Northwest (OR WA)

"Last week, the Whatcom County Council in northwestern Washington voted to buy six new SUVs for the local Sheriff's Department and introduced its annual road construction plan. These were significant developments in this sleepy rural enclave of scarcely 200,000 people, but nothing compared to what's on the horizon: A proposal to build the largest coal export terminal on the West Coast, capable of annually shipping a whopping 48 million tons of Montana and Wyoming coal to Asia."

"SAN FRANCISCO -- Saying that the West Coast must lead the way in battling climate change, the governors of California, Oregon and Washington, along with the premier of British Columbia, signed an agreement Monday committing the Canadian province and the three states to coordinate global-warming policies."

"The Energy Department is tightening its control over the Bonneville Power Administration in the wake of a scandal over BPA's illegal hiring practices."

"Monsanto Co. and DuPont Co., among the biggest makers of bioengineered crop seeds, are persuading Washington state voters to change their minds about a proposal to require labels on genetically modified food."

"INCHELIUM, Wash. -- Imagine bringing your kids to the lake and wondering if they’d be better off at home, watching TV."

"Promoters of a giant coal export terminal, proposed for north of Bellingham, have given $40,000 to the Washington Republican Party, bucks that a Western Washington University professor suspects are being funneled into campaigns of sympathetic but officially 'non-partisan' Whatcom County Council candidates."

"Salmon counters at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River are seeing the biggest chinook run since 1938, but environmentalists still worry."