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Archive for January, 2015
Republicans, court ship oil pipeline decision back to Obama
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 10th, 2015
Associated Press: Congressional Republicans and Nebraska's Supreme Court have shipped the Keystone XL oil pipeline project right back to a reluctant President Barack Obama.
Obama is so loath to make the call that deliberations have entered their sixth year, nearly as long as he has held office.
He has blamed the delays on bureaucratic formalities and parochial issues in Nebraska, even when skeptics claimed that the politics of Obama's re-election race in 2012 were a more accurate explanation.
That campaign...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Republicans, court ship oil pipeline decision back to ObamaWatch Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Blast the Keystone Bill
Posted by Moyers and Company: Katie Rose Quandt on January 10th, 2015
Moyers and Company: As expected, a bill approving the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline sailed through the House of Representatives for the tenth time on Friday. The bill is predicted to pass the Senate next week, but Republicans may not have enough votes to override the veto Obama has promised.
On Wednesday we got a preview of the Senate debate when the Energy and Natural Resources Committee met to vote on the bill. Before the vote, which passed 13-9, Democrats used the opportunity to express their environmental...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Watch Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Blast the Keystone BillKeystone XL: US House approves oil pipeline again
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 10th, 2015
Guardian: The House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Canada to the US, despite a renewed pledge by the White House to veto the legislation.
Hours before the House vote, Nebraska’s highest court tossed out a lawsuit challenging the pipeline’s route, an obstacle the White House said it needed removed to make a decision.
Keystone XL has been one of the biggest areas of conflict between President Barack Obama and a Congress...
Nebraska Court Upholds Keystone XL Pipeline Route
Posted by Environment News Service: None Given on January 9th, 2015
Environment News Service: TransCanada`s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline now has a legal route through Nebraska that would take the controversial pipeline through the sensitive Sand Hills region and across the Ogallala aquifer.
The Nebraska Supreme Court Friday reversed a lower court decision that struck down the 2012 law used to approve the route across the state for the $8 billion proposed pipeline that would carry diluted bitumen from Alberta`s tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
The Nebraska Supreme...
A Year After West Virginia Chemical Spill, Some Signs of Safer Water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2015
National Geographic: A year ago Friday, Rebecca Roth experienced what she calls one of the "worst fears" she has known as a mother.
A large-scale chemical spill on the Elk River near her home in Charleston, West Virginia, had unleashed an unknown amount of a coal-washing agent, possibly poisoning the local water supply. Roth, who had a two-year-old daughter and was then pregnant, was afraid she "could not keep her children safe and healthy."
For weeks, nearly 300,000 people around Charleston, the state capital,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on A Year After West Virginia Chemical Spill, Some Signs of Safer WaterWe can fix Gulf dead zone — for $2.7 billion a year
Posted by Grist: None Given on January 9th, 2015
Grist: Every year, millions of tons of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers wash down the Mississippi River and out into the Gulf of Mexico. There, instead of fertilizing corn, they fertilize the growth of algae, which blooms extravagantly and, in turn, creates a massive boom in microorganisms. There are so many aquatic microorganisms reproducing, eating algae and respiring at once, that they literally use up all the oxygen in the water. Anything else that needs to breathe oxygen - all the other marine life...
Nebraska Supreme Court Clears Way For Keystone XL Pipeline
Posted by National Public Radio: Krishnadev Calamur on January 9th, 2015
National Public Radio: Nebraska's Supreme Court, in a split decision, cleared the the way for the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline's route.
Four of the seven judges ruled that landowners who challenged the state law giving Nebraska's governor authority to approve the pipeline's route have standing to challenge the constitutionality of the law. The same judges also found that a lower court correctly ruled the state law as unconstitutional. But Nebraska's Constitution requires a supermajority of five to strike down...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Nebraska Supreme Court Clears Way For Keystone XL PipelineNebraska court approves route of controversial Keystone XL pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2015
Guardian: A Nebraska court has signed off on the proposed route for the Keystone XL, bringing the controversial project a crucial step closer to reality after six years of legal and political fighting.
The Nebraska supreme court said the state’s governor, Dave Heineman, had indeed acted within his authority in January 2013 when he approved the pipeline’s route.
A lower court had ruled that Heineman should have consulted Nebraska’s public service commission, an obscure body which regulates grain bins,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Nebraska court approves route of controversial Keystone XL pipelineBrazil water supply, crops still risk year after epic drought
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2015
Reuters: Southeastern Brazil is getting some rainfall a year after a record drought started, but not enough to eliminate worries about an energy crisis, water shortages or another season of damaged export crops, meteorologists said.
Record-high temperatures and the most severe drought in at least 80 years punished southeastern Brazil last year, a region accounting for 60 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Despite rain in recent weeks, the country's climate challenges could threaten a tepid...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Brazil water supply, crops still risk year after epic droughtIntegrated farming: The only way to survive a rising sea
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2015
Inter Press Service: When the gentle clucking grows louder, 50-year-old Sukomal Mandal calls out to his wife, who is busy grinding ingredients for a fish curry. She gets up to thrust leafy green stalks through the netting of a coop and two-dozen shiny hens rush forward for lunch.
In the Sundarbans, where the sea is slowly swallowing up the land, Mandal's half-hectare farm is an oasis of prosperity.
The elderly couple resides in the Biswanathpur village located in what has now been declared a UNESCO World Heritage...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Integrated farming: The only way to survive a rising sea