9-30-09

 
9-30-09
Merced Sun-Star
Wal-Mart distribution center: Appeals period begins
Opponents have one month to file lawsuits to stop the project...SCOTT JASON
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1086257.html
For the next month, it's a waiting game.
Opponents of the Wal-Mart distribution center have 30 days to file an appeal challenging the Merced City Council's approval of the project.
Leaders with the Merced Alliance for Responsible Growth, the main anti-distribution center group, haven't indicated whether they'll pursue a lawsuit. While some have charged their attorneys are being paid by outside interests, the group's leaders, Tom Grave and Kyle Stockard, maintain they're working pro bono.
Business community members publicly appealed for the alliance to accept the public's support of the center and keep it out of litigation.
Wal-Mart spokesman Aaron Rios said Tuesday the company is prepared to defend the project in court. That would add delays that could range from one to two years.
On the hope it would move rapidly forward, some area contractors are drafting bids to help build the 1.2 million-square-foot center on 230 acres.
Matt Fry, with Power Plus, drove to the distribution center site in the morning to get an idea of the area.
His plan is to send a bid to the general contractor, whenever it's picked.
Power Plus provides electric hookups to construction areas, which includes tapping the nearest transformer or bringing out generators, he said.
It opened a Fresno office two years ago, and he's trying to build a customer base in trying economic times. The distribution center is a major opportunity.
"I want to get in on that as quickly as I can," Fry said.
He said he understood arguments for and against the project, which he ultimately supported. "We need jobs and a place for commerce to occur," he noted.
Dan Peterson, a Merced dirt grader and paver since 1996, said he's starved for work and wants a chance to bid on Wal-Mart's project. During the housing bubble, he employed a handful of employees. Now, it's just him.
He moved dirt last spring on Foster Poultry Farm's wastewater treatment project. Other than that, work's been scarce. "There's probably no one hurting worse than us," he said. "(Merced) was the hottest area, and now it's probably the coldest."
Contractors interested in bidding on the center must become authorized by Wal-Mart, Rios said. He said they should go to www.walmartrealty.com for more information.
If no lawsuit is filed, Wal-Mart will need to submit all its final plans for review by city staff to move the project forward, Planning Manager Kim Espinosa said.
It will probably take a couple months for all the plans to be reviewed and approved, she said. Then a building permit would be issued.
And some contractor in need of a job can break ground.
Mike Tharp: New sticker reads, 'Save the humans'...Mike Tharp, Executive Editor...9-26-09
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/115/v-print/story/1079518.html
We live in a desert.
Not just us Mercedians. Not just folks on the edges of Death Valley or the Mojave or the Salton Sea.
Everybody in California.
The Golden State would have stayed a coastal and mountain redoubt for settlers except for the mammoth man-made water projects we all learned about from our history books.
Movies like "Chinatown" and books like "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner have chronicled the water wars we've waged with one another and Mother Nature for more than 150 years.
"If the contrived flow of water should somehow just stop," Reisner wrote in a later book, "A Dangerous Place," then "California's economy, which was worth about a trillion dollars as the new millennium dawned, would implode like a neutron star."
Now we Mercedians are involved in another water war. Our people on the West Side and next door in Fresno County, especially the town of Mendota, are fighting for their lives and livelihoods because of drought and water policies laid down by the state and the feds.
The stakes became as clear as a desert sunrise on a recent two-and-a-half-hour airplane ride with Gail McCullough. The pilot, who grew up on her daddy's farm at Red Top Ranch, 17 miles south of Merced, flew us in her 1957 single-engine Cessna 170B over the khaki-colored fields, parched in the morning sun.
It reminded me of flying over Iraq.
Gail, a Realtor and well-respected pilot at airports all over the state, wanted me to see -- with a 360-degree, 1,000-foot perspective -- what's happening on and to the ground. Isolated tractors tilled tan fields, leaving dust in their wake that looked like smoke or a brown wind sock. Hay bales resembled Legos near the Harris Ranch feedlot. Bone-white alkali deposits settled like waves on the surface of the soil.
"Nobody can afford to drill down and get water," Gail said. "It would cost them thousands a month."
And in a "Sun Rises in East" headline, politics has imposed its own rules of engagement in the latest campaign. Thanks to our Washington-based McClatchy reporter Mike Doyle's superb dispatches, we know how the Beltway dust-wrestling has complicated any immediate solution to what our farmers and ranchers need -- water.
Just plain water.
The political dynamic would make a dull yarn, except for its importance. Grandstanding by our two U.S. senators and their House Democratic counterparts on one side, and Republicans such as Rep. Devin Nunes and, improbably, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, on the other, has shed more heat than light on the issue.
It's much more complex than the lectern rhetoric, but one critical factor in the equation is a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service "biological opinion" promulgated last December. It "regulated and reduced water flowing into the San Joaquin Valley for the protection of the Delta smelt (a fish)," according to a news release from DeMint's office.
In June the National Marine Fisheries Service issued another biological opinion that "included salmon, steelhead, green sturgeon and killer whales endangered by release of water in the San Joaquin Valley," the DeMint news release added.
Five bills and a financial package were introduced in Sacramento before the electeds slunk home. All claimed to be fixes to our water problem.
In still more simplistic algebra, the latest water war pits the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and environmentalists on one side of the equation and those who want to repeal or suspend the ESA -- most of our farmers and ranchers -- on the other.
A UC Davis study in May estimated that our three-year-long drought led to a loss of $630 million and 35,000 jobs and 450,000 acres fallowed in the Valley. The study estimated total income lost from the drought at around $830 million. Mendota almond grower Shawn Coburn told The Associated Press, "If you like foreign oil, you're going to love foreign food."
The Pacific Institute's Peter H. Glieck tried to debunk what he called "myths" about the problems facing farmers and ranchers. "It's not the fish," he wrote, arguing that if there had been no court order to protect fish, water deliveries to the Valley would be only 5 percent higher.
While hunched in Gail McCullough's passenger seat, I remembered a story I wrote a long time ago. It was about coyote predation on sheep in the West. One of the places I wound up was the University of Wyoming, Laramie. I met the guy in charge of the Wildlife Science department.
He gave me some scholarly takes on coyotes killing sheep in the state. Then, thankfully, he walked me down the hall to the office of Doug Crowe. Doug was finishing a Ph.D in wildlife biology. He was also a guide for elk hunters.
