newsdesk dot org (https://newsdesk.org/tag/sf-bay-area/)
Two years after Newsdesk.org first examined high levels of air pollution in West Oakland, progress towards helping this community breathe easier is moving slowly. Thorny projects, including cleanups at the port and a local Superfund site, are hard to k…
After more than a decade of getting approved for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grants to remediate “brownfields” (contaminated properties), Oakland has been turned down.
This is the first such rejection in a long time – and it will delay both…
Soil polluted with lead has long plagued the South Prescott neighborhood of West Oakland. But cleanup is finally getting underway.This Saturday, June 25, the community is invited to learn more about the new green technology this project will use to cle…
Putting aside mind-blowing cost overruns, along with delays at a Chinese steel fabrication plant, engineers and scientists are following the equally mind-blowing construction feats in the eastern span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.
The blame for Haiti’s staggering death toll from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12—the toll is expected to rise to over 200,000— lies at the feet of that country’s c0nstruction industry, says a Berkeley, Calif. engineer.
An influx of huge krill swarms has drawn an unprecedented number of blue whales to the Monterey, Calif. coast, delighting boatloads of whale watchers.
The multimedia series Bay Area Toxic Tour: West Oakland was published by the nonprofit online news packager/distributor Newsdesk.org—and crowdfunded by through Spot.us.
A Santa Cruz, Calif.-based non-profit organization has announced plans for a three-day mid-April conference on “Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century.”
The great news in California’s High Sierra this January is that its fabled snowpack, for years underfed by an apparently vengeful Skadi, is almost back to normal after a week of roiling storms left some measuring stations over 100 percent of what is normal for an average April. That means come the spring, the waterfalls tumbling into Yosemite Valley ought to be spectacular — awesome perhaps. That might not be so good for the park.
By Kwan Booth
Crowdfund this with Spot.Us
Part of the Bay Area Toxic Tour
The long road leading to cleaner air in West Oakland was stretched just a little farther Tuesday night, as Port of Oakland commissioners postponed voting on a controversial new program to control diesel pollution from thousands of trucks serving the port. West Oakland’s high rates of childhood asthma and lifelong illnesses, such as cancer, are linked to exhaust from truck and international ship traffic through the port. Approximately 100 representatives from the trucking, environmentalist and West Oakland communities packed Tuesday’s meeting as the board considered adopting the Comprehensive Truck Management Plan, which aims to reduce diesel emmissions from the port by 85 percent by 2020. The plan requires that all early-model trucks be fitted with new diesel filters by January 1st, 2010. Opponents of the plan expressed cautious optimism at amendments to include a proposed truck registration system as well as a complete ban on pre-1994 trucks, as recommended by the study.