7-27-09

 
7-27-09
Fresno Bee
San Joaquin River plan gets hearings this week...Mark Grossi
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/v-print/story/1560384.html
The first major fix in the long-awaited San Joaquin River revival will come before the public this week at meetings about rerouting the river around Mendota Pool -- a barrier to migrating salmon.
As part of the project, officials also plan to widen more than 10 miles of the existing river channel leading up to the pool, which forms behind Mendota Dam.
The $100 million to $200 million project is considered a linchpin in restoring salmon in the river. The fish need a clear path around Mendota Dam to swim upstream to spawning grounds.
The bypass and channel widening are the first of many projects over the next seven years to re-establish the state's second-longest river. Limited experimental flows from Friant Dam are scheduled to start Oct. 1.
The San Joaquin dried up in long stretches after Friant Dam was built in the 1940s to provide irrigation water for a dying farming industry along the east side of the Valley.
The restoration is the result of a 2006 lawsuit settlement between farmers and environmentalists. Spanning nearly 150 miles at a cost that might approach $1 billion, it is the biggest river revival in the West.
The public is encouraged this week to reveal possible problems, solutions and effects in the bypass project, said Jason Phillips, river restoration program manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Meetings have been scheduled Tuesday in Fresno and Wednesday in Firebaugh.
"I'd say this is the highest priority of all the channel improvements because at the Mendota Pool, there's a dam in the river," Phillips said. "Salmon don't do well with dams."
After six to nine months of study, the bureau is expected to release a range of options for the bypass and the channel widening. The project is scheduled for completion in late 2013.
The existing river channel in the area must be able to carry three times as much water as its current capacity.
The increased flow will help salmon move through the channel.
The big flow also will push water through dry spots along more than 100 miles downstream to the river's confluence with the Merced River. The river channel simply will have to be broader to get the water through, Phillips said.
"It will probably involve building levees that are set back from the river," he said.
The Mendota Pool is 62 miles downstream of Friant. The pool, which is a wide spot along the river, is an important part of the complex plumbing along Fresno County's west side.
Northern California river water for surrounding irrigation districts is sent in canals to the pool, where it is held and distributed to farmers.
The Fresno Slough from the south ends at the pool, carrying Kings River water in years of big snowmelt runoff. Those functions would not be interrupted, project officials said.
The revived river will seep into area underground water tables, bureau officials said.
The ground water dropped dramatically over many decades due to farm water pumping and the lack of recharge from a naturally flowing river.
A resident in nearby Mendota said the region's ground water needs the boost.
"The ground water hasn't been good in Mendota for a long time," said Ed Petry. "I won't like it if the restoration doesn't help the ground water here."
If you go
What: Public meetings on the Mendota Pool bypass
When: 6-8 p.m. Tuesday in Fresno and 6-8 p.m. Wednesday in Firebaugh
Where: Piccadilly Inn, 2305 W. Shaw Ave., Fresno; City Council Chambers, 1659 13th St., Firebaugh
Sacramento Bee
'Million boat' protest planned over Delta canal...Matt Weiser
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/v-print/story/2057828.html
Drilling soil samples in Delta river bottoms is expected in September as California begins planning a controversial water diversion canal – a canal that also has a fleet of Delta boaters planning to weigh anchor in protest.
Oakley City Councilman Bruce Connelley launched the "Million Boat Float" idea, to protest drilling and what he calls a consistent exclusion of local residents from the canal planning process.
"The state government involved in this Delta plan has not listened to the people," he said. "There is no choice other than a public display."
The proposed canal has been endorsed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a task force he assembled to study the issue. The task force said a canal could help restore the Delta's strained environment.
The canal is a centerpiece of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan – the BDCP – which includes state and federal agencies, water users and environmental groups. Its goal is to obtain approval for the canal, and habitat protection projects, under the Endangered Species Act.
The group's steering committee, however, has no local government representatives. Its meetings are public, but its outreach has been limited.
Karla Nemeth, state liaison to the BDCP, said a number of community workshops are planned in the Delta this fall.
"The loud and clear message we heard was that folks needed more detail," she said.
Nonetheless, Connelley's protest is set to begin Sunday, Aug. 16. He expects to see thousands of boaters cruising upriver to Sacramento for an overnight stay. On Monday, Aug. 17, the Legislature will reconvene after a recess, and the boaters will take their protest to the Capitol steps.
Connelley's goal is a million boats, but he acknowledged he probably won't get there.
"You ever seen a million boats on the Sacramento River before? I don't think we ever will, but it ought to be pretty impressive."
The protest is not likely to stall state Department of Water Resources plans to drill in the Delta in September.
That work involves taking soil samples as deep as 200 feet in the river bottom at 16 locations, from Sacramento's Pocket neighborhood and the town of Walnut Grove on the Sacramento River, to remote sloughs near Bethel Island and Stockton.
With land-based sampling already under way, testing is estimated to cost $4.5 million, paid for by water contractors that depend on the Delta.
