9-28-09
9-28-09
Badlands Journal
The WalMart project public comment period...Badlands Journal editorial board
http://www.badlandsjournal.com/2009-09-27/007434
The Merced City Council is to be commended for holding two lengthy public hearings on the WalMart distribution center project including citizens with sharply opposed views on health, human safety and economic growth, who spoke their mind in an orderly, safe process. This begs the lie of Rep. Dennis Cardoza, the Pimlico Kid, that citizens in his district could not meet together in town hall meetings to discuss health care reform. In fact, on another contentious issue, Riverside Motorsports Park, a large number of town hall meetings were held, some by proponents, some by opponents. We observed several moments of tension and name calling in those meetings, held without security, but only feelings were bruised.
However, questions remain about the WalMart project. First, who will pay for the increase in respiratory disease in the community? The answer is clear: the public will pay; the corporation will not pay. The corporation was praised for voluntary donations to various medical facilities in town. Voluntary contributions are all well and good, but they aren’t reliable – witness the decrease in charitable foundation spending since the recession began.
Second, where were UC Merced’s experts in air pollution at the public comment periods? Perhaps they have submitted a letter. But, if this is true, it raises another question: why weren’t people directly involved in air pollution research at UC Merced willing to speak publicly to support opponents of the project, their closest neighbors? Has WalMart already bought off the campus, with perhaps a promise or more for funds for research into respiratory disease? Respiratory disease has increased in Merced as a result of UC Merced’s stimulus to growth. It will be increased more by the WalMart distribution center, with its 900 diesel-truck trips a day, 18-24 hours a day seven days a week. WalMart is another beneficiary of UC Merced’s arrival, in the form of the Mission Interchange off Highway 99 and the Campus Parkway, which its trucks will use. The EIR says that trucks using the facility would dump 72 tons per year of ozone-forming nitrogen oxides and 33 tons per year of particulates. Surely UC Merced’s scientists could calculate what that will mean for the health of the Merced community, including its own students. We would be interested in why professors. Elliott Campbell, Shawn Newsam, Roger Bales, Henry Forman (member of the Valley air board), Yihsu Chen, Qinghua Guo, Thomas Harmon, Martha Conklin, Valerie Leppert, Wolfgang Rogge, Samuel Traina, or Anthony Westerling, -- all of whom do research in different aspects of environmental engineering – could not have offered their expert opinions to the city council on the subject of the cumulative impacts of increases in air pollution on the public health of this community.
But, that’s how the system does not work for the public benefit. UC Merced gets grants for developing technological “black boxes” to “fix” air pollution. There are no grant funds for social and political pressure to prevent increases in air pollution. Possibly, WalMart will provide such a grant for UC Merced environmental engineers to work on the perfect black box to suppress diesel fumes. Possibly, the city made it clear to UC Merced that it did not want to hear from any air pollution experts from its faculty on this issue, period.
A number of citizens and neighbors testified in opposition to the project and made important, reasonable points against it, very few of them with any particular expertise in the subject. Tom Grave, head of Merced Alliance for Responsible Growth, testified as a member of the Merced/Mariposa County Asthma Coalition and was, in our view, one of the less effective opposition speakers. Mary-Michal Rawling, the coalition program manager, did not testify, probably because she is running for a seat on the city council. This is another example of how the system does not work for the public benefit.
Overall, opponents did a good job of presenting arguments that drove diesel trucks through the usual real estate boosters’ usual arguments. The best of them were simple, powerful moral statements, telling the council to protect its citizens, especially the young and the elderly. One woman asked if the health of the 80 percent of the community that is employed mattered, too, since everyone was talking about unemployment and WalMart’s promise of hundreds of jobs. The boosters never saw a project that promised big profits to outside corporations while degrading our local environment and public-health outlook that they didn’t like.
