"Close to 40 percent of Puget Sound's shorelines have been covered in concrete or otherwise walled off from the tides. State officials say restoring the health of Puget Sound will require removing some of those walls. But it's local governments that control the shore, and property owners want to build more seawalls as coastal developments expand."
"Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a handful of environmental protection bills into law Thursday, including a ban on the sale of children’s drinking cups that contain the plastics hardener bisphenol-A, or BPA."
"The federal government is doing what once had been unthinkable: Building a new stretch of pipeline and draining more water from the Columbia River system to aid farmers. The pipeline is approved to carry just a trickle, but will be designed to handle much more water than that. New proposals would dramatically increase the amount of river water provided to Columbia Basin farmers."
"Maybe the Klamath River basin would have turned itself around without Jeff Mitchell. Back in 2001, at the pinnacle of the conflict over the river’s fate, when the Klamath earned its reputation as the most contentious river basin in the country, Mitchell planted a seed."
"Despite unanimous opposition from Republicans, Oregon's Senate passed a bill this afternoon aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions from cars, SUVs and pickup trucks in metropolitan areas even as the state's population grows."
"The mysterious pelican malady that left hundreds of the birds sick and stranded along the Oregon and California coasts this winter was probably caused by a combination of bad weather and fish shortages related to El Nino, state Fish and Game officials said Monday."
"Oregon's Senate shot down a bill this morning that would have banned a potential endocrine-disrupting chemical from baby bottles and sippy cups, splitting 15-15 on a ban that Washington's Legislature has endorsed with lopsided votes."
"The federal judge overseeing efforts to make the Columbia Basin's federal hydroelectric dams safer for salmon is giving the Obama administration one last chance to come up with something better that won't violate the Endangered Species Act."
"An influential environmental group has backed away from a settlement that would remove four dams along the Klamath River to restore salmon and steelhead runs that have been partially blocked for most of the past century on the California-Oregon border."
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