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Another piece of good news!

California Native Plant Society
Defenders of Wildlife
Butte Environmental Council

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – July 13, 2007

Contact: Carol Witham, California Native Plant Society, (916) 452-5440

Brian Segee, Defenders of Wildlife, (202) 682-9400 x 121

Barbara Vlamis, Butte Environmental Council, (530) 891-6426

Court Issues a Preliminary Injunction
against destruction of vernal pool habitat
in the Sunrise Douglas area of Rancho Cordova

Three pieces of good news

This means that other communities will be saddled with a potentially unnecessary NBAF and unjustified hazards. "We remain vigilant and plan tstand with communities across this country to oppose the proliferation ofthese exceedingly dangerous labs." said Miles, Tri-Valley CAREs, July 11, 2007

Three pieces of good news:

Central Valley Safe Environment Network reply to a Merced County Planning Commissioner

A number of local eco-justice advocates would like to thank Merced County Planning Commissioner Cindy Lashbrook for providing a public opportunity to discuss the place of the eco-justice movement in Merced County. Veteran local organizers understand better than the commissioner does that she is just a messenger for the special interests doing business through a combination of propaganda and political coercion to promote urban sprawl and environmental destruction in the San Joaquin Valley.

Rancho Cordova/Tsakopoulos lose vernal pool case

7-7-07
Sacramento Bee
Rancho Cordova stymied
Worried about vernal pools, judge overturns OK of the Preserve housing project.
By Mary Lynne Vellinga
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/260784.html

A Sacramento judge Friday overturned Rancho Cordova's approval of a proposed development that has put the city at odds with federal environmental agencies.

Financial hemorrhaging continues

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.” So declared F.D.R. in 1937 ... Paul Krugman, New York Times, July 9, 2007

The public of the north San Joaquin Valley remembers being told by its elected officials, planning staff with advanced degrees in urban planning, lending institutions, insurance companies and realtors (even those not elected to local land-use authorities), that our growth boom was all planned, it would pay for itself, and prosperity was right around the corner.

Lloyd Carter: The growing selenium threat

Although drainage flows to Kesterson were halted in 1985 following intense media exposure of the problem, selenium-contaminated farm drainage continues to flow to many wildlife refuges in more than a dozen western states, and food chain levels of selenium in those refuges reveal a continuing threat to bird populations. -- Lloyd Carter, Fresno Bee, July 5, 2007

The Hun's dilemma

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has replaced the former chairman of the California Air Resources Board with Mary Nichols, secretary of the Resources Agency during the Gov. Gray Davis administration. The occasion for the switch according to the Hun's flaks was CARB's approval of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District's decision to forestall the cleanup of Valley air for another 11 years, thereby, in the infinite legerdemain of air pollution regulations, also forestalling a possible cessation of federal highway funds.

Extinction no solution to water pollution -- Felix Smith

When one looks seriously at the probable extinction of the Delta Smelt, the only thread in the history is the one most denied in the San Joaquin Valley: the systematic, long-range, politically rigged destruction of Public Trust law and natural resources by agribusiness lords and by the aggressions of water agencies led by Wetlands Water District.

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