TOPIC: Environment

Raptor deaths dirty California’s cleanest energy source

Federal wildlife conservation officials have launched an inquest into the deaths of protected birds at a California wind farm, Louis Sahagun of the Los Angeles Times reports, highlighting a potentially crippling drawback of one of the world’s cleanest power sources.

A total of seven golden eagles are believed to have been killed over the course of two years after colliding with one of 90 windmills at the Pine Tree windmill site. The windmills, operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in the Tehachapi Mountains went on-line in 2009 and are spread out among 8,000 acres, generating 120 megawatts of electricity. (more…)

NRC says Diablo Canyon is safe — case closed?

Is Diablo Canyon destined for disaster? Well, according to a story by Suzanne Rust of California Watch published by the San Francisco Chronicle, that all depends on which government agency you believe.

According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (and the utility that owns the plant, Pacific Gas & Electric Co.), the plant is safe. Totally safe. So safe, the NRC insists, that further studies are unwarranted. (more…)

Five feet high and rising (the ocean, that is) at Hampton Roads

Darryl Fears reports on a realistic approach to climate change in a great Washington Post snapshot of the area around Hampton Roads, Virginia.  Including the cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, this part of the country is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels because the land itself is sinking due to long-term geological processes. In a few generations, Virginia Beach could be left without a beach, and the Norfolk Naval Station could be more underwater than even the Navy likes to be. (more…)

Army Corps v. California trees

Six years and thousands of miles away from the poorly designed flood walls and levees whose post-Katrina failure inundated New Orleans, environmental groups in California have filed a federal lawsuit to prevent what they contend is an unproven, costly and potentially damaging flood protection strategy ordered by US Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps, under scrutiny after a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe, decreed in 2007 that local levee districts would in the future lose guarantees of federal aid and loans unless all trees and shrubs were removed from levees under its nominal jurisdiction around the nation. (more…)

Seeing, hearing, and speaking the truth about Yucca Mountain

When a government project is described with terms like “case study in government dysfunction and bureaucratic inertia” and “epic fiasco,” there appears to be no upside.  The planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, as Joel Achenbach and Brian Vastag report it in the Washington Post, fully deserves these labels.  After the government spent$15 billion over nearly three decades to build a five-mile deep tunnel for radioactive waste storage, it turned out that the facility wasn’t “as geologically isolated as hoped,” meaning that it can leak hazardous materials into the surrounding water supply.  When you’re talking about uranium and plutonium, there’s only one possible response: don’t build it. (more…)

For California water supply, $150 million spent to not solve the problem

California salmon run

Four years and $150 million into a major study of plans to re-engineer elements of California’s main source of water, a National Science Foundation review found the multi-billion-dollar proposal confused, poorly defined and inadequately researched.  That’s the gist of a piece by Gosia Wozniacka of The Associated Press picked up by the Riverside Press Enterprise.

Power brokers managing California’s fresh water supplies have long sought more access to the state’s two major rivers — the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. But taking too much water from the rivers creates all sorts of problems: (more…)

Solar power on federal lands: destroying the desert in order to save it?

Projects designed to save the environment can end up hurting it, writes Michael Haederle in Miller-McCune.  Haederle looks at the effects of large solar arrays being built on federal land. Projects like the Palen array in California or the “world’s largest solar plant” being built by Solar Millenium, LLC in Riverside County, CA may deliver many megawatts of energy, but they also, Haederle reports, endanger desert animals and plants and threaten heritage sites treasured by Native Americans.  Of course, the public sees revenue from solar company leases of federal lands (handled by the Bureau of Land Management), but as each new alternative energy source comes on line, new problems also arise.  Greater public involvement in decision-making about these mega-projects would mean shared responsibility for the problems as well as shared benefits.

Water, water not everywhere (especially not in the Southwest)

As trapped carbon dioxide raises temperatures around the world, water will become even more scarce in the already arid southwest, according to a report released yesterday by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, together with the Army Corps of Engineers.

While a story by Bettina Boxall in the Los Angeles Times says California as a whole will end the century receiving about as much water as it does today, though precipitation will be distributed differently. (more…)

No easy way out on water issues in California

After years of admonishment about wasting water, residents of perennially dry California are watching billions of gallons of the life giving liquid roll out to sea as a prodigious rainy season draws to a close.

With irrigation districts, water districts and enviros engaged in battles spreading out across the decades, Matt Weiser 0f the Sacramento Bee wades into the battle with a primer on efforts to boost water supplies in California and the substantial hurdles these projects must clear. (more…)

High speed rail funding leaves one coast for the other

A major windfall in federal funding offered to Florida for a new high speed rail effort, just might end up in America’s other sand-and-sun tourist destination — California.

Arguing that local matching funds and future operating and maintenance costs would be an albatross around Floridians’ necks, Florida’s Republican leadership recently rejected the $2.43 billion Washington offered for that state’s long planned fast train project. Now, according to Rich Connell of the Los Angeles Times, the race is on to get that money and California is hoping for a healthy slice, if not the whole pie. (more…)