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THEFLORIDATIMES-UNION,BOBMACK—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS A group of people watch a turtle swim to the ocean a er rehabilitation on April 22in Jacksonville, Fla. ByJasonDearen The Associated Press ST. AUGUSTINE BEACH, FLA. The Obama administra- tion is reopening the East- ern Seaboard to offshore oil and gas exploration, an- nouncing final approval Fri- day of sonic cannons that can pinpoint energy depos- its deep beneath the ocean floor. The decision promises to create plenty of jobs and thrills the oil industry, but dismays environmental- ists worried about the im- mediate impact as well as the long-term implications of oil development. The cannons fill waters shared by whales and tur- tles with sound waves 100 times louder than a jet en- gine. Saving endangered species was the environ- mental groups' best hope of extending a ban against offshore drilling off the U.S. Atlantic coast. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management dis- closed its final approval first to The Associated Press ahead of an announcement later Friday. The approval opens the outer continental shelf from Delaware to Florida to ex- ploration by energy com- panies preparing to apply for drilling leases in 2018, when current congressional limits are set to expire. The bureau is moving ahead de- spite acknowledging that thousands of sea creatures will be harmed. "The bureau's decision reflects a carefully ana- lyzed and balanced ap- proach that will allow us to increase our un- derstanding of potential offshore resources while protecting the human, marine, and coastal envi- ronments," acting BOEM Director Walter Cruick- shank said in a statement. These sonic cannons are already in use in the western Gulf of Mexico, off Alaska and other offshore oil operations around the world. They are towed be- hind boats, sending strong pulses of sound into the ocean every 10 seconds or so. The pulses reverberate beneath the sea floor and bounce back to the sur- face, where they are mea- sured by hydrophones. Computers then translate the data into high resolu- tion, three-dimensional images. "It's like a sonogram of the Earth," said Andy Rad- ford, a petroleum engineer at the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade association in Wash- ington DC. "You can't see the oil and gas, but you can see the structures in the earth that might hold oil and gas." Obamaopens Eastern Seaboard to oil exploration DEVELOPMENT By Nicholas K. Geranios The Associated Press PATEROS,WASH. A fire rac- ing through rural north- central Washington de- stroyed about 100 homes, leaving behind smoldering rubble, solitary brick chim- neys and burned-out auto- mobiles as it blackened hundreds of square miles in the scenic Methow Valley. Friday's dawn revealed dramatic devastation, with the Okanagan County town of Pateros, home to 650 people, hit especially hard. Most residents evacuated in advance of the flames, and some returned Friday to see what, if anything, was left of their houses. There were no reports of injuries, officials said. A wall of fire wiped out a block of homes on Dawson Street. David Brownlee, 75, said he drove away Thurs- day evening just as the fire reached the front of his home, which erupted like a box of matches. "It was just a funnel of fire," Brownlee said. "All you could do was watch her go." Next door, the Pateros Community Church ap- peared largely undamaged. The pavement of U.S. Highway 97 stopped the advance of some of the flames, protecting parts of Pateros. Firefighters poured wa- ter over the remnants of homes Friday morning, raising clouds of smoke, steam and dust. Two big water towers perched just above the town were singed black by the flames. The fire consumed utility poles from two major power lines, one feeding Pateros and the other feeding the towns of Winthrop and Twisp to the north. Gov. Jay Inslee said about 50 fires were burn- ing in Washington, which has been wracked by hot, dry weather and lightning. Some 2,000 firefighters were working in the east- ern part of the state, with about a dozen helicopters from the Department of Natural Resources and the National Guard, along with a Washington State Patrol spotter plane. Inslee said that the state was rapidly training about 1,000 additional National Guard troops and active duty military could be called in as well. "This, unfortunately, is not going to be a one-day or one-week event," he said. The Methow Valley, about 180 miles northeast of Seattle, is a popular area for hiking and fishing. Sec- tions of several highways were closed. "There's a lot of mis- placed people, living in parking lots and stuff right now," said Rod Griffin, a fly-fishing guide who lives near Twisp. "The whole val- ley's in disarray." He described long lines for gasoline, with at least one gas station out of fuel, and said cellphone towers must have been damaged as well because there was very little service. In Brewster, 6 miles to the south, a hospital was evacuated as a precaution. The smoke was so thick there Friday it nearly ob- scured the Columbia River from adjacent highways. The smoke extended all the way to Spokane, 150 miles to the east. Jacob McCann, a spokes- man for the fire known as the Carlton Complex, said it "ran quite a bit" Thurs- day and officials were also able to get a better han- dle on its size. It blackened 260 square miles by Friday morning, up dramatically from the prior estimate of 28 square miles. "Mother Nature is win- ning here," Don Waller, chief