Despite opposition from developers and municipalities over new regulations for surface water runoff, state regulators and environmentalists contend that the standards for new development are essential to improving coastal water quality.

Los Angeles is one of the largest jurisdictions to adopt runoff standards, joining Seattle, Phoenix, Delaware, Denver, Maryland and Florida. Sprawling developments and vast paved areas make the city's coastal waters highly vulnerable to polluted runoff.

More than 500 unhappy people went to a public hearing on 31 Jan 2000 in Houston to protest the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission's plans to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions in the metropolitan area.

The US EPA has five air quality categories, ranging from extreme to marginal. Three cities in Texas were in the intermediate range, viz. Houston and Dallas in the "serious" category, and Beaumont in the "moderate" category. All must improve their air quality by 2007.

In Houston, state planners hope the petrochemical and power industries can bare the brunt of reducing NOx emissions and are counting on them for 90% of the improvements.

Still, other drastic measures such as driving prohibitions on every fourth day may be necessary. Environmentalists in Houston called for more investment in transit systems, light rail in particular.

Comparison testing of gas and diesel/electric-hybrid buses showed the two models to be equally acceptable low-emissions vehicles.

The tests found that diesel-hybrid buses equipped with pollution-exhaust traps and using low-sulphur fuel produced particle pollution too small to be detected by the testing equipment. The hybrid buses did, however, produce more nitrogen oxide, which contributes to ground-level ozone. The natural gas buses also produced too little particle pollution to be detected.

The particles produced by both the natural-gas bus and the hybrid bus would probably add up to less than a pound a year per bus, compared with as much as 42 pounds per year from a traditional diesel bus.

The European Union (EU) said it was pushing ahead with a directive on recycling waste from electronics equipment despite opposition from the U.S. government and industry.

The EU directive is designed to make mandatory the reuse of metals and plastics used in electronics equipment, such as printed circuit boards, computers and consumer electronics.

The European Parliament has backed plans to place producer responsibility for recycling old vehicles on manufacturers despite the industry's claims the plan is retroactive and possibly illegal.

The Parliament approved the Council's common position on the proposed End of Life Vehicles Directive. It rejected manufacturers' pleas to shift the financial burden away from them.

Under the proposal, manufacturers will have to pay for disposal of vehicles or "a significant part of the costs of the implementation of this measure and/or take-back of end of life vehicles". The Parliament has agreed to put back the date by which 85% of vehicles must be made of recyclable material and 95% from recoverable to 2005.

The Air-conditioning and Refrigeration Technology Institute (ARTI) Refrigerant Database underwent a significant update recently, with more than 6700 records affected.

The update included:

• Addition of 14 refrigerant profiles, bringing the total to 507;
• Introduction of new atmospheric lifetimes, ozone-depleting potentials, and global-warming potentials based on the latest international scientific assessments and calculated values for blends;
• Introduction of new recommended exposure limits reflecting the latest American Industrial Hygiene Association workplace environmental exposure-level guides and American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists threshold-limit values;
• Introduction of preliminary values for the recommended concentration limits;
• Addition of 267 citations focussing on nonfluorochemical refrigerants and heat transfer;

Tokyo Electric Power Company has signed a "carbon credit" deal with New South Wales(NSW), Australia worth about A$130 million. The deal will see 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) new forests planted along Australia's east coast in exchange for carbon credits meant to offset carbon emitted into the air in Japan. The carbon credits are based on the carbon dioxide absorbed by the trees planted.

Under the deal, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) will pay A$30 million for an initial 10,000 hectares of forest to be planted, but has the option to plant up to 40,000 hectares worth A$130 million, over 10 years. NSW Forestry Department would manage the new forests, determining what type of trees and where they would be planted.

The carbon trade agreement was in line with the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce the emission of greenhouse gas emissions.

It was estimated that energy demand could grow by 60% in 2020. Royal Dutch Shell, UK, said it saw great opportunities for renewables to help reduce greenhouse emissions but that large-scale production of "green" energy remained a tough challenge.

Extending the use of gas for power generation was the most effective immediate way of reducing emissions, but longer-term, renewables offered the potential for carbon-free energy.

Resources of renewables appeared adequate but "storage is a major problem". Also, the production of renewable energy on a commercial basis would require large land areas compared to a fossil fuel power generation plant.

Shell, however, was committed to commercial renewable energy development. The company had earlier announced plans to construct, as part of a consortium, UK's first offshore wind project in the North Sea.

It was also involved in rural solar electrification projects in Bolivia and South Africa, its first commercial biomass scheme in Norway and built a third solar cell manufacturing factory in Germany.

According to Hong Kong SAR's director of Drainage Services John Collier, sewage charge need to increase more than six-fold over the next 10 years to recover the cost of treatment.

The present charge, HK$1.20 per m³, has remained unchanged since it was introduced in 1995. An average household pays less than HK$10 a month, and a restaurant about HK$1,500. Mr Collier said that the charges would have to be increased to about HK$8 per m³ within 10 years to recover the cost.