The chairman introduced me and asked Doug if he'd talk with me and show me around. His cowboy boots resting on top of his desk, he looked at me over a Wyatt Earp mustache.
"Maybe," he drawled, "if I like him."
I still don't know what test I passed, but Doug led me to his pickup. Off we went into the meadows and hills outside Laramie. He talked coyotes.
"They're so clever," he said in a quote I used in the story, "that if one was on a tennis court, he could hide behind the ball."
As we juddered along the dirt roads, Doug waxed a little philosophical. He was talking about species evolution and extinction. This was an academic with a 30.06 rifle in a gun rack behind us.
"There!" he suddenly whispered and pointed out my window as he stopped the truck. Maybe 300 yards away in tall green grass, a gray shape was surfing. Up. Down. Up. Down. Its tail following like a flag.
"He's mousing," Doug said. The coyote leapt a couple yards in the air, then landed with both forepaws together. He was flushing field mice for a snack.
We watched this graceful ballet for a few minutes. Then Doug slammed his palm against his driver's side door. The coyote disappeared like wind rippling the tall grass.
On the way back, Doug Crowe told me one of those truths that stay with you the rest of your life. "Extinction is normal," he said. "It's natural. About 250 million years ago, 90 percent of all species were wiped out. Always been that way. Always will be."
At first that sounded like heresy to the first environmental writer the Topeka Capital-Journal ever hired. To someone who as a boy had stepped over any ant trail in his path. Whose parents had considered littering a venial sin.
But the more I thought about it, the more I knew Doug Crowe was right. Sure, we humans can and should try to prevent the annihilation of, say, the black rhino or the snow leopard.
But ours is but a finger in the dike of evolution.
When it comes to picking whether to protect a fresh-water species or to help an almond grower in Mendota survive, here's where I come out:
Save the human.
So I favor suspending the ESA. Look hard at its provisions. Keep those that accommodate Americans' livelihoods vs. twisting human laws into knots that won't -- in the long, long run -- save a fairy shrimp or a smelt.
Like affirmative action (which is a policy, not a law), the ESA has outlived its usefulness. Rewrite it in a sensible, reasonable way. Food, jobs and human habitat are on the line.
I'll take us.
"Fish are important," Gail said as we headed back to Merced. Most of the horizon stretching from the Sierra was cupped in a purple haze. "But people have to make a living."
Otherwise, there'll be one more endangered species.
Badlands Journal
Response to a Sun-Star editorial...Bill Hatch
http://www.badlandsjournal.com/
Merced Sun-Star Executive Editor Mike Tharp flew part of the Westside in a private plane with a realtor/Westside rancher named Gail McCullough and came back with revelations. It reminded him of Iraq, where he seems to need to go, whenever the reality of Merced and the San Joaquin Valley overwhelm him, to find refreshment in the Pentagon propaganda mill. You can sugar-coat failure with belief but it is still failure, out there on the imperial frontier or here at home. 
He begins by announcing, “We live in a desert,” then extends the sentence to include everyone in California. But, I didn’t imagine dry-farming orchards on the coast for a decade. Tharp must be writing about Los Angeles. 
The Golden State would have stayed a coastal and mountain redoubt for settlers except for the mammoth man-made water projects we all learned about from our history books. 
Actually, the San Joaquin Valley contained one of the largest lakes in the country at one time, and the history of California didn’t begin with the settlers, even in “our" history books. 
"If the contrived flow of water should somehow just stop," Reisner wrote in a later book, "A Dangerous Place," then "California's economy, which was worth about a trillion dollars as the new millennium dawned, would implode like a neutron star."
Yes, and Reisner’s point was that California’s economy is essentially, basically, and fundamentally unsustainable, nothing but a pawn for finance, insurance and real estate special interests. 
It reminded me of flying over Iraq.
Gail, a Realtor and well-respected pilot at airports all over the state, wanted me to see -- with a 360-degree, 1,000-foot perspective -- what's happening on and to the ground. Isolated tractors tilled tan fields, leaving dust in their wake that looked like smoke or a brown wind sock. Hay bales resembled Legos near the Harris Ranch feedlot. Bone-white alkali deposits settled like waves on the surface of the soil.
"Nobody can afford to drill down and get water," Gail said. "It would cost them thousands a month."
And what else is new about the Westside in September, any September? The history of the Westside and of the San Joaquin Valley is not going to improve by total ignorance of its human and natural reality.
Tharp’s core argument is this: 
Sure, we humans can and should try to prevent the annihilation of, say, the black rhino or the snow leopard.
But ours is but a finger in the dike of evolution.
When it comes to picking whether to protect a fresh-water species or to help an almond grower in Mendota survive, here's where I come out:
Save the human.
So I favor suspending the ESA. Look hard at its provisions. Keep those that accommodate Americans' livelihoods vs. twisting human laws into knots that won't -- in the long, long run -- save a fairy shrimp or a smelt.
The black rhino and the snow leopard are glamorous prey species far away, out there on the dark continents, where imperial plutocrats sat around their hunting camps swilling whisky and gin and reading Rudyard Kipling to each other.
But ours is but a finger in the dike of evolution.
How poetical. How sentimental. What crap. Let run the dogs of war, subsidized agribusiness, finance, insurance and real estate? Are they facts of nature like global warming is?
The economic system is killing the fish and wildlife, and it is also killing itself. Evolution is not killing the smelt or the fairy shrimp.
In fact, those starving almond growers around Mendota, who keep a classic California agribusiness labor-depot town in 30-40-percent unemployment regardless of the amount of water they get, are now crying about seepage from the San Joaquin River when the first releases into the riverbed, dry for 60 years due to those amazing feats of hydraulic engineering.
So Tharp would suspend the ESA and rewrite it according to the bill Cardoza and former Rep. Richard Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy, tried to push through in 2006, after Cardoza had failed twice before, during the speculative boom, which has ruinously busted. Pombo lost his seat over that bill and his bullying chairmanship of the House “Resources” Committee, restored to its former name, Natural Resources, as soon as Democrats regained control of the House.
By “Americans’ livelihoods,” this Merced editor who writes like he never heard of Kesterson intends to make us feel that it is patriotic to destroy the environment. Just because his cowboy heroes have destroyed the environment of Iraq, are doing a job on Afghanistan, and desire to flatten Iran, does not make destruction of our own or others’ environments patriotic – unless, of course, what he means is that stupidity and violence is somehow intrinsically “American.”