A yet-to-be-hired contractor will work from either a barge or a ship. In addition to drilling, the crew will test soil density by using a hammer-like device to pound into the river bottom, said Mark Pagenkopp, a DWR senior engineering geologist overseeing the project.
The goal is to test suitability of soils for construction of a canal and its intakes, tunnels and siphons.
"This data will help in determining which alignment would be the best alignment to do," Pagenkopp said.
He said work is likely to start near Sacramento's Pocket neighborhood, and then move south. The aim is to finish by the end of September, but it could stretch into 2010.
The canal would divert a portion of the Sacramento River's flow directly to the Delta's state and federal water export pumps near Tracy.
Isolating freshwater in a canal would prevent the pumps from killing fish, and would protect the water from floods and earthquakes.
A canal would also end the need to maintain the Delta as a freshwater environment to serve water diverters. Biologists say the Delta should have more frequent pulses of salt water, an idea that worries Delta residents.
What's envisioned are actually two canals: a completely contained canal skirting one edge of the Delta, and a "through-Delta" canal assembled from existing levees running down the estuary.
Each canal would be enormous – at least 1,000 feet wide and 40 miles long – with potential environmental effects that remain unknown.
The project is similar to the ill-fated Peripheral Canal rejected by California voters in 1982. This time, the Schwarzenegger administration claims it doesn't need voter approval to build the canal, which is likely to cost $10 billion.
Many property owners are protesting DWR's demand for access to conduct land-based soil sampling. About 35 lawsuits are pending as a result.
Dante Nomellini Sr., a lawyer representing some property owners, said the drilling is likely to draw more lawsuits.
Connelley said his "Million Boat Float" will be civil. Participating boats will fly unique flags to identify them as part of the flotilla.
"There's no intent to do anything radical that would hurt, harm or demean anybody," he said. "Our focus is to bring this to national attention."
Canal Test-Drilling Locations...Source: State Dept. of Water Resources...Nathaniel Levine...Image
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2057828-a2058001-t46.html
Indybay.com
New Peripheral Canal Analysis Reveals Project to be Dysfunctional Scheme...Dan Bacher
Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), has written an excellent summary of the Contra Costa Water District's analysis of the proposed peripheral canal. "The CCWD has reached the same conclusions as CSPA's analysis revealed: A Peripheral Canal is a dysfunctional unworkable scheme that will exacerbate existing conditions," said Jennings.
New Peripheral Canal Analysis Reveals Project to be Dysfunctional Scheme...Bill Jennings
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/26/18612521.php
The Contra Costa Water District (CCWD) recently analyzed the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) studies that have been conducted to date and reached the same conclusions as CSPA's analysis revealed: A Peripheral Canal is a dysfunctional unworkable scheme that will exacerbate existing conditions.
It should be remembered that the PPIC report that is used to justify a Peripheral Canal concluded that a dual-conveyance system would be a disaster for fisheries (20-50% chance of survival of salmon as a species and 10-40% chance that Delta smelt would survive). It should also be remembered that the cost estimates contained in the PPIC report (as modified by Dr. Jeff Michaels of UOP) revealed that the costs to California from eliminating all Delta exports was essentially the same as constructing a Peripheral Canal.
The CCWD analysis is summarized as follows:
1. A Peripheral Canal alone would deliver less water than can be delivered today (4.6 MAF/year) after reductions required by the Wanger decision and federal biological opinions. Dual conveyance could deliver as much as 6 MAF/year, if fishery recommendations for increased flows are ignored.
2. The Sacramento River carries less than 15,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) 46% of the time (size of the proposed Peripheral Canal). Minimum instream flow needed to protect fisheries is 9,000-15,000 cfs (plus a percentage of the remainder). Again, higher bypass flows recommended by DG have not yet been studied.
3. Because of limitations on how much water can be drawn off the Sacramento River, 50 to 75% of exports must still come from the south Delta pumping plants.
4. A large Peripheral Canal would be largely unused: it would be empty 12% of the time, transport less than 2,000 cfs 18% of the time, transport 2,000-4,500 cfs 20% of the time, transport 9,000-14,000 15% of the time and convey more than 14,000 CVS only 4% of the time. In other words, it would be empty three times as often as it was at full capacity.
5. A 5,000 cfs pipeline would provide virtually the same amount of water as a 15,000 cfs canal. Again, this fails to consider necessary increased flows for fish.
6. Actual costs of a Peripheral Canal are close to 10-12 billion dollars, which does not include mitigation for project impacts or restoration efforts.
7. A Peripheral Canal would be longer than the Panama Canal and wider than the Sacramento River (500 feet wide). It would have the same seismic problems as existing levees (one of the supposed justifications for a canal), create major barriers to terrestrial species migration and have enormous seepage and drainage problems.
8. The analysis found that water supply improves with a small facility and that benefits diminish as size increases. The mid-point of construction for a 15,000 cfs Peripheral Canal would be 2023 and the mid-point for a 5,000 cfs canal would be 2018.
