2012-06-22 "Global sea-level rise could hit California hard" by David Perlman from "San Francisco Chronicle"
[http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Global-sea-level-rise-could-hit-California-hard-3657131.php]
Global sea-level rise, induced by the warming climate, will hit California's coastline harder than the other West Coast states over the coming decades and on through the end of the century, according to a new report from the National Research Council.
Oceans around the world are rising, but seas around California will rise even higher - by more than 3 feet before 2100, the report says. Tide gauges and satellites show that the rate of sea-level rise has increased steadily since 1900, and with each passing decade, storm surges and high waves will put low-lying regions like the Bay Area at heightened risk of dangerous flooding.
The forecasts come from the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, which appointed the 12-member committee to investigate earlier estimates of sea-level rise and factor in all new available evidence. The result was a 260-page report issued Friday.
The report was commissioned primarily by California's Department of Water Resources, along with state agencies from Oregon and Washington in order to aid their planning efforts.
The scientists estimated the rates of global sea-level rise, and compared their findings with other forecasts of the global future. The report did not recommend ways to deal with future issues.
"This is physical science, not political science," said committee member Gary Griggs, an oceanographer and director of marine science at UC Santa Cruz.

Oceans rising -
The report estimates that California's sea-level rise south of Cape Mendocino could range between a mere 1.5 inches to a full foot by 2030; the rise could range between 4.5 inches and 2 feet by 2050 and between 16 inches and 4.5 feet by the start of the next century.
"However," the report's scientists warned, "an earthquake of magnitude 8 or larger in this region could cause sea level to rise suddenly by an additional meter (3 feet) or more" beyond those estimates.
The estimates of future sea-level rise are so broad, the scientists said, because of all the uncertainties and knowledge gaps involved in this kind of forecasting.
The sea-level forecast for California below Cape Mendocino is substantially higher than projections for Mendocino north along the coasts of Oregon and Washington because of the great differences in the nature of the Earth's crust between the two regions, the scientists noted.
 From Cape Mendocino north, the coastal land mass lies along what is called the Cascadia Subduction Zone. There the entire sea floor beneath the Pacific is slowly diving beneath the coastal crust and pushing the land upward, which means that the sea is slowly receding. That's not happening along the rest of California.
But if a major earthquake hits on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, as it did in 1700, records show, then the diving would stop, and sea level would rise more swiftly, the report said.
The new estimates of sea-level rise are substantially greater than the projections by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, known as the IPCC, in 2007. The effect of melting polar ice on sea level has been calculated since then far more precisely, Griggs said.

The Arctic effect -
The council's scientists calculated that the melting glaciers in the Arctic and the breakup of vast ice sheets in the Antarctic due to climate change are dumping water into the oceans at an ever-faster rate. The melting ice accounts for 65 percent of total sea-level rise, while the expansion of all the world's oceans as they warm up accounts for the rest, said Robert A. Dalrymple, professor of civil engineering at Johns Hopkins University, who headed the committee.
During a telephone press briefing Thursday, Dalrymple noted that as sea level rises more and more rapidly, California's coastline will become increasingly threatened by erosion, crumbling cliffs, and larger and larger waves hitting farther and farther inland.
"California wetlands are likely to keep pace with sea-level rise," he said, "and sea-level rise will magnify the effects of every storm."
The Bay Area will be particularly hard hit because its airports and many cities are barely above sea level now. With every few inches of sea-level rise, more and more of those urban areas will be flooded - and particularly so by storm surge waters, the report said.
Jeanine Jones, interstate resources manager for California's Department of Water Resources, called the report "extremely helpful in planning for the future."
 The new sea-level estimates mean, she said, that "winds, waves and weather will need a lot more prediction and more monitoring than ever."

