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California's Sonoma County has committed to becoming the nation's first 100 percent sustainable wine region through a three-phased program to be completed within the next five years, the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission, also known as Sonoma County Winegrowers (SCW), say.

Evoqua Water Technologies' water treatment system will save Washington County, Maryland, $16 million in upgrade costs, according to the county.

Construction is finished at the 33-story Tower at PNC Plaza in Pittsburgh, a structure considered one of the world's greenest buildings. It was designed to use 50% less energy and 77% less water than a regular office building. The project used new materials techniques, requiring construction workers to understand the latest technology. "They get trained and they get retrained when new things come out," said Jack Shea, Allegheny County Labor Council, AFL-CIO president. 

Since 2014, oil companies reported that they used more than 20 million pounds and 2 million gallons of chemicals in their operations, including at least 16 chemicals the state of California classifies as carcinogens or reproductive toxicants under the state's Proposition 65 law. That recycled wastewater was then sold to irrigation districts largely in Kern County. The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board has allowed the practice for at least four decades and only recently required the oil companies and water districts to disclose the details. EWG detailed its findings in a report released Wednesday, two days before a public meeting of an expert panel convened to study the practice's safety. Although scientists don't know whether using oil field wastewater to grow crops poses a health risk to people who eat the food, the water board has refused to halt the practice until the expert panel releases its findings.

Developer FivePoint has a new plan to reduce carbon emissions at its proposed $12.7 billion master-planned community in California's Los Angeles County after a court blocked the project on environmental grounds. The company hopes to begin construction in 2018 and will implement zero-net-energy construction when it builds the 21,500 homes, each of which will have a charging station for electric vehicle.

Washington is suing Monsanto over widespread PCBs contamination, the first U.S. state to take such an action. Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced the lawsuit, filed in King County Superior Court, at a press conference in Seattle on Thursday. According to the Associated Press, Washington is seeking damages on several grounds, including product liability for Monsanto's alleged failure to warn about the dangers of PCBs; negligence; and trespass for injuring the state's natural resources.

A report in the journal Nature Climate Change said climate change and rising sea levels could threaten 13.1 million people living along the coastal United States. The study combines population projections with rising sea level models. The areas with the greatest percentage of people at risk are Florida's Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Smaller communities are threatened too and are dealing now with environmental changes.

The largest landfill in the US shut it gates forever on 10/31/13. After 56 years of operation, the Puente Hills Landfill in southeastern Los Angeles County has collected around 130 million tons of waste since 1957 and is 40 stories high in some places, according to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

A local environmental group slams the plan for the just-approved 58-acre facility, which will eventually employ 2,800 people but faces months of hearings before breaking ground

Chevron Energy Solutions will design and build a waste-to-energy plant at Broward County, Fla.'s wastewater treatment facility

IKEA just bought the Hoopeston Wind farm, comprising 49 turbines in Vermillion County, Ill. This is its first wind farm investment in the U.S. and its largest renewable energy project. Set to become operational in 2015, Hoopeston will generate 380 GWh per year ­- nearly 1.5 times the energy needed to operate all of IKEA's U.S. operations.

Amazon has signed a 13-year agreement to buy wind power from Pattern Energy's 150-megawatt wind farm in Benton County, Ind. The Fowler Ridge wind farm will be renamed the Amazon Web Services Wind Farm and is expected to begin operations as soon as January 2016.

The American Business Act on Climate Pledge has been signed by a number of leaders in the biofuel industry, including Abengoa Bioenergy, DSM North America, Novozymes, Pacific Ethanol and Poet. A total of 81 companies, of which at least 11 have biofuel industry connections, signed the document to show their dedication to the fight against climate change. Other biofuel companies that signed the pledge were Aemetis, Cargill, Fulcrum BioEnergy, Schneider Electric, Siemens and Syngenta/Quad County Corn Processors

Procter & Gamble has set a goal of obtaining 30% of its global electricity from renewable sources by 2020. One way the company will do that is by acquiring output from a wind farm to be built in Cooke County, Texas, in partnership with EDF Renewable Energy. "Wind not only emits zero greenhouse gas emissions, but also delivers long-term energy price stability," said EDF chief executive Tristan Grimbert. 

The largest solar-powered desalination plant in the US is planned in Fresno County, an inland area in California where the water contains natural salt and needs to be treated. The project, which could get underway next year, will create enough drinking water for 10,000 homes

Los Angeles County approves the start of the Newhall Ranch master-planned community north of the city of Los Angeles. The state has never seen a community quite like Newhall Ranch, proposed by California developer FivePoint. It will be a carbon-neutral development in the Santa Clarita Valley that tackles such critical challenges as climate change, water conservation, and the dire housing shortage that is severely threatening our economic competitiveness.

Two counties and a city in California have filed separate Superior Court lawsuits against 37 oil and coal companies seeking damages related to fossil fuel development, which the communities allege has resulted in climate-related problems in their areas. Their lawsuits are "a first-of-its-kind challenge that some liken to the high-stakes litigation of the tobacco industry in the 1990s," writes Kurtis Alexander.

Two counties and a city in California have filed separate Superior Court lawsuits against 37 oil and coal companies seeking damages related to fossil fuel development, which the communities allege has resulted in climate-related problems in their areas. Their lawsuits are "a first-of-its-kind challenge that some liken to the high-stakes litigation of the tobacco industry in the 1990s," writes Kurtis Alexander.

Taking plastics recycling to a whole new level, Procter & Gamble (P&G) has pioneered a new technology that restores used polypropylene plastic (PP) to 'virgin-like' quality. Developed in P&G labs, the patented technology is being licensed to PureCycle to deploy in a new recycling plant in Lawrence County, Ohio and will allow consumers to purchase more products made from recycled plastic.

On Tuesday, the EPA awarded the Disneyland Resort the 2014 Food Recovery Challenge award for its zero-waste efforts and food recovery. Disneyland is the first theme park to receive the award.