9. Environmental problems have yet to be addressed. A Peripheral Canal would worsen the stagnant polluted conditions in the Delta.
10. The BDCP studies show “variable salinity” (one of the selling points of a Peripheral Canal) would be difficult to attain.
11. The key water conflict remains. Freshwater flows are needed to protect fisheries: including, salmon flows for migration, spring flows for estuarine species and fall salinity for estuarine species. Meeting the needs of fisheries will require reduced water supplies.
12. New fish screens at Clifton Court Forebay (as required by the CalFed Record of Decision in 2000) would reduce loss of Delta smelt. Flow control gates (2-Gates) would limit entrainment of delta smelt (note: Two-Gates is a highly controversial experiment).
13. BDCP implementation remains 10 to 15 years away. Fisheries status remains poor. Other stressors (pollution, invasive species, etc.) are not being addressed. Lawsuits will continue to increase. Water supplies will remain unreliable.
For a copy of the report including slides, go to: http://www.calsport.org/7-26-09.htm
Bill Jennings, Chairman
Executive Director
California Sportfishing Protection Alliance
3536 Rainier Avenue
Stockton, CA 95204
p: 209-464-5067
c: 209-938-9053
f: 209-464-1028
e: deltakeep [at] aol.com
http://www.calsport.org
Mercury News
Huge tunnel to be built under San Francisco Bay...Paul Rogers
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12902506?nclick_check=1
Hoping to protect one of the Bay Area's main water supplies after the next major earthquake, construction crews will soon embark on a job that sounds like something out of a Jules Verne novel: building a massive, 5-mile-long tunnel underneath San Francisco Bay.
The project is believed to be the first major tunnel ever built across the bay.
Using a giant boring machine, workers will carve a 14-foot high corridor through clay, sand and bedrock from Menlo Park to Newark as deep as 103 feet below the bay floor. They'll then run a 9-foot-high steel water pipe through the middle.
"All the experts tell us that within the next 30 years, there is a 63 percent chance of having a major earthquake in the Bay Area," said Ed Harrington, general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which is in charge of the project.
"By building extra tunnels and strengthening our pipelines, it means we have much greater assurance that we'll have water after the next earthquake."
Bids on the tunnel will be advertised Friday.
Only 12 companies in the world are certified to perform the job, which is estimated to cost $347 million. Digging will start next spring on the Menlo Park shoreline just south of the Dumbarton Bridge, and head eastward, with work scheduled to be completed in 2015. An additional 16 miles of pipe connecting to the tunnel on either side of the bay also will be replaced.
The job is part of a $4.5 billion renovation by the San Francisco PUC to upgrade its water system. Commonly known as the Hetch Hetchy System, the network of tunnels, pipes and reservoirs delivers water 167 miles through gravity-fed pipes from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park to Crystal Springs Reservoir along I-280 in San Mateo County.
Biggest system
The largest water system in the Bay Area, it provides some or all of the drinking water to 2.5 million people from North San Jose through the Peninsula to San Francisco, along with Fremont, Hayward and other parts of the East Bay.
Another agency, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, provides water to 1.8 million people in Santa Clara County from groundwater and the delta.
An engineering marvel, the Hetch Hetchy system was built following the 1906 earthquake, when San Francisco burned after its water system failed. Today, much of its equipment is antiquated and at risk of collapse in the next major quake.
The tunnel, for example, will replace two large steel pipes built in 1925 and 1936 that sit on the floor of the bay, and could easily break in a major quake, cutting off water for weeks.
"Being buried deep in stronger, tighter materials, there is much smaller vulnerability to being pulled apart from shaking and liquefaction," David Schwartz, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, said of the proposed tunnel. "From an engineering point of view, it's much stronger."
Schwartz noted that since the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, a 6.9 magnitude event that killed 63 people and did $6 billion in damage, other Bay Area agencies have been hard at work.
Racing to beat the next earthquake, Caltrans has retrofitted dozens of freeway overpasses and is rebuilding the Bay Bridge. Pacific Gas & Electric has upgraded gas lines and substations. BART is retrofitting the Transbay Tube, a 3.6 mile-long cylinder that sits on the floor of the bay, connecting Oakland and San Francisco.
"The question is, can we get it all done in time?" Schwartz said.
Retrofitting needed
Many of the region's hospitals have not been retrofitted. And thousands of old buildings, including homes and unreinforced masonry buildings, remain at risk.
USGS scientists say there is a 63 percent chance of a quake of 6.7 magnitude or larger hitting the Bay Area by 2036. Geologists are most concerned about the Hayward fault, which runs from San Jose to Richmond.
With that backdrop, the San Francisco PUC won approval from San Francisco voters in 2002 to upgrade its water system. Funding is coming from revenue bonds, financed by a near-doubling of residential water rates in San Francisco from $23 a month now to $40 in 2015, with similar hikes expected in other communities that receive Hetch Hetchy water.
