Subject: Environmental Issues and Protection

• Money for Nothing

  August 16, 1995

• A Walk in the Park

  April 8, 2009

• Baggage

  January 7, 2009

• Pollution Absolution

  A company is dumping questionable materials into the ocean so that you can buy forgiveness in the form of carbon credits

  July 18, 2007

• Troublesome Pastimes

  One local busybody collects letters from serial killers. Another attacks environmentalists. Guess which one's misguided.

  September 27, 2006

• Mean People's Court

  On many fronts, the spiteful are doing harmful things that you should know about

  June 28, 2006

• Big Dam Mess

  The Environmental Defense Fund embarks on a national campaign to shame San Francisco into restoring the other great Yosemite valley, Hetch Hetchy. But is shame really a good political strategy?

  September 22, 2004

• Planet Pleasure

  Earth Day in S.F.

  April 21, 2004

• Unnatural Gas

  "Environmentalists" make bad transit worse by insisting Muni buy alt-fuel buses

  December 4, 2002

• Fallout: The Past Is Present

  The Nuclear Witnesses

  July 31, 2002

• Best Use of Trash

  The Sanitary Fill Co.

  May 15, 2002

• Tabled Salt

  Plans to buy Cargill's huge saltworks and restore them to wetlands are thwarted by a sour economy

  January 23, 2002

• Massing Gas

  San Francisco asks the Navy to investigate potentially dangerous methane concentrations at Hunters Point Shipyard

  January 2, 2002

• Letters to the Editor

  Ring Master; Salt in the Wound; S.F.: 237, N.Y.: 1

  December 26, 2001

• Letters to the Editor

  Tale of the Whale; Night Crawler: A Cure for the Common Cold

  December 12, 2001

• Hold On a Minute!

  Ecologists are still trying to spin their phony save the whale campaign

  December 12, 2001

• The Unlikely Environmentalists

  International environmentalists claim they stopped a Mexican salt plant that endangered the gray whale. Actually, though, the Mexican government canceled the plant for reasons of its own.

  November 28, 2001

• The New Economy

  The road to Punta Abreojos is paved with hollow intentions

  November 21, 2001

• Crying Whale

  Environmental groups sent out a worldwide call to save the gray whale from a Mexican salt plant. They got millions of dollars and thousands of new members. But scientists found no threat to the whales.

  November 21, 2001

• Rural Cleansing

  Large numbers of Northern Californians really, truly believe that the government, the environmentalists, and the U.N. have joined forces in a plot so obvious, yet so subtle, so seemingly benevolent and fundamentally evil, that it can only be called ...

  October 3, 2001

• Letters to the Editor

  Power to the People; A Love/Hate Relationship

  July 18, 2001

• Running on Empty

  Detroit automakers have spent millions attempting to unplug California's effort to put electric cars on the road. And so far, Detroit's succeeding.

  June 27, 2001

• Chlorine, Benzene, Vinyl Chloride, Trichloroethylene, Beryllium, Nickel, PCBs ...

  Even if radioactivity were ignored, Hunters Point Shipyard would be one of the planet's most polluted properties

  May 2, 2001

• The Return of the Screw

  PG&E is doing to New England what greedy, polluting, out-of-state energy suppliers have done to PG&E and California

  April 25, 2001

• Russian Roulette

  The Western Pacific gray whale, once thought extinct, clings to life in a remote Siberian sea. Biologists fear their research is serving as cover for massive oil drilling that could wipe out this lost tribe once and for all.

  April 25, 2001

• Devil Fish

  Fierce prey. Spiritual brother. Ecological bellwether. The majestic gray whale inspires awe, conflict, and troubling environmental questions from the icy seas of Russia to the warm lagoons of Baja.

  March 28, 2001

• The Battle for Walpert Ridge

  A lawsuit over a proposed Hayward country club promises to be more than just another environmentalists-vs.-developers fight

  February 14, 2001

• Current Events

  How development pressure and environmental law may force radical change along the seemingly idyllic but deeply troubled Russian River

  August 2, 2000

• Love Your Mother

  Earth Day events take place Saturday

  April 19, 2000

• Shaky Ground

  Environmental activists adopt a new strategy -- playing the race card

  January 5, 2000

• Political Economy

  How a Willie Brown real estate venture snagged tens of millions of dollars in government subsidies and opened the way for Democratic heavyweight Angelo Tsakopoulo to make even more money

  August 25, 1999

• Cothran

  March 17, 1999

• Cothran

  March 10, 1999

• Fecal Matters

  When it comes to sewers, San Francisco just can't get its shit together

  September 23, 1998

• Deep Xanadu-doo

  William Randolph Hearst's heirs want to build hotels and a golf course on his seaside estate, below his fabled castle. Ranchers and environmentalists are raising Kane.