One project proponent, a WalMart employee, however, plunged us into the depths of mystery when she thanked God for her (WalMart) vacation benefits. WalMart provided the lady her vacation benefits, not God. WalMart is not God. It may be time to refresh our understanding of these elementary distinctions
Merced Sun-Star
Decision on Merced Wal-Mart distribution center expected today
Three years of debate comes down to special meeting...SCOTT JASON
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1082571.html
Merced's City Council will vote tonight on the proposed Wal-Mart distribution center, capping three years of debate, two days of public input and hundreds of pages of studies.
The council will meet at 7 p.m. in its second-floor chambers for a special meeting. City Hall, 678 W. 18th St., is expected to be crowded with supporters and opponents.
It's unknown how long the council will deliberate. The seven members haven't said what they think of the project or indicated how they'll vote.
The council is faced with certifying the environmental report, amending the general plan and approving the site plan.
Wal-Mart in 2005 proposed building a 1.2 million-square-foot distribution center on 230 acres between Childs and Gerard avenues.
Company officials say the project will employ 900 full-time people when it's running at full capacity. An environmental review projects 643 truck trips -- a diesel rig coming or going -- every day. The center will be running all day and all night.
Supporters say the jobs, along with Wal-Mart's investment in building a $60 million center, are key factors for why the project must be approved. Turning it down would send a message that Merced's not friendly toward business.
Opponents say the diesel exhaust in southeast Merced will increase asthma rates and make existing respiratory problems worse. They're also skeptical about how many of the jobs will go to local residents.
The public's chance to speak to the council about the project began Wednesday with a three-hour meeting.
The council met again Saturday from 9 a.m. to about 1 p.m. to make sure everyone from the public had a chance to comment on the project. Twenty people spoke in favor of the project. Thirteen people voiced objections to it.
In all, 35 people argued that the project should move forward and 30 people opposed it. Of all the opponents who spoke, five were from outside of Merced County.
Jon Hawthorne, a Merced resident, cited a report showing there were 3,500 premature deaths in the state related to diesel truck pollution. "Don't put more nails in the coffin," he told the council.
Project supporter Clint Moore said none of Merced's problems -- foreclosures, gang violence and poverty -- are Wal-Mart's fault and turning down the center will probably make them worse.
"The day the distribution center breaks ground Merced will begin to return to prosperity," Moore said. "This distribution center is Merced's economic recovery package."
The distribution center is supported by city staff. The Planning Commission recommended approval. Opponents working with an environmental law firm have suggested that they'll file a lawsuit if the project moves forward.
For San Joaquin River, a historic reawakening begins this week...MARK GROSSI, The Fresno Bee
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1082565.html
It all starts Thursday with a gentle surge of water to be released from Friant Dam into the San Joaquin River.
A massive, unprecedented and unpredictable river restoration project will begin -- reawakening miles of dried riverbed and salmon runs that have been extinct for six decades.
Since the dam was built in the 1940s, long stretches of the river have been dry. Parts have become a gutter for the San Joaquin Valley, collecting muddy seepage, trash and abandoned cars.
Now, in a nine-year effort that could cost up to $1.2billion, the 350-mile San Joaquin will be reconnected with the Pacific Ocean.
Salmon, which once teemed in its waters, may again migrate from near Fresno to the ocean.
The project begins with test releases to determine how the river will respond. Engineers then will widen the riverbed in some places and dig new channels around obstacles.
In recent years, government agencies across the nation have attempted other big river restoration projects, from the Penobscot River in Maine to the Klamath in Oregon. But nobody is restoring a big, salmon-supporting river this far south -- or a river as damaged as the San Joaquin.
"I've never seen anything like this on this scale," said Bay Area-based biologist Chuck Hanson, a longtime fisheries consultant and now a member of an independent advisory committee on the San Joaquin restoration.
Not everyone relishes the challenge. Under terms of a complex, controversial court settlement, east-side Valley farmers -- 15,000 of them, cultivating 1 million acres from the center of the Valley to the foothills -- will give up some of their irrigation water so the San Joaquin can be reborn.
The water loss comes at a dark moment for California agriculture.
The Valley's west side -- a national symbol for farmers battling environmentalists over water -- already is reeling from three years of drought and restrictions to preserve a rare fish species, the delta smelt.
