RSS Feed
Archive for July, 2013
Flood, rebuild, repeat: Are we ready for a Superstorm Sandy every other year?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 31st, 2013
Mother Jones: TWO MONTHS AFTER Hurricane Sandy pummeled New York City, Battery Park is again humming with tourists and hustlers, guys selling foam Statue of Liberty crowns, and commuters shuffling off the Staten Island Ferry. On a winter day when the bright sun takes the edge off a frigid harbor breeze, it's hard to imagine all this under water. But if you look closely, there are hints that not everything is back to normal. Take the boarded-up entrance to the new South Ferry subway station at the end of the No....
Posted in 
Connecticut warns of dire climate change consequences
Posted by Associated Press: Stephen Singer on July 31st, 2013
Associated Press: Connecticut environmental officials are warning of dire consequences from climate change that will affect agriculture, dams and levees, waterfront habitats and public health. For example, sea level rise will leave Hammonasset Beach State Park, among Connecticut's most popular state parks, mostly inundated by sea water by the end of the century, according to a new report by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Most agriculture in Connecticut is likely to be "highly impacted" by...
Study looks at Sandy’s impacts on tidal marshes
Posted by Associated Press: Clarke Canfield on July 31st, 2013
Associated Press: For biologists who have been studying birds in East Coast tidal marshes, Superstorm Sandy couldn't have come at a better time. Just two months before Sandy pummeled New Jersey and New York last October, a research team completed the field work of a study looking at bird populations at risk due to the loss of tidal marshes from sea level rise. With that pre-storm data in hand, the researchers are now comparing the abundance of marsh plants and birds before and after Sandy in those same marshes, from...
Study projects impact of rising tides in Marshfield
Posted by Wicked Local Marshfield: Mary Jane Hanron on July 31st, 2013
Wicked Local Marshfield: As the sun set in Brant Rock on Monday night, nearly 200 people filled the second floor of Haddad’s Ocean Café as the board of selectmen hosted a presentation about results of a sea level rise study. Town officials and project specialists presented an overview to residents at the July 29 meeting to address the impact of the changes anticipated in weather patterns and the ocean in the next 75 years. The project, which involves the three towns of Marshfield, Scituate and Duxbury, was funded through...
Republicans say Obama comments jeopardize Keystone XL pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 31st, 2013
Reuters: President Barack Obama's recent comments on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, downplaying jobs that would be created, jeopardize the project by adding to its uncertainty, Republican lawmakers said in a letter to the president on Wednesday.
"We are concerned that your recent statements have signaled an arbitrary and abrupt shift in how our nation approves cross-border energy projects," Republican Representatives Fred Upton, Ed Whitfield, and Lee Terry said in a letter.
Obama has said twice over...
ExxonMobil Puts Off Discussion of Pipe Under Ark. Lake
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 31st, 2013
Associated Press: ExxonMobil Corp. says it wants an investigation into a March oil spill in a Mayflower neighborhood to wrap up before it opens discussions about a pipeline’s path below a watershed that provides drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people in central Arkansas. In a letter sent Friday to public officials, Gary Pruessing, the president of the ExxonMobil Pipeline Co., said it would be premature to talk about the leaky pipeline’s path below Lake Maumelle and its environs. “The Pegasus Pipeline...
Plastic beads are the latest pollution threat to Great Lakes
Posted by Reuters: Lisa Maria Garza on July 31st, 2013
Reuters: Tiny plastic beads from beauty products are showing up in North America's Great Lakes, and an environmental group is calling upon companies to stop using the plastic particles. Scientists have already been found the particles, known as microplastic, floating in the oceans but recently reported the same contamination in the largest surface freshwater system on the Earth. The particles are often less than a millimeter (0.04 inch). A team of researchers with 5 Gyres Institute, a non-profit California-based...
Fracking: how do the Tories win in the North now?
Posted by Telegraph: Benedict Brogan on July 31st, 2013
Telegraph: In the absence of the high command, the Tory summer campaign is supposed to start today with a speech from Grant Shapps, the party chairman, to be followed in coming weeks with interventions from Theresa May, Iain Duncan Smith and the Treasury. They are on the front foot, and want to keep up the pressure on Labour, hence the lecture series. They wouldn't use the term "aggressive" but there is evidently a desire to capitalise on what they perceive as the advantage they have gained in the summer. Labour...
Gulf of Mexico dead zone is big, but not record-breaking big
Posted by Grist: John Upton on July 30th, 2013
Grist: Oh yay. Just 5,840 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico are virtually bereft of life this summer. This year’s dead zone is much bigger than an official goal of 1,950 square miles, but not as bad as had been feared. Heavy spring rains inundated Mississippi River tributaries with fertilizers and other nutrients, and once those pollutants flowed into the Gulf, they led to the growth of oxygen-starved areas where marine life can’t survive. But NOAA says things could have been worse. The agency had previously...
Enbridge begins fresh clean-up on 2010 Michigan oil spill
Posted by Reuters: Nia Williams, Carol Bishopric on July 30th, 2013
Reuters: Enbridge Energy Partners LP has begun a new round of dredging on the Kalamazoo River, Michigan, to clean up oil from a huge pipeline spill in 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday. More than 20,000 barrels of heavy Canadian crude oil gushed into the Kalamazoo River system following the rupture of Line 6B in July 2010, the largest onshore oil spill in U.S. history. Enbridge Energy Partners, the U.S. unit of Canada's largest pipeline company Enbridge Inc received an order...