9-23-09

 
9-23-09
Badlands Journal
Rodale critique of biotechnology convention...Badlands Journal editorial board
http://www.badlandsjournal.com/2009-09-23/007427
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself how corporate propaganda is constantly trying to colonize the future? We'd like UC Merced, our own "high-tech, bio-tech engine of growth" right here in Merced CA to assign its best academic minds to explaining to us ordinary citizens what the future actually is so that the public might be in a better position to judge the claims of the endless stream of corporate flak about the future. For example, should the public take out a patent on the future before it is as cluttered with proprietary brands as outer space is cluttered with satellites?
Badlands Journal editorial board
9-22-09
Huffington Post
New Big Ag Push to Fight World Hunger Misses What Organic Ag Is Already Doing
Timothy LaSalle, CEO Rodale Institute
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-lasalle/new-big-ag-push-to-fight_b_295082.html
The compelling humanitarian goals expressed today at the corporately sponsored Global Harvest Initiative symposium were laudable, as were some of the hunger-relief projects cited. Missing, however, was an honest assessment of the limits of dead-end chemical agriculture to play a leading role in actually feeding people.
Also absent from the high-powered forum was a prominent role for what organic agriculture is already doing to meet the most important goals on the food-hunger-nutrition side of the problem.
The event, despite all the good people presenting and all the calls for curbing the environmental harm of chemical ag, amounted to glitzy green packaging for the same unnecessary gift of chemical dependence for the world's farmers. GHI is sponsored by ADM, DuPont, John Deere and Monsanto. (Yes, the same Monsanto which has promised to double its profits by 2012 with continuing introductions of "high impact technology" seeds.)
In his opening remarks, GHI executive director William Lesher placed the focus firmly on the need for more food, highlighting a projected "productivity gap" that will require a doubling of current world food output by 2050. This thinking follows the outlines of a white paper by GHI in April: "Accelerating
Productivity Growth: The 21st Century Global Agriculture Challenge: A White Paper on Agricultural Policy." Yet more food alone won't help starving people
until the global agricultural system radically shifts its focus to address the barriers of poverty (the inability to buy food) and distribution (getting food people want to where they are).
By framing global food security in terms of "not enough food," the Global
Harvest Initiative seems stuck on doing the same old thing harder and faster. It backers still push expensive seeds and continued dependence on climate-damaging inputs. Organic and near-organic techniques offer robust, biodiverse, productive and regenerative systems that can out-produce chemical approaches in drier and wetter seasons.
The symposium's highlighting of groups seeking environmental and social benefits may do some good -- if the groups can break industrial ag's profit-driven willingness to sacrifice soil vitality, agricultural biodiversity, human endocrine and neurological health, farmer control of seeds and a nation's nutritional well-being. Or it may just be the best agri-greenwashing money can buy.
This event kicked off a campaign by these corporate leaders to claim the moral high ground in addressing world hunger, which already impacts 1 billion people, according to the UN. While nutrition received prominence at the event, the top three agenda items listed at the GHI website are seeking new funds for research, liberalized ag trade, conservation.
The GHI overture appears to be geared to grab even more money, attention, research, trade and policy support for high-input dependent systems. This mission runs counter to calls from several world food study groups (here and here) who say organic and ecological production systems are the best hope for transforming the "feeding the world" challenge from simply producing more corn and soybeans on industrial farms toward growing more diverse and nutritive crops, better suited to feed the hungry poor, produced in more ecologically sound ways based on locally-available, biologically renewable resources.
Food-focused farmers already know how well biology works. Without further research, organic farms in widely varied climates and sizes are already producing highly nutritious food in sustainable ways that are reducing greenhouse gases, increasing resilience in the face of changing climatic conditions, and providing greater economic opportunity.
With a fraction of the hundreds of millions of research dollars already spent to overcome chemical agriculture's failures, agricultural researchers around the world could work on organic farming advances relevant to their bioregions. NGOs dedicated to exploring ecologically sound ways to optimize hunger-relieving livestock and crop production could adopt and teach organic techniques to help bring degraded soils into production -- a goal of the GHI's white paper -- while improving nutrition through complex crop mixes that are impossible when pesticides are used.
"Conservation" in today's symposium too seemed to be crafty balancing of "agricultural sacrifice zones" (where pesticides and fertilizers protect commodity monocrops) with non-farmed wild areas. Mitigation is good, but organic systems done well actually increase biodiversity throughout farmed land: in the soil, as fungi and other microorganisms build up to support crop productivity over time; in the fields as crops are protected by health soil and beneficial insects; around the fields through hedgerows and scattered bio-habitat plantings.
And how telling about GHI means and ends is this quote from its white paper:
While the technological advances brought by the Green Revolution have been fully exploited by now, a new frontier -- biotechnology -- has emerged with the capacity to provide important new benefits for both developed and developing countries, and even to target new technologies specifically to local needs and conditions, including those in developing countries.
I want hungry people to be fed, farmers to prosper, ecosystems to thrive while farming improves, wildlife to flourish and whole bio-regions to develop
sustainable economies. That's why I demand organic agriculture be front and center on the global food agenda.
Rodale Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit engaged in research and advocacy for "Healthy Soil, Healthy Food, Healthy People, Healthy Planet." We were founded in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, in 1947 by organic pioneer J.I. Rodale.
Our research findings are clear: A global organic transformation will mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere and restore soil fertility. Our
mission: We improve the health and well-being of people and the planet.
After all the crap, some real numbers...Badlands Journal editorial board
http://www.badlandsjournal.com/2009-09-22/007426
In a February letter to President Obama, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, claimed, as he did in many other venues: "A simple measure that would save up to 80,000 jobs (in the lower San Joaquin Valley) would be to relax restrictions on pumping facilities in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers Delta that have caused the regulatory drought that my constituents are experiencing."
In January, the state Farm Bureau reported that, "UC Davis agricultural economist Richard Howitt that the drought would cause a lost of "40,000 jobs, and these are job losses for those who can least afford them in the valley's small, rural towns."
9-21-09
Hanford Sentinel
Water officials: Pumping restrictions cost Westside agriculture 2,000 jobs...Seth Nidever...9-19-09
http://hanfordsentinel.com/articles/2009/09/19/news/
doc4ab5679f27c3f041959766.txt
Officials at the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority issued a statement Friday claiming100,000 acres went unplanted and 2,000 jobs have been lost on the Westside because of federal pumping cutbacks to protect the endangered Delta smelt fish.
The statement refutes a document released Thursday by the U.S. Department of the Interior that claims it’s “not true” that “water shortages and high unemployment rates in California’s Central Valley are the result of a man-made, ‘regulatory’ drought, as opposed to natural conditions.”
“Interior is lacking candor in explaining and accepting the human impacts of the Endangered Species Act restrictions,” said Jason Peltier, deputy general manager of Westlands Water District.
Westlands, a member of the authority, has about 80,000 acres in Kings County that rely on federal Central Valley Project water from the delta.
“I would just say in general we look forward to ... working with the local and state government, as well as the water authorities and our other partners, to solve this problem,” said Interior spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff.
Barkoff declined to get into specifics about how much of a role environmental regulations play in the current situation.
Current laws call for a certain percentage of the Central Valley Project water to go to environmental protection and ecosystem preservation in the delta and other areas. These rules are not suspended in drought situations like the current one — California is in its third consecutive dry year.
Many of the regulations were included in the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, passed in 1992, which reserves some water for fish and wildlife protection and ecosystem preservation.
But this year Westside farmers are facing additional regulations stemming from a 2007 federal court order to protect the delta smelt fish and a 2009 federal biological opinion mandating additional cutbacks to protect other fish species including salmon and steelhead.
The cumulative impacts have left giant bare patches of earth on the Westside and created high farmworker unemployment in small towns like Avenal, Huron and Mendota.
Westlands officials predict district farmers will lose 1 million acre-feet of water as a result of both the court order and the biological opinion.
The Interior Department is right about the fact that there is a natural drought, but has tried to “minimize the role that regulatory decisions play,” said Dan Nelson, executive director of the authority.
9-18-09
Fresno Bee
Valley jobless figures improve
Fresno County rate falls while statewide number increases...Tim Sheehan
http://www.fresnobee.com/business/v-print/story/1643491.html
California's unemployment rate has risen above 12%, setting a record for modern times, officials said Friday. But across the central San Joaquin Valley, unemployment rates headed in the opposite direction.
An estimated 2.2 million Californians were out of work in August, the state Employment Development Department reported. That represents 12.2% of the state's work force, excluding discouraged workers who have given up looking for jobs. That's the highest since 1976, when current tracking methods began.
Joblessness in Fresno County remains well above the statewide figure, but gains in agriculture and manufacturing helped drive the county's unemployment rate from 15% in July to 14.6% in August -- the lowest it's been all year.
Similar improvements were reported in neighboring Valley counties. Across Fresno, Madera, Merced, Kings and Tulare counties, the number of people out of work fell from 136,200 in July to 133,200 in August.
Despite the statewide record, there were signs California may be emerging from recession as the rate of job losses slowed. The number of jobs lost from July to August was just 12,000, down from about 35,000 in the previous month. From November 2008 until last June, the state lost 65,000 or more jobs each month, said Jerry Nickelsburg, a senior economist with the Anderson Forecast at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In February alone, the state lost more than 110,000 jobs.
"The big story is the continued decline in the rate of job loss in payroll employment," Nickelsburg said. "That's much more significant than the slight uptick in the unemployment rate."
Among Valley counties, Merced County saw the greatest drop in the jobless rate -- almost a full percentage point, from 17.6% in July to 16.7% in August.
In Kings County, the rate fell to 14.2% from 14.4%. In Madera County, it fell to 13.3% from 13.8%, and in Tulare, to 15.2% from 15.3%.
The seasonal nature of agricultural employment is one factor nudging Valley unemployment rates down while California's rate rose.
But Alexander Whalley, a professor of economics at University of California, Merced, said he believes it also has to do with the Valley getting hit harder and earlier than other parts of the state when the recession began.
"I think the Valley has had more time to make that adjustment," Whalley said. Some people out of work for months have likely uprooted and moved to other parts of the country to find work, Whalley said, perhaps thinning the ranks of the unemployed here. "We don't have a good measure of that, but I do get a sense that in the Central Valley, things are going to start getting better."
Whalley added that he doesn't expect to see unemployment rates in the coming winter -- when farm jobs seasonally dip -- climb as high as last March, when it reached 17% in Fresno County.
California was one of 42 states to lose jobs last month, when the national jobless rate hit 9.7%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. The state is tied with Oregon for the fourth-highest unemployment rate nationally, behind Michigan, Nevada and Rhode Island.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said earlier this week that the recession is likely over but warned that the economy will not grow quickly enough to lower the nation's unemployment rate in the short term. Economists expect the national jobless rate is expected to peak above 10% next year.
The U.S. lost 216,000 jobs in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said earlier this month, down from 276,000 in July. Employers have eliminated 6.9 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007.
"You are seeing the pace of job losses slow a little bit," said Mike Lynch, a regional economist at IHS Global Insight. But states "are not out of the woods yet."
9-19-09
Visalia Times-Delta
Some Valley farmers are selling water to buyers outside region
But local experts say deal like one in Kings County unlikely to occur here...DAVID CASTELLON
http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090919/NEWS01/909190322&template=printart
While area farmers are struggling through a third year of drought, letting land lie fallow because they can't afford to irrigate it, a large Kings County farm operator is a step away from a $73 million deal that would send 14,000 acre-feet of water to the Mojave Desert over 10 years.
