California has ambitious rail plans.

California is No. 1 with a bullet … train that is.

When the federal government recently awarded $8 billion for the development of high speed railway projects, the Golden State took the big prize — $2.3 billion. California High-Speed Rail Authority chairman Curt Pringle called the award “fantastic news for California and for our state’s high-speed rail project.”

“It is an award that will lead to the creation of tens of thousands of quality jobs in the near-term and to continued economic strength and enhance our transportation network in the longterm,” Pringle said in a statement.

California, he noted, is closer than any other state or region to building the first true high-speed rail system in the United States.” The federal money recognizes California’s work in partnering with local governments and state legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to put the plan into action, he said.

Here’s a look at the states that were winners, the amount of funding, and a brief description of the projects being funded:

California ($2.344 billion) — Work will include purchasing right-of-way, constructing track, signaling systems, and stations, and completing environmental reviews and engineering documents; other work that ultimately will allow for top speeds of 110 mph from Los Angeles to San Diego; four new station tracks at San Jose Diridon Station to almost double capacity and a universal crossover between Davis and Sacramento, which will reduce trip times and improve on-time performance; fund upgrades of the trains’ emissions control equipment, which will reduce pollution.

Illinois|Missouri ($1.133 billion) — Improvements that allow passenger rail service from Chicago to St. Louis at speeds up to 110 mph – a plan advocated by the Midwest High Speed Rail Association; overhaul of track, signal systems, and existing stations; implementation of positive train control technology; planning studies for additional service enhancements; expansion of existing railroad bridges and universal crossovers, as well as improved grade crossings.

Florida ($1.250 billion) — Construct 84 miles of track, build and enhance stations, and purchase equipment to serve the Tampa-Orlando corridor.

Minnesota|Wisconsin|Illinois ($823 million) — A planning study for extension of high-speed rail service to the Twin Cities; new and refurbished stations; implementation of positive train control technology along 80 miles of track; infrastructure enhancements, and signal and track improvements to enhance time performance and reliability.

North Carolina|Virginia|Washington D.C. ($620 million) — Nearly 30 interrelated projects will increase top train speeds to 90 mph and double the number of round trips along this corridor; purchase and rehabilitation of locomotives and cars, track upgrades, and station security improvements; add a third track from Arkendale to Powell’s Creek; cut congestion.

Washington|Oregon ($568 million) — Building bypass tracks to allow for increased train frequency and multiple upgrades to existing track and signal systems; safety-related projects; upgrading Portland’s Union Station; engineering and environmental work for track and signaling projects that will increase service reliability and reduce congestion.

Ohio ($400 million) — Track upgrades, grade crossings, new stations, and maintenance facilities.

Michigan|Illinois ($200 million) — Renovate stations in Troy and Battle Creek, MI; construct new station in downtown Dearborn; other station renovations, a new station, a flyover, approach bridges, and embankment and retaining walls; crossovers and signal system improvements to cut travel times improve on-time performance.

New York|Montreal ($151 million) — Construction of new track, signaling and interlocking improvements, upgrades to warning devices at grade crossings, and enhancements to stations in Rochester and Buffalo; three miles of new track to relieve congestion and improve on-time performance.

Massachusetts|New York|Washington, D.C. ($112 million) — Completion of engineering and environmental work for a new tunnel in Baltimore and a new station at BWI Airport. Projects also will span Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Maine ($35 million) — Restore more than 30 miles of track, including 36 grade crossings, to extend new passenger rail service from Portland to Brunswick, ME.

Pennsylvania ($27 million) — Eliminate three remaining grade crossings on the corridor to improve the 110 mph service; study an extension of the service to Pittsburgh.

Connecticut|Massachusetts|Vermont ($160 million) — Implement track, passenger stations and signal upgrades to relocate the Amtrak Vermonter service to a more direct route; Vermonter New England Central Railroad route improvements; construct new segment of second main track to increase reliability and improve service quality, and reduce trip times.

Iowa ($17 million) — Install four remotely controlled powered crossovers on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Ottumwa subdivision, which will reduce travel times and improve on-time performance.

Texas ($4 million) — Implement the final design and construction of signal timing improvements at grade crossings between Austin and Fort Worth to increase the operating speed of Amtrak’s Texas Eagle and improve on-time performance.

If it feels like you are finding a new phonebook on your door step every week and yet, you can’t remember the last time you opened one to get a number, listen up. The industry may be walking away, albeit in baby steps, from its paper-wasting ways.

These days there are multiple ways to get a phone number without having to thumb through a directory. With sites like www.yellowpages.com and www.superpages.com many people are turning away from print phone books and using online versions. There are even free phonebook applications for phones such as the iPhone and Blackberrys.

