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Rig Reaches Shelter
4:40 pm
Mon January 7, 2013

Shell’s Beached Kulluk Oil Rig Towed To Safe Harbor

Credit Travis Marsh, U.S. Coast Guard.
The Kulluk aground off Sitkalidak Island, Alaska.

A shipwrecked oil rig that was bound for Seattle has been floated off the rocks and towed to a safe harbor in the Gulf of Alaska. A fleet of nine ships accompanied Shell Oil’s Kulluk drill rig on the 45-mile tow. Shortly before noon Pacific Time, the rig reached its anchorage in sheltered Kiliuda Bay on Kodiak Island.  

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Presidential Politics
10:01 am
Mon January 7, 2013

Coming Up: Obama To Nominate Hagel For Defense, Brennan For CIA

Originally published on Mon January 7, 2013 10:36 am

President Obama is moving to fill two key posts on his national security team with the nomination of former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican, to be secretary of defense and current White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

We're updating this post as he speaks, so be sure to hit your "refresh" button. We've also added an audio player so you can, if you wish, hear NPR's coverage and the president's remarks.

Update at 1:35 p.m. ET. Hagel Pledges To "Always Do My Best":

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Tsunami Dock Removal
9:18 am
Mon January 7, 2013

Tsunami Debris Dock Decontaminated, Removal Poses Next Challenge

Credit Wash. Dept. of Fish

Originally published on Mon January 7, 2013 9:01 am

State and federal biologists say they are confident they have minimized the invasive species threat posed by a derelict dock that washed ashore last month in Olympic National Park. The concrete and steel dock appears to have drifted across the Pacific Ocean after last year's tsunami in Japan. But the story is not over yet.

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Infrastructure Funding Strategy
9:17 am
Mon January 7, 2013

Talk Of A Carbon Tax In The Northwest

Credit Portland General Electric
Portland General Electric's coal-fired Boardman Power Plant along the Columbia River. it's among the greenhouse gas emitters in Oregon and Washington not subject to a carbon tax. Some Northwest policy makers want to change that.

Keeping up with transportation infrastructure isn’t cheap. The Washington State Transportation Commission estimates that in the next 20 years around 200 billion dollars needs to be put towards the maintenance of roads, ferries and more. But how to pay for that? Some are putting forward the idea of a tax on carbon emissions.

Read the whole story on KUOW’s Earthfix

Trash Experiment Ends
8:54 am
Mon January 7, 2013

Seattle Ends Biweekly Trash Pickup Pilot Program

Credit KUOW / Derek Wang
Garbage and Recycling Containers in Wedgewood.

Many Seattle residents are grateful for the new year because it means that their garbage will be picked up every week. At least for now.

For the past six months, 800 Seattle households participated in a pilot program that experimented with picking up the trash every other week. The affected neighborhoods were roughly in the four corners of the city and included Wedgewood.

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