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Corrections

Sierra Corrections Policy
Sierra strives to publish accurate information and to acknowledge and correct errors. When factual corrections are made to copy already posted on the Web, they will be noted in this column and also at the end of the corrected article.

January/February 2009
In "Lost and Found" (January/February 2009), the photo caption on page 47 misidentified several figures. The woman at center is Louise Teagarden, but the man is Harry Quinn's grandfather, Harry Caldwell--not Wilson Howell. And the woman at left is not Betty Moore but Caldwell's sister-in-law, Mary Lee. The photo that appeared on pages 1 and 50 was also mislabeled. It is actually a view of Joshua Tree National Park, not the Santa Rosas.

September/October 2008
"Bold Strokes" ("Grapple," September/October 2008) converted knots to miles per hour incorrectly; five or six knots is six or seven mph. The article has been corrected.

"Ten That Get It" ("Cool Schools," September/October 2008) misstated Warren Wilson College's partnership with Asheville, North Carolina. The college has a climate alliance with the city, and it buys carbon offsets for all its electricity use, but the two are unrelated. The article has been corrected.

"From Zero to Hero" ("Cool Schools," September/October 2008) referred to the EPA's RecycleMania competition. RecycleMania is a project of the National Recycling Coalition's College and University Recycling Council; the EPA is a sponsor. The article has been corrected.

"Five That Fail" ("Cool Schools," September/October 2008) misspelled the name of the College of William and Mary's president. The correct spelling is W. Taylor Reveley III. The article has been corrected.

May/June 2008
Due to an editing error, "Are We There Yet?" (May/June 2008) misstated the source of the study showing that annual vacations cut men's heart attack risk by 32 percent. The authors are Brooks B. Gump and Karen A. Matthews of the State University of New York at Oswego (2000). The article has been corrected.

November/December 2007
"Sustainable Crustaceans" ("Lay of the Land," November/December 2007) noted that Wal-Mart is selling certified sustainably farmed shrimp. No internationally recognized standards currently exist for aquaculture sustainability.

September/October 2007
The chart in "Bio-Hope, Bio-Hype" (September/October 2007) stated that vehicles using B99/100 biodiesel require special modifications. Unless the car is using 100 percent waste vegetable oil, the only modification necessary is to replace natural rubber fuel hoses on older vehicles. Modern diesel vehicles can use biodiesel with no modifications. The chart has been corrected.

In "Gladder Glades" ("Sierra Club Bulletin," September/October 2007), the proposed power plant near Everglades National Park would have emitted 14 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, not 13 million pounds. The article has been corrected.

July/August 2007
"Disinformation Highway" (Lay of the Land, July/August 2007) misstated the length of the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor. While the project encompasses a network of roads totaling 4,000 miles, the section from Laredo, Texas, to the Oklahoma border will cover about 500 miles. The article has been corrected.

In "New, Improved New Orleans" ("Sierra Club Bulletin," July/August 2007), we mistakenly implied that Hurricane Katrina was a Category 5 storm when it struck the Louisiana coast. Katrina had been a Category 5 at sea, but it made landfall as a weaker Category 3 storm. The article has been corrected.

May/June 2007
The May/June 2007 cover should have been labeled as the east shore of Lake Tahoe in Nevada, not California. The online table of contents has been corrected.

March/April 2007
"This Species Is in Danger A-OK!" ("Decoder," March/April 2007) falsely identified Chris Nolin of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Endangered Species program as a political appointee. Nolin is, in fact, a career employee of the agency. Sierra regrets the error, and the article has been corrected.

January/February 2007
In "Negawatt Power" (January/February 2007), we confused our watts and watt-hours, and thus power with energy consumed. The goal of the "2,000-Watt Society" program is to reduce per-capita power use to 2,000 watts, which corresponds to an energy usage of 48 kilowatt-hours per day. The article has been corrected.

"WWatch" ("Lay of the Land," January/February 2007) incorrectly identified the GAO as the "General Accountability Office." What was (prior to July 7, 2004) known as the General Accounting Office is now officially the Government Accountability Office. The article has been corrected.

In "One Cool Country" ("Sierra Club Bulletin," January/February 2007), we mistakenly credited the Club's Long Island Group with persuading Suffolk County, New York, to adopt a green-fleet program. In fact, the county initiated the program. The article has been corrected.

November/December 2006
In "A Few Good Species" ("Profile," November/December 2006), we mistakenly identified 195-square-mile Camp Pendleton as the largest Marine Corps base in the world. That was true when Pendleton was first built, but now the biggest is the 932-square-mile base at Twentynine Palms, California. The article has been corrected.

July/August 2006
In "A Working Marsh" ("Lay of the Land," July/August 2006), we should have stated that the new water-treatment facility in Petaluma, California, will recycle 4 million gallons of water per day, not over the entire summer. The article has been corrected.