This is a trend that even phonebook providers are waking up to. On August 13, the Yellow Pages Association and the Association of Directory Publishers launched a national opt-out program. “Yellowpagesoptout.com makes it simple for consumers to find information about managing home delivery of print directories,” said Neg Norton, president, Yellow Pages Association.

It is simple. Go to www.yellowpagesoptout.com to enter your zip code. The site pulls up the list of providers for your area. Some publishers have direct links to stop delivery, while others require that you call them. This allows users to lower the number of phonebooks they receive yearly or simple stop all print delivery.

You’ll still be able to get “the yellow pages”.

“Our local data is available in a number of ways, including print phone books, Internet Yellow Pages, Google, and Yahoo! Local, for example.” Norton said. “Whatever way consumers choose to find a local business, chances are the last mile of the search was supported by Yellow Pages – whether the consumer knows it or not.”

There are areas that are testing out a Yellow Pages-only pilot program. A hardcopy of the yellow pages would be distributed to consumers, with a cd-rom of the white pages. Consumers would still be able to request to receive a hardcopy of the white pages if they preferred. ”In areas where the Yellow Pages-only delivery has been tried, an average of 1 percent of subscribers requested paper copies of the White Pages,” said Don Sadler, AT&T Spokesman. AT&T Florida is getting on board with the program this fall in four of their major markets: West Palm Beach, Jacksonville, Orlando, and Miami.

And if you do prefer print versions to virtual phonebooks, you will be pleased to know that the print versions are becoming more eco-friendly. The paper used contains 40% recycled content, while the other 60% is a byproduct of sawmills.

If you don’t recycle your old phonebooks, they are either gathering dust on your desk or taking up space in area landfills, neither of which are desirable.

Need help figuring out where and how to recycle? The Yellow Pages site has tips.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Sustainability and nature appreciation walk hand in hand. But surprisingly, there are still just a few U.S. vacation venues lodged lightly in nature’s embrace. If you want to “go green” you can camp out all over North America, but you can’t necessarily find a hotel that hugs the woods (or the beach) and boasts full green credentials and white linen service.

Here are a handful of green getaways that nestle nature, but don’t necessarily involve nesting with nature. We set the bar fairly low, requiring that these hotels have mattresses, hot food, indoor showers, and a LEED rating of some sort. We begin with Callaway Gardens, a great place to enjoy a respite from urban hustle amid botanical delights.

Callaway Gardens, Georgia

Indulgence often brings with it just a twinge of guilt. Riding in the back of a limousine, you can’t help but to think about the tailpipe emissions.

The Lodge and Spa at Callaway Gardens, a well-groomed paradise about 80 miles southwest of Atlanta, is a place where you can indulge guilt free. The 150-room lodge is one of fewer than two dozen hotels across the country to earn a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the US Green Building Council.

The resort operations are green, too. The Lodge and Spa uses refillable dispensers of all natural bath products in each room, saving nearly 200,000 plastic containers a year. Your piña colada is served in a glass made of corn.

Energy-efficient construction here is pretty easy on the eye, too. The look is upscale rustic, with heavy beams in the soaring lobby and heavy use of earth tones in the décor. The guest rooms feature down comforters with duvets, pillow top mattresses and 32-inch flat screen televisions.

Every room has a balcony. The best balcony belongs to room 8450 – a private perch overlooking the pool (but far enough away to not be noisy) and the treetops of the forest that surrounds the lodge.

While the lodge rooms are nice, Callaway Gardens isn’t a place where you stay indoors. This is a place here Mother Nature is dressed to kill, especially in the spring when thousands and thousands of azaleas – more than 700 varieties – erupt in color. The John A. Sibley Horticultural Center is indoor/outdoor garden with plants from around the world with something always in bloom.

And there is always bright colors to be found at the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center, a big glass house filled with 1,000 or so tropical butterflies, or, as Robert Frost wrote: flowers that fly.

A 10-mile bike path courses through the lavish landscape and there are miles and miles of walking trails. There are two golf courses, lakes for fishing and Robin Lake with a wide, white sand beach for swimming.

At the end of the day, you may be too exhausted to feel guilty about anything at all.

Odwalla is continuing its successful plant-a-tree program by donating $100,000 worth of trees to be planted in state parks in California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Utah, Ohio, Texas, Maryland, Michigan and Virginia.

Visitors to www.parkvisitor.com/odwalla can choose their preferred state to receive a tree — no contribution or registration is required. The trees will be used to support important reforestation and planting initiatives across the country.

Since debuting in 2008, the Odwalla Plant a Tree program has provided more than 60,000 trees to state parks across the country. Trees donated through the 2008 program were planted through volunteer and other events at local parks.

The Odwalla Plant a Tree program runs from May 27, 2009 through December 31, 2009. The species of trees donated will vary by region and will be planted in fall 2009 and early 2010.

