In this week’s roundup, Save The Bay’s founder Sylvia McLaughlin is honored with a renaming of Eastshore State Park. Monday was a big day for fighting plastic pollution in the Bay, as San Francisco’s plastic ban now applies to all local retailers. David Lewis was quoted in the Chronicle: “San Francisco is showing that it is vital to stop litter at its source before it flows into creeks, chokes wetlands, and harms wildlife.” Farther south, courts ruled against plastic bag industry in San Lois Obispo and Haiti banned plastic bags and Styrofoam. In wetland restoration news, Watsonville Slough project is improving life for people and birds. And Bair Island restoration continues near Redwood City. The Los Angeles Times profiles Delta landowners fighting the proposed peripheral tunnel. Finally, Hayward’s salt ponds are memorialized with a US postage stamp.
San Francisco Chronicle 10/3/2012
Park to take name of noted bay advocate
A parks commission has approved a resolution to rename Eastshore State Park after the last surviving founder of the environmental watchdog group Save the Bay.
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San Francisco Chronicle 9/29/2012
Monday is D day for bags, a dime apiece
There’s one more thing San Franciscans need to add to their shopping list, unless they want to pay up: a reusable bag.
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Learn more about San Francisco’s expanded bag ban >>
Miami Herald 9/24/2012
Haiti bans plastic bags, foam containers
Plastic and foam food containers are everywhere in this enterprising Caribbean nation — clogging canals, cluttering streets and choking ocean wildlife.
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New Times 10/4/2012
County plastic bag ban upheld in court
On the same day a plastic bag ban went into effect, a challenge to the controversial law impacting grocery and other retail outlets across San Luis Obispo County was shot down by a SLO County Superior Court judge.
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Santa Cruz Sentinel 10/3/2012
Wetlands restoration a boon to birds, people; transportation agencies help fund latest Watsonville project
Crews are wrapping up the restoration of a section of Watsonville Slough that’s been little more than a drainage ditch for years.The work along a stretch of the slough between Ohlone Parkway and Highway 1 is the final phase of a 25-acre wetlands restoration project mandated when the city annexed the 94-acre Manabe-Ow property at its western edge for a business park.
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Field Notes 9/25/2012
DON EDWARDS S.F. BAY NWR: Innovative Deal on Restoration Dirt Saves Taxpayers Money
An innovative arrangement to acquire uncontaminated dirt for an ongoing wetland restoration project on Bair Island, a part of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge near Redwood City, Calif., is saving taxpayers more than $5 million.
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The Los Angeles Times 10/4/2012
Delta, accustomed to water wars, prepares for battle
As a child, Brett Baker learned farming fundamentals from his grandfather, who taught him to drive a tractor and gave him some advice about water.
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The Daily Review 9/30/2012
Hayward photo by Berkeley photographer chosen for stamp
At first glance, the magenta field slashed down the middle by a multicolored strand could be an abstract painting in an art gallery. The striking image, though, is the work of aerial photographer Barrie Rokeach of Berkeley, who elevated a sight familiar to Bay Area residents — salt ponds along the Hayward shoreline — to a work of art.
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