Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

President Signs Executive Order on Infrastructure

PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP WORKS TO REBUILD AMERICA'S INFRASTRUCTURE - "Crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, and railways gleaming across our very, very beautiful land." - President Donald J. Trump, August 15, 2017. --The following is the Executive Order signed by President Trump on August 15, 2017:


Executive Order Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure Projects

Summary:
The Executive Order (EO) establishes the policy of the Administration to facilitate the efficiency and effectiveness of federal infrastructure decisions by establishing greater accountability in the environmental review and permitting process.
    The policy goals of this will be as follows:
    • To safeguard our communities and maintain a healthy environment.
    • To ensure the Federal decision makers make informed decisions concerning the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects.
    • To develop infrastructure in an environmentally sensitive manner.
    • To provide transparency and accountability to the public on environmental review and authorization decisions.
    • To be good stewards of public funds used to develop infrastructure projects and avoid duplicative and wasteful processes.
    • To conduct environmental reviews and authorization processes in a manner that is sufficiently coordinated, consistent, predictable, and timely to give public and private investors the confidence necessary to make funding decisions for new infrastructure projects.
    • To speak with a coordinated voice when conducting environmental reviews and providing authorization decisions.
    • To make well-informed and timely decisions with the goal that the process for the completion of all Federal environmental reviews and authorization decisions for major infrastructure projects take no longer than 2 years. This EO will require agencies to process environmental reviews and permitting decisions for major projects under a "One Federal Decision" plan, meaning a lead agency is identified and works will all relevant agencies to develop a unified schedule for completion. Additionally, this EO will establish a 2-year goal for the Federal Government to process all of the actions required by Federal law for the environmental reviews and permits of major infrastructure projects.
    This EO also directs the implementation of the following process enhancements:
    • Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Action Plan: The EO directs CEQ to develop and implement a list of actions that will help facilitate Federal environmental reviews. The EO also empowers CEQ to mediate interagency disputes between Federal agencies to ensure that the environmental review and permitting process for an infrastructure project does not indefinitely stall due to the lack of a decision.
    • Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC): The FPISC is a Federal interagency council established by statute that is comprised of all Federal agencies responsible for environmental reviews and permits of infrastructure, and is statutorily charged to facilitate the review and permitting of certain infrastructure projects with costs in excess of $200 million. The EO authorizes the FPISC Executive Director to facilitate the environmental review and permitting process of any infrastructure project in the Federal Government upon request of a Federal agency or project sponsor.
    Finally, this EO will repeal EO 13690, which was signed by President Obama, which established a climate-based approach to defining actions that arise in a floodplain.
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Friday, November 23, 2012

Feds to double habitat for spotted owl to 9.6 M acres in California, Oregon and Washington

GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- The last building block of the Obama administration's strategy unveiled Wednesday to keep the northern spotted owl from extinction nearly doubles the amount of Northwest national forest land dedicated to protecting the bird by the Bush administration four years ago. ✧ Still, conservation groups that went to court to force the overhaul said key gaps remain, such as an exemption for private forest lands and most state forests. ✧ The full critical habitat plan will not be published until next week, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that 9.6 million acres of Oregon, Washington and Northern California will come under its provisions, almost all of it federal lands. ✧ The amount is down from nearly 14 million acres proposed last February but still exceeds the 5.3 million acres proposed in 2008. The biggest cut came in private timberlands -- 1.3 million acres. State forests covering 271,000 acres remain. ✧ Following a directive last February from the White House, officials revised the latest plan to make room for thinning and logging inside critical habitat to reduce the danger of wildfire and improve the health of forests. Read more at The Willits News... Read More......

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Allen Alley: Rainbows and Moonbeams

"Rainbows and Moonbeams"
By Allen Alley
Was it a “Portlandia” script or an Oregonian front page story? The April 17 article on Governor Kitzhaber and Cylvia Hayes, who spent three hours in a class to learn how to construct a happiness index, could have been either one.  This happiness index, promoted by a Portland State University professor, purports to give a more accurate picture of economic health than the value of all goods and services produced, also known as gross domestic product (GDP).

