Environmental News from Sightline Daily

Cupertino Union School District has four new big yellow schoolbuses that are very much green at heart. The buses are thanks to a grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

A new pilot program Bonneville Power Administration is starting with two wind energy operates will add flexibility to the Northwest electric grid and enable better accommodation of variable renewable energy sources.

With green building becoming mainstream, the next big thing for the industry is in the realm of net-zero: buildings that produce all the energy they need. Pike Research released a report this week indicating that net-zero construction will become a $1.3 trillion global business by 2035, driven largely by demand from Europe where zero-energy requirements are increasingly becoming required by building codes.

On Southeast 122nd Avenue, from Foster Road to Division Street, crowded apartment complexes sit one next to the other. Shops, stores and houses are few and far between. But some residents of the area have joined with Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to change all that.

A new study from Stanford University concludes that studies of public transit fail to consider the type of trips taken by women, an oversight that leads transit agencies to fail to provide for women’s transit needs. Specifically, transit agencies tend to completely ignore trips that involve taking care of a child or relative, trips that are predominately taken by women.

Wildlife managers have temporally closed two wildlife areas in Central and Eastern Oregon. The closures are part of an effort to protect big game populations.

This session, a group of lawmakers are aiming to clamp down on litterbugs. The bill they're supporting would increase statewide fines for dumping large quantities of litter.

The nation's crumbling roads, bridges and transit systems are at the point of hindering U.S. economic growth, but Congress is struggling to come up with a solution. The problems are numerous.

Architects had some triumphs in converting the former First Church of Christ Scientist on Capitol Hill into townhomes, but the difficulties they encountered offer lessons about preservation in the city.

The enduring species-protection dilemma in Northwest forests ratcheted up recently as the American Forest Resource Council, joined by Douglas County, sued the US government over lands identified as critical to the survival of an elusive seabird called the marbled murrelet.

Nearly two years after Seattle announced an ambitious, $20 million weatherization program to create 2,000 jobs, officials said Wednesday that reaching that goal was unlikely. But the program is having an impact: more than 20,000 hours have been worked, and 226 people have received a paycheck.

How the Washington state Senate's only openly gay member helped achieve something he once thought was beyond dreaming about.

Conservation groups, hoping to head off action they believe would increase unsustainable logging, have proposed a three-prong approach for replacing federal forest payments to hard-hit Oregon counties. The groups called Wednesday for "shared responsibility" in solving the severe budget problems facing 18 rural counties in the state.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled their version of a national transportation bill this week: wiping out designated funding for bike and pedestrian infrastructure and gutting programs that help kids get to school without being flattened by a passing car. I mean, really, is nothing sacred?.

All Kedir Wako wanted was a day off. The Ethiopian immigrant and veteran cab driver was sick, but his company wouldn't cut him any slack on his weekly payment. It sent him on a mission to improve the lot of Portland's 900 cabbies—a campaign the city's revenue bureau bolstered last week with the release of a new study supporting the cabbies' widespread claims of poor treatment.

Insurance commissioners in California, New York and Washington State will require that companies disclose how they intend to respond to the risks their businesses and customers face from increasingly severe storms and wildfires, rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change.

Proposed new beach pollution regulations from the US Environmental Protection Agency, meant to protect public health, instead would allow 1 in 28 beachgoers to experience some gastrointestinal illness after swimming, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

This year, the National Retail Federation estimates 5.1 million people – or about 5 percent of those planning to watch the Superbowl – will buy a new television specifically for game day. So what happens to all the old televisions that are now looking puny, low-definition and boxy?

Environmentalists often respond to charges that their policies are “job killers” with research demonstrating that investment in solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy and conservation creates far more jobs than equivalent investment in fossil fuels. This is a well-documented fact, but a hypothetical future job doesn’t put food on an empty table today.

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