Monday, 25 Nov 2002

Gonna Be a Bright Sunshiny Day

A year after voters approved a $100 million bond to boost solar power in San Francisco, planning is well underway to position the city as the country's largest municipal generator of solar power and other renewable energies. Within five years, San Francisco hopes to add 10 megawatts of solar power to the electricity grid. In the long term, the city is determined to increase solar generation an additional 40 megawatts -- enough to meet about 5 percent of the city's peak electricity needs. "It is clear to us that the leadership for promoting renewable energy is not going to come from the White House or Congress," said David Hochschild, a leader in passage of the renewable energy ballot measure. "The action really is at the local level."

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

The Bush administration and environmentalists are at loggerheads over what should happen to national forests burned in last summer's wildfire season. The administration is pushing for aggressive logging of scorched forests, including older and larger trees; next month, it will propose new rules meant to reduce delays in timber sales due to environmental appeals. Enviros, meanwhile, argue that it would be best to leave the burned slopes alone, and that the administration is using the issue of salvage logging to try to expand cutting willy-nilly, ignoring ecological consequences.

Big Bang

As if terrorist attacks weren't enough of a threat, unexploded munitions at 16,000 inactive military ranges in the United States present "imminent and substantial" public health risks, according to newly released U.S. EPA documents. The agency said the problem might require the largest environmental cleanup program ever implemented by the feds. Jeff Ruch, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said his organization obtained the documents confidentially from an EPA whistleblower who believes that the munitions -- including chemical and biological weapons -- could be leaking into soil and groundwater. The weapons are spread across 30 million to 40 million acres nationwide, an area about the size of Florida.

The Shipping News

Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn has announced an agreement in which several of the largest shipping companies in Asia will work with L.A. to clean up air quality in the city's port. Last year, the port received 2,200 cargo ship visits, each burning about 14 tons of heavy bunker fuel. Under the new plan, the ships will shut off their engines while docked and plug into the city's power system, helping to reduce a significant source of pollution in the region. The program would be the largest of its kind in the world. Some local activists predicted, however, that the port's fast expansion would undermine the benefits of the project within a year or two.

New Source, Same Old Crap

In the most far-reaching move to relax air pollution rules in years, the Bush administration on Friday gave refineries new flexibility to upgrade their facilities without having to reduce emissions. The U.S. EPA also outlined proposals that would give aging coal-fired power plants a similar advantage -- allowing them to upgrade and increase energy output -- without having to install new anti-pollution equipment. The plans represent giant reforms to the Clean Air Act's New Source Review rule, which till now required antiquated plants undergoing modernization to meet up-to-date air standards. The EPA said the changes would lead to cleaner air, as plant owners would now have greater freedom to adopt new technologies. But attorneys general from the six New England states, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York said they would sue to block the changes. The EPA announcement provoked some congressional Democrats to call on EPA Administrator Christie Whitman to resign.