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Archive for March, 2014
Why maize for biogas should be banned
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 14th, 2014
Guardian: In principle it's a brilliant solution. Instead of leaving food waste and sewage and animal manure to decay in the open air, releasing methane which contributes to global warming, you can contain it, use micro-organisms to digest it, and capture the gas.
Biogas from anaerobic digestion could solve several problems at once. As well as a couple of million tonnes of sewage sludge, the UK produces between 16-18m tonnes of food waste, much of which still goes into landfill. Farms in this country generate...
Riverboats help get remote parts of Amazon online
Posted by SciDevNet: None Given on March 14th, 2014
SciDevNet: The world's second largest river is home to some of the most remote communities in the world, but thanks to a recent connection drive they are now increasingly benefiting from internet access.
The Amazon Connection project has brought 3G (third generation) internet access -- which can be used for voice and internet services -- to rural communities living along the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon River.
The project is a partnership between Swedish communications company Ericsson,...
Emails Link Duke Energy and North Carolina
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 14th, 2014
New York Times: Environmental regulators in North Carolina consulted Duke Energy last year before seeking to exclude citizen activists from talks to settle charges that the utility’s coal ash ponds had polluted the state’s groundwater, newly released email exchanges among the regulators indicated on Thursday. Duke officials and the state later settled the charges by proposing a fine and a requirement that Duke study the potential for further pollution before offering solutions. That agreement collapsed in February...
More quakes reported near fracking well
Posted by Columbus Dispatch: Will Drabold on March 14th, 2014
Columbus Dispatch: Geologists say there were 12 earthquakes near an active fracking well in northeastern Ohio — four last week and eight this week.
The earthquakes all have similar wavelengths, said Won Young-Kim, a senior scientist who runs a regional earthquake monitoring network at Columbia University in New York.
He said last week’s epicenters appear to be within a mile of the largest — a magnitude 3.0 earthquake — that occurred on Monday morning near Lowellville in Mahoning County and not far from dozens...
New Hampshire Town Shows Support Potential Tar Sands Pipeline
Posted by Vermont Public Radio: Charlotte Albright on March 14th, 2014
Vermont Public Radio: At several town meetings held this past week in New Hampshire, voters weighed in on non-binding resolutions opposing the flow of tar sands oil through their communities.
But the town of Lancaster, on the Vermont border, sent a resounding message of support for a pipeline company some worry will carry tar sands oil from Canada to Maine.
The two companies that own the pipelines that now carry crude oil west from Portland to Quebec insist they have no immediate plans to reverse that flow and change...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on New Hampshire Town Shows Support Potential Tar Sands PipelineSenate Committee Debates Whether Keystone XL Is in the U.S. National Interest
Posted by Huffington Post: Kate Sheppard on March 14th, 2014
Huffington Post: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing Thursday to consider whether approval of Keystone XL, the proposed 1,660-mile pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Texas, is in the national interest of the United States.
The State Department released its final environmental impact statement (FEIS) on Keystone in January, moving the decision on the pipeline into the hands of Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama. The administration is expected to make a national-interest determination...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Senate Committee Debates Whether Keystone XL Is in the U.S. National InterestTwo Months After W. Va.’s Chemical Spill, Residents Still Concerned About Water Safety
Posted by Rolling Stone: Heather Rogers on March 14th, 2014
Rolling Stone: Sharon Satterfield, a grandmother of six in Charleston, West Virginia, doesn't touch the water. "It's still not all right," she says, standing in her son's modest ranch-style house, almost two months after a toxic chemical spill shut down the drinking water supply of 300,000 residents in and around the state capitol -- one of the largest incidents of drinking water contamination in U.S. history. At the time, state authorities banned the use of tap water for everything except flushing toilets and...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Two Months After W. Va.’s Chemical Spill, Residents Still Concerned About Water SafetyPoll: Global warming no big threat USA life
Posted by USA Today: Michael Winter on March 14th, 2014
USA Today: Though two-thirds of Americans believe global warming is happening or will happen during their lifetimes, only about one-third see it as a serious threat to their way of life, a new Gallup Poll reports.
The wide perceptual gap has existed since Gallup first asked the question 17 years ago, but it has narrowed slightly. Today, 36% believe that global warming will seriously affect how they live, up from 25% in 1997.
At the same time, the percentage of people who do not see global warming hampering...
Court Upholds Guidelines to Protect Fish
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 14th, 2014
Reuters: An appeals court on Thursday sided with environmentalists over growers and upheld federal guidelines that limit water diversions in order to protect delta smelt. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a lower court should not have overturned recommendations that the state reduce exports of water to the south from the north. The reduced exports leave more water in the Sacramento Delta for the finger-size delta smelt and have been blamed for exacerbating the effects of...
New Mexico nuclear repository mishap leaves Los Alamos waste quandary
Posted by Reuters: Joseph J. Kolb on March 13th, 2014
Reuters: The Los Alamos National Laboratory is evaluating how to meet a June deadline to permanently discard plutonium-tainted junk in light of a prolonged shutdown of a New Mexico nuclear waste dump after an accident there last month, a lab official said.
Los Alamos, one of the leading U.S. nuclear weapons labs, has been forced to halt shipments of its radioactive refuse some 300 miles across the state to the nation's only underground nuclear repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on New Mexico nuclear repository mishap leaves Los Alamos waste quandary