May/June 2006
"Miles to Go Before You Eat" ("Decoder," May/June 2006) incorrectly implied that all pineapples coming from Hawaii arrive by air. In fact, most are shipped to West Coast ports, which is why their price in markets is comparable to Costa Rican fruit. The pineapples used in this calculation are the variety known as "jet fresh," which cost considerably more than those sent by ship. The article has been corrected.

March/April 2006
Carl Pope's "Fuel Folly" ("Ways & Means," March/April 2006) incorrectly calculated the amount of electricity that is lost in the process of transmission through the electric grid. A far larger amount of electricity is lost in the generation process. The amount lost in transmission corresponds to less than half an ounce. The article has been corrected.

"A Real Energy Boom" ("Lay of the Land," March/April 2006) misstated the regulatory sweep of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. In fact, FERC regulates only onshore LNG facilities and those in state waters. Offshore facilities in federal waters are under the control of the Maritime Administration, a department in the Department of Transportation. The article has been corrected.

In "Updates" ("Lay of the Land," March/April 2006), we incorrectly stated that Oregon's Measure 37, a sweeping "takings" initiative, was overturned; it has been upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court. The article has been corrected.

January/February 2006
In "Sticker Shock" ("Lay of the Land," January/February 2006), Sierra implied that the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers advocates lowering fuel-efficiency standards. That is incorrect. While the organization (which includes all the major automakers except Honda) has fought every significant attempt to raise corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, it is now working with the Bush administration to raise them by a smidgen: 1.8 miles per gallon over the next five years.

In "Digging Up Trouble" ("Sierra Club Bulletin," January/February 2006), we misstated how much land has been stripmined in Florida. The correct amount is 460,000 acres, not square miles. The article has been corrected.

September/October 2005
In our September/October 2005 article on Will Siri, "Career Climber," we mistakenly described John Lawrence as the "inventor of the 'atom smasher.'" Actually, it was his brother, Ernest, who invented the cyclotron. John was a pioneer in nuclear medicine.

May/June 2005
In "Making Waves" (May/June 2005), the profile of San Diego mayoral candidate Donna Frye, former representative Lynn Schenk's name was misspelled. The article has been corrected.

March/April 2005
In two places in "Thirty-Hour Valley" (March/April 2005), we incorrectly stated the size of the Raton Basin. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates its size at 4,000 square miles, or 2.56 million acres. The article has been corrected.

January/February 2005
In "Bold Strokes" ("Lay of the Land," January/February 2005), we misidentified the hoodia, an African plant that suppresses hunger. It is a succulent but not a cactus. The article has been corrected.

November/December 2004
On page 37 of "A Tale of Two Immigrants" (November/December 2004), we published numbers from a 2001 Census Bureau document indicating that immigration to the United States was "somewhere between 350,000 and 1.37 million" each year. Our story should have stated that this range referred to net (not total) immigration. More recently, the bureau broadened that range, projecting between 324,000 and 1.65 million in 2005. Looking back at the period from July 2003 to July 2004, the bureau estimates net immigration was 1.22 million.

In the same article, we misspelled the name of the founder of the National Immigration Forum: He is Rick Swartz. The article has been corrected.

In "Wild & Whitewashed" (November/December 2004), we inaccurately credited Lewis and Clark with the first scientific discovery of the buffalo and (in a caption) the fairy slipper orchid, Calypso bulbosa. Astute readers informed us that buffalo were already well known in the eastern United States at the time, and the botanist Linnaeus described the fairy slipper in a book published in 1753, half a century before Lewis collected it in 1806. One reader suggested that we should have called those shaggy beasts of the plains bison, eschewing their common name. (Strictly speaking, buffalo refers only to bovines native to Asia and Africa, such as the water and the cape buffalo.) Those who wish to be biologically impeccable should take heed. The article has been corrected.

July/August 2004
In "When Aliens Attack" (July/August 2004), we stated that Atlantic salmon appear to be interbreeding with Pacific salmon in Alaska. There is no evidence of this. A far bigger concern is the displacement of wild Pacific salmon by their escaped farm-raised cousins. In the same issue, the "African clawed frog" we showed in a photograph on page 21 was actually a leopard frog. The article has been corrected.

May/June 2004
Our May/June 2004 "Profile" headline, "Delta Defender," was geographically challenged. Most of Rose Johnson's work is in Gulfport, which is along the Mississippi coast, while "the Delta" is in the northwest part of the state.

March/April 2004
In his March/April 2004 "Ways & Means" column, Carl Pope incorrectly stated that no nuclear power plant had been built in the United States since the Three Mile Island accident. He should have said that no new plant had been ordered since that time. The article has been corrected.

January/February 2004
In "A Fine Balance" (January/February 2004), we stated that Ecuador is the most densely populated country in Latin America. In fact, it is the most densely populated country in South America. (El Salvador is denser.) The article has been corrected.

November/December 2003
In "Hazards of Hydration" (November/December 2003), we cited a study about single-use water bottles that appears to have been flawed. While reusing these #1 PET bottles is not a good idea because of risk of bacterial contamination, you probably don't need to worry about them releasing the chemical DEHA. The article has been corrected.