Though river restoration will send more water downstream into the west side, farmers in the hard-hit Westlands Water District would get no share. Some could benefit from river water that seeps into the water table, however -- but the potential benefit is unknown.
There are plans to pump some replacement water back through an aqueduct from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where the river ends, to help east-side farmers. But that water may instead be needed downstream to ease problems for threatened fish, such as the delta smelt.
For worried farmers, the restoration boils down to a single question: Can the government rebuild this river without crippling the Valley's internationally known farming industry? Environmentalists and scientists think the odds are good. But nobody knows for sure.
Fish and farmers
Farmers have dreaded this moment since 1988, when environmentalists sued to rescue the San Joaquin. Decades earlier, it was the river that rescued farms. In the 1940s, Friant Dam was built to capture most of the river's water and irrigate dying farms in Merced, Madera, Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties.
The river and its salmon runs were deliberately sacrificed, although even then the state fish and game code required a stream of water beyond the dam for the native fish. Environmentalists used that provision as a cornerstone in their 1988 lawsuit.
Farmers fought the suit for 18 years, but decisions in the case were consistently going against them. They were running out of options. So they cut a deal in 2006 -- a compromise intended to restore the river and salmon runs but preserve most east-side farming.
Three years later, some farmers have begun to doubt they will see much river water circulating back from the restoration to their fields. And they wonder whether salmon, a cold-water fish, will even survive in a warming climate over the next century.
Farmer Kole Upton, one of only four people who negotiated the restoration deal in 2006, has changed his mind about the settlement for many reasons, including the salmon issue.
With climate change, "it's going to get very warm here," he said.
"This looks like an ultimate waste of taxpayer money."
Fishery biologist Peter Moyle of the University of California at Davis disagrees, saying the San Joaquin may be a refuge for salmon because it taps a part of the Sierra likely to remain a source of ice-cold water in spring.
"It does drain some of the highest Sierra, which will still have a snowpack," he said.
The fishing industry is elated about this restoration. Decimated fisheries in the Pacific Ocean forced authorities to shut down salmon fishing for the second consecutive season this year. The idea of restarting San Joaquin salmon runs sounds good.
"I don't know if we'll ever get 110,000 fish in the river like we did before, but I think it will help," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman's Associations, which was a plaintiff in the 1988 lawsuit.
But the restoration probably will not return the river to a pristine state with robust salmon runs, said Ron Stork, senior policy expert for Friends of the River, a statewide advocacy group. There's not enough water in the settlement for big salmon runs, he said.
Stork's group also was among the 14 environmental, fishing and conservation organizations that filed the 1988 lawsuit.
"The restoration is symbolic," Stork said. "This is a very big undertaking in a place where the political and institutional culture is to capture every bit of water that falls on the Sierra Nevada and use it in the Valley. The culture is that none of this water should leave the area."
From the Sierra to the sea
The restoration will span the middle 150 miles of this 350-mile river -- from Friant Dam to where the Merced River empties into the San Joaquin.
But there is much more to the San Joaquin, especially above Friant Dam. The headwaters are at Thousand Island Lake, east of Yosemite National Park.
The river runs through a mountain wonderland, passing near the spectacular volcanic columns of the Devils Post Pile and flowing through breathtaking glacial canyons. It arrives at Millerton Lake after about an 80-mile journey that takes it through several hydroelectric dams and lakes, such as Redinger and Kerckhoff lakes.
The 150 miles from Friant Dam to the confluence of the Merced is where the river must be rebuilt. Beyond that, it refills with tributary water from the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers on its run to the delta. All three major tributaries have salmon runs.
Even far downstream, however, the river has problems: Farm pesticides and urban waste contaminate the flow.
Some cities, such as Antioch, get water from the delta. Fresh water from the restoration might help water quality for those residents. It also might improve conditions at the deep port of Stockton, where fish suffer from a lack of dissolved oxygen in the slow-flowing river. The city discharges millions of gallons of treated sewage into the river each day.
Many believe a restored San Joaquin will ultimately improve the health of the delta by providing a stronger push of fresh water to guide dwindling species away from massive water pumps.
