Northern California’s Environmental Magazine
Articles by Staff Reporter
Dear Reader
A note from Ecology Center Executive Director Martin Bourque.
Essential Reads
The Contributions of Ruby and Arthur Van Deventer With an essay by David Rains Wallace
Edited by Rick Bennett and Susan Calla
Heyday Books (2009), $35.
When California’s leading botanist Willis Linn Jepson met Ruby Van Deventer in 1936, the wild and practically roadless northwest corner of the state presented the most conspicuous gap in knowledge of California […]
Essential Reads
New books on birding, eco-entrepreneurship, and the future of sustainabilty
Letters to the Editor
Regarding: Cutting the Grassroots, Fall/Winter 2008
Shell Seeks Vallejo Foothold For Overseas Gas
A proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility on Mare Island in San Pablo Bay would pose major health and safety threats while increasing California’s vulnerability to the natural gas market, say energy consultants.
Stockton’s Water “Not for Auction”
Residents of Stockton, California, have demanded the right to vote on a multimillion-dollar proposal to contract out operation of the city’s water system in what would be the largest water privatization on the West Coast.
Hope for Renewables
A groundbreaking California law requires all investor-owned utilities to increase their renewable energy use by 1% per year, eventually to 20%.
Medicine Lake
The US Department of the Interior is set to decide by November 1 whether to reverse a Clinton-era denial of geothermal development in the Medicine Lake Highlands, a caldera sacred to the Modoc, Shasta, Pit River and other Native American tribes.
Urban Ag Showdown
Student activists say they are ready to apply “political pressure,” including civil disobedience, to stop the University of California Berkeley from paving over Albany’s Gill Tract, the largest piece of undeveloped agricultural land in the urban San Francisco Bay Area.
Big-Picture Choices
Is an ice cube tray with round holes more energy efficient than one with rectangular holes?
Winter on the Farm
In winter, our farmers take a breath, pick and sell in the rain, organize boxes, prune, weed, fix the plows — and plan and plant for spring, summer, and sometimes years ahead.
The Dirt on Biodiesel; Informative, Rousing
The Dirt on Biodiesel
Daniel Duart’s article [“Liquid Solar,” Summer 2002] on the use of biodiesel crops raises a question about fuel cycles, or chains. Because soil loss has been a major problem in North America for over 100 years, the real prospects for practical large-scale bio-fuels cycles will be limited. Take, for example, the cycle […]
Only Who Can Prevent Forest Fires?
If you believe what the US Forest Service interrogators first said, Terry Lynn Barton started this summer’s big fire in Colorado’s Pike National Forest by burning a letter from her estranged husband.
County May Pay $20 Million for Timberland
The Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC), owned by the Fisher family that owns the Gap clothing chain, has obtained little-known development rights that boost the price of over 3,000 acres of timberland sought by Sonoma County for open space, Terrain has learned.
Plan to Bag Gualala, Albion Rivers Could Exploit Free Trade Laws
Luxembourg-based World Water SA has become the first multinational to seek water rights to northern California rivers, setting up a key test of local sovereignty in the face of international trade agreements, say public interest advocates.
Muwekma Recognition
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is expected to decide by early August whether to formally recognize the East Bay’s Muwekma Ohlone tribe — 96 years after the federal government granted the status to their ancestors.
Precautionary Tale
Under a draft ordinance set to go before its Board of Supervisors this fall, San Francisco may become the first city in the US to subject purchasing decisions to the precautionary principle.
Post-Fire Logging
A Federal District Court judge has sided with activists seeking to block post-fire salvage logging in Humboldt County’s Six Rivers National Forest.
An Ohlone Story
In all the traditional territory of the Ohlone, from Carquinez Strait and San Francisco to Big Sur, the only place so far held in trust by indigenous inhabitants lies in the hills near Hollister — Indian Canyon.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
E-waste — old computers, printers, and other gadgetry — contains lead and cadmium in circuit boards, lead oxide and cadmium in monitors, mercury in switches and flat-screen monitors, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), brominated flame retardants on circuit boards, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) cable insulation.
Liquid Solar
The Nation’s Fastest-Growing Alternative Fuel? Vegetable Oil.
Montezuma Wetlands Suit
Two Bay Area activist groups have filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue to block the Montezuma Wetlands Project, an effort to dump toxic dredge spoils from the Port of Oakland and elsewhere into Solano County marshland for “restoration.”
Clean Water Victory
Working-class communities in the San Gabriel Valley and Pomona areas east of Los Angeles have won a state Supreme Court ruling that allows water users to sue privately owned water suppliers, as well as public water companies, over contamination of the water supply.
Good Companions
The Bay Area is blessed with a mild climate that permits year-round gardening, but many of us don’t get the urge to plant until Spring warms up our soil.
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