Environment

Ocean Beach Climate Rally and March – Sat. April 28

April 25, 2018 by Frank Gormlie

Join your fellow OBceans and other San Diegans at Saturday’s Ocean Beach Climate Rally & March – April 28. Hosted by San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition, the rally begins at 10:00 a.m at the at the foot of Newport Ave. in Ocean Beach on the grass.

There’s a rally with music and speeches. and then march to the Ocean Beach Post Office to post on the door the demand

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San Onofre Surf Community Starts to Wake Up About Nuclear Waste on Their Beach

April 20, 2018 by Source

By Jake Howard / Dana Point Times

To be frank, the surf community’s response to the nuclear waste situation at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) has been apathetic at best. Somehow, the toll road dilemma generates more attention and more buzz than the fact that at this moment there are four questionable canisters of nuclear waste buried yards from the waterline at San O. Why aren’t there more “No Nukes” bumper stickers on cars around town?

The amount of nuclear waste stored at the SONGS site includes 51 old canisters and potentially 73 new ones, which can be hazardous to human health—there are even signs posted by the fences that ward off people from going near the facility.

Meanwhile, everyone from local rippers to old salts to young hipsters and first-time surfers have been playing in the ocean, contently disregarding the threat of exposure to radiation lurking over their shoulders.

But recently, the conscience of the local surf community has been stirred

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Landmark Lawsuit Against SANDAG Ends With a Victory for Clean Air

April 16, 2018 by Staff

The San Diego County Superior Court has formally ordered the San Diego Association of Governments to decertify its defective Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for 2011 the Regional Transportation Plan. SANDAG has also agreed to cover attorney’s fees in the amount of $1.7 million for the petitioners in this public interest case.

It has taken six long years to reach this point, with the lawsuit going to the California Supreme Court. The two precedent-setting court opinions arising from this case will guide SANDAG and other agencies in addressing greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and public health impacts of regional transportation planning.

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Do Something for the Ocean or Watch It Die!

January 19, 2018 by Source

By David Helvarg / Blue Notes / January 16, 2018

Two new reports in Science magazine confirm what we’ve been seeing for years: climate change and nutrient pollution are contributing to dead zones in the world’s ocean – in part because a warmer, more acidic ocean holds less dissolved oxygen.

Another study of 100 reefs showed coral bleaching is occurring globally at least once every six years. The most recent wave reduced half of the corals in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (watch the Academy-Award nominated film ‘Chasing Coral’).

And of course, climate-induced extreme weather events like hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria contributed to making 2017 the costliest year for natural disasters in U.S. history.

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Burying 3.6 Million Pounds of Nuclear Waste at San Onofre State Beach Is a Terrible Idea

January 3, 2018 by Source

It’s heating up around the shuttered nuclear plant at San Onofre because locals are not happy with the plan to bury 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste at San Onofre State Beach. There were protests recently in the nearest city, San Clemente, against this plan.

Meanwhile, a local group, Citizens Oversight, has submitted a formal petition to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under NRC Regulations that govern how the nuclear industry handles spent nuclear fuel. They believe the containers of the toxic nuke spent fuel should be designed for 1,000 years rather than the current requirement of only 40 years.

Everybody is talking about San Onofre. In the current San Diego Reader, Don Bauder has a piece about how nuclear waste in the sand now will create a toxic ocean later. Sarah “Steve” Mosko, at Boogie Green writes there’s a ticking time bomb at San Onofre Nuclear Plant.

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Do Nukes Kill? – Nuclear Shutdown News – December 2017

January 2, 2018 by Michael Steinberg

By Michael Steinberg

Do Nukes Kill?

While the decline of the nuclear power industry has become undeniable, one of the more significant aspects of this story still receives scant attention. In order to function, nuclear reactors generate radioactive materials and must release them into the air and water of surrounding communities. This doesn’t just happen during serious accidents as at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, but during day-to-day operations at nuke plants.