The price, more than $5,200 an acre-foot, could be a record. Robert Cooke, chief of the State Water Project Analysis Office, said the most he's ever heard paid for water was about $3,000 an acre-foot.
An acre-foot is the amount of water that would fill an acre 1 foot deep, or 325,851 gallons. The average household in the Visalia area uses about 290,000 gallons of water annually, according to the California Water Services Co.
The deal for the Kings County water, awaiting final approval by the California Department of Water Resources, is between Sandridge Partners, owned by the family of the late Silicon Valley real estate developer Stephen Vidovich, and the Mojave Water Agency, which represents water districts in more than 4,900 square miles of high desert along Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County, roughly between Victorville and Barstow.
Sandridge farms in southwestern Kings County, near Kettleman City, use water from the nearby California Aqueduct to farm 2,500 acres of almonds. Sandridge spokesmen were not available to say what would happen to the almonds.
Some reports say Sandridge intends to use some of its $73 million windfall to buy groundwater rights in Kings and Tulare counties.
That's what worries John Roeloffs, a Tipton-area farmer and dairyman.
"Heck no. I don't like it. I think it's a bad deal," Roeloffs said. He pays about $100 an acre-foot for water. "Everybody who sells water thinks there's water coming behind it, but that's not true."
Drought affects all water sources
Water in the southern San Joaquin Valley can be drawn from all or some of four places: groundwater; surface water from lakes, rivers and reservoirs; the California Aqueduct; and the Friant-Kern Canal.
All these sources have been affected by three years of drought.
In addition, the amount of water delivered by the California Aqueduct has been reduced through an agreement to divert some ag water for environmental reasons in Northern California.
And, the federally controlled Friant-Kern Canal, from which Roeloffs draws most of his agricultural water — along with many other Tulare County farmers, as well as the city of Lindsay and the town of Strathmore — is distributing, on average, about 20 percent less water because of low runoff from the Sierra.
The result is more demand on groundwater, drawn from wells that are themselves victims of falling water tables.
A valuable commodity
With things this bad, it's not surprising that water has become such a valuable commodity that a farm operator like Sandridge could sell it for many times the going rate.
Under the proposed contract, Sandridge would allow the Mojave Water Agency to request additional water from the California Aqueduct in three separate years. In 2010, it would get 7,000 acre-feet; in 2015, it would get 3,000; and in 2020, 4,000. In those years, Sandridge would reduce its own draw on Aqueduct water by the same amounts, said Craig Trombly, chief of the water contract branch for the State Water Project Analysis Office.
As for the dollars paid for that water, the state agreement is filled with various fees and charges for the parties involved, but Sandridge and Mojave have signed their own side agreement for a one-time, $73 million payment for the water, Trombly said.
The Mojave Water Agency already is a big user of California Aqueduct water. More than a decade ago, it bought water from Kern County, and currently it has contracted to draw a maximum 75,800 acre-feet a year from the California Aqueduct.
This year, because of delivery reductions, it's getting only 80 percent of that, said Kirby Brill, general manager of Mojave Water.
The water the Mojave Water plans to get through the Sandridge deal would be used to help replenish its underground water, Brill said.
At more than $5,200 per acre-foot, Mojave clearly is willing to pay heavily for it, as water from the Aqueduct normally costs — according to Cooke — $100 to $500 per acre-foot, depending on how hot and dry a year is, as well as the distance it travels.
"It's an aggressive policy by our board [of directors] to make sure this area has the water it needs for the future," Brill said of the deal.
That "aggressive" price has raised concerns that other farming operations in the Valley will look at all those zeros and try to strike more deals to send water outside the area.
"I think it's a bad deal that farmers sell their water for money," Roeloffs said.
"The people always win," he added, referring to water districts that supply homes and businesses — Mojave Water among them — and can pay a lot more for water than farmers and ranchers.
"When they sell the surface water to an urban use, that water's gone forever," said Charlie Pitigliano, owner of Pitigliano Farms in Tipton and Pixley.
In addition, he said, if landowners sell off their surface water rights, they may end up pumping more groundwater to keep their farms going.
Can it happen in Tulare County?
That affects all farmers in the region, because aquifers beneath the Valley are largely connected, like cups connected by straws, Pitigliano explained. "If they put more straws in the glass, they're going to pump everybody dry."
But water experts in Tulare County say deals similar to the one Sandridge struck are highly unlikely to occur here.
A big part of the reason is that farms drawing water from the California Aqueduct actually own their water rights — through their respective water districts —and can sell them.
The 14 water districts in Tulare County — the city of Lindsay among them — don't draw water from the Aqueduct. Surface water here comes from the Friant-Kern Canal as well as the Kaweah and Tule rivers. Different rules apply.
"Most irrigation districts own the surface contracts to the water and distribute it to the landowners," said Tom Barcellos, who operates a dairy and farms in the Porterville and Tipton areas.
"In the district where I'm in, I can't control that water. I can't sell the surface water rights.
"If I choose not to use it, it's spread among the remaining farmers in the district."
In the case of water from the Friant-Kern Canal, which is used to irrigate land or supply water for communities along 1 million acres in the San Joaquin Valley, the water districts own the water, not individual farmers or communities that ultimately use it. The districts can sell off some of their water, but with restrictions, said Ron Jacobsma, general manager of the Friant Water Users Authority.
"Water rights on Friant are limited to place of use," an area covering 4.5 million acres of the Valley, he explained. "You can't sell water outside of that boundary. So our guys couldn't sell water to Los Angeles, even if they wanted to."
Similar rules apply to river water here.
"By statute, you do not own the water, but you acquire the right to it," said Bruce George, water master for the Kaweah and St. Johns Rivers Association.
"The association has a policy of no net loss to our basin" unless an equal amount or more is returned later, he said.
If anyone tried to transfer water out of the area for money or trade, "it would violate the [association's] policy and possibly have environmental impacts" and likely would be challenged in court, George said.
Merced Sun-Star
Disaster declared: severe drought in the Valley
San Joaquin Valley farmers will now have access to low cost federal loans...CAROL REITER
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1072729.html
The feds confirmed what a lot of farm folks already knew.
This is a disaster area.
A declaration of disaster by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has opened the doors for Merced County farmers and ranchers to get low-cost loans because of drought losses.
The county, along with other San Joaquin Valley counties, was declared a natural disaster area Monday.
"By getting this disaster declaration it makes available emergency loans to farmers," said Laura Westerfield, county executive director of the USDA.
There are some rules about getting the loans, Westerfield said. Farmers or ranchers must have had a certain percentage of loss from weather conditions. And they have to be unable to get conventional lending.
"The drought declaration for livestock forage was already in the pipeline," Westerfield said. Livestock producers will be eligible for money because of their loss of feed because of little rainfall in the foothills. Many cattlemen put their herds in the foothills of Mariposa and Merced counties in the winter, when rains bring nutritious green grass to the area.
But livestock producers will have had to have hedged their losses from the beginning, Westerfield said. They had to have bought the equivalent of catastrophic insurance, or they won't be eligible for anything, she said. "We have a deadline coming up for 2010," Westerfield said. "We have to have applicants by Dec. 1."
Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, said he's pleased that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack paved the way for ag producers to get help.
"It's some acknowledgement that we do have a drought," Cardoza said. "We've been talking about the economic impact of the drought, housing and the dairy situation, and that has all made for a very serious economic situation."
Because of the disaster declaration, producers in the county will be eligible to apply for emergency loans from the Farm Service Agency and the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program.
Cardoza said times have been tough for growers in the county, but he's hoping for a change.
"I think we are starting to see a slight, ever so slight, improving scenario for agriculture in the coming months," Cardoza said.
Central Valley group seeks $193 million to help areas hit by foreclosure crisis...Tuesday, Sep. 22, 2009
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/story/1071198.html
The California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley has announced a regional effort to seek $193 million in funding to help areas hit hard by the recession and foreclosure crisis.
The group is seeking $193 million in Neighborhood Stabilzation Program 2 (NSP-2) funding provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Nine local government agencies submitted proposals to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and signed a commitment to repair damage caused by a wave of foreclosures throughout the Central Valley.
The consortium would use NSP-2 funding to help approximately 2,300 housing units in the Valley, including purchasing and rehabilitating abandoned or foreclosed homes, demolishing blighted buildings and redeveloping demolished or vacant properties.
The plan also includes:
- Using collective buying power to negotiate with large banks so that foreclosed homes can be purchased and renovated for energy efficiency and sold at a discount to low-income families.
- Working with HUD-approved counseling agencies to prevent additional foreclosures and prepare families to buy foreclosed homes.
- Sharing best practices and helping other areas use collective resources for energy efficiency, with help from the San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Organization.
- Providing reports and monitoring the effectiveness of the program, using services from the Fresno HUD office.
- Building a regional process that will encourage affordable housing that is connected to transportation and jobs.
The California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley noted in a press release sent Tuesday that home prices in the Central Valley have decreased by more than half since 2006. Foreclosure rates in the Valley's largest cities, including Merced, rank among the highest nationwide. In Merced County, home prices have dropped by nearly 75 percent, leaving the average home worth less today than it was in 2000, the press release said.
The California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley is an eight-county public-private partnership, created by an executive order from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, focused on improving the region's economic status.
Merced County census figures paint a picture of poverty
Many are uninsured; education attainment remains at low level...SCOTT JASON
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1072753.html
U.S. Census Bureau data released Tuesday reflect the grim state of health care coverage in Merced County.
Twenty percent of the population, or 50,000 people, lack health insurance. Roughly half the population has private insurance. A third of the population is covered by a public plan, according to the 2008 American Community Survey.
Merced County's percentage of uninsured residents is higher than the state average of 17.8 percent and the federal average of 15.1 percent.
Other areas of the country have higher uninsured rates. Texas' rate is at 26.5 percent and Florida is at 24.8 percent.
Mercy Medical Center Merced's Director of Patient Financial Services Lori Graver said the survey reflects what she sees at the hospital.
Ten percent of the patients the hospital treats don't have insurance, she said. As a result, the hospital had to write down $15 million in debt last year from people who don't pay their medical bills.
The hospital wrote off an additional $21 million in debt under its Charity Care program, which reduces poor residents' medical bills based on their income.
The annual data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau cover social characteristics, housing statistics, demographics and economic indicators. The government surveys communities with at least 65,000 residents to monitor how they're changing.
All the economic data will be released next week. This is the first time the survey has asked about health care coverage.
Some other notable findings:
Three-quarters of the county's 246,117 residents were born in the U.S. Of the 60,883 foreign-born people, a third are naturalized citizens. The rest, about 70 percent of the foreign-born, aren't U.S. citizens.
Hispanic or Latino residents make up 52.9 of the population. Whites count for 34 percent of the population, blacks 3.5 percent and Asian 6.4 percent.
Merced County's median age is 29.7, meaning half the population is older and half the population is younger. The county tied with Imperial County for being the youngest area in California.
Thirteen percent of residents are disabled, higher than the state and federal averages. In the city of Merced, 16.4 percent of residents are disabled. Common disabilities include hearing difficulties, eyesight problems and cognitive issues.
The county's educational attainment remained low and relatively unchanged. Sixty-six percent of residents are high school graduates, while 12.9 percent have gone on to earn a bachelor's degree or higher.
In the U.S., 85 percent of residents have graduated from high school. Almost a third have a bachelor's degree.
A worker's education level is reflected in the salary earned, according to the survey. The median income for residents with a bachelor's degree is $50,876. A high school graduate can expect to earn about $25,658.
Merced's housing vacancy rate increased from 11.6 percent to 13.5 percent.
