Earth Share of Washington - News

U.S. eases review of pesticides for endangered species

The Bush administration yesterday made it easier for the government to approve pesticides used by farmers and homeowners, saying it no longer would require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to first consult other federal agencies to determine whether a product could harm endangered species.

The change affects federal regulations that carry out the Endangered Species Act, a law that protects about 1,200 threatened animals and plants.

Federal officials portrayed the action as a more efficient way to ensure the species are protected from pesticides sprayed across the la...Read the full story

July 30, 2004 | Comments Off

Lack of Funds Delaying Toxic Waste Cleanups

Number of Superfund Sites Growing While Federal Resources Drained by Other Needs

The federal government's toxic waste cleanup program is delaying projects across the country because funding is decreasing at a time when the number of sites and other demands are increasing, according to state and federal officials.

A slew of new Superfund waste sites, coupled with such needs as funding emergency responders to terrorist attacks, has drained federal resources in the past few years. As a result, officials in a number of states, including Illinois and Texas, are p...Read the full story

July 29, 2004 | Comments Off

Stories of a Wildlife Rescue - "Fear at Freedom's Door"

by Naturalist Kevin Mack from Earth Share of Washington member PAWS Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, published in the July 28, 2004 edition of Wild Again

On July 22nd, 2004, a Red-tailed Hawk sat timidly at the back of a transport carrier and stared out at the world through an open door. Just a few seconds earlier, that door had been closed, and the hawk had been doing his best to force his way through it to the freedom beyond. The appearance of a human in front of the door had made him less certain abou...Read the full story

July 28, 2004 | Comments Off

Wildlife Viewing Offers Spectacular Returns

As you steady your gaze and binoculars and hold your breath, you may become slightly wide-eyed, your weight imperceptibly shifting. According to a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Report (Watchable Wildlife Industry, 2001) you are a driver in the $980 million spent each year viewing wildlife in Washington State. Fishing nets $854 million and hunting $350 million.

This trend in both interest and accompanying revenue is based on our fascination and love of wildlife, and is also a part of a national trend in nature-based tourism. Wildlife watching is the fastest growing segment of the trav...Read the full story

July 27, 2004 | Comments Off

Earth Saving Tips - Bargains for a Better Environment

The Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club offers free tips and promotion for your yard sale this summer. In return, you can designate 25% of your proceeds to them. Clean out and your closets and protect the environment, what a great combination!

• The Chapter will advertise your sale via our website and email, and will give you planning tips for the sale.
• You'll contribute 25% of your sale proceeds to support your local Chapter volunteers and their work in our community. HELP THEM REACH OUR GOAL of $5,000 ! (DID YOU KNOW that most of the Sierra Club "staff" are actually v...Read the full story
  July 26, 2004 | Comments Off

Northwest Cruise Ships Moving in Right Direction

"Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me."
-- Albert Schweitzer, 1875-1965; theologian, musician and medical missionary

A thriving tourism industry

As you travel west through downtown Seattle, all of a sudden it hits you. "Wow, what is that? It's huge..." 29 stories, up to 4,000 passenger and crew, and over 900 feet long might be considered huge. We are at once in awe, possibly repuls...Read the full story

July 23, 2004 | Comments Off

Surfrider Foundation Releases 2004 State of the Beach Report

San Clemente, CA-- The Surfrider Foundation announced this week that it has released its 2004 State of the Beach report. This unique report, which is now in its fifth edition, analyzes the status of beach health across the nation based on several indicators; including water quality, coastline erosion and access to beach and surfing areas.

The report covers all twenty-two coastal states and territories where the Surfrider Foundation has chapters and is by far the most comprehensive single collection of coastal zone information in the nation. The report is published in two versions; ...Read the full story

July 22, 2004 | Comments Off

Radioactive Waste Shipments to Hanford Halted

The federal government has agreed to temporarily halt some shipments of low- level waste bound for burial at Hanford if it can reach agreement with Washington state on a schedule for a court decision.

Monday evening the state sent documents to federal district court suing the Department of Energy over its June 23 record of decision calling for Hanford to become a regional disposal site for up to 62,000 cubic meters of low-level waste and up to 20,000 cubic meters of low-level waste mixed with hazardous chemicals.

Attorney General Christine Gregoire is asking for a federal co...Read the full story

July 20, 2004 | Comments Off

Oceans soaking up carbon dioxide

Scientists say water becoming acidic, endangering sea life

After absorbing nearly half of humankind's industrial emissions of carbon dioxide for the past 200 years or so, the Earth's oceans are becoming more acidic -- a chemical change that could significantly harm sea life and speed up global warming.

That's the gist of several reports in today's Science magazine from an international team led by researchers at Seattle's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Carbon dioxide is a so-c...Read the full story

July 19, 2004 | Comments Off

Earth Saving Tips - Good, Clean Boating Fun

Courtesy of Earth Share of Washington member Union of Concerned Scientists

If you like to fish, water ski, or just cruise along the shore, here are some tips for guilt-free boating-how to enjoy the water while minimizing the air and water pollution caused by motorboats and personal watercraft (such as Jet Skis and WaveRunners).