The cost of the river revival is not small, although it could be as little as $600 million. The price tag easily could push beyond $ 1billion because officials may need to buy private property to widen the river and build expensive facilities to help replace irrigation water that farmers lose.
Congress has authorized $250 million, but the money will have to be approved by federal lawmakers as it is needed for projects in the next decade. The state has committed about $200 million through water bonds.
East-side Valley farmers will pay nearly $90 million in extra water fees over the next 10 years, as well as contribute an average of 15 percent to 17 percent of their river allotments.
The restoration overshadows all but a few river projects in the country, ranking alongside the $200 million removal of hydroelectric dams along the California-Oregon state line on the Klamath River.
But Friant Dam isn't going anywhere. The San Joaquin restoration will be a series of projects to widen the channel, alter the river course to go around barriers such as Mendota and Sack dams, and prepare spawning habitat for salmon.
The work will be done over the next nine years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, owner of the dam and architect of the restoration plan.
Officials will release water from the dam during the next several years to study the river. How much water will sink into the ground? How much will seep into neighboring property? How fast will the vegetation return?
Maybe another lawsuit
While east-side farmers have reached an uneasy peace over the river's fate, the fight over the restoration has shifted to the Valley's west side, where the most significant expense is anticipated.
Farmers working 240,000 acres near the river already are considering their own lawsuit, fearing a reinvigorated river will destroy their crops.
They are part of the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Authority, representing growers who traded their historic river rights for Northern California water decades ago.
These west-side farmers have developed crops near a 25-mile stretch of the old, dried riverbed beyond the Mendota Pool. When the river fills, water might seep through the levees and onto their land, swamp their crops and cause big losses.
The Bureau of Reclamation has assured them monitoring wells will be in place and water flow will be slowed if excess seepage is detected.
But farm officials say the monitoring wells have not been installed, and the government will run out of time.
"Our goal is not to go to court," said executive director Steve Chedester of the exchange contractors, who worry about seepage damage.
"But we think it would be wise to slow down the restoration until the wells are in." The growers in Chedester's organization also are directly involved in a possibly controversial 35-mile section of river northeast of Los Banos. The river hasn't flowed at that point since the 1960s. Floodwater has been shunted through an artificial channel called the Eastside Bypass. Officials need to decide whether they will rebuild the withered old river or use the bypass.
If officials decide to use the natural river, they will have to spend $350 million or more to buy miles of private land so they can rebuild the waterway deeper and wider. Federal officials will decide in the next two years.
Chris Acree, executive director of Revive the San Joaquin, a Fresno-based advocacy group, prefers to see the natural river restored, even though there are some obstacles. For instance, someone 30 years ago built a house in the river channel in Merced County. It would have to move.
But "it's only one house," Acree said. "There could have been cities built."
Our View: Drought help is too little, but it's not too late to do more
Federal government finally aware of California's drought conditions, but farmers need more help.
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/181/v-print/story/1082574.html
After three years of drought, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has finally acknowledged that it's dry in California -- but Merced County farmers need more help than what's being offered.
The USDA's disaster declaration opens the doors for Valley farmers and ranchers to obtain low-cost loans because of drought losses.
However, farmers must have had a certain percentage of loss from weather conditions, and they have to be unable to get a conventional loan.
To qualify for the help, livestock producers must have hedged their losses from the beginning. They must have bought the equivalent of catastrophic insurance, or they won't be eligible for anything.
That leaves a lot of ag producers who still need help.
The drought declaration is a good start, but Valley farmers need a lot more attention from the feds.
It should be obvious to Washington politicians that after three years of drought and in the middle of a recession, California farmers need their own stimulus package.
A broader declaration, which President Obama turned down in July, would have brought a wide range of help, including food, job training and unemployment assistance.
The disaster declaration also doesn't do much to increase the flow of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farmers on the Valley's Westside.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says he doesn't have authority over pumping water to the Valley.
Obama's administration needs to reconsider, even if it means dipping a toe in the contentious politics of California water wars.