As John Maynard Keynes, who knew quite a bit about economic times like these, once wrote: “In the long run, we are all dead.” In the “long, long run,” we will all be dead and forgotten; although, if we destroy the environment as we are presently doing, we will be cursed by our descendants because we will have destroyed their opportunity to have any kind of economy.
"Fish are important," Gail said as we headed back to Merced. Most of the horizon stretching from the Sierra was cupped in a purple haze. "But people have to make a living."
Why don’t you get Gail to fly you up to Bodega Bay, Ft. Bragg, Eureka or Crescent City for a weekend. The two of you should definitely go to a nice tavern in any one of those towns and tell the people there about making a living without fish.
The whining, the despair, and the actual disorientation of our leaders, reflected in this editorial beg the question of whether they can evolve into human beings capable of civilized care for anything. Having seen the housing bubble they created collapse around the ears of the community they have led down the drink, they still can’t understand the meaning of the tears of the county director of human services speaking to the supervisors about the destruction of her department -- what it means for laid-off employees, people dropped from vital programs and for those of us who are capable of caring for ourselves, our communities and our environment.
Fresno Bee
Officials called to conference on Calif. drought...KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer
http://www.fresnobee.com/state/v-print/story/1656523.html
WASHINGTON The Obama administration on Wednesday urged California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to call state lawmakers into a special session to deal with the state's water crisis.
Meanwhile, the administration will ask the National Academies of Science to determine whether other scientifically sound practices can be used to protect endangered species besides curtailing water delivery from the Delta Bay to the state's farm belt.
The administration summoned state officials and interest groups to a conference on how to deal with a shortage that's causing high unemployment and economic distress in the state's Central Valley.
Precipitation rates over the past three years in California have ranged from 63 percent to 78 percent of the state's average. Compounding the problem, restrictions on water delivery were put in place to protect a native fish. The two factors have led farmers to idle more than a quarter-million acres and put thousands out of work.
Lawmakers from the Central Valley focused on the latter factor Wednesday as the primary cause of their constituents' problems. They asked federal officials to waive the Endangered Species Act for a year or two until more long-term solutions could be found to bring more water to the region. Some described the problems in their districts as a raging fire.
"Instead of red lights and fire trucks, I see too much business as usual," said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif.
"This is our Katrina," Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., said referring to the hurricane that killed more than 1,600 people in Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told lawmakers that water shortages and the degradation of the Delta Bay were the result of decades of inaction. He took exception to the criticism about the lack of federal action. He said the federal government has invested more than $400 million to upgrade the state's water infrastructure "after eight years of neglect."
"This is not about lip service," Salazar said, adding that pointing fingers would make it harder to find long-term solutions to the twin goals of protecting the Delta Bay and ensuring adequate water supplies.
The Interior Department says the drought is responsible for roughly three-quarters of the water shortage. Still, some lawmakers from the Central Valley are placing much of the blame on efforts to save the delta smelt, salmon and other fish.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that mindset is too simplistic.
"We have a problem ladies and gentleman and it won't be solved by saying, 'turn the pumps on, turn the pumps off,'" Feinstein said.
Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, whose family has farmed in the San Joaquin Valley for three generations, said previous droughts have never led to the kind of water shortages that farmers are experiencing.
Nunes and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., have failed in recent weeks to persuade lawmakers to pull back on two of the government's comprehensive plans - called "biological opinions" - for balancing water use and protection of endangered species. One reduces water flows to the San Joaquin Valley for the protection of a native fish species called the delta smelt, and the other possibly reduces water flows still more to protect salmon and other fish.
Feinstein took particular exception to those actions because she was not warned beforehand as she was trying to manage the passage of an appropriations bill.
"I never thought I would be in that position when people I'd worked with for 15 years would have blindsided me," she said.
Utility agrees to remove Klamath dams, help salmon...JEFF BARNARD,AP Environmental Writer
http://www.fresnobee.com/state/v-print/story/1656761.html
MEDFORD, Ore. The utility that owns four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River has agreed to terms for their removal, a key milestone in efforts to restore what was once the third-biggest salmon run on the West Coast and end decades of battles over scarce water.
PacifiCorp, the states of California and Oregon, American Indian tribes, federal agencies, irrigators and conservation groups announced the draft agreement Wednesday. It is expected to be signed by the end of the year.
Removal of the dams is not scheduled to start until 2020 and depends on funding for the removal, a federal determination that it will actually help salmon and is in the public interest, and authorization from Congress.
"This agreement marks the beginning of a new chapter for the Klamath River and for the communities whose health and way of life depend on it," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. "Hats off to all the stakeholders who have worked so hard to find common ground on one of the most challenging water issues of our time."
PacifiCorp will not bear the estimated $450 million cost of removing the dams. Oregon has approved $180 million in surcharges on state ratepayers. Another $250 million depends on California approving general obligation bonds.
"We are not in the business of taking out dams, but the Klamath Basin crisis is a unique situation," Dean S. Brockbank, vice president and general counsel of PacifiCorp, said in an interview. "We have been able to arrive at a settlement and a business deal that is in the best interests of our customers because it minimizes costs and guards against the risks of the alternatives."
The turning point came in May 2008, when an aide to former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorn summoned Brockbank to a meeting at a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service training center in Shepherdstown, W.Va. They were locked down for a week with representatives of the Bush administration and the governors of Oregon and California, Brockbank said.
They "made it very clear from a public policy point of view that they did not want these dams relicensed," Brockbank said. "Once that became abundantly clear, we shifted our framework from relicensing to a settlement involving a possible dam removal framework."
Michael Carrier, policy director for Gov. Ted Kulongoski, said the meeting was a "watershed moment" that gave the governor's office a new understanding of what was at stake for PacifiCorp.
The utility serves 1.6 million customers in Oregon, California, Washington, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, and is owned by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a unit of Warren Buffett's Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
The four dams - J.P. Boyle, Copco 1, Copco 2, and Iron Gate - together produce enough electricity for 70,000 customers.
"When the Klamath dams come down, it will be the biggest dam removal project the world has ever seen," Steve Rothert, California director for the conservation group American Rivers, said in a statement. "We will be able to watch on a grand scale as a river comes back to life."
Charles Bonham, California director for Trout Unlimited, said the next key to successfully restoring salmon to the upper Klamath Basin will be a final agreement among farmers, American Indian tribes, conservation groups and others to ensure salmon restoration will not come at the expense of farming.
