The Daily Score

• Food-safety lawyer's wish: Lay me off

  You might say that E. coli has been very, very good to William Marler. If there's an outbreak of food-borne illness anywhere in the country - spinach, cookie dough, hamburgers, you name it - chances are Marler will be filing lawsuits on behalf of those who were sickened. But now [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Sewer pollution spills into waterways

  More than 9,400 of the nation's 25,000 sewage systems have reported dumping untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere. As cities have grown rapidly across the nation, many have neglected infrastructure projects and paved over green spaces that once absorbed [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Climate change speeds up since 1997 Kyoto accord

  Since the 1997 Kyoto international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated - beyond some of the grimmest warnings made back then. [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• KC Metro won't cut bus service after all

  Metropolitan King County Council members say they've figured out how to maintain existing bus service for two more years - instead of cutting service 9 percent as earlier proposed.' [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Learning the lessons of the Pahsimeroi River

  Ranchers along the Idaho's Pahsimeroir River area have long pointed fingers at the mind-numbing red tape federal agencies required to eliminate barriers that blocked spawning streams and to provide more water for fish. But today, 10 miles of cold, spring-fed creek habitat that had been lost for up to a [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Eugene seeks to sustain ‘green’ manager’s future

  When Eugene’s first sustainability manager left her job last summer, environmentalists thought the city would quickly find a replacement to lead the city’s quest for a greener future. But that hasn't happened.' [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Life in the slow city

  With no fast food restaurants or big box stores, the bicycle and pedestrian friendly Cowichan Bay in British Columbia has become North America's first Slow City. An offshoot of the Slow Food movement, it's a quiet resistance to drive-thru homogenization. [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Frozen salmon better for the planet

  Frozen salmon is better for the planet than fresh, because it takes so much less energy to make it to your dinner plate than catching fish and flying them to markets around the world. The findings of a study by Portland-based EcoTrust may fly against conventional assumptions that fresh is [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Fatal attraction in acidifying oceans

  Ocean acidification could cause fish to become "fatally attracted" to their predators, according to scientists. A team studying the effects of acidification - caused by dissolved carbon dioxide - on ocean reefs found that it leaves fish unable to smell danger. [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• The changing SF skyline

  For more than 20 years, San Francisco planners have nudged the city's burgeoning financial center towards these principles: don't drive cars, make street-level life more appealing, and let the skyline rip with ultra-tall high-rises. Now they've tweaked that thinking with intriguing specifics, including a "crown" of 1000-foot-tall towers. [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Recovery invisible to OR's small towns

  Oregon's economy has hit bottom, and a slow recovery is under way, state lawmakers learned from forecasters. But the folks in Willamina, Dallas and countless rural towns across the state - which in some cases are one mill closure away from 80 percent unemployment - aren't celebrating.' [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Do it for the polar bears!

  For marketers, climate guilt isn't the easiest thing to sell. Part of the audience thinks climate change is fake, fuzzy or too far in the future to care about. And another segment of the audience believe in climate change so fervently that they're too paralyzed or resigned to respond to [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Views: Try spending less, giving more

  For three years now, families and churches - including many in Portland - have given more than 300 communities clean drinking water in an attempt to take back Christmas by worshiping fully, spending less, giving more and loving all. [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Shoppers buy green despite tough economy

  Despite the worst US recession in decades, sales of organic and sustainable products have continued to grow, experts say, with shoppers willing to spend a few more dollars in a bid to become more green. [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Canada needs 40 years to stabilize greenhouse gases

  Acting on climate change is urgent, but Canada needs 40 years to succeed in its own part of a global plan to stabilize the emissions that are warming the atmosphere, the country's top environment official said. [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Bitter fight developing over sugar beets

  If the Midwest is the nation's breadbasket, then Oregon's Willamette Valley might be called its "seed basket." Organic growers who fear that genetically engineered sugar beets grown nearby could pollute their seeds with biotech-infused pollen are suing the USDA and hoping to keep that crop out of the ground next [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• California recycling program is on the rocks

  For years California has courted a reputation as an eco-friendly, green-minded leader, but the state now finds its most basic program of recycling beverage bottles and cans mired in debt and litigation. [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Oregon tax votes foster competing claims

  Mike Roach makes a decent living selling clothes. Bess Wills doesn't do too badly selling cars. Both believe strongly in the role small business plays in the local economy, and both consider themselves die-hard public school supporters. Yet they stand at opposite poles of Oregon's upcoming tax election.' [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Views: The Senate’s duty on climate

