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Target, Kmart and Toys-R-Us settle lead claims
Los Angeles Times
11/06/2009
Three major retailers have agreed to pay nearly half a million dollars to settle a lawsuit stemming from the companies' sale of toys containing excessive amounts of lead, the California attorney general's office said Thursday.
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Climate change: Threat or opportunity?
Washington Post
11/06/2009
A curious debate has broken out among American environmental groups, as the Senate balkily starts to focus on the threat of climate change. Is this really the time to talk about shrinking glaciers?
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Takeout, eco-style
Ashland Daily Tidings
11/05/2009
An Ashland High School graduate has created a reusable takeout container that is being used at 200 workplaces and universities nationwide - including Southern Oregon University. Audrey Copeland, 24, created the Eco-Takeout clamshell container after she was inspired by a college environmental studies project.
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Democrats push climate bill without GOP
New York Times
11/05/2009
Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee pushed through a climate bill on Thursday without any debate or participation by Republicans. The move suggests that President Obama and bill supporters will have serious problems assembling the votes needed to enact it when it comes to the Senate floor, probably not before next year.
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Baucus votes against climate change bill
Missoulian
11/06/2009
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., was the only Democrat on Thursday to vote against a climate change bill that Democrats rammed through a Senate committee - but said he still supports the effort to limit greenhouse gases and pass a bill.
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Views: Energy initiative should spark broader dialogue
Tri-City Herald
11/06/2009
Promoting clean energy development in the Mid-Columbia region is a natural fit, but we need a broader conversation about our economic future. That includes serious talks about potential uses of those parts of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation that are cleaned up and no longer are needed by the federal government.
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Bacteria may gobble toxics at military test sites
Toronto Globe and Mail
11/05/2009
Bacteria with the potential to eat military testing sites clean are going under the microscope at the University of British Columbia.
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'Treebates' help stormwater programs branch out
Portland Tribune
11/04/2009
A rebate to plant trees? That's the city of Portland's plan to encourage property owners to plant more trees, which help suck up hundreds of gallons of rainwater every year, reducing the amount that flows into storm drains and, eventually, into local rivers and streams.
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Constantine wins King County exec
Seattle Times
11/04/2009
Riding a late-breaking wave of liberal support, Dow Constantine - a pro-abortion-rights, pro-labor, pro-transit Democrat - handily defeated Susan Hutchison on Tuesday in a rancorous race for King County executive. Now he has to clean up the county's budget, which is projected to face a $110 million shortfall over the next two years.
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Al Gore is my co-pilot
Los Angeles Times
11/03/2009
We're used to GPS car units telling us where to go. Now they also have the ability to urge us to be more eco-friendly drivers. So, would this be a handy service, or would it be more like having a grumpy Al Gore in the passenger seat?
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Beauty of a bioswale
Vancouver Columbian
11/03/2009
A few months ago, a good-lookin' bioswale was a tangled forest of blackberries and scrubby trees gone out of control. Subdivision owners didn't realize that maintaining the stormwater facility - vital to filtering the dirty water draining off their streets into streams and groundwater - was their responsibility until a sternly worded letter arrived in their mailboxes.
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Report: Toxic trinkets put kids at risk
CBC BC
11/03/2009
Tests are turning up dangerous levels of lead in children's jewelry and Canada's federal government can't compel companies to recall the toxic trinkets, an auditor's report reveals.
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Consumer group finds elevated BPA levels in food
Los Angeles Times
11/02/2009
A consumer advocacy group's analysis of canned goods has found measurable levels of the chemical additive bisphenol A (BPA) across a range of foods, including some that were labeled "BPA free." Children eating multiple servings of some of the tested food could get doses of BPA "near levels that have caused adverse effects in several animal studies."
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Coal-friendly stream buffer rule may take another year
Seattle Times
11/02/2009
The Obama administration says reversing a last-minute Bush-era surface mining regulation criticized as too friendly to coal companies is going to take at least another year.
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Clorox to stop using, transporting chlorine in US
San Francisco Chronicle
11/02/2009
Laws already bar transporting toxic materials, including substances that can vaporize, such as chlorine, through large cities.
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Contamination at Umatilla clouds land-use issue
Oregonian
11/01/2009
With the Army on track to destroy the last of the deadly mustard agents at its Umatilla Chemical Depot in 2011 and return the sprawling property to public use, developers from ports to tribes are drawing up plans. But contamination and unexploded weapons could delay any transfer, possibly for years.
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Crews work to save birds after San Fran oil spill
San Francisco Chronicle
11/02/2009
Efforts to limit the damage from Friday's fuel spill in the San Francisco Bay focused Sunday on the Alameda shoreline, where rescue workers tried to save oiled birds that had beached themselves and painstakingly removed balls of sticky tar.
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US lags with patchwork approach to e-waste
Scientific American
10/30/2009
One of the world's largest producers of electronic refuse, the US imposes no federal restrictions on what materials can be used to make electronic devices or how they can be discarded, leaving states to lead.
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Views: A chemical we can live without
Oregonian
10/29/2009
All of us carry around unwanted harmful substances in our bodies. They come from mercury in our fish, stain repellants in carpet, flame retardants in sofa cushions, phthalates in our shampoo, and bisphenol A in our children's sippy cups.
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How can Seattle make TOD work?
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
10/28/2009
The debut of Sound Transit's light rail line through Seattle already has been the impetus for plans to build new clusters of high-density development around transit stops. To make it happen, officials will have to depoliticize decisions on transit, find new funding solutions and work more effectively between transportation and land-use silos, according to a new report.
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EPA pushes strict greenhouse gas rule
Seattle Times
10/28/2009
As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee took up its climate bill for the first time Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed requiring thousands of greenhouse-gas emitters to install stricter pollution-control technology.
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Economics of climate change move to the fore
Washington Post
10/28/2009
For a decade or more, the political battle over climate change has been fought largely over the validity of the science of global warming. But Tuesday, as the Environment and Public Works Committee opened its first hearing on a Senate climate change bill, those concerns took a rear seat to a different issue: the potential economic impact of climate change.
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Hanford's new cleanup schedule up for public comment
Oregon Public Broadcasting
10/26/2009
The US Department of Energy is collecting comments over the next few weeks on its new timeline for cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
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Study makes Hanford recommendations
Tri-City Herald
10/27/2009
Ground work for significant Hanford cleanup is laid out for decades to come in a draft version of a massive new environmental study of Hanford released in the Tri-Cities on Monday.
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Thousands rally for action on climate
Vancouver Sun
10/25/2009
About 5,000 people, including a shouting, sign-waving group of secondary school students, demonstrated on Vancouver's Cambie Bridge as part of the International Day of Climate Change. They were among millions of people around the world who took part in weekend demonstrations demanding government action on climate change.
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