March 24, 2010

Tax exemption helps multi-billion dollar TransAlta, not workers.

Washington legislators are in their final days of hashing out responses to the state’s multi-billion dollar budget shortfall.  Still in play is the $5 million-a-year sales tax exemption for TransAlta, the multi-billion-dollar Canadian corporation that owns the coal-fired power plant in Centralia.  Today, the Governor’s office confirmed her opposition to the Senate proposal to remove this tax exemption.

The Sierra Club, Coal-Free Washington Campaign Director Doug Howell responded to the Governor’s comments. "TransAlta’s coal plant is Washington’s single largest stationary source of pollution, including carbon dioxide, toxic mercury and haze. A better use of that public money is investing in a clean energy future. The Sierra Club supports redirecting these funds to investments in clean energy workforce development.

March 19th, 2010 by Ashley DeForest

Washington State overwhelmingly passed the Safe Baby Bottle Act (SSB 6248) during the 2010 legislative session, which will eliminate the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) from baby bottles, sippy cups, and other children’s dishware, as well as from sports bottles.

"This is a huge victory for children’s health and for parents. Dangerous chemicals like BPA have no place in baby bottles, sippy cups or any product children put in their mouths," said the prime sponsor of the house version of the legislation, State Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-Seattle), in a recent article. "Parents can soon go to the store with confidence and buy a bottle for their baby that won’t contain BPA."

Bipartisan Legislation One Step Closer to Preserving Additions to Alpine Lakes Wilderness and Portions of the Pratt River and the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River

SEATTLE — March 18, 2010 Supporters of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Additions and the Pratt and Middle Fork Snoqualmie Rivers Protection Act (H.R. 1769 / S. 721) celebrated as the legislation moved closer to final passage.

The measure, which passed out of the House of Representatives today, would protect an additional 22,000 acres of wilderness adjoining the existing Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area and would add 10 miles of the Pratt River and nearly 30 miles of the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River to the National Wild and Scenic River System. Washington wilderness supporters thanked Representative Dave Reichert for his continuing leadership, advocacy and bipartisan approach to protecting the wilderness and free-flowing rivers in the North Cascades.

By, Craig Welch, The Seattle Times
 
OTHELLO, Adams County
Orman Johnson's spuds are out of the ground now, piled in sheds longer than football fields, each stuffed with enough tubers to feed Seattle for half a year.

Like most of Washington's 9 billion pounds of potatoes, the farmer's thirsty crop is grown where less rain falls annually than Seattle may get in six weeks. And the well water that supplies Johnson's farm is disappearing.

The species is back in parts of the state. But can a recovering species return to the Olympic Peninsula?

By Daniel Jack Chasan

Gray wolves are back, gliding through the forests of eastern Washington and the Cascades. The Lookout pack is producing pups in the Methow Valley, near Twisp. Seven wolves, an alpha male and female, a yearling and last year's four pups, have been traveling through 350 square miles, eating black-tailed and mule deer primarily, but also munching the occasional muskrat or beaver. Last year, on the banks of the Twisp River, they were seen eating salmon.

The Diamond pack is roaming the northeastern corner of the state, where grizzly bears and mountain caribou also wander down into the Salmo-Priest wilderness. There seem to be wolves in the southeastern corner, across the border from the two packs that have been identified in Oregon's Wallowa Mountain and Hell's Canyon area. Other wolves have been sighted in Mount Rainier National Park, although no one knows whether or not they're hybrids.

Wolves hold a very special badass image in European language and myth. They are seen as voracious ("wolfing down" one's food); unusually predatory (a "wolf whistle" directed at a pretty woman); a metaphor for human aggression ("The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.").

by GARY CHITTIM / KING 5 News, Posted on March 8, 2010 at 5:58 PM

ARLINGTON, Wash. - Twenty-five years ago the Stillaguamish Tribe turned its back on the contaminated bay which was once its food basket.

Development around Port Susan had left it polluted with fecal coliform. Human and animal waste had been flowing into the shallow bay and mudflats for decades.
But 12 years ago, the tribe decided to do something.

Posted By Jordan Schrader on March 8, 2010 at 6:06 pm

Lawmakers have probably missed their last chance to do something to bail out struggling transit agencies.

Pierce Transit and its Snohomish County counterpart, Community Transit, say they need funding to stave off cuts to bus service. They want authority to levy a $20 fee on vehicles in the county without voter approval, or a bigger fee if voters permit.

THE BELLINGHAM HERALD
- KIE RELYEA 

BELLINGHAM - The city has received a $350,000 federal grant for a project to reduce carbon emissions by reducing energy use.

The money comes from the Environmental Protection Agency through its new Climate Showcase Communities program. Bellingham is among the first cities in the nation to be awarded such a grant - becoming one out of 25 to receive the money from a pool of 450 applicants, according to a city news release.