  We cannot rewrite the Bush years any more than we can persuade the Chinese of the merits of a binding treaty to control greenhouse gases. What the United States can do is assume responsibility for its own emissions, and this the US Senate has manifestly failed to do. [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• New economy cities: A Seattle slew of advantages

  Seattle is the prototype city of the future. It embodies in one leafy landscape virtually all of the forces driving the New Economy – exports, an educated workforce, a vibrant high-tech base, a budding green-tech sector, and an enviable lifestyle. Still, Seattle is far from perfect. [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Review: An inconvenient solution

  Occasionally, truth be told, Al Gore's book Our Choice verges on the nerdy. Taken as a whole, however, this is the most comprehensive and well-informed survey anyone has ever done of what we need to do to get off fossil fuel, writes Bill McKibben. [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• San Francisco's health care a model

  San Francisco did not wait for Washington's health care overhaul. Most uninsured adults here are already reaping the benefits of a government-run health care program -- seeing doctors, filling prescriptions, and getting surgeries they could not otherwise afford. [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Biologists rush to save fish after landslide

  A gigantic landslide that buried a highway, uprooted homes and rerouted a river in Washington state's Cascade Range left hundreds of smaller victims: fish. Fisheries biologists from 10 government agencies and private groups are working shifts to try to save the salmon and trout. [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Oregon wolves again star in video -- with pups

  They walk in single file -- black- and gray-coated wolves gliding through a snowy open forest in eastern Oregon. The remarkable video, captured last week by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, is further evidence that wolves are re-establishing themselves here. [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Free clinics tied to health-care debate

  A nonprofit group's campaign to hold free medical clinics for the uninsured in three states is turning into a not-so-subtle jab at moderate Democrats to support their party's efforts to reform health care. [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Waste Not Baskets ready for Winter Olympics

  Rooms in the Vancouver and Whistler athletes' villages will feature recycling containers -- called Waste Not Baskets -- made from recycled plastic.' [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• State gets grant to study green jobs

  The state of Oregon has received a $1.25 million grant from the federal government to study green jobs. [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Reid pushes for votes on US health-care bill

  Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid worked Thursday to nail down the votes needed to move to a final debate on health-care legislation, but a tepid assessment of the public insurance plan he crafted emerged as the latest potential obstacle to the passage of the far-reaching changes. [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Victoria eco-rally calls for action on climate

  A thousand people who packed the Victoria Conference Centre Tuesday night called on the Canadian government to take a leadership role on climate change prior to a UN climate-change conference in Copenhagen next month. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• A bridge over rising waters

  December is the big season for Willamette River cruises on the Portland Spirit, but that's also the big season for heavy rains. The ship's owners worry that the deluge will be so sudden and so great -- courtesy of global warming -- that the river will rise too high for [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Idaho Power's cloud seeding efforts

  Idaho Power Co. is investing up to $1 million to seed the clouds above Idaho's mountains in hopes of increasing the snowpack that holds the water that will drive the hydroelectric turbines to produce the cheapest power the company can get. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Making sun, wind power more reliable

  Technology and policy are coming together to promise electricity as abundant as sunshine and as freely available as the breeze -- and about as fickle. That could change. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Vancouver choosing density over open space

  Vancouver, BC, is opting for denser communities at the expense of open public spaces in its bid to become the world's greenest city by 2020. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• US Chamber of Commerce split over climate issue

  Climate change poses a different sort of challenge for the US Chamber of Commerce. Many of its big-business members are deeply split on the issue, with some standing to profit from an economy moving away from reliance on fossil fuels, while others could see cost increases. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• NW trees have profitable potential in climate issue

  In a state famous for its logging, imagine this: Oregonians getting paid not to cut down trees. The intriguing idea surfaced in a discussion about climate change Wednesday in a US Senate hearing on managing federal forests. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Cleanup slows of mining Superfund site in Oregon

  Bureaucratic snags threaten to slow cleanup of the state's dirtiest abandoned mine, a Superfund site in southern Oregon that leaches 5 million gallons of fish-killing, acid rock drainage into nearby creeks each year. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Views: Closing in on a carbon target

  While in China, President Obama came tantalizingly close to saying what the rest of the world has been waiting years to hear: that next month the United States, the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases, will finally come to the table with a specific carbon reduction target. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Oregon tree farmers invest in the majestic redwood

  Oregon tree farmers are planting at least 20,000 coastal redwood trees a year in Lane and Douglas counties. They're driven less the awe the big trees inspire in many people, than by the best return on their investment in 30 or 40 years, when the trees are harvested.' [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• 'Under-insured' growing as fast as uninsured

