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rdifalco

Row on the creek - 0 views

www.newsreview.com/...content

BEC Chico Glenn County Butte County water Stony Creek creeks waste recycling landfill toxics

shared by rdifalco on 28 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • rdifalco on 28 Jan 16
     
    Critics blast environmental review of proposed waste conversion facility along Glenn County waterway The watchdogs at Butte Environmental Council usually keep guard close to home, but occasionally they'll look beyond Chico's backyard. "Environmental issues don't stop at the county line," said Executive Director Robyn DiFalco. "We tend to look beyond our borders at least a little bit to see if our community will be affected." She believes that's the case with the proposed Glenn County Solid Waste Conversion Facility about 3 miles west of Hamilton City, which would sort and recycle up to 200 tons of material a day and convert biodegradable substances into biogas. According to the project's Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR), the goal is to divert and recycle up to 70 percent of the county's municipal solid waste from the landfill. And that's been a problem; the county's landfill near Artois has been pushing capacity for years and is set to close in December. What's caught BEC's attention? It's mostly a matter of location. The facility would be constructed along the northern bank of Stony Creek, which feeds into the Sacramento River and the Tuscan Aquifer, the vast underground reservoir that provides drinking water for residents in Glenn County and nearby communities-including Chico.
ndcarter

Chico waste rates are changing, but customers can still save money - 0 views

www.chicoer.com/...customers-can-still-save-money

shared by ndcarter on 13 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • It’s worth noting the city has approved the main components of the waste hauling agreement, but has not finalized the details. There will likely be more tweaks made before the October date. The agreement returns to the City Council on July 5.
  • “A lot of people aren’t quite sure what can be recycled,” Holden said. When in doubt, some people tend to just throw things out, or throw too much into the recycling bin.
  • maximizing use of recycling bins, using donation stations and learning to compost can help costs drop “enormously,” especially for people using the largest bin size.
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  • Once people realize how easy it is to compost, Holden said they can create their own nutrient rich soil and put organic waste back into the ground instead. “It’s water, food, brown material, cardboard and sunshine,” Holden said.
  • Residents and businesses can end up being slammed with extra fees if they are not disposing of waste correctly. Learning what not to do can help people avoid unnecessary fees.
  • “The goal is to deliver clean recyclables to manufacturers to create new materials and clean green waste to return as compost,”
rdifalco

Butte County supervisors vote 4-1 to ban fracking waste disposal in county - 0 views

www.chicoer.com/...cking-waste-disposal-in-county

BEC fracking water Butte County

shared by rdifalco on 22 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Oroville >> After a relatively brief public hearing Tuesday, the Butte County Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance that would ban the storage or disposal of fracking waste within the county.The vote regarding the waste generated by injecting fluids into the ground to stimulate oil and natural gas production was 4-1.
  • The ordinance defines key fracking terms, creates a land-use category about storing or disposing fracking waste or byproduct and then bans such storage and disposal within the county.
  • Six of the seven members of the public that commented on the proposal openly supported the ordinance. Members of the Butte Environmental Council and Frack-Free Butte County spoke.
rdifalco

City of Chico sees progress, setbacks in meeting 2020 targets for greenhouse gas emission - 0 views

www.chicoer.com/...ts-for-greenhouse-gas-emission

BEC chico water energy climate change climate action plan

shared by rdifalco on 16 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Chico >> With 5 1/2 years left to meet greenhouse gas emission targets, the city of Chico continues to struggle in certain sectors.
  • The draft greenhouse gas emissions inventory, which is expected to be highlighted during the sustainability indicators report at the Chico City Council today, summarizes results of a high-level community-wide inventory that addresses emissions from the transportation, energy and waste sectors within city boundaries from 2005-12. Many external factors, including the economy and government regulations, are to be credited for reductions, and it remains to be seen how well the city is on track to meet its goals, said Principal Planner Brendan Vieg.
  • some of these reductions could be reversed, said Mark Stemen, a member of the Sustainability Task Force, which has been tasked with leading implementation of the Climate Action Plan.
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  • “How do we keep people from getting back into their cars?” he said. “We need to remind people, hey, drive less. It’s good for pollution. It’s good for the planet.”Other areas of success included emissions from commercial electricity, which fell 10.6 percent, and waste to landfill, which dropped by 15.2 percent.
  • “Watching the struggles with water has made me feel a little bit better about our inability to cut back on electricity,” he said. “People are now seeing the effects of the drought and they are acting. It’s important for people to understand they have to do the same thing when it comes to climate change.”
rdifalco

