Iraqi Engineer and Conservationist Azzam Alwash Wins Goldman Prize

Azzam Alwash has received the Goldman Environmental Prize for his work to reflood the marshes fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and bring back the Marsh Arabs. It's one of six $150,000 awards that go to grass-roots environmental activists each year.

In 2003, this civil engineer and Iraqi immigrant living in Orange County moved back to Iraq to launch his ambitious environmental engineering project. Some say the marshes, an ecosystem twice the size of the Everglades, are the "historical" Garden of Eden. But during his 30-year reign in Iraq, Saddam Hussein transformed the marshland into a battleground. To punish political enemies, Hussein built canals with names such as Mother of Battles to drain water from marshlands and sap the lifeblood of the Marsh Arabs, a community of indigenous Iraqis who depended on the swamp to survive.

As a professional engineer, Alwash admits to having been in awe at what Saddam's men had done. "To drain 6,000 sq km of wetlands is an incredible engineering feet. It was an immense job. They had dug new rivers, intercepted the Tigris and rerouted the Euphrates away from the marsh. They had set fire to the reedbeds … It was sold by the regime as making more land available for agriculture when in fact he was trying to deprive his opposition of a base of operations. 70,000 refugees went to Iran, 30,000 to the US. The rest were displaced."

Alwash set up Nature Iraq as an NGO to focus on the restoration of the marshes and he offered his technical skills to tear down the giant embankments to flood the land. To gain the support of officials and sponsors, Alwash said he couched his argument in terms of the intrinsic value of services the marshlands could provide.

"This is environment in the service of humanity," Alwash said. "The marshes are an engine of economy."

Read more here.

Orange County Wildflower Hikes

OC Parks is offering several wildflower tours to the public. The next Wildflower Hike is on Saturday, June 12.

Wildflower Hike
Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, Willow Staging Area, 20101 Laguna Canyon Road
8:30 am to 11:30 am

Call 949-923-2235 to make reservations. Parking $3, plus $2 donation.

Learn more about where to find wildflowers in Orange County with this interactive multimedia presentation.

Also, check out the entries from the Orange County Register’s wildflower photo contest.  This year's contest is over, but there's always next year!

State of the Air 2011

In its 12th annual State of the Air report, the American Lung Association found that despite a drop in the total number of days that Californians breathe smog and diesel fumes, the state continues to be plagued by air pollution.

The association analyzed federal data collected between 2007 and 2009 on short-term and annual average concentrations of ozone, or smog - usually generated by car exhaust mixed with heat - and fine particle emissions from diesel trucks, coal-fired power plants and wood-burning fireplaces.

Roughly 50% the people in the US live in counties that have unhealthful levels of either ozone or particle pollution. Both Alameda and Orange County ranked near the bottom of the list for air quality; both received F's for high ozone days and Orange County received an F for particle pollution, while Alameda county earned a D.

Read the article on the report in the San Francisco Chronicle, or visit the State of the Air website to review the key findings and see how your county scored. The scoring and ranking methodology is explained here.

EPA Pumps $26M Green Stimulus into Southern California

Funding aimed at air quality improvements
Pat Brennan, Green OC, October 1, 2009

Yesterday at the Port of Long Beach, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson announced more than $26 million in federal stimulus funding, including millions to retrofit trucks and school buses in the South Coast Air Basin.

Much of the funding, authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is aimed at cutting diesel pollution in the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Diesel pollution results in more than 2,000 hospitalizations and 50,000 cases of asthma and respiratory illness across the state each year, EPA says.

The funding includes:

• $4 million for research on technology to create cleaner-burning heavy duty trucks for the air district
• more than $4 million to replace or retrofit diesel engines for 112 pieces of cargo-handling equipment at the Port of Long Beach
• $1.9 million to replace or retrofit 27 such pieces of equipment at the Port of Los Angeles
• $8.8 million to “repower” at least eight switch-yard locomotives in Southern California
• $1.7 million to the state Air Resources Board to retrofit school buses in the region, awarded in April
• nearly $1 million to cut emissions from a variety of types of construction equipment, including tractors, excavators and forklifts

Read the complete story here.