. The bill now moves to the full Senate for consideration; floor action has not yet been scheduled. The bill contains lots of eco-good stuff (including a ban on US import of Canadian oil sands product), along with the long-dreaded “inventory” of the Outer Continental Shelf’s oil and gas potential.  For much of the US east coast, no modern seismic surveys have taken place; what data exists is largely from the 1970’s, at much lower resolution than is now possible.  There are many steps between this bill and any actual offshore oil development (even if it passes the House and Senate with the OCS survey provision in place, there is still a need for funding for the surveys, and a full Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement process that has yet to begin), but for an increasingly vocal contingent of activists, the proposed seismic surveys will be a line in the sand.  AEI certainly shares the concerns of many others about the effects of survey noise on wildlife (see this recent AEI presentation to a Canadian government advisory meeting, focusing on questions about surveys disrupting foraging activity).  Six different geophysical contractors have proposed seismic surveys off the Atlantic coast; the Minerals Management Service Atlantic Seismic PEIS website has links to maps of these proposals, which span most of the east coast and include a huge amount of overlap.  At the very least, data sharing should be required, in order to minimize duplication of this extremely noisy activity.

However, it is also worth noting that the OCS inventory that is called for in the current Senate bill includes not just oil and gas resources, but also an assessment of potential for wind, wave, and other alternative energy development, fisheries, habitat and conservation, and military use.  I am particularly struck by the provision to assess habitat and conservation values in the OCS: this is exactly the sort of regional overview that could provide the data needed to do real ecosystem-based management of all offshore activities.  Such a comprehensive assessment would identify key habitat (seasonal or permanent) that needs protection from military training activities and increased shipping, including LNG terminals.  The fisheries inventory could also serve to constrain the extent of seismic survey activity, especially for fisheries with depleted stocks and active fishermen associations (both of which are widespread on the east coast).  It may still be possible to strike the whole idea of further oil and gas development from the energy bill; we may be close to the societal tipping point where we are ready to acknowledge that new sources of CO2 simply cannot be tolerated.  The Chairman of the House Natural Resources committee, Nick Rahall, points out that “even the American Petroleum Institute’s most optimistic projections - a best-case scenario extrapolation, requiring that the entire OCS be made available - would, in 2030, provide no more than 5% of our total daily energy needs, and displace only 8% of our oil imports. These are large volumes of oil, to be sure, but they comprise less than half the impact of the increase in fuel efficiency standards that Congress passed just over a year ago.”  Rahall’s committee has held three hearings on oil development in the OCS, and is the gateway for House consideration of a companion to the bill now moving through the Senate. Still, it may not be politically feasible to preclude OCS development outright at this point.  The potential for a comprehensive inventory of offshore resources, including habitat, conservation, and fisheries, may turn out to be well worth the trade-off of allowing the idea of seismic surveys to stay alive for a bit longer.  It’s highly likely that the results of any such comprehensive inventory will constrain survey operations, perhaps even to the point that the industry itself finds the oil and gas horizons too limited to be worth pursuing.

On June 1, Thomas Berry died peacefully at his home in the Wellspring Community in Greensboro, NC.  While this may have no direct bearing on the issues covered by AEI, his writings and his inspiration have been central to my ever-developing sense of self and purpose on this planet in our time; this morning as I take in the news of his passing, I am both saddened to feel this earth without his presence, and immensely grateful for the huge generosity of spirit he shared, and which continues to live, grow, and find further articulation in so many environmental activists and thinkers.  I am heartened to hear that he completed two more books, both of which will be published on August: “The Sacred Universe” and “The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth.”

Thomas Berry

Thomas Berry inspired in me a dedication to infusing my (and our culture’s) emerging scientific understanding of life and the cosmos with the sense of primal wonder that has always been central to our human experience as part of the natural world.  The part of me that seeks transcendence and unity need not be at odds with my 21st-century scientific curiosity; indeed, they fuel each other at the deepest levels.  I was first dazzled by his writings with cosmologist Brian Swimme (The Universe is a Green Dragon, Universe Story), in which the grandness of our emerging understanding of cosmology, given wondrous visual expression by Hubble and other deep-space imagery, is given intimate expression within the timeless tradition of stories of creation.  His encouragement to take part in a modern recasting of our culture’s creation story inspired much of my early adulthood; EarthEar was a chance to let the creatures of the earth tell their own story, “the original story, in its original language.” In the past couple of decades, he’s written and spoken passionately about the need to put the earth’s needs at the center of human decision-making, and has inspired other eco-theologians and eco-ministries that are bringing the natural world back into the center of Christian practice.  