  The trend of people no longer being able to afford health insurance has been getting worse, Washington officials say. A new state study predicts the number of people here without insurance will hit 1 million by the end of 2011. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• US companies making carbon cuts

  A survey of 90 big US companies found that most were addressing climate change, either by cutting energy use, measuring greenhouse gas emissions, adopting policies to cut emissions, or pushing for federal legislation to do the same. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Forests fight climate change on two fronts

  And at a hearing on Capitol Hill, forest officials and lawmakers discussed ways that federal forestland could help combat climate change on at least two fronts. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Views: US health-reform foes on wrong side of history

  Why is it broadly accepted that elderly Americans should have universal health care, while it's immensely controversial to seek universal coverage for children? What's the difference, asks Nicholas Kristof, except that health care for children is far cheaper? [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Wage confusion delays weatherization program

  Washington's home-weatherization efforts have fallen at least two months behind goals set under the federal stimulus aid, the result of a mix-up over conflicting wage requirements under federal and state laws. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• RV park tenants face eviction from affordable housing

  A pastoral campground on the banks of the Columbia River has for decades provided about 60 low-income residents with a clean, cheap, and safe place to live in an Oregon county with a dearth of decent affordable housing. But regulators say it's operating illegally and the long-term tenants must go.[...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Bottled water sucks

  With style, verve and righteous anger, a new documentary exposes the bottled water industry's role in suckering the public, harming our health, accelerating climate change, and contributing to overall pollution. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Questions arise over Obama's salmon plan

  On Monday comes the latest in the long-running court battle over the government's plan to run its hydroelectric dams without pushing Columbia Basin salmon closer to extinction. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Possible park at Fernhill Wetlands

  Wetlands near a Forest Grove sewage treatment could be turned into a park, a plan that delights area birdwatchers, but there's no money budgeted for the effort in the city west of Portland. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Views: Sliding backward on climate change

  Portland may be at the edge of the continent, but in so many ways it's right at the center of Al Gore's green thinking. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Low-income housing reimagined

  The Seattle Housing Authority unveiled a plan last week to remake Yesler Terrace's 561 units of public housing into a mixed-use area of office, housing, and retail with buildings up to 22 stories high. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Health bill hopes to sway reluctant Democrats

  The Senate needs 60 votes to bring its health care bill to the floor. To round up those votes, the bill unveiled Wednesday costs less than the House version, and delays the effective date for many provisions to 2014. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Toward Copenhagen

  As we approach the Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference, December 7 to 18--the world's last chance to secure an emissions reductions agreement that will replace the Kyoto Protocol before it expires--activists racing against a ticking environmental bomb are channeling their energies at the UN talks and beyond. Join them.[...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Give in on same-sex benefits, judge orders feds

  The chief federal appeals court judge in San Francisco bluntly ordered the Obama administration Thursday to stop resisting his finding that the wife of a lesbian court employee was entitled to government insurance coverage. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Nations unveil plans to rein in emission

  With less than three weeks remaining before negotiators gather in Copenhagen to hammer out a global response to climate change, a rapid-fire succession of countries are unveiling national plans that serve as opening bids for reining in heat-trapping emissions. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Pelosi: Abortion issue won't sink health care bill

  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday predicted that she can corral enough moderate Democrats to guarantee passage of health care overhaul legislation -- even if it doesn't contain a controversial House proposal that would expand abortion limits.' [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Physicians detail health hazards from coal

  A new report from the advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility concludes that pollutants from coal-fired power plants contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the US: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. Coal plants still provide about 40 percent of the electricity [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Vancouver endorses plan light on parks

  Vancouver's city council has unanimously endorsed a plan to create a high-density neighbourhood with a civic plaza, residential and office space on the final undeveloped section of the former Expo lands. What it doesn't include is the 2.75 acres of park space per 1,000 people that city council holds as' [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• The mother tree

  How fate and fortitude in BC's Similkameen Valley combined to give us a new apple so good it had to be called Ambrosia. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Views: We need another carbon tariff

  A carbon tariff is an indispensable component of any economically viable carbon policy that Western economies must ultimately adopt. A carbon tariff is an indispensable component of any economically viable carbon policy that Western economies must ultimately adopt. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Where can I juice up my ride?

