The week that was, 8/29-9/4/2010
"... one jumped right in front of me and I realized what it was." -- Chuck Fountain on a leaping sturgeon caught on film by his wife Trina on the Ogeechee River. Click on the image to be taken to the story in the Savannah Morning News.
“This is what you get when you move to the desert to ski.” — Tribal spokeswoman Jamescita Peshlakai of Cameron, Arizona at a community meeting debating a proposal to use potable water to make artificial snow, Snowbowl vote postponed, Arizona Daily Sun, August 31, 2010
To me, the whole debacle demonstrates just how dysfunctional the state legislature has become … Laws that protect the special interests at the expense of the public pass routinely. — Heal the Bay president Mark Gold on the failure of the California legislature to pass a bill banning single-use plastic bags, “State senate: Industry bagmen,” …
High good, low bad: Mead in August 2010
There may be a plan in place to keep the West in water in the face of climate change, population growth and sluggishness to conserve. Or there may simply be plans for plans. The image above comes from a federal Bureau of Reclamation May 2010 Tribal outreach PowerPoint to do with supply and demand on the Colorado River.
To quote retired General Stanley A. McChrystal’s remark about another PowerPoint, “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.”
As for the current state of our shrinking Colorado River reserves, with apologies for the lateness of what should have been a September 1 posting, after the jump are the last 10 closing August elevations for the reservoir serving Arizona, Nevada, California and the Republic of Mexico as reported by the master of the river. The closing August 2010 elevation of Lake Mead was 1,086.91, the lowest since 1956. Click here…
The Dry Garden: Dig it
The fig beetles seem late this year, and maybe they are. It’s been unseasonably cool for much of the summer. Yet when these drowsy fliers properly known as Cotinis mutabilis appear, it’s a cue. It’s time to empty the contents from the bottom of your compost bins to make room for fresh additions at the top.
Why? These bugs, also called June beetles, are in search of decomposing vegetation in which to lay eggs, where their grubs will become an integral part of the composting process. If you want to enlist these most excellent helpers and prepare your compost bin for fall planting, the time to do it is now.
You will need a pitchfork, a wheel barrow, some burlap, a scoop shovel and fluent profanity.
Click here to keep reading ‘The Dry Garden’ in the Los Angeles Times. Then by all means please return to check newly compiled listings …
In praise of Mark Gold
Few of us come so near greatness as to be crushed by a defeat. This week, after 22 years with Heal the Bay, the man synonymous in Los Angeles with the health of our ocean and beaches was crushed. Moreover, he was flattened while the nation was watching. Until the wee hours of August 31st, it seemed as if Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, had led California, and hence the country, in a ban of the single-use plastic bags handed out in stores. Then the state senate rejected the ban, 21-14.
On the morning of September 1st, as news organizations reported how plastics industry lobbyists stopped the first bag ban in the nation, Gold’s blog “Spouting Off” was surprisingly empty. Over at Heal the Bay, the Action Alert asking Californians to call their senators to support AB 1998 still sat on the website.
Where was Mark? Aside …
Sherman’s “little friend”
When Las Vegas Review-Journal publisher Sherman Frederick assured his own readers yesterday that anyone who posts an article from his newspaper without securing copyright permission “will meet my little friend called Righthaven,” he sounded like a thug, which he clearly intended and enjoyed, but mostly he came off like the kind of fool that has so successfully reduced Las Vegas to one of the most depressed and depressing places in America.
Frederick argued that by using Righthaven, a company suing an ever-expanding array of non-profits, internet bulletin boards and even a local PR firm for unpermitted reproduction of R-J content, he is saving newspapers in an age of rampant internet pilfering.
With saviors like that, who needs a wrecking ball? As held earlier on this site, what Frederick really is doing is rendering R-J content worthless. For a perfect example of how, turn to the paper’s arch rival, the …
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