  December 17, 1997

• Foul Ball

  The Giants' new stadium site is almost certainly seeping a stew of toxic chemicals into the bay. Why doesn't the government care?

  October 1, 1997

• The Sky's the Limit

  How buying and selling pollutants could help clean up the Bay Area's air

  September 3, 1997

• Looking A little Green

  Taking the Sierra Club's helm, boy wonder Adam Werbach confronts more than his own inexperience

  June 19, 1996

• State Senate Committee Moves to Allow Toxic Waste In County Dumps

  Thanks, Ma: Toxic waste from old cars is still hunky dory in California The California Senate's Environmental Quality Committee today unanimously approved a bill that would block environmental officials from preventing 700,000 tons of toxic waste from being dumped into county landfills each year. As reported in SF Weekly, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control last fall proposed rules that would end a 20-year-old policy of allowing residue from automobile recycling plants to be dumped

  April 27, 2009

• Ironically, bike hater Rob Anderson advances cause of cycling in S.F.

  May 27, 2009

• Suit Alleges Environmental Protection Agency Not Doing Enough Environmental Protecting

  Smoke 'em if you got 'em...It was the Roman satirist Juvenal who pondered quis custodiet ipsos custodes? -- Who watches the watchmen? If we gave him the answer "The WildEarth Guardians" we don't think it'd satisfy his query (and, honestly, the man's been dead 1,800 years) -- but it wouldn't be wrong. The aformentioned organization filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency last week in San Francisco alleging the EPA isn't doing enough EP. Juvenal's statement, it seems, was made in a

  June 8, 2009

• Mandatory Recycling Hasn't Led to Fascism In Other Locales -- But San Francisco's Proposed Fines are 10 Times Higher Than Elsewhere

  It hasn't gotten quite to this point yet...There's no getting around it -- the notion of a government employee or contractor inspecting one's refuse and approving or disapproving its composition is creepy, regardless of how altruistic the goal of waste reduction. You cannot argue about this. That being said, Big Brother has not taken over the Departments of Sanitation in the several cities that preceded San Francisco in adopting mandatory recycling and composting (we're assuming this one is goin

  June 9, 2009

• In environmental terms, Cash for Clunkers is a jalopy

  September 2, 2009

• Earth Days

  September 9, 2009

• No Impact Man

  September 16, 2009

• S.F. State Prof: Comparision of Republicans to Neanderthals Is Insulting -- To Neanderthals

  His knuckles do not drag...​Angry words continue to be exchanged about fiery Florida freshman Congressman Alan Grayson referring to Republicans as "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals" and Rep. Nancy Pelosi's refusal to compel him to apologize. But a San Francisco State University professor has a problem with it. "I think it does Neanderthals an injustice," said Professor Niccolo Caldararo, a specialist in biological anthropology. Now, that's not meant to be too hard a dig at Republicans but, inste

  October 5, 2009

• I Wish I Knew How to Quit You: S.F. Chamber of Commerce Won't Leave Global Warming-Denialist U.S. Chamber

  ​People in fields such as petroleum, investment banking, or running chambers of commerce, know what it means to be blessed. They are embedded within industries that love to put on conventions and trade shows. Workers travel to distant cities, check into the Hyatt, mingle with people who went the same (or similar) college as they did, and, at the end of the day, hit industry-sponsored dinners and cocktails. So it's easy to comprehend why the suits at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce have

  October 16, 2009

• Update -- S.F. Pledges $250,000 to Settle Diesel Spill Lawsuit

  ​San Francisco has agreed to pay $250,000 to settle an EPA lawsuit demanding that the city  prevent a repeat of a 2005 Muni diesel fuel spill.SF Weekly obtained a copy of the consent decree between San Francisco and U.S. officials just after posting an item about an Oct. 27 EPA lawsuit charging San Francisco with environmental law violations in connection with the 2005 spill at a city bus yard.In addition to the payment, the city has also agreed to train staff and install new safety equip

  October 29, 2009

• S.F. Green Business Program rewards polluter

  November 18, 2009

• Is Toxic Waste is Good for the Environment? S.F. Official Explains Logic behind Green Business Program.

  ​This week's Matt Smith column notes that Sims Metal Management dumps into municipal landfills tens of thousands of tons of waste California Department of Toxic Substances Control scientists say is hazardous. Yet the company somehow received a San Francisco "Green Business Award." The column asked: How could a toxic-waste dumper be stamped officially green? Isn't that taxpayer-funded greenwashing?In response to our inquiry, (but after our deadline) Sushma Dhulipala Bhatia, who directs the

  November 18, 2009