Spouting Off Blog

Protecting Toddlers

As a Jewish parent and environmental scientist, I am consumed by guilt for taking the baby bottle shortcut when feeding our kids many years ago.  Yes, I put formula, and even – gasp --breast milk, in a plastic bottle and heated …
Spouting Off: Protecting Toddlers - baby bottle

Back-to-Back Jacks

Last night, I enjoyed an amazing half hour of TV after our Rosh Hashanah dinner. Yes, I’ll have something else to atone for a week from Saturday, but it was worth it. Watching Red Sox Nation and the tomahawk-chopping, unPC  Braves complete som…
Spouting Off: Baseball

LID at Last in L.A.

Today the city of Los Angeles took a giant step forward on its long-promised goal to green itself -- one new development at a time.  After three years of negotiations, hearings, educational forums and technical discussions, the City Counci…
Single family homes may use rain barrels to comply with the LID ordinance

Chico Bags a Big Win

In a victory for sustainability, the nuisance lawsuit filed by Big Plastic against reusable bag entrepreneur Andy Keller has been settled. The SLAPP suit, designed to silence Keller’s small ChicoBag company in its claims that si…
Chico Bags a Big Win

The Stink Over L.A. Sewer Charges

About six months ago, the city of Los Angeles’ Bureau of Sanitation (BoS) started setting up dozens of meetings with the public and the environmental  community on the city’s wastewater system upgrade plan and the need for a major increase i…
Spouting Off - The Stink Over L.A. Sewer Charges

Shark Fin for All

On Sunday morning, our family schlepped out to Rosemead for my niece’s 17th birthday. The destination for Isabel’s festivities was Sea Harbor, one of my brother Jonathan’s favorite dim sum places in the county. After all of these decades of gru…
Spouting Off - Shark's fin dumplings

Playing Hooky

Today, the Regional Water Board agenda looked a little light and Heal the Bay’s water quality director, Kirsten James, and environmental engineer, Susie Santilena, had the issues pretty well covered.  I was going to come in at the usual time …
Spouting Off at the Wedge

Seismic Shift at the EPA?

I flew out to Washington, D.C., this week to meet with Nancy Stoner, the EPA’s Acting Assistant Administrator for Water, to help voice environmental community concerns about the direction of the National Beach Water Quality Criteria due out in 2012…
East Coast Quake 8-23-2011

Flushing Out a Capybara

What could possibly beat a wild capybara emerging from the murky waters of a California sewage pond? Rodents of unusual size have a wide following. (Exhibit A: the classic Rob Reiner film “The Princess Bride.”)  And capybaras are p…
Flushing out a capybara

A Clean Start in Ventura

After a decade of disagreement about the impacts of sewage treatment plant discharges to the Santa Clara River estuary, the city of Ventura and environmental groups Ventura Coastkeeper, the Wishtoyo Foundation and Heal the Bay today jointly announced…
Santa Clara River estuary