PDF: Merced Census Figures...
http://media.mercedsunstar.com/smedia/2009/09/21/15/
MercedCensus092109.source.prod_affiliate.11.pdf
PDF: U.S. Census Figures...
http://media.mercedsunstar.com/smedia/2009/09/21/15/
UnitedStatesCensus092109.source.prod_affiliate.11.pdf
PDF: California Census Figures...
http://media.mercedsunstar.com/smedia/2009/09/21/15/
CaliforniaCensus092109.source.prod_affiliate.11.pdf
Merced Realtors see tight housing inventory, more foreclosures, higher home prices...From reports
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1071868.html
Realtors from Gonella Realty said the $110,000 median sale price for houses in Merced had led to an inventory of only 1.8 months’ supply of homes, down from a 5.8 months-supply in August last year and a 28.6 months supply in August 2007.
The median sale price was 38 percent below that of a year ago, but it led to an affordability index of 79 percent, meaning that four out of five Merced residents making the state median income can afford to buy a house. In 2005, that index stood at 11 percent.
Loren Gonella, head of Gonella Realty, said he expects “one or two years more of foreclosures, then prices will start to come up faster than people expect.”
Investors and first-time buyers make up the bulk of home purchases, the Gonella Realtors told the Sun-Star editorial board Tuesday. “I get calls all the time from 408 and 415 area codes,” said Realtor Andy Krotik, referring to the Bay Area. Some UC Merced students also appear to be renting houses instead of off-campus apartments. In 2004-05 the Realtors estimated that investors comprised 65 percent of the market, owner/occupants 35 percent or so. Today they reckon 63 percent of sales are to owner/occupants.
They also suggested that the city of Merced’s fees deter more home building and sales. Atwater’s fees are lower, and buyers and builders would naturally gravitate toward the place with lower taxes, they said.
Commercial real estate, “vibrant” until a year or so ago, has suffered from higher vacancy rates, although the office market may improve slightly, Realtor Scott Oliver said
UC Merced students get plenty of help
Nearly 75 percent of enrollment get some sort of financial aid...DANIELLE GAINES
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1072734.html
Each day is a new adventure for UC Merced student Jose Palma. When he leaves for class, he navigates a maze of soaring gothic architecture to get to the city bus, reading street signs in Catalan along the way.
Palma was one of the pioneering students to enroll at UC Merced in 2005. Today, he's studying at the University of Barcelona. In his spare time while working toward a degree in anthropology and psychology, Palma explores the city and visits local landmarks with other exchange students from around the world.
Next week, he'll begin work as an intern under the guidance of a psychologist at a Barcelona-area prison. "Just being here is completely different -- nothing like I had ever imagined," Palma said from his apartment in Barcelona Tuesday.
Palma's dream to enroll in a study-abroad program this year was realized after he received a Benjamin A. Gilman scholarship for international education, a private donation that four other Merced students received this year.
The Gilman program gave funding to more than 45 institutions this year, with UC Merced taking in the most. Five students -- who are studying in Egypt, South Korea, Spain and Turkey -- received $19,000 to help them cover the costs of spending a semester or year in a foreign country.
All told, 75 percent of students on campus this year received part of $28,216,197 in grants and scholarships, according to information released by the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships on Tuesday.
The 2,230 scholarship recipients don't have to pay back the money, which can come from public or private donors.
"In response to the current economic situation, UC Merced continues to make attending college affordable to eligible students," Kevin Browne, assistant vice chancellor for enrollment management, said in a press release. "Concern over expenses is the worst possible reason not to attend a UC. If a student meets UC admission requirements, he or she deserves to be here, and we can help. We have been able to offer competitive gift-aid packages to almost 75 percent of our enrolled students."
John Garamendi, Jr., vice chancellor for university relations, said a large portion of scholarship funds on campus come from private donors. The most recent donation to the campus, $500,000 given anonymously, was set aside for students interested in studying renewable energy; the university will begin awarding those funds as early as this spring.
"Giving to scholarships is the most selfless act any donor can perform," Garamendi said in the release. "The fact that people who have worked hard over the years are willing to invest in the futures of students they have never met speaks volumes. Our students recognize that sacrifice, and I believe it makes them work harder in the classroom, and it shows them the importance of giving back when they leave."
Palma said he'll do just that.
A first-generation college student himself, Palma said many of his high school classmates in Southern California weren't confident they'd be able to attend college, much less study abroad.
When he returns from Barcelona in August, he will visit his old school to encourage students to follow in his path.
What will he tell them? "College is going to be hard, but there are also going to be endless opportunities."
Merced County supervisors reverse course on some layoffs
Early retirement, forced days off could be on horizon for workers...CORINNE REILLY
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1072721.html
Eighteen Merced County employees who thought they'd be laid off this week will instead keep their jobs, the Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday.
More workers could be rehired or spared from future layoffs if the county decides to go forward with plans to encourage early retirements and mandate worker furlough days.
Faced with a massive shortfall, supervisors voted last month to lay off 89 employees and cut $33 million from the county's budget.
On Tuesday, supervisors voted to rescind 18 of the layoffs after the county's budget office discovered it will have more money to work with this fiscal year than it had expected. Sixteen of the affected employees work for the Human Services Agency. Two work in public health.
All of them were slated to lose their jobs Friday.
"Obviously, we're very pleased, and this supports our claim that these layoffs were too hasty," said Kristy Waskiewicz, of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees local 2703, which represents most county employees. "When the layoffs were first approved, we weren't convinced that the budgets being presented were accurate."
The county learned late last week that the Human Services Agency will receive about $1.7 million more in state Medi-Cal funds than it had expected. The two public health workers were saved because of state legislation passed earlier this month that restored money for California's Healthy Families program, which provides government health insurance for children of the working poor.
Besides the human services and public health workers spared by Tuesday's decisions, roughly another dozen employees who expected to be laid off this week will be allowed to stay because of vacancies that have emerged since supervisors approved the layoffs last month, county spokeswoman Katie Albertson said.
"Through attrition and retirements and the normal course of business at an organization of this size, we've had some positions open up," she said. "That's good news."
Also Tuesday, supervisors voted to create six new, temporary jobs in the county's work force investment department. They'll be funded with federal stimulus money. Laid-off county employees will have the first crack at the positions, Albertson said.
Aiming to avoid future layoffs, the county is floating a plan to encourage senior-level employees to retire early. It's also studying the possibility of using worker furlough days.
Neither plan has gone to the Board of Supervisors for approval but both have been presented to union members. Albertson and Waskiewicz each said Tuesday that it was too early to publicly comment on either idea or speculate about when specific proposals might be presented to supervisors.
"I think all we can say at this time is that the county is considering a number of things to try to save money over the long term," Albertson said. "This is about looking to the future. We don't believe that problems related to the recession and the state's budget crisis will end this year."
In concept, the early retirement plan would take highly paid workers off the county's payroll by offering them a one-time payment to retire within the next two months. The amount of the payment would be based on an employee's salary and years of service. It wouldn't boost retirees' pension benefits.
As they've been discussed, the worker furloughs would begin in December. They would amount to a 5 percent pay cut spread throughout the year for most of the county's 2,400 employees. Workers would be furloughed one day a month for at least the rest of this fiscal year, with most county departments closed to the public on those days.
The cuts that supervisors approved last month included sharp reductions in a wide variety of social service programs, leaving fewer resources for the poor, the elderly, the mentally ill and those struggling with addiction. Besides the Human Services Agency and the public health department, workers also were laid off in the mental health and public works departments.
In other news, supervisors voted Tuesday to approve a plan by the county's economic development department to host two round-table discussions each year with local business owners. The round tables will be used to collect ideas for growing and diversifying the area's economy and creating jobs.
Modesto Bee
San Joaquin Valley recovery's at least another year away...J.N. Sbranti
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/864951.html
At least one more year of recession will plague Stanislaus, San Joaquin and Merced counties, with unemployment rising, jobs disappearing and incomes stagnant.
That's the grim prediction from the University of the Pacific's Business Forecasting Center, which released its quarterly forecast today.
"The Northern San Joaquin Valley suffered early and substantially in this recession. And the way it's shaping up, the region may be among the last ones out of it," said Jeff Michael, center director.
The forecast predicts unemployment will keep climbing through mid-2010 to 18.2 percent in Stanislaus County, 17.8 percent in San Joaquin County and 19.5 percent in Merced County.
Valley residents will continue to lose their jobs, in part, because of the planned closure in March of the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. plant in Fremont. It employs about 4,700 workers, many of whom live in the valley.
"These Northern San Joaquin Valley metro areas are tightly linked to the economy of the East Bay," the forecast said. "The NUMMI closure will severely impact more than 1,000 jobs in auto part suppliers in (San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties) in addition to an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 NUMMI employees who live in this area and commute to the East Bay."
Michael said he's "been told half of the NUMMI workers are commuting from this area."
In addition to NUMMI workers, others may lose their jobs at companies that supply parts to NUMMI. That includes Trim Masters Inc. in Modesto, which makes interior door panels for Toyota Tacomas and employees about 200 people.
In San Joaquin County, about 10 suppliers with 900 workers send parts to NUMMI.
One of those firms is Amtex Inc. in Manteca, which makes carpet and other parts.
In Merced County, about 50 employees of Arvin Sango Inc. make parts for the Fremont plant.
The forecast made many specific economic predictions for regions:
• Stanislaus County: Job losses will slow in 2010.
"The effect of the recession is expected to fade out starting in the third quarter of 2010.
Major sectors losing jobs in 2009 will start gaining jobs again late 2010. The economy will see job growth of 1.8 percent in 2011. As the recovery continues, job growth will accelerate to a healthy 2.8 percent in 2012."
The county's population is expected grow "at a mild rate of 0.7 percent in 2010, before gradually rising to an average of 0.9 percent per year through 2012."
Unemployment will rise from 16.2 percent in 2009 to a peak of 17.9 percent in 2010.
It will fall in 2011 to 16.3 percent and 14 percent in 2012.
Personal incomes are expected to grow 0.4 percent in 2010, which will offset some of the 1.1 percent loss from 2009.
Incomes will climb 2.3 percent in 2011 and 3.8 percent in 2012.
• San Joaquin County: Unemployment will peak at 17.4 percent in 2010, then "slowly decrease over the next three years."
"The economy is expected to rebound in the third quarter of 2010 as job losses lessen," according to the report, which predicts job gains in education, health services, leisure and hospitality, and financial activities.
"As the recovery continues, job growth is expected to accelerate to 1.6 percent in 2011 and 2.8 percent in 2012."
Personal income is expected to grow 0.7 percent in 2010.
• Merced County: "The recession is expected to subside in 2010, allowing the economy to rebound in the fourth quarter of 2010," the forecast predicts. "Job growth will rise to 2 percent in 2011, recovering to 3.3 percent the following year."
With the population growing at a moderate rate but the number of jobs declining, the unemployment rate will climb to 19.2 percent next year.
It will decline to 18.5 percent in 2011 and 17.3 percent in 2012, the report predicts.
County will continue battle for right to preserve farmland...Garth Stapley
http://www.modbee.com/local/v-print/story/865072.html
Stanislaus County will ask an appellate court to restore a controversial farmland preservation requirement, county leaders decided Tuesday on a relatively rare 3-2 vote.
The appeal sets up another court battle between the county and home builders, who won in court in June after arguing that the rule unfairly penalizes them.