ofOkanoganCountyFireDis- trict 6, told The Wenatchee World newspaper. The county sheriff, Frank Rogers, said his team counted 30 houses and trailers destroyed in Pateros, another 40 in a community just outside the town at Alta Lake, and about 25 homes destroyed elsewhere in the county of about 40,000 people. About 100 miles to the south, the Chiwaukum Creek Fire chased people from nearly 900 homes as it sent a dusting of ash over the Bavarian-themed vil- lage of Leavenworth. Worsening wildfire ac- tivity has prompted the governor's offices in both Washington and Oregon to declare states of emer- gency, a move that allows state officials to call up the National Guard. Fifteen large fires were reported around Oregon on Friday, burning across 565 square miles of timber, rangeland and grass. Doz- ens of homes were evacu- ated. WEST 'Funnel of fire' destroys homes in Washington ELAINE THOMPSON — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Firefighters work on the still-smoldering remains of a house destroyed the night before in a wildfire on Friday in Pateros, Wash. By Alicia A. Caldwell The Associated Press WASHINGTON The flood of children crossing the Mexican border illegally and without their parents has slowed down in recent weeks, two senior Obama administration officials said Friday. Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas have found fewer than 500 children crossing the border illegally this week, the officials said. Last month, agents arrested as many as 2,000 child im- migrants a week. The Obama administra- tion has been struggling to deal with a flood of more than 57,000 children trav- eling alone since Oct. 1. Homeland Security Secre- tary Jeh Johnson said ear- lier this month that as many as 90,000 unaccompanied child immigrants could be apprehended by the end of the budget year in Septem- ber. Most of the children are from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The volume of child im- migrants has significantly taxed resources attheHome- land Security and Health and Human Services depart- ments in recent months and prompted President Barack Obama to ask Congress to approve an emergency $3.7 billion spending bill to deal with the situation he has called an "urgent humani- tarian crisis." The officials, who spoke on the condition of ano- nymity, said Friday it's too soon to know what has led to drop in border arrests. They said illegal border crossings along the Mexi- can border tend to slow dur- ing the summer. IMMIGRATION Flow of migrants at border slowing By Eric Tucker The Associated Press WASHINGTON Tens of thousands of federal in- mates serving time for drug crimes may be eli- gible for early release un- der a cost-cutting pro- posal adopted Friday that would dramatically reduce the nation's prison popula- tion over time. The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which earlier this year voted to substan- tially lower recommended sentences for drug-dealing felons, voted unanimously to retroactively apply that change to prisoners now behind bars. More than 46,000 in- mates, including many who have already served a decade or longer in prison, would be eligible to seek early release under the commission's decision. The commission, an in- dependent panel that sets sentencing policy, has said sentences would be cut by an average of 25 months. The releases would start in November 2015 and be phased in over a period of years. "The magnitude of the change, both collectively and for individual offend- ers, is significant," com- mission chairwoman Patti Saris, a federal judge in Massachusetts, said be- fore the vote. Advocates of the early- release plan say it would cut prison costs — nearly one-half of the federal prison population is locked up for drug crimes — and scale back some of the harsh sentences im- posed during the coun- try's war on drugs. Pris- oner advocacy groups im- mediately trumpeted the change, calling it a matter of fundamental fairness. "This vote will change the lives of tens of thou- sands of families whose loved ones were given overly long drug sen- tences," Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Mini- mums, said in a statement. The change is part of a broader rethinking of criminal justice policy that the Justice Depart- ment, under Attorney General Eric Holder, has embraced. With an eye toward addressing sen- tencing disparities rooted in the 1980's-era fight against crack cocaine, the Justice Department has is- sued new clemency crite- ria designed to encourage thousands of additional inmates to seek clemency. Last year, Holder directed federal prosecutors to avoid seeking mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. "This is a milestone in the effort to make more ef- ficient use of our law en- forcement resources and to ease the burden on our overcrowded prison system," Holder said in a statement. Though sentencing guidelines are advisory rather than mandatory, judges still rely heavily on them in deciding on prison sentences. The guidelines recommend sentences that factor in the types and quantities of the drugs. The commission in April voted to lower recom- mended sentences across all drug types, meaning, for instance, that a co- caine package of a given size would now be linked to a shorter range of pun- ishment than before. PRISONS Panel supports early release for 46,000 drug felons N EWS D AILY REDBLUFF TEHAMACOUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 PHONE: (530)527-2151 FAX: (530) 527-5774 545 Diamond Avenue • P.O. 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