Washington
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Puget Sound saviors wage war on pet poop
Runoff and dog poop are killing Puget Sound. On Sept. 17, a diverse coalition of 57 cities, counties, businesses, universities, and advocacy groups launched a campaign called Puget Sound Starts Here to try and deep six these and other threats to Washington State’s vast inland waterway. (Funding for the effort is coming from state and […]
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Washington state prisons pursue sustainable practices, green-collar job training
Daniel plants showy fleabane, a prairie flower native to the Pacific Northwest, at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center.Photo: Sarah van Schagen Rows and rows of small yellow cylinders fill the greenhouse where Daniel works steadily, beads of sweat forming on his round, bald head as he places tiny seeds in each container. He is planting […]
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Tally of interests on climate bill tops a thousand
This post was originally published on the website of the Center for Public Integrity and is reposted on Grist with CPI’s kind permission. More than 460 new businesses and interest groups jumped into lobbying Congress on global warming in the weeks before the House neared its historic vote on climate change legislation, a Center for […]
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Washington state may soon be home to world’s largest PV solar project
About four miles from the town of Cle Elum, Wash., there is a large, flat piece of land surrounded by a ring of 50-foot-tall Ponderosa Pines. The area has been repeatedly logged over the last few decades and is now relatively treeless. But it may soon be home to an entirely different sort of renewable […]
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Washington Republican helps swing climate bill vote
The American Clean Energy and Security Act (aka the Waxman-Markey bill) narrowly passed in the House late Friday thanks to eight bold Republicans who hopped the fence. And one of them is Washington state’s very own Dave Reichert of the 8th District (which includes Mercer Island, Bellevue, and surrounding areas). Some 44 House Democrats, mostly […]
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Seattle and Berkeley drop biodiesel
Here’s a King 5 News video clip and here is a short article from the online Seattle PI, demonstrating how much easier it is to fall back on science when there’s money involved. The PI article suggests that Seattle quit because of this EPA study, which came out in May (Figure 2 shows soy biodiesel […]
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The Climate Post: Insider baseball on Waxman-Markey, outsider baseball on Hawaiian solar power
For those mercifully far enough away not to know, the “Capital beltway” is a looping highway, Interstate 495, the way many metro Washington residents ride to work. “Inside the beltway” isn’t coincident with Washington, DC. It also connotes a mythical place unrestrained by geography, a state of mind where consequential details of legislation attract and […]
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As Energy Northwest looks to nuclear power, expert details risks
Last week, news broke that regional power consortium Energy Northwest may be looking to build another nuclear reactor in Washington state. The last time Energy Northwest went after nuclear power, they were known as Washington Public Power Supply System — or WPPSS, which eventually came to be pronounced as “whoops” when only one of five […]
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What happens when you mandate clean coal
A plan to build a “clean coal” plant in Washington state is officially dead: Energy Northwest officials said they could not produce a required plan for capturing carbon emissions from the proposed plant in the foreseeable future. A 2007 Washington law sets strict limits on carbon emissions from coal plants and requires that utilities show […]