Judge halts no-match letters
A federal judge issued an order to temporarily block the Dept. of Homeland Security and Social Sec. Admin.'s no-match rule. The order stopped the SSA from sending out 140,000 no-match letters last week. The order followed an Aug. 29 lawsuit filed by AFL-CIO, ACLU and Nat'l. Immigration Law Center. The groups are scheduled to appear before U.S. Dist. Court Judge Charles Breyer Oct. 1, asking the judge to permanently bar the no-match regulations. The temporary order "does not signal anything about the ultimate merits or likelihood for success" of the no-match rule, said Bob Dolibois, exec. v.p. at ANLA. Growers should still examine their options while keeping an eye on the courts.
Court orders reduction in Calif. river delta pumping
U.S. Dist. Court Judge Oliver Wanger ordered the State Water Project and federal Central Valley Project to reduce pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta by 1/3 to protect the threatened Delta smelt. The cut is the equivalent of up to 2 million acre-feet, which will hurt growers from San Joaquin Valley to San Diego, said Timothy Quinn, exec. dir. of Assoc. of Calif. Water Agencies. The reductions represent the single largest court-ordered redirection of water in Calif. history, he said. "It truly hammers home the serious challenges facing our statewide water system."
Post-entry quarantine time cut for mums
The post-entry quarantine period was cut from 6 months to 2 months for imports of rooted and unrooted cuttings of mums, Leucanthemella serotina and Nipponathemum nipponicum. The quarantine period was established to prevent the spread of chrysanthemum white rust (CWR), caused by the fungus Puccinia horiana. USDA found that 2 months was an "adequate amount of time for CWR to express" symptoms. CWR control efforts in the U.S. are costly. Growers typically destroy all plants within a 1-meter radius of any infected plant, treat the entire production site and implement a host-free period. In a 2006 CWR outbreak in Calif., implementing the host-free period cost $54,594, according to USDA.
Development makes solar energy affordable
A method for manufacturing low-cost, high-efficiency solar panels will be ready for mass production by the end of 2008. The technology was developed by W.S. Sampath, a Colo. St. Univ. prof. The panels will be produced at less than $1 per watt. He developed a continuous, automated manufacturing process for solar panels using glass coating with a cadmium telluride thin film instead of the standard high-cost crystalline silicon. The cost to the consumer may be as low as $2 per watt, about half the current cost of solar panels. Also, this solar technology isn't tied to a grid.
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