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Nuclear Shutdown News November 2017: Lawsuit vs. San Onofre Rad Waste and ‘Last Nuke’ in California

November 30, 2017 by Michael Steinberg

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those who are working for a nuclear free world. Here is our November 2017 report:

Lawsuit Challenges Storage of Radioactive Waste at San Onofre Nuke

…

Last Running California Nuke Plant Inches Towards Shutdown

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A Summary of Nuclear Waste Issue at San Onofre

October 23, 2017 by Source

By Gary Headrick

I was recently asked to clear up some confusion about our nuclear waste strategy in an email thread between some good friends. I thought it might be worth sharing a refined version of my reply with you.

Also if you have not signed and shared our Petition yet, please do.

Here is the basic objective:

Delay the date for silos on the beach to get loaded with extremely radioactive waste.

This allows time to consider better alternatives that make us safer while deadly waste remains here cooling off for perhaps decades before it can be moved. We must deal with the fact that they are using canisters that can’t be monitored to prevent leaks, can’t be repaired

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The Heat Is On: How Climate Change Is Making Western Wildfires Worse

September 12, 2017 by Source

By Sher Watts Spooner / Daily Kos

Let’s look at the other set of natural disasters that is being exacerbated by climate change.

Major wildfires are burning in British Columbia in western Canada and in at least nine states throughout the American West: California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. California, Montana, and Oregon are bearing the worst of it.

So far in 2017, more than 8 million acres have burned.

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What a Difference a Year Makes for America’s Public Seas: Obama vs. Trump

August 16, 2017 by Source

By David Helvarg / Blue Notes / Aug. 15, 2017

Both 2016 and 2017 will be remembered as years of contrast in the way the United States approached its public seas, an ocean frontier that like our 19th century western frontier has been ruthlessly exploited but remains an essential element of who we are as a people and what we might yet achieve.

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Eleven Reasons an Electric Car Wouldn’t Be for You

August 8, 2017 by Source

Not a sequel to the 1999 movie: 10 things I Hate About You.

By Bill Adams / San Diego UrbDeZine

I’ve been driving my electric car (aka EV for electric vehicle) for a little shy of a year now. While I love it (I even bought a second one), I realize they’re not for everybody. Below are some reasons you might hate an EV:

You love gas stations: The ritual, the delay in getting home, to work, or that trip out of town; and the drama of rising and falling gas prices.

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Nuclear Shutdown News from July 2017

August 2, 2017 by Michael Steinberg

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear industry, in the US and abroad, and highlights the efforts of those working to create a nuclear free world. Here is our July 2017 report:

Hackers Hit US Nuke Plants

On July 6 the New York Times published, “Hackers Are Targeting Nuclear Facilities, Homeland Security and FBI Say.”

“Since May hackers had been penetrating computer networks of companies that operated nuclear power stations of companies that operate nuclear power stations and other energy facilities, as well as manufacturing plants in the US and other countries,” the Times reported.

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Downtown Protest Today – June 1st – in Response to Expected Trump Decision to Abandon Climate Agreement

June 1, 2017 by Staff

Climate

Grassroots climate advocacy group SanDiego350 is calling for people to protest President Trump’s widely expected decision to pull the U.S. out of the international Paris Climate Agreement.

A demonstration is set for 5:30-7pm today (Thursday, June 1) at the Federal Building (880 Front Street) in downtown San Diego.

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Nuclear Shutdown News May 2017: San Onofre Shenanigans Continue

May 31, 2017 by Michael Steinberg

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear industry in the US and abroad, and highlights the efforts of those who are working to create a nuclear free world. Here is our May 2017 report:

San Onofre shenanigans continue–and so does resistance

On May 27 KPBS along with the Associated Press reported the story “Customers May Never Know How They Got Stuck With $3.3 Billion Paid For San Onofre Shutdown.”

This report details how the San Francisco-based California Public Utilities Commission –

“once again failed to release sources of emails it exchanged with Governor Jerry Brown’s office” concerning the “nuclear plant’s closure.”

