Category Archives: agriculture

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Thank you Hyatt

“Hyatt is the latest international hotel brand to ditch travel-sized toiletries from its rooms, following Holiday Inn-owner InterContinental Group and Marriott International.

Portable tubes of shampoo, conditioner and bath gel will be replaced with bulk-sized toiletries across Hyatt’s global chain of 220,000 rooms beginning in June 2021. The changes will affect Hyatt’s 900 hotels worldwide, encompassing 20 brands, including Park Hyatt, Hyatt Place and the Andaz.

“Plastic pollution is a global issue, and we hope our efforts will motivate guests, customers and, indeed, ourselves to think more critically about our use of plastic,” Mark Hoplamazian, president and CEO of Hyatt, said in a press release.”

It takes everybody working together to reduce plastics….why all the packaging? Ever since Tylenol scare back in the 1980s, companies have gone packaging crazy…time to ease up on Plastics. Buying local is a starting point…

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Efforts to Restore the Los Angeles River Collide With a Gentrifying City | Sierra Club

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2018-4-july-august/feature/efforts-restore-los-angeles-river-California-collide-gentrifying-city

“The complex, unique geology of the Los Angeles Basin, with its interlocking and overlapping ridges and valleys, resulted in a wildly unpredictable river that often sent torrents of water tearing over its banks.

Not long after California became a state in 1851, the water needs of a booming population stressed the Los Angeles River to its breaking point. Meanwhile, the fitful river endangered the settlements multiplying throughout the floodplain. After catastrophic floods in 1914, 1934, and 1938, the city, at the recommendation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, agreed to straighten the riverbed and pave it with concrete, deracinating whatever plant and animal wildlife was left. A complex of aqueducts, dams, and reservoirs was built to import most of the city’s water; today, it delivers about 430 million gallons daily.”

Restoration of this watershed is a priority to many who live in and around LA.

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Why the World’s Rivers Are Losing Sediment and Why It Matters – Yale E360

https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-the-worlds-rivers-are-losing-sediment-and-why-it-matters

“Now, as global warming steadily melts glaciers and polar ice sheets, quickening the pace of sea level rise, scientists say that a severe shortage of river-borne sediment — most of it trapped behind dams — will increasingly be felt along the world’s coasts.”

The most important things!

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Don’t let Congress lock the public out of the courts! – Waterkeeper Alliance

https://waterkeeper.org/dont-let-congress-lock-the-public-out-of-the-courts/
Section 437 of the bill attempts to block judicial review of all agency decisions regarding the environmental review of a proposed water transfer project in California known as the “delta tunnels project,” or “California WaterFix.”

The bill is cited in article.

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Audio: Proposed federal water bill would streamline new dam projects | 89.3 KPCC

http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/01/09/67954/proposed-federal-water-bill-would-streamline-new-d/

“The bill would codify into federal law the 1994 Bay Delta Accord, an agreement between state and federal authorities to coordinate water use and quality standards for water in the California Delta, where the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers enters Suisun Bay and flows toward the Pacific Ocean. Making the accord a federal law would restore water deliveries to Central California users that were “cut off by environmental lawsuits and a series of illogical regulations,” Valadao says in the bill’s summary.”

Stream lining dam project process good for farmers but what about the environment?

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Exeter’s Great Dam Removal :: NOAA Fisheries

https://www.greateratlantic.fisheries.noaa.gov/stories/2016/september/08_exeter_s_great_dam_removal.html

Good news for boaters! And everyone!

“Friday, September 9, the town of Exeter, New Hampshire celebrates the removal of the Great Dam and the restoration of the Exeter River. The town will hold a public ceremony in Founders Park at 10am.

There have been dams along the Exeter River since the 1640s or so. The Great Dam, named for the nearby Great Falls, was built around 1831 to provide power to Exeter’s mills. After coal and oil power came to Exeter, the Great Dam continued to provide power to Exeter businesses into the mid-20th century. When the dam’s owner sold the dam and factories in 1981, the Great Dam was donated to the Town of Exeter.

With the need for the dam gone, the Great Dam fell into disrepair. In 2000, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services advised the town that the dam had serious safety and flooding issues. The Town considered repairing, modifying, or removing the dam, and finally decided that removing the dam was the best solution.

Great Dam Removal Project SignView slideshowExeter’s Great Dam Removal Project

Opening 21 Miles of River “

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Dams produce more greenhouse gas emissions than we thought — Quartz

http://qz.com/797380/reservoirs-methane-emissions-climate-change/

Katherine Ellen Foley on the problem with “clean” hydropower. “Globally, the reservoirs created by dams may actually contribute almost a gigaton of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions—about 25% more than they had previously thought. This means that we’ve almost certainly been underestimating how much greenhouse gas we’ve been shooting into the atmosphere.”

Another reason to let rivers run their natural course….too late to stop China’s 3 River Dam on Yangtze.

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Great Lakes water quality issues to be focus of public forum – News – Voice News

http://www.voicenews.com/articles/2016/09/09/news/doc57d2f5619eab5141364661.txt

Weigh in on environmental issues on Oct 4, in Toronto Canada. If you are a citizen of the US or Canada you are invited to participate. Go to IJC.ORG to find out more. So your part to protect the Great Lakes.

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Rediscovering Native American roots at pipeline protest – BBC News

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37171280

“Since April, over 3000 Native American people have been camping in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. They are trying to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which would run underneath the Missouri river near the Cheyenne river reservation.”

Video by Anna Bressanin