Water
The trouble with Chinatown
Ann proposes Chinatown as the greatest environmental movie of all time. Now, Chinatown is my favorite movie: the poster above is currently hanging on my office wall. it is a great movie. But Chinatown can’t be a great environmental movie for one simple reason: It gets the environment wrong. The conceit of Chinatown is that a diabolical …
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CONTINUE READINGWho’ll Stop the Rain?
Maybe the City of Los Angeles. I complained a couple of weeks ago that during the (rare) times when the Southland gets a downpour, all the water get sent out to sea ASAP, even though cistern technology exists that could conserve water, reduce pollution, and reduce the costs of purchasing it from elsewhere. Well, as …
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CONTINUE READINGSingin’ the California Delta Blues (Muddy Waters Ahead?)
But there really is a California Delta, and it’s vitally important to the state’s water supply. It also raises major environmental issues. The struggle to manage the Delta has also given rise to one of the most ambitious experiments in collaborative governance anywhere — an experiment that had some successes but ultimately seemed to hit a brick wall.
CONTINUE READINGA Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall — and Then Get Wasted
A friend from New York, recently transplanted to Los Angeles, has watched aghast as, again and again, weather reporters have greeted any local rainfall more than 1″ with feverish STORMWATCH headlines. That said, the Southland got hit with quite a storm these last 48 hours. “Well,” say most Angelenos unaccustomed to precipitation. “At least we …
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CONTINUE READINGMore on EPA approval of the Hobet 45 mountaintop removal permit
Cross-posted at CPR Blog. On Monday, EPA signed off on the Corps of Engineers’ issuance of a Clean Water Act § 404 permit to Hobet Mining for a mountaintop removal coal mining project in West Virginia. The decision is important because it’s the first product of the process announced last fall for joint EPA / …
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CONTINUE READINGEPA cuts a deal on major mountaintop mining permit
We’ve been periodically covering the Obama EPA’s attempt to find a middle way on mountaintop removal mining, reducing the most egregious environmental impacts of the practice without prohibiting it altogether. On Monday EPA announced, in effect, that it thinks it has found that compromise. In a letter to the Corps of Engineers Huntington office, EPA …
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CONTINUE READINGA look at the interim federal Delta plan
As I pointed out three months ago, the federal government has awakened from its 8-year Bush administration slumber to notice that the SF Bay-Delta is an important environmental and economic resource whose management requires federal input. On December 22, the Obama administration issued an Interim Federal Action Plan for the California Bay-Delta. The best news …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Top 10 Environmental Developments of 2009
10. Cass Sunstein becomes regulatory czar. Sunstein is a true believer in cost-benefit analysis, the bête noire of many an environmentalist. Obama’s appointment of Sunstein to oversee health and environmental regulations may put the brakes on regulatory initiatves. 9. California passes AB 758. The first mandate for energy efficiency standards for existing buildings. 8. Water …
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CONTINUE READING60 Minutes flubs the California water story
Last night, 60 Minutes had a long story on the California water crisis, featuring Lesley Stahl interviewing (among others) Arnold Schwarzenegger and UC Davis professor Jeff Mount. On the positive side, the story accurately portrayed the vulnerability of California’s fragile through-Delta water delivery system to a major earthquake or catastrophic levee break. But CBS News …
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CONTINUE READINGTwo Stories from Eastern Europe
Arthur Max from AP has an excellent piece on the environment in Eastern Europe, contrasting two rivers. The Danube flows through Germany and then Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria. It was an environmental disaster, but both the river itself and its environs have been improved greatly for three reasons: (a) the countries involved have …
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