At the end of this post, I’ll link to a few of the obituaries that are beginning to emerge.  Before that, I’ll share some of his reflections that appear in them: Read the rest of this entry »

Call me naive, but I never imagined that the Fish and Wildlife Service would make it nearly to the conclusion of its process of developing Siting Recommendations for wind farms without any consideration of the acoustic footprint of these sprawling industrial installations.  Of all the possible impacts that large wind farms may have, their acoustic presence is likely to be second only to the raw habitat changes in its localized biological significance.  The Federal Advisory Committee charged with drafting FWS recommendations and procedures for assessing impacts on wildlife has been working since 2007, and has just released the 3rd Draft of its recommendations, which contain not one single occurance of the words noise, acoustics, or ambient.  Acoustic appears only in  references to acoustic monitoring to identify the presence of bats or birds.  Sound appears three times, each one in the phrase “scientifically sound,”  which may in fact be related to the lack of attention to any acoustic impacts or effects in the rest of the document.  In correspondence with a committee member, I learned that they had briefly discussed noise impacts of turbines, but had quickly concluded that there was insufficient science on which to base any recommendations.  

I have no idea what the members were aware of in the bioacoustics and anthropogenic sound literature, but there is a long (if not always broad) body of research into the effects that road noise, ocean noise, aircraft and military noise, and more have on wildlife–looking at avoidance, stress hormones, disruption of mating, and acoustic masking.  The nature of wind turbine noise is not so different than some of the noise sources that are well studied.  In addition, bioacousticians are constantly adding to our understanding of the hearing ranges and acoustic communication/behaviors of an increasingly wide range of species.  And, in order to pass muster with local or state permitting standards, wind farm developers must produce sound modeling maps showing their predicted sound levels at various distances from turbines. Surely there is enough here for FWS to address the simple need to assess potential wind farm sites to be sure that any especially acoustically sensitive species will either not be significantly affected, or have suitable nearby habitat to relocate to.  

The National Park Service Natural Sounds Office is but one (and the most experienced) agency office that is always ready to share its expertise with other agencies; one of the more intriguing recent NPS research efforts has been looking precisely at the sort of noise impacts that could be caused by wind farms: modest increases in background ambient noise, and how that may make it more difficult for predators to hear and find prey (e.g., mice in leaves), or make it harder for prey to hear predators in time (e.g., owl wings or stalking bobcat).  The US Forest Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, BLM, and National Science Foundation all consider noise impacts as a matter of routine; why does FWS consider the topic too complex or too little understood to be relevant to this foundational document?

The committee may feel that existing assessments of habitat impacts will protect animals from more subtle acoustic effects as well. In some wide-open spaces (such as ranch land), this may be the case, as the turbines and their infrastructure will create ongoing visual/presence impacts. On wooded ridges, however, acoustic impacts could well outstrip visual and road-related impacts: the small footprints of the turbine towers will be surrounded by forests where the increased noise will be a primary effect, and in some topography, lowlands beneath ridges may well be significantly noisier for at least a half mile, and in many cases, up to a mile from the edge of the wind farm, especially at night.  We can only hope that the committee reassesses their dismissal of this potentially significant siting factor, or that there will be an opportunity for scientists and other agencies to comment and amend the recommendations before they are finalized.

See the http://www.fws.gov/habitatconservation/windpower/wind_turbine_advisory_committee.html#mce_temp_url#, where you can download the latest draft, as well as a PDF version of the presentation to be made at a public meeting this week.

Throughout the spring, China has been actively complaining about the presence of the USNS Impeccable off its coast (see earlier AEInews coverage).  This week, the “Bejing Review,” an English-language weekly, ran a story on the controversy, playing the environmental card in its efforts to reach in international audience, though some of its examples confused mid-frequency sonar-related strandings with the LFAS system, which has not been associated with any known strandings (though monitoring is nearly impossible, given its very long range), and falsely claims that sonar training was banned off the California Coast and that the Navy discontinued sonar training off Hawaii.  The story reports that a humpback whale was found stranded near Hong Kong “not long after”  the Impeccable had been driven away, though no details are included about any investigation into the causes of the stranding.

The Impeccable is one of the US’s two ships equipped with Low Frequency Active Sonar (LFAS), both of which are deployed in the western Pacific to monitor 
Chinese and North Korean submarines.  In addition to harassing the Impeccable (which both emits LFAS signals and receives echoes on its SURTASS towed array of hydrophones), Chinese Navy and fishermen have dogged  the USNS Victorious, one of several other US ships that can receive LFAS echoes on their own SURTASS arrays.

