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Archive for May, 2013
Indonesia: Court rules for palm oil company in controversial deforestation case
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 5th, 2013
Mongabay: An Indonesian court has ruled in favor of plantation company PT Kallista Alam in a lawsuit brought against the governor of Indonesia’s Aceh province for revoking the company’s license to develop palm oil plantations in a protected peat swamp forest.
The Banda Aceh Administrative Court said the governor’s earlier decision to revoke the permit was not legally binding as the case that led to the permit’s cancellation was still being considered by Indonesia’s Supreme Court, Mongabay-Indonesia reported...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Indonesia: Court rules for palm oil company in controversial deforestation caseIn S. Illinois, residents debate economic lure of ‘fracking,’ preserving area’s rugged beauty
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 5th, 2013
Washington Post: This is the Illinois that many people never see -- the sparsely populated southern tip where flat farmland gives way to rolling hills, rocky outcrops, thick forests and cypress swamps.
Blacktopped county roads wend through no-stoplight towns. Locals speak in soft drawls and talk of generations who've lived on the same land or in the same villages. The remote and rugged Shawnee National Forest attracts hikers, campers and horseback riders, and offers a stark contrast to the rest of a state that...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on In S. Illinois, residents debate economic lure of ‘fracking,’ preserving area’s rugged beautyClimate change good, bad for spring wheat
Posted by Great Falls Tribune: None Given on May 5th, 2013
Great Falls Tribune: Spring wheat planting in Montana is slightly late this year, but that goes against the grain of a long-term trend of earlier planting caused by rising temperatures, which could threaten and benefit the state’s top export commodity, according to researchers at Montana State University.
MSU wheat breeders documented the warming trend by looking at weather and crop data kept at agriculture research stations in Bozeman, Havre, Sidney, Creston, Moccasin and Huntley from 1950 to 2007.
Over the 58...
Southern California wildfire nearly 60-percent contained
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 5th, 2013
Reuters: A fierce wildfire that had threatened 4,000 homes northwest of Los Angeles was nearly 60-percent contained on Saturday as favorable weather conditions helped beat it back, officials said.
"We actually have a pretty good marine layer, which is like thick fog on the coast moving inland, cooler temperatures and higher humidity," Captain Dan Horgon of the Ventura County Fire Department told Reuters.
"That coupled with our efforts out there with our firefighters have made the situation quite a bit...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Southern California wildfire nearly 60-percent containedWildfire Interactive Helps Track the Springs Fire Blaze
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 5th, 2013
Climate Central: With the weather lending a helping hand, officials were cautiously optimistic that the raging fire, called the Springs Fire, near Los Angeles was being brought under control as of late Saturday. Firefighters reportedly had contained more than 50 percent of the fire, as they were aided by calmer winds and cooler temperatures, and Sunday's forecast had a 20 percent chance of rain.
As the blaze is still being battled, you can monitor that wildfire with Climate Central's interactive map. The flame...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Wildfire Interactive Helps Track the Springs Fire BlazeState of Siege: Mining Conflict Escalates in Guatemala
Posted by Upside Down World: Sandra Cuffe on May 5th, 2013
Upside Down World: With the world's attention focused on the on-again off-again genocide trial of former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt and his head of military intelligence in Guatemala City, there has been little international reporting on other events in the Central American nation. Meanwhile, as the trial continues, conflicts involving rural communities and Canadian mining companies are escalating, to the point that a State of Siege was declared last night. Fifty miles southeast of the capital, private...
United Kingdom: How our fens were sacrificed for more farms
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 4th, 2013
Independent: Very few parts of the British landscape have eluded great change in the past 1,000 years, but none of them have suffered a loss which can remotely compare to that of the fens of eastern England. These vast wetlands – at times desolate but always teeming with wildlife – once stretched from just above Cambridge to north Yorkshire.
But, at first gradually, and then systematically, they have been all but destroyed, the loss amounting, if you can credit such a figure, to around 3,500 square miles....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United Kingdom: How our fens were sacrificed for more farmsToxic Waste Sites Cause ‘Healthy Years of Life Lost’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 4th, 2013
ScienceDaily: Toxic waste sites with elevated levels of lead and chromium cause a high number of "healthy years of life lost" in individuals living near 373 sites located in India, Philippines and Indonesia, according to a study by a Mount Sinai researcher published online today in Environmental Health Perspectives.
The study leader, Kevin Chatham-Stephens, MD, Pediatric Environmental Health Fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, presented the findings today at the Pediatric Academic Societies...
To Silence Discontent, Chinese Officials Alter Calendar
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 4th, 2013
National Public Radio: How do you prevent protests in China? Move the weekend.
That's the Orwellian step taken by local authorities in the southwestern city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. May 4 is a sensitive date commemorating an influential student movement in 1919. It's especially potent in Chengdu, where it marks the fifth anniversary of a protest against the construction of a $6 billion crude oil refinery and petrochemical facility in Pengzhou, 25 miles away.
As text messages circulated calling...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on To Silence Discontent, Chinese Officials Alter CalendarChinese River’s Fate May Reshape a Region
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 4th, 2013
New York Times: From its crystalline beginnings as a rivulet seeping from a glacier on the Tibetan Himalayas to its broad, muddy amble through the jungles of Myanmar, the Nu River is one of Asia’s wildest waterways, its 1,700-mile course unimpeded as it rolls toward the Andaman Sea.
But the Nu’s days as one of the region’s last free-flowing rivers are dwindling. The Chinese government stunned environmentalists this year by reviving plans to build a series of hydropower dams on the upper reaches of the Nu, the...