2012-06-15 "Strong, 'broken egg' smell around Rodeo stems from leak at ConocoPhillips refinery" from "Bay City News" and "Vallejo Times-Herald" newspaper
[http://www.timesheraldonline.com/news/ci_20865646/strong-broken-egg-smell-around-rodeo-stems-from]
Strong odors are expected to last all day following a gas leak at the ConocoPhillips oil refinery in Rodeo Friday morning, a Contra Costa County hazmat official said.
 Crews were responding as of 8 a.m. to the refinery at 1380 San Pablo Ave., said Steve Morioka, assistant director of the county's hazardous materials program.
 There are strong odors in the surrounding area resulting from egg-type odor," he said.
 Prevailing winds carried the odor toward Crockett, Vallejo and Benicia, said Randy Sawyer, the county's chief environmental health and hazmat officer.
 The odor was reported by numerous Benicia residents as well as a construction crew near Birds Landing, a Solano County hazmat official said.
 Health officials have advised people to stay indoors if they have respiratory problems.
 The odors are the result of a hydrogen sulfide release tied to a tank failure at the refinery, Sawyer said.
 "The tank over-pressurized and a welding seam failed," Sawyer said. Crews were responding by covering the tank with foam, he said.
 The levels of gas that were released were well below levels of concern, health officials said.
 The Bay Area Air Quality Monitoring District is investigating to determine the leak's exact cause. Sawyer said the refinery has been asked to submit an investigation report to county officials by Monday.
 City of Benicia officials issued an advisory this morning advising residents that the odor they are noticing "is following the prevailing winds and will dissipate shortly."

2012-06 Chemical spill at ConocoPhillips in Rodeo

2012-06-15 "Rodeo refinery spill prompts Benicia alert"
by Donna Beth Weilenman from "Benicia Herald" [http://beniciaherald.me/2012/06/15/rodeo-refinery-spill-prompts-benicia-alert/#more-18106]:
A strong odor in Benicia caused by a spill at a Rodeo-based refinery prompted a communitywide alert Friday morning, though Fire Chief Steve Vucurevich said no shelter-in-place warning was required.
The city’s dispatchers handled more than 300 calls from residents who were worried about the smell, and of those, 30 were directed to the fire department, Vucurevich said. “It was definitely a strong odor.”
The ConocoPhillips refinery, 1380 San Pablo Ave., experienced the release about 7:45 a.m. It was handled by Contra Costa Fire Protection District, according to information Vucurevich and the city alert system provided.
Contra Costa Environmental Health was told of the spill, the notification said.
Vucurevich said he learned from Colby LaPlace, Solano County Department of Resource Management specialist, that the ConocoPhillips refinery experienced overpressurizing in a sour water tank, causing it to leak.
“That’s what is causing the odor,” he said.
The smell, which residents said was like rotten eggs, was from hydrogen sulfide contamination in the tank’s water. Prevailing winds were expected to dissipate the odor, residents were told.
“They’re putting foam on it to reduce the vapors and odor, and they hope it will be mitigated by 4 p.m. today,” Vucurevich said Friday.
Contamination near the Contra Costa County refinery reached 1 part per million, said Randy Sawyer, Contra Costa County chief environmental health and hazardous materials officer.
The gas becomes a hazard at 30 parts per million, but the odor becomes more offensive long before it reaches that level, Sawyer said.
He explained that the smell might make some motorists in the vicinity of the ConocoPhillips refinery might feel nauseated if heavy traffic slowed their driving times.
Valero Benicia Refinery employees checked the refinery’s ground level monitors’ measurements, and were able to to provide information to local officials, Vucurevich said.
Based on the data provided by the local refinery, which otherwise was not involved with the spill, the city authorized the notice to the public, but learned it did not need to issue a shelter-in-place warning or sound alarms.
“We activated the CAN (community alert network) system to get the information out to the community,” Vucurevich said. “It’s not a health risk to us.”

2012-05-14 "Public Opinion Snapshot: Americans Still Support Environmental Protection" by Ruy Teixeira
[http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/05/snapshot_051412.html]
Given today’s economic problems, you’d think the public would be in a surly mood about environmental protection, seeing it as a secondary and perhaps conflicting priority to jobs and economic growth. That’s certainly what conservatives are hoping as they continue to push their environment-wrecking agenda.
Turns out, though, the public didn’t get the memo. In the recently released poll from Yale University’s and George Mason University’s climate change communication programs, 58 percent of poll respondents said that protecting the environment improves economic growth and creates new jobs. Just 17 percent thought environmental protection hurts growth and jobs, and 25 percent thought there was no effect.

In the same poll, when asked to choose directly which was more important—environmental protection or economic growth—the public decisively favored protecting the environment 62 percent to 38 percent when there is a conflict between the two goals.

