Earth Share of Washington - News

Diverse coalition seals land-preservation deal

With the mist from Snoqualmie Falls floating in the air, an unlikely crew of government officials, environmentalists and developers yesterday celebrated the completion of a land deal that could pave the way for open-space acquisitions over the next few decades.

The Snoqualmie Preservation Initiative, announced in 2001 and officially wrapped in June, will protect about 9,600 acres in east King County from development. That includes 150 acres directly south of the falls, where the view could have been altered by subdivisions across the water.

An additional 8,800 acres south of...Read the full story

August 31, 2004 | Comments Off

WA Department of Ecology Unveils Plan for Eliminating Toxic Flame Retardants

New study finds flame retardants building up in Puget Sound orcas

The Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology) yesterday revealed its preliminary draft plan for phasing out toxic flame retardants that have been building up in humans and the environment across Washington state. The plan recommends banning three forms of the flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (or PBDEs), including a complete ban on Penta and Octa-BDE, and a ban on Deca-BDE in consumer electronics (80% of the chemical's commercial use). Ecology issued the draft plan as sci...Read the full story

August 27, 2004 | Comments Off

Seas Seen as Viable Power Source

Undaunted by past failures, a new wave of entrepreneurs is seeking to generate electricity by channeling the energy of the Earth's oceans.

In experiments from Southern Australia to Scotland to Northern California, startup energy firms and researchers will be testing a host of technologies in the coming months aimed at generating electricity from the sea.

Among the most ambitious, planned for this fall, is a 486-ton wave turbine that converts wave motion into electricity and will be anchored off the coast of Australia, 150 miles south of Sydney. Energetech, the Australian com...Read the full story

August 26, 2004 | Comments Off

Stories of a Wildlife Rescue - "Agile Wings"

by Naturalist Kevin Mack from Earth Share of Washington member PAWS Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, published in the August 25, 2004 edition of Wild Again

Cooper's Hawks are extremely agile fliers. I have often been amazed by their ability to fly at top speed through what appear to be impenetrable tangles of branches. This ability serves them well as they pursue the small birds on which they prefer to prey. They frequently use the stealthy approach, appearing as if from out of nowhere to snatch an unwar...Read the full story

August 26, 2004 | Comments Off

Investment advice - Alternative energy industry finally ready to grow up

As anxiety over oil supplies mounts, big-name companies that can afford to be patient have been making significant investments in renewable power sources

When oil prices rise, public interest in alternative energy often does too. Tapping into renewable sources of power like wind, solar power and hydrogen, which are inexhaustible but far from inexpensive, seems to make more commercial sense when crude oil costs almost US$48 a barrel.

But the logic is evidently escaping Wall Street. Many companies involved in alternative energy have missed out on the rally tha...Read the full story

August 25, 2004 | Comments Off

Hanford reaches milestone in cleanup of tanks

Last of liquid waste removed from aging containers

RICHLAND -- Workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation yesterday celebrated the completion of a project to remove millions of gallons of liquid radioactive waste from old, leak-prone tanks.

State and federal officials called the achievement a major milestone in the decades-long cleanup of Hanford.

For 40 years, the Hanford reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons. Today, work there centers on a $50 billion to $60 billion cleanup, to be finished by 2035.

Much of the cleanup ...Read the full story

August 24, 2004 | Comments Off

Burning News

This story is courtesy of Matt Shoellhamer from Northwest Environment Watch

In case you've been living under a log, forest fires have been a serious problem lately. So far this year just over 6 million acres have burned nationwide, almost double the ten-year year-to-date average. Out of the 25 currently reported large fires in the US, 17 are burning in the Pacific Northwest, totaling 65,391 acres. The story north of the border has been even more dire. And forests fires aren't just frightening, they're expensive. From 1999-2003 the...Read the full story

August 23, 2004 | Comments Off

Pollutants cause huge rise in brain diseases

Scientists alarmed as number of cases triples in 20 years

The numbers of sufferers of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, have soared across the West in less than 20 years, scientists have discovered.

The alarming rise, which includes figures showing rates of dementia have trebled in men, has been linked to rises in levels of pesticides, industrial effluents, domestic waste, car exhausts and other pollutants, says a report in the journal Public Health.

In the late 1970s, there were around 3,000 deaths a year ...Read the full story

August 20, 2004 | Comments Off

Green buildings less expensive in the long-run

WASHINGTON -- "Green buildings" sound great. But can we afford them?

The benefits are impressive. Building green means seeking out solar or other renewable power sources, utilizing smart architectural design to maximize natural sunlight and ventilation, and selecting recycled and nontoxic construction materials.

If we ever hope to have less energy dependence in America, buildings must be a big part of the deal. The country has 5 million commercial structures, 76 million residential. They account for two-fifths of total national energy use. And we keep building them at a furi...Read the full story

August 19, 2004 | Comments Off

Earth Saving Tips - Environmentally Friendly Pest Control

Green tips courtesy of Earth Share of Washington member, Union of Concerned Scientists

True or false: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will not approve pesticides that can harm humans or the environment. Answer: False.

The EPA allows pesticides to be registered as long as there is no "unreasonable risk to man or the environment"--the operative word being "unreasonable". Conventional, EPA-approved pesticides can still pollute our air and water, harm wildlife (including endangered species), increase the risk for serious health problems in humans, and lead to ...Read the full story

August 18, 2004 | Comments Off

Study Finds Climate Shift Threatens California

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 16 - A scientific study released on Monday presents an alarming view of climate changes in California, finding that by the end of the century rising temperatures could lead to a sevenfold increase in heat-related deaths in Los Angeles and imperil the state's wine and dairy industries.

