Daily Score Blog

Legislation was just proposed in Olympia that takes an important step towards solving our stormwater woes. House Bill 3181 and Senate Bill 6851, called the "Clean Water Act of 2010," would boost a tax that's already added to petroleum, pesticides, and other chemicals that are fouling waterways from the Spokane River to Lake Chelan to the Duwamish River.

The tax hike is expected to raise about $225 million more a year. It would increase the current 0.7 percent tax for toxic chemicals to 2 percent. That might add a few pennies to a gallon of gas (see a great analysis of the tax in this post by Eric de Place), as well as a slight bump to pesticides and other dangerous chemicals that are covered by the state's Model Toxics Control Act.

The money collected would be used by cities, counties, and the state Department of Transportation to pay for projects that reduce and clean stormwater, and for other environmental projects. It also makes low-impact development -- the smartest, cheapest, and best way to deal with stormwater -- a priority for a portion of the funds raised.

Raising this tax is a well-reasoned strategy for addressing the state's sizable stormwater problems. Here's why. 

Northwest lawmakers finally appear swayed by the mounting evidence showing that bisphenol A, or BPA, is a threat to human health and that its use should be curtailed. BPA is a key ingredient in hard, clear, glasslike plastics, such as baby bottles.

Oregon lawmakers today began considering a ban on BPA in products used by children under the age of three, including baby bottles and sippy cups and the lining of baby-food containers.

Washington lawmakers are pursuing a similar BPA ban. The Senate last week approved a bill barring BPA in kid's food items alone, while a measure approved by the House also included a ban on BPA in sports bottles. Now all the two chambers have to do is reconcile their differences. (Governor Gregoire is expected to sign the bill.)

Canada last year decided to ban BPA. The government is considering further ways to limit its use.

Oregon and Washington both have pursued limits on BPA in the past. So what's changed in 2010? In January, the US Food and Drug Administration reversed its stance that BPA was safe to people at current levels of exposure. It now has adopted an opinion in line with the National Toxicology Program (a division of the National Institutes of Health).

The National Toxicology Program way back in September 2008 ruled that there was reason to be concerned about BPA harming human health -- namely people's behavior, brain, and prostate gland -- and particularly when it came to exposure to fetuses, babies, and children. Other research links early exposure to the chemical with obesity and reproductive problems later in life.

$60 million isn't chump change, but it didn't get much notice last month when the state released new cost estimates for Seattle's deep-bore tunnel. According to the revised numbers, the deep-bore tunnel cost projections have already risen by $60 million -- which works out to 3.2 percent. And that's before builders have broken ground.

What was sold to the public -- and approved by the legislature -- as a $1.9 billion tunneling project is now projected to cost $1.96 billion. If that increase seems miniscule, it's only because the scale of the project is so huge. Consider:

• $60 million is more than the entire budget shortfall for the city of Seattle.
• If Seattle residents picked up the tab directly, it would work out to roughly $400 for a family of four.

And remember, these figures are not for the cost of the entire deep-bore tunnel project, but just for the latest, seemingly tiny, cost increase of about 3 percent. And it's troubling, especially in light of the somewhat perplexing attitude that state leaders have taken so far.

"I don't think we're going to have overruns." -- State House Transportation Chairwoman Judy Clibborn quoted in the Seattle Times on April 24, 2009.

"There won't be any cost overruns." -- State Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond quoted in the Seattle Times on April 29, 2009.

"We don't envision any cost overruns on this project." -- Pearse Edwards, spokesman for Gov. Chris Gregoire quoted in the Seattle Times on April 22, 2009.

So now that there is a $60 million cost increase, will state leaders renew their pledges that costs will not rise further?

Editor's Note: Anna wrote this post (and several others) before leaving on maternity leave. She gave birth to a healthy baby girl in December.

To eat fish, or not? If you’re pregnant, nursing, or even thinking about becoming pregnant, it’s a Catch-22. Seafood is the best possible source of the long-chain omega-3 fatty acid DHA, which is critical for a baby's brain and eye development, both in utero and in the “fourth trimester,” while the baby is nursing and the brain is still developing. But there’s a catch: seafood contains contaminants that can be harmful to babies—particularly methylmercury, which can harm the developing nervous system, causing subtle deficits in language, memory, motor skills, perception, and behavior.