"We don't think we will be successful putting salmon back where they haven't been for 100 years unless we have a good, solid relationship with the landowner and farming communities," he said. "We want salmon to be met in Klamath Falls with open arms, not pitchforks."
Water wars have long simmered in the Klamath Basin, where the first of the dams and a federal irrigation project built in the early 20th century turned the natural water distribution upside down, draining marshes and lakes and tapping rivers for electricity to put water on dry farmland that grows potatoes, horseradish, grain, alfalfa and cattle.
A drought in 2001 forced irrigation water to be shut off to sustain threatened and endangered fish. When the irrigation was restored the next year, tens of thousands of salmon died trying to spawn in the Klamath River, which was too low and too warm to sustain them.
Besides blocking salmon, the dams raise water temperatures to levels unhealthy for fish. California water authorities have been taking a hard look at the toxic algae produced by the dam's reservoirs, and river advocates have sued PacifiCorp to fix the algae problem.
Pressure has been building since PacifiCorp applied for a new 50-year federal operating license in 2004 and made no provision for fish passage, which stops at Iron Gate near the Oregon-California border.
California and Oregon's governors pressed for dam removal after West Coast commercial salmon fisheries collapsed in 2006 because of declines in Klamath River returns, triggering a disaster declaration.
Final approval of the dam removal agreement is key to authorization of a separate agreement to spend $1 billion over the next decade on environmental restoration in the Klamath Basin.
Some conservation groups were not happy that the deal would allow farming to continue on the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake national wildlife refuges, preventing restoration of wetlands that would contribute to better water quality, and guaranteed irrigation levels for farmers in the upper basin.
"We really can't afford to allow dam removal be linked to making other environmental problems in the basin worse," said Steve Pedery, conservation director of Oregon Wild in Portland.  
Madera Co. faces $500k fine for road project...Tim Sheehan
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/v-print/story/1656481.html
Madera County faces a potential state fine of more than $500,000 for allowing erosion runoff to despoil mountain streams during a road project in the Sierra foothills in summer and fall 2008.
The state Regional Water Quality Control Board said county officials didn't get all the permits required to widen Road 200 near the hamlet of O'Neals, and failed to prevent dirt and sediment from flowing into streams that ultimately feed into Millerton Lake.
The proposed fine of $510,600 represents the amount that Madera County saved by cutting corners and not doing the work correctly, said Lonnie Wass, a supervising engineer for the water board's Central Valley region.
The fine isn't the largest levied in the Central Valley region over the past year. In November 2008, the board sought a penalty of nearly $4 million against a wastewater-treatment plant in Lake County for violating discharge rules and failing to submit monitoring reports to the state.
But it's hefty compared to most of the board's penalties, which generally amount to less than $20,000.
If the fine stands, "it would be an extreme hardship for Madera County," said Johannes Hoevertsz, the county's road commissioner.
"We're laying off people in this county as it is," Hoevertsz said. "We'd rather have that money available for other projects ... and keep that money in Madera County for something more productive than fines."
Problems with the Road 200 project were detailed in a complaint issued Friday by the water-quality board.
Work on the $5.5 million project, funded by Madera County's Measure A, began in July 2008 without a required federal permit for storm-water discharges.
Wass said work at the site went on for more than a month before the county secured the permit -- and only after state officials reminded the county about the requirement.
Over the following months, Wass said, state inspectors expressed concern about excavation and grading work in the construction area. They also said erosion-control measures were installed incorrectly and did little to prevent sediment from running into streams.
Because silt and sediment in streams can clog fishes' gills, smother eggs or disrupt spawning areas, "discharges from the site certainly caused injury and/or death of aquatic species using the waters," the complaint said.
"We continued to inspect through the spring storm season and into the summer, and it's still kind of a mess," Wass said. He added that since the state issued a cleanup order earlier this year, county officials have been cooperative and are making progress on repairs at the work site.
Hoevertsz acknowledged his department suffered some missteps as it undertook the $5.5 million project.
"Now we're working the best we can to get this thing solved," Hoevertsz said. "We're doing what we can, and we're willing to do more to mitigate more of the alleged damage."
But, he added, "there's no way you can prevent erosion completely" in this type of project.
A water board hearing on the proposed fine is set for December in Rancho Cordova, but Hoevertsz said Madera County will petition the water board to delay the hearing to allow the two sides to discuss possible settlement options.
"We think the water board is being somewhat unreasonable," Hoevertsz said. "We need to come up with some reasonable alternatives."
Wass said the proposed fine already reflects a discount. The water board calculated the county's maximum liability as more than $7 million for the various violations.
"We start with the maximum penalty, but there are factors in the water code to reduce those," Wass said. "We've taken it to what we believe is the minimum we can reduce it to."
Sacramento Bee
EPA to delay 79 coal mining permits in 4 states...TIM HUBER, AP Business Writer
http://www.sacbee.com/business/nation/v-print/story/2220586.html
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- President Barack Obama's administration put the brakes on 79 applications for surface coal mining permits in four states Wednesday, saying they would violate the Clean Water Act.
The action is the administration's latest attempt to curb environmental damage from a highly efficient but damaging mining practice known as mountaintop removal. Each permit likely would cause significant damage to water quality and the environment, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement.
The permits would allow mine operators to bury intermittent streams with excess material removed to expose coal seams. Environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the Rainforest Action Committee want Obama to ban the practice, arguing it destroys ancient mountain peaks, fouls water and damages the culture of Appalachia.
The applications now go to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which will coordinate changes to reduce potential damage. The aim is to avoid environmental damage and meet the country's energy and economic needs, Peter Silva, EPA's assistant administrator for water, wrote in a letter to the corps.
The coal industry estimates mountaintop mines in Appalachia produce 130 million tons of coal a year, most of which goes to generate electricity for 24.7 million customers in the East and South.
"Coal mining throughout Appalachia cannot reassure thousands of anxious workers and their families, and we cannot plan for the economic future of our operations absent a workable, transparent process that provides certainty," National Mining Association President Hal Quinn said in a statement.
"EPA's answer of more delay and study is at cross-purposes with our nation's need for affordable energy, investments and secure jobs."
All 79 permits were on a preliminary list released by the EPA on Sept. 11. They cover applications for surface coal mines in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. West Virginia and Kentucky rank second and third in U.S. coal production behind Wyoming.
"People all over West Virginia can't believe this is happening," West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney said in a statement. "They don't understand why Washington is willing to kill-off good paying jobs when our economy is still on the ropes and the unemployment rate is still unacceptably high."
Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, praised the EPA and said the group hopes "it is just one of many positive actions the Obama administration will take toward ending mountaintop removal coal mining. An enhanced review of each of these pending permits will surely prove that this most destructive form of coal mining is incompatible with clean water."
The EPA said the 79 delayed permits represent the corps' current backlog of mountaintop mining permits, though the National Mining Association put that figure at 250.
Stockton Record
Score one for the watchdog...Michael Fitzgerald's blog
http://blogs.recordnet.com/sr-mfitzgerald
Bill Jennings, head of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, forwards this, about a victory over lax regulators allowing Delta pollution. If your eyes glaze over at the technicalities, go to the bottom for a translation.
CSPA Forces Regional Board to Withdraw Illegal Underground Regulation
Decision affects numerous permits for discharges to surface and groundwater
In response to a 28 May 2009 petition by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) to California's Office of Administrative Law (OAL), the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board's (Regional Board) has withdrawn its illegal “underground regulation” that allowed dischargers to discharge salt to waterways at levels greatly exceeding water quality standards.  Regional Board staff had used the illegal regulation in preparing numerous waste discharge permits adopted by the Board.  The action means that cities and industrial facilities will no longer be able to ignore standards and continue discharging prodigious quantities of salt far into the future but will have to begin efforts to achieve compliance within defined compliance schedules.  
The OAL established a 28 September 2009 deadline for the Regional Board to respond to the allegations in the petition.  In response, the Regional Board's Executive Officer, Pamela Creedon, issued a “Certification” to OAL that the “Management Guidance for Salinity in Waste Discharge Requirements” has been withdrawn.  Ms. Creedon also sent program managers a letter stating, “Effective immediately, staff should not consult, cite or use the Salinity Guidance in making permitting decisions or recommendations.”
“A victory for clean water and a victory for the law,” said CSPA Executive Director Bill Jennings.  “Unfortunately its only an initial step in holding accountable a Regional Board that seems more intent in protecting dischargers than the environment,” Jennings said, adding “we've got more than 50 Regional Board permits on appeal for major violations of federal and state clean water regulations and are preparing another petition to OAL regarding yet another underground regulation.”
Salt (or salinity) is a pervasive pollutant prevalent in wastewater effluent.  Numerous waterways, including the San Joaquin River and San Joaquin Delta, are identified as “impaired” and incapable of supporting identified beneficial uses because of salinity.  Groundwater basins throughout the Central Valley are impaired because of salinity.  Excessive salinity is damaging to irrigated agriculture, sources of drinking water and freshwater aquatic life.
The State Water Resources Control Board, responding to a number of CSPA appeals, had already remanded several NPDES wastewater permits (Lodi, Tracy) and was proposing to remand the Stockton permit back to the Regional Board to implement proper salinity standards.  There are, however, numerous CSPA appeals regarding salts and other issues still pending.
State agencies are required to adopt regulations to enforce or implement the laws they administer.  These regulations must be adopted through formal rule-making procedures established by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of the California Government Code.  The Regional Board's policy for salt control, as outlined in the Management Guidance for Salinity in Waste Discharge Requirements, was never adopted through formal procedures outlined in the APA.  The policy ignored legally promulgated state and federal regulations and illegally extended the timeframe for controlling discharges of salts thereby ensuring increased degradation and pollution of state and federal waters by salinity based pollutants.
Richard McHenry, CSPA's Director of Compliance and a former Regional Board NPDES Supervisor, said “Over the last few years, we're seeing the Regional Board increasingly disregard fundamental regulations adopted to protect water quality and beneficial uses.  Consequently, our waterways are becoming increasingly polluted.”  “This disregard for legally adopted regulations must stop if we're going to protect our already degraded waters,” he added.
In an effort to avoid costly upgrades to treatment facilities, municipal and industrial dischargers have heavily lobbied the Regional Board to ignore long-existing regulatory mandates in the federal Clean Water Act and California's Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act that require dischargers to control salt in wastewater discharges.  Under the law, where a reasonable potential exists to cause or contribute to a violation of a water quality objective, wastewater discharge permits must contain final enforceable effluent limits to prevent pollution and degradation of the state's surface and ground waters.
The Regional Board acquiesced to discharger demands and established a policy that granted discharges interim “performance-based” limits allowing them to continue to discharge salts at current levels.  The policy established compliance schedules of 15-20 years for the discharger to conduct studies and implement vague unenforceable salinity reduction programs.  Since the law only allows compliance schedules of 5 years for surface water discharges and 10 years for discharges to land, the Regional Board policy instructed permit writers to avoid placing compliance schedules in “enforceable parts of the permit” to avoid mandatory penalties.In other words, state regulators told dischargers dumping salt into the Delta that their regulatory policy was, "Just keep on doing what you're doing." Jennings caught them and made them stop. He wins a lot of battles like this one, down in the trenches, out of the public eye. The Delta is lucky to have him.
San Francisco Chronicle
Conn. land vacant 4 years after court OK'd seizure...KATIE NELSON, Associated Press Writer...9-25-09
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/09/30/national/a093050D46.DTL&type=printable
Weeds, glass, bricks, pieces of pipe and shingle splinters have replaced the knot of aging homes at the site of the nation's most notorious eminent domain project.
There are a few signs of life: Feral cats glare at visitors from a miniature jungle of Queen Anne's lace, thistle and goldenrod. Gulls swoop between the lot's towering trees and the adjacent sewage treatment plant.
But what of the promised building boom that was supposed to come wrapped and ribboned with up to 3,169 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues? They are noticeably missing.
Proponents of the ambitious plan blame the sour economy. Opponents call it a "poetic justice."
"They are getting what they deserve. They are going to get nothing," said Susette Kelo, the lead plaintiff in the landmark property rights case. "I don't think this is what the United States Supreme Court justices had in mind when they made this decision."
Kelo's iconic pink home sat for more than a century on that currently empty lot, just steps away from Connecticut's quaint but economically distressed Long Island Sound waterfront. Shortly after she moved in, in 1997, her house became ground zero in the nation's best-known land rights catfight.
New London officials decided they needed Kelo's land and the surrounding 90 acres for a multimillion-dollar private development that included residential, hotel conference, research and development space and a new state park that would complement a new $350 million Pfizer pharmaceutical research facility.
Kelo and six other homeowners fought for years, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2005, justices voted 5-4 against them, giving cities across the country the right to use eminent domain to take property for private development.
