"In Washington, a move to preserve choice; Bill requires abortion coverage" by Kirk Johnson | New York Times, April 02, 2013
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The legality or availability of abortion is under challenge from Arkansas to North Dakota this spring as conservative state legislatures throw down roadblocks.
See: April Fool: Arkansas Energy Woes
A Flood of Stories From the Dakotas
How is that snow pack doing?
Btw, nothing from my Globe on the landslides my friends told me about.
But here in this corner of the Far West, winds may blow the other way....
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Related: Washington state may mandate abortion insurance
Just be happy if you are not downwind, ladies:
"Leak complicates nuclear site cleanup" by Shannon Dininny and Mike Baker | Associated Press, February 16, 2013
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The long-delayed cleanup of the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site became the subject of more bad news Friday, when Governor Jay Inslee Washington announced that a radioactive waste tank there is leaking.
He announced it late on a Friday, huh?
The news raises concerns about the integrity of similar tanks at south-central Washington’s Hanford nuclear reservation and puts added pressure on the federal government to resolve construction problems with the plant being built to alleviate environmental and safety risks from the waste.
The tanks, which are long past their intended 20-year life span, hold millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.
Yeah, those worthless weapons that "won" us the Cold War sure were worth it.
On Friday, the US Department of Energy said liquid levels are decreasing in one of 177 underground tanks at the site. Monitoring wells near the tank have not detected higher radiation levels, but Inslee said the leak could be in the range of 150 gallons to 300 gallons over the course of a year and poses a potential long-term threat to groundwater and rivers.
Related: Vermont's Leaky Pipes
It's upriver, and I'm not happy about it.
At the height of World War II, the federal government created Hanford as part of a project to build the atomic bomb. The site produced plutonium for one of two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, effectively ending the war. Plutonium production continued there through the Cold War.
Related: I Hear You, Hiroshima
That and Nagasaki are the two greatest individual war crimes in human history.
Today, Hanford is the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup will cost billions of dollars and last decades.
That is on top of the trillions already wasted.
Central to that cleanup is the removal of millions of gallons of a highly toxic, radioactive stew — enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools — from 177 aging, underground tanks. Many of those tanks have leaked over time — an estimated 1 million gallons of waste — threatening the groundwater and the neighboring Columbia River, the largest waterway in the Pacific Northwest.
Twenty- eight of those tanks have double walls, allowing the Energy Department to pump waste from leaking single-shell tanks into them. However, there is very little space left in those double-shell tanks today.
In addition, construction of a $12.3 billion plant to convert the waste to a safe, stable form is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Technical problems have slowed the project, and several workers have filed lawsuits in recent months, claiming they were retaliated against for raising concerns about the plant’s design and safety.
What a flipping mess!
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What are they going to do with it?
"Washington, N.M. split over fate of nuclear waste; Problem stems from faulty tanks at weapons site" by Shannon Dininny | Associated Press, March 08, 2013
RICHLAND, Wash. — Removing radioactive waste from underground tanks at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site has proved to be technologically vexing for years, and recent word that six tanks are leaking has only added pressure to efforts to empty them.
A proposal to ship some of that waste to New Mexico to ultimately stem the leaks earned approval from Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who called it the right step for south-central Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the state, and the nation.
The proposal requires approval from the two states, and Congress still must approve funding — likely pushing any shipments of waste two to four years into the future. But Inslee said he will press lawmakers to fully pay for the proposal, saying ‘‘every single dollar of it is justified.’’
Federal officials on Wednesday announced a plan to ship some million gallons of radioactive waste from Hanford for disposal in a massive repository — called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant — near Carlsbad, N.M., where radioactive materials are buried in rooms excavated in vast salt beds nearly a half-mile underground.
How? By truck? Rail?
The waste near Carlsbad includes such items as clothing, tools, and other debris.
The Hanford site sent the equivalent of about 25,000 drums of such so-called transuranic waste, which is radioactive but less deadly than the worst, high-level waste, to the site between 2000 and 2011.
The latest proposal would target transuranic waste in underground tanks that hold a toxic, radioactive stew of liquids, sludge, and solids, but it would address only a fraction of the 56 million gallons of total waste in the tanks.
The proposal quickly met with criticism from a New Mexico environmental group....
To be expected.
Dave Huizenga, head of the Energy Department’s environmental management program, said the transfer would not impact the safe operations of the New Mexico facility.
‘‘This alternative, if selected for implementation in a record of decision, could enable the department to reduce potential health and environmental risk in Washington state,’’ said Huizenga.
And threaten those in New Mexico.
Don Hancock, of the Albuquerque-based watchdog group Southwest Research and Information Center, which opposes the transfer to New Mexico, said this is not the first time the Energy Department has proposed bringing more waste to the plant near Carlsbad.
‘‘This is a bad, old idea that’s been uniformly rejected on a bipartisan basis by politicians when it came up in the past, and it’s been strongly opposed by citizen groups like mine and others,’’ Hancock said. ‘‘It’s also clear that it’s illegal.’’
