Debris is becoming a hot commodity in some areas as the U.S. power industry seeks to lessen its dependence on fossil fuels amid growing global-warming concerns.

With renewable energy taking off, wind and solar power are hogging the limelight, but biomass-fired electricity is quietly making a comeback after a decade-long slump. Biomass is animal and plant wastes used as a fuel source.

Technology in biomass fuel has opened new doors toward alternatives to greenhouse gas-producing waste sites. It is a priority for CAW, however, that new energy technologies do not induce further harm on the environment.

What You Can Do:

• Learn more about how greenhouse gas emissions are affected by our waste stream.
• Calculate your carbon footprint with CAW's Living Green.

A win-win siutation may be on hand as one Nebraska cattle ranch lassos in methane to fuel a plant producing the up-and-coming biofuel ethanol. Ethanol, the corn industry's answer to the country's oil and greenhouse gas crises, is normally dependent on heavily-criticized amounts of fossil fuels in its production. From Nate Jenkins of the Pueblo Chieftain:

MEAD, Neb. - Ranchers have long been fond of saying cattle manure smells like money.

Now, folks in the business of making ethanol are smelling dollars too - in the methane gas emitted by manure at large cattle feedlots and dairies.

Across the country, ethanol plants powered by methane instead of costly natural gas or coal are on the drawing board - a movement that could be a win-win situation for the environment and the industry.

Complete Article

What You Can Do:

• Prepare for the new legislative session by reading about our priorities to reduce greenhouse gas.
• Explore how the livestock industry impacts our environment in our dairy issues page.
• See the big picture by learning more about greenhouse gas.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer today appointed long-time environmental leader Michael Paparian as Executive Director of the California Pollution Control Financing Authority.  Paparian served most recently as the environmental representative on the California Integrated Waste Management Board, and prior to that he had a long career as an activist with the Sierra Club. Paparain and has experience in a variety of environmental protection and resource conservation issues.

CPCFA provides low cost financing for large scale pollution control facilities to help meet environmental standards. CPCFA was at the center of a controversy laste year when CAW and other environmental groups squared off with the Dairy Industry over a proposal to use CPCFA taxpayer subsidized financing to help build large Confined Animal Feeding Operations in the Central Valley. The CAFO's are a significant source of air and water pollution in the central valley. Paparian and CPCFA will still need to wrestle with that issue.

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What You Can Do

• Learn more about dairy pollution.

San Bernardino County officials are grappling with what to do with more than 31,000 tons of cow manure that has been temporarily 'stored' on county parkland.

An article in today's Los Angeles Times by staff writer Jonathan Abrams reveals that the County inadvertently approved storing the manure at Prado Regional Park in Chino. The problem is, the county doesn't own the land, but leases it from the Army Corp of Engineers.

After being tipped off to the dumping by a park ranger, the corps issued a cease-and-desist order to the county and ordered the manure removed.

Chino is well-known for its vast dairy lands, which generate millions of pounds of manure annually, most of it stored in open-air piles.

This particular manure pile, at the "finished compost" stage, belongs to a Houston-based waste management company, Synagro Technologies Inc., which has a processing plant in Corona.

Synagro's plan to send the manure to the Central Valley fell through, and its previous storage site had already been sold to Lewis Homes.

For the complete article, click here.