I’ll gladly tell you Thursday if your beach is safe today…
Each year, NRDC publishes a report on the sometimes-foul state of our beachwater nationwide. This year's Testing the Waters analysis shows that people are still regularly swimming in water with unsafe levels of E Coli and other pathogens, and that thousands of people likely get ill every year from a day at the beach. In the northeast and Great Lakes regions, combined sewage overflows after rainstorms are a prime cause; here in California, surface runoff is a big ...
CONTINUE READINGSemi-good news from the Gulf Coast
NOAA this week released the latest survey of the "dead zone" just off the Gulf Coast. The dead zone results from fertilizer pollution brought down from midwest farms and cities by the Mississippi River. That nutrient influx fuels phytoplankton blooms. The subsequent decomposition of dead plankton consumes oxygen, leaving the levels of dissolved oxygen in the dead zone's waters too low to support aquatic life. The good news in this year's survey is that at 3,000 square...
CONTINUE READINGThink About Carbon First, Act Later
The Worldwatch Institute reports on a new policy recently announced by the World Bank -- before approving future projects, the Bank intends to develop an estimate of likely greenhouse gas impacts. At a minimum, this will provide greater transparency concerning the implications of a World Bank decision. Hopefully, it will encourage projects more likely to improve energy efficiency or promote renewable energy. This leads to an important question -- shouldn't governmen...
CONTINUE READING2 Funny!
This is from Grist's mock facebook page for Steve Chu: Steven took the quiz "Do you know more about energy than Sarah Palin?" and the result is "OMG I HOPE SO, MR. ENERGY SECRETARY". You're the flipping Secretary of Energy. Your vocabulary has moved beyond Sarah's staples of "Drill, Baby, Drill" and "Nu-cu-lar." You understand that geothermal is not something you dress your kid in out of an L.L. Bean catalogue. You may be drinking the clean energy Kool-Aid, but it's ...
CONTINUE READINGNew Report on Infrastructure at Risk
Resources for the Future, one of the least partisan of Washington think tanks, has issued a new report entitled Adapting to Climate Change: The Public Policy Response - Public Infrastructure by James E. Neumann and Jason C. Price. The report makes three major recommendations for how to improve infrastructure planning in light of climate change: The need to take best advantage of replacement opportunities, including extreme events. More frequent and�...
CONTINUE READINGProposed Order on Floodplain Development
The White House is considering a new executive order to limit floodplain development. The proposal covers roughly the same federal licensing, project, and funding decisions as NEPA. The heart of the proposal is section 4, which unlike NEPA imposes a substantive requirement (preventing or mitigating floodplain development.) The proposed language is after the jump. This is a very constructive step -- we can't keep putting people and infrastructure in harm's way, ...
CONTINUE READINGPublic Enemies: EPA’s Most Wanted List
EPA has a list of fugitives, all of them wanted in connection with environmental crimes. Defendants charged with environmental crimes or violations of the U.S. Federal Criminal Code sometimes flee the court’s jurisdiction and/or the USA rather than face prosecution or to serve a sentence. When these circumstances occur, the defendants become fugitives from justice. The following wanted posters identify fugitives sought by the EPA’s Criminal Investigation D...
CONTINUE READINGWhy Al Franken Matters
Norm Coleman was pretty good on environmental issues. But Franken has the capacity to become a real leader on environment and energy issues. In his campaign, he called for a major push on clean energy: When I was a kid, I watched John F. Kennedy tell us that we would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. I thought he was nuts. But he put our greatest minds and the full backing of the government behind the project, and we did it. Today, I think we need a ...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Economics at EPA
EPA's Science Advisory Board is considering feedback to EPA's 2008 draft guidelines on economic analysis. The preliminary SAB draft makes a number of interesting points: EPA needs to recongize that it's discretion is limited: "only the legislative branch has the power to tax, subsidize, or assign liability, and both the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act very clearly specify what kinds of regulations EPA may promulgate." The guidelines are badly out of date, part...
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