  As their manufacturers see it, the electric cars entering U.S. showrooms as early as next year will be engineering marvels: stylish, battery-operated, zero-emission wonders. Yet for all their technological prowess, there's one practical question that unsettles the green dreamers and entrepreneurs alike: Where, oh, where, can you plug them in?[...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• 'Cash for Caulkers' home weatherization program

  The economy still needs help. So White House officials are looking at creating a new version of cash for clunkers -- this time for home weatherization. Call it "cash for caulkers." [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Oregon entrepreneurs see profits in carbon market

  Many hope the Copenhagen summit will set up a global carbon trading market, along the lines of what's now being established in California. In Oregon, some entrepreneurs see a public good -- and private gain -- in these markets. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Seas absorbing less carbon

  The Earth's oceans, which have absorbed carbon dioxide from fuel emissions since the dawn of the industrial era, have recently grown less efficient at sopping it up, new research suggests. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• BC First Nation approves private property rights

  A northwestern BC First Nation has approved a revolutionary land reform deal, making it the first in Canada to approve private property rights. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• California rejects energy-hungry TVs

  California moved to crack down on the sale of energy-gobbling big-screen television sets that now account for about 10 percent of a typical household's monthly power bill. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Infuriated mom: Why can't I protect my body?

  Kim Radtke of Seattle was pregnant with her now nearly three-week-old son when tests detected in her blood 11 chemicals, including mercury. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Defending science: the disease of denialism

  Fear is as infectious as any virus, and gives many Americans a warped view of the dangers posed by vaccines, genetically engineered crops and other beneficial technologies, New Yorker writer Michael Specter said in Seattle Tuesday. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Tap water far 'greener' than bottled in study

  Even in a best-case scenario, drinking bottled water boosts greenhouse gas emissions 46 times more than drinking water from the tap, an analysis from Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality concludes. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• $3.1 million coming to Northwest for green jobs

  Pacific Northwest states are getting more than $3.1 million from the US Department of Labor to encourage green jobs. The stimulus grants include training for jobs that reduce energy use and benefit the environment. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Views: What climate-change deniers really believe

  So, you don't believe in global warming? You're wrong, says columnist Thomas L. Friedman, but he'll let you enjoy it until your beach house gets washed away.' [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Home energy-efficiency startup wins CA green contest

  Startup companies with ways to save energy and make plastic from wastewater took top honors Tuesday evening in the 2009 Cleantech Open, an annual contest to find and nurture California's promising environmental entrepreneurs. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Push on to turn BC pet cemetery into park

  The only pet cemetery in Vancouver could eventually disappear under a developer's bulldozer, but some pet lovers are trying to have the property turned into a park. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Energy-efficient fish science

  Work at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries lab in Juneau has expanded beyond fish research to include energy conservation. The lab is using roof-top wind turbines and other modifications to cut energy use. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Gore insists on switch to clean energy, new politics

  The person most responsible for raising public consciousness on climate change, Nobel laureate and former Vice President Al Gore, is touring the country to tell us how to avert the calamities he has long projected. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Endangered frogs released at Fort Lewis

  The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife says about 500 endangered Oregon spotted frogs have been released this fall at a lake on the Fort Lewis Army base near Tacoma. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• MT logging projects challenged over bears

  An environmental group is seeking to stop three logging projects on several thousand acres in northwest Montana, arguing that the timber sales would harm the area's fledgling grizzly bear population. [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Pigs in the city? Hillsboro's creative compromise

  The City Council expects to approve a plan Tuesday night to annex island properties into the city in order to streamline services and save money. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Boise company's solar charger may save gas

  Treasure Valley Solar is marketing a way to keep electronic devices revved up in the car without turning on the engine. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• San Francisco cyclists get techie

  If you see bicyclists wobbling through the city streets with an iPhone in hand, don't assume they're playing Bejeweled or IMing their virtual pals while they pedal. They may be using Cycle Tracks, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority's new - and first - application for the Apple iPhone. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Paying extra for green power, getting ads instead

  Close to a million electricity customers have signed up for voluntary "green power" payments, and the amount of electricity sold in this way has nearly tripled since 2005, amid rising concern about climate change and energy security. But the participants are in a distinct minority, with a sign-up rate of [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Is 'cash for clunker appliances' coming to Seattle?

