Photo courtesy of shrff14

College students crush plastic water bottles, industry wines
As banning bottled water becomes the cause du jour amongst college students, the bottled water industry is crying over spilled water, reports NPR. Everywhere from San Francisco to national parks like the Grand Canyon, cities and community members are considering banning plastic water bottles, which contribute to landfill waste, are rarely recycled, and whose purity is suspect. And now college campuses are jumping onto the bottled-water-banning bandwagon, with more than 20 schools signing on to complete or partial bans on plastic bottles brimming with H20. That has the International Bottled Water Association, an industry trade group, upset about “misinformation" and what it deems a war on freedom of choice. It even released a video to show college kids how silly they are for spending time on environmental issues like banning bottled water. Check it out: 

Toxic algae choking Florida waterway

A big thank you to the more than 17,000 people who have sent letters to the White House so far in support of strong U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits for sewage, manure and fertilizer in Florida waters. We so appreciate you all having our backs on our quest to clean up Florida’s number-one pollution problem.

As you know, we’ve been suffering down here from repeated toxic algae outbreaks that cover our waters with green slime -- outbreaks triggered by the excess phosphorus and nitrogen from sewage, manure and fertilizer. We had toxic algae and nasty fish kills around beautiful Sanibel Island over the winter holidays. In January, Fort Myers had an algae outbreak on the Calooshatchee River that had people holding their noses because it smelled like raw sewage. There’s been an algae outbreak killing aquatic life in the Indian River for a year, and red tide in the Gulf – which is fueled by excess nutrients -- has been sickening and killing manatees, sea turtles, and cormorants on the state’s southwest coast.

Since our tourists come from everywhere, we need folks around the country – and around the globe – to speak out and help us win the battle against these polluters who are intent on using our public waters as their private sewers. So keep those cards and letters coming to the White House.

On backing down, backing away, and backing into a corner . . .

President Obama’s statement, “I will not back down from making sure an oil company can contain the kind of oil spill we saw in the Gulf two years ago,” was one the more awkward sentences in his State of the Union speech, and not just syntactically.

The president had to use that particular construction, however, because he could not say what he should have and maybe even wanted to say: that he will not allow drilling in our coastal waters until he has such assurances. He couldn’t say that for the simple reason that his administration continues to approve oil drilling in the outer continental shelf almost as if the Gulf oil spill had never taken place.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska.

Coos Bay, Oregon. (Brian Burger/Creative Commons)

A new battle has emerged in the fight over proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest.

The Oregon Department of State Lands recently issued a permit allowing the Port of Coos Bay to conduct the largest dredging project in an estuary in state history. The permit allows for dredging of the first 1.75 million cubic yards (mcy) of a 5.6-mcy project.

The reason for the massive dredging effort: Coos Bay—a town of about 16,000 people on the remote southern Oregon coast—has been targeted for construction of a coal export terminal and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility.

Earthjustice, representing a coalition of local residents, grassroots environmental, and clean-energy groups, in early January filed an appeal of the Oregon Department of State Lands’ decision to green light the $100 million project. While the “multi-purpose” dredging permit was initially sought to develop an LNG import terminal, the Port of Coos Bay recently entered into a confidential agreement with an undisclosed coal export company seeking to send coal overseas to Asia, and LNG backers have changed their plans to now export domestic gas instead.