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State and utility officials applauded the completion Monday of the world's first artificial kelp reef that they say will provide a thriving habitat for fish and marine organisms for decades. Spread over two miles south of San Clemente Pier, the pioneering reef was undertaken by Southern California Edison to make up for environmental damage caused by the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Advertisement “In the end we have both the energy and the environment we need,” Cecil House, a Southern California Edison vice president, said during a ceremony attended by about 100 people on the pier. The 175-acre reef was...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - California has become the main front in a war over offshore oil drilling. Congress may soon vote to allow drilling for oil at at least 50 miles from America's coastline - but not in the Golden State, if leaders have anything to say about it. The California Assembly has taken a firm stand against the drilling, saying that the move would protect the state's beaches. Many drivers who cram into the state's packed freeways are singing a different tune. Some told NBC Bay Area they want lower prices now - and if drilling is what it takes...

PORT MORESBY (AFP) - Environmental group Greenpeace said Thursday that its activists had boarded a logging ship in Papua New Guinea to prevent it exporting timber to China. Greenpeace Australia Pacific said four activists climbed on a loading crane aboard the ship Harbour Gemini at Paia Inlet on PNG's southwest coast to stop logs being loaded. Greenpeace argues the ship is being operated by Malaysian-owned logging company Rimbunan Hijau, which it accuses of breaking PNG's forestry laws. "We need to urgently protect these ancient forests to save our climate," Greenpeace campaigner Sam Moko said in a statement. "Greenpeace is asking...

Tim Budney scoffed at the fliers spread across the table in front of him. The pieces of paper, arrayed for an audience of natural gas drillers at a recent Harrisburg meeting, boasted of one wastewater treatment facility’s daily capacity to treat hundreds of thousands of gallons of the dirty water produced during gas exploration in the Marcellus Shale. Mr. Budney was unimpressed. He had recently pumped and recovered more than 4 million gallons of water to develop just two Western Pennsylvania gas wells for Pittsburgh-based CNX Gas Corp.

Mike Shaw didn't want to be caught by surprise when the state starting cracking down on diesel engines. He owned more than 100 of them – powering the scrapers, graders and bulldozers that are the backbone of his San Diego construction business. So he paid close attention when the state's air pollution regulators wrote new rules requiring the owners of diesel-powered equipment to clean up their fleets. And as he thinned the oldest, dirtiest engines from his stock, Shaw thought he was well on his way to satisfying the state's requirements. Then he ran the numbers. The state's calculator showed...

Canada lags behind U.S. in curbing toxic emissions, says NAFTA report Wed Jun 2,12:15 AM ET DENNIS BUECKERT OTTAWA (CP) - Canadian industrial plants released 2.7 million kilograms of chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects and other reproductive harm in 2001, says a new report by the NAFTA environmental agency. The annual Taking Stock report, drawn from submissions by more than 20,000 polluters in the United States and Canada, shows that Canada is lagging the United States in curbing toxic pollution. Although total North American emissions declined by 18 per cent from 1998 to 2001, Canadian emissions rose three per...

Copenhagen, Denmark - In addition to oil prices hovering at record levels, some economists say a carbon tax would encourage Americans to curb wasteful energy consumption that contributes to global warming. Three prominent economists appearing here for the global economics conference "Copenhagen Consensus" agreed that the chances of approving a carbon tax during an election year are slim. Consumers would face the tax at the gas pump.Gas prices have risen steadily in Denver from about $1.50 a gallon in June to about $2.02 now.Americans wouldn't like the additional hike, but they must start thinking seriously about how to decrease greenhouse...

May 27, 2004 -- Automakers can't turn out popular penny-pinching hybrid cars fast enough to fill motorist demand. With gasoline prices doubling in the past year, driver demand for the 55-miles-per-gallon gasoline-and-battery-powered vehicles from Toyota and Honda has also more than doubled. Sales of the $23,000 Toyota Prius, for example, soared 152.8 percent in the 12 months since gas prices started their troubling ascent in April 2003. "Manufacturers are selling every hybrid they can build — they're hot," said auto analyst David Lucas of AutoData Corp., the industry's authoritative source for automotive sales. "As our energy costs continue to rise,...

Tough bacteria lurk under Hanford tank This story was published Wednesday, May 26th, 2004 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer Beneath the leak-prone tanks of highly radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear site lie some of the most inhospitable underground environments in the world. For seven years in the 1960s, Tank SX-108 there leaked tens of thousands of gallons of a stew of radioactive, toxic and caustic waste left from the past production of plutonium at Hanford. But when scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory studied the contaminant-soaked soil beneath the buried tank, they found a surprise -- an abundance...

EPA Fines Army Over Nerve Gas Release 2 hours, 48 minutes ago Add U.S. Government - AP to My Yahoo! SAN FRANCISCO - The U.S. Army and a contractor were fined nearly $52,000 for releasing a deadly chemical weapon on a wildlife sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean, federal environmental officials announced Wednesday. An unknown quantity of VX nerve agent was released in August 2002 at a chemical weapons disposal facility on Johnston Atoll, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites)'s office in San Francisco said. The release occurred when a tray holding remnants of a VX shell was improperly...

WorldNetDaily / Commentary Henry Lamb Our posterity will laugh at us Posted: April 24, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com It may take a generation or two, but at some point in the future, policy-makers will look back in disbelief at the arrogance and ignorance that permeate the policies of this generation. How profoundly arrogant is it to think that public policy can, or should, "preserve" the environment as it was at some point in the past? Suppose the policy-makers at the turn of the 20th century had decided to "preserve" the environment as it was before America was discovered. Had...