"I'll probably get fired for what I'm about to tell you, but these dams are a travesty"

The Boise Weekly profiles retired US Army Corp  Civil Engineer Jim Waddell who had a featured role in the film DamNation.

During his 35-year career with the Army Corps of Engineers as a civil engineer, Jim Waddell spent some of his time studying the four Lower Snake River dams bordering Idaho and Washington in eastern Washington. He concluded the dams are an economic sham and recommended the Corps breach the dams back in 2002.

LINK

Great Lakes have some of world’s most concentrated plastic pollution

Plastic pollutants circulate in pockets of the Great Lakes at concentrations higher than any other body of water on Earth, according to a recent State University of New York study.

The study is the first to look at plastic pollutants in the Great Lakes.

“We had two samples in Lake Erie that we just kept going back and rechecking the data, because the count, the number of plastic particles in the sample, was three times greater than any sample collected anywhere in the entire world,” SUNY chemistry professor and project lead Sherri Mason said.

LINK (via: Great Lakes Echo)

What'll 10 miles of large scale drift nets get ya?

A Honolulu-based Coast Guard cutter assigned to Alaska encountered the 177-foot fishing ship in late July about 850 miles east of Tokyo. Coast Guard personnel boarded the ship and found 30 metric tons -- more than 66,000 pounds -- of albacore tuna. They also found 6 metric tons of shark bodies and fins on board.

Coast Guard officials said Chinese citizens were operating the vessel, called the Da Cheng. The cutter has since followed the vessel as it moved west, and the vessel was turned over to the China Fishery Law Enforcement Command on Tuesday, officials said.

Read on at Anchorage Daily News

And the winner, by unanimous decision...

...the big guy with the repetitive right. 

What was junior thinking?  Never engage in a mid channel scrap w/out a wading belt. 

Dick of the Week - Pebble Executive Critical of Environmental Groups

Couldn't just stick to the data summary now could you Ken?

During last week’s Pebble Partnership update to lawmakers in Juneau, Vice-President Ken Taylor presented an overall summary of the data being released through its Environmental Baseline Document.  However, he could not complete his remarks in front of lawmakers in Juneau without addressing the opposition that exists to the Pebble Mine. Taylor feels that the groups opposing the Pebble Mine don’t want to see a wise use of Alaska’s resources.

Well at least he didn't call them terrorists.

LINK (Via: KSRM)

A little background on VP Ken Taylor from the Pebble Partnership.

Mr. Taylor has worked as a wildlife biologist in the State of Alaska for more than 30 years, most recently as Deputy Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish & Game. He spent 10 years as an Area Biologist in the region of southwest Alaska where Pebble is located.

You would think a biologist would have a greater appreciation for the environment they earned thier living working in for 10 years.

Nice gig for a retired state employee.