Northern California’s Environmental Magazine
Fall 2002
Table of Contents
Joining the Chorus
Who needs concrete, billboards, and Homeland Security? Sometimes it helps to get out of the manufactured world and sit in nature a while — find a wild spot, just sit down, and observe.
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.
Lines in the Sand
In 1994, the U.S. Army abandoned its base in San Francisco’s Presidio. In the aftermath, local politicians fought for additional housing, businesses sought retail space, and environmentalists argued for the restoration of sand dunes and wetlands that once covered the area.
The Fight To Save Seed
Monsanto is pushing to get marketing approval for herbicide-resistant, genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready wheat — despite widespread farmer protests that GE wheat from open-air test plots could cross-breed with normal wheat.
When the Well Runs Dry
If you drive through Mesa Verda in the desert of southeastern California, you get the sense that not much has changed in a long time.
Airport Accused of Suppressing Runway Studies
Open-government advocates and environmentalists say the San Francisco International Airport is illegally blocking access to draft studies on the environmental impacts of its proposal to fill San Francisco Bay with new runways.
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.
Chevron Slammed for Plans to Store Explosive Gas
Chevron Richmond Refinery has illegally avoided environmental review of its plans to build storage tanks for highly explosive liquid petroleum gas (LPG), said Oakland-based Communities for a Better Environment (CBE).
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.
The Way to Daylight
For more than 50 years, Poinsett Park was a 250-foot-long triangle of grass, squeezed on a hillside between Rosalind and Poinsett Avenues in El Cerrito, California.
The Deep Next Door
The giant gelatinous predator moves silently through cold, dark waters, propelled by a pair of expanding and contracting swimming bells. Its rope-like body is actually a colony of almost a thousand individual subsections, each performing a specific task.
Distant Relatives
In the summer of 1872 — the year Grant defeated Greeley for a second term and the Credit Mobilier scandal broke; the year Luther Burbank developed his eponymous potato and Aaron Montgomery Ward invented mail-order merchandising; the year General Meade, the victor of Gettysburg, died and Rasputin, Bertrand Russell, and Calvin Coolidge were born — the botanist Asa Gray came out to California to see the redwoods and giant sequoias.
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.
Evolution Two-step
In fond hope of luring pipevine swallowtails to my yard, I planted a native Aristolochia, a Dutchman’s pipe, a few years ago.
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.
From the Farms: Water Stories
We always have to conserve water, especially in drought years. We only irrigate the trees for about their first five years.
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