'Block party' cleanup of Little Chico Creek set for Saturday morning - 0 views

www.chicoer.com/...creek-set-for-saturday-morning

BEC chico water cleanup creek

shared by rdifalco on 06 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • A clean-up of Little Chico Creek from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday is being touted as a “block party with a purpose.”After gathering near the windchime sculpture at the park on Humboldt Avenue near Willow Street, volunteers and community members will remove garbage from the creek and park, according to an event flier. Invasive weeds will also be cleared.Volunteers are asked to wear closed-toe shoes, long pants and long-sleeve shirts and to bring gloves and a reusable water bottle, if available. Organizers will provide tools, waste bins and water. They will also provide lunch and lemonade to volunteers. The event is sponsored by the city of Chico, Butte Environmental Council, Waste Management and the Mount Lassen Chapter of the California Native Plant Society.
beckyholden

Glenn County residents opposed to KVB Waste Conversion facility - 0 views

www.appeal-democrat.com/...9f-11e5-a293-c7299bb8dbbf.html

BEC Glenn KVB

shared by beckyholden on 10 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Last week, the Concerned Citizens of Glenn County and a number of other individuals, largely from the Hamilton City area, made known their opposition to the Glenn County Solid Waste Conversion Facility project, overseen by KVB Inc. and at a proposed site along Stony Creek.
  • Becky Holden and Lindsey Wood, both employees of the Butte Environmental Council and Glenn County residents, both expressed their displeasure with the project in its proposed location and cited the Stony Creek waterway and the groundwater table as reasons for concern. "We're following this issue," Holden, a resident of Ord Bend, said. "We believe this project has submitted an inadequate EIR, and I realize that is still being worked on. The KVB project is the wrong project for Glenn County, and it is especially at the wrong site."
ndcarter

Chico News & Review - Compassion above all else - Editorial - Opinions - March 29, 2018 - 0 views

www.newsreview.com/...content

BEC water cleanup chico news Community

shared by ndcarter on 05 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Butte Environmental Council, which for decades has organized events to beautify our parks and waterways. During a cleanup in 2008, as the CN&R reported, BEC volunteers collected a whopping 10.5 tons of trash in five hours.
  • ndcarter on 05 Apr 18
     
    Butte Environmental Council (BEC) is a community organization committed to protecting and defending environmental quality throughout Butte County. By regularly removing trash and recyclables that have found their way in to our urban creeks, parks and greenways BEC is helping to keep local water clean and safe, improving wildlife habitat and reducing human impacts on our environmental quality. Chico's urban waterways are heavily impacted by litter, illegal dumping, and creekside camping. BEC is committed to treating all members of our community with dignity and respect. We often remove materials left behind by those living along our creeks. Our non-confrontation policy asks our volunteers to avoid any interactions with those in the cleanup area besides inviting them to join us. In partnership with local law enforcement, we provide notice to camps in an effort to allow time for personal property to be removed. Usable items that are removed from our cleanup efforts are repurposed whenever possible to minimize what we send to the landfill. Our community cleanups have two goals: remove waste from our creeks, and build a community committed to healthy waterways.
rdifalco

Letters for October 11, 2012 - Letters - Opinions - October 11, 2012 - Chico News & Review - 2 views

www.newsreview.com/...content

BEC chico plastic bag

shared by rdifalco on 11 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Regulate plastic bags As a student and Butte Environmental Council intern interested in a sustainable future, I am submitting this letter in support of the Chico City Council’s voting to restrict plastic-bag use. California uses an estimated 400 plastic bags per second, requiring an estimated 12 million barrels of oil annually. Only 3 percent of plastic bags are recycled, and the thermosetting process used to mold plastic bags is irreversible, creating a product that is not biodegradable. These bags end up in the streams, creeks, rivers and eventually the ocean. On the bags’ journey to the sea, the plastic breaks down into smaller pieces, absorbing toxic chemicals along the way. These contaminated bits of plastic contribute to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is twice the size of Texas. At least 267 marine species have been documented to be adversely affected by plastic debris. California spends $25 million annually to manage plastic-bag pollution and $303 million in litter reduction. If consumers were to utilize reusable bags instead, we could reduce waste and water pollution and contribute to the local economy by allowing wonderful companies such as ChicoBag to further their commitment to consumer safety. Lindsay McDonnell Chico
ndcarter

