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Tag: california

  • AUDIO: Energy’s Water Footprint in the Western Drought

    Drought in the west­ern U.S. is in the news every day, yet most media cov­er­age ignores the impact from water with­drawals for indus­tri­al pow­er facil­i­ties. While munic­i­pal and agri­cul­tur­al use are major drains on lim­it­ed water resources, so too are bio­mass, coal, nat­ur­al gas, and nuclear pow­er facilities.  On August 20, EJN spoke with Sta­cy Tellinghuisen,…

  • Bill to Subsidize California Biomass Facilities

    - by John Cox, April 6, 2015, Bak­ers­field Californian Local farm­ers are adding their sup­port to leg­is­la­tion that would divert rev­enue from California’s cap-and-trade pro­gram to bio­mass plants that gen­er­ate pow­er by burn­ing agri­cul­tur­al and urban green waste. Last month the Kern Coun­ty Farm Bureau co-host­ed a meet­ing in Delano to raise aware­ness of Assem­bly Bill 590…

  • Public Weighs in on Plumas County, CA Biomass Proposal

    - by Debra Moore, April 5, 2015, Plumas Coun­ty News The Sier­ra Insti­tute is poised to receive $2.6 mil­lion from the Cal­i­for­nia Ener­gy Com­mis­sion, but first the pub­lic will have a chance to com­ment on the bio­mass boil­er that would be built near the county’s health and human ser­vices build­ing in Quincy. The com­mis­sion announced March 10…

  • More California Biomass Facilities Closing

    - by Seth Nide­v­er, March 26, 2015, Han­ford Sentinel [Notice not a sin­gle men­tion of health and envi­ron­men­tal impacts of bio­mass facil­i­ties. ‑Josh]  Once upon a time, local orchard farm­ers tak­ing out trees piled them up in large heaps and struck a match, send­ing huge plumes of smoke into the air. More recent­ly, the waste has gone…

  • 2014 Farm Bill Logs National Forests for Bioenergy

    - Decem­ber 17, 2014, U.S. Depart­ment of Agriculture Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary Tom Vil­sack today announced that more than 200,000 tons of bio­mass were removed from fed­er­al lands through the Bio­mass Crop Assis­tance Pro­gram (BCAP). BCAP, reau­tho­rized by the 2014 Farm Bill, pro­vid­ed incen­tives for the removal of dead or dis­eased trees from Nation­al Forests and Bureau of…

  • Covanta Settles for $536,211 in Lawsuit Over Biomass Ash Testing

    -Decem­ber 11, 2014, Bak­ers­field Californian Dis­trict attor­neys from eight Cal­i­for­nia coun­ties announced Thurs­day the set­tle­ment of a civ­il envi­ron­men­tal enforce­ment action against three sub­sidiaries of a New Jer­sey-based company. The set­tle­ment cov­ers Cov­an­ta Ener­gy LLC’s Kern Coun­ty bio­mass ener­gy facil­i­ty in Delano, along with oth­er com­pa­ny facil­i­ties in Men­do­ta and Oroville. Kern Coun­ty will receive about…

  • US Forest Service Moves to Start Clearcutting in Rim Fire Area

    - by Chad Han­son, August 28, 2014, Earth Island Jour­nal  [How much of the forests that expe­ri­enced the Rim Fire will be feed­ing bio­mass incin­er­a­tors? ‑Ed.] The US For­est Ser­vice issued a draft deci­sion yes­ter­day for a mas­sive post-fire log­ging project in the Stanis­laus Nation­al For­est por­tion of the 2013 Cal­i­for­nia Rim Fire, which cov­ered 257,171 acres…

  • Santa Barbara, CA Eyes $50 Million Trash Anaerobic Digestion Project

    [NOTE: this is a pro­pos­al for anaer­o­bic diges­tion of munic­i­pal sol­id waste, not an incin­er­a­tor.  Ener­gy Jus­tice sup­port diges­tion of unre­cy­clable resid­u­als before land­fill­ing as part of a zero waste plan.] - by Joshua Moli­na, August 16, 2014, Noozhawk San­ta Bar­bara Coun­ty is propos­ing a $50 mil­lion trash-to-ener­gy project that would dou­ble the life of the Tajiguas land­fill and rad­i­cal­ly rede­fine trash diver­sion as…

  • Biofuels Plant Won’t Protect Us from Wildfire

    - by Vir­ginia Moran, May 16, 2014, Source: The Union Regard­ing the pro­posed “bio­fu­els” plant (i.e. accel­er­a­tion of cli­mate change) project, here is what I find “scary”: that res­i­dents of west­ern Neva­da Coun­ty are nev­er allowed to live our lives in peace. If we are twitchy and irri­ta­ble it is because we are con­stant­ly on guard…