The county's agricultural element, requiring that developers preserve an equal amount of farmland when building new homes, was declared unconstitutional by a Stanislaus County judge in June. The government failed to show a "reasonable relationship" between its mitigation rule and the adverse impacts of home construction, Superior Court Judge William A. Mayhew ruled.
"We think we have strong grounds for appeal," County Counsel John Doering said after Tuesday's closed-door, split-decision vote.
Supervisors Jim DeMartini and Jeff Grover voted to appeal, affirming their earlier support for the farmland preservation rule, and Supervisors Dick Monteith and Bill O'Brien dissented, as they had before. Supervisor Vito Chiesa, voting on the issue for the first time since taking office in December, broke the tie, as did his predecessor, the late Tom Mayfield, when the agricultural element was adopted in December 2007.
"It's another method of protecting our No. 1 industry and No. 1 creator of jobs," said Chiesa, a former county Farm Bureau president, after the closed session. "This is one I feel strongly about. (Agriculture) is the only reason Stanislaus County is doing as well as it is."
Builders say they'll keep fighting
Steve Madison, executive director of the Building Industry Association of Central California, said his organization will fight to keep the rule outlawed.
"We're surprised that the county leaders didn't choose to use their time more productively in crafting a new policy that would work, instead of using taxpayers' resources to appeal a decision that benefits a handful of ag landowners in the county," Madison said.
Although Stockton won in court when builders there challenged a similar farmland preservation ordinance, Madison said its rules differ from those in Stanislaus County.
Stockton allows payments in lieu of putting farmland elsewhere into a no-build easement and relies on soil classifications, neither of which is true in Stanislaus County, Madison said. Also, Stockton produced a study and involved stakeholders early in the process while Stanislaus County did not bring in builders until late in the game, he said.
The supervisors' majority thinks it should be up to builders to challenge an actual case where land is set aside to compensate for farmland conversion to urban use, Doering said.
"We believe one-to-one is inherently reasonable; if you're giving up one acre of farmland, you're going to get one protected in perpetuity," Doering said.
Separately, the BIA is waiting to hear from the state Fair Political Practices Commission about a complaint the group filed a year ago charging that DeMartini, Grover and Mayfield should not have been able to vote on the ag preservation policy because they own farmland. The BIA argues that the farmland preservation measure directly benefits those supervisors, which represents a conflict of interest that should bar them from voting.
· AT A GLANCE
·  WHAT HAPPENED: Stanislaus County supervisors decided to appeal a court ruling that favored home builders opposed to the county's new agricultural element.
· WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: The ruling had negated a county requirement that developers preserve farmland in amounts equal to that used for new subdivisions. If the county prevails in the appeal, the requirement could be reinstated.
· WHAT'S NEXT: Lawyers on both sides will argue the case again, in the 5th District Court of Appeal in Fresno. The process typically takes several months
UC Merced doles out grants...last updated: September 22, 2009 10:40:42 PM
http://www.modbee.com/local/v-print/story/865036.html
The University of California at Merced awarded $28.2 million in grants and scholarships to 2,230 undergraduate students for this school year. The money doesn't need to be repaid.
The aid comes from public and private entities and can be used for a variety of school-related expenses, depending on the requirements set forth by the agencies offering the financial aid.
There are many qualification factors that determine which students get which awards. Many scholarships and grants are need-based, but that's not true for all.
Regents Scholarships, the University of California's most prestigious scholarship award, are given to students with outstanding academic records and personal achievements.
The scholarships are awarded to entering freshmen or transfer students and are renewable for up to four years. Regents Scholars at UC Merced receive preferential housing on campus and a gift-aid package of as much as $25,000 per year as long as they maintain their academic success.
For more information, go to www.ucmerced.edu.
Fresno Bee
Senator introduces amendment to restore Valley water deliveries...Michael Doyle, Bee Washington Bureau
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/v-print/story/1647409.html
WASHINGTON - The Senate on Tuesday rejected a surprise amendment that was billed as a way to help solve the San Joaquin Valley's water problems.
By a nearly party line 61-36 vote, the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected the amendment offered by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer both opposed the amendment, even though they were targeted by a last-minute e-mail lobbying campaign organized by Westlands Water District.
On the Senate floor, a clearly unhappy Feinstein likened the surprise amendment to “Pearl Harbor” and she voiced dismay that it would be brought up without her prior knowledge.
DeMint's long-shot amendment to a Fiscal 2010 Interior Department funding bill would have effectively restored full irrigation deliveries for a year.
"What started out as a local water problem in California is quickly developing into a food problem for the nation," DeMint said. "If we don't address this problem now, not only will thousands of people remain out of work in California, but everyone in the country will pay higher food prices."
DeMint is a conservative whose strict budget-cutting views have often put him at odds with members of his own party as well as Democrats. Technically, his latest amendment would prohibit federal spending on two "biological opinions" that supported the irrigation delivery cutoffs.
DeMint has not previously involved himself in California water issues.
The irrigation deliveries were curtailed in order to protect endangered species including salmon and the smelt found in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The pumping restrictions were lifted at the end of June. In the House, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, had repeatedly tried and failed to block the biological opinions through amendments to the $32 billion Interior Department bill.
Nunes, who has previously worked with other out-of-California lawmakers on water-related amendments, applauded the identical DeMint amendment on Tuesday, as did other Valley lawmakers.
"This amendment would allow a small reprieve to the economic and agricultural destruction that the San Joaquin Valley has been in the midst of for the past 12 months," Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, declared in a letter sent Tuesday to Feinstein.
Fresno Co. backs farm tax breaks
Lobbying effort will try to get funds for Williamson program...Brad Branan
http://www.fresnobee.com/updates/v-print/story/1647169.html
Fresno County will keep giving property tax breaks to farmers despite losing nearly $5 million in state backing for them this year.
Instead, county supervisors decided Tuesday to lobby Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to restore funding to the Williamson Act, which gives farmers a tax break as long as they don't sell their land to developers.
The state has traditionally reimbursed counties for a portion of the property taxes they lose because of the program. Fresno County has received more Williamson Act funding than any other county in the state.
Schwarzenegger, who has repeatedly moved to cut the program, virtually eliminated funding for the Williamson Act in July, approving just $1,000 in payments statewide.
The county has Williamson Act contracts with about 8,000 property owners. If the county decides not to renew the contracts, it takes nine or 19 years for them to cancel, depending on the type of contract. Tax rates increase progressively during that time.
The Fresno County Farm Bureau, the Nisei Farmers League and other agricultural groups asked the board to keep the contracts in place, saying the additional tax burden would devastate farmers already struggling because of a water crisis, regulatory issues and other problems.
Additional taxes would put some farmers out of business, they said.
On a day when the board praised three young people for agricultural achievements, one Fresno County farmer wondered whether they could continue in the field.
"Will those 4-H kids who were here earlier have a future here?" asked Jackie McCoy, who has property enrolled in the Williamson Act in the eastern part of the county. "I don't want us to become another L.A. County."
Supervisors hope to persuade Schwarzenegger to restore Williamson Act funding to this year's budget.
"We need to focus on the governor," said Supervisor Judy Case. "He's kind of gone after [Williamson Act funding] every year he's been in office."
Some supervisors said they're willing to wait to see whether funding is restored in next year's state budget before deciding whether to end contracts. The county hasn't approved a Williamson Act contract in two years, reflecting uncertainty over the act's future.
But even Supervisor Phil Larson, who previously worked for an agricultural company and represents a largely rural district, said the county can't continue to subsidize the tax breaks without state assistance.
"I'm not optimistic the Williamson Act will continue," he said.
The county gets reimbursed for only a portion of lost property tax revenue. The assessor's office estimates the county will lose about $8 million this year because of the Williamson Act.
In other action
The Fresno County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to create requirements for new development in areas served by special districts. Developers and special districts will have to ensure that water and other services will be provided before the county will approve development. The decision comes as a number of special districts have struggled to provide service due to financial and other problems.
EDITORIAL: We welcome disaster designation, even if late
http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/v-print/story/1647490.html
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has done little to help San Joaquin Valley farmers during the three-year drought, has finally offered some relief to the agricultural industry. The USDA had declared 50 of California's 58 counties natural disaster areas because of the drought.
That will allow emergency loans to farmers who have suffered financial losses this year. But the USDA has not helped to increase the flow of available water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farmers on the Valley's west side.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says he does not have authority over pumping water to the Valley, and has gone silent on the issue. We had expected him to advocate for a larger share of water during Obama administration cabinet meetings.
The Department of Interior has authority over water conveyance, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has essentially told Valley farmers tough luck when they've pleaded for relief. Salazar has embraced the environmental community in the struggle over dividing California's water.
We are disappointed in President Barack Obama administration's unwillingness to broker a compromise on this issue. Vilsack, the former Iowa governor, has been especially disappointing in his role overseeing USDA. He must do more on behalf of California agriculture.
While we welcome USDA's disaster declaration, it would have been better for the president to offer a much broader declaration. That declaration, which Obama turned down in July, would have brought a wide range of help, including food, job training and unemployment assistance.
Salazar appears to be the key administration official in the water battle. He visited the region earlier in the year and made some promises to farm leaders. But once he got back to Washington, significant help for farmers and farmworkers failed to materialize.
On this contentious issue, we must have government leaders who can bring the sides together, not determine winners and losers in the battle for California's precious water.
Sacramento Bee
New builder pounces on distressed Sacramento-area land...Jim Wasserman
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/v-print/story/2202022.html
Sacramento's big developers have lost plenty of possessions since the real estate market collapse: private jets, vacation homes, expensive cars and multi-million-dollar tax refunds.
But mostly they've lost land. Lots and lots of it.
Their loss is Ray Sahadeo's gain. The 27-year-old has spent much of this year buying lots and building houses, capitalizing on the stumbles of his more established peers.
The local real estate industry is in the midst of a massive reshuffling as developers who have long been in the top tier of Sacramento society see their fortunes fall, and others step in to fill the void left by their departure.
Sahadeo, a relative unknown, has gained control of more than 400 home lots from distressed builders and banks. Buying low, he sells low, with homes starting at $139,000.
It's the Great American story: a son of immigrant parents from Guyana tapping private equity to "make hay while the sun shines."
While Sahadeo and partner Mark Chisick stake a claim in the local housing market, some of the most prominent family names in Sacramento development circles have become synonymous with bankruptcy and losses.
The list of those brought low includes royals like John Reynen and Christo Bardis, Sidney B. Dunmore and C.C. Myers. Collectively, as their businesses have collapsed, they've lost status and well-paying livelihoods, and surrendered corporate jets, vacation homes and millions of dollars in tax refunds to creditors.
Even so, they have managed so far to keep some vestiges of their opulent lifestyles.
As their stories unfold in bankruptcy courts, players like Sahadeo and others with access to money have moved into the game or gotten bigger. Last year, McClellan-based janitorial services partners and land developers Ron Alvarado and Charles Somers scooped up 879 building lots on 250 acres in growth-friendly Rancho Cordova from Pulte Corp. and Centex Corp., home building giants that were shedding assets.
It was a "prudent buy" for a "decent property" said Alvarado, and reportedly for far less than Pulte and Centex paid and spent to improve it.
Investors from Granite Bay, Pleasanton and Southern California also have swooped in for bargains after implosions of John Laing Homes, Kimball Hill Homes, Dunmore Homes and Reynen & Bardis Communities.
Among builders that survived after selling assets and downsizing, none has a more formidable position for the region's next housing boom than Pulte and Centex. Last month, the giants merged into a superbuilder that accounts for almost one in five sales.
That giant is in place now to realize dreams of builders killed off by debt and plunging land values – the same knockout punches that sent thousands of homeowners hurtling toward foreclosure and bankruptcy.
