Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. (AP) -- Scientists say a fishing boat that rammed an instrument platform built off North Carolina's coast to study water quality will delay research by six months.
A 71-foot trawler ran over the 18-by-18-foot wooden platform last month in Pamlico Sound. The rubble was removed last week by a salvager.
Rick Luettich, director of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, said the collision sets the project back by six months. The platform loss was estimated at between $100,000 and $200,000.
Scientists from seven universities and government agencies designed the platform to gather data on water quality, fisheries and physical changes in the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds.
One program which has been delayed by the collision is installation of a wind profiler. The data would have been part of studies on generating power with wind turbines in North Carolina sounds. UNC researcher Dr. Harvey Seim said finding an alternative site for the project is "easier said than done."
Luettich said he found out Oct. 1 that the platform was missing and only bits of wreckage were left. He later heard a trawler captain from Bayboro said he hit something in the sound during a storm. Lighting on the platform met Coast Guard standards.
"I think we were all discounting the likelihood that even a large-sized fishing boat would plow it over and steam away and live to tell about it," Leuttich said. "It is our hope that the trawler's insurance company will cover this, but we don't know that at all.
"One thing we've learned is that we've got to have something resilient enough to take at least some impact from a vessel."
The project, called the North Carolina Environmental Observation Network System, was funded by a $200,000 appropriation from the Legislature.
Before the platform, which sat on 16 pilings, was destroyed a fiberglass instrument house had been bolted on and a wireless communication system and an antenna were attached along with a wind turbine and solar panels.
More instruments were scheduled to be attached, including a weather station; instruments to measure currents, salinity, oxygen and chlorophyll at different water levels; a refrigeration unit; a radar system to read wind speeds at different heights, and an acoustic fish-finder, the newspaper said.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