USNS Impeccable

China maintains that US warships must receive permission to travel in China’s Exclusive Read the rest of this entry »

One of the more exciting new technologies to come of age in the past couple years is ocean “gliders” that can cruise the seas, silently or nearly so, while collecting data ranging from temperature and salinity to sounds. The gliders are small (roughly 6 feet long), and surface periodically to send data to satellite communication systems. Some gliders are battery powered and can cruise for about a month, while the leading edge approach is to use a temperature-sensitive ballast that allows the glider to travel for up to five years at sea.  As a tool for working with ocean noise issues, gliders hold great promise for use in monitoring the seas before sonar trials, as well as for regional acoustic mapping/monitoring.  In late 2007, researchers at Defense Research and Development Canada used a glider to listen in on beaked whale calls; recording and analysis take place while the glider is below the surface; by the time it surfaces to send its data to researchers on shore, “it already thinks it knows whether it has a beaked whale or a sperm whale,” according to lead researcher Jim Theriault.  The US Navy has a few training ranges where bottom-mounted hydrophones make it much easier to monitor for beaked and other whales before and during sonar exercises; gliders could bring this advanced capability to sonar training anywhere at sea.

WHOI glider in the water

This spring, the US Navy placed orders for $6 million worth of Littoral Battlespace Sensing-Gliders (LBS-G), with options for up to $50 million more over the next four years.  It appears that, at least for now, the Navy is planning to use the gliders as part of their near-shore (littoral) defense system, rather than as adjuncts to monitor for whales near sonar exercises.   Early this year, the NATO Undersea Research Group (NRUG) ordered 4 to 7 gliders, though it’s unclear whether they will be outfitted with hydrophones.  At Woods Hole, Mark Baumgartner’s research group has been using a fleet of 20 gliders (which were initially developed at Woods Hole, before being commercialized by a WHOI scientist) to listen in on baleen whales as they study whale distribution and habitat in the Gulf of Maine; however, before long-term deployment and research can begin, the team is developing instruments and software to allow for near real-time assessment and classification of the sounds.  Once that’s up to speed, larger scale monitoring can begin.  Non-acoustic gliders are in use worldwide by Rutgers researchers, where the Coastal Ocean Observation Lab (COOL) has been using them since 2003.

Gliders hold great promise as a benign yet active platform for ocean observing, especially in acoustics.  Any boat-based monitoring brings its own noise along for the ride, while bottom-mounted hydrophones need more complex communication systems (generally cables).  Gliders are effectively silent, and move so slowly that even in the case of a fluke collision with a sea creature, no harm will come to either party.  Keep an eye on this exciting new technology!

This one sat around for a while waiting for me to write about it, but it’s pretty timeless, so here goes!  One of the leaders in fish bioacoustics, Rodney Rountree, wrote a great overview piece in the Nov/Dec issue of Marine Technology Review on the groundbreaking work being done in fish biology using Passive Acoustic recording systems.  The article does a wonderful job of introducing the various approaches being taken to recording freshwater and oceanic fish.  The most exciting aspect of this work is that until quite recently, very few biologists even CONSIDERED fish as vocal or acoustic creatures (the emphasis was on chemical/smell and mechanical/tactile sensitivity).  As Rountree notes, “currently most biological sounds recorded in marine and aquatic habitats are unknown due to the lack of study and a lack of comprehensive sound catalogues.”  It’s agua incognita!  

To enter this fascinating new acoustic world, Rountree has compiled three distinct yet complementary overviews:

• The article in MTR is on Page 40 of this pdf version of the issue. 
• You can download his 42-page “e-book” nominally written for children, but in fact a wonderful layperson overview of the history and current discoveries in fish acoustics; it’s full of links to websites. 
• And, his academic website FishEcology.org has a page that is full of fish sounds, including a slew of unidentified sounds. 

Two UK environmental and research organizations that were monitoring whale activity during a recent NATO naval exercise report that minke whales were seen fleeing along the surface while their hydrophones were picking up loud mid-frequency active sonar signals.  Observers from the Hebrides Whale and Dolphin Trust saw “two minke whales within an hour displaying unusual and worrying behaviour. At the same time they heard military sonar on the hydrophone – sometimes so loud that they could not keep the headphones on. The whales were both moving in the same direction at high speed, regularly leaping clear of the water. This behaviour, known as ‘porpoising’, is more typical of dolphins and rarely seen in undisturbed whales.”