  If you were hoping to buy a new, energy-efficient dishwasher or fridge with a federal rebate by Christmas, you're out of luck. Cash for clunker appliances - officially known as the US Department of Energy's state energy efficient appliance rebate program - won't be available in Washington until February of next [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Oregon's unemployed giving up looking for work

  It's tempting to present the flattening of Oregon's unemployment rate - at 11.3 percent in October - as good news. But economists, dismal scientists to the core, paint a negative picture. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Premature-birth rate low in Washington

  Premature-birth rates in the Pacific Northwest are among the lowest in the nation, but the March of Dimes says that earns Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska only C's on the organization's premature-birth report card. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Seattle's other mega-project: 520 bridge

  A replacement for downtown Seattle's viaduct has been getting a lot of attention - but there's an equally challenging state highway project that crosses Lake Washington. The question is how to replace the aging Route-520 bridge. A committee is supposed to vote today on which option to recommend to the [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Seniors skeptical of health care overhaul

  The health-overhaul bill passed by the House this month includes many benefits for seniors, including elimination of the Medicare prescription-drug "doughnut hole" and copays on preventive services. But still, many seniors remain unconvinced that health reform would be good for them. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Idaho governor objects to listing peppergrass as threatened

  Gov. Butch Otter said the federal government has let down the ranchers and others in Idaho who stepped forward to help a rare flowering bush that grows in the Foothills and in wet areas of Southwest Idaho's desert - even though it was not protected under the Endangered Species Act.[...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Parks Service Jon Jarvis taps Idahoan for parks scientist

  National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis didn't wait long to reach into his Idaho roots. Jarvis, who served as superintendent of Craters of the Moon National Monument, picked the University of Idaho's Gary Machlis to serve as the first National Park Service science adviser.' [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• First Nation sues government over 1851 promise

  An allegedly broken promise from 160 years ago will be tested by a lawsuit filed against the federal and provincial governments. The Songhees First Nation is claiming a large swath of land that takes in part of the Uplands, the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, Cadboro Bay village, Gyro Park and a [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Views: Simon Frasier professors slam Campbell's energy plan

  Hobbling BC Hydro so private firms can profit big is bad public policy. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Preparing Oregon for earthquakes

  Using information gained from an April simulation of quakes ranging up to 9.0 magnitude, engineers can now prioritize which of the 2,671 bridges in the state highway system should get seismic upgrades. That's a $3 billion job, Oregon Department of Transportation spokesman Dave Thompson said. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Two senators seek new US approach on climate change

  Two senators have introduced a bipartisan bill that proposes to double US nuclear power in 20 years, provide $100bn in loan guarantees for carbon-free electricity projects and ramp up alternative energy and carbon capture research and development. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Where does that school lunch come from?

  The story of how food with a history of making kids sick continued to get into schools illustrates broad failures in government programs meant to provide safe, quality meals for America's children, a USA Today investigation found. Parents and schools often have no idea where the food comes from.[...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Hunger in US at a 14-year high

  The number of Americans who lived in households that lacked consistent access to adequate food soared last year, to 49 million, the highest since the government began tracking what it calls "food insecurity" 14 years ago, the Department of Agriculture reported Monday. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Cleaner chlorine plants may be creating a mercury glut

  Cleaner chlorine plants may indirectly be creating an excess of toxic metal. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Poll finds deep divisions on health-care reform

  As the Senate prepares to take up legislation aimed at overhauling the nation's health-care system, President Obama and the Democrats are still struggling to win the battle for public opinion. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Americans deeply divided over the proposals under consideration and majorities predicting higher costs [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Hunger a growing problem in America

  The nation's economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people -- including almost one child in four -- struggled last year to [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• EPA has new 'green homes' Web site

  The US Environmental Protection Agency has a new "Green Homes" Web site that aims to guide homeowners and renters toward environmentally friendly home improvement and yard care. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Low-emission locomotives a boost to public health

  A new crop of "ultra-low emission" short-haul locomotives could have significant public health benefits, according to rail industry officials and federal health experts, who suggest that they could help decrease the risk of cancer and heart and respiratory disease for people living near rail yards. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Views: Imperfect 'cap-and-trade' is best option

  Reasonable people can disagree about how bad global warming will eventually be if nothing is done, and some of the doomsday scenarios might well be overblown. But virtually all climate scientists concur that it's a dire enough threat that the wise course of action is to sharply curb use of [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Experts question Hanford's waste treatment plant

  The Obama Administration says it plans to appoint a blue ribbon panel soon to determine the fate of the nation's radioactive waste. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Big algal bloom lingering along coast

  Marine scientists have been surprised by the persistence of an unusual red tide along the Washington and northern Oregon coast. This is the algae bloom which produced a slimy foam that killed thousands of seabirds earlier in the fall. Foam turned up on coastal beaches again on Monday, but the [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:00pm EST