The week that was, 10/11-17/2009
Posted on | October 18, 2009 | No Comments
The Spruce Mine, Logan Co., West Virginia. Source: The Charleston Gazette. Click on the map to be taken to the Gazette blog "Coal Tatoo."
The Spruce Mine as currently configured would bury more than seven miles of streams. –– Ken Ward, Jr, Coal Tatoo blog at the Charleston Gazette, October 16, 2009
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it planned to use its authority for the first time to revoke a previously issued permit for a West Virginia surface mine. — NPR / AP, October 16, 2009
Region III is aware that EPA has never before used its Section 404(c) authority to review a previously permitted project since Congress enacted the Clean Water Act in 1972. That it is necessary in this circumstance … reflects the magnitude and scale … of this mountaintop removal mining operation — the largest strip mining operation ever proposed in Appalachia when it was first permitted by the Corps. — October 16, 2009 Letter from William C. Early, Acting Regional Administrator EPA Region III to Colonel Robert D. Peterson, District Engineer, US Army Corps of Engineers, Huntington, West Virginia, posted by Ken Ward, Jr at the Charleston Gazette
“To say that I am mad would be an understatement.” — West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, NPR / AP, October 16, 2009
Click here to keep reading The week that was
Color me stupid
Posted on | October 17, 2009 | 2 Comments
Infrared aerial photographs help the Southern Nevada Water Authority identify lawn during a water crisis in the Mojave Desert city. Computer treatment of the photographs pinpoints the most wasteful use of water on grass -- on front lawns -- shown here in yellow. Back lawns are shown in green, trees in red and the pools in blue. Photo: Southern Nevada Water Authority via the Las Vegas Sun
TODAY’S Las Vegas Sun has an interesting story on the forced retirement of the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s aerial landscape conservation program.
The gist of it is that Las Vegas wants to save water by aerial identification of water wasters, but the Southern Nevada Water Authority can’t afford to keep the program going.
The SNWA skint? Since when? A Friday story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the Authority had just spent $4m to pay a single rural Nevadan ranch to, among other things, withdraw suits against SNWA’s proposed pipeline into the Great Basin.
Is the SNWA broke or not broke? Who’s right? The Las Vegas Sun or the R-J?
Click here to keep reading about what happens when you hook conservation to development
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > lawn > Southern Nevada Water Authority
The Dry Garden: Weeding in the rain
Posted on | October 16, 2009 | 2 Comments
With the first rain of the season fast evaporating from the tree leaves outside the window, it feels as if I may never again enjoy perfect gloom. So much rain in Los Angeles fails to come at all; other times it comes down too hard, and so often it falls at night. By contrast, this week water met daylight. From morning till night, the atmosphere was like gray milk, making visibility down among the plants incomparably good. Without its normal cover of glare, the garden stood for inspection … By Wednesday afternoon, it was time to admit a knuckle-scraping truth. The job that needed doing was weeding.
To keep reading the Dry Garden in the Los Angeles Times, click here.
Art and water in Beverly Hills
Posted on | October 16, 2009 | No Comments
Graffiti at the confluence of the LA River and Arroyo Seco by Liz Reday at "Affaire in the Gardens" this weekend in Beverly Hills
MORE than 200 artists from around the country will be featured at the Beverly Hills art show Affaire in the Gardens this weekend, reports Barbara Thornburg in the Los Angeles Times. The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in Beverly Gardens Park, located on four blocks from Rodeo to Rexford drives along Santa Monica Boulevard. The subject of this year’s show is water, “although no rain is planned,” event spokesman Robert Nieto says.
El Nino: “A slight tilt in the odds” for California
Posted on | October 16, 2009 | No Comments
THE NATIONAL Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration yesterday reiterated forecasts for an El Nino in its seasonal outlook for December-February.
California, it says, has a “slight tilt in the odds toward wetter-than-average conditions over the entire state.”
For the announcement, click here. For Chance of Rain’s chat with JPL oceanographer Bill Patzert on the likelihood of a big rain year, here. For a September 28, 2009 NASA round-up of the debate over whether it will rain much or not in the parched West this winter, click here.
« go back — keep looking »North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
Garden blogs
