Here's the weekly news digest collected by Greg Giusti.
Agency won't protect Upper Klamath chinook salmon, by The Associated Press, Contra Costa Times, 04/05/2012
Federal biologists have decided Endangered Species Act protection is not warranted for chinook salmon from the upper Klamath and Trinity rivers in Northern California and Oregon. The decision from NOAA Fisheries Service was published Monday in the Federal Register......
Founder, longtime director of Coastal Commission dies, Debra Kahn, E&E News, Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Peter Douglas, who helped create the California Coastal Commission, died Sunday of cancer. He was 69 years old. Douglas served as the commission's executive director from 1985 to 2011 and guided the agency through a maze of issues affecting coastal building practices, offshore oil and gas leasing, power-plant construction and habitat protection......
Myth-busting scientist pushes greens past reliance on 'horror stories', Paul Voosen, Greenwire, April 3, 2012
ARLINGTON, Va. -- Peter Kareiva had come to answer for his truths. Settling at the head of a long table ringed by young researchers new to the policy world, Kareiva, chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy, the world's largest environmental organization, cracked open a beer. After a long day mentoring at the group's headquarters, an eight-story box nestled in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, he was ready for some sparring......
Headwaters awards $750,000 for lumber marketing project; Forest Product Initiative seeks to promote redwood for decks, Jessica Cejnar, THE TIMES-STANDARD, Redwood Times, 04/03/2012
The Headwaters Fund board approved a grant for a project aimed at convincing California residents to choose redwood over wood-plastic composite lumber when building decks. Six members of the fund board awarded a three-year $750,000 grant - $250,000 a year - to the Humboldt Economic Development Division, which is working with the California Redwood Company and the Humboldt Redwood Company on the Forest Products Initiative marketing project. Board member Jackie Deuschle-Miller, a former Green Diamond Resource Company employee, recused herself......
Taking back the woods (IN HONOR OF JERE MELO), Fort Bragg mobilizes in effort to protect private lands from pot growers, By GLENDA ANDERSON
Santa Rosa Press Democrat, April 3, 2012
With outdoor marijuana-growing season about to begin, private and public officials are invoking the memory of slain Fort Bragg City Councilman Jere Melo to bolster their rallying cry of "take back our forests" from illicit growers they say despoil the woods and endanger the lives of honest citizens. "We must band together" to fight illegal trespass gardens, Campbell Timberland Management manager Stephen Horner told more than 300 people attending a recent forum in Fort Bragg hosted by the Jere Melo Foundation. The foundation was created to carry on Melo's work to keep the forests safe and clean.....
Excessive Government Regulations Are Strangling California Businesses, By George Plescia, President of Apex Consulting, Inc. Fox & Hounds, Monday, April 2nd, 2012
Picture this: an entrepreneur wants to open a yogurt shop. She has a business plan, has secured the operating capital and has a location picked out for the new small business. However, before she can hire employees and open her doors for business to sell her product and contribute to the local economy, a state bureaucrat has to certify that the people who will come to get yogurt are not adding to vehicle congestion in that neighborhood. .....
Gov. Brown looks to global warming fees to pay for high-speed rail, By Mike Rosenberg and Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News, San Jose Mercury News, April 2, 2012
With a lower price tag and speedier plan to start zipping bullet trains up and down California, Gov. Jerry Brown's ambitious new high-speed rail proposal is still wobbly on one vital ingredient: billions and billions of dollars. The state still has no guarantee on where it will come up with about 80 percent of the funding needed for a project that high-speed rail leaders announced Monday will cost at least $68 billion. But bullet train backers are now touting a new wild card that could provide a major contribution courtesy of the state's big polluters.....
California gas prices soar as consumption falls, Mark Glover, Sacramento Bee, MAR. 31, 2012,
Gasoline prices soared by an average of 23 percent statewide last year, and in-state consumption of gas declined nearly 2 percent, according to 2011 statistics released Friday by the California Board of Equalization. The BOE said 2011 ended with an average statewide gas price of $3.86 a gallon......
Greens Want Energy Bubble Loans from CPUC, By WAYNE LUSVARDI, Cal Watchdog, MARCH 30, 2012
California is getting strapped for cash to continue to pay for subsidies for economically infeasible solar power and energy efficiency projects for homeowners and small businesses. So the Environmental Defense Fund has concocted a proposal to the California Public Utilities Commission called “On-Bill Repayment.” This program would have electricity users pay for such energy upgrades in their monthly electricity bills. The upfront money for energy upgrades would come from loans through commercial banks instead of government subsidies.......
EPA out to raise your electricity bill, Orange County Register Editorial, 2012-03-30
The Environmental Protection Agency is stepping up its war on coal-fired power plants, imposing first-ever limits on carbon emissions for new electric utility facilities. Ostensibly, this administrative over-reach is to fight pollution and reduce global warming. Those claims are disingenuous. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas necessary for life, not a pollutant. Its emissions have scant, if any, relationship to global temperatures, which have been flat for a dozen years even as CO2 levels dramatically increased......
Sierra Nevada forest plan ruled defective, By Jim Porter, Special to the Sun, Sierra Sun, March 30, 2012
TRUCKEE, Calif. — “The national forests of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (‘the Sierras') are home to a rich array of fauna, including at least 61 species of fish and 35 species of amphibians.” With that statement, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals begins its Opinion striking down part of a President Bush-era plan to allow additional logging, grazing and road building in a 400-mile stretch of the Sierra Nevada forests, interestingly called “Sierras” in the case. I thought “Sierra” was proper.....
Feinstein slams NPS for 'deceptive and potentially fraudulent' report on oyster far, Emily Yehle, E&E NewsPM, March 29, 2012
Sen. Dianne Feinstein accused the National Park Service today of falsifying data and misrepresenting science to oust a controversial California oyster farm from a wilderness area. The California Democrat wrote a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today, after revelations that the Park Service used 17-year-old data -- from 3,000 miles away -- to represent the noise coming from Drakes Bay Oyster Co. ......
Climate change to inflict major crises, panel says, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 2012
Washington -- Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists says in a report issued Wednesday. The greatest danger from extreme weather is in highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe - from Mumbai to Miami - is immune. The document by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges and droughts......
Fire tax repeal bill passes out of committee, By Sally Morris, The Trinity Journal | March 28, 2012
A bill to repeal California’s new fire prevention fee on rural homeowners within the State Responsibility Areas passed in the State Assembly Natural Resources Committee with bipartisan support on Monday. AB 1506, coauthored by Assemblymember Jim Nielsen, would eliminate the SRA fee of up to $150 per habitable structure adopted last year by the California Board of Forestry to raise an estimated $84 million to help fund Cal Fire. It will next be heard in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.....
Moody’s maintains negative outlook on paper and forest industry, David Pett, Financial Post, March 27, 2012
The global paper and forest products industry remains a risk for investors as falling demand threatens profits at several companies in Canada and abroad, says a new report from Moody’s Investors Service. “Our negative outlook is based on our expectation that the industry’s overall operating income will decrease over the next 12 to 18 months as demand and pricing weaken for most grades of paper and forest products,” said Ed Sustar, a vice president and senior credit officer at Moody’s in Toronto.....