Will Hanford ever be cleaned up?

The deadline for treating all of the waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation was once 2028. Now it’s 2047, with long-term federal stewardship of the site continuing for at least two decades longer.  Read more the in the Seattle Times.

Seattle plan would make city carbon neutral by 2050

Seattle officials unveil a 37-year climate action plan for the city.  Read more in the Seattle Times.

Book focuses on 1969 fight to save America’s premier fossil beds

In the summer of 1969, the Federal District Court in Denver heard arguments in one of the nation’s first explicitly environmental cases, one trying to halt real estate developers intent on turning land containing an “extraordinary set of ancient fossils” into a housing development.  So starts the book “Saved in Time: the Fight to Establish Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado co-written by University of Washington biology professor emeritus Estella Leopold, who was a key player in the process.  Read more in UW Today.

Whidbey landslide: ‘Where I had been standing was no longer there’

A landslide early Wednesday morning took out a 1,000-foot stretch of hillside on the west side of Whidbey Island. There were no injuries, but several people were displaced.  It is a part of the Puget Sound geology, a legacy of the glacier that formed this area: Massive chunks of shoreline hillsides just slide off.  Read more about this in the Seattle Times.

 

Engineering Projects Will Transform Seattle, All Along the Waterfront – NY Times

This city’s urban shoreline on Puget Sound was never built with photo-snapping tourists in mind, or technology entrepreneurs jogging in the rain. In decades past, stretching back to the big-timber-and-fish era of the 1800s, the waterfront was a place of gaff hooks, warehouses and stink.  But as brawny old Seattle faded, the hard parts of its industrial past — a shadow-casting highway viaduct, a crumbling sea wall — remained behind like bleached fossils even as the modern gloss of restaurants, hotels and apartment towers moved in.  Part of the renovation will include ecological considerations for how the seawall is constructed, which will help juvenile salmon as they transit to and from sea.  Read more about the planned waterfront facelift here.

Sustainability Gold for the 2012 London Olympics – Scientific American

With the 2012 London Olympics drawn to a close, so starts the task of breaking down parts of the 500-acre Olympic Park that housed the world’s finest athletes for the past two weeks. But, the London 2012 Organizing Committee and the Olympic Delivery Authority are already two steps ahead. In their effort to keep this year’s games both water and energy efficient, these groups designed and built Olympic park with sustainability in mind.  Read more about their efforts here.

Treasure hunt: the battle over Pebble Mine – PBS.org

Global mining giant Anglo-American and its Canadian partner, Northern Dynasty, want to dig one of the world’s largest open-pit mines – up to three miles wide and thousands of feet deep – in the near-pristine watershed of Bristol Bay, home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery. Learn more about this proposal and the controversy surrounding it; SAFSThomas Quinn is quoted.