The project also will rebuild pipelines, water treatment plants and Calaveras Dam, north of San Jose, over the next five years so that they can withstand a quake of up to magnitude 7.9 on the San Andreas fault and 6.9 on the Hayward fault.
Despite the sensitive politics of anything involving the bay, environmentalists did not oppose the new tunnel.
"The environmental effects of a tunnel would be less than if they built new pipelines across the marshes," said Florence LaRiviere, co-founder of the Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge, in Palo Alto.
And the earthquake risks are real, so "it is entirely appropriate," she said.
Still, LaRiviere said she wants the PUC to remove the old pipes when the tunnel is done to restore the shoreline to its natural state. For now, the agency plans to leave them in place as a backup.
Los Angeles Times
Wildflower reserve concerned about proposed racetrack
Each year, thousands of people behold the state flower at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. A proposed motor sports park nearby has environmentalists, visitors, residents and parks officials nervous...Ann M. Simmons
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poppyfields27-2009jul27,0,7977303,print.story
During peak seasons, the hardened landscape in the desert beyond Lancaster turns into a golden welcome mat for the thousands who come to see the poppy fields.
It's a dizzying spectacle that the state estimates draws upward of 100,000 visitors a year to the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. There's a trail, an interpretive center and not much else -- except the sensory experience of viewing the state flower in full bloom.
But the neighborhood could be changing.
An Orange County man who owns 320 acres of Mojave Desert land next to the poppy fields wants to carve out a 3.6-mile course for racing, driving and testing cars. The proposed Fairmont Butte Motorsports Park would be used primarily for events sponsored by car clubs and racing organizations.
But the fact that the track would be only a mile from the state-protected reserve has alarmed environmentalists, residents, visitors and state parks officials, who fear the loss of serenity and vast stretches of land where wildflowers frequently grow.
"It's a terribly inappropriate business for that area," said Milt Stark, president of the Poppy Reserve/Mojave Desert Interpretive Assn., a volunteer group that gives tours and talks at the wildflower sanctuary.
"Visitors who come to see the poppies come out there to have peace and quiet."
Tom Malloy sees it differently. For the last seven years he has been trying to win approval to develop a motor sports park on his land, which is near the tiny community of Fairmont. The land is vacant, used primarily by trespassers who are looking for a place to race motorcycles or shoot guns.
"I feel the racetrack, run the way I want it run, would be an asset to the area," said Malloy, who owns a Los Angeles-based shoring equipment firm.
The racetrack would operate only during the daytime, Malloy said, and there would be no grandstand or large seating area, allowing for only a few spectators. He doesn't anticipate a throng of racing enthusiasts pouring into the area.
But according to a draft environmental impact report filed with Los Angeles County earlier this month, the park could expose nearby residents to dust during construction and excessive noise once it is up and running. It could also adversely affect the area's wildlife, which includes lizards, badgers and burrowing owls.
Most upsetting for flora and fauna lovers, the proposed racetrack would result in the loss of almost 140 acres within the project site, where seasonal wildflowers such as poppies, California buckwheat scrub and purple needle grass typically grow.Though mitigation measures have been suggested to help reduce the dust, muffle the noise and decrease the risk of harm to wildlife, "no feasible measures exist" to prevent to loss of the wildflower fields, according to the impact report. The effects would be "significant and unavoidable."
Kathy Weatherman, a state parks superintendent in the Tehachapi area, said that in 2005 her agency sent a notice to the county's planning department outlining concerns about the proximity of the proposed track to the 1,800-acre reserve.
The southern portion of the project site falls within the boundaries of a county-designated "significant ecological area," a designation meant to protect the habitat of rare, endangered or threatened plants or animals.
Malloy contends that his venture will actually help the area. If given the go-ahead, he said, he would clean up the spent bullet casings that now litter much of the site, along with the trash and used household items that have been dumped there.
Trespassing motorcycle enthusiasts, whose bootleg racing sessions have transformed vegetation-ripe soil into bare dirt, would have to "go someplace else," he said.
Stark and others said the racetrack probably would attract more bikers and "people who are interested in that kind of thing."
Dean Webb, a local environmental activist and an Antelope Valley resident since 1960, said people driving on California 138 will be drawn to the track, bringing traffic and a stream of off-roaders.
"I hate to put it this way, but it would be, 'There goes the neighborhood,' " Stark said.
Not only the neighborhood, but the entire ambience of the community, said Mike Powell, who volunteers at the reserve. He worries that if Malloy gets approval, other enterprises will ask to set up shop nearby.
"That project represents the start of a significant threat to the kind of lifestyle and environment that many people moved out here for," Powell said.
The tranquillity and stark landscape are what compelled Northridge resident Linda Wang to visit the poppy reserve one recent season. She couldn't envision having a motor sports park nearby.
"I think it would be a little weird," she said.
