Lawsuit to block clean trucks at ports dropped

Here's the latest on the controversial clean trucks initiative in LB and LA Ports:The Federal Maritime Commission announced Tuesday, June 16 that it is withdrawing its lawsuit that had sought to block clean trucks initiatives at the Port of Long Beach and Port of Los Angeles, according to a press release from the Port of Long Beach.
The move eliminates a challenge to the Port of Long Beach’s landmark Clean Trucks Program that already has gone a long way to reduce pollution from area trucks.
“We are pleased that the Federal Maritime Commission has decided to drop its challenge against a key component of our important environmental efforts,” said Port of Long Beach Executive Director Richard D. Steinke. “Today’s decision by the commission helps ensure that the Clean Trucks Program will continue to improve air quality in the Long Beach community.”
In a motion filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., the FMC asked to withdraw the lawsuit.
The FMC sued in October 2008, challenging certain aspects of the ports’ clean trucks concession agreements. In April, the judge in the case denied the FMC’s request for a preliminary injunction.

Study says green jobs in US grew by 9 percent

The number of environment-related, or green, jobs across the nation grew 9 percent from 1998 to 2007, which is more than 2 percent higher than the rate of the overall workforce, according to the Los Angeles Times that reported a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
California led the way with the most growth in the country, with the opening of 10,209 green businesses and 125,390 jobs in 2007 alone.

New source of methylmercury: groundwater

As many people have taken seafood out of their diets, especially fish, because of the mercury poisoning associated with it, scientists believe they have discovered a new source of where highly toxic mercury could be coming from.
For the first time, scientists have detected mercury in groundwater flows at two coastal sites in California according to a press release from the NOAA California Sea Grant program.
What's interesting is that the type of mercury discovered in these submarine groundwater flows, found underneath the ocean floor, appears to be methylmercury, the highly toxic form of mercury that accumulates in the marine food chain. Methylmercury, also often found in dental fillings, poses a public health problem in most regions of the world, according to the Madison Conference Declaration on Mercury Pollution.
The UC Santa Cruz researchers, who led the NOAA project, believe these groundwater flows represent a “significant and previously overlooked source of mercury in the nearshore marine environment.”
In an article to appear in Environmental Science and Technology, scientists report that these groundwater flows at Stinson Beach in Marin County and Elkhorn Slough in Monterey County inject about as much total mercury into coastal waters as that falling out of the sky, locally through atmospheric deposition.
But, for the most part, scientists aren’t sure how the mercury got there and why it is accumulating in high volumes.
There are a few theories though.
Frank Black, a former doctoral student at UC Santa Cruz, now a postdoctoral researcher in biogeochemistry at Princeton University and the paper’s lead author, believes that some of the inorganic mercury is coming from natural processes such as weathering of local mercury-containing rocks.
Mining and other “human activities” are also sources of mercury in soils and sediments.
Methylmercury, Black believes has come from septic tanks in the vicinity of Stinson Beach, because they provide nutrients to methylmercury bacteria, may be contributing to its formation. At Elkhorn Slough, the leading theory is that groundwater is flushing out methylmercury from sediments where it is being produced.
Previous studies documented the presence of methylmercury in terrestrial groundwater. Few have observed methylmercury in coastal waters, however, the press release states.
On a global average, the amount of mercury falling out of the sky has tripled since the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago, due primarily to the burning of fossil fuels. This mercury is converted into methylmercury by sulfur- and iron- reducing bacteria, which reside in wet, low-oxygen soils and sediments.

Above is a picture of a calico bass I caught in Catalina about a year ago.

What "green bubble"?

With the economic downturn sending many jobless, whether they be white collar or blue collar workers, the greening of America could be what businesses are looking for.
At least that was the consensus during a conference about the new "green collar" workforce at the Long Beach Convention Center last week.
The event was hailed as the biggest conference to address such advancements in the business market. Rightly so, since Long Beach is a highly productive heavily-polluted area that suffers from bad air quality because of one of the nation's largest ports. The city also suffers from a large unemployment rate, much like other cities across the nation right now.
The conference spoke about diversity in the workforce as well, as government officials and green business owners talked about how environmental efforts will "bring back the middle class...and help protect Mother Earth" all at the same time.
The problem is though, that the State of California, and the nation, as a whole, are suffering financially right now, keeping manufacturers of these new technologies, i.e., wind, solar and other green energies, on hold until further notice. The other problem is the funding to teach people about how to work in the fields of these new green technologies, whether its building green infrastructure or green tech jobs, is near non-existent.
So the answer from experts in the field was pretty much, "Be patient." And whether the green trend will create another "green bubble" much like the tech bubble in 2000 and then the mortgage bubble we all are so familiar with the answer was, "We will always have the sun and wind."
To read more here is my article in the Press-Telegram.