Engines: Many gasoline and diesel-powered watercraft use inefficient two-stroke engines that pollute the air with hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, which form the respiratory irritant ozone. In addition, as much as 30 percent...Read the full story

July 16, 2004 | Comments Off

Two Northwest park bills advance

WASHINGTON -- A Senate committee voted yesterday to expand Mount Rainier National Park and to create a new historical park honoring the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved an 800-acre increase on the northwest side of Rainier and called for the conversion of three historical sites in Washington and one in Oregon into the only national park honoring the explorers. The Washington sites total 560 acres on the lower Columbia River.

Congress must approve $4 million to $6 million to buy the Rainier land before it becomes part of the nati...Read the full story

July 15, 2004 | Comments Off

U.S. Department of Agriculture Ends Popular Roadless Rule

New policy would end federal Protection for Washington's Roadless Forests

BOISE, ID -- Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service announced its intent to repeal the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and substitute it with a state petition process. Environmentalists, recreationists, and businesses around the country charge that this proposal will effectively eliminate all federal safeguards provided by the Roadless Rule and makes roadless areas vulnerable to road-building and commercial logging. The policy change was announced in Boise, Id...Read the full story

July 14, 2004 | Comments Off

Office Depot offers to recycle old PCs

Consumers can recycle one electronics product a day for free as part of a limited summer initiative.

NEW YORK -- Don't be so quick to toss out your old PCs, fax machines or digital cameras -- office supply retailer Office Depot is partnering with Hewlett-Packard to offer recycling of one electronic product a day for free all through the summer.

In a press conference Tuesday morning, Office Depot executive Chuck Rubin said the program is designed to offer customers an environmentally sound way to dispose of old electronics.

"We believe this initiative...Read the full story

July 13, 2004 | Comments Off

Sound Transit To Study Monorail for Phase 2

Sound Transit, the agency that brought light rail to the region, charged off in some new directions yesterday, deciding to consider adding monorail and a Seattle streetcar to its portfolio.

Sound Transit staff members doing a study of future transit projects for the region known as Phase 2 had earlier indicated they wanted to stick to building on what the agency already offers: regional express bus service, commuter rail and light rail.

But one-third of public comments on Phase 2 asked Sound Transit to consider monorail in Phase 2.

Yesterday, Sound Transit board memb...Read the full story

July 12, 2004 | Comments Off

Washington State likely to sue federal government over Hanford

SEATTLE, July 8 -- The states of Washington and Oregon announced Thursday that they will sue the federal government if it continues to refuse to assess the environmental damage caused by decades of bomb making at the Hanford nuclear site in eastern Washington.

The states say that although the Department of Energy spends $2 billion a year to clean up its leaking plutonium factory beside the Columbia River, it has never done a thorough analysis of the harm that Hanford has done to groundwater, wildlife and fish.

The threat of a lawsuit marks a further deterioration in an alrea...Read the full story

July 9, 2004 | Comments Off

Book Review: 'The Story Handbook - Language and Storytelling for Land Conservationists'

Edited by Helen Whybrow - Review Courtesy of Andy Goodman at Free-range Thinking™

To protect fragile ecosystems and the wildlife they sustain, the Trust for Public Land (TPL) [an Earth Share of Washington member] pursues a straightforward strategy: buy the land before developers can. It's an effective strategy, but since TPL's success stories often reduce to raising money and completing complex financial transactions that result in the purchase of so many acres, it can be dull to describe. Recognizing this drawback, TPL has assembled a collection of essays that tell t...Read the full story

July 7, 2004 | Comments Off

Hike Of The Week - New trail honors dedicated naturalist

By KAREN SYKES, SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Rising above Mason Lake and Lake Kulla Kulla in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness is Mount Defiance (5,584 feet) and its long, bony ridge, with other tempting summits for off-trail hikers -- some with whimsical names, others indicated only by numbers on a topographical map.

Despite some discrepancies in hiking guides and maps, Mount Defiance is a tough hike -- about 12 miles round trip, with the elevation gain falling somewhere between 3,400 and 3,600 feet.

We planned this hike to Mount Defiance to coincide with th...Read the full story

July 6, 2004 | Comments Off

Hanford waste dumping will be scaled back

The federal government promised yesterday to immediately stop dumping radioactive garbage into unlined dirt trenches at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and agreed to send much less waste there than originally proposed.

The decision by the U.S. Department of Energy ended more than six years of planning and debate over how much low-level radioactive and toxic waste will be imported to the Eastern Washington site.

Watchdog groups and Washington State regulators have criticized plans to bring thousands of truckloads of waste to Hanford, most of it for permanent disposal, arguin...Read the full story

July 5, 2004 | Comments Off

Sustainable building design - An interview with Bert Gregory

Bert Gregory is President & CEO of Mithun, a Seattle-based architecture, design and planning firm and a national leader in resource sensitive and sustainable design. Earth Share of Washington (ESW) recently interviewed Mr. Gregory about the present status of sustainable design, it's future direction, and Mithun's role in shepherding this fast-growing movement. Here is an excerpt from that interview:

Bert Gregory: We look at designing buildings, landscapes and communities to reduce their impact on natural systems and, ultimately, to enhance or improve t...Read the full story

July 1, 2004 | Comments Off