The study, published in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers the most detailed projection yet of changes in California as temperatures rise around the world because of building concentrations of heat-trapping gases.

Under one of t...Read the full story

August 17, 2004 | Comments Off

Pay as you drive insurance pilot program launched

Story courtesy of Northwest Environment Watch

If you drive 10,000 miles a year, aren't you less likely to have an accident than someone who drives 30,000 miles a year? And if so, shouldn't you pay less for insurance?

That's the idea behind pay-as-you-drive car insurance (PAYD), an approach that would make buying car insurance more like buying gasoline: the less you drive, the less you pay. But despite studies indicatin...Read the full story

August 16, 2004 | Comments Off

Businesses Start to Get Real About Global Warming

Consensus is growing among scientists, governments, and business that they must act fast to combat climate change. This has already sparked efforts to limit CO2 emissions. Many companies are now preparing for a carbon-constrained world

The idea that the human species could alter something as huge and complex as the earth's climate was once the subject of an esoteric scientific debate. But now even attorneys general more used to battling corporate malfeasance are taking up the cause. On July 21, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and lawyers from seven other sta...Read the full story

August 13, 2004 | Comments Off

Agency helping fight invaders from the sea

With a push of a laboratory button, Rusty Rodriguez sets in motion a shiny robotic arm, which silently dabs samples from a dish onto a microscope slide, possibly the world's most complicated and expensive eyedropper.

Fans of crime dramas would immediately identify the fancy gizmo as the first step in state-of-the-art DNA testing. But Rodriguez, a fisheries biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Seattle, is trying to catch a different kind of crook.

It is hoped that by cataloging the DNA of aquatic organisms big and small, from Puget Sound and some day the rest of...Read the full story

August 12, 2004 | Comments Off

A Spotlight on Young Environmental Activists

David Brower, a pioneer of the U.S. environmental movement, once said that his generation depended on young people "to shape us up before it's too late."

Though Brower -- former executive director of the Sierra Club, founder of Friends of the Earth and the Earth Island Institute -- passed away in 2000, his legacy lives on: He established the Brower Fund, which cultivates new environmental leaders through the annual Brower Youth Awards. Award winners -- aged 13 to 22 -- are chosen by a panel of activists organized by the Earth Island Institute. They get a $3,000 prize, and ongoing a...Read the full story

August 11, 2004 | Comments Off

Fate of state forests rests in Olympia

This Opinion article from the Seattle P-I was authored by guest columnists Eric de Place and Joan Crooks from Northwest Environment Watch and Washington Environmental Council, respectively.

Over the next year, a half-dozen people in Olympia will decide the fate of forests vast enough to fill Mount Rainier National Park nearly nine times over.

Washington's Board of Natural Resources, the governing body that sets policy for the state's forests, is currently setting ...Read the full story

August 10, 2004 | Comments Off

Court blocks cuts in Northwest forests

A federal appeals court shot down a series of timber cuts planned for national forests in the Pacific Northwest yesterday, ruling that regulations ostensibly protecting the spotted owl and other threatened species are "blatantly contradictory to Congress' express demand."

In a ruling covering 6.9 million acres but with potentially even greater implications, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it's not enough for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to merely keep threatened species from dying out.

The government also must protect natural areas deemed critical to the rec...Read the full story

August 9, 2004 | Comments Off

Elwha dam removal gets final go-ahead

PORT ANGELES -- After years of negotiations, the biggest dam-removal project in history is about to begin, promising to restore one of Washington's legendary salmon rivers.

Today, with Rep. Norm Dicks looking on, the City of Port Angeles, the National Park Service and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe will sign an agreement allowing the $182 million Elwha Restoration Project to go forward.

Congress approved the dam removals in 1992. Following an environmental review process, the project stalled as negotiations dragged on over federally funded mitigation of the project's impact o...Read the full story

August 6, 2004 | Comments Off

High mercury risk in fish raises alarm

'Problem a lot more widespread than we realized,' group says

Mercury is turning up in fish in Washington state's remote lakes and reservoirs at levels that could be harmful to women and children, and more than half the fish tested nationwide also are contaminated, according to a study by an environmental coalition.

The results highlight the need to take stronger action to reduce mercury pollution, particularly from coal-burning power plants, according to Clear the Air, a coalition pushing for more stringent mercury-emission standards.

In rural Washin...Read the full story

August 5, 2004 | Comments Off

Washington Farms Could Benefit From Renewable Fuel Standards

A new report shows agricultural organizations across the country are joining a growing trend to support renewable energy standards that help make energy a profitable crop for farmers and local communities. Renewable energy standards ensure that a minimum percentage of electricity and vehicle fuels are produced from renewable sources.

Larry Albin, former Washington State Director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency, supports a renewable fuels standard because it can help launch a new clean energy economy for Washington state farmers. Albin is leading the Straw-t...Read the full story

August 4, 2004 | Comments Off

Sea otters' revival in state waters brings new concerns

CAPE ALAVA, Clallam County -- It's a three-mile hike to this rugged headland on the Washington coast, and Mark Stafford starts scanning for sea otters as soon as he emerges from the rainforest to an ocean overlook.

With eyes sharpened by a decade of field experience, he can tell it's going to be a good day.

"There's two resting groups over there," he says, pointing at distant mats of kelp undulating in the swell.

To the unschooled observer, nothing in the water remotely resembles a furry mammal.

"They look like little logs," Stafford prompts, attaching his sp...Read the full story

August 3, 2004 | Comments Off