Porpoising minke whale. Credit: HWDT

Nienke van Geel, HWDT’s Biodiversity Officer said “Seeing minke whales porpoising many times successively is very unusual. Both whales moved very fast, too fast for us to keep up with them to try to take identification pictures. We estimated they were traveling at least at 15 knots. Our research has already shown a decline in minke whale sightings in the last few years, so we’re worried about anything that might adversely affect the population.” The incident is reported on in three posts from the HWDT’s colleagues, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).  The first includes the initial report of the incident, the second details the situation more fully and stresses the need for the UK Navy to conduct fully environmental assessments as the US Navy has begun to do at home, and the third clarifies that the US Navy should be, according the the US Marine Mammal Protection Act, applying for permits for sonar activities in UK waters, though it currently only does so for training in US waters.

After my participation on a Canadian government expert group looking at offshore oil and gas noise, I headed west to Banff for my second appearance as a plenary speaker at the Alberta oil and gas industry’s biannual Spring Noise Conference. Here, participants are largely agency staff and noise control contractors, with a few oil and gas companies participating as well. Alberta has a vibrant oil and gas industry (read: most important economic driver for the Province), and while the landscape is heavily tapped by traditional oil and natural gas drilling, coalbed methane development, surface coal mining, and, infamously, oil sands development, Alberta’s noise regulations are among the most stringent in the world: impact on neighbors cannot exceed 5dB above the local ambient noise conditions.  This year’s conference (and the very informative pre-conference workshop I attended) expanded from its roots in oil and gas development, to include wind farms.

Read the rest of this entry »

On May 12 and 13, I was invited to be part of a Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat workshop that was called by the DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Canadian sister agency to NOAA) to assess the Canadian government’s mitigation measures to protect marine mammals from noise impacts of seismic surveys used to explore for offshore oil and gas. Thanks to my previous involvement in the Ocean Noise Coalition, a Canadian ONC member recommended that I be invited—thanks, Kathy! Longtime ONC colleague Michael Stocker of Ocean Conservation Research was also there, and we shared some nice rambles around the city. The two-day workshop included a day of “working papers” in which various participants shared research and information meant to inform our assessment of how well marine mammal observers, safety zones, and passive acoustic monitoring perform in their goals of protecting marine mammals from the effects of seismic survey noise. Most of the 40+ participants work for agencies, oil and gas companies or trade groups, or for environmental consultants who write EISs or manage marine mammal observing operations for seismic survey companies. Four of us were from the “environmental community,” and of those, I was the only one to present a working paper.  

My paper was the sole piece of the workshop that addressed impacts beyond the 500m exclusion (or safety) zone, meant to protect animals from injury; Read the rest of this entry »

The revised draft of wind energy wildlife impact guidelines released by a US Fish and Wildlife Service Federal Advisory Committee was released in March, and like the first version, contains not a single occurrence of the words “noise” or “acoustic.” The Committee is directed to “recommend effective measures to avoid or minimize impacts to wildlife and their habitats related to land-based wind energy facilities.” How they can provide provide this guidance without considering acoustic impacts is simply unimaginable.  Modern wind turbines are hundreds of feet tall, and create significant sound; even the minimal setbacks for human residences are 1000 feet, with many cases of bothersome noise (especially at night) at a half mile or more.  Wildlife impacts of wind farms are sure to include increased ambient background noise over a fairly large area (half mile to a mile in diameter), which can make it more difficult for predators such as owls and coyotes to find their small prey, and likewise force prey animals to be more vigilant against attack, which has clear energy costs for the animals.  In addition, low-frequency noise radiated into the ground could affect burrowing animals.  Especially in “islands” of woods along ridgelines surrounded by farm land, this acoustic degradation could displace animals from key habitat; even in larger woodlands, steep terrain along ridgelines often contains a different mix of trees and thus habitat that is locally important.  As AEI noted in comments submitted to committee members in February, “In at least some situations/locations, acoustic impacts could be a primary or substantial contributing factor in displacement from habitat, as well as triggering stress that may have synergistic relationships with other impacts.”  Such considerations are basic requirements for effective analysis of impacts on wildlife.  The Committee briefly considered noise impacts, but concluded that no data (specifically involving turbine noise) was available with which to assess the possible effects.  As with ocean noise, though, this lack of specific data does not preclude assessing possible or likely impacts, using studies of other noise sources or even other species than those present at a given project area; NOAA and the Navy routinely take this approach to assessing the impacts of various ocean noise sources.  There is plenty of research on the noise impacts of oil and gas installations, road noise, and aircraft noise on many families of wildlife (birds, rodents, large mammals, etc.).  The National Park Service Natural Sounds office and bioacoustics researchers at universities across the country are good sources of information that this Federal Advisory Committee surely needs to consult before moving forward with guidelines for assessing the impacts of wind farms on wildlife.  These guidelines will shape wildlife impact analyses for years to come, and need to be done right.  