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Nuclear Shutdown News April 2017: Safety Value Malfunction at Oyster Creek Nuke

May 3, 2017 by Michael Steinberg

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear industry in the US and abroad, and highlights the efforts of this who are working to create a nuclear free world. Here is our April 2017 report:

40 + Nuke Club

On April 18 Patch Media reported “Nuclear Regulatory Commission Finds Oyster Creek Safety Valve Malfunctioned For Nearly Two Years.” The emergency safety valve in question was “inoperable between October 11, 2014 and September 19, 2016” in the New Jersey nuke plant’s reactor, patch.com reported.

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Trump Wants To Roll Back Two Decades of National Monuments

May 2, 2017 by Source

Editor’s Note: On April 26th, Trump signed an executive order that covers a review of national monument designations going back 21 years. It was an executive order that is monumental—and not in a good way.

By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos

In the spirit of patriotic occupiers of wildlife habitat who don’t believe any place is so beautiful, historic, or ecologically significant that it couldn’t be improved by a Walmart and/or a strip mine, Trump wants to do in a few national monuments.

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Why the People’s Climate March Matters Now More Than Ever

April 24, 2017 by Jim Miller

Climate March

By Jim Miller

In the lead up to Earth Day, Elizabeth Kolbert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction, accurately observed that this year there wasn’t much to celebrate.

She’s right. An administration that can’t seem to stop stepping on its own feet in nearly every other area has been pretty darn good at gearing up to kill the planet. As Kolbert writes in the New Yorker:

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Present at the Creation: Walter Cronkite and the ‘Environment Story’

April 21, 2017 by Source

By Ron Bonn/ SanDiego350

You could say I was present at the creation.

Looking back in our lives, we rarely know exactly when something started. But regular television news coverage of man-made climate change, with all it implies, started on New Year’s Day, 1970.

The staff of “The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite”: producers, writers, technicians; a couple dozen of us in all, were sitting around the newsroom waiting for something to happen—because nothing happens on New Year’s Day—when the man himself stormed in. “Goddamn it,” he said to us, “we’ve got to do something about this environment story.”

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Proposed San Diego Budget Bad News for Urban Forestry

April 21, 2017 by Source

By Anne Fege / San Diego Free Press

The City’s FY 2018 budget was released on April 13, with a proposed cut of $880,000 for shade tree pruning—a grave disappointment.

With the City’s commitment to the Climate Action Plan, existing and large trees provide the most canopy cover, and they need to be managed and protected to maximize their health and life span.

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It’s Spring: Time to Save the Planet

April 20, 2017 by Source

planet

March for Science San Diego – Saturday, April 22, 10am

People’s Climate March San Diego – Saturday, April 29, 10am

Upcoming weeks offer several opportunities to join the fight against global warming. And in the age of a Donald Trump administration, the environment needs all the friends it can get.

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SeaWorld Ends Summertime Fireworks for Now

April 17, 2017 by Staff

SeaWorld has announced its Mission Bay theme park will not shoot off fireworks this summer. Fireworks will still go off during 3-day holiday weekends and a few other special events. Plus, SeaWorld will not disclose whether nightly fireworks are gone for good, only that they are on “hiatus for the foreseeable future.”

The “official story” is that SeaWorld is preparing for its new “Electric Ocean” a nighttime lighting display. In typical fashion, SeaWorld could not admit that maybe – in its effort to be more environmentally-sensitive – that the summertime tradition is halting due to public pressure. (For more of the official line, see SDU-T)

For years, San Diegans have signed petitions calling on SeaWorld to stop their summer explosions over the Bay.

From our July 2015 post,
Hit the link and sign the Petition that calls on the San Diego City Council to ban the nightly fireworks at SeaWorld.

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OB Planning Board’s Project Review Committee Looks at Companion Unit Permit at 4528 Cape May on Wed., April 19

April 17, 2017 by Staff

On the agenda of the Project Review Committee – a subcommittee of the OB Planning Board – is an application for a permit to construct a 700 square foot companion unit over a carport and to demolish the existing car garage and storage shed.

The site is located at 4526 Cape May Avenue.

COME INSIDE FOR OFFICIAL AGENDA

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Ocean Beach Planning Board to Meet Wed., April 5th

April 4, 2017 by Staff

The OB Planning Board holds their regular monthly meeting this Wednesday, April 5th. They meet in the OB Recreation Center, at 4726 Santa Monica Avenue. The meetings usually begin sharply at 6pm.

