Latest news with #BenjaminAllen
17-07-2025
- Climate
An Alaska tsunami warning had residents scrambling for high ground after 7.3 magnitude earthquake
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Communities along a 700-mile (1,127-km) stretch of Alaska's southern coast ordered residents to higher ground after a powerful offshore earthquake Wednesday, but officials quickly downgraded and then canceled a tsunami warning for the region. There were no reports of significant damage. The earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 7.3, struck at 12:37 p.m. local time south of Sand Point, a community of about 600 people on Popof Island, in the Aleutian chain, according to the Alaska Earthquake Center. There were 40 aftershocks detected within the first three hours, the center said. 'We have seen other earthquakes in the area that have not generated significant tsunami waves, but we're treating it seriously and going through our procedures, making sure communities are notified so they can activate their evacuation procedures,' said Jeremy Zidek, a spokesperson for Alaska's emergency management division. The quake was felt as far away as Anchorage, almost 600 miles (966 km) to the northeast. The National Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for an area stretching from about 40 miles (64.4 km) southwest of Homer to Unimak Pass, a distance of about 700 miles (1,126 kilometers). Among the larger communities in the area was Kodiak, with a population of about 5,200. The warning was downgraded to an advisory about an hour later, and canceled just before 2:45 p.m. The highest water level generated by the earthquake in Sand Point was not quite 2.5 inches (6.3 cm) above the tide, the center said. 'There's no damage at the airport, doesn't appear to be any damage at the harbor, no damage to speak of, really,' Sand Point Police Chief Benjamin Allen said. There was some damage — in the form of broken bottles — at the Alaska Commercial general store in town. Manager Vickey McDonald said about half of the store's alcohol aisle had crashed and shattered. 'I've got liquid smoke and barbecue sauce and pickles ... broken on the floor,' McDonald said. "It smells horrendous in here.' In Unalaska, a fishing community of about 4,100, officials urged people in possible inundation zones to move at least 50 feet above sea level or 1 mile (1.6 km) inland. In King Cove, which has about 870 residents on the south side of the Alaska Peninsula, officials sent an alert calling on those in the coastal area to move to higher ground. Tourists Jodie Stevens and her husband, Aaron Park, were looking at the puffins at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward when they heard someone yelling that there had been an earthquake and they needed to evacuate. They walked a few blocks uphill in the rain, with a woman from the center yelling to those they passed to get to higher ground. They were about halfway to the official high ground spot when they heard a siren signal that all was clear, she said. The National Weather Service said in posts on social media that there was no tsunami threat for other U.S. and Canadian Pacific coasts in North America, including Washington, Oregon and California. Alaska's southern coast is earthquake-prone, and Wednesday's was the fifth in roughly the same area since 2020 exceeding magnitude 7, state seismologist Michael West said. 'Something's moving in this area,' he said. 'I would not call this an isolated earthquake. It appears to be part of a larger sequence spanning the last several years.' That has the attention of seismologists, he said. 'This area has been and remains capable of larger earthquakes and earthquakes capable of significant tsunami damage,' he said. ___
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Lawmakers ask Newsom and waste agency to follow the law on plastic legislation
California lawmakers are taking aim at proposed rules to implement a state law aimed at curbing plastic waste, saying the draft regulations proposed by CalRecycle undermine the letter and intent of the legislation. In a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and two of his top administrators, the lawmakers said CalRecycle exceeded its authority by drafting regulations that don't abide by the terms set out by the law, Senate Bill 54. "While we support many changes in the current draft regulations, we have identified several provisions that are inconsistent with the governing statute ... and where CalRecycle has exceeded its authority under the law," the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Newsom, California Environmental Protection agency chief Yana Garcia, and Zoe Heller, director of the state's Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, or CalRecycle. The letter, which was written by Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) and Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica), was signed by 21 other lawmakers, including Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) and Assemblymembers Al Muratsuchi (D-Rolling Hills Estates) and Monique Limón (D-Goleta). CalRecycle submitted informal draft regulations two weeks ago that are designed to implement the law, which was authored by Allen, and signed into law by Newsom in 2022. The lawmakers' concerns are directed at the draft regulations' potential approval of polluting recycling technologies — which the language of the law expressly prohibits — as well as the document's expansive exemption for products and packaging that fall under the purview of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. The inclusion of such blanket exemptions is "not only contrary to the statute but also risks significantly increasing the program's costs," the lawmakers wrote. They said the new regulations allow "producers to unilaterally determine which products are subject to the law, without a requirement or process to back up such a claim." Daniel Villaseñor, a spokesman for the governor, said in an email that Newsom "was clear when he asked CalRecycle to restart these regulations that they should work to minimize costs for small businesses and families, and these rules are a step in the right direction ..." At a workshop held at the agency's headquarters in Sacramento this week, CalRecycle staff responded to similar criticisms, and underscored that these are informal draft regulations, which means they can be changed. "I know from comments we've already been receiving that some of the provisions, as we have written them ... don't quite come across in the way that we intended," said Karen Kayfetz, chief of CalRecycle's Product Stewardship branch, adding that she was hopeful "a robust conversation" could help highlight areas where interpretations of the regulations' language differs from the agency's intent. "It was not our intent, of course, to ever go outside of the statute, and so to the extent that it may be interpreted in the language that we've provided, that there are provisions that extend beyond ... it's our wish to narrow that back down," she said. These new draft regulations are the expedited result of the agency's attempt to satisfy Newsom's concerns about the law, which he said could increase costs to California households if not properly implemented. Newsom rejected the agency's first attempt at drafting regulations — the result of nearly three years of negotiations by scores of stakeholders, including plastic producers, package developers, agricultural interests, environmental groups, municipalities, recycling companies and waste haulers — and ordered the waste agency to start the process over. Critics say the new draft regulations cater to industry and could result in even higher costs to both California households, which have seen large increases in their residential waste hauling fees, as well as to the state's various jurisdictions, which are taxed with cleaning up plastic waste and debris clogging the state's rivers, highways, beaches and parks. The law is molded on a series of legislative efforts described as Extended Producer Responsibility laws, which are designed to shift the cost of waste removal and disposal from the state's jurisdictions and taxpayers to the industries that produce the waste — theoretically incentivizing a circular economy, in which product and packaging producers develop materials that can be reused, recycled or composted. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
