Free Republic

The publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 sent shock waves through state agencies. The following year, in 1963, the Arkansas branch of the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife (which later became the US Fish and Wildlife Service) imported grass carp as an organic treatment for catfish ponds. Carp, with their voracious appetites for plankton, were a chemical-free filter. When the approach proved successful, additional species — black, silver, and bighead carp — were brought from Vietnam and Malaysia, and later from China and Russia as well. Without differentiating among the species, agencies like the US Department of...

Portland administrators will flush 38 million gallons of water from Mt. Tabor Reservoir 5 after a 19-year-old man urinated in the city’s drinking supply. “Even though there is very minimal public health risk, the bottom line is that our commitment is to serve water that’s clean, cold and constant,” said Water Bureau administrator David Shaff. “That doesn’t include pee. Not from people, at least.”

ECHO SUMMIT, Calif. (Map, News) - A month of relentless storms has left the Sierra snowpack well above its average depth, a welcome change from last year's dry winter and a positive sign for summertime water deliveries to farms and cities.In the northern Sierra Nevada, just south of Lake Tahoe, the state Department of Water Resources measured the snow Thursday at 73.1 inches deep. That's 123 percent of what is typically expected this time of year.The average snowpack along the entire 400-mile-long range was 111 percent of normal, well above the amount measured during the first seasonal snow survey earlier...

NEW YORK - Election night 2006 will go into history books as a triumph for Democrats and rebuke to President Bush. It was a watershed evening for the news media, too. The first smoothly run election night of the Internet era left many news organizations unsure of where they stood and should prompt some rethinking in time for 2008, according to a detailed new report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The journalism think tank monitored several forms of media that night and concluded the best place to follow the story was on Web sites run by television networks...

Opponents of Referendum C counted on voters rejecting a bigger tax bite, $3,100 for the average family in the next five years, under the pressure of high prices for gasoline, home heating, health care and housing. We appealed to people's skepticism that the Democrat-led legislature would use the new money responsibly. Polling even last weekend suggested proponents hadn't made the sale. But they surged to victory with the help of respected Republicans like Gov. Bill Owens, former party chairman Bruce Benson and University of Colorado president Hank Brown. Those heavy hitters outweighed the more numerous antitax Republican voices, including the...

The Missouri legislators, who read, before voting to approve a water law (HB1433) in the waning moments of last year’s session, no doubt, thought that they were creating something to help protect clean water in a nine-county area. That’s what they were told by reputable employees of the state agencies, and influential lobbyists from environmental organizations. The new law created a nine-county district in which water policy would be developed and enforced by appointed--not elected--officials. None realized that the law they adopted was, in fact, an important step toward the implementation of a plan conceived more than 15 years ago...

"Three U.S. senators are calling for an official review of the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort after news reports that the government agency leading the cleanup has overstated its progress." . . . "The Chesapeake Bay Program, the federal and state partnership directing the restoration of North America's largest estuary, has used numbers from a computer model to report significant reductions in the amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen running into bay waters. "The Washington Post reported last month that the model was twice found to have rested on erroneous assumptions that overstated the results of the cleanup. Some scientists questioned whether...

Grant awarded, plan created to improve water sanctuaries in Santa Cruz County Jun 20 2003 12:00AM By By MICHAEL SEVILLE OF THE REGISTER-PAJARONIAN Santa Cruz County has an immense concentration of watershed areas making up its world-class landscape. To help preserve and restore some of these water sanctuaries to their original state, the California Coastal Conservancy has awarded a $4.5 million grant to the county for environmental improvements including more than 100 watershed restoration projects. "The Integrated Watershed Plan represents the future of watershed management in California," Sam Schuchat, executive director of the California Coastal Conservancy, said. Also contributing to...