Boom in hydropower pits fish against climate
The renewable energy could ease global warming, but the dams and turbines could result in mass killings...Kim Murphy
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hydro-power27-2009jul27,0,5383340,print.story
Reporting from Wenatchee, Wash. — The Rocky Reach Dam has straddled the wide, slow Columbia River since the 1950s. It generates enough electricity to supply homes and industries across Washington and Oregon.
But the dam in recent years hasn't produced as much power as it might: Its massive turbines act as deadly blender blades to young salmon, and engineers often have had to let the river flow over the spillway to halt the slaughter, wasting the water's energy potential.
The ability of the nation's aging hydroelectric dams to produce energy free of the curse of greenhouse gas emissions and Middle Eastern politics has suddenly made them financially attractive -- thanks to the new economics of climate change. Armed with the possibility of powerful new cap-and-trade financial bonuses, the National Hydropower Assn. has set a goal of doubling the nation's hydropower capacity by 2025.
Expanding hydropower is fraught with controversy, much of it stemming from the industry's history of turning wild rivers into industrialized reservoirs struggling to support their remaining fish. The emerging boom in hydroelectric power pits two competing ecological perils against each other: widespread fish extinctions and a warming planet.
The issue has been particularly contentious in the Pacific Northwest, where some are calling for actually breaching dams on the Snake River in an effort to bring back the declining salmon and steelhead.
"Hydropower does have pretty significant and serious impacts on rivers. We know that. The industry knows that," said John Seebach, director of the Hydropower Reform Initiative launched by the conservation group American Rivers. "It also provides some pretty significant benefits in terms of power production. So it's a tricky balance to get those benefits while trying to minimize those impacts."
Across the country, there are about 82,600 dams, but only about 3% of them are used to generate electricity. Hydropower produces about 6% of the nation's electricity, and nearly 75% of all renewable electric power.
The increasing mandates for power utilities to expand their portfolios of renewable energy are prompting dam operators to take a second look at thousands of dams now used for flood control, irrigation, navigation, recreation and industrial water supply that might also be used to generate electricity without further harm to fish.
"Most of the bang for the buck is at existing dams and reservoirs without hydropower facilities, and hydropower facilities that need to be upgraded for additional capacity," said Norman Bishop, vice president of MWH Americas Inc., which designed the dam improvements in Chelan County, Wash., home to the Rocky Reach facility.
The U.S. Department of Energy estimated that there are up to 30,000 megawatts of potential energy at 5,677 undeveloped sites across the nation, more than half of which already have dams.
Newly added to the equation is the emerging market for so-called carbon credits. The credits are part of a strategy to place "caps" on damaging greenhouse gas emissions while allowing companies that can't meet the restriction to buy credits from ones that achieve significant savings. The cap would be gradually lowered to reduce overall emission levels.
Hydroelectric power is a prime candidate to sell credits because it is largely emission-free. The credits typically would be granted only for new or additional power.
The market for the credits is tiny now, but legislation is moving forward that would create caps and a national market that could ultimately reach $120 billion a year.
Even without a national cap-and-trade law, markets such as the Chicago Climate Exchange now allow companies to voluntarily limit their carbon emissions and lower their carbon footprint by purchasing credits, traded on the market like stock.
This added incentive has made building or upgrading hydroelectric facilities a more alluring prospect.
The small rural Chelan County Public Utility District last year became the first hydropower facility in the U.S. to begin trading carbon credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange.
The money the district has made from selling credits -- about $1.6 million so far -- is going back to Chelan County and its customers for new investments in carbon-free electricity. The district has invested heavily in making sure its new electricity results have no net harm to salmon -- a key requirement for trading on the Chicago exchange.
But the possibility of more hydroelectric construction around the world has set off alarm bells among some groups of environmentalists.
"Rivers in the U.S. have been seriously impacted by dam construction," the conservation group International Rivers said in urging California authorities to disqualify hydropower projects producing more than 10 megawatts of power from receiving carbon credits.
"Fortunately, some of this damage is now starting to be reversed by dam removals," the group said. "California climate action should not act as an incentive to increase damage to rivers and prevent efforts to restore them."
California gets about 9.6% of its power from large hydro generators. The state has said it will consider as renewable energy only those hydro projects smaller than 30 megawatts that do not require the diversion of any new water.
Climate-change activists particularly balk at the idea of offering carbon credits in the U.S. for large hydropower projects in developing countries, such as Chile, Peru, Uganda and elsewhere, where environmental protections may be lax and the overall contribution to global welfare dubious.
But here at Rocky Reach Dam, engineers say they believe there is a way to reduce emissions, increase power output and save fish at the same time -- although at a cost.
The Chelan County utility district spent $292 million overhauling Rocky Reach's 11 aging generators and installing new, more efficient turbines and an expensive mile-long safe-passage tunnel for up to 3.5 million young salmon and steelhead that navigate the dam each year.
With the juvenile-fish passage facilities -- along with commitments to improve habitat and expand hatchery production for salmon -- the district could meet its targets for healthy fish and allow much less water to spill over the dam.
Five years ago Rocky Reach had to spill up to a quarter of its water over a 31-day period during the height of the spring salmon juvenile migration, but last spring it got permission to spill no water at all.
