Overturned truck may have hazardous material
http://www.ocregister.com/news/closed-298463-street- eWaste Disposal IncInspired by successful high-speed train systems worldwide, California's electrically-powered high-speed trains will help the state meet ever-growing demands on its transportation infrastructure. Initially running from San Francisco to Los Angeles/Anaheim via the Central Valley, and later to Sacramento and San Diego, high-speed trains will travel between LA and San Francisco in under 2 hours and 40 minutes, at speeds of up to 220 mph, and will interconnect with other transportation alternatives, providing an environmentally friendly option to traveling by plane or car.
800 miles of track… up to 24 stations… the most thorough environmental review process in the nation. Due to the large scope of the project, the planning process proceeded in phases: first, program-level review assessing the need and .......http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/project_vision.aspx
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morrison-chouinard-031111,0,6628594.column
(CNN) -- The Hawaiian islands may get a new and unwelcome addition in coming months -- a giant new island of debris floating in from Japan.
Researchers in Hawaii have created a simulation showing exactly how the houses, tires, chemicals and trees washed to sea by the March 11 tsunami will float across the Pacific and eventually hit the U.S. coast.
The team, led by Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa have spent years preparing computer models by following real world observations of floating buoys, according to a statement.
The first wave should begin washing up on beaches in Hawaii within a year, the simulation shows.
After it passes Hawaii it should begin hitting beaches stretching from Vancouver down through Oregon, Washington and to the tip of Baja California in 2014, before bouncing back toward Hawaii for a second impact.
That second impact five years from now could be even more concentrated and harmful to Hawaii's beaches and reefs, the researchers found.
The flotsam and trash eventually makes its way into what's called the North Pacific Garbage Patch, a sort of circulating whirlpool of garbage hundreds of miles in diameter.
There it eventually decomposes and breaks up in collisions over many years.
 The manufacture of incandescent lightbulbs is being phased out in the United States. (Willis Glassgow, AP / April 7, 2011)
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The nation's accelerating shift from incandescent lighting to a new generation of energy-efficient bulbs is raising an environmental concern: the release of tons of mercury every year.
The most popular new bulb — the compact fluorescent light bulb, or CFL — accounts for a quarter of new bulb sales. Each contains up to 5 milligrams of mercury, a potent neurotoxin that's on the worst-offending list of environmental contaminants.
Demand for CFL bulbs is growing as government mandates for energy-efficient lighting take effect, yet only about 2% of residential consumers and one-third of businesses recycle the new bulbs, according to the Assn. of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers.
As a result, U.S. landfills are releasing more than 4 tons of mercury annually into the atmosphere and storm water runoff, according to a study in the Journal of the Air and Waste Management Assn.
A San Francisco hardware store owner is all too familiar with the bulb issue.
"They're promoting them and giving them away, but there's nowhere to drop them off," said Tom Tognetti, co-owner of Fredricksen's Hardware.
The federal Clean Energy Act of 2007 established energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs that dimmed the future for old-fashioned incandescents, which don't meet those standards. Incandescents are to be phased out by 2014 in the U.S., and California passed even stricter rules, calling for store shelves to be cleared of them by 2013.
The old-style bulbs are just too wasteful, converting to light only 10% of the energy they consume. The rest is squandered as heat.
Sales of energy-efficient alternatives like CFLs, halogen bulbs and LEDs have been growing steadily, with the low-cost CFLs the biggest sellers.
If every California household replaced five incandescent bulbs with CFLs, the move would save 6.18 billion kilowatt-hours and prevent the annual release of 2.26 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, according to the California Energy Commission. That's equivalent to taking 414,000 cars off the road.
But no federal law mandates recycling of household fluorescent lights. Federal rules exempt some businesses, based in part on the number of bulbs used, said Paul Abernathy, executive director of the Napa, Calif.-based recycling association.
Several states, including California, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont and Minnesota, do require that all households and businesses recycle fluorescents. Abernathy's group thinks compliance is low because of a lack of convenient drop-off options.
Tognetti's store is part of a pilot project run by San Francisco to increase recycling of fluorescent bulbs and other hazardous waste. Since 2009, a city-financed truck has regularly stopped by his store and about a dozen other independently owned hardware stores to pick up consumers' toxic discards.
The National Electrical Manufacturers Assn. in Rosslyn, Va., offers information on fluorescent light bulb recycling at http://www.lamprecycle.org. Home Depot, Ikea, Lowe's and many Ace Hardware stores, among other outlets, offer free recycling, even for noncustomers.
The website Earth911.com provides a list of recyclers by ZIP Code; or consumers can call 800-CLEAN-UP (253-2687).
CFL bulbs actually have fewer mercury concerns than incandescent lights, according to the California Energy Commission. Although the older bulbs contain no mercury, they're often powered by coal-fired electricity plants, which release mercury as a pollutant. The result is about 40% less mercury emissions per bulb with CFLs, according to Environmental Protection Agency figures.
But CFLs aren't the only energy-efficient alternatives to incandescents, said Brad Paulsen, national lighting merchant with Home Depot Inc.
"You really have three options," he said. "Halogens, LEDs [light-emitting diodes] and CFLs."
Halogen bulbs are essentially energy-efficient incandescents. "They're very similar to a person's experience with incandescents," Paulsen said, and are 30% more efficient.
Paulsen, along with many others, sees LEDs taking center stage in coming years. The lights contain no mercury, are 85% more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs, and burn for 25 years.
The main drawback now with LEDs is cost — sometimes $30 or more per bulb — but Paulsen says prices are sure to plunge as demand and production grow.
"LEDs, in my mind, are the way of the future," he said.
Bohan writes for the Contra Costa Times.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
The mercury release shows just how problematic the ban on simple bulbs is..
It is of course a ban:
Yes, energy efficient halogen incandescent replacements are
temporarily allowed, but
have whiter light type etc differences with regular bulbs, apart from
costing much more for the small savings, which is why neither
consumers or governments really like them, since they have been around
for a while now without being sold much
LEDs are not yet suitable for all-round use,
and regarding the pushed CFLs,
the so-called power factor alone means that common CFLs use twice the
energy compared with what your meter says ( http://ceolas.net/#15eux
with Sylvania, DOE and other references, and with more on why supposed
savings from banning simple incandescents don't hold up ).
Much more relevant savings of actual “energy waste” comes from power
plant and grid changes, and from preventing the unnecessary usage of
products eg night lighting in buildings,
rather than from preventing the personal choices of what products
people can use.
The law of unintended consequences. Personally I plan to stock pile a lifetime supply of incandescent light bulbs.
Besides,
All the major light bulb manufacturers support a ban!
Why would they do that?
Why do these manufacturers welcome being told what they can make?
Profits of course:
The removal of the unprofitable cheap simple safe and popular bulbs so
that major manufacturers can make bigger profits from expensive
inferior products
that people otherwise would not to buy in sufficient quantities.
Instead:
Increased - not decreased - marketplace competition gives good energy
saving bulbs that people want to buy – since manufacturers then have
to try to satisfy them.
New businesses with local American jobs, whatever the type of bulbs made.
Worried governments can give research grants towards energy saving alternatives.