Mark Steihl:

Minnesota enacts a new law requiring that all diesel fuel sold in the state be made partly of farm-based products, a hybrid called biodiesel.

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Tokyo’s massive underground water system.

Dan Neil’s review of the new Toureg SUV Diesel version provides some useful background on Rudolph Diesel’s invention, along with a discussion of biodiesel fuel.

These days, the air inside many homes is more polluted than the air outside. That’s because everything from pets to gas appliances to paint and cleaning products contributes to indoor air pollution. Most homes contain an alarming number of chemicals, and modern homes are built so tightly that they tend to trap the bad air inside.

Years ago, while living in San Francisco, I visited the Owens Valley (Eastern Sierra). The Valley, decimated by the LA Department of Water & Power may now see a flowing river, according to this article by Rene Sanchez.

A sailboat makes its way along Lake Michigan on Friday in this aerial photo from Chopper Four with power zoom. The discolored water extended past the breakwater; the contents are unknown.
Mary Rohde & Steve Schultze write about the Milwaukee Metro Sewage District’s massive sewage dumping this past week:

The sewerage district dumped an unprecedented 4.6 billion gallons of raw sewage this month – exceeding any annual dumping tally since the deep tunnel system opened in late 1993.
To visualize how much sewage was dumped by the district, consider these calculations: The 4.6 billion gallons would fill Miller Park 15 times over, from its base to its retractable roof. The sewage spill would also fill the U.S. Bank office tower on the lakefront 41 times.
“That’s more than any sewage treatment system in the country could handle,” said Kevin Shafer, the district’s executive director. The dumping “is something we have to do if we want to minimize and prevent basement backups,” he said.

Background: Google | Teoma | Yahoo | Alltheweb
The Lake Michigan Federation has a useful web site on the impact of raw sewage dumping.

Felicity Barringer writes about the Ocean Commission’s new strategy for safeguarding the sea:

“Our oceans and coasts are in serious trouble,” the commission’s chairman, Adm. James D. Watkins, a former chief of naval operations, said at a news conference here today. The existing management system, which spreads responsibility across what he called “a Byzantine patchwork” of federal and state agencies and local fishing councils, “is simply not up to the task” of preventing degradation, Admiral Watkins said.