Latest West Coast of the United States Stories
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Sept. 29, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- There is always a tight balancing act between environmental preservation and sustainable development. Nowadays, with global warming and climate change in the agenda of international conferences between governments, there is the possibility that promises made during a "cooler" period will be forgotten. This is the controversial contention made in Grant W. Hunter's Mugged at the Courthouse that Alaskans have been cheated out of what is...
By James Haug By JAMES HAUG REVIEW-JOURNAL The goal of high school graduation is no longer just about getting a good job or going on to college. Education and law enforcement officials suggested Thursday that it has become a matter of life and death. Sheriff Douglas Gillespie and Clark County School District Superintendent Walt Rulffes drew attention to the correlation between violent crime and low graduation rates in a news conference Thursday outside Clark High School. "This is...
By Steve Tetreault By STEVE TETREAULT Stephens Washington Bureau WASHINGTON - Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., introduced a bill in Congress on Friday to designate almost a half-million acres of federal land in Clark County as wilderness or for other protections. The bill would create a National Conservation Area with some controls on visitors to Gold Butte, an area encompassing 362,177 acres - more than 565 square miles - located 65 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Within the conservation...
By ERNESTO PORTILLO JR The Sahuarita Planning and Zoning Commission last week approved eight amendments to the general plan, which could lead to the annexation of 25 square miles and a 15,000-home development. The commission is recommending the Town Council adopt the amendments. Two of the amendments were initiated by the town and one is from a Nevada-based developer. Sahuarita wants to incorporate 12,500 acres owned by the state, the city of Tucson and private landowners east of the town...
Officials at Oregon's George Fox University are investigating an effigy of Barrack Obama found hanging from a tree in the center of campus. College President Robin Baker planned to discuss the incident with the student body at the Christian college in Newburgh Wednesday. "We are a faith community driven by the teachings of Christ," Baker told The (Portland) Oregonian. "We have to express love toward each other so it was a great disappointment that anything like this would happen." The effigy...
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the most overdue state budget in California history Tuesday, skipping the usual fanfare because he said the Legislature's efforts on the $144.5 billion spending plan were nothing to celebrate. Nearly a quarter of the way through its fiscal year, the state finally has freed up billions of dollars to pay medical clinics, nursing homes, day-care centers and contract vendors. The 85-day impasse stemmed from a partisan legislative...
By John L. Smith Southern Nevada homeowners who get scolded for over-soaking their sod will cringe at this news. But a Las Vegas Valley Water District official says the decision this week to drain 20 million gallons from the new Levi reservoir in the northwest was absolutely necessary. That's right: 20 million gallons. At four gallons per flush, that's 5 million flushes. The worst news is, the water won't return to the system via a sewer drain. It is headed down a flood-control channel....
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Tens of thousands of Californians scoured our beaches, shorelines, and inland locations to pick up trash and debris this morning, covering over 750 sites and gathering hundreds of tons of trash. These volunteers took part in the California Coastal Commission's 24TH Annual California Coastal Cleanup Day presented by Whole Foods Market, part of the International Coastal Cleanup organized by The Ocean Conservancy. Beach, inland waterway, and...
With the housing market on the ropes, lumber production at Western sawmills in 2007 slipped for the second straight year to the lowest annual volume in more than a decade, according to final production figures prepared by Western Wood Products Association. Mills in the 12 Western states produced 16.32 billion board feet of softwood lumber in 2007, down 9.3 percent from the previous year. The estimated wholesale value of the lumber was $6.1 billion, compared to $6.8 billion in 2006. The...
The start of the 2009 session of the Oregon Legislature is months away, but transportation interests already appear to be jockeying for position when it comes to getting their pet projects out in front of legislators and the public. For Onno Husing, executive director of the Oregon Coastal Zone Management Association in Newport, one of those projects that legislators should tackle during their next session is coming up with money to help fix aging and neglected roads along the coast. Of...
Latest West Coast of the United States Reference Libraries
Olympic National Park is located in the state of Washington, in the Olympic Peninsula, in the United States. The park holds 922,650 acres of land that was once inhabited by Native Americans. Most of the tribes were wiped out once European explorers introduced diseases into the area. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the logging industry boomed, but the public began to express concerns of over logging in the 1920’s. However, the first proposal to establish the area as a...
North Cascades National Park is located in the state of Washington in the United States and was established in 1968. The park holds 504,781 acres and is the largest of three national park areas known as the North Cascades National Park Service Complex. It once contained 318 glaciers, but all of these have retreated at a fast rate and many glaciers have completely disappeared. The largest remaining glacier is Boston Glacier, but other large glaciers include Redoubt, Neve, and McAllister....
The Sierra Nevada Mountains located along the Eastern portion of California and the Western Portion of Nevada have a huge impact on the weather in this region. The first is the Sana Anna winds. These are very warm winds that ascend from the mountains westward back into the basins of California in such places like Los Angeles. These are very dry winds that can heat the temps up into the 100s and can cause rapidly forming fires. When weather systems come in from the west they hit these...