Disposal operations near Carlsbad began in March 1999. Since then, more than 85,000 cubic meters of waste have been shipped to it from a dozen sites across the country....
Officials estimate that some 7,000 to 40,000 drums of waste would be trucked to New Mexico, depending on how the waste is treated and its final form.
Do you really know what is in that tanker truck in front of you on the highway?
South-central Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation has 177 underground tanks, which hold toxic and radioactive waste left from decades of plutonium production for the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal. The tanks have long surpassed their intended 20-year span.
Federal officials have identified six leaking tanks....
Officials said the leaks pose no immediate threat.
And they wonder why we don't believe a damn word they say anymore (as we wonder if they even care).
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Maybe that's what spilled:
"Unknown toxin sickens 200 in New Mexico" by Juan Carlos Llorca | Associated Press, October 31, 2012
SANTA TERESA, N.M. — An unknown hazardous material sickened about 200 people Tuesday just northwest of El Paso, as some workers in the industrial area where the substance released described feeling a burning sensation on their skin, according to New Mexico authorities.
A 1-mile area surrounding the Dona Ana County Industrial Park and Mexico border crossing at Santa Teresa was evacuated for a few hours and the county airport was closed. Workers a few miles away said they could smell something.
‘‘I got there after they barricaded the road. When I rolled down the window, I started feeling irritation on my skin,’’ said Gerardo Gomez, on his way to work. ‘‘It felt like when you get chile on your skin.’’
By Tuesday afternoon, only the industrial park remained off-limits as hazmat crews took samples to determine what made the people sick. No serious injuries were reported and no one was hospitalized.
An investigation initially centered at the FoamEx plant on the industrial park campus, but was being expanded to other areas in the park, authorities said. A New Mexico National Guard support team was en route to help with monitoring and testing.
Officials say some people in the industrial park were taken to Santa Teresa High School after complaining of breathing problems, light-headedness, nausea, dizziness, or a burning sensation on their skin.
Dona Ana County spokeswoman Kelly Jameson said officials started getting calls from people about 8:30 a.m.
Officials from Texas and New Mexico responded, and people in nearby homes and businesses were told to stay indoors, seal all doors and windows, and turn off air conditioning and heating systems.
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Back to Washington:
"The Alaska Airlines pilot who lost consciousness during a Seattle-bound flight Thursday night, prompting an emergency landing, was suffering from food poisoning or a stomach virus, an airline spokesman said Friday."
Yeah, or he was drunk.
"Wash. marijuana law welcomed in cloud of smoke" by Gene Johnson | Associated Press, December 07, 2012
SEATTLE — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle’s Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.
Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year’s Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.
A few dozen people gathered on a sidewalk outside the north Seattle headquarters of the annual Hempfest celebration and did the same, offering joints to reporters and blowing smoke into television news cameras.
:-)
It could only help them!
‘‘I feel like a kid in a candy store!’’ shouted Hempfest volunteer Darby Hageman. ‘‘It’s all becoming real now!’’
Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21. Both measures call for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors, and retail stores. Colorado’s law is set to take effect by Jan. 5.
Related:
Technically, Washington’s new marijuana law still forbids smoking pot in public, which remains punishable by a fine, like drinking in public. But pot fans wanted a party, and Seattle police weren’t about to write them any tickets.
In dealing with marijuana, the Seattle Police Department told its 1,300 officers on Wednesday that until further notice they shall not issue citations for public marijuana use.
Officers will be advising people not to smoke in public, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. ‘‘The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas, and enjoy a ‘Lord of the Rings’ marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to.’’
He offered a catchy new directive referring to the film ‘‘The Big Lebowski,’’ popular with many marijuana fans: ‘‘The Dude abides, and says ‘take it inside!’’’
‘‘This is a big day because all our lives we’ve been living under the iron curtain of prohibition,’’ said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. ‘‘The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow.’’
Washington’s new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors, and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care, and basic government functions.
But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it and it is banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.
The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.
‘‘The department’s responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged,’’ said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle US attorney’s office. ‘‘Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress.’’
The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would ‘‘frustrate the purpose’’ of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.
That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.
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I thought something stunk.
The Tacoma News Tribune reported that 42-year-old Alan O’Neill said he is ‘‘embarrassed and remorseful.’’
He was charged in March after his first wife learned of his second wife through a Face book ‘‘people you may know’’ notification and alerted authorities. The second woman’s profile photo showed her and O’Neill dressed in fancy clothes and standing near a wedding cake.
O’Neill was spared jail time but will be on probation for a year. He has annulled his second marriage and is divorcing his first wife.
His first wife wrote a letter supporting O’Neill, saying the media coverage has been enough punishment.
O’Neill’s future as a Pierce County jailer remains in question.
"Washington man pleads guilty to bigamy in Facebook case" AP, September 15, 2012
TACOMA — A Washington man whose wife discovered through Facebook that he had married a second woman has pleaded guilty to attempted bigamy.
O’Neill’s future as a Pierce County jailer remains in question.