The decision was sharply criticized and created grassroots backlash. Forty states quickly passed new, protective rules and regulations, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some protesters even tried to turn the tables on now-retired Justice David Souter, trying unsuccessfully in 2006 to take his New Hampshire home by eminent domain to build an inn.
In New London the city's prized economic development plan has fallen apart as the economy crumbled.
The Corcoran Jennison Cos., a Boston-based developer, had originally locked in exclusive rights to develop nearly the entire northern half of the Fort Trumbull peninsula.
But those rights expired in June 2008, despite multiple extensions, because the firm was unable to secure financing, according to President Marty Jones.
In July, backers halted fundraising for the project's crown jewel, a proposed $60 million, 60,000-square-foot Coast Guard museum.
The poor economy meant that donations weren't "keeping pace with expenses," said Coast Guard Foundation president Anne Brengle.
The group hopes to resume fundraising in the future, she said.
Overall, proponents say about two-thirds of the 90-acre site is developed, in part because of a 16-acre, $25 million state park. The other third of the land remains without the promised residential housing, office buildings, shops and hotel/conference center facility.
"If there had been no litigation, which took years to work its way through (the court system), then a substantial portion of this project would be constructed by now," said John Brooks, executive director of the New London Development Corp. "But we are victims of the economic cycle, and there is nothing we can do about that."
A new engineering tenant is moving into one of the office buildings at 1 Chelsea St., and a bio tech firm with as many as five employees is getting ready to move into an existing building on Howard Street, Brooks said.
Kelo, paid $442,000 by the state for her old property, now lives across the Thames River in Groton, in a white, two-bedroom 1950s bungalow. Her beloved pink house was sold for a dollar and moved less than two miles away, where a local preservationist has refurbished it.
Kelo can see her old neighborhood from her new home, but she finds the view too painful to bear.
"Everything is different, but everything is like still the same," said Kelo, who works two jobs and has largely maintained a low profile since moving away. "You still have life to deal with every day of the week. I just don't have eminent domain to deal with every day of the week, even after I ate, slept and breathed it for 10 years."
Although her side lost, Kelo said she sees the wider ramifications of her property rights battle.
"In the end it was seven of us who fought like wild animals to save what we had," she said. "I think that though we ultimately didn't win for ourselves, it has brought attention to what they did to us, and if it can make it better for some other people so they don't lose their homes to a Dunkin' Donuts or a Wal-Mart, I think we did some good."
Scott Bullock, senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, argued Kelo's case before the Supreme Court. He calls "massive changes that have happened in the law and in the public consciousness" the "real legacy" of Kelo and the other plaintiffs.
The empty land means the city won a "hollow victory," he said.
"What cities should take from this is to run fleeing from what New London did and do economic development that is market-driven and incorporate properties of folks who are truly committed to their neighborhood and simply want to be a part of what happens," he said.
Deal to raze 4 Klamath dams...Peter Fimrite
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/30/MNMM19UDKH.DTL&type=printable
In what is being touted as the world's biggest dam-removal project, an agreement was reached Tuesday to remove four dams on the Klamath River and restore a 300-mile migratory route for California's beleaguered salmon.
The tentative agreement was reached after a decade of negotiations among 28 parties, including American Indian tribes, farmers, fishermen and the hydroelectric company that operates the dams and distributes the water. The plan would set in motion one of the most ambitious efforts in U.S. history to restore the habitat of a federally protected species if it receives final approval by the parties in December, as expected.
The dams - Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2 and J.C. Boyle - have blocked salmon migration for a century along the California-Oregon border and have been blamed for much of the historic decline of chinook and coho salmon and steelhead trout in the Klamath. Under the plan, the dams operated by the utility, PacificCorp, would be dismantled beginning in 2020.
The ultimate goal of the so-called Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement is to restore what has historically been the third-largest source of salmon in the lower 48 states, behind the Columbia and Sacramento rivers. Chinook once swam all the way up to Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon, providing crucial sustenance to American Indians, including the Yurok, Karuk, Klamath and Hoopa Valley tribes.
"This is the deal that we have all been working on for 10 years," said Steve Rothert, the California director of American Rivers, a national nonprofit river conservation group. "There were a lot of people who didn't think we could do this, and some groups that worked actively to prevent it. It's fantastic that we've reached this spot."
The groups involved in the negotiations agreed Tuesday to take the proposal to their various boards and commissions for approval and then have everybody sign the final document in December.
The project, which would cost an estimated $450 million, is then expected to go through nearly three years of study and cost analysis before it lands on the desk of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in 2012. "This agreement marks the beginning of a new chapter for the Klamath River and for the communities whose health and way of life depend on it," Salazar said Tuesday in a written statement. "This agreement would establish an open, scientifically grounded process that will help me make a fully informed decision about whether dam removal is in the public interest."
Serious talk of removing the dams began in 2002 after a federally ordered change in water flow led to the death of 33,000 salmon in the river.
The effort picked up momentum over the past few years after devastating declines in the number of spawning salmon in both the Klamath and Sacramento river basins. The paltry number of fish forced regulators to ban virtually all ocean fishing of chinook salmon in California and Oregon over the past two years.
The four midsize dams were built along the Klamath's main stem starting in 1909, blocking off about 300 miles of salmon-spawning habitat. The dams warmed the river water, allowing destructive parasites and blooms of toxic, blue-green algae to contaminate the water. Water diversions to cities and for agriculture exacerbated the problem, according to fishery biologists.
The various tribes with rights to the river have been battling for years to get the dams removed. Fishermen and environmentalists rallied to their side, but PacifiCorp and farmers along the Upper Klamath Basin fought the effort and even sought to extend the hydropower lease.
Some agricultural groups still oppose the plan out of fear that it would limit irrigation and raise the cost of energy, and a few claim it is little more than a giveaway to environmental interests, but most of the stakeholders now at least support moving forward.
"I cannot adequately say how impressed I am by everyone's ability to put aside their differences," said Craig Tucker, spokesman for the Karuk Tribe. "There is a long history of not getting along, of fighting over water rights. Now we are optimistic."
PacifiCorp has pledged to raise $200 million of the cost of removing the dams by implementing a surcharge on its customers in California and Oregon, but the bulk of the money would come from Oregon.
Tearing down the dams is expected to cost less than making the improvements necessary to comply with the federal Clean Water Act and Fish and Wildlife Agency regulations, which would require, among other things, the construction of fish ladders and screens. The utility would have to get certification from both states under the Clean Water Act to continue operating the dams, a potentially difficult proposition given the algae problems.