So no, the bad economy has not turned the public off to environmental protection. Conservatives, if they are wise, will factor that into their political calculations.
Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. To learn more about his public opinion analysis, go to the Media and Progressive Values page and the Progressive Studies program page of our website.

2012-05-02 "On a mission for blue butterflies" from "San Francisco Chronicle"
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/01/BA8E1OC159.DTL]
A group of scientists from San Francisco and San Mateo counties scaled San Bruno Mountain on Tuesday to collect endangered Mission Blue butterflies that later would be released on Twin Peaks in San Francisco.
One of the lovely little Mission Blues rests in the sun at San Bruno State Park in San Mateo County.

Stu Weiss climbs a steep ridge at San Bruno Mountain State Park on Tuesday as he searches for Mission Blue Butterflies. San Francisco Parks and Recreation, along with San Mateo County Parks and Creekside Science Center for Earth Observation scaled San Bruno Mountain on Tuesday to collect the endangered Mission Blue Butterfly to release them at Twin Peaks in San Francisco. Photo: Kevin Johnson / The Chronicle

State of the air in the Northeast San Pablo Bay

Retrieved during 2012-05-09 from [http://www.stateoftheair.org/2012/states/california/solano-06095.html]

2011-05-09 "Lena Septimo: Helping to preserve wild Napa County" by SASHA PAULSEN from "Napa Valley Register"
[http://napavalleyregister.com/lifestyles/article_a5ba05d4-79f6-11e0-b64a-001cc4c03286.html]

We were following a Jeep that was bumping its way along a narrow dirt road. To the left was a mountain; to the right a sheer drop to a canyon — breathtaking views, in more ways than one.
The Jeep kept stopping so its intrepid driver could jump out to heave boulders out of the way. At one point the growth from trees proved impassable, so from the back of the Jeep she pulled a pair of loppers and went to work clearing trail. When these didn’t do the job, she went back for a saw, also in the rear compartment of the Jeep. What, we wondered, would she pull out next? A chainsaw, perhaps?
The driver was Lena Septimo, land projects manager at Land Trust of Napa County, the preservations group that since 1975 has put more than 30,000 acres in the valley under protection through preserves and conservation agreements. Part of her work, she explained, is documenting conditions both before an acquisition and after, to ensure compliance.
It’s work that keeps her out in the wilds a lot, and that’s what she likes.
This day she was shepherding a media group around the Dunn-Wildlake Ranch, a 3,030-acre stretch of land in the north county, which will now be permanently wild, thanks to the $28 million the Land Trust was able to raise to buy it for a permanent preserve.
Septimo, who grew up in the high desert of eastern Washington, studied natural resource conservation at Eastern Washington University before heading to Panama with the Peace Corps. There she worked on environmental education and conservation; and also met her husband, Eliecer Septimo.
The Peace Corps, she said, “is a great way to be abroad … a great way to be outside the tourist box.”
Returning to the U.S., she finished her master’s degree at Eastern Washington University before heading south to Napa County to take a job with the Land Trust four years ago.
Another aspect of her job, Septimo explained, is leading field trips out onto Land Trust preserves. “It’s a great way of getting people out into the Land Trust lands,” she said.
Along the way, she has learned to know these wild places as only a person who had spent the bulk of her time in them can: As her media charges sat high up on a mountain, admiring the views of the distant valley, they embarked on a discussion of whether or not the tree that shaded them was an oak tree.
“It’s a white Oregon oak,” Septimo told the duly impressed group. “It took some time,” she explained, “but I think I’ve got all the oaks now.”
When the Jeeps could go no further, Septimo led the puffing reporters on a hike up to the top of the aptly named Potato Hill, where the reward was a 360-degree view of wilderness — not a grapevine in sight.
Here was Napa County as it was and will now continue to be, she explained. The Dunn-Wildlake property, she said, is a “marquee that indicates the dedication of the Napa community” — and this, she added, is part of a tradition that goes back to the landmark 1968 Ag Preserve legislation passed by voters to protect the agricultural lands of the county.
“I think it’s pretty cool that Napa did such a thing back then,” she said.
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Lena Septimo shows a touring group of reporters the map outlining the Duff-Wildlake property. The Land Trust of Napa County was able to raise $28 million to purchase it and prevent its being developed. Submitted photo