Yet more than 90% of the young salmon and 94% of the steelhead are surviving their trip past Rocky Reach Dam, according to district records.
The result is that the dam has been able to produce an additional 1.75 million more megawatt-hours of electricity over a recent three-year period, the equivalent of 702,204 metric tons of carbon if the electricity were generated at a natural-gas-fired power plant.
"What we have been able to do is provide more power with the same amount of water," said Tracy Yount, the Chelan County utility district's external affairs director. "We're saying, let's skip the new facilities, skip the regulatory issues associated with new dams and go to our existing facilities and get more value from them."
Foreclosure hot spots...Peter Y. Hong...L.A. Land
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2009/07/foreclosure-hot-spots.html
Here are some locally specific statistics from MDA DataQuick's quarterly foreclosure report for California.
Top five ZIP Codes in number of homes repossessed by lenders, per capita, second quarter 2009:1. Tracy 95391 (148 Q2 foreclosures, 71 per 1,000 homes)
2. San Jacinto 92582 (220 Q2 foreclosures, 56 per 1,000 homes)
3. Lake Elsinore 92532 (244 Q2 foreclosures, 52 per 1,000 homes)
4. Perris 92571 (504 Q2 foreclosures, 47 per 1,000 homes)
5.Merced 95341 (477 Q2 foreclosures, 47 per 1,000 homes)
Some upscale communities with big annual jumps in foreclosures (in no particular order):
--South Pasadena 91030 (24 Q2 foreclosures, 200% over same quarter last year)
--La Jolla 92037 (103 Q2 foreclosures, 115% over same quarter last year)
--Manhattan Beach 90266 (35 Q2 foreclosures, 192% over same quarter last year)
--Calabasas 91302 (94 Q2 foreclosures, 170% over same quarter last year)
--Malibu 90265 (54 Q2 foreclosures, 146% over same quarter last year)
--Beverly Hills 90210 (61 Q2 foreclosures, 110% over same quarter last year)
Foreclosures are generally less than 1% of all homes in those upscale ZIPs, but they still skew prices. That's because a much smaller percentage of total homes is typically on the market in those areas, so a few dozen foreclosed is a significant share of homes for sale.
San Marino 91108 had only three foreclosures in Q2, the same as Q2 2008.
CNN Money
New home sales: 'Really good news'
Sales of newly constructed single family homes rose 11% over May, but median price fell 3%...Les Christie 
http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/27/real_estate/June_new_home_
sales/index.htm?postversion=2009072712
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Sales of newly constructed single-family homes spiked 11% in June to an annualized rate of 384,000 homes, according to a report released Monday.
The gain over May was much greater than expected. A consensus of housing industry analysts had forecast seasonally adjusted sales of 352,000, according to Breifing.com.
However, sales are still 21% below the levels of a year ago, when new homes sold in June at an annualized rate of 488,000, according to the report released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Four years ago, during the height of the housing boom, the sales rate for June was 1,374,000, nearly three-and-a-half times higher than last month.
Still, the report was very positive, according to Peter Morici, an economics professor at the University of Maryland who had forecast June sales to be at the 350,000 level. "That is really good news. Considering what's going on in existing home sales, with all the foreclosure activity sending down home prices, for new homes to jump like that is a good indicator that the economy is bottoming out."
Builders have been more optimistic about market conditions and this report should further buoy their spirits. An index of builder confidence from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) rose to 17 this month after languishing in single-digit territory.
In June, they began building single-family housing units at an annualized rate of 470,000, a 14.4% jump over May.
Pat Newport, a housing industry analyst for IHS Global Insight, also deemed the report very good news -- but is uncertain how Obama's $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers will affect the longer view.
"I only wonder how much of the increase is coming from rising demand from new homebuyers," he said. "The tax credit is boosting demand, but what will happen when it goes away in December?"
Prices and inventory
The median price paid for a house sold in June 2009 was down about 3% to $206,200; the mean price was $276,900.
By the end of the month, the inventory of new homes had dropped to 281,000, an 8.8 month supply at current rates of sale. Last month, there were enough homes on the market to last 10.2 months at that rate.
"They have to clean out that stock to get building again," said Morici.
"Normal" new home inventory is about 300,000, according to Newport, which we're already below. But ,he added, that the median time to sell a home is at an all-time high of 11.8 months.
"That tells you it's still very hard to sell a new home," he said.
Much of that struggle is because the housing stock is concentrated in exurbs -- otherwise known as McMansions far away from work. "Inventories are misaligned," said Morici, who likened the situation to the auto industry being overstocked with large trucks and SUVs instead of fuel efficient cars.
"There'll be a shift from far-out to closer-in and from bigger to smaller," he said. But builders will have a hard time selling those "white elephants" and they'll languish on the market, he predicted.
The excess inventory also tend to be concentrated in just a few markets, such as California, southern Florida, Las Vegas and Arizona, according to Bernard Markstein, a senior vice president and economist with the National Association of Home Builders.
