Pollution Control

Frustrated that the new owner of contaminated beachfront property in Oxnard is moving too slowly with cleanup plans, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has begun its own emergency stabilization of a massive waste pile next to sensitive wetlands. The 43-acre Ormond Beach property, once controlled by metal recycler Halaco Engineering Co., was purchased and leased last September by Chickadee Remediation Co. The firm intends to restore the property for residential development.

Airline tycoon Richard Branson announced Friday that he would award a $25-million prize to the first person to come up with a way of scrubbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and alleviate global warming. The prize will initially be open for five years, with ideas assessed by a panel of judges. The winning technique must remove 1 billion tons of carbon gases a year from the atmosphere for 10 years -- with $5 million going to the inventor at the start and $20 million at the end.

President Bush is widely considered one of the world's most prominent skeptics of global warming. But to hear White House officials tell it, the world's view of him is wrong. In recent days, White House officials have made a special effort to argue that Bush has always been concerned about climate change. Moreover, they say, he has long acknowledged that human activity may be a significant factor.

A new ranking of cities measures quality of life based on environmental factors that reduce global warming. Excellent public transportation, bikeways and neighborhood retail get workers and consumers out of cars. Food produced locally eliminates the energy consumption of long-distance transportation. Based on these and other categories, the top five cities for 2006 were Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Seattle; Chicago; and Oakland, according to SustainLane (www.sustainlane.

Democratic presidential contender Tom Vilsack offered up a plan Tuesday to wean the nation off of fossil fuels and roll back greenhouse gas emissions to a fraction of current levels. The former Iowa governor said he would force new power plants to emit no carbon dioxide -- one of the greenhouse gases blamed for rising Earth temperatures -- by 2020. Vilsack would cap U.S. carbon dioxide emissions and create a credit-trading program to meet the cap.

Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said today that Australia would gradually ban incandescent lightbulbs and require the use of more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs instead. Legislation to restrict the sale of the old bulbs could reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by hundreds of thousands of tons and cut household lighting costs up to 66%, Turnbull said. Australia produced almost 565 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2004, officials say.

Twenty years ago, scores of state and regional agencies, landowners and conservationists hammered out a comprehensive agreement that dictated virtually every aspect of future development at Lake Tahoe, save one: how many piers, slips and buoys would be allowed along the lake's 72 miles of shoreline.

Two landmark Los Angeles lakes will be cleaned up and restored with bond funding approved Wednesday by the City Council. On a unanimous vote, the council allocated $58 million in Proposition O money for six water-quality projects, including $23 million to begin the cleanup of Echo Lake, north of downtown, and Lake Machado in Harbor City. The council also set aside an additional $178 million for future phases of the two lake projects.

Impatient with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's leadership in combating global warming, leaders of the Democratic-controlled state Senate plan to unveil a sweeping legislative package today that would impose new regulations on industries and government agencies. The measures reflect long-standing tensions between Schwarzenegger and the Legislature over how best to reduce greenhouse gases produced by vehicles, electricity suppliers, landfills and other sources.

President Bush, who frequently jokes about his undistinguished record as a history major at Yale, is devoting considerable time these days to matters scientific. Four weeks ago, he toured a chemical plant in Delaware. Earlier this month he visited a Virginia computer-chip manufacturer. On Wednesday, at a hospital in Tennessee, he watched a video of a surgical robot excising cancerous tissue, prompting his host to ask, "You OK with the blood?"