Traces of an herbicide that is deadly to a number of common vegetables have turned up in commercial compost across the country, threatening the compost industry and the urban waste disposal projects that depend on it. Residue of Clopyralid, which is widely used on lawns and wheat crops, has been found in compost made from grass, straw and manure. The herbicide causes many garden vegetables to wither and die. Officials speculate that the contamination could bankrupt the rapidly-growing compost industry.
The federal government's plan to store vast amounts of radioactive nuclear waste in a massive tunnel that it is digging under Yucca Mountain in Nevada (on land deeded by treaty in 1863 to the Western Shoshone tribe) was approved by President Bush in February. The project is expected to be vetoed by Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn. It then must be decided by a vote in Congress.
An innovative if controversial bill could protect offshore waters in California from oil drilling by allowing oil companies to swap drilling claims in California for others in the Gulf of Mexico. The legislation, introduced by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), and John Breaux (D-La.), would convert 40 offshore tracts into ecological preserves that would be forever protected from oil and gas drilling. But some cast a skeptical eye at the bill, calling it a bailout for big oil. The deal could be worth upwards of $2.8 billion to more than a dozen oil companies that have been frustrated in their attempts to develop oil leases off the coast of southern California. The money would come in the form of credits usable for bidding on tracts in the central and western Gulf, as well as to offset royalty payments to the government.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2002
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