From Green Right Now Reports

Real estate developer Kitson & Partners today announced an agreement with electric utility Florida Power & Light to build a large solar photovoltaic power plant at Babcock Ranch, Fla. – making it the “world’s first city powered by solar energy.”

Kitson & Partners said the 17,000-acre city of Babcock Ranch will consume less power than the proposed FPL on-site solar facilities will produce. The city also will be integrated with a “smart grid” that will provide greater efficiencies and allow residents and businesses to monitor and control their energy consumption.

The company said all commercial buildings and homes in the new city will be certified as energy-efficient and constructed according to Florida Green Building Council standards. The developers said over half of the project’s 17,000 acres will be permanently protected as greenways and open space. The planned city will be adjacent to the 73,000-acre Babcock Ranch Preserve, which was created by a conservation purchase of the state of Florida.

Babcock Ranch also will feature sustainable water management and conservation; street lamps designed to reduce light pollution; electric car chargers; and green roofs that reduce energy loss.

“We are extremely excited to build one of the world’s largest solar photovoltaic projects once the state legislative and regulatory authorities have taken the actions that would be required for us to move forward,” Eric Silagy, Florida Power & Light Company Chief Development Officer, said in a statement. “We believe large-scale solar projects like Babcock Ranch can yield significant environmental benefits to the people of Florida, create sustainable job growth and stimulate the local economy. With the continued support of Governor Crist, the Florida Legislature and the Public Service Commission, FPL is prepared to do much more in the coming years to build projects like Babcock Ranch and grow Florida’s renewable energy industry.”

When completed, Babcock Ranch will include 6 million square feet of retail, commercial, office, civic and light industrial space. Subject to State of Florida approvals, groundbreaking on the FPL solar facility is targeted for late 2009, with construction of the city center set for mid-2010, with construction of the first residential and commercial buildings in late 2010.

“I believe clean energy and sustainable development are the future of the American economy,” Syd Kitson, chairman and CEO of Kitson & Partners, said in a statement. “Babcock Ranch will be a living laboratory for companies, workers and families ready to reap the rewards of innovation. No other place in America will be home to such a concentration of new jobs and technologies, energy-saving advances and global economic leadership. I could not be more enthusiastic to be a part of this major step toward economic recovery and a sustainable future.”

A native landscaping program will cultivate plants and other crops on-site for landscaping use within Babcock Ranch, reducing the demand for water and eliminating the need to ship these products in from far-away locations. The city layout includes 40 miles of walkable paths and bikeable streets, to create a short, green commute to work.

Kate Johnson, National Clean Energy Representative for the Sierra Club, said the project has the potential to influence other U.S. cities. “Now is the time to rethink how we can make development work for everyone,” said Johnson. “Babcock Ranch has the potential of showing America that you can have a vibrant, prosperous community without sacrificing Florida’s clean air and water. Our common fight against climate change will require exactly this kind of large-scale commitment to clean technology and sustainable development. We are proud to support Babcock Ranch as it leads the way in this new direction.”

A softening economy and a milder-than-usual winter contributed to a decline in carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants in 2008, according to a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project.

EIP officials noted that the decrease is a departure from the recent trends, with power plant carbon dioxide emissions having risen 0.9 percent since 2003, and 4.5 percent since 1998, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Even with the national improvement in CO2 emissions, six states had increases in power plant emissions of 1 million tons or more from 2007 to 2008:

• Oklahoma (3.1 million)
• Iowa (1.8 million)
• Texas (1.7 million)
• Nebraska (1.3 million)
• Illinois (1.1 million)
• Washington (1.1 million)

“Unfortunately, one year of improved data does not mean that we are on the right path for carbon dioxide reduction from U.S. power plants. We clearly cannot afford a wave of conventional fossil-fired power plants that would only add tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year over the lifetimes of these new plants,” EIP Senior Attorney Ilan Levin said in a statement. “If the United States is serious about curbing greenhouse gas pollution and meeting the goals that the scientific community says are needed, then many of the nation’s dirtiest power plants will either need to be cleaned up or retired. We have no time to lose.”

The 10 states that emitted the most CO2 in 2008, measured in total tons, are: Texas, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, and West Virginia.

The 10 states with the largest CO2 increases over the past 10 years (from 1998 to 2008) are:

• Texas (26.9 million tons)
• Arizona (22.6 million)
• California (18.8 million)
• Georgia (17.7 million)
• Illinois (17.7 million)
• Oklahoma (16.6 million)
• Alabama (8.9 million)
• South Carolina (7.5 million)
• Colorado (6.7 million)
• Iowa (6 million)

Seeking to show that proposed new U.S. coal plants would exact a high environmental toll even beyond their carbon air pollution,  the Natural Resources Defense Council issued a list today of the states that would bear the greatest burden from coal waste.