Environmental coalitions push stricter limits on plastic bag ban | Action News Now - 0 views

www.actionnewsnow.com/...imits-on-plastic-bag-ban-95697

shared by ndcarter on 08 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Prop 67, the measure that would ensure a ban in every city and require stores to charge 10 cents for paper bags. The Butte Environmental Council Executive Director says we still have a lot of work to do. "In the United States, we use more than a billion plastic bags a year and less than one percent of them are recycled,” said Natalie Carter. “The rest of them end up in landfills and take more than a thousand years to degrade."
  • City Councilmember Randall Stone says our county needs to protect our numerous creeks, streams and rivers. "We have plastic bags going into those creeks and streams it requires us to clean that space up that costs a tremendous amount of money for the city of Chico in volunteer time as well as staff and waste time,” he said.
ndcarter

Butte Environmental Council named top-rated nonprofit - 0 views

www.chicoer.com/...161229772

shared by ndcarter on 29 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • “BEC is a great example of a nonprofit making a real difference in their community,” said Perla Ni, CEO of GreatNonprofits, in a press release.
  • “We are so proud of our many accomplishments this year, including our 29th annual Bidwell Park and Chico Creeks Cleanup event that brought out more than 500 community volunteers who cleaned over four tons of waste and recyclables from our local creeks.”
rdifalco

Letter: Facts matter on fracking - Chico Enterprise Record - 0 views

www.chicoer.com/...letter-facts-matter-fracking

water fracking Butte County hydraulic fracturing

shared by rdifalco on 31 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Letter writer Garry Cooper is right. Facts must guide when considering a moratorium on fracking in Butte County. Here are 12: 1. We are now blessed with deep, fresh, clean groundwater aquifers in our valley. 2. Our groundwater is invaluable as drinking water for people and animals and for irrigation water for our food. 3. Butte County has old wells drilled to collect gas, which lies below and separated by protective impervious layers from our groundwater. 4. Fracking wells would drill completely through our groundwater and its protective impervious layers. 5. Fracking injects, under extreme pressures, huge quantities of many highly toxic chemicals down the drill hole and its horizontal extensions, reaching miles out around the well. Fracking also creates vast quantities of toxic waste liquids.
  • Support the Citizens Action Network's proposed moratorium on fracking in Butte County. — Doug Fogel, Chico
rdifalco

Recycling Education Programs in Butte County Are No Longer RARE - 0 views

growingupchico.com/?p=705

shared by rdifalco on 16 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Published on November 3, 2013 by growingupchico
  • When it comes to waste, “there is no away.” This is an important life lesson that the Butte Environmental Council hopes to impart to local students, teachers and community members with their new recycling education program. RARE, The Recycling and Rubbish Education program, strives to educate through engaging interactive workshops and field trips, which focus on the four R’s – reduce, reuse, recycle and rot.  The program comes directly to the students at their Butte County school and is completely free of charge. “When we give children meaningful, hands-on experiences within their classrooms and show them up close by visiting the local landfill, they feel connected to the bigger picture of where trash ends up,” said Tanya Parish, RARE program coordinator.  “Our hope is that they then take positive steps to create a healthier and more sustainable future.”
rdifalco

Chico News & Review - Constant cleanup - Feature Story - Local Stories - April 17, 2014 - 0 views

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BEC chico cleanup water parks creeks

