Archive for May 18th, 2010

NAMIBIA: Will Farm Project Mean the River Runs Dry?

Inter Press Service: A proposed irrigation scheme promises greater food security for Namibia, but should the 10,000 hectare Katondo Farm Project be completed, it could threaten the health of the Okavango River. Thihako Mukena paddles his mokoro slowly across a soccer field, pointing with a smile towards the goalposts that barely clear the water's surface. Heavy rains in Angola months earlier have meandered down the Okavango to his doorstep: the river is at its highest point in nearly fifty years. His ...

United States: Spill reinforces oil bad will for American Indians

Associated Press: Like many American Indians on the bayou, Emary Billiot blames oil companies for ruining his ancestral marsh over the decades. Still, he's always been able to fish -- but now even that is not a certainty. An oil spill -- 5 million gallons and counting -- spreading across the Gulf of Mexico has closed bays and lakes in Louisiana's bountiful delta, including fishing grounds that feed the last American-Indian villages in three parishes. It is a bitter blow for the tribes of south ...

U.S. to probe spill, containment efforts in high gear

Reuters: Energy giant BP said on Tuesday it was now able to siphon off about 40 percent of the oil gushing from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico but has not been able to stop the leak, as President Barack Obama is to create a commission to probe the spill. BP's progress in capturing more oil through a tube inserted by undersea robots into the mangled "riser" pipe of the well came amid new evidence that a powerful sea current in the Gulf was pushing the crude closer to the U.S. Eastern ...

Florida tar balls fuel fears of oil slick spread

Reuters: Fears that the huge Gulf of Mexico oil spill was spreading through ocean currents flared on Tuesday after tarballs were found on Florida's Key West, while energy giant BP Plc worked to capture more of the leaking crude. Tests were trying to confirm whether the oil balls found on the well-known island resort on Monday came from BP's ruptured undersea well. Florida was bracing for potential impact from the spill on the state's $60 billion-a-year tourism industry. "We believe it ...

Oil spill threatens way of life on Louisiana bayou

Reuters: For part-time fisherman and deckhand Randy Arceneaux, this season was supposed to mark his first chance to trawl for shrimp with his very own boat. And this was supposed to be the year he took his son out with him on the marshy backwaters of southern Louisiana's bayou country for the first time, to begin teaching the boy how to fish, catch crabs, hunt small game. But a deep-sea wellhead owned by energy giant BP ruptured just weeks before the shrimp season was due to open, ...

U.S. says offshore drilling key despite oil spill

Reuters: The U.S. Interior Secretary said on Tuesday offshore drilling was vital to meet the country's energy needs just as lawmakers pushed forward with efforts to make big oil companies fully liable for oil spills. In Capitol Hill hearings four weeks after a drilling rig exploded and caused a massive oil spill deep in the Gulf of Mexico, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said offshore drilling was still a necessary part of U.S. energy policy. Salazar said about 30 percent of U.S. oil ...

Experts: India becoming dumping ground for e-waste

Associated Press: An environmental group warned Tuesday that India was fast becoming a dumping ground for electronic waste and asked the government to frame stringent laws to control illegal trade and its recycling. India generates up to 385,800 tons of electronic waste every year -- equal to 110 million laptops_ and imports another 55,100 tons, mostly illegally under the pretext of metal scrap and secondhand electrical appliances, said the Center For Science And Environment. Private companies ...

Wildlife death toll from oil spill still uncertain

Associated Press: Federal officials say 189 dead sea turtles, birds and other animals have been found along Gulf of Mexico coastlines since a massive oil spill started last month. The total includes 154 sea turtles, primarily the endangered Kemp's ridley variety, plus 12 dolphins and 23 migratory birds. But in a phone news conference Tuesday, officials said they don't know how many were killed by oil or chemical dispersants. Barbara Schroeder of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric ...

This is no forecast. Climate change is here and now

Independent (UK): You can look at the warming of Lake Tanganyika as a geographical and scientific curiosity; but you're probably wiser to look at it with a considerable sense of foreboding. Africa may well be the region where global warming hits hardest in the coming century, a possibility clearly spelled out in the last report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in 2007. The "multiple stresses" include increased water shortages, severely compromised ...