Category: Blog entry

  • Plainfield, Vermont Biomass Continues to Rile Neighbors

    - by Eric Blais­dell, March 27, 2015, Ver­mont Pub­lic Radio Things got so heat­ed at Plainfield’s Select Board meet­ing Mon­day night in a dis­cus­sion about God­dard College’s planned bio­mass-fueled heat plant, that one elect­ed offi­cial told board mem­bers they’d be in “deep water” if they dis­re­gard­ed some res­i­dents’ wish­es to have anoth­er meet­ing on it. The school is…

  • Save America’s Forests and Wild Lands from Anti-Environmental Congress

    The log­ging, graz­ing, min­ing and oth­er extrac­tive indus­tries are mount­ing an intense attack on our nation’s pub­lic lands.  The Decem­ber 2014 lame duck ses­sion of Con­gress saw an ugly brew of anti-con­ser­va­tion ini­tia­tives remov­ing legal con­ser­va­tion pro­tec­tion from mil­lions of acres of pub­lic lands. But this was just the tip of the oncom­ing extrac­tive indus­tries iceberg.…

  • Radioactive Spikes from Nuclear Plants a Likely Cause of Childhood Leukemia

    - by Dr. Ian Fair­lie, Ecol­o­gist On 23rd August, The Ecol­o­gist pub­lished very clear evi­dence of increased can­cers among chil­dren liv­ing near nuclear pow­er sta­tions around the world, includ­ing the UK. The sto­ry sparked much inter­est on social media sites, and per­haps more impor­tant­ly, the arti­cle’s sci­en­tif­ic basis (pub­lished in the aca­d­e­m­ic peer-reviewed sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal the Jour­nal of Envi­ron­men­tal Radioac­tiv­i­ty) was down­loaded over 500…

  • $629 Million in Taxpayer Dollars for Bioenergy

    - by Erin Voegele, March 19, 2015, Ethanol Pro­duc­er Magazine On March 12, the U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion pub­lished a report on direct fed­er­al finan­cial inter­ven­tions and sub­si­dies in ener­gy for fis­cal year (FY) 2103. The report, which responds to a request from Reps. Fred Upton, R‑Mich., chair­man of the House Com­mit­tee on Ener­gy and Com­merce…

  • Montana Logging Collaborative Fails Restoration Goals

    - by George Wuerth­n­er, March 15, 2015, The Wildlife News The For­est Ser­vice (FS), the tim­ber indus­try and some envi­ron­men­tal groups formed a col­lab­o­ra­tive groups sev­er­al years ago known as the South­west Crown of the Con­ti­nent (SWCC). The goal osten­si­bly is to pro­mote healthy ecosys­tems, but the real goal is to increase log­ging in the See­ley-Swan…

  • Garden Variety Environmentalism: The Band-Aid Wing of the Green Growth Economy

    - by Michael Don­nel­ly, March 13, 2015, Coun­ter­punch It was 60+ degrees and sun­ny – had been for weeks – in west­ern  Ore­gon, as I arrived in Eugene for the annu­al Pub­lic Inter­est Envi­ron­men­tal Law Con­fer­ence (PIELC) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon Law School – the planet’s old­est such con­fer­ence. The con­fer­ence, attend­ed by over 3000 attor­neys,…

  • Planned La Pine, Oregon Biomass Incinerator Hinges on Market

    - by Dylan J. Dar­ling, March 17, 2015, Bend Bul­letin A wood-burn­ing pow­er plant remains a pos­si­bil­i­ty for La Pine, with the city now tak­ing the lead on the project from Deschutes Coun­ty and the com­pa­ny behind it wait­ing for a change in the ener­gy market. “It’s just been on hold due to mar­ket con­di­tions,” said…

  • Gypsum, CO Biomass Incinerator Still Off-Line After December Fire

    - by Scott Miller, March 22, 2015, Post Inde­pen­dent A plant that gen­er­ates elec­tric­i­ty by burn­ing bee­tle-killed wood had only been oper­at­ing for a few months when a Decem­ber fire bad­ly dam­aged the facility’s con­vey­or sys­tem. The plant has been closed since, and will prob­a­bly remain closed until summer. The plant, built by Pro­vo, Utah-based Eagle…

  • State of Illinois Settles Ethanol Spill Fish Kill Case

    - by Pam Egge­meier, March 5, 2015, Sauk Val­ley A set­tle­ment has been reached with a rail­road com­pa­ny respon­si­ble for an ethanol spill that caused a sig­nif­i­cant fish kill in the Rock Riv­er near­ly 6 years ago, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Lisa Madigan’s office announced Thursday. In June 2009, a Chica­go, Cen­tral and Pacif­ic Rail­road train derailed in…

  • Kauai Biomass Facility to Get Fuel from Burned Forest

    - by Chris D’Angelo, March 5, 2015, The Gar­den Island It is unlike any oth­er log­ging oper­a­tion in Hawaii’s history. And the $90 mil­lion bio­mass-to-ener­gy facil­i­ty the logs are des­tined for is as unique as the project itself, state offi­cials say. “This is the largest oper­a­tion that we’ve had,” said Lisa Had­way, admin­is­tra­tor of the state Depart­ment…