State leaders haven't been able to sort out the mess -- it's time for a federal approach.
The United States can't afford to ignore the problems of the people who provide its food.
Sacramento Bee
Alan Lowenthal: Quietly, legislators chip away at environmental integrity...State Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, represents the 27th District.
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/v-print/story/2214002.html
With a pair of votes in the predawn hours, state legislators last week took historic steps to dismantle California's premier environmental protection act, making it easier than at any time in the past 40 years for big developers to ride roughshod over "the little guy." A majority of lawmakers had joined a bizarre alliance of big business, labor unions and one of the state's preeminent clean-air agencies to undermine California's landmark Environmental Quality Act.
California's Environmental Quality Act, known by its acronym CEQA, has, ever since Gov. Ronald Reagan signed it into law, served as an impregnable bulwark against reckless development and rampant pollution.
CEQA's complex process of meetings and reports delivered a stunningly simple result: It put every citizen, neighborhood or town on an even footing with the most powerful forces in our society.
It was born with powerful enemies. It made it harder to bulldoze a forest or put a factory next to a school. It protected our rivers and mountains, our beaches and wetlands. While some hailed it as hope for the future, others saw it as a hindrance to business.
Despite all that, it withstood every effort to dismantle it. Californians, it turned out, had come to depend on its protections, even if they didn't fully understand them. And why not? CEQA worked.
Since its adoption, California's population more than doubled. But our air quality improved. Our economy grew threefold, but our impact on the environment actually softened. The poorest neighborhoods have a tool to protect themselves.
CEQA has helped a coalition of community groups to achieve a historic settlement with the Port of Los Angeles to reduce air pollution in surrounding neighborhoods. It empowered the Mothers of East L.A. to defeat a toxic waste incinerator to be built within 7,500 feet of homes, schools, churches and hospitals. It forced the developers of the massive Mission Bay project in San Francisco to reduce sewage outflow and to restore critical wetlands.
All of that seemed to count for nothing at the end of this year's legislative session. Legislators' resolve to protect the act had weakened, their commitment to the CEQA process melted like ice in the oven of the great recession. Nervous and unpopular, the Legislature fell prey to the canard that the only way to create jobs was to abandon the strictures of CEQA. The Assembly forgot it had never impeded the economy before, as they chucked it aside in a favor of a new football stadium in eastern Los Angeles County coveted by labor groups and a well-connected billionaire developer.
Meanwhile, in a more bizarre chapter, the South Coast Air Quality Management District turned its considerable stable of lobbyists (it had spent more than $240,000 on lobbying in the first six months of this year alone) loose to overturn a lawsuit it lost in state court, and in doing so put CEQA in grave peril.
In that lawsuit the judge admonished the SCAQMD for failure to produce an environmental impact report on a new air credit system required under the Federal Clean Air Act.
Instead of going back to the drawing board and creating a rule that worked, SCAQMD decided to push through a bill that would allow them to do legislatively what they have been unwilling to do through the regulatory, rule making process. It is hard to understate the significance of this development.
For the first time in recent memory, the legislature passed Senate Bill 827 that for all intents and purposes, overturns an active court case and opens the flood gates to any business that chooses to not abide by the law. SCAQMD has lost three suits on this same issue and has been stalling for more than a year to develop a rule that works.
For the past 39 years, the Legislature has been successful in repelling many attacks on CEQA. First defended staunchly by past legislators such as Sen. Byron Sher and more recently by current senators, such as Joe Simitian and Fran Pavley, the Senate has stood pat on challenges to the act. Unfortunately, that all changed at the end of this legislative session.
The night before, the Assembly passed legislation that would have given a CEQA exemption to the City of Industry to build the stadium in Southern California. Assembly members, speaking against that bill on the floor, warned this would open the door to every business interest in the state to come to the Legislature when they can't get what they want by following the law.
Little did they know how prescient their fears were.
When will it end? Unfortunately, I am afraid it will only end with the complete dismantling of CEQA. If this happens, all Californians, the rich, the poor, the urban and the rural, will suffer the consequences of a system that no longer values the input of those who will be most affected.