By John Rarrick •
January 1, 2009
Last week, The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the success of a city-wide holiday recycling drive, which looked to top the more than two tons of used cooking oil San Fransicoans unloaded over Thanksgiving weekend. The grease will go to power the city’s fleet of fire trucks, ambulances, Muni buses and other vehicles.
According to Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, programs like this can also put a huge dent in the city’s sewer repair budget, as kitchen grease is one of the major causes of municipal water pipe damage, responsible for over 50% of sewer emergencies each year.
By Michael Ratliff •
December 18, 2008
Scientists with research group SRI International recently completed a successful wave power test in the Monterey Bay off the coast of Santa Cruz, CA. While the buoy-like device only generates enough electricity to power a refrigerator light bulb, the design is an improvement on its problem-prone predecessors.
By Keith Rockmael •
June 13, 2008
In California, and San Francisco in particular, we see almost as many Obama for president placards in home and business windows as we see Stop the Spray signs. It seems like the precursor for a B-grade sci-fi film with the storyline pitting the the government versus this evil moth. But this isn’t Mothra we’re talking about, its the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM).
The situation involves not just the local governments but the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) and CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture) that claim that the LBAM will cause major destruction of crops in California. The feds think that we must take swift action or suffer the economic impact of quarantines, which they estimate will cost CA millions of dollars.
Something curious happened on the way to this economic thinking. To date, the LBAM has caused ZERO crop damage. The economic damage has been due only to quarantines imposed on the Golden State by Canada and Mexico. When the Feds sprayed Santa Cruz and Monterey counties last fall the counties recorded over 640 health problems. This number represented only the reported cases, and conservative estimates of actual health impacts by local agencies put the number of cases at ten times the number of reports claimed.
