Editor's Take: October 12, 2009
Erroll Ozgencil, flickr
Green thumbprints
Homeowners with green thumbs are slowing polluted stormwater around older homes with rain gardens, building engineers are experimenting with green walls, and grape growers are capitalizing on climate shifts that now make it possible to make good wine in Western Washington. Don't forget to share Sightline Daily with friends and win a free trip to Seattle!
Editor's Top Picks
Your editor today is Jennifer Langston | View All Today's News
Rain gardens? Kitsap Co. hopes they're pouring
Kitsap Sun
10/12/2009
Kitsap County wants to help more people install rain gardens, landscaping that uses vegetation to soak up runoff from impervious surfaces before it drains back into a waterway. In particular, it can help owners of older homes deal with the frustration of poor planning for stormwater runoff.
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Where the housing boom - and the sidewalks - end
Bend Bulletin
10/12/2009
What's it like living in a development full of vacant lots? At Fieldstone Crossing in Redmond OR, residents have seen home prices drop to half what they paid. But many are staying positive, citing the views and the space to play.
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A glass of wine with your global warming?
Seattle Times
10/12/2009
On an early autumn morning at the top of the Olympic Peninsula, Tom Miller is doing something that would have been difficult, if not impossible, 50 years ago: harvesting grapes to make wine that people actually want to buy. A small explosion of Western Washington grape growers are benefiting from small climate shifts that may reshape the global wine-growing map.
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OR dam's demise lets the Rogue River run
Los Angeles Times
10/11/2009
Savage Rapids Dam in Southern Oregon, the cause of fights and lawsuits for years, is finally torn away, as across the US the era of dam-building of the early 20th century has given way to a new era of dam breaching.
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In BC, one less worry about health care
Boise Idaho Statesman
10/11/2009
In most respects, the residents of Creston, British Columbia - a rural farming community about 35 miles north of Bonners Ferry - are little different from their Idaho neighbors. One major difference, though, is they rarely seem to worry about how to pay for their health care needs.
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What's up, Doc? Hanford's radioactive rabbit poop
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
10/11/2009
In late September, a helicopter hovered 50 feet above the Hanford nuclear reservation, methodically hunting for radioactive poop that critters with a taste for salt spread. Information on the amount of discovered radioactive scat was not made available, but the poop cleanup began this week.
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Green walls taking root
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
10/12/2009
The next big thing in green building design might be to turn an existing idea on its side. A financial services company recently installed a green wall the size of two tennis courts on one side of its headquarters.
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Obesity links spur limits on CA minimarts
Los Angeles Times
10/12/2009
Proposed rules that would limit new convenience stores in South Los Angeles, an outgrowth of last year's city restrictions on new fast-food restaurants, are prompted by links found by researchers between snack foods and obesity in poor communities.
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Life after the bubble
Oregonian
10/11/2009
A year since the peak of the great economic panic, much of the financial sector has regained an uneasy equilibrium. But the unprecedented transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the financial industry has done little to improve the prospects of millions of individual Northwesterners who have lost their jobs, their homes and much of their wealth. Even their sense of security is gone.
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Views: How traffic jams help the environment
Wall Street Journal
10/11/2009
By requiring car drivers to pay a fee to drive in a city at peak hours, congestion pricing reduces traffic and raises money that can be used to support public transit - both worthy goals. Yet traffic jams, if they're managed well, can actually be good for the environment. They maintain a level of frustration that turns drivers into subway riders or pedestrians.
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