The happiness index or Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) was promoted at a recent United Nations summit meeting on happiness and originated in that bastion of economic energy, Bhutan.  The Kingdom of Bhutan is a tiny Himalayan country with a GDP per person of $2,600.  Bhutan’s GDP ranks 129th in the world with other economic powerhouses such as Bolivia, Sri Lanka and Mongolia.  In perspective, the U.S. GDP per person is 18 times higher than Bhutan.

Is the Governor really going to model our economy after a third world country?  Are we giving up trying to measure ourselves by the economic measures of successful nations and instead partner with the Bhutanese and the UN to just make up our own happiness index?  Even “Portlandia’s” writers could not have conceived of this plot twist.

A trip to Taiwan in 1982 proved to me that economic prosperity creates happiness and a cleaner environment.  At the time, the streets of Taipei looked like a scene from Blade Runner.  Acid rain literally etched the buildings and stripped the paint off cars and signs.  Swarms of smoke-belching dilapidated scooters were the transportation mode of choice.  It seemed that Taiwan might sink into the ocean under the weight of the detritus of society, and all that would be left would be an oil slick and Styrofoam packing worms.  Then an amazing thing happened.  They became prosperous.  Today the GDP per person of Taipei is second only to Tokyo in Asia and is higher than that of Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul.  Once they became economically prosperous, they did not want to live in squalor.  They had the community wealth to clean up their environment, and they did. 

Oregon’s economic report card is apparently so stubbornly awful that rather than creating an environment where prosperity can flourish, Governor Kitzhaber is going to change the grading system.  Now our economic F will be waved away, because we try really hard and have nice parks.

Global economic competition is brutal.  There are no bonus points for effort or style.  You either succeed or fail, and lately Oregon has been failing.

Since 1995 Oregonians have been getting poorer relative to other Americans.  We have slipped 10 places in state personal income ranking from 22nd to 32nd.  At the same time our neighbor to the north Washington rose from 16th to 13th.  In 1995 an Oregonian earned $750 less than the average American in personal income, today we are $3,700 behind.  That means the average family of 4 in Oregon is $14,800 a year poorer than the average American family.  So either we have to have significantly higher taxes or settle for inferior schools, roads, and public safety.  We cannot fill potholes with happiness.

Governor Kitzhaber, we need to embrace GDP and rededicate ourselves to creating an environment where it actually increases.  We must maximize access to the assets that make Oregon a potentially great place to build prosperity.  Open and expand our ports.  Use our natural resources.  Go out and actively promote Oregon timber as the greenest building product on earth.  Keep power rates low.  Manage the Columbia River to extract more economic value for Oregon.  Embrace hydro power as the renewable, CO2 free, source of clean energy that it is.  Create an environment where we feel our state is a partner in prosperity, not an impediment.

It’s difficult to attain long-term happiness without some measure of security and prosperity.  Gone are the days when a barter economy could provide all of the goods and services we need.  Besides, much of the capital created in Oregon comes from trade with other states and nations.  Happiness is a result, not a thing that can be traded.  Oregonians cannot pay their mortgage with moonbeams, and even the governor is unlikely to convince the public employee unions to accept rainbows rather than raises.

Here is the link to the op-ed on the Oregonian website. This op-ed was received via email, which also included a link to the ORP donation page.
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Friday, October 29, 2010

Candidate Delia Lopez: Common sense on the environment

DELIA LOPEZ, 2010 Republican Candidate for Oregon's Third Congressional District, POSITIONS/ENVIRONMENT - "Look into the spotted owl and many other of the birds that have been listed on the threatened or endangered species list. Years ago I cut out and copied newspaper articles for then president Clinton and 2 other of the top EPA and Forest Service heads. They were finding spotted owls emaciated in surprising numbers! There were at least 5 articles where they were found dead and autopsy showed they starved. There were articles stating they found spotted owls nesting in 30 year old trees, they found a nest in a Roseburg K-Mart sign! I had them nesting in my back yard (they have a distinctive whoo) Also an article on the effective rodenticide the federal forest department had been using for 26 years!! It stopped rodents from killing the small newly planted trees, and how effective it was at killing the rodents. I made 3 copies of each and sent them off with a letter. I got a BS thank you letter back from Clinton. They are still using the rodenticide! The spotted owls numbers are still declining. You will not survive without food, spotted owls eat rodents, rodenticides kill rodents. Birds that have no food, do not reproduce, they die. Shutting down the forests to logging has not helped the Spotted Owls nor improved the heath of our forests." Read more on the environment, forest health, jobs, carbon sequestering and more.

