Please consider a donation for Haiti

Hi all you caring Healdsburg-ers!

I want to add my voice in asking you to give a gift to a responsible organization that is helping the disaster victims in Haiti. Join me today in helping succor this poor devastated nation. For online gifts you can go to:

Doctors Without Borders

and/or the

American Red Cross International Response Fund

Thank you and blessings.

What does mountaintop mining in West Virginia and Kentucky have to do with Healdsburg?

Last Friday in the Washington Post I read "Scientists say mountaintop mining should be stopped." According to the article, for the first time the scientists studying blasting off mountaintops and burying stream valleys under tons of rubble in order to mine coal are taking a political stand against issuing any new permits.

Most of the mountaintop removal is occurring in the Appalachian mountains in West Virginia and Kentucky, so what does this have to do with Healdsburg?

More than more many people think, including our city government. We pride ourselves on our clean energy source from the Geysers, but if you look at our Power Content Label sent with your city utility bill, you'll see that in the column "Healdsburg's System Average (projected), coal is the source of 14% of our electricity. The surrounding area, served by PG&E, has electricity generated with 2% coal.

When I talk with city council members and electricity department employees, they tell me that we don't know how much of our energy comes from coal because it's part of a "mix" and therefore not quantifiable. How can this be? Doesn't the supplier of the mix to the city know? Isn't there a cost attached to each of the energy resources purchased by the city?

Mountaintop mining is just one of the environmentally damaging aspects of using coal to produce electricity, but the photo above is enough to prompt me to ask these questions of those in charge of where Healdsburg gets its energy.

(Photo from NRDC article about mountaintop mining.)

New Year 2010

HAPPY NEW YEAR, HEALDSBURG - ONE AND ALL 2010!
Wishing you all a happy, joyous, & prosperous new year in the best place in the world.

Darla Williams Budworth