Lady Bird, a 400-foot-long, $30 million, 1,300-ton German-made tunnel boring machine, will soon be carving miles of 22-foot-wide tunnel 100 feet below the Potomac riverbed. It’s part of DC Water’s Clean Rivers Project, the second-largest civil engineering project in DC history (only Metrorail is bigger). When completed in 2025, the $2.6 billion EPA-funded dig will keep raw sewage from flowing into the Potomac and Anacostia when it rains hard. That’s what happens now (it’s called CSO, “Combined Sewer Overflow”).
Lady Bird will be underground and out of sight, but you can follow her on her own Twitter account.
Tourists have infested thronged Washington for the city’s annual Spring celebration, the National Cherry Blossom Festival. This year’s festival has concerts, kites, kimonos, food, fireworks ….. everything but cherry blossoms. Unseasonably cool temperatures have resulted in tiny green and pink buds but no real blossoms. The festival ends next weekend; maybe the cherry blossoms will be out by then.
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Image (“DC Spring Weenies, Barracks Row“) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Despite protests by concerned DC citizens, sharpshooters have bagged 20 deer in Rock Creek Park, which runs though the middle of the Nation’s Capital. The National Park Service is reducing whitetail over-population in the urban outdoors, and hopes to harvest a total of 150 critters by the end of a 3-year deer-reduction period. Resulting venison is donated to local food banks and shelters.
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Image (“Rock Creek Deer Hunt, after Atelier de Walt Disney”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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In the dead of night, while half the city is out of town for Easter Week, the National Park Service is implementing its ruthless slaughter of helpless, cute, fuzzy deerwhitetail reduction plan in Rock Creek Park.
More:
“‘Deer Reduction Operations’ to Begin Tonight in Rock Creek Park,” Martin Austermuhle, DCist
“Sharpshooters to begin killing deer in Rock Creek Park for National Park Service,” AP via Washington Post
“Rock Creek Park Deer Slaughter Starts Tonight,” Will Sommer, Washington City Paper blog.
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Image (“Bye-Bye Bambi, after Atelier de Walt Disney”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Rock Creek Park runs right through the middle of Washington DC, and it has a problem. The skinny ribbon of National Parkland is infested with deer, five times more than the 1,750 acres can support. The deer wander onto Rock Creek Parkway where commuting motorists mince them into Bambi-burgers. They cause international incidents by browsing backyards on Embassy Row and visit the grounds of the Vice President’s residence for wrestling matches with the Secret Service.
The National Park Service issued shoot-to-kill orders, but five DC residents went to court to stop the hunt. A judge just threw out their lawsuit so the hunt is back on. The NPS plans to donate harvested venison to area homeless shelters.
UPDATE:
“Rock Creek Park Deer Killing for Me, Not for Thee,” Will Sommer, Washington CityPaperblog
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Groundhogs (aka woodchucks, whistlepigs, and marmots) are insecto-vegetarians and confirmed locavores. If you plan to plant this spring, harvest those hairy beasts now. Celebrate Groundhog Day with critter cuisine.
Attention space travelers: That new space capsule may smell good, but that aroma isn’t good for you. NASA’s Goddard Laboratory is on the case:
“For some people, the best part about buying a new car is its factory-fresh new car smell, a distinctive aroma created when the chemicals and residual solvents used to manufacture dashboards, car seats, carpeting and other vehicle appointments that outgas and fill the cabin. While the scent may be alluring to some, many researchers believe exposure to these gases isn’t particularly healthy — so unhealthy, in fact, that some recommend that drivers keep their new cars ventilated while driving.
Outgassed solvents, epoxies, lubricants, and other materials aren’t especially wholesome for contamination-sensitive telescope mirrors, thermal-control units, high-voltage electronic boxes, cryogenic instruments, detectors and solar arrays, either. As a result, NASA engineers are always looking for new techniques to prevent these gases from adhering to instrument and spacecraft surfaces and potentially shortening their lives.
It’s that time again. The leaves are turning bright autumn colors, and lovesick deer on the road to romance are finding it crowded with motor vehicles. There are more deer and cars in the U.S. than ever before, so the situation isn’t as amusing as it might initially seem. Deer cause car crashes that kill about 200 people in the US each year, twice as many as Hurricane Sandy. State Farm Insurance says deer collided with 1.23 million vehicles between July 2011 and June 2012, 7.7 percent more than last year. The company’s claims from deer collisions rose almost 8 percent while those for other collisions fell 8.5 percent.
Gibson Guitars agreed to pay penalties totaling over $$600,000 for smuggling exotic endangered wood into the United States in violation of the century-old Lacey Act. The Act was amended in 2008 to ban importation of illegally harvested hardwoods like Madagascar ebony. Gibson builds many well-known guitar models including the ES-355 (B.B. King and Chuck Berry play it) and the Les Paul, and many of these guitars have ebony fretboards. Madagascar has forbidden logging of its slow-growing ebony since 2006, meaning US importation from that date forward was illegal.
In order to avoid criminal prosecution, Gibson acknowledged that it imported exotic wood in violation of environmental laws, paid the Justice Department $300,000 in penalties, forfeited claims to over $250,000 worth of wood seized by the Feds, and contributed $50,000 to a foundation to promote the conservation of protected tree species.
At least Gibson didn’t get caught smuggling illegal weapons into the country. Blackwater did that.
