4/30 Sound Action, frogs, #SSEC14, Inslee's carbon, oil train spills, Baaken crude

Don’t move to Houston. Join in the fight to save Puget Sound.
Eric Becker’s new video for Sound Action tells it like it needs to be told. Check it out. Share it. Live it.

New blog: On The Subject of Frogs
“I’m still sad thinking about the frog populations crashing, as described by Elizabeth Kobert in the opening chapter of The Sixth Extinction. But on spring nights that have finally arrived, it’s heartening to hear the frogs croaking away in the retention pond across the way....”

Salish Sea Communications will be at the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference for the next few days. Look for some blogs on the proceedings and follow @savepugetsound on Twitter #SSEC14

Inslee orders a move toward limits on carbon emissions
Calling the fight against global climate change “a moral responsibility,” Gov. Jay Inslee signed an executive order Tuesday aiming to push Washington closer to a limit on carbon emissions. The Democratic governor’s rhetoric was urgent and his goals sweeping, but his executive order called for actions to move at a deliberate pace. Inslee appointed a 21-member task force to help design a “market-based” carbon-reduction plan, such as a cap-and-trade system or carbon tax, to take to the Legislature next year. Inslee also directed state agencies to further support clean-energy technologies such as solar power, and to work with utilities to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of electricity produced by coal-fired power plants, some of which comes from out of state. And he ordered a study of possible new clean-fuel standards. Jim Brunner reports. (Seattle Times)

Washington state has no comprehensive plan if oil trains crash
They are called petroleum pipelines on wheels -- trains pulling 100-110 tanker cars filled with crude oil from North Dakota and Canada.  Each train transports around 3 million gallons of raw crude oil and they move right next to sensitive waterways in Washington state like the Snake and Columbia rivers as well as long stretches of Puget Sound. If an oil train were to derail, the tanker cars could end up crashing into the water, spilling thousands, even tens of thousands of gallons of oil. As of now, there is no comprehensive plan to get spill response teams in place to deal with a potential environmental disaster. Kevin McCarty reports. (KIRO)

Bakken oil fields mark billionth barrel of oil
Oil drillers targeting the rich Bakken shale formation in western North Dakota and eastern Montana have produced 1 billion barrels of crude, data from the two states show. Drillers first targeted the Bakken in Montana in 2000 and moved into North Dakota about five years later using advanced horizontal drilling and hydraulic-fracturing techniques to recover oil trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface. North Dakota has generated 852 million barrels of Bakken crude, and Montana has produced about 151 million barrels through the first quarter of 2014, data show. James MacPherson reports. (Associated Press)

Now, your tug weather--
WEST ENTRANCE U.S. WATERS STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA- 230 AM PDT WED APR 30 2014
SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY IN EFFECT THIS MORNING
TODAY
E WIND 15 TO 25 KT EASING TO 10 TO 20 KT IN THE AFTERNOON. WIND WAVES 2 TO 4 FT. W SWELL 5 FT AT 12 SECONDS.
TONIGHT
E WIND 5 TO 15 KT RISING TO 15 TO 25 KT AFTER MIDNIGHT. WIND WAVES 1 OR 2 FT BUILDING TO 2 TO 4 FT AFTER MIDNIGHT. W SWELL 4
 FT AT 10 SECONDS.

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"Salish Sea News & Weather" is compiled as a community service by Mike Sato. To subscribe, send your name and email to msato@salishseacom.com. Your email information is never shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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