Category: Energy

Twenty years ago today, Colleen Dietzel and Kip Kruegar and other local environmentalists opened The Green Store on Voltaire Street for the first time. It was Earth Day 1989 – April 22nd.

Ever since, the iconic ecology store has steadfastly held its ground, offering books, magazines, bumper stickers, buttons, posters and other green products and mementos, while also serving as an anti-corporate space, a meeting site for area groups, and the headquarters for any thing green in OB.

The carbon footprint of the average San Diegan — including residential energy use and transportation — is larger than that of the average resident of Los Angeles, a review of available data shows. San Diego lags behind LA in policies and programs to reduce energy use.

By Jon Carr

The first annual OB Global Rock Fest is taking place at the pier parking lot on April 18th, 2009.
The event is being promoted as “Carbon Neutral” because the stages will be powered with Solar energy and there will be plenty of environmentally conscious vendors in the grassy area between the wall and Abott street.

Chris Yule is far to modest. My family has known Chris for years, she is my closest friend.

She begged both Funke and Winkler to keep the school open. At the time of its closing, less than $3,000.00 in repairs would have kept the school open. The school was refurbished long AFTER its closure.

I want a plug-in hybrid. A vehicle with lithium-ion batteries good for 40-45 miles, two wheel drive, a six speed computer controlled transmission with a computer that starts a small generator; an 11 hp portable generator is rated for 6200 watts, and yes, burns gas, for now. Modular construction would make it easy to replace the gas power generator with a fuel cell or other non-internal combustion power source.

The Capitol Power Plant’s days of coal are over. It’s been the waiting game here: Since 2 pm, over 2,000 activists have blockaded the three main gates to the Capitol Power Plant. The rather larger police turnout is impressive; clad in their best stocking caps, they dot the chain fence like lamp-posts, taking in the gregarious march with a bit of interest and fascination. No attempt at any arrests have been made. The crowd is controlled and peaceful; there is a festive atmosphere, young and old, all bundled up and dancing to keep warm on this crystal clear but chilly afternoon.

BORDER AGENTS BLOCK MARCHERS
In the end, immigration activists never made it to the site of yesterday’s planned demonstration, a plaza dubbed Friendship Park that sits on a bluff overlooking the ocean at Border Field State Park. For the first time, Border Patrol agents formally sealed off access on the U.S. side to the plaza, for years a popular meeting place on the U.S.-Mexico border for families to visit through the fence.
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POWERLINK CAUSES OUTRAGE
Jody Morgan cherishes his 100-acre property in El Monte Valley, where El Cajon Mountain rises above the rural community that’s home to a dairy and horse farms. At a Lakeside planning group meeting Wednesday night, Morgan held up a photo he created of what the valley would look like if the proposed Sunrise Powerlink transmission line were built there.

by Michael Steinberg

Though a meltdown at a nuclear plant may be its worst case scenario, the dangers and risks by no means end there. In fact they go on every day.
Radioactive releases into the air and water are routine at nukes. As is the transportation of radioactive wastes offsite by road, rail and water. These activities are the seldom discussed everyday threats to people, other living beings, and the environment as a whole.

This report delves into what goes on at the San Onofre Generating Station in these respects.

There is a new opening right now for US and Iranian relations. Mainstream media reported that on Saturday, Feb. 7th, Vice President Biden, while in Munich, Germany, for an international security conference, offered “an olive branch” to Iran – and Russia. Ali Larijani, Iran’s head of parliament, in his response address, indicated a new willingness to deal.

AFP reported:

On Iran, Biden repeated that the US was ready to talk to Tehran after three decades of frozen relations. “We will be willing to talk to Iran, and to offer a very clear choice: continue down the current course and there will be continued pressure and isolation; abandon the illicit nuclear programme and your support for terrorism and there will be meaningful incentives.”

Water rationing probably will be imposed in San Diego by July 1, Mayor Jerry Sanders said yesterday. The reduction would vary per household depending on factors including how much water is used for landscaping. Sanders said residential and business customers alike would face “fairly significant penalties” for using too much water in the face of a drought and spring cutbacks expected from the wholesaler that provides water to the city. Sanders didn’t elaborate on what the penalties might be.

Water administrator Alex Ruiz said the rationing plan would try to take into account customers’ past conservation efforts and seek to distinguish between “discretionary” outdoor water uses and indoor uses, such as cooking and cleaning.

A more than $1 billion plan to add 10 gates, and probably a parking structure, at Lindbergh Field is scheduled before the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority in March, but it may cost another $4 billion to build out the airport that would soon be gridlocked. An airport update was presented at a Society for Marketing Professional Services meeting at the DoubleTree Hotel in Mission Valley last Wednesday.

Iraj Ghaemi, the Airport Authority’s director of facilities development, noted that with 227,000 aircraft operations, Lindbergh was the busiest single runway commercial service airport in North America in 2008.

Fortunately for us, the San Onofre nukes ended last year with a whimper rather than a bang. Or a meltdown. The same could be said for 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004. Because that’s how long a comatose battery sat there unnoticed and undermaintained. Not just any battery either. One that could’ve been called upon to prevent such a catastrophic event.

But none reporting on this disgrace could bring themselves to use the M Word to describe the potential threat.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) stated, in a December report, that its inspectors “found that the battery used to supply power to the plant safety systems under some accident conditions, was inoperable between 2004 and 2008 because of loose electrical connections caused by inadequate maintenance instructions (Reuters 12-22).”

Uh, what safety systems might that be? And which accident conditions? Would they have anything to do with the M Word?