"The critical thing with land is not to owe," said Angelo K. Tsakopoulos, owner of AKT Development Corp. and the region's largest land developer.
Tsakopoulos, 73, said he is buying in this downturn just as he did in the 1990s recession and housing crash. Back then, Tsakopoulos bought hundreds of distressed and discounted acres, especially in North Natomas, after landowners crumbled under debt.
"Those were pretty bad days," he said. "But this cycle's a bad one. People didn't see it this time. We never do. They come, and come quickly, and they're brutal."
Brutal is an apt description of the past two years in the lives on John Reynen and Christo Bardis, partners for 36 years in Reynen & Bardis Communities, the Mather-based home builder and land developer. The pair filed for Chapter 11 personal bankruptcy protection after they personally guaranteed $900 million in loans for land their company bought during the housing boom. Lenders are now selling off many of their possessions.
Their bankruptcy filings offer a glimpse into how well Sacramento's development class lived when the market was booming, and how much it's losing now that it isn't.
Bankruptcy court records show that Reynen and his wife are giving up $26.8 million in cash to creditors, including $24.5 million in income tax refunds. They're surrendering a $2.5 million vacation home in Mendocino, a $325,000 property in El Dorado Hills, a $1.8 million vacation home in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and a vacant lot valued at $1.35 million in the same city.
They're also giving up shares of numerous development ventures valued collectively at more than $8 million.
Creditors voted to let the Reynens keep their Sacramento home, valued at $2.9 million, and a farm in Hartford, Pa., valued at $500,000. They also get to keep a 2007 Mercedes-Benz automobile and $606,000 in personal property, including jewelry and artwork.
Records show that Bardis and his wife are giving up $32.7 million in cash, most from a tax refund, to creditors. They'll also lose their $1.7 million home in Los Angeles.
Creditors agreed to let them keep the family home in Gold River, valued at $550,000. They'll also keep $757,000 in personal property, including jewelry and artwork. Finally, they're keeping memberships in private clubs, a $75,000 home in Greece and a 25 percent interest valued at $243,000 in a partnership that owns and trains horses.
Bardis attorney David Meegan said more than 90 percent of the pair's creditors "voted in favor of that plan treatment. If there had not been sufficient creditor support for the plans as proposed, the plans would not have been approved by the court."
Neither Reynen nor Bardis responded to a Bee inquiry seeking comment. Spokeswoman Michele McCormick said, "So far they haven't seen any interest in participating in any of these stories."
Reynen & Bardis Communities, which aimed during the boom to spread itself widely across a fast-growing Central Valley, is not likely to survive, though it is not in bankruptcy protection. Meegan, when asked if the company would try to regroup, answered, "This probably won't be possible."
Another former leader in the home building market, Sidney B. Dunmore, is still fighting to keep a $12.8 million tax refund and his homes in Granite Bay and Palm Desert, nearly two years after his firm's 2007 bankruptcy and the sale of its Falcon 900 jet.
Separate lawsuits filed by Comerica Bank and Travelers Casualty and Surety Co. of America have aimed to take both homes and the tax refund. The refund, which Dunmore received after selling Dunmore Homes in 2007, remains deposited with the bankruptcy court clerk in Sacramento while proceedings continue.
Dunmore did not respond to a telephone call requesting comment.
Brutal, too, describes the journey of bankrupt highway and bridge builder C.C. Myers. After losing his 45 percent stake in his Rancho Cordova contracting firm C.C. Myers Inc. to creditors, he recently lost his 8,000-square-foot unfinished house at Winchester Country Club in Meadow Vista. It's for sale for $1.5 million in the upscale golf course community that Myers spent 20 years planning and building. He lost the project after personally guaranteeing more than $40 million in loans.
Even as the big names work through bankruptcy, the pain goes on. Richland Planned Communities recently joined the list of those surrendering prime pieces of real estate, giving up title to 44 acres in Roseville's Stone Point.
The developer, one of the region's largest, planned and won city approvals in 2005 for 575 homes on the property.
"We were relatively conservative with our borrowing and had a grade A piece of property," said Steve Thurtle, a Richland senior vice president. "We had deals lined up at various times for $50 million. But they all fell through because of a growing credit and real estate crisis," he said.
Recent history suggests that Richland's loss is sure to be someone else's gain. As foreclosed and lost acreage piles up across the region, Sahadeo and his backers are scouting for more lots, more land.
"This window is closing pretty quickly," said the region's newest builder. "I don't think I'll ever see this again."
Stockton Record
When it comes to Valley ag, Sean Hannity is all wet...Michael Fitzgerald
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090923/A_NEWS0803/909230308/-1/A_NEWS#STS=fzy9sd8i.1spf
Sean Hannity parachuted into the San Joaquin Valley last week to broadcast another diatribe about the "man-made drought." And the maleficent minnow to blame for it.
Why, a meaningless guppy, in cahoots with environmentalists, and an activist judge - wackos who put fish before people - aided and abetted by Barack Hussein Obama, are turning the Valley into a Dust Bowl and God-fearing farmers into the Joads.
"To defend this little 2-inch Delta smelt fish," Hannity marveled, they have decided that the farmers come second and the Delta smelt comes first!"
To my astonishment, the "fish vs. man" hoax has hardened into an article of faith on the right.
Could anybody really believe the state's establishment gob-smacked its most politically powerful interests in arbitrary defense of a smelt?
Surely this fringe interpretation would swiftly be dispelled, I thought at first. The truth would come out.
Hannity was a rebuke to such naïveté. The truth will not come out, because guys like Hannity, playing the rage of the right like a piano, are fabricating an alternate reality.
Where to begin? Hannity's show was set in a cotton farm outside Huron. The farm is fallow for lack of water. The Grapes of Wrath, Part II: The Joads of Huron.
Only those ignorant of the oceanic amounts of water needed to farm cotton are oblivious to the irony. If water's scarce, cotton shouldn't even be farmed.
"Turn the water back on!" Hannity intoned over and over, sounding like Moses crying "Let my people go!"
In fact, the water has been "turned on" since June 30. Last Sunday - to cite a typical day - the state and federal pumps exported 13,626 acre-feet of water from the Delta.
The pumps sucked hard enough to make Old River, Middle River and the San Joaquin River at Stockton flow backwards.
Not only are the conservative choruses of calamity receiving most of their water, some of them are hoarding water.
Last year, San Luis and Millerton reservoirs had carryover supplies of 336,000 and 56,000 acre-feet respectively - almost one-quarter of the Westland's entire annual needs.
In fact, a number of these poor Dust Bowl victims sold their water to developers. They profit from paving over farmland. Then they line up behind Hannity and wave the flag, victims of a world gone mad.
Not to ruin the table-thumping, but consider:
» Average Delta exports prior to 2008: 5.7 million acre-feet
» 2009 exports: 3.6 million acre-feet
» Of the 2.1 million acre-foot shortfall, 1.6 million is due to the drought. Only 500,000 is due to the Delta smelt ruling.
Source: Just Ron Milligan, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation operations manager for the Central Valley Project.
Admittedly he's no match for Hannity's water guru, comedian Paul Rodriguez.
Rodriguez appeared on the show to squeak, in stoic victim mode, "We're not asking for a handout. We don't want to turn in our trucks, because our old trucks work just fine. ... We want to farm."
No, they're not asking for a "handout;" to those guys, subsidies for water and crops are an entitlement.
And how about that "activist" judge? That label shows how cuckoo the distortions have become. Superior Court Judge Oliver Wanger is so conservative that for years, water interests maneuvered to have their cases heard before his court.
He's no activist. He simply faced the truth: The greed of these water users is killing the Delta.
Not just a 3-inch smelt; we're looking at the collapse of longfin, splittail, American shad. Threadfin shad, striped bass, herring, sturgeon, steelhead, all four runs of salmon - everything's dying out there, dying in violation of the law and every rational principle of conservation.
And the agenda of Hannity and his pseudo-parched patriots is not only to continue this destruction but to perpetuate it by overthrowing the law they claim to respect.
For them, the real problem besides the drought is California's seniority system of water rights. They hold junior rights. Rights that entitle them to water only in the wettest years, when there is surplus.
Yet some of the boneheads planted permanent crops such as orchards. A dying orchard looks great on Fox News, especially with farmer Paul Rodriguez puttering past in his old truck.
Hannity, a cardboard idol more concerned with ratings than responsible journalism, cares about farming so much he supports inundating forever world-class farmland in the Delta.
That is what the peripheral canal would do. The pro-canal crew intends to use the canal to the front of the line for steady water entitlements.
I'll give them this: You wouldn't think they could hide an agenda that huge and radical. But they have. They have concealed the whole rotten scheme behind a 3-inch fish.
Delta plan has other risks
Peripheral canal not the only controversial strategy in mind...Alex Breitler
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090923/A_NEWS/909230313/-1/A_NEWS#STS=fzy9s3ti.myj
STOCKTON - The peripheral canal gets all the publicity, but plans to radically revamp the Delta include other controversial and far-reaching strategies - including converting 80,000 acres of farmland into tidal marsh and flood plain habitat over the next four decades.
Farmers and fishermen argued their opposition on both counts Tuesday as the officials behind the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan visited Stockton to share early drafts of the document, which would give those who export water from the Delta permission under federal law to continue killing endangered fish at the giant pumps near Tracy.
Supporters say the plan is the best opportunity to save fish while stabilizing the state's water supply.
But at whose expense?
The plan calls for re-storation of at least 5,000 acres of marshland in the south Delta, the same area where farmer Cecil Rodgers has tilled the ground for four generations.
"This isn't just a wilderness out there," he said. "There are people. Farmers."
A consultant working on the habitat restoration said the state would seek land from willing participants only and would not exercise eminent domain.
Landowners worry, however, that those standards could change if a new Delta governance structure is put in place, as legislators recently tried unsuccessfully to do.
The farmers worry about proposals to move or breach levees and fret that water flooding onto a willing neighbor's land just might seep onto their own.
What's more, the strategy could interfere with San Joaquin County's own habitat conservation plan, which attempts to keep land in farming while providing habitat for critters that crawl or fly.
"We're an agriculture-based county," said Steve Mayo, senior habitat planner with the San Joaquin Council of Governments. "We want active agriculture. That's what we preserve. The restoration being planned is really to take all that agriculture out."
Tuesday's workshop, which attracted close to 200 participants and included an anti-canal rally earlier in the afternoon, addressed a 200-page draft of just one of what will eventually be 13 chapters.
The canal, as usual, generated the most debate. The 49-mile channel would ship Sacramento River water around the estuary, through four tunnels and siphoned underneath eight rivers and streams. Nineteen new bridges would be built for roads and rail, as well as a new forebay to hold water before it's pumped to south San Joaquin Valley agriculture and Southern California.
Supporters say the canal would save fish from getting sucked into those pumps. Opponents say it would cut off the freshwater that is the lifeblood of the Delta.
In addition to the canal and restoring wetland habitat, the plan would attempt to address discharges from wastewater treatment plants, pesticide use by Delta farmers and mercury contamination.
Bay-Delta spokeswoman Karla Nemeth said she understands that the plan is controversial. She acknowledged it is not just a conservation plan but a water supply plan.
A full draft may be released by early next year.
"Folks are going to have all kinds of opportunities down the road" to comment, she said.
San Francisco Chronicle
Difi smacks down DeMint...Carolyn Lochhead, Politics Blog
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=48128
It came as something of a surprise today when a South Carolina Republican began rattling off on the Senate floor statistics about California and its phenomenally productive agriculture sector.
