April 2011

Making connections
The Center for Biological Diversity reports it distributed 350,000 Endangered Species Condoms during 2010. It’s their way of reminding folks that increasing population threatens to negate all the progress we’ve made in protecting the environment.

Don’t drill, baby
A bevy of West Coast senators have introduced a bill to permanently prohibit new offshore drilling along the Pacific Coast. California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein were joined by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Patty Murray (D-WA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) in offering the West Coast Ocean Protection Act. Our respective coasts support a $34 billion economy providing 570,000 jobs.

Although President Obama has not included the West Coast in any new offshore oil and gas development plans through at least 2017, permanent protection is needed.

Slough progress
The sill at Parsons Slough is operational. The Slough channel is restored to the approximate size it was decades ago before land subsidence and the harbor construction increased the channel depth and speed of the currents in the estuary, beginning the process of tidal scour. For the first time since 1948 this process has been reversed.

Argument for organics
New research by scientists at UC Berkeley and Harvard note a relationship between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and pesticides. The US uses over 73 million pounds of these poisons on crops and in homes each year. Pesticides attack the nervous systems of insects. It’s not a big stretch to think they can attack the human nervous system.

Hot power
The Westlands Water District is hoping to build two 1,600 MW nuclear reactors near Fresno to desalinate groundwater. They are trying to get around the state moratorium on nuclear power plants by calling it a “water treatment system.” Recently a huge solar project has been proposed for the same property. Fresno is almost directly east of Santa Cruz.

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