The first mandate in the U.S. to require all-electric heating has passed in Washington state, where newly constructed buildings will need to install electric heating and hot-water systems. The mandate will go into effect in July 2023. The mandate passed 11 to 3 in a vote by the State Building Code Council to restrict the […]
The wildfires raging across the West Coast have made the air quality so bad in several U.S. cities that they rank among the worst in the world. In fact, the air quality in Portland, Oregon was so bad on Sunday that it went off the charts when it passed 500 on an air quality index. […]
What does the climate crisis look like? As wildfires continue to rage up and down the U.S. West Coast, we have some terrifying answers: orange skies; burnt-out buildings; a horse, seemingly abandoned, running past a stall as the hill above erupts in flames. These images help to ground an unfathomable reality. More than 100 major […]
Wildfires raged through Oregon and Washington Monday and Tuesday, prompting evacuations, blanketing Seattle in unhealthy levels of smoke and destroying nearly all of a small Washington farming town. The town of Malden in eastern Washington lost 80 percent of its structures including its fire station, post office, City Hall and library after a fast-moving blaze […]
By Tara Lohan The conclusion to decades of work to remove a dam on the Middle Fork Nooksack River east of Bellingham, Washington began with a bang yesterday as crews breached the dam with a carefully planned detonation. This explosive denouement is also a beginning. Over the next couple of weeks, crews will fully remove […]
By Akito Y Kawahara Editor’s note: According to recent press reports, two Asian giant hornets – a species not known to occur in North America – were found in northwest Washington state in late 2019, and a hornet colony was found and eliminated in British Columbia. Now scientists are trying to determine whether more of […]
Washington State has seen a slowdown in the infection rate of the novel coronavirus, for now, suggesting that early containment strategies have been effective, according to the Seattle NBC News affiliate. While Seattle was the early epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., the number of deaths and positive cases there has started to slow […]
Removing one gigantic dam can have a massive effect on restoring a river ecosystem. But bringing down more than 80 smaller dams? That can also cause a transformation. This spring the Forest Service, aided by U.S. Marine Corps members, will blast apart 13 more dams in the Trabuco ranger district in Southern California’s Cleveland National […]
Bottled water manufacturers looking to capture cool, mountain water from Washington’s Cascade Mountains may have to look elsewhere after the state senate passed a bill banning new water permits, as The Guardian reported. The state, with its glacier-fed springs and rainforests, will become the first state in the country to put a total ban on […]