The Board will certify the recent election results, review the applications of people who wish to be appointed to the Board for seats 1, 3 and 5, appoint a new Executive Committee for the year, decide whether to make a recommendation to the City about the Soccer City proposal for Qualcomm Stadium, and have a quick overview of the city’s development process by chair John Ambert.

Come Inside for the official agenda

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Nuke Shutdown News for March 2017 : San Onofre Nuke Waste to Be 100 Feet from Ocean

April 3, 2017 by Michael Steinberg

Nuke Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear industry in the US and abroad, and highlights the efforts of those working to create a nuclear free world. Here’s our March 2017 report:

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

San Onofre nuke owner wants to put lots of high level nuclear waste 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean.

On March 20 Surfer Magazine reported:

“They’re going to put nuclear waste 100 feet from the water.”

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Audubon Society Gearing Up for Weekend of Restoring Least Tern Nesting Areas on Fiesta Island

March 30, 2017 by Source

The San Diego Audubon Society is gearing up for a weekend of organizing volunteers to help restore the natural habitat on Fiesta Island.

On both Saturday, April 1st and Sunday, April 2nd, teams of volunteers will work to restore the nesting habitat of the endangered California Least Tern and to protect Nuttall’s Lotus, an endangered sand dune plant on Fiesta Island.

Here’s the break-down:

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Trump’s Climate Change Legacy: “The Coast is Toast”

March 30, 2017 by Doug Porter

Climate Change

By Doug Porter / San Diego Free Press

Southern Californians got some bad news this week with the release of a report from the U.S. Geological Survey saying two-thirds of beaches from Santa Barbara to San Diego could be completely eroded back to sea cliffs or coastal infrastructure by 2100.

Reporting by Joshua Emerson Smith in the Union-Tribune details this grim scenario and explains how scientists reached these conclusions::

The findings are the result of a new computer modeling program called the Coastal Storm Modeling System. The numerical modeling incorporates predicted sea-level rise as well as anticipated shifts in storm patterns as a result of climate change.

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Will SoccerCity Fill a Void in Mission Valley?

March 29, 2017 by Doug Porter

SoccerCity

By Doug Porter

Surprise, surprise, surprise! Those friendly folks collecting signatures for the billion dollar SoccerCity development to replace Qualcomm Stadium are being–how shall we put it?–less than honest.

Tuesday’s Union-Tribune includes a story involving an informal survey of 25 signature gathering locations around San Diego. Petition bearers are reportedly being paid $5 per signature and are making promises with little connection to what is actually contained in the document they are pushing.

The hope is that the San Diego City Council, with visions of $2.8 billion in economic benefits dancing in their heads, will vote to enact the ‘citizen’s ordinance’ without the need for an actual ballot measure.

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Collier Park in Ocean Beach – The Incredible Shrinking Park

March 28, 2017 by Source

(Originally p0sted Dec 6, 2010 as part of a series, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to OB”)

By Citizen Cane

The Incredible Shrinking Park can still be observed in Ocean Beach at the intersection of Green and Soto Streets. It’s officially known as Collier Park, and consists of approximately 6.7 dedicated acres if you include the Point Loma Native Plant Reserve. That might sound large, but it’s barely a fraction of the original size of the park before it began shrinking.

Travel back in time with the aid of the Fall 1957 Thomas Brothers Map, and you can see the park was bounded by Soto, Green, Valeta, and almost to Wolcott (about two blocks from the present day Stumps Market.)

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“Villa Famosa” Project Promises to Be a Challenge for Famosa Slough

March 28, 2017 by Frank Gormlie

A new construction project coming to the shores of Famosa Slough promises to be a challenge to one of the last natural vestiges of Mission Bay.

The existing lot is on the edge of Famosa Slough at 2727 Camulos Dr.within the perimeters of the Peninsula Community Planning Board (ed. we don’t know when the project is scheduled for their meeting review). It’s on a .38 acre site. The applicant is Alex Miller, and the project manager at the City of San Diego is Derick Johnson.

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