Coastal Areas

The Interior Department will announce new rules today that clear the way for the first offshore wind turbines to be erected along the Atlantic Coast. The rules will set long-awaited guidelines for offshore leases, easements and royalty payments that the Bush administration worked on for years but did not complete. The guidelines represent the most aggressive move yet from an administration that hopes to shift the nation's offshore energy supply from oil to wind power.

A Texas oil company's campaign to drill the first new wells in 40 years off the California coast continues despite setbacks in both the Legislature and at a key regulatory agency. The measure, which passed the state Senate but failed in the Assembly in August, would authorize drilling from an existing maritime platform in state waters off the northern Santa Barbara County coast. Supporters now hope for action this fall. Boosters of the project say state government stands to get an estimated $14 billion in potential new money to run schools, build prisons and strengthen a tattered social-welfare safety net. But opponents say they worry about the possibility of an oil spill that could threaten the California coast, an internationally renowned tourism magnet.

Targeting one of the biggest sources of air pollution, federal and state regulators moved forward Wednesday with plans to slash emissions from big diesel-powered ships entering U.S. coastal areas. Under rules that took effect Wednesday, the roughly 2,000 ocean-going vessels that enter California ports each year must switch to fuel with lower sulfur content before coming within 24 nautical miles of the state's coast.

Just off downtown Long Beach, where freighters queue up to unload much of the nation's imported goods, a long wall of rock rises from the waves, encrusted with mussels and crawling with crabs. This is the Long Beach breakwater, a 2.2-mile vestige of World War II designed to shield the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet from stormy seas and enemy torpedoes.

Reporting from Martha'S Vineyard, Mass., and Washington -- For at least one more summer, vacationers on Martha's Vineyard won't be able to gaze across the water and see, far off on the horizon, the churning blades of offshore wind turbines -- no matter how badly the island's most famous current vacationer would like. President Obama, now summering on the Massachusetts island with his family, is still at least a year away from seeing turbines take root anywhere off the U.S. coast, even though his administration promised to make offshore wind a priority and developers are lining up to string wind farms up and down the Atlantic seaboard.

A federal judge in Los Angeles on Thursday ordered the toughest set of restrictions ever imposed on the U.S. Navy's use of mid-frequency sonar off the Southern California coast as part of a protracted court battle to protect whales and other marine mammals from underwater sonic blasts.

A federal judge in Los Angeles declined Monday to set aside her order forbidding the Navy from using powerful sonar in training missions in Southern California waters unless it operates farther than 12 miles off the coast and adopts other measures to lessen the effect on whales and dolphins. The Navy is expected to appeal Judge Florence Marie Cooper's decision and ask that her injunction temporarily be removed to allow training exercises to begin later this month without the restrictions.

A sonar technician listening through his headset caught the trail of an "enemy" submarine just before a line of warships cruised through waters between Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands. The whooshing sound of bubbles created by the submarine's propeller had been picked up by passive acoustic monitoring, made famous in the movie "The Hunt for Red October."

A federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday rejected the Bush administration's attempt to exempt Navy sonar training from key environmental laws, saying that there's no real emergency to justify overruling court-ordered protections for whales and dolphins. U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper also suggested that President Bush's effort to maneuver around an earlier federal court order was "constitutionally suspect," although she made no ruling on that issue.

High surf that was expected to pound Southern California with waves as high as 28 feet fizzled as the day wore on Monday, leaving surfers disappointed by less-than-epic conditions. But authorities warned that rough seas still made fishing from jetties dangerous. "Swells get hyped up a lot on the Internet. It was supposed to be 15 feet here today," said surfer Josh Fuller, 25, of Newport Beach, surveying breaks that were less than a third that size.