For more on the FWS wind advisory committee, see:
http://www.windaction.org/articles/21154
Industrial Wind Action Group letter to Sec. of Interior Salazar, May 2009

http://www.fws.gov/habitatconservation/windpower/wind_turbine_advisory_committee.html
Advisory Committee website 

Debate continues to swirl around wind farm development across the US, as local communities struggle to find the right balance between green energy and minimizing impacts on wind farm neighbors.  At the crux of the issue is how close to homes turbines should be built.  The wind energy continues to push for setbacks as small as 1000 feet, while local residents report significant noise impacts up to a half mile or mile.  In Wisconsin, where five wind farm proposals have been derailed since 2007 by local setback ordinances of 1800 feet to a mile, which the industry deemed too severe, a push is on in the state legislature to transfer all decision-making power to state authorities, stripping localities of regulatory authority.  In Maine, two physicians have urged the state to take note of clear health effects caused by audible noise from the Mars Hill windfarm: Read the rest of this entry »

The Minerals Management Service suffered a major defeat this week, as a Federal Appeals Court ruled that its current five-year leasing program be vacated and remanded to the Department of Interior for more substantial environmental analysis.  The program includes oil and gas leasing from 2007-2012 on the Outer Continental Shelf; only one lease has been offered in Alaskan waters, though more are in the planning stages.  MMS did produce a 1600 page environmental assessment, but the court found it lacking. Among the primary considerations cited by the court was inadequate analysis of the effects of exploration and drilling noise on migrating Bowhead whales, and similarly inadequate assessment of effects on fish. Kim Elton, director of Alaska Affairs for the Department of the Interior, said his office is still studying the ruling. Though industry officials and some Republicans in the US Congress have called for a quick approval of further offshore development, Elton said the latest ruling should convince people that rushing to formulate land-use policies leave them open to challenge in court and not make hurried assumptions based on the work of the previous administration. “We too often end up doing things in a rushed way without recognising the fact that the paradigm is likely to be challenged,” he said. “And if we don’t do our upfront work we allow a group of people wearing black robes or a person wearing a black robe to set policy.”

More on this:
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article176453.ece 
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-alaska-drilling18-2009apr18,0,1920171.story 
http://www.koaa.com/aaaaaa_down_to_earth/x586944506/Court-blocks-Alaska-offshore-drilling

A new report issued in the wake of an active sonar mitigation workshop held by the European Cetacean Society calls unequivocally for sonar training to be limited to relatively small dedicated areas.  By contrast, the US Navy continues to insist that it needs access to nearly the entire eastern seaboard and most of the west coast as well, in order to have enough flexibility to train “realisically.”  The ECS working group report, by an impressively diverse set of researchers ranging from NRDC’s Michael Jasny to Woods Hole scientist Peter Tyack, calls on the world’s navies to “commit without delay” to “minimum procedures” including: Read the rest of this entry »

Representative Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) marked Earth Day by announcing the introduction of a bill that would provide $25 million per year to the Marine Mammal Commission to fund new research into the effects of human activities on whales and dolphins, with a particular focus on the effects of active sonar. ”We need to end the fighting and resolve these issues, but we can’t really do that until we’re sure we all know what we’re talking about,” Abercrombie said in a statement. “We have to fully understand the effects of human activities, including underwater sound, on marine mammals and determine how to mitigate any harmful impact. That requires expanded and focused research.”  By comparison, the Navy, currently the largest source of research funding, spends $26 million per year on its marine mammal research programs, which include studies of the effects of sound as well as many other topics, including a wide range of population studies, and a recent agreement between the Navy and NRDC will devote $5 million per year to several topic of mutual interest. For several years, the MMC has recommended that an independent research initiative such as the one proposed by Abercrombie be established; many environmental advocates have also long called for research funding to be more independent of the Navy and the perceived constraints that its priorities impose on research topics.  Abercrombie is serving what is likely to be his last of ten terms as an Hawaiian congressman; he has announced plans to run for Governor in 2010.

An earlier version of the bill, HR 5106, was introduced in January 2008; it appears likely that the new bill is substantially similar.  Read the old bill here.