But that's what conservative firebrand Jim DeMint did, waxing eloquent on the enormous market share owned by growers of California tomatoes, lettuce and other vegetables and fruit, by way of arguing a national interest in California water policy.
DeMint offered an amendment on the $32 billion Interior appropriations bill being managed by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, that in effect would have banned water diversions from farmers to aid endangered species. California farmers are warning that they are an endangered species themselves, water shortages being but the latest assault on their existence.
"What started out as a local water problem in California is quickly developing into a food problem for the nation," DeMint said. "This region (California) is vital to our nation's food supply...If we don't address this problem now, not only will thousands of people remain out of work in California, but everyone in the country will pay higher food prices."
Feinstein, managing bill as an Appropriations subcommittee chair, quickly rebuked DeMint for butting into her business, and a very complex topic on which she suggested he may be ignorant.
California water policy "is not an issue in South Carolina, trust me," Feinstein said.
DeMint's newly minted concern about California follows a broadcast by conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity from the Central Valley last week accusing the government of putting fish before food.
Crikey! Real water conservation and efficiency in Australia...Dr. Peter Gleick, President, Pacific Institute
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gleick/detail?entry_id=48164
Regular readers of this blog know my feelings about the potential to improve the efficiency of our water use. Besides being cheaper and more environmentally beneficial than new supply options, efficiency improvements are easier to find. Our work at the Pacific Institute has repeatedly shown that the potential for improving efficiency is vast. Now, my colleague Michael Cohen of the Pacific Institute's Boulder, Colorado office has pointed out to me a new study from Queensland, Australia. This report highlights once again how far we, in the United States, have to go.
Water Number: 34 gallons per day. This is the level to which per capita residential water use in South East Queensland (SEQ), Australia dropped during 2007 and 2008 in the midst of a historically severe drought. Before the drought, Queensland homeowners were using around 70 gallons per person per day. For comparison, the average Californian uses around 135 gallons per person per day in their homes. SEQ includes the city of Brisbane and is home to about 14% of Australia's total population.
Our previous work suggested it was possible to reduce residential (as well as overall urban) water use by a third: this would drop daily Californian use from 135 gallons per person to around 90 -- still 20 gallons per day more than each Queenslanders used before the drought.
So how did they do it? While they developed conservation programs for all water users, part of their efficiency efforts focused on high water users. In 2004-05, over 204,000 households in South East Queensland used more than 800 liters of water per day (around 210 gallons per household -- not per person, but per day). While this amount of water use is already far below what the typical three-or-four-person household in the U.S. uses, water service providers developed special programs to work with these households and helped them take action to reduce water consumption. By June 2008, the number still using more than 800 liters had been reduced to around 53,300 households -- almost a 74% reduction.
These reductions include both permanent improvements in efficiency and temporary conservation efforts involving changing behavior and cutting back on some water uses (like lawns and car washing). But the reductions achieved greatly exceed what the Pacific Institute recommended as easily achievable with current technologies like low-flow toilets, showerheads, and efficient washing machines.
Moreover, the drought has partially lifted in this part of Australia, and the water agencies have eased some of the restrictions. So what's happened? Water use has gone up, but only to 43 gallons per person per day -- still far, far below their pre-drought levels. This indicates that the drastic improvements in water-use efficiency appears to have caught on -- that many Australians have found a way to continue with their lives while using less water.
The Institute's study on urban water use efficiency, Waste Not, Want Not, published in 2003, showed that water use in our residential, commercial, institutional, and industrial sectors could drop more than 30%, cost effectively, with existing technology. Some urban agencies reacted as though we were proposing something impossible, or draconian. Others asked why we were picking on the cities, when agriculture used so much more water.
Our more recent studies on agricultural efficiency potential (More with Less and Sustaining California Agriculture in an Uncertain Future) also identified a vast amount of water that could be saved -- on the order of 17% of current use, with very conservative assumptions. Some irrigation districts, and especially agricultural lobbyists, reacted as though we were, yes, proposing something impossible, or draconian. Others asked why we were picking on farmers, when the cities were obviously so wasteful. And the State of California water "plan" still fails to incorporate this potential in their report.
Other studies at the Institute, focused on the potential in specific regions or cities like Las Vegas, Atlanta, and others have regularly found similar substantial, untapped potential.
Seeing the numbers achieved in Australia -- 43 gallons vs. California's 135, it's hard to feel much sympathy for those who argue we've done all we can do to save water. Some households and farms have made great progress -- no doubt many readers of this blog. Thank you for your efforts. But as a society, we still have a long way to go to really improve the way we use our water.
Feinstein's unnecessary opinion...Editorial
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/23/EDJD19QRPR.DTL&type=printable
Why in the world would Sen. Dianne Feinstein request an "independent review" of the science behind the biological opinions that have reduced San Joaquin Valley farmers' use of Sacramento Delta waters?
Those opinions, which came courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, were completed within the last year and exhaustively peer-reviewed by other scientific agencies.
"We looked at 700 scientific citations. The opinion that we issued in June was based on the most current information," said Maria Rea, supervisor of the Sacramento-area office of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Yes, that's June 2009. So there's absolutely no reason to conduct another review (and waste the $750,000 in taxpayer money that Feinstein has requested for it) except for the fact that certain wealthy farmers - and namely one Beverly Hills billionaire named Stewart Resnick - are scrounging for a way to pump more water out of the Delta.
The Obama administration wouldn't do it. On Sept. 1, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent a letter to the Department of the Interior requesting "re-consultation" of the opinions. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wrote back, "the law allows for re-consultation only where new scientific information has become available." Now is not that time.
But Resnick and others wouldn't be deterred. Resnick turned to Feinstein, who's been one of the many beneficiaries of his campaign largesse over the years, and she has sent yet another request to the Department of the Interior, noting that "time is of the essence."
Time is of the essence all right - especially for the Delta's collapsing fish populations. For years, pumping has damaged the Delta's entire ecological system, endangering not just the fish, but imposing long-term risks for human health. Another study isn't going to change the facts on the ground - and in the water.
Why in the world would Sen. Dianne Feinstein request an "independent review" of the science behind the biological opinions that have reduced San Joaquin Valley farmers' use of Sacramento Delta waters?
Feinstein seeks to benefit Drakes oyster farm...Martin Griffin
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/23/EDQH19QPPH.DTL&type=printable
Sen. Dianne Feinstein needs to remove her rider in the Interior Appropriations Bill that wrongly benefits Kevin Lunny's private Drakes Bay Oyster Company. She's extending his lease for 10 years in Drakes Estero, the public wilderness heart of the Point Reyes National Seashore.
The removal will force the end of Lunny's lease in 2012 as intended by Congress in 1976, returning the public trust tidelands to wilderness status. Private inholdings of this sort are a grave threat to the integrity of our beloved national parks.
Her rider sets a dangerous precedent opening the seashore to private opportunists. Lunny's lease extension may be as risky as allowing citizens to carry guns in the national parks.
Magnificent Drakes Estero shelters the largest rookery of breeding and pupping harbor seals on the North Coast. It is a refuge for thousands of migratory ocean birds, its mud shoals home to hundreds of species of invertebrates, nourished by cold tidal water from the ocean beyond. This remote paradise is spoiled by the traffic trying to reach Lunny's misplaced oyster bar.
I strongly support family farms within the seashore but oppose shellfish farms in the wildlife-rich tidelands of Drakes Estero. While oysters may be a moneymaker, there are other waters - Tomales Bay - where oysters may be grown and sold just as profitably. Lunny's is the only private tidelands-based industry in the park.
The fight to save Point Reyes and West Marin (1957-76) was a major land-use battle to prevent its Los Angelization. The public was thrilled when state Sen. Peter Behr in 1972 collected 500,000 signatures, persuading President Richard Nixon to complete the purchase of the National Seashore. The 1976 Point Reyes Wilderness Protection Act set aside areas within the seashore for federal wilderness status: limited access, no development, no commerce. It stated: "In terms of preserving and protecting marine life systems, Drakes Estero and Limantour Estero could well be considered the most significant ecological units within the national seashore."
Some 16 major environmental organizations including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resource Defense Council, the Wilderness Society and Marin Audubon Society are profoundly saddened by the prospect of Drakes Estero - so close to being protected by the Wilderness Act - falling back under the wheels of private commercial exploitation.
It's ironic that the adjoining Limantour Estero enjoys full wilderness status.
Johnson Oyster Company was due to terminate its lease in 2012. Lunny knew this when he bought the company. Isn't the effort to extend this lease a violation of good faith and public trust?
Shouldn't this valuable gift to a private individual of public lands, worth millions of dollars, be fully debated by Congress? As we know, riders are slipped into bills to avoid public and congressional debate.
The scientific studies that Feinstein ordered on Drakes Estero do not justify this rider. This is a political act.
Please view Ken Burns' new documentary, so aptly titled. "National Parks: America's Best Idea."
Martin Griffin is the co-founder of Audubon Canyon Ranch and the Environmental Forum of Marin, and author of "Saving the Marin-Sonoma Coast."
Opponents sue to stop Marin desalination plant...AP...9-22-09
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/09/22/state/n143400D02.DTL&type=printable
San Rafael, Calif. (AP) -- Opponents of a plan to turn millions of gallons of salt water from San Francisco Bay into drinking water for residents of Marin County have sued to stop the project.
The lawsuit filed Monday against the Marin Municipal Water District says the desalination project would increase energy consumption, pollute the bay and fuel population growth.
The water district board last month approved a desalination facility that could convert 5 million gallons of bay water into drinking water each day.
Officials say the county needs a new source of water that is drought-proof. They dismiss the lawsuit as without merit.
But San Anselmo Councilman Ford Greene, one of the plaintiffs in the case, says the county should focus on conservation.
Spot for S.F. high-speed rail station up in air...John Coté, Rachel Gordon
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/23/BAMJ19QIMR.DTL&type=printable
The plan is still for high-speed trains to whisk passengers into a sleek, modern rail station in San Francisco by 2020.
The question is where that station will be.
Ballot measures, years of planning and millions of dollars in prep work have all put the station at the Transbay Terminal at First and Mission streets.
Now that location is in question as the California High-Speed Rail Authority explores three alternatives amid questions about capacity of the Transbay Terminal during peak hours.
Local officials worry that uncertainty could cost them federal stimulus funds that will be awarded in a few weeks.
While the California High-Speed Rail Authority maintains the Transbay Terminal is its preferred site, high-speed rail officials say state and federal environmental laws require that they consider alternatives.
"We're following the law," said Quentin Kopp, a retired judge and former state senator who sits on the rail board.
The state attorney general's Office agrees, but some San Francisco officials dispute that position. The Transbay Joint Powers Authority says exploring alternative station sites is "legally improper" and unnecessary.
The alternate sites are: ending the high-speed line at a revamped rail terminal at the Caltrain station at Fourth and King streets, splitting high-speed rail traffic during peak times between the Transbay Terminal and the Fourth and King station, and locating the station on Beale Street.
The Beale Street option resurrects an idea that was rejected in 2002 to locate the terminal on almost three city blocks bounded roughly by Beale, Main, Mission and Harrison streets, perpendicular to the proposed transit center. The site had been the city's preferred option for a new terminal in the late 1990s until AC Transit sued to have it changed.
Arguments for Beale Street
Art Gensler, founder of the Gensler global architecture and planning firm, is a major proponent of the Beale Street plan. Supporters argue it can handle more trains, with 12 tracks and six platforms, and cost less.
But a Transbay Joint Powers Authority analysis said that location would cost about $4 billion more and calls for tunneling that could undermine the Bay Bridge.
