The Friant Dam on California’s San Joaquin River, built in the 1940’s, is slated for removal as part of today’s Congressional designation of wilderness status and federal protection to 2 million acres across nine states.

Included in Congress’ largest expansion of the wilderness system in 15 years is an ambitious river restoration effort on the San Joaquin River. The legislation authorizes the federal government to carry out an $88 million settlement won by environmentalists in 2006 after a court battle that spanned two decades.

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A study released Wednesday shows that there are far fewer animals living in the area around Chernobyl and that animals living there are much more likely to be deformed.

“Usually (deformed) animals get eaten quickly, as it’s hard to escape if your wings are not the same length. In this case we found a high incidence of deformed animals,” said Anders Moller, a researcher working at Chernobyl since 1991.

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The criminal trial of W.R. Grace & Co., an international chemical company under federal indictment since 2005, began yesterday in Libby, Montana.

W.R. Grace & Co. is charged with violating the Clean Air Act and obstruction of justice while operating vermiculite mines in the Northwestern Montana town. Charges focus on whether company officials knew that the mining endangered Libby’s community.

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Scott James is a frequent contributor to Planetsave. This is his first post on the Ecopreneurist.

Hi Everyone, I want to introduce you to the Carbon Advice Group. It is an international carbon offsetting venture that allows users to create their own carbon offset merchant sites. This site harnesses the spirit of social entrepreneurship in the drive to be carbon neutral by empowering anyone to set up their own personalized micro-site where they can provide carbon offsets to their family, friends or business colleagues.

Every person and business leaves a carbon footprint, perhaps most notably through travel or food consumption, and this site empowers people to take responsible action to offset the unavoidable emissions of everyday transactions. I especially like that the affiliate set-up lets people take the carbon offset message to their personal community/network/business and take a lead role in spreading that awareness. Here is a page that I set up as an example:  Scott on Carbon Advice Group.

“We want to motivate the average person in the street to get online, build their own site and get the message across to everyone they know,” says serial Social Entrepreneur and Carbon Advice Group founder Matthew Sullivan.

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Virginia will cut its air pollution inspectors by more than 20% due to a budget shortfall. The Department of  Environmental Quality reported that 14 of the 54 inspector positions had been eliminated as part of Governor Timothy Kaine’s proposed $12 million in cuts to the state secretary of natural resources.

“If [polluters] are out of compliance, we may or may not find it as quickly or easily as we once did,” said State Secretary of Natural Resources L. Preston Bryant Jr.

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President Obama will push for the E.P.A. to allow states to set higher fuel economy standards than the current Federal standards. The Bush administration had not allowed stricter standards than those set by Congress in 2007.

“Just days into office, President Obama is showing America and the world that he will lead our country in a bold new direction to protect the environment and fight global warming,” said Frances Beinecke, Natural Resources Defense Council president.

Image Credit: bobster1985 on Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

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Germany’s environmental issues advisory body issued a strong advisory for German people to lower their meat consumption, effectively asking the population to eat meat only on special occasions. The advisory board cited that 15% of Germany’s greenhouse gases come from agriculture. Dramatically reducing meat consumption will diminish Germany’s carbon footprint.

“We must rethink our high meat consumption,” said Andreas Troge, president of the government’s environmental issues advisory body.

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Scientists have concluded that forests with excessive nitrogen concentrations reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. During a ten year study in Michigan by the National Science Foundation, researchers intentionally fertilized forests with two to three times the current levels of nitrogen. These levels mimic the predicted nitrogen levels of the near future due to fertilizers and exhaust from cars, power plants, and factories.

“It is pretty important to recognize that human effects on the nitrogen cycle have significant effects on climate,” said Alan Townsend, North American director of the International Nitrogen Initiative.

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A coalition of Chesapeake Bay advocates have filed suit against the EPA, calling for the government agency to honor existing state-federal agreements. The lawsuit focuses on Chesapeake Bay “dead zones” where lobsters and crabs are unable to breathe.

Agreements between the EPA and state governments to curb runoff pollution from farms, suburbs, power plants and storm sewers upstream of the bay have largely failed over the past 25 years. The legal action finds the Chesapeake Bay Foundation teaming up with past opponents, including commercial and recreational watermen groups and former public officials in both Maryland and Virginia.

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The Puget Soundkeeper Alliance has been suing companies under the 1972 Clean Water Act when they do not meet these minimal federal regulations. The law empowers citizens to bring lawsuits against individual polluters, and the Soundkeeper Alliance has been aggressively focusing on the biggest culprits with big results.

While defendants argue that companies are negligible polluters and that the suits slow the efforts of businesses to comply with regulations, Washington’s Department of Ecology supports the Alliance.

“Congress recognized that given limited resources, states would have to set priorities … and there may be enforcement cases [the government] could not pursue,” said Ron Lavigne, a senior member of the Department of Ecology. “That’s the role citizens should be fulfilling, and generally that is the role these Soundkeeper suits are playing.”

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Officials in Palm Beach County, Florida arrested Heather K. Southworth for felony fraud after exposing her big cat rescue charity as a complete fabrication.

Her non-existent organization, called Rescue: Big Cat Organization, complete with a fictional website, location, staff, and convenient donation link, was outed by The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission when they attempted to visit the site and found that no such rescue exists.

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Recently I went to a meeting in the San Mateo County Council room for local residents interested in learning about how to green their homes. The meeting was part of a bi-monthly series called “A Taste and a Talk,” where San Mateo residents get together, eat, and talk about some green issue. This time is was “Ask an Expert: Saving Energy at Home,” featuring local green business owners and consultants.

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