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Archive for May, 2015
Crews work to assess, control Santa Barbara-area oil spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 22nd, 2015
LA Times: Efforts to clean the crude-stained Santa Barbara coastline ramped up Thursday as scientists, government officials and workers tried to get a handle on the size, extent and environmental impact of Tuesday's oil spill.
Officials responding to the spill, which sent an estimated 21,000 gallons of oil into the water near Refugio State Beach, asked for patience as the massive cleanup effort turned into a 24-hour operation with some 300 workers and 18 boats.
Investigators were still working Thursday...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Crews work to assess, control Santa Barbara-area oil spillNovelists, Directors Respond as ‘Water Wars’ Loom
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 22nd, 2015
Inter Press Service: Item: In a recent blog post at the New Yorker magazine, staff writer Dana Goodyear surveys the current drought impacting California and writes: “It’s hard to escape the feeling we are living a cli-fi novel’s Chapter One.” Item: Edward L. Rubin, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville, surveys the ongoing California drought in an oped at Salon magazine, writing: “As the California drought enters its fourth year, it is threatening to strangle the splendid irrigation system that...
Mandatory Water Usage Cuts Loom in California Even for Those with Senior Water Rights
Posted by LA Times: Bettina Boxall and Geoffrey Mohan on May 22nd, 2015
LA Times: In the 1976-77 drought, the state ordered growers with some of the oldest water rights in California to stop pumping from many rivers and streams. Now, in a sign of the spreading pain of another punishing drought, regulators are preparing to do the same thing.
The State Water Resources Control Board halted diversions last summer by many so-called junior rights holders - those whose claims date back only as far as 1914. In the last month, the board ordered some 9,000 junior rights holders in the...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Mandatory Water Usage Cuts Loom in California Even for Those with Senior Water RightsOil Again Fouling California Coast Near Site of Historic Spill
Posted by New York Times: Adam Nagourney, Richard PÉREZ-PEÑA and Clifford Krauss on May 22nd, 2015
New York Times: Refugio State Beach is one of the treasures of the California coast, a little-known curve of beach in the hills that on weekends like this one — Memorial Day — would be sprinkled with people who made their way up from Santa Barbara, about 20 miles down the Pacific Coast. But not on Thursday. Refugio was filled not with vacationers, but with teams of workers in white coveralls and masks, scooping up sand fouled with oil that had washed in after a pipeline broke earlier this week. The smell of oil,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Oil Again Fouling California Coast Near Site of Historic SpillTexas, Oklahoma Drought ‘All But Over’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 22nd, 2015
Climate Central: While the Western drought has its claws firmly dug in, the nearly five-year drought that has gripped Oklahoma and Texas is on its last legs, thanks to recent torrents of rain, government climate scientists said Thursday.
"I think the Texas drought is pretty much all but over,' Victor Murphy, climate services program manager for the National Weather Service's Southern Region, said during a press teleconference.
The last vestiges will likely disappear over the next few months as forecasters with...
Canada becomes full member Thirty Meter Telescope project
Posted by KHON: None Given on May 22nd, 2015
KHON: Canada is the most recent nation to affirm its commitment to the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and was voted in as a full member of the project by the TMT International Observatory (TIO) Board of Directors at a recent board meeting.
The country joins California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the science institutions of China, India, and Japan as partners in the TMT project.
TIO is the nonprofit limited liability company founded in May 2014 to carry out the construction...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Canada becomes full member Thirty Meter Telescope projectThe fight to build Earth’s most powerful telescope on sacred ground
Posted by Business Insider: None Given on May 22nd, 2015
Business Insider: The summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii is arguably the most perfect spot in the world for a telescope. But some native Hawaiians who believe the mountain top is a sacred site and are worried about the ecological impacts of building a huge telescope there, may disagree. The peak of the mountain is nearly 14,000 feet above sea level, looming high above any light pollution and most clouds. It's a crystal-clear window into the cosmos. Astronomers want to build a new telescope, called the Thirty-Meter Telescope...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on The fight to build Earth’s most powerful telescope on sacred groundWealthy nations overlook the dangers of climate change
Posted by Conservation: Alex Lo on May 22nd, 2015
Conservation: Alex Lo
Antarctic in ‘dramatic’ ice loss
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 21st, 2015
BBC: Satellites have seen a sudden dramatic change in the behaviour of glaciers on the Antarctica Peninsula, according to a Bristol University-led study.
The ice streams were broadly stable up until 2009, since when they have been losing on the order of 56 billion tonnes of ice a year to the ocean.
Warm waters from the deep sea may be driving the changes, the UK-based team says.
The details of the satellite research are published in Science Magazine.
They include more than 10 years of space...
Santa Barbara Oil Spill Adds Pipeline Operator Dismal Safety Record
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 21st, 2015
National Public Radio: Texas-based Plains All American Pipeline is reported to have a number of previous infractions. One of the company's pipelines also spilled an estimated 10,000 gallons near Los Angeles a year ago.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Near Santa Barbara, Calif., oil from a spilled pipeline now stretches across nine miles of Pacific Ocean coastline. The leak itself was stopped last Tuesday. Today, federal investigators are on the scene trying to pinpoint what caused it and why the line didn't automatically shut...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Santa Barbara Oil Spill Adds Pipeline Operator Dismal Safety Record