Texas, with eight proposed plants, topped the NRDC’s “Filthy 15″ list. It was followed by South Dakota, Florida, Nevada and Montana, Illinois, South Carolina, Ohio, Wyoming, Michigan, Kentucky, Missouri , Wisconsin, Georgia and West Virginia.

Those states have 54 proposed coal plants awaiting permitting. Across the nation, there are 80 proposed plants that would dump an estimated 18 million tons of dangerous coal combustion waste annually into various dump sites, largely unmonitored by the federal government.

That waste would include some 18,000 tons of toxic chemicals and metals, such as lead, mercury and arsenic, that would threaten the environment and people because it could leach into groundwater and streams and lakes, according to the NRDC’s analysis.

Arsenic and heavy metals such as lead and mercury have been linked to increased incidence of cancer, hormone disruption and impaired cognitive abilities among children.

The threat from coal waste is especially acute because states typically have weak regulations, and the federal government has failed for the last three decades to finalize national regulations, NRDC experts said.

This waste “has never been regulated at the national level,” said Peter Lehner, executive director of the NRDC at a news conference. “Currently it’s just dumped into ponds and unregulated landfills and abandoned mines.”

Even outside the “Filthy 15″ no state has successfully controlled the problem, he said.

Lehner applauded the announcement earlier this week by the Obama Administration that the EPA would move forward with regulating coal ash. But he said the agency should act swiftly, adding: “We fully expect the coal industry is going to fight back very, very hard.”

One area of debate has involved the recovery of coal waste for believed beneficial uses, like filling abandoned mines. The practice provides a way to get rid of coal waste and the coal ash is supposed to neutralize acids in the mines and improve water quality in the area; but NRDC research suggests the practice can backfire with toxins leaking into the water supply.

In addition, the EPA has found that coal waste dumps have contaminated water (groundwater and at the surface) at 24 sites in 13 states, according to the NRDC report Dangerous Disposals: Keeping Coal Combustion Waste Out of Our Water Supply.

Aside from ongoing (and difficult to track) potential poisoning of soil and water, coal plants pose a danger from calamitous accidents such as the one in Harriman, Tenn., where a Tennessee Valley Authority waste pond spilled more than a billion gallons of coal sludge.

“Coal waste is one more nail that should be driven into the coffin of coal,” said Tom (Smitty) Smith, director of the Texas Office of the Public Citizen, who appeared at the conference.

“We need to stop permitting coal,” said Smith, ticked off the industry’s other polluting attributes, from shearing off mountaintops to causing acid rain and more carbon pollution than any other single source.
“The toxic toll of coal,” he said, “is too great for the country to bear”

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Related links:

• NRDC: Contaminated Coal Waste
• Watch Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars at SnagFilms.com
• Texas Business for Clean Air

1. Texas (8 proposed plants; 4,093,087 tons of coal ash waste)
2. South Dakota (2; 952,630)
3. Florida (3; 911,118)
4. Nevada (3; 888,272)
5. Montana (3; 848,278)
6. Illinois (4; 797,450)
7. South Carolina (2; 731,110)
8. Ohio (3; 711,616)
9. Wyoming (5; 697,850)
10. Michigan (5; 686,897)
11. Kentucky (4; 593,662)
12. Missouri (4; 515,709)
13. Wisconsin (3; 512,632)
14. Georgia (2; 507,952)
15. West Virginia (3; 445,202 )

Related links:

• Watch Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars at SnagFilms.com

Photo: The Redford Center at the Sundance Preserve and Alpheus Media

Narrated by Robert Redford, Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, followed the story of Texans fighting a high-stakes battle for clean air.

Recycling. It works for campaign slogans. Now the government of Florida figures it can work for those accumulating campaign signs as well.

The state is encouraging local entities to come up with innovative plans in hopes of recycling 75% of the signs that line local lanes and thoroughfares in the run up to the election Nov. 4, according to the Environmental News Service.

By encouraging candidates and citizens to recycle the signs instead of trashing them, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection will be working toward its mandate to reduce waste heading for landfills by 75 percent by 2020.

State legislators passed a law setting that benchmark earlier this year. Reusing campaign signs is just one of many ideas that state officials will have to try, said Mary Jean Yon, the DEP’s director of waste management.

In 2006, the Florida DEP ran four pilot programs that collected used campaign signs. Three of the programs used collection sites; the fourth was supposed to engage high school students in the collection, but it was thwarted by Pinellas County (St. Petersburg/Clearwater) code officials who nabbed the signs first and took them to the community group, Keep Pinellas Beautiful, for recycling.

Keep Pinellas Beautiful reported that they were able to recycle 100 percent of the signs. Floridians wanting more information can start with their local recycling coordinator or visit Florida’s recycling website.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media