"[In most other parts of the country] inventory has been worked down to the point where if you want to buy a new home, it will probably have to be built," he said.
Perhaps the best news is that home construction may be ready to once again boost the economy again. "The construction-put-in-place numbers that come out next month will show that housing is starting to add to the GDP," said Newport. "It's been nothing but a drag on growth lately."
With new home inventory more in balance, consumers may no longer be able to wring extras, such as high-end appliances and even swimming pools, out of builders. "People are going to find builders are not going to be quick to make concessions," Markstein said. "The time for getting deals is going away."
Huffington Post
Wall Street on Speed...Robert Kuttner
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/wall-street-on-speed_b_245121.html
The New York Times recently reported that the latest scheme--or scam--on Wall Street is something called High Frequency Trading. Very sophisticated financial firms, such as Goldman Sachs, are tipped off by the New York Stock Exchange's own computers to pending buy and sell orders. Armed with ultra sophisticated computer algorithms, the insiders anticipate the direction of the market based on what they learn about supply and demand for a given security. They can make an extra penny here and an extra penny there at the expense of us suckers, adding up to billions.
"Nearly everyone on Wall Street is wondering how hedge funds and large banks like Goldman Sachs are making so much money so soon after the financial system nearly collapsed," wrote the Times' Charles Duhigg in a front page piece that was the talk of New York and Washington. "High-frequency trading is one answer."
As debates in the blogosphere in the last couple of days have made clear, there are a couple of possibilities of what is at work here. One is that Goldman and others are literally using privileged information to make trades ahead of markets, in which case they are committing a felony. Specifically, the abuse is known as "front-running," or trading ahead of customers, and it is an explicitly illegal form of market manipulation. Front running is epidemic on Wall Street--the whole point of an investment bank trading for its own account is to take advantage of its specialized knowledge of markets--and the SEC or the Justice Department shuts down front-running when it becomes too blatant to ignore.
The other possibility is that the Goldmans of the world have found themselves a nice loophole. Tapping into the Stock Exchange's own computers and other sources of trading activity is something that anyone in theory could do, but only a few privileged insiders have the sophistication to exploit what they find. Often orders are placed, only to be cancelled. Their purpose is to figure out what the market is willing to pay, and then get in ahead of it.
But suppose that High Frequency Trading doesn't violate any law. It still is the essence of what's wrong with the recent metastasis of money markets into private game preserves for insider-traders.
Consider for a moment some first principles. The legitimate and efficient function of financial markets is to connect investors to entrepreneurs, and depositors to borrowers. There is no legitimate reason whatever for this to be done by the millisecond. At bottom, the process is pretty simple. The intermediary--the bank, savings institution, or investment bank makes its fees for making a judgment about risk and reward. How likely is the loan to be paid back? How high an interest rate should it charge? How should a new issue of securities be priced? The investor decides whether to indulge a taste for risk or for prudence.
But the hyperactive trading markets and creations of recent decades such as credit default swaps and high speed trading algorithms add nothing to the efficiency of financial markets. They add only two things--risk to the system, and the opportunity for insiders to reap windfall profits.
Therefore, whether or not Goldman's lawyers have figured out how it can engage in High Frequency Trading and stay within the law, there is a strong case that this entire brand of financial engineering should be prohibited. The whole game should be slowed down. Bona fide investors should get in line under the rule of first come, first served. Anything else should be considered illegal market manipulation. No dummy transactions. There is absolutely no gain to economic efficiency from having prices of securities change in milliseconds, and much gain to the opportunities for manipulation.
The need to restrain traders from exploiting their privileged knowledge is an old fight. During the New Deal, for example, many reformers proposed that floor specialists for investment bankers and brokerage houses simply be prohibited from trading for their own accounts. They should be there simply to execute buy and sell orders for customers. Otherwise, the conflict of interest would be overwhelming--and this was before computers. These reformers were overruled, but insider trading was explicitly prohibited (and good luck catching it.)
Now, as then, it is a mark of Wall Street's stranglehold on politics that the most sensible of remedies seem impossibly radical. One very good way to damp down the dictatorship of the traders, and raise some needed revenue along the way, would be through a punitively high transactions tax on very short term trades. Genuine investors should get favored fax treatment. Pure traders should be taxed, and very short term manipulation taxed into oblivion.
If the financial crisis has proven anything, it is that capital markets have become an insiders' game in which trading profits crowd out the legitimate business of investment. The whole business-models of the most lucrative firms on Wall Street are a menace to the rest of the economy. Until the Obama administration recognizes this most basic abuse and shuts it down, it will be more enabler than reformer.
Global Research
The Real US Unemployment Rate Hits a 68-Year High
Comparing the Bureau of Labor Statistics' "U-3" and "U-6" rates...John Miller
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14529
Although you have to dig into the statistics to know it, unemployment in the United States is now worse than at any time since the end of the Great Depression.