"We've really looked at this as a business deal, and we believe it is in the best interests of our customers," said Dean Brockbank, vice president and general counsel for PacifiCorp. "The agreement we have now is a collaborative effort, and we believe it beats all of the alternatives."
California would raise another $250 million from voter-approved general obligation bonds.
Conservationists sue EPA over prairie dog poison...AP
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/09/30/national/a093050D46.DTL&type=printable
Kansas City, Mo. (AP) Two conservation groups are suing the Environmental Protection Agency for its decision to register pesticides that curtail prairie dogs.
Defenders of Wildlife and Audubon of Kansas, which filed the federal lawsuit last week in Washington, D.C., say the chemicals threaten the endangered black-footed ferret, which feeds on prairie dogs. Prairie dogs can compete with livestock for forage.
The lawsuit says the EPA is violating the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws. It also says the EPA failed to heed warnings from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that said the chemicals have "known and potential impacts to wildlife."
The EPA says it will release a notice next week related to the lawsuit and that once it has evaluated comment, it will determine how to proceed.
Los Angeles Times
Judge rejects U.S. management plan for California desert
Bureau of Land Management's proposal for the West Mojave 'does not contain a reasonable range of alternatives' to limit off-road-vehicle routes in the sensitive habitat, the ruling states...Louis Sahagun
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mojave30-2009sep30,0,2464079,print.story
A federal judge has rejected key provisions of a plan for managing millions of acres in the California desert, saying the U.S. Bureau of Land Management designated roughly 5,000 miles of off-road vehicle routes without properly taking into account their impact on public lands, archaeological sites and wildlife.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on Monday ruled that the West Mojave plan, which the bureau approved in 2006 after a decade of development, is "flawed because it does not contain a reasonable range of alternatives" to limit the number of miles of off-road routes.
She also determined that the bureau's analysis of the routes' impacts on air quality, soils, plant communities and sensitive species such as the Mojave fringe-toed lizard was inadequate, pointing out that the desert and its resources are "extremely fragile, easily scarred, and slowly healed."
"The court recognizes the complexity of the issues presented in this case," Illston said, "and that defendants have been given the difficult task of addressing the interests and needs of OHV [off-highway vehicle] recreationists while at the same time protecting listed species as required by law."
The ruling came in response to a legal challenge brought in late 2006 by a coalition of conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and Desert Survivors.
The bureau's "planning was backwards," Elden Hughes of the Sierra Club said in a statement. "They should first analyze the resources, natural, cultural wildlife etc., and then plan the route network. They put the route approvals first."
U.S. Atty. Charles R. Schockey, who represented bureau in the matter, declined to comment on the ruling. However, Illston said she plans to schedule a case management conference to discuss possible remedies.
The plan was designed to provide a comprehensive strategy to conserve and protect sensitive species and their habitats on public lands administered by the bureau, including the desert tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel.
"We believe the plan didn't go far enough in terms of protecting resources," said Lisa Belenky, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Off-road-vehicle use in the west Mojave is very prevalent and increasing, so having the proper protections in place is very important."
"We hope that in light of this decision," Belenky added, "the bureau will rethink and limit the number of routes in these sensitive areas."
New York Times
Alternative Energy Projects Stumble on a Need for Water...TODD WOODY
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/business/energy-environment/30water.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. — In a rural corner of Nevada reeling from the recession, a bit of salvation seemed to arrive last year. A German developer, Solar Millennium, announced plans to build two large solar farms here that would harness the sun to generate electricity, creating hundreds of jobs.
But then things got messy. The company revealed that its preferred method of cooling the power plants would consume 1.3 billion gallons of water a year, about 20 percent of this desert valley’s available water.
Now Solar Millennium finds itself in the midst of a new-age version of a Western water war. The public is divided, pitting some people who hope to make money selling water rights to the company against others concerned about the project’s impact on the community and the environment.
“I’m worried about my well and the wells of my neighbors,” George Tucker, a retired chemical engineer, said on a blazing afternoon.
Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year.
“When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable energy,” said Michael E. Webber, an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin who studies the relationship between energy and water.
Conflicts over water could shape the future of many energy technologies. The most water-efficient renewable technologies are not necessarily the most economical, but water shortages could give them a competitive edge.
In California, solar developers have already been forced to switch to less water-intensive technologies when local officials have refused to turn on the tap. Other big solar projects are mired in disputes with state regulators over water consumption.
To date, the flashpoint for such conflicts has been the Southwest, where dozens of multibillion-dollar solar power plants are planned for thousands of acres of desert. While most forms of energy production consume water, its availability is especially limited in the sunny areas that are otherwise well suited for solar farms.
At public hearings from Albuquerque to San Luis Obispo, Calif., local residents have sounded alarms over the impact that this industrialization will have on wildlife, their desert solitude and, most of all, their water.
Joni Eastley, chairwoman of the county commission in Nye County, Nev., which includes Amargosa Valley, said at one hearing that her area had been “inundated” with requests from renewable energy developers that “far exceed the amount of available water.”
Many projects involve building solar thermal plants, which use cheaper technology than the solar panels often seen on roofs. In such plants, mirrors heat a liquid to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine. As in a fossil fuel power plant, that steam must be condensed back to water and cooled for reuse.
The conventional method is called wet cooling. Hot water flows through a cooling tower where the excess heat evaporates along with some of the water, which must be replenished constantly. An alternative, dry cooling, uses fans and heat exchangers, much like a car’s radiator. Far less water is consumed, but dry cooling adds costs and reduces efficiency — and profits.
The efficiency problem is especially acute with the most tried-and-proven technique, using mirrors arrayed in long troughs. “Trough technology has been more financeable, but now trough presents a separate risk — water,” said Nathaniel Bullard, a solar analyst with New Energy Finance, a London research firm.
That could provide opportunities for developers of photovoltaic power plants, which take the type of solar panels found on residential rooftops and mount them on the ground in huge arrays. They are typically more expensive and less efficient than solar thermal farms but require a relatively small amount of water, mainly to wash the panels.
In California alone, plans are under way for 35 large-scale solar projects that, in bright sunshine, would generate 12,000 megawatts of electricity, equal to the output of about 10 nuclear power plants.