shared by rdifalco on 17 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The byproducts of homeless encampments—mattresses, tents, sleeping bags, food packaging, empty bottles, clothing and human waste—are increasingly common along Chico’s creeks, and the mess is more than unsightly. Many items at these makeshift homes have the potential to pollute the local waterways and habitats downstream.
  • Members of volunteer cleanup crews, park officials and environmental advocates agree that the problem is worse than ever. They also acknowledge that, in light of the city’s ongoing financial difficulties, the ability to clean up the camps in a timely manner has diminished significantly.
  • Robyn DiFalco, executive director of the Butte Environmental Council, said that in the months leading up to the Bidwell Park and Chico Creeks Cleanup last September, there was a dramatic increase in homeless encampments throughout Chico, and despite a lower than expected volunteer turnout, the cleanup removed about twice as much trash from the creeks as the year before.
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  • “Things reached a level that no one could remember,” she said. “It was worse than it had ever been. We saw so many more mattresses, so many more tires, so many of those big, bulky items.”
  • Since last fall’s cleanup, DiFalco said, she has been encouraged by ongoing discussions between city and county organizations about how to stay on top of the issue. Some locals, including a group of neighbors along Lindo Channel, have organized cleanup efforts of their own, while student volunteers from Chico State and Butte College have also proved helpful.
  • Volunteers also described certain areas with such high concentrations of fecal matter and urine that “they required a hazmat cleanup,” DiFalco said. “When humans use our waterways as a bathroom, it has an impact on water quality; it has an effect on aquatic wildlife as well as terrestrial and amphibian wildlife.”
  • Mark Gailey, a Chicoan who has volunteered for BEC’s cleanup efforts for nearly 25 years, said in an email that the amount of trash in Chico’s waterways “has seemed to grow exponentially—especially in the last few years. The vast majority of this trash … appears to be from abandoned homeless and transient encampments.”
  • “You’re never going to solve it, but you do need to keep responding to it so it doesn’t get out of control,” she said. “The city shouldn’t be expected to do it on their own, nor should volunteers or nonprofits.”
  • rdifalco on 17 Apr 14
     
    The community's efforts to keep waterways unpolluted is more important than ever
rdifalco

Chico News & Review - Haps on the CAP - Feature Story - Local Stories - April 17, 2014 - 0 views

www.newsreview.com/...content

chico BEC climate action plan sustainability task force

shared by rdifalco on 17 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The city hasn’t forgotten about its Climate Action Plan
  • This article was published on 04.17.14.
  • In November 2012, the Chico City Council put its official stamp on sustainability by adopting a municipal Climate Action Plan. The blueprint, honed by the city’s Sustainability Task Force, laid out a two-stage approach for addressing the impacts of climate change and meeting greenhouse-gas standards established by the state.
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  • STF and CAP have become nearly synonymous acronyms at the direction of City Council, which cut the size of the task force in half—to seven members, officially appointed—and focused the panel on implementing the plan, versus exploring sustainability in general.
  • Mark Stemen, chair of the reincarnated STF, says the city is “on the right track now, and we are making progress” but, in a broader sense, sees the process as “a good five years behind. We lost some momentum; we also lost the opportunity when there was more staff to get things done. But that’s water under the bridge—or carbon in the air, unfortunately.”
  • Flash forward six months and … Pause. Budget woes led to restructuring of city staff. At the same time, the council opted to reconfigure the Sustainability Task Force; the STF wouldn’t meet again until December 2013.
  • A tangible display of that impetus is a joint session of the Planning Commission and the STF next month. Uniting the committees means the STF “is getting more integrated into city processes,” Stemen said, and also “is getting the Climate Action Plan in front of the people who implement the [2030] General Plan.” That is particularly significant for Phase II, which has a series of goals related to construction.
  • solar panels on city structures, which produced 2.2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity in the preceding 12 months and 16 million kwh total. Three years ago, aided by grants, the city installed 1,200 LED streetlights that have translated into annual savings of approximately $67,800 in electrical costs plus $6,000 to $7,000 in maintenance costs, according to city staff.
  • Instead of commissioning another full inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, the city will extrapolate numbers based on readily available information: natural gas usage, electricity usage, waste diversion and vehicle fuel usage.
  • “If we’re not moving in the direction of reducing those emissions, then we’re directly working against our own interests.”
rdifalco

Chico News & Review - A $7 billion blunder? - Feature Story - Local Stories - October 2... - 0 views