So for a pregnant woman, the decision whether to eat fish is now freighted with consequences.  Eat fish, and you're putting your baby's brain at risk of from toxic contaminants.  Skip fish, and you're denying your baby's brain of crucial nourishment. 

Pregnant and nursing women never asked to make this choice. 

So what kinds of plants might a former coal plant burn? The utility is looking at using wood pellets that are used in home heating stoves, which might optimistically replace 20 percent of the coal Boardman now consumes. The rest of the fuel, PGE hopes, might come from plants that are roasted at high temperatures until they resemble something like charcoal.

It's still an experimental technology. And it remains to be seen whether PGE could get its hands on enough plant material to fuel a 585 MW power plant (about 15 percent of the energy serving its current customers.) One of the leading prospects is a tall fast-growing cane called Arundo donax that's also used to make reeds for oboes and clarinets. It's partial to riverbanks, sucks up a lot of water, and has become a nettlesome invasive weed in other states. But, according to the Oregonian story, the utility believes it could be farmed safely.

Still, Oregon farmers would apparently need to grow about 90,000 irrigated acres of the giant cane to serve Boardman's needs. That's more than all the irrigated farmland planted in food crops today in the northeastern Oregon county where the power plant is located. Needless to say, that’s a lot of giant cane, which raises big questions about whether Oregon's farmers would embrace a new crop on such a large scale.

But that’s just one of many puzzles that the utility, regulators, power consumers and other stakeholders will be working through in the next few months, as Oregon's Public Utility Commission decides the fate of PGE's proposed long-range power plan.

Arundo donax photo courtesty of flickr user Valter Jacinto via the Creative Commons license.

Read more about the Northwest's energy future in Sightline's special series: The Dirt on Coal.

For years, environmentalists have touted "low-impact development" -- letting soil and vegetation soak up heavy rains, rather than channeling storm runoff into gutters and sewers -- as the best solution for stormwater. But as it turns out, LID has picked up a whole host of new fans: smart economists, developers, builders, and government regulators are now singing LID's praises as well.

The fundamental principle of low-impact development is that it's better -- both for people's pocketbooks and for streams -- to prevent storm runoff than it is to treat it. That means building green roofs and rain gardens, installing rain barrels and cisterns, and using porous concrete and pavers. The conventional alternative is building an elaborate and expensive system of concrete storm sewers that funnel stormwater, as well as the trash and toxics it picks up, into streams, lakes, and bays.  

And recent studies from around North America show that the principle has promise: real-world evidence shows that LID is, in fact, a cheaper way to handle stormwater, and it does so without the flooding risk or the damage to marine life, that the conventional approach to stormwater often carries with it.

Take, for example, this 2005 study by researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles. They point to a previous study, which had estimated that it would cost a whopping $284 billion, and require building 65 drinking-water treatment plants, to clean the filthy torrents streaming off of LA's highways and rooftops. But the researchers concluded that LID, coupled with related strategies, could deal with stormwater in the sprawling metropolis at a cost of $3 billion to $7 billion -- treating stormwater at pennies on the dollar, compared with the conventional approach.

Seattle Public Utilities has done some number crunching of its own. The utility found that using LID, or what they call "natural drainage systems," to retrofit streets in need of stormwater treatment that the city spent $325,000 per block, compared to $425,000 if they had built traditional storm-drain-and-pipes infrastructure. 

Editor's Note: Anna wrote this post (and several others) before she left on maternity leave. She gave birth to a healthy baby girl in December.

When Fit Pregnancy Magazine set out to rank the best cities in America to have a baby, they found that Northwest cities did surprisingly well: they ranked Portland number one, while Seattle landed the number four spot. (Minneapolis came in second, San Fran third.)

So why did Portland take the cake? The Oregon metropolis does well on healthy food, walkable neighborhoods, lots of birth options, and solid breastfeeding numbers.

Here’s the rundown:

I was in Olympia again yesterday tracking the progress of the Energy Efficiency Financing Act, a bill being considered by the Washington State Legislature. The legislation would make it easier for local governments to create innovative financing for energy efficiency retrofits in the residential sector.

Improving financing options would stoke demand for retrofits and lead to more jobs in the energy efficiency sector.  One of the examples I have used is Clean Energy Works in Portland. Here is a video created by Green For All highlighting Clean Energy Works' recent progress on green collar job creation.

The prospects for current legislation in Washington are promising and we will continue to keep an eye on the progress of that bill and others affecting energy efficiency financing.