Best wishes to Delia Lopez in her campaign to replace Earl Blumenauer. --bc Read More......

Friday, September 3, 2010

GT: Federal judge orders revised spotted owl plan

CORVALLIS GAZETTE-TIMES, 9/2/2010 - See article at the GT... Read More......

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Politics In Criticizing Cleanup, Jindal Finds His Voice

FOXNEWS, 6/2/2010 - PORT FOURCHON, La. — In the gathering frustration over failures to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has emerged as one of the staunchest critics of the response by the federal government and BP PLC. ∴ Nearly every day, the Republican policy wonk pulls on his brown cowboy boots and traipses across a newly oiled shore, or takes a boat through fouled waters. Along the way, he often lambastes BP's and the federal government's efforts as "too little, too late" for communities scrambling to protect their fragile wetlands from encroaching crude—comments that have drawn sharp criticism from the White House and some Democratic lawmakers. ∴ Louisiana has jurisdiction over its coastline, but none in the federal waters of the Gulf. Read more at FOX/NYT...

Related:
NEW YORK POST: I can plug oil leak, says NY genius - BP's engineers can't stop the gushing oil spill, but a young genius from Long Island says she found the solution in less time than it takes most people to finish a crossword puzzle. Read More......

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Judge overturns Bush administration logging rule

SEATTLE TIMES, 7/1/2009 by Jeff Barnard, AP Environmental Writer: GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A federal judge has struck down the Bush administration's change to a rule designed to protect the northern spotted owl from logging in national forests. ∴ U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled from Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday that the U.S. Forest Service failed to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of changing the rule to make it easier to cut down forest habitat of species such as the spotted owl and salmon on 193 million acres of national forests. ∴ "I am hopeful that this is the last nail in the coffin to (President George W.) Bush's assault on our public forests," said Pete Frost, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene, which represented plaintiffs in one of two cases challenging the rule. Read more at the Seattle Times... Read More......

Monday, July 6, 2009

How does Oregon rank for clean and green?

Senator Ted Ferrioli noticed that no one was asking this question. He said that Oregon ranks 43rd out of 50 states with 50 being the top ranking. He added that the seven states with higher rankings are small northeastern states that would all fit withing the boundaries of Oregon. This is a ranking that we should be very proud of. Apparently many of Oregon's environmental extremists (City of Corvallis and Benton County Commissioners included) don't agree for all the radical changes they propose. --bc Read More......

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Senate to raise energy prices?

Update: NO VOTE TAKEN
Freedom's Watch, June 5, 2008 - By Joe Eule, Chief of Staff
At $4 a gallon, Americans are hurting at the gas pump. Higher gas prices are affecting every part of our life. We’re paying more for food, milk, clothes, and cooling our homes. Even summer vacations are in jeopardy.

Yet the Senate is about to vote on a bill (S. 2191) that would make things worse by raising gas prices, increasing home energy bills, and slowing the economy, and we need your help to stop it. Send an email to your Senators and sign our petition today!

Sponsors say their bill will reduce the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. They call their plan "cap and trade," but it is really a huge hidden carbon tax on our economy that will have devastating consequences.

This bill could not come at a worse time. Last week General Motors announced it was closing four plants, putting nearly 5,000 Americans out of work. Thousands more in supporting industries will also lose their jobs.

Meanwhile, United Airlines announced it was slashing 1,600 jobs, idling older planes, and cutting routes - all because of skyrocketing gas prices.

Is your job next?
Incredibly, the bill before the Senate is estimated to raise the price of gasoline $1.10 a gallon, raise taxes, and increase your home energy bills (to find out what these higher costs will be where you live, click here).

This bill is so bad the Wall Street Journal called it “the largest income redistribution scheme since the income tax.” That’s saying something.

So please help us stop this bill from becoming law. First, click here to send your senators an email opposing S. 2191. Second, sign our petition opposing this bill that we can deliver to the Senate on your behalf.

With your help, we can stop this liberal assault on the paycheck you work so hard to earn. Please act NOW!
Read More......

