 |
||||||||
| This week in conservation December 15-21, 2008 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| Calendar | ||||||||
| MEP final report on Edgartown Great Pond | ||||||||
|
||||||||
| back to top | ||||||||
| Save The Date | ||||||||
| Stormwater Financing Workshop |
||||||||
 Tues, Jan 13, 2009 Stormwater Financing Workshop 9:00 am to 1:00 pm (Registration and breakfast at 8:30 am) Conference Center, Cape Cod & Islands Association of Realtors 22 Mid-Tech Drive,West Yarmouth, MA 02673 Description: On Cape Cod, protecting water quality is critically important for ensuring safe drinking water supplies, swimming beaches, shellfish, aquaculture, and recreation. Federal and state water quality standards also require communities to treat and manage stormwater runoff to prevent pollution of water bodies. However, municipal stormwater management requires investment in trained staff, infrastructure improvements, maintenance, and management systems. Finding the funding to manage stormwater runoff to meet state and federal water quality standards is a challenge. Traditional sources of funding (state and federal grants) are typically not enough to address all of a community’s stormwater management needs. Contact Jo Ann Muramoto, Ph.D. Massachusetts Bays Program Regional Coordinator for Cape Cod Association to Preserve Cape Cod (508) 362-4226, Fax: (508) 362-4227, E-mail: jmuramoto@apcc.org. |
||||||||
| Symposium on Climate Change and the Marine Environment |
||||||||
| February 5, 2009 Co-sponsored byNew England Aquarium and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Statement of Purpose A one day conference bringing business leaders, policy makers, and non-governmental organizations together to examine the impacts of climate change on the marine environment. Goals To highlight the effects of climate change on the ocean environment, especially in Massachusetts Bay and the Gulf of Maine. To learn about the impacts of climate change on the Massachusetts economy – coastal development, real estate, tourism, commercial fishing, marine trades, infrastructure, etc. To examine policy implications for regulatory and management programs governing ocean resources in Massachusetts Bay and the Gulf of Maine. Vickie Cataldo, Special Programs Coordinator, Education Department New England Aquarium Central Wharf, Boston, MA 01220 617-973-0235 vcataldo@neaq.org www.neaq.org |
||||||||
| back to top | ||||||||
| MVTV | ||||||||
| Martha’s Vineyard Energy Reality |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| back to top | ||||||||
| MVC Update | ||||||||
| MEP Final Report on Edgartown Great Pond now available on MVC website | ||||||||
|
||||||||
| Estuaries Study Now Complete |
||||||||
| Edgartown will consider making it mandatory for hundreds of residents in the watershed of the Edgartown Great Pond to hook up to a new town sewer line, following recommendations of a study into pollution of the pond. http://www.mvgazette.com/article.php?19416#feedback |
||||||||
| back to top | ||||||||
| Sustainable Update | ||||||||
| Obama’s ‘Secretary of Food’? |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| back to top | ||||||||
| Wastewater Update | ||||||||
| Island Grove sewer | ||||||||
|
||||||||
| back to top | ||||||||
| Energy Update | ||||||||
| EPA Abruptly Backs Away From Proposals to Alter Air-Pollution Rules |
||||||||
 The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday abandoned its push to revise two air-pollution rules in ways that environmentalists had long opposed, abruptly dropping measures that the Bush administration had spent years preparing. One proposal would have made it easier to build a coal-fired power plant, refinery or factory near a national park. The other would have altered the rules that govern when power plants must install antipollution devices. Environmentalists said it would result in fewer such cleanups. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2008/12/10/AR2008121003225.html?hpid=moreheadlines |
||||||||
| back to top | ||||||||
| Climate Change Update | ||||||||
| The Oceans’ Shifting Balance |
||||||||
 Most of us understand that what we give off in the form of exhaust — from cars and manufacturing and energy production and burning forests — makes its way into the atmosphere, and is responsible for changes in the global climate. What is less familiar is the fact that the oceans are absorbing as much as a third of the carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/ opinion/12fri4.html?ref=opinion |
||||||||
| back to top | ||||||||
| Waste Update | ||||||||
| DOE calls for bigger nuclear waste dump |
||||||||
 WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration said Tuesday there are no technology constraints to a major expansion of the proposed nuclear waste site in Nevada, calling for possibly tripling the amount of highly radioactive used reactor fuel that could be stored there in manmade underground caverns. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/ article/ALeqM5gM9SQa98idlhqZD0eT6fkRW5B_2wD94VEJDG1 |
||||||||
| back to top | ||||||||
 Email Subscription InformationThe Almanac is provided as a public service by the Vineyard Conservation Society with the intent of providing quick and easy access to the Island's government process and environmental community. You are recieving this free email service because you have subscribed to the Vineyard Conservation Almanac. More information about island conservation issues, meetings and events can be viewed at http://almanac.vcsmv.org. If you do not wish to continue receiving these emails please click here to unsubscribe. Thank you for subscribing to the Almanac! |
||||||||
Have ideas for content for the Almanac? Please send them along to: |
||||||||
For 28 years, the Vineyard Conservation Society has been leading the fight to preserve the wild moors of Moshup Trail in Aquinnah. The effort began when VCS facilitated the purchase of the strategic MacDiarmid parcel near the Gay Head Cliffs, and worked to have the Martha’s Vineyard Commission designate the area as a District of Critical Planning Concern. More than 90% of this coastal heathland habitat has been eradicated worldwide, due largely to habitat fragmentation in the form of road building, residential construction, and related development impacts. 
As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens, and as concerns about climate change cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new energy economy is emerging in the United States. The old energy economy, fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, is being replaced by one powered by wind, solar, and geothermal energy. The transition is moving at a pace and on a scale that we could not have imagined even a year ago.
Mon Dec 15, MEP final report on Edgartown Great Pond, public meeting at 4:00 PM in the meeting room at the Dr. Daniel Fisher House (the house next to the Whaling Church on Main Street)
Part of the Vineyard Haven Library Energy Series, featuring Peter Cabana. Channel 13 on Tues Dec 16 at 8:00 PM and Wed Dec 17 at 2:00 PM 
The Final Edgartown Great Pond Report is out and posted on the MVC website – mvcommission.org To access the document type “Edgartown Great Pond” into the SEARCH BOX at the MVC website. The hit you want is titled “ Edgartown Great Pond MEP Report”. It is a large 5.2 mb file. 
As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed “secretary of food.” 
Another controversial article asked voters to spend $85,000 for design, permitting, and bidding on an extension of the sewer system to the 148-home Island Grove subdivision. The article was amended to a lower amount, $70,000. According to wastewater plant manager Joseph Alosso, the estimated cost of the sewer construction will be $840,000, an amount voters will likely be asked to spend in a separate article at the annual town meeting next spring. Taxpayers will be asked to split the cost equally with residents of the subdivision. Mr. Alosso estimated residents will pay $200 to $300 dollars per year for 20 years to fund construction, and $5,000 to $10,000 to connect to the sewer.