Category Archives: environment

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Lake Ontario: Property owners updated on funding

https://www.wnypapers.com/news/article/featured/2018/04/21/132346/lake-ontario-property-owners-updated-on-funding

Problem was, officials assigned to dole out the funding soon realized the damage totals of claims filed far exceeded the $45 million total the state initially allocated, Welch said.
“Wouldn’t you know (it), that funding was $45-50 million short,” he said.
In response, after months of delay, state officials with the governor’s office began to allocate additional monies this year, Welch said. First came a combined state Assembly-Senate $10 million funding allocation in January, followed by an additional $40 million this spring as the state budget process moved along, bringing the entire total to more than $90 million – the amount initially requested, Welch pointed out.
“With the extra $50 million, it should cover everyone’s expenses. (So) what’s the issue (as to the delays)?” he asked.

Look like IJC could rectify this somehow with the state of NY.

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2 gallons of radioactive nuclear waste done; 56M gallons to go | The Columbian

http://www.columbian.com/news/2018/may/16/2-gallons-of-radioactive-nuclear-waste-done-56m-gallons-to-go/

“It’s a big deal,” said Dawn Wellman, sector manager for environmental health and remediation at the national lab in Richland. “At a scaled version we have done what they will do at full scale at Hanford.”

The vitrification plant — or Waste Treatment Plant — at the Hanford nuclear reservation has been under construction since 2002, with a court-ordered deadline of 2023 to start treating some of the 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in underground tanks.

Much of the waste, which is left from the past production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program, is planned to be vitrified, or turned into a solid glass form for disposal.”

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EPA orders extensive cleanup of radioactive waste site near St. Louis

https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/09/27/epa-orders-extensive-cleanup-radioactive-waste-site-near-st-louis/

“The West Lake Landfill contains thousands of tons of radioactive material from the World War II-era Manhattan Project that was dumped at the site in the 1970s, where it has languished ever since amid other waste. The latest plan calls for excavating 70 percent of the radioactive waste from the site — a far cry from a 2008 solution proposed by the George W. Bush administration to cover and monitor the waste.“

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The Paleo-Bell River: North America’s vanished Amazon | EARTH Magazine

https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/paleo-bell-river-north-americas-vanished-amazon

A generalized reconstruction of Paleo-Bell River drainage and evolution of other major rivers in western and northern North America, after James Sears and others. By the Miocene, the Paleo-Bell River Basin reached its greatest extent. Rifts like the Rio Grande and Great Basin created an ancestral Colorado River that was yet to establish a course to the Pacific (location 1). Instead, it flowed north from the Grand Canyon region through structurally controlled valleys and into the larger Paleo-Bell River Basin via an ancestral Yellowstone River, whose gravels cap the Cypress Hills. This route was blocked by eruptions of lava in the Snake River Plain (location 2) associated with the Yellowstone Hot Spot. Repeated glaciation starting about 2.6 million years ago diverted north-flowing rivers like the Paleo-Yellowstone along ice sheet margins (location 3) to form the Missouri River. The ice sheets also disrupted the Paleo-Bell River Basin, causing river sedimentation to cease in the Saglek Basin. The Mackenzie River Basin was created, leaving the Saskatchewan/Nelson River Basin as the last remnant of North America’s Amazon. Credit: K. Cantner, AGI and Lionel Jackson, based on Sears, GSA Today, 2013.

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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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Fall is here!

I’ve been worried these last few days of summer and now fall is here! The maple and birch leaves have been falling. Swirls of leaves follow me as I walk along the trail. But the leaves are green and spotted! Where are the fall colors? May I just be anxious for cooler climes. Perhaps but with the wind and rain being so plentiful as of late I fear the fall colors nature brings with the changing seasons may be compromise.

AS I look out my window, the leaves seem to be talking to each other; they sway back and forth in the wind. Last night I heard numerous conversations of chattering leaves. What does one leaf say to another? Maybe they are pleading with one another to hold on to their branches or maybe they are encouraging each other to fly away with the wind.

Miraculously I found a yellow rose in my rose bush recently. I swear it is pink now. Do roses change color? Whatever, it is a wonderful sight. The rain has brought all sorts of colorful mushrooms up from the ground – orange, purple and of course white. Plenty of tiny little toads hopping about too and slender long snakes slithering about the driveway. No bloodsucking gnats like last year. I couldn’t even open doors to enjoy the wonderful cool weather as the gnats were so tiny that they could squeeze through the screens! The plague of gnats, inside and out, were annoying to say the least. No bloodsucking attacks – at least as of yet.

As I ramble on steadied with glee of autumnal comings, my mind goes to all the things that need to be completed before winter gets here. I’ll make a list but for now I am going to enjoy the blissfulness of fall’s arrival. I think I will go crunch some fallen foliage beneath my feet, dogs in tow!

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Climate Change Contributed to Oroville Spillway Collapse, Study Says

https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2018-06-28-oroville-dam-failure-global-warming-connection

The UCLA study highlights the inadequacies of decades-old infrastructure in the Golden State that were “designed for the climate of the past and not for the rapidly changing climate of the future,” Climate Signals notes.

“Our big dams were designed to capture smaller floods than what we expect in the future,” said Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist and lead author of an earlier study on California’s climate-related weather extremes. “We can make some changes on the margins, but these structures were built for a climate that we no longer have.”

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Plan Released for Klamath River Dam Removal | American Rivers

https://www.americanrivers.org/2018/06/plan-released-for-klamath-river-dam-removal/

“The Klamath River project will be the most significant dam removal and river restoration effort yet. Never before have four dams of this size been removed at once which inundate as many miles of habitat (4 square miles and 15 miles of river length), involving this magnitude of budget (approximately $397 million) and infrastructure.

But perhaps more important than the size of the dams is the amount of collaboration and the decades of hard work that have made this project possible. American Rivers has been fighting to remove the dams since 2000. And thanks to the combined efforts of the Karuk and Yurok tribes, irrigators, commercial fishing interests, conservationists, and many others, our goal of a free-flowing river is now within reach.”

Biggest dam removal ever! Klamath was largest salmon producer until dams interrupted reproduction cycles.

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Hanford waste, 9 year wait worth it

https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/article213801829.html

The first shipment of highly radioactive sludge left an annex at the Hanford nuclear reservation’s K West Reactor Basin, which is near the Columbia River, at about 10:30 a.m. Monday. It was taken to central Hanford for storage away from the river.
Courtesy Department of Energy