www.newsreview.com/...content

BEC water california bond Sites Resevoir

shared by rdifalco on 23 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Local environmental groups, including the Butte Environmental Council, AquAlliance, the Sacramento River Preservation Trust, Chico Conservation Voters and Friends of Butte Creek have come out against the proposition. So, too, have fishing groups and others worried about the impacts on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the state’s fishery.
  • BEC officials note Prop. 1 includes some worthwhile components, such as water conservation and funding for restoring watersheds, but the bond promotes north-to-south water transfers via purchase at a time when existing water rights exceed the actual supply of water by a 5-to-1 ratio. The bond, as BEC points out, does not create more water.
  • Perkins studied the potential impacts the proposition, including the construction of Sites Reservoir, would have on Northern California groundwater resources.
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  • Carol Perkins, BEC’s water policy advocate, says the bond doesn’t address the urgent nature of the issue. “We need immediate solutions like recycling and efficiency improvements,” she said, “not borrowing now to purchase water and shift the burden to our children and grandchildren.”
  • Above-ground storage facilities do not offer much in the way of new water, her study notes, though Sites could increase the existing supply by 1 percent. On the other hand, at least 30 percent of the surface water in the state is known to evaporate or be lost to infiltration back into the ground, which means “groundwater storage will be the ‘wave’ of the future.”
  • She said $520 million would be allocated for organizations to compete for clean-water and waste-water infrastructure projects. “That money would be set aside for competitive grants,” Perkins said, “which means it goes to the savvy, well-funded organizations instead of the smaller communities without county or district water departments.
  • Perkins said the bond also provides hundreds of millions for water conservancies, and that those monies would not be dispersed on a level plane. For instance, she noted the conservancy in L.A. County’s Baldwin Park would receive $10 million for its 2,038 acres of land, which equates to $4,906 per acre. On the other hand, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, which provides 60 percent of the state’s water supply, would receive $25 million for its 42 million acres, or 59 cents per acre. “Los Angeles is getting a lot of money and so [statewide] environmental organizations like the Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy are for [Prop. 1] because it means more money for them,” Perkins said. “We’ve had $20 billion set aside in taxes and interest since 2000 and we still have water problems. The money gets put aside, but is not being spent where it needs to be spent.”
  • rdifalco on 23 Oct 14
     
    Environmental groups say water proposition is no panacea
becnews

Chico News & Review - Creekside crackdown - News - Local Stories - September 10, 2015 - 0 views

www.newsreview.com/...content

BEC Chico Butte County Community Chico Creeks Cleanup

shared by becnews on 29 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Cynthia Gailey identifies herself first and foremost as an environmentalist, and she’s fully aware that homeless encampments have contributed heavily to the trashing of Chico’s waterways. The degradation, she says, is appalling.
  • Still, it’s not as if the camps’ inhabitants have access to household comforts such as toilets, showers, laundry machines or garbage pick-up, Gailey says. As the coordinator for Safe Space, the seasonal, cold-weather homeless shelter hosted at rotating locations, she argues that the solution is providing unsheltered people with adequate facilities and services, not creating new laws that only “further criminalize homelessness.”
  • The environmental impacts are serious. Last year, Butte Environmental Council’s annual Bidwell Park & Chico Creeks Cleanup—which aims to remove litter from the waterways before rain washes it downstream—pulled an estimated 30 tons of garbage from the creeks. It was a record amount of trash, far surpassing the previous high of 23,000 pounds in 2002. (BEC has tracked the trash haul since 1987.)
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  • This year is shaping up about the same, based on accounts of volunteers who have worked in the waterways ahead of the cleanup, which is taking place on Saturday (Sept. 19), said BEC Executive Director Robyn DiFalco. “We’re hearing the conditions are really similar to last year,” she said. “We’re expecting to collect just as much material so long as the same number of volunteers come out again.” The volunteers pick up plenty of “typical everyday litter,” DiFalco said, but the vast majority of trash, by both weight and volume, comes from homeless encampments. However, she doesn’t want people blaming homeless people alone for the waste in the waterways. “This is all part of the bigger situation in our community and society,” she said. “Our role at BEC is to facilitate the community having a positive impact and getting out there for the cleanup.”
dnbaxter

Chico and Oroville Volunteers do their Part in Helping Clean California - 0 views

www.chicoer.com/...rt-in-helping-clean-california

BEC Butte County Chico Community Volunteers Waste Reduction Environmentalism

shared by dnbaxter on 30 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • dnbaxter on 30 Sep 19
     
    Chico and Oroville volunteers were part of the 60,000 people throughout California that spent Saturday morning picking up trash. Oroville focused on beautifying areas along the Feather River, while Chico cleaned up Bidwell Park and local creeks.
dnbaxter

BEC Hosting Environmental Listening Forum - 0 views

www.orovillemr.com/...l-holds-special-action-meeting

BEC Chico Butte County Environmentalism Community Educational Forum

shared by dnbaxter on 30 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • dnbaxter on 30 Sep 19
     
    Public opinion is welcomed on several topics at BEC's meeting tonight, which are: Recommendations for greenhouse greens reductions from transportation energy; Solid waste recommendations for sequestration and mitigation projects; Engaging the community in ideas and incentives for funding.
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