Used motor oil and filters
Millions of gallons of oil have been spilled across the United States through ship, rail and road collisions, explosions, pipeline ruptures, storms, etc. Big oil disasters continue to reverberate through the environment and through our news cycles: the BP oil rig explosion that wreaked havoc in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the ship Cosco Busan that crashed into the Bay Bridge in 2007 dumping oil into San Francisco Bay, and the famous Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989. While we watch the ongoing analysis, litigation and attempted cleanup from these high-profile events, there are measures we can all take to reduce a lesser but still very serious threat.
Wrong solution, wrong problem
The answer to “when is enough, enough?” will appear on the June 2 county election ballot. That’s when the county Board of Supervisors will ask voters to approve a quarter-cent sales tax increase, promising to use the money to catch up on road and street repairs.
Time to modify growth ordinance
Healdsburg’s Growth Management Ordinance (GMO) is a citizen initiative enacted to preserve the town’s unique quality and character and insulate it from the pressures of unregulated market driven development. It effectively put the brakes on residential development and allowed the community to contemplate its future free from outside development pressures. The GMO’s authors and supporters are to be commended for their courage, perseverance and continued resolve.
Barrel of fun, wine or both?
At least since Isabelle Simi converted a big wine vat at her Healdsburg winery along the Old Redwood Highway into a roadside wine tasting room just after the Great Depression and that “little old winemaker” invited the world to visit the Italian Swiss Colony, Sonoma County has beckoned agricultural visitors. Organized in 1973, a hundred or so small family farms created Sonoma County Farm Trails to welcome thousands of Gravenstein Fair goers, pumpkin patch seekers and Christmas Tree farm trekkers. Before that, apple blossom and prune blossom tours drew busloads of out-of-towners.
