Understanding Government

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…)

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…)

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…)

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.

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…)