Current Stories
Editor's Top Picks
Anxiety ebbs over Green River flooding
Seattle Times
11/06/2009
The odds of severe flooding in the Green River Valley have dropped substantially due to repairs on the Howard Hanson Dam. But that relief was followed by barely contained frustration that months of high anxiety have come at great psychic and financial expense - and that the wait for a permanent fix could sap the region further even if a flood never comes.
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Canada plans inquiry into disappearance of BC sockeye
Vancouver Sun
11/06/2009
Canada will stage a judicial inquiry into the collapse of sockeye salmon runs on the Fraser River, which have been in a two-decade decline and hit a 50-year low in summer 2009. It has prompted concerns that sockeye are heading for a population failure on the scale of the collapse of Atlantic cod.
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Views: Scientist stakes reputation on salmon plan
Idaho Statesman
11/05/2009
The Obama administration and the region’s federal dam managers are pinning their hopes to the scientific reputation of Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a marine ecologist from Oregon State University. And it’s a good call.
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Views: A CA water deal at long last
San Francisco Chronicle
11/06/2009
For decades, California's water wars have flared unabated - cities versus farms, north against south - while half measures left the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta drained and decimated. A solution involving all sides was only a dream. Until now.
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California water overhaul caps use
New York Times
11/04/2009
Prompted by a protracted drought -- which has reduced water supply, harmed the fishing industry, and contributed to crop loss -- environmentalists and agricultural interests have agreed to broad concessions in a package of water legislation approved Wednesday.
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Storm drains seek adoption
Seattle Weekly
11/04/2009
Government entities are cutting services, and the city of Seattle is applying that ethos to storm drains and sewers, just as they're becoming leaf-clogged and prone to flooding in our typically damp autumn weather.
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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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Views: Smart, green and humane
Vancouver Sun
11/04/2009
According to the latest UN population projections, the next 40 years will see an almost doubling of urban populations. This growth will offer both unprecedented challenges and great opportunities to cities around the world.
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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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BC natives claim landmark fish victory
Vancouver Sun
11/03/2009
The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council claimed a legal victory Tuesday after the BC Supreme Court affirmed the right of aboriginals to sell the seafood they harvest. The court gave the aboriginal people of the west coast of Vancouver Island the right to harvest and sell fish and other seafood in their territory, although the right is not unrestricted.
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Expert: Impact of BC hydro projects on rivers unknown
Vancouver Sun
11/04/2009
British Columbia is decades behind other North American jurisdictions when it comes to confronting the impacts that hydroelectric development may have on the environment, a green energy conference heard Tuesday in Vancouver.
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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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Radio: The Perils Of Over-Fishing
NPR
11/02/2009
Daniel Pauly, a professor at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia, warns that the global fishing industry has drastically depleted the number of fish in the oceans
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Local waters may become "Salish Sea"
KPLU
10/30/2009
The Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Georgia Strait are parts of a connected marine ecosystem. Now, a Washington board is likely to approve a new name for these inland waterways: The Salish Sea.
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US getting better at conserving water
Seattle Times
10/30/2009
Americans are using less water per person now than they have since the mid-1950s, thanks to water-saving technologies and a push to safeguard dwindling supplies. Experts said it was particularly welcome news in the burgeoning West.
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Report: US water use down
Oregonian
10/29/2009
America is using less water now than it did in 1975 and 1980, when water use peaked.
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Federal dollars for Puget Sound, national forests
Kitsap Sun
10/29/2009
Congress will provide $50 million next year for the cleanup and restoration of Puget Sound, an increase from $20 million in the current year's budget.
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'It's like an oil spill, without the oil'
KPLU
10/27/2009
It's like an oil spill, but without the oil. That's how wildlife rescue people are describing an unusual red tide along the Northwest coast. The algal bloom is causing hundreds upon hundreds of dead or dying seabirds to wash up on coastal beaches. Today, the deluge of distress shows signs of tapering off.
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CA's Trinity River salmon threatened
Eureka Times-Standard
10/27/2009
The US Bureau of Reclamation is asking for a decades-long extension of state water permits on the Trinity River to give it more time to find uses for the water -- a move river advocates say could threaten the water available for salmon and steelhead.
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Delta water plan emerges for Californians to view
San Francisco Chronicle
10/27/2009
Strict conservation, new dams and a peripheral canal are all on the table after six weeks of closed-door negotiations to solve the state's water crisis and restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ecosystem.
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Portland harbor contamination poses risk
Oregonian
10/25/2009
Decades of industrial pollution in the Portland Harbor Superfund site have left high levels of contaminants in river sediment, an exhaustive survey concludes, posing risks to wildlife, fish and humans who eat fish from the nine-mile stretch of the Willamette River.
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Dead-zone microbe thriving off BC coast
Victoria Times Colonist
10/25/2009
There is life in the planet's expanding dead zones, say researchers, who have uncovered a remarkable microbe thriving in toxic waters off the BC coast. The bacteria takes up carbon dioxide like a plant, consumes sulphide that is deadly to most other lifeforms, and exhales nitrous oxide which is a potent greenhouse gas.
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California's water wars
The Economist
10/25/2009
From Australia to Israel, parched places all over the world are now looking to California to see whether, and how, it solves one of the most intractable problems of thirsty civilisations in dry regions.
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Views: A Tale of Two Rivers
Seattle Times
10/26/2009
Call it a tale of two rivers. On the one hand, there is the Klamath, where after decades of battling over water, salmon, jobs and livelihoods, stakeholders have come to an agreement to put the river and its communities on a path to recovery and remove four outdated dams. On the other hand, there is the Northwest's Columbia-Snake River basin.
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A big payoff for fish
Medford Mail-Tribune
10/26/2009
A contraption of plywood and metal strips is helping do what a dam removal and a new bridge so far has failed to accomplish on their own - turn little Lazy Creek in east Medford, OR into an urban steelhead nursery.
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