The option would also require acquiring federal land and demolishing a 287-unit condominium complex valued at more than $140 million, according to a San Francisco Redevelopment Agency analysis.
"Every study has indicated that it's not a feasible or desirable site," said Adam Alberti, a spokesman for the Transbay Joint Powers Authority. The proposal "is not based on anything other than somebody's desire to move the station."
Alberti said recent design changes for the First and Mission site address capacity concerns.
The debate over where to locate the station comes as the Federal Railroad Administration is expected to announce soon which states will receive the highly competitive stimulus-fund grants for high-speed rail.
California requested $1.1 billion in initial funding, $400 million of which would help fund the Transbay Terminal project in San Francisco.
Cost for high-speed trains
California's plan for trains running from Southern California to San Francisco and Sacramento at speeds up to 220 mph would cost an estimated $40 billion.
In addition to the $1.1 billion in funding already requested, Mehdi Morshed, executive director of the High-Speed Rail Authority, said Monday he plans to seek another $4.6 billion in federal funds.
San Francisco officials don't want to see their plan snubbed because the High-Speed Rail Authority has not settled on the station location. They say it is important to pursue federal grants with a unified voice.
"This is not the time to revisit the issue," said Michael Cohen, head of the city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, said the High-Speed Rail Authority didn't have much choice.
"If there's a better way to skin the cat, you sure want to find it," he said.
UC campuses brace for faculty-student walkout...Nanette Asimov
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/23/BAG119QLBQ.DTL&type=printable
University of California administrators say they want to keep things running as smoothly as possible Thursday - the first day of school at many campuses - when many faculty, staff members and students are expected to walk out of classes, host rallies and stage a systemwide labor strike for technical employees.
UC is facing one of the worst years in its history as it tries to close a budget gap of more than $750 million in lost revenue from the state and increased expenses. To balance the budget, administrators have ordered unpaid furloughs for nonunion employees, staff layoffs and course cutbacks, and are expected to raise tuition for next year, making it 45 percent higher than last year's student fees.
Those actions have infuriated employees and students.
"There is a lot of anger and frustration, and people need to vent that," said Dan Mogulof, a spokesman for UC Berkeley, where classes have been in session for a month. "The main concern is that the faculty are expected to meet their obligations to students - giving them notice about course cancellations and changes, and making sure that the course material is covered."
It's a sentiment echoed by administrators across the 10-campus system. The last thing they want Thursday are empty classrooms - or rooms filled with students with no one at the podium to teach them. But it's a possibility on many campuses.
Since late August, some UC faculty members have been urging all instructors to walk off the job Sept. 24 to protest the university's handling of its crisis and a policy that furlough days not be taken on days they teach. More than 1,000 professors and associate professors across all campuses have signed a petition urging the walkout.
Other faculty members at UC Berkeley have taken a different approach, forming a group called Save the University. They support their colleagues who plan to walk out, but will hold educational forums on UC's financial troubles from the perspective that there are better ways to bolster the university.
Even so, many of the same faculty members may cancel classes or hold them off campus to avoid crossing a picket line by the University Professional and Technical Employees union, which plans a one-day strike because it has been working without a contract for 18 months.
Meanwhile, some student groups have issued statements in support of their instructors.
Amid all of this, campus administrators say they are hoping for business as usual.
"I think that most of our classes will go off without a hitch," said Patricia Turner, vice provost for undergraduate studies at UC Davis, which starts school Thursday.
"We completely support freedom of speech," she added.
It's a message the campuses are sending to the protesters - even as they urge students and faculty to go to class.
"I understand that on some campuses, including ours, labor actions could impact the opening of classes this Thursday," UC Santa Cruz Provost David Kliger said in a message to all employees sent Monday. "I hope that those who participate in this action try to minimize disruption to our students - the people we are here to serve."
Some faculty members want a different message.
"I'd like them to talk to the students who are going to have to drop out because they can't meet the (expected) tuition increases," said Shannon Steen, a UC Berkeley associate professor of theater. "These are the students who are going to be hurt the most."
Contra Costa Times
Board approves development on San Bruno Mountain despite threat to endangered butterflies...Julia Scott, San Mateo County Times
http://www.contracostatimes.com/environment/ci_13396932
REDWOOD CITY — Ignoring protests from environmentalists, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to award a permit that would allow development of a section of San Bruno Mountain known to contain endangered butterfly habitat.
The controversial vote was one of the final hoops Brookfield Homes will have to jump through on its way to breaking ground on a 71-home subdivision on the Northeast ridge of San Bruno Mountain in Brisbane. The county, which protects and restores parts of San Bruno Mountain, was asked to amend its Habitat Conservation Plan to allow some endangered Callippe silverspot butterflies to be killed to make way for the single-family homes. The permit next goes before the Brisbane City Council for final approval.
Opponents of the project have fought hard to protect the butterfly and its habitat, the final known remaining habitat for the Callippe silverspot on earth. An extensive letter-writing campaign orchestrated by San Bruno Mountain Conservancy resulted in 180 letters to the county, and many Brisbane residents spoke with great passion at Tuesday's meeting (one Brisbane resident was in favor). Nevertheless, no one seemed surprised by the Supervisors' vote.
"It's just another major chip away at the habitat of an already severely imperiled species," said Philip Batchelder, a board member of San Bruno Mountain Conservancy, speaking after the meeting.
The project has in fact been planned for years and is part of a much larger development on the mountain's Northeast ridge, a development environmental advocates have fought tooth and nail since the 1980s. The listing of the Callippe silverspot as a federally endangered species had the effect of cutting the planned development down from 151 homes to 71 homes on 20 acres, which will be built as one neighborhood instead of two. Another 20 acres next to the construction site where more homes would once have been will be conserved as butterfly habitat.
Those concessions seemed to influence the supervisors' decision to approve the special permit, as did a promise by Brookfield Homes to give a $4 million endowment to the county for natural habitat restoration elsewhere on San Bruno Mountain. The endowment would triple the amount of money the county could spend each year on habitat maintenance.
"There's been inadequate funding in the past to protect the butterfly — I believe this funding will help us do that (better)," said Supervisor Mark Church. "This is a compromise. We're giving up a lesser habitat and gaining a significant habitat."
Kevin Pohlson, vice president of Brookfield Homes for the Bay Area, reaffirmed his funding commitment at Tuesday's meeting and seemed anxious to gain approval after more than a decade of delays. "Our developments have been reduced in half. The process has been lengthy, very difficult and has affected our property greatly," he said.
A total of 476 Callippe silverspot butterflies were counted on San Bruno Mountain in 2008 by a firm hired by the county to monitor their population. Project opponents dispute the scientific process used to reach those conclusions, just as they dispute a finding of "no significant impact" issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this May — the equivalent of their stamp of approval for the development plan, notwithstanding any effects on the butterflies.
Batchelder and his group want a full environmental review of several questions they say were glossed over in all the reports prepared for Tuesday's meeting, and they are prepared to sue to force the county to conduct one. Paul Carroll, the attorney for San Bruno Mountain Conservancy, submitted a letter to the county on Tuesday that asserts the county violated the California Environmental Quality Act by not ordering a full Environmental Impact Report based on new evidence that suggests the development could destroy a crucial pathway for the Callippe silverspot by fragmenting it with homes.
Batchelder said the group is discussing whether or not to mount a lawsuit against the county over the matter. If so, they have 30 days to file a notice of intent to sue.
"What we're really trying to draw attention to is that the development as proposed would severely encroach on the ability of the butterfly population on the Northeast ridge to migrate to the rest of the habitat on the mountain," said Batchelder.
County planner Sam Herzberg said butterfly advocates are making a big deal over a development that would remove no more than 1.7 percent of Callippe silverspot habitat.
"We know what significant habitat we need to protect, and we're dealing with the habitat restoration we need to do. The Callippe silverspot is doing well on the mountain overall," Herzberg said.
Herzberg added that people often forget that 2,828 acres of San Bruno Mountain are protected as permanent conserved parkland thanks to the county's Habitat Conservation Plan, which was created in 1982.
"Before the HCP was adopted, the entire mountain was proposed for development," he said. "Other mountaintops in the Bay Area have been completely developed."
Hanford Sentinel
Kings County declared disaster area for drought
http://hanfordsentinel.com/articles/2009/09/23/breakingnews/
doc4ab8fb0785982501346452.txt
The U.S. Agriculture Department has declared Kings County and 20 other California counties “primary natural disaster areas” because of drought, according to a press release issued today.
Kern County was included.
Farmers in the listed counties immediately qualify for disaster assistance in the form of low-interest loans.
Another 29 counties qualify for the assistance because they are contiguous. Fresno and Tulare counties are among them. That brings the total to 50 out of 58 counties falling under the category of drought disaster areas.
Pasadena Star-News
Walnut agrees to settlement terms in NFL stadium lawsuit...James Wagner...james.wagner@sgvn.com
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_13395720#
The Walnut City Council in a closed-door meeting Tuesday night agreed to settlement terms with Majestic Realty Co. and its proposed National Football League stadium in Industry
The council voted 3-1 to accept a settlement, essentially ending its legal challenge of the 75,000-seat stadium complex in neighboring Industry and providing a renewed sign that professional football may return to the Los Angeles area.
Walnut filed the lawsuit in March to prevent the 600-acre development, seeking a new environmental-impact study. Councilman Joaquin Lim, an outspoken critic of the proposal, was the dissenting vote. Councilman Tom King abstained because of a potential conflict of interest.
The terms of the settlement won't be released until the Industry City Council votes on whether to approve it at its meeting Thursday, according to a confidentiality agreement.
"In light of the pending environmental exemption, I think it's a good agreement. I wouldn't have recommended it if I didn't think it was," said Jan Chatten-Brown, Walnut's attorney for the stadium lawsuit. Majestic Realty, the developer of the proposed stadium complex, and Industry had been in talks with Walnut and a citizens' group over the project since Sept. 14.
Majestic Realty Vice President John Semcken declined to comment Tuesday, citing a pending vote by Industry and ongoing negotiations with a citizens group that also filed a lawsuit against the project.
The negotiations, supervised by former California attorney general John Van de Kamp, were mandated by state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg more than a week ago.
Steinberg postponed a Sept. 11 Senate vote on a bill that would have granted an environmental exemption for Majestic Realty's planned sports complex.
Majestic and its owner, billionaire Ed Roski Jr., had been lobbying hard for weeks for relaxation of the California Environmental Quality Act, the environmental laws governing the development. On Sept. 10, the Assembly overwhelmingly approved the bill before Steinberg pulled it.
The first round of settlement talks broke off in May when Majestic Realty accused Walnut of requesting nearly $300 million in items unrelated to the stadium and a $500 million stadium roof.
The Senate vowed to consider the bill in a special session before the end of the month if negotiations failed, a move some Walnut officials said forced their hand.
With a look of disappointment, Lim said Tuesday night he opposed the settlement "because it's so wrong morally and wrong ethically - it's money politics."
Mayor Mary Su said Walnut had no choice but to settle.
"The choice was to get the maximum we could to protect our mitigation," she said Tuesday after the nearly hourlong closed session.
One hurdle still remains for Majestic Realty - negotiations with a group of Walnut residents, called the Citizens for Community Preservation Inc.
The group filed a lawsuit in March against the project on similar grounds as Walnut. Brigid Bjerke, a plaintiff in that case, said Monday that Walnut residents are still in negotiations with the developer and Industry.
The group was steadfast in its efforts to "preserve the environmental laws of CEQA," she said. Lim said he hopes to continue to fight the planned sports complex, even as a private citizen.
