By now, oil from the Nov. 7 spill has largely dispersed. Cleanup efforts have switched from recovering oil to scouring beaches. And wildlife experts fret that the spill's true impact is just emerging: Tarlike fuel oil blanketing fragile marshland and hiding in rocky bluffs and rip-rapped shores, where it will contaminate the region for years to come. As of Saturday night, 16,974 gallons of oil had been recovered from this spill. An additional 4,060 likely evaporated, according to the state Office of Spill Prevention and Response. Most of the remaining 37,000 gallons will likely never be recovered. Contra Costa Times 11/18/07
Government biologists have concluded the most promising way to save the Delta is to divert water around it through a canal -- an idea often derided as a Southern California water grab that would ensure the destruction of the region. By siphoning water out of the Sacramento River before it reaches the Delta, the canal would reduce the amount of fresh water near Contra Costa Water District's intakes in the south Delta and increase the concentration of pollution and salt water. If built, however, a new canal probably would be operated and managed in conjunction with the existing state and federal intakes near Tracy. That would ensure more water stays in the Delta. Contra Costa Times 11/19/07
A drive to revamp the nation's costly farm subsidies died Friday in the Senate, leaving in place a system widely criticized for being out of step with the modern agriculture economy, for favoring crops with minimal nutritional value and for funneling large federal payouts to wealthy investors. The 55-42 vote, short of the 60 needed, scuttled a bill that had drawn severe criticism for falling far short of reforms Democrats had promised when they took over Congress. The chairman of the agriculture committee, pledged to try to bring the bill back to the Senate floor after lawmakers return from their two-week Thanksgiving break. LA Times 11/17/07
Next year a state senator is planning to bring back three bills he introduced in February in response to e. coli outbreaks that killed at least three people. Sen. Florez plans to ask assembly leaders to send them first to the Health Committee, a more liberal panel that also had been scheduled to consider the legislation. The bills would have prohibited growers from using certain practices that could result in contaminated produce, such as placing portable toilets in the fields or using uncomposted or untreated manure as fertilizer. Contra Costa Times 11/18/07
The sweeping cleanup of San Francisco beaches tapered off Saturday as authorities reopened miles of shoreline, shifting cleanup efforts to the less accessible marshes and rocky shores that were doused by last week's oil spill. Meanwhile, as a precursor to possibly reopening the bay and coast to commercial fishing, biologists are testing fish and crab for contaminants up to 3 miles from the coastline. SF Chronicle 11/18/07
A defiant Japan has embarked on its largest whaling expedition in decades, targeting protected humpbacks for the first time since the 1960s despite international opposition. An anti-whaling protest boat awaited the fleet offshore. The whalers plan to kill up to 50 humpbacks in what is believed to be the first large-scale hunt for the once nearly extinct species since a 1963 moratorium in the Southern Pacific put the giant marine mammals under international protection. The anti-whaling group Greenpeace said its protest ship, Esperanza, was moored just outside Japan's territorial waters and would chase the fleet to the southern ocean. There was no immediate word Sunday of an offshore confrontation. CNN 11/18/07
For the world's anti-whaling activists, whaling in Japan an atrocity that must be stopped. But the men who harpoon, flense and sell these whales at four small-scale coastal hunting communities have another word for it: tradition. SJ Mercury 11/18/07
According to the On Language column of the NY Times the phrase conventional produce now describes fruits and vegetables which are not organic. 11/18/07
A new USDA rule allows citrus not infected with canker - but from a grove where some citrus has the disease – to be shipped to non-citrus-producing states, even if other fruit from the same grove is infected. Bizjournals 11/19/07
Fluctuating temperatures have made for a slow-and-go wine grape harvest in California this year. Temperatures cooled in September, extending the season as growers waited for grapes to ripen. Estimates from CDFA point ti 3.2 million tons, up slightly from last year's 3.1 million tons. TheOnline 11/18/07
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