From December 2007, when the recession began, to May of this year, 6.0 million U.S. workers lost their jobs. The big three U.S. automakers are closing plants and letting white-collar workers go too. Chrysler, the worst off of the three, will lay off one-quarter of its workforce even if it survives. Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar and giant banking conglomerate Citigroup have both laid off thousands of workers. Alcoa, the aluminum maker, has let workers go. Computer maker Dell and express shipper DHL have both canned many of their workers. Circuit City, the leading electronics retailer, went out of business, costing its 40,000 workers their jobs. Lawyers in large national firms are getting the ax. Even on Sesame Street, workers are losing their jobs.
The official unemployment rate hit 9.4% in May-already as high as the peak unemployment rates in all but the 1982 recession, the worst since World War II. And topping the 1982 recession's peak rate of 10.8% is now distinctly possible. The current downturn has pushed up unemployment rates by more than any previous postwar recession.  (see Table 1).
Source: Table A-1, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Labor Department, www.bls.gov.
The comprehensive U-6 unemployment rate adjusts the official rate by adding marginally attached workers and workers forced to work part time for economic reasons to the officially unemployed. To find the U- 6 rate the BLS takes that higher unemployment count and divides it by the official civilian labor force plus the number of marginally attached workers. (No adjustment is necessary for forced part-time workers since they are already counted in the official labor force as employed workers.)
Calculating the Real Unemployment Rate
The BLS calculates the official unemployment rate, U-3, as the number of unemployed as a percentage of the civilian labor force. The civilian labor force consists of employed workers plus the officially unemployed, those without jobs who are available to work and have looked for a job in the last 4 weeks. Applying the data found in Table 2 yields an official unemployment rate of 9.1%, or a seasonally adjusted rate 9.4% for April 2009.
Accounting for the large number of marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons raises the count of unemployed to 24.0 million workers for May 2009. Those numbers push up the U-6 unemployment rate to 15.9% or a seasonally adjusted rate of 16.4%.
Some groups of workers are already facing official unemployment rates in the double digits. As of May, unemployment rates for black, Hispanic, and teenage workers were already 14.9%, 12.7% and 22.7%, respectively. Workers without a high-school diploma confronted a 15.5% unemployment rate, while the unemployment rate for workers with just a high-school degree was 10.0%. Nearly one in five (19.2%) construction workers were unemployed. In Michigan, the hardest hit state, unemployment was at 12.9% in April. Unemployment rates in seven other states were at double-digit levels as well.
As bad as they are, these figures dramatically understate the true extent of unemployment. First, they exclude anyone without a job who is ready to work but has not actively looked for a job in the previous four weeks. The Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies such workers as "marginally attached to the labor force" so long as they have looked for work within the last year. Marginally attached workers include so-called discouraged workers who have given up looking for job- related reasons, plus others who have given up for reasons such as school and family responsibilities, ill health, or transportation problems.
Second, the official unemployment rate leaves out part- time workers looking for full-time work: part-time workers are "employed" even if they work as little as one hour a week. The vast majority of people working part time involuntarily have had their hours cut due to slack or unfavorable business conditions. The rest are working part time because they could only find part- time work.
To its credit, the BLS has developed alternative unemployment measures that go a long way toward correcting the shortcomings of the official rate. The broadest alternative measure, called "U-6," counts as unemployed "marginally attached workers" as well as those employed "part time for economic reasons."
When those adjustments are taken into account for May 2009, the unemployment rate soars to 16.4%. That is the highest rate since the BLS began calculating the U-6 rate in 1994. While not exactly comparable, it is also higher than the BLS's earlier and yet broader adjusted unemployment rate called the U-7. The BLS began calculating the U-7 rate in 1976 but discontinued it in 1994 in favor of the U-6 rate. In the 1982 recession the U-7 reached 15.3%, its highest level. In fact, no bout of unemployment since the last year of the Great Depression in 1941 would have produced an adjusted unemployment rate as high as today's.
Why is the real unemployment rate so much higher than the official, or U-3, rate? First, forced part-time work has reached its highest level ever, going all the way back to 1956 and including the 1982 recession. In May 2009, 8.8 million workers were forced to work part time for economic reasons. Forced part-timers are concentrated in retail, food services, and construction; about a quarter of them are young workers between 16 and 24. The number of discouraged workers is high today as well. In May, the BLS counted 2.2 million "marginally attached" workers. That matches the highest number since 1994, when the agency introduced this measure.
With the economy in the throes of a catastrophic downturn, unemployment, no matter how it's measured, will rise dramatically and impose yet more devastating costs on society and on those without a job or unable to find full-time work.
John Miller teaches economics at Wheaton College and is a member of the Dollars & Sense collective.
Sources:
U.S. Dept. of Labor, "The Unemployment Rate and Beyond: Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization," Issues in Labor Statistics, June 2008; John E. Bregger and Steven E. Haugen, "BLS introduces new range of alternative unemployment measures," Monthly Labor Review, October 1995.