Plans for a new asphalt production facility alongside the Petaluma River on the south side of that city have been a hot button issue for more than five years now. After the Dutra plant was approved by county supervisors in late 2010, it was promptly challenged in court by the city of Petaluma and a group of local environmental groups. That case that was dismissed by the State Court of Appeal last week, but there’s still at least one more round of legal arguments being made, as we hear today.

It’s fairly simple to capture and collect rainfall from rooftops, and use it for watering yards and gardens. But it’s a limited antidote to drought.

  In California’s Central Valley, a small water district is pioneering the use of solar energy to power water desalination through distillation. An extensive article on the pilot project in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle reported that this approach cuts the power requirements for desalination by as much as three-fourths, which is a breakthrough in cost-effectiveness. We learn more in this conversation with the article’s author.

Restaurants and caterers throw away tons of unused food scraps each day. A new project in Marin is working to keep that food out of the landfill and using it to create renewable, clean-burning bio gas. After nearly 5 years of negotiations and testing, it officially began operations yesterday. 

Organizers say the project, called the  Food-to-Energy (F2E) program, is the first of its kind: a partnership between a the private Marin Sanitary Service  and the public Central Marin Sanitation Agency.