"The only hope is the citizens' lawsuit," he said.  
Washington Times
Senate rejects measure to turn California water on...Amanda Carpenter, The Back Story 
http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/back-story/2009/sep/22/senate-votes-down-measure-to-turn-california-water/?feat=home_blogs
The Senate rejected an amendment proposed by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, to turn water pumps back on in the struggling farming area of California’s Central Valley that were shut down earlier this year to save a three-inch fish.
This is the latest in a series of efforts in recent weeks to undo a biological opinion from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that required water to be cut off to the valley to protect the Delta Smelt, a small fish that resembles a large minnow. 
Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, who represents some of the valley, has been trying to reverse the measure but has been unable to convince Democrats in the House to hold the floor vote neccesary to do so. For their part, many Democrats attribute the area’s farming woes to recent droughts and say giving the valley more water isn't the right solution.
Fox News personality Sean Hannity took his highly-rated prime time television program there earlier this month to interview the farmers who were asking the government to get the water back. This brought national attention to a problem that had only been covered by a few outlets, like the Wall Street Journal.  Mr. Hannity called his program “The Valley that Hope Forgot” and slammed the Democrats in power for protecting fish at the expense of suffering farmers.
Mr. DeMint put the question to a test on Tuesday evening by proposing adding a measure to the Senate's Interior spending bill to prohibit any federal funds from being used to restrict the water supply in that area.
It was voted down 61-36.
California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein voted against it and likened Mr. DeMint's amendment to let more water flow in her state to the sneak attack the Japanese made on Pearl Harbor.
“I don’t quite understand what is going on here,” she said on the floor of the Senate. “And that is the reason for my objection. I’m not going to put the state of California and the Bay Delta in the threat of another lawsuit. We have enough already and water is a huge, difficult and complicated issue...in a way this a kind of Pearl Harbor, when everything we are trying to do, to work together, to put Interior in the lead, not to handcuff Interior and that is the reason I object to the amendment."
A video of her statement, posted by Mr. DeMint's office can be viewed HERE.
Mr. DeMint seemed to think she was making it too complicated. “Unlike most of the big government solutions coming out of Washington that cost taxpayers billions, this amendment doesn’t cost a single penny,” said Mr. DeMint in statement. “We can turn the water on so thousands of Central Valley farmers can get back to work without creating another federal program or bailing out another industry.”
New York Times
Sen. Feinstein Demands Outside Review of Calif. Water Restrictions...COLIN SULLIVAN of Greenwire
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/09/23/23greenwire-sen-feinstein-demands-outside-review-of-calif-75517.html?sq=endangered species&st=cse&scp=11&pagewanted=print
SAN FRANCISCO -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein is pressing the Obama administration to take a step back from California's drought emergency to authorize a third-party scientific review of two federal biological opinions that restrict water deliveries to farmers in the Central Valley.
In a recent letter to the secretaries of Commerce and Interior, the California Democrat requested an immediate National Academy of Sciences study of the bi-ops, which many in the agriculture industry blame for shutting down water flows from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and adding to economic woes in the state. The bi-ops were triggered by the Endangered Species Act to protect salmon and delta smelt in the sprawling delta region.
"The National Academy of Sciences, through the National Research Council (the operating arm of the academy), is the only body whose views will be respected by all the relevant parties as a truly independent voice," Feinstein wrote.
Attached to Feinstein's request was a letter from Stewart Resnick, a billionaire from Southern California who owns and operates some of the state's largest farming operations. Resnick's letter slams Obama officials for rejecting attempts by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) to prod Interior and Commerce into rewriting, or "reconsulting," the bi-ops.
"In a blatant attempt to deflect scrutiny of the federal wildlife agencies' roles in exacerbating the state's severe drought, the [agencies] minimized the very real impact of regulatory-induced water shortages and misstated the law regarding reinitiation of consultation," Resnick wrote.
Resnick went on to cite "sloppy science" at the federal level and argued for a fast six-month review by NAS.
Schwarzenegger had asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service to reconsider the bi-ops. But Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, in a Sept. 3 letter to the governor, said a reconsultation is required "only where new scientific information has become available."
"The FWS and NMFS determinations were completed within the last 12 months, and we are not aware of any new scientific information or infrastructure or operational changes that would allow for a 'reconsultation,'" the secretaries wrote.
The dueling letters highlight the severity of the water shortages as well as the sensitive political atmosphere surrounding the ESA-imposed restrictions. Late last week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack declared 50 of California's 58 counties federal drought disaster areas, but his declaration -- which makes emergency loans available to hard-hit farmers -- stopped short of the more comprehensive federal assistance sought by many in the state (E&ENews PM, Sept. 22).
The Feinstein request also comes as the national media has begun turning its attention to the complicated web of water-supply problems facing the agriculture industry in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys. Last week, FOX News host Sean Hannity filmed his cable television show on location in Fresno County and charged the Obama administration with putting environmental interests above those of the farmers.
Environmentalists have since shot back at Hannity for, in their view, spreading misinformation about the crisis. They say Hannity and others have overestimated the amount of water that has been placed off-limits by court-ordered bi-ops meant to protect endangered delta smelt and salmon.
Some environmentalists also had tough words for Feinstein and questioned why the senator chose to attach Resnick's letter to her request. They noted that Resnick, a prominent campaign contributor, is involved in several lawsuits challenging the water restrictions and has much to gain by decreasing the limits.
"It's pretty unusual for a member of Congress to tie a letter like that to a Cabinet secretary," said Glen Spain, of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "[Resnick] is angling to try to second-guess the bi-ops to get more leverage in court."
Spain, whose group represents commercial fishing interests, added that the bi-ops have been peer-reviewed and that nothing has changed of late to necessitate a further review. "This idea of going back and getting a second or third or fourth opinion is just an effort to get new answers," he said.
Feinstein's office shot back that the NAS review might help cut through the confusion created by the 13 lawsuits that have been filed against the bi-ops.
"The NAS study could very well uphold the pumping restrictions, or it could determine that they are not based on the best available science. There is no predetermined outcome," said Laura Wilkinson, a spokeswoman for Feinstein. "But Senator Feinstein believes that an independent review is an appropriate step and should satisfy any lingering questions about whether the federal government has done its due diligence."
A spokeswoman at Interior said the agency is reviewing Feinstein's request.
Regulations Might Be Needed for 104 Chemicals Found in Tap Water, EPA Says...TARYN LUNTZ, Greenwire
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/09/23/23greenwire-regulations-might-be-needed-for-104-chemicals-82391.html?sq=epa&st=cse&scp=10&pagewanted=print
U.S. EPA has found 104 chemicals that might require regulations to keep them out of tap water -- the longest list of potential contaminants ever compiled by the agency.
A 1996 law requires EPA to evaluate possible tap-water pollutants every five years and make regulatory determinations for at least five of them.
The new list -- the agency's third -- includes pesticides, commercial chemicals, disinfection byproducts and, for the first time, pharmaceuticals.
"The thing that they did differently this time was they looked at a much bigger universe to start out with," said Mae Wu, a staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "They kind of looked at every potential chemical that could end up in drinking water. It's a lot more extensive than the first two lists."
But the agency has yet to regulate a single contaminant that has appeared on any of the lists, Wu said.
"There are some flaws in the process," she said. "They just have to make a determination on five of them. That decision can be that they're not going to do anything about it."
The agency monitors 91 contaminants in tap water, with most chosen for regulation decades ago.
EPA said it evaluated approximately 7,500 contaminants for the new list, ultimately selecting 104 chemicals and 12 microbes based on their potential to pose health risks through drinking water exposure.
The agency said it will continue to research the contaminants and will determine by 2013 whether to propose drinking water regulations for some of them.
Judge Rejects Approval of Biotech Sugar Beets...ANDREW POLLAC
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/business/23beet.html?sq=beets&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print
A federal judge has ruled that the government failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of genetically engineered sugar beets before approving the crop for cultivation in the United States. The decision could lead to a ban on the planting of the beets, which have been widely adopted by farmers.
In a decision issued Monday, Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco, said that the Agriculture Department should have done an environmental impact statement. He said it should have assessed the consequences from the likely spread of the genetically engineered trait to other sugar beets or to the related crops of Swiss chard and red table beets.
The decision echoes another ruling two years ago by a different judge in the same court involving genetically engineered alfalfa. In that case, the judge later ruled that farmers could no longer plant the genetically modified alfalfa until the Agriculture Department wrote the environmental impact statement. Two years later, there is still no such assessment and the alfalfa, with rare exceptions, is not being grown.
In the new case, Judge White has not yet decided on the remedy. A meeting to begin that phase of the case is scheduled for Oct. 30.
But the plaintiffs in the lawsuit said they would press to ban planting of the biotech beets, arguing that Judge White’s decision effectively revoked their approval and made them illegal to grow outside of field trials.
“We expect the same result here as we got in alfalfa,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group that was also involved in the alfalfa lawsuit. “It will halt almost any further planting and sale because it’s no longer an approved crop.”
The Center for Food Safety was joined in the suit by the Sierra Club, the Organic Seed Alliance and High Mowing Organic Seeds, a small seed company. The defendant, the Department of Agriculture, said it was reviewing the decision.
Some beet farmers and sugar processors declined to comment Tuesday on the decision, saying they needed more time to analyze it. But they said that the genetically engineered sugar beets had proved immensely popular since first being widely grown in 2008.
The beets contain a bacterial gene licensed by Monsanto that renders them impervious to glyphosate, an herbicide that Monsanto sells as Roundup. That allows the herbicide to kill weeds without harming the crop.
“Growers have embraced this technology,” said Duane Grant, a farmer in Rupert, Idaho, who said industry surveys suggested that 95 percent of the sugar beets planted this year were genetically modified.
Mr. Grant, who is also the chairman of the Snake River Sugar Company, a grower-owned cooperative, said easier weed control allowed farmers to reduce tillage, which in turn saved fuel and fertilizer and reduced erosion.
Mr. Grant, as well as some other growers, sugar processors and seed companies like Monsanto, had sought to intervene in the case. Judge White said that other than filing a friend-of-the-court brief, they could not participate in the phase of the lawsuit examining whether the Agriculture Department fulfilled its obligations under environmental law.
However, those groups are expected be allowed to take part in the next round of the case, involving the remedies. “We’re going to use that opportunity to advocate the need for that technology and vigorously defend our growers’ freedom to plant Roundup Ready sugar beets,” said Luther Markwart, executive vice president for the American Sugarbeet Growers Association.
Beets supply about half the nation’s sugar, with the rest coming from sugar cane. About 10,000 farmers grow about 1.1 million acres of sugar beets, Mr. Markwart said. That makes it a small crop compared to staples like soybeans and corn.
The Agriculture Department did conduct an environmental assessment before approving the genetically engineered beets in 2005 for widespread planting. But the department concluded there would be no significant impact, so a fuller environmental impact statement was not needed.
But Judge White said that the pollen from the genetically engineered crops might spread to non-engineered beets. He said that the “potential elimination of farmer’s choice to grow non-genetically engineered crops, or a consumer’s choice to eat non-genetically engineered food” constituted a significant effect on the environment that necessitated an environmental impact statement.
In March, Judge White had asked the federal government if the Obama administration would take a different stance in the case than the Bush administration had. The new administration said there would be no change.
David Berg, president of American Crystal Sugar Company, the nation’s largest sugar beet processor, said food companies had accepted sugar from the biotech beets. “They’ve been a big nonevent in terms of customer acceptance,” he said.