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

It's official... Polar Bears are Endangered...

May 15, 2008 - Heard on the radio today that polar bears have been put on the endangered species list... well... sort of... kind of. They may not be exactly endangered since there were reported to be 5,000 polar bears in the 1970's and there are 25,000 today... but... the AGW proponents' applied enough pressure so here we are. The door is open... stay tuned for more and beware! Read More......

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Sen. Smith: Earth's Energy Powering OIT

An update from Senator Smith (email), January 25, 2008

I was recently in Klamath Falls visiting Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT). Senator Wyden and I were able to secure $1 million for OIT to build a geothermal power plant that will generate enough electricity to power the entire campus. The plant is expected to save the school over-a-half a million dollars a year.

OIT is on the forefront of renewable energy innovation and technology. They are on pace to be the only "all green" campus in the world powered by geothermal energy. In the classroom, OIT is a leader in preparing tomorrow's renewable energy workforce by offering a renewable energy systems degree. The plant will serve as an excellent educational tool to teach and train students.

I commend OIT for their leadership in renewable energy. As other campuses and businesses around the country follow OIT's lead, our nation will be relying more on domestic sources of energy, free from foreign control. OIT's success with geo-thermal energy demonstrates that, with a little innovation and investment, an energy-independent America is possible.

Construction could begin as early as this spring.

HOW GEOTHERMAL ENERGY WORKS (click image for larger view)

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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Ford's Hydrogen Fusion 999 tested


Ford Fuel Cell Car goes 200 M.P.H. at the Bonneville Salt Flats
August 16, 2007 - By Richard S. Chang,

“We just went 207 m.p.h.”

Those were the first words from Mujeeb Ijaz when I reached his cellphone yesterday, at 5:25 p.m. at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

It’s Speed Week at Bonneville, a yearly ritual of triple-digit one-upmanship across an oblivion of white salt. One racer has already crashed at 170 m.p.h. Mr. Ijaz, manager of fuel cell vehicle engineering at Ford, and his team are running a fuel cell-powered electric car. Announced to the world in July, the Ford Hydrogen Fusion 999 is named after the car that Henry Ford drove to a land speed record in 1904. Mr. Ford went 91.37 m.p.h. This week, Mr. Ijaz’s goal was to hit 200.

Mission accomplished.


Continued...

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Friday, April 27, 2007

Spotted Owl Controversy

Sen. Smith Comments on Spotted Owl Recovery Plan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, April 26, 2007 - Washington, DC – U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) released the following statement today responding to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service release of two draft recovery plans for the Northern Spotted Owl:

“While setting aside 88 percent of federal forests for the owl, we’ve lost tens of thousands of jobs in rural Oregon counties and burned millions of acres of its habitat. The plan recognizes the threat to the owl is less logging than the invasive barred owl and catastrophic wildfire. This should be the first step toward allowing Oregon to responsibly manage its forests and support its counties.”
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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

A Nicer Shade of Green

We Can Have Green Conservatism -- And We Should
Human Events, Vol. 2. No. 17, April 23,2007 - Newt Gingrich wrote,

[...] For the last 36 years, I have watched the pro-regulation, pro-litigation, pro-taxation liberals label themselves as the only Americans who care about the environment.

The leftwing machine would have you believe that to care about clean air and water, biodiversity, and the future of the Earth you have to both buy in to their catastrophic scenarios and sign on to their command-and-control bureaucratic liberal agenda, including dramatic increases in government power and draconian policies that will devastate our economy, as the only solution to environmental challenges.

The time has come to define a fundamentally different approach to a healthy environment and a healthy economy. The time has come for the development of Green Conservatism as an alternative to big bureaucracy and big litigation liberal environmentalism.


Read the entire article at Human Events where Mr. Gingrich adeptly covers these topics:
  • Conserving Our Environment, Not Expanding Our Government
  • Liberal Environmentalism: Radical, Hysterical and Inaccurate
  • Green Conservatism: Pro-Freedom, Pro-Market, Pro-Environment
  • Key to Green Conservatism: Energy Independence From Dangerous Dictatorships
  • Sounds Good, but How Do We Get There?
  • Our Entrepreneurs and Markets vs. Their Lawyers, Bureaucrats and Regulations
Read More......