Their water use would vary widely. BrightSource Energy’s dry-cooled Ivanpah project in Southern California would consume an estimated 25 million gallons a year, mainly to wash mirrors. But a wet-cooled solar trough power plant barely half Ivanpah’s size proposed by the Spanish developer Abengoa Solar would draw 705 million gallons of water in an area of the Mojave Desert that receives scant rainfall.
One of the most contentious disputes is over a proposed wet-cooled trough plant that NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of the utility giant FPL Group, plans to build in a dry area east of Bakersfield, Calif.
NextEra wants to tap freshwater wells to supply the 521 million gallons of cooling water the plant, the Beacon Solar Energy Project, would consume in a year, despite a state policy against the use of drinking-quality water for power plant cooling.
Mike Edminston, a city council member from nearby California City, warned at a hearing that groundwater recharge was already “not keeping up with the utilization we have.”
The fight over water has moved into the California Legislature, where a bill has been introduced to allow renewable energy power plants to use drinking water for cooling if certain conditions are met.
“By allowing projects to use fresh water, the bill would remove any incentives that developers have to use technologies that minimize water use,” said Terry O’Brien, a California Energy Commission deputy director.
NextEra has resisted using dry cooling but is considering the feasibility of piping in reclaimed water. “At some point if costs are just layered on, a project becomes uncompetitive,” said Michael O’Sullivan, a senior vice president at NextEra.
Water disputes forced Solar Millennium to abandon wet cooling for a proposed solar trough power plant in Ridgecrest, Calif., after the water district refused to supply the 815 million gallons of water a year the project would need. The company subsequently proposed to dry cool two other massive Southern California solar trough farms it wants to build in the Mojave Desert.
“We will not do any wet cooling in California,” said Rainer Aringhoff, president of Solar Millennium’s American operations. “There are simply no plants being permitted here with wet cooling.”
One solar developer, BrightSource Energy, hopes to capitalize on the water problem with a technology that focuses mirrors on a tower, producing higher-temperature steam than trough systems. The system can use dry cooling without suffering a prohibitive decline in power output, said Tom Doyle, an executive vice president at BrightSource.
The greater water efficiency was one factor that led VantagePoint Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, to invest in BrightSource. “Our approach is high sensitivity to water use,” said Alan E. Salzman, VantagePoint’s chief executive. “We thought that was going to be huge differentiator.”
Even solar projects with low water consumption face hurdles, however. Tessera Solar is planning a large project in the California desert that would use only 12 million gallons annually, mostly to wash mirrors. But because it would draw upon a severely depleted aquifer, Tessera may have to buy rights to 10 times that amount of water and then retire the pumping rights to the water it does not use. For a second big solar farm, Tessera has agreed to fund improvements to a local irrigation district in exchange for access to reclaimed water.
“We have a challenge in finding water even though we’re low water use,” said Sean Gallagher, a Tessera executive. “It forces you to do some creative deals.”
In the Amargosa Valley, Solar Millennium may have to negotiate access to water with scores of individuals and companies who own the right to stick a straw in the aquifer, so to speak, and withdraw a prescribed amount of water each year.
“There are a lot of people out here for whom their water rights are their life savings, their retirement,” said Ed Goedhart, a local farmer and state legislator, as he drove past pockets of sun-beaten mobile homes and luminescent patches of irrigated alfalfa. Farmers will be growing less of the crop, he said, if they decide to sell their water rights to Solar Millennium.
“We’ll be growing megawatts instead of alfalfa,” Mr. Goedhart said.
While water is particularly scarce in the West, it is becoming a problem all over the country as the population grows. Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, predicted that as intensive renewable energy development spreads, water issues will follow.
“When we start getting 20 percent, 30 percent or 40 percent of our power from renewables,” Mr. Kammen said, “water will be a key issue.”
Anti Corruption Republican
Ring's Motion to Acquit and the Government's Response...9-29-09
http://anticorruptionrepublican.blogspot.com/2009/09/rings-motion-to-acquit-and-governments.html
Last night, attorneys for Kevin Ring filed a Motion to Acquit. The basic premise of this document is that no reasonable jury could find that the government has proven its case against Mr. Ring. Tonight, the Justice Department filed its response.
These documents have w-a-y too much case law for the author of the ACR Blog. We'll leave the discussion of the merits of these filings to others.
The only point we'd like to make is that it doesn't appear that the defense means for U.S. District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle to be the intended audience for the Motion to Acquit. The ACR Blog thinks that the entire motion is simply intended to lay the groundwork for an appeal.
Here's what we mean. On page 19 of the Motion to Acquit, the defense writes:
The evidence presented at trial is insufficient to establish any sort of [conspiracy] agreement, much less that Mr. Ring knowingly and intentionally joined it. Mr. Volz did not describe any sort of agreement to act unlawfully between Mr. Ring and anyone -- not even on that involved implicit winks and nods. For his part, Mr. Boulanger described any agreement to “win at all costs” and his own beliefs that the rules did not matter in such an environment. But other than this evidence, there simply was no evidence that lobbyists at Greenberg Traurig, including Mr. Ring, joined any conspiracy of the type described by the government.
Does the defense really think Judge Huvelle will find that there is no conspiracy? Less than a week ago, Judge Huvelle identified 12 people as conspirators. We rather doubt that Judge Huvelle can see that many conspirators but no conspiracy.
Did John Doolittle Sign a Tolling Agreement?...9-29-09
http://anticorruptionrepublican.blogspot.com/2009/09/did-john-doolittle-sign-tolling.html
We've long known that former Reps. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Tom DeLay (R-Ft. Bend County) signed tolling agreements. Basically, a tolling agreement waives the statute of limitations. A person under investigation may sign a tolling agreement as part of a strategy to continue discussions and negotiations with prosecutors instead of facing an immediate indictment. We've never had any evidence that John Doolittle has waived the statute of limitations through a tolling agreement.
So today, I'm reading the incoherent ramblings of Tom Hudson, the President of the Placer County (Calif.) Republican Party, as reported by Gus Thomas of the Auburn (Calif.) Journal:
Tom Hudson, president of the Placer County Republican Party, said that any connection after several years of Justice Department scrutiny is more about “bad-mouthing” John and Julie Doolittle than about justice.
“I think the fact that they have never been indicted after an extensive witch hunt is about the best proof of their innocence that we can get,” Hudson said.
What? The best evidence of innocence is the lack of an indictment? We wonder what Mr. Hudson said during the investigation into lies under oath by President Clinton. There was no indictment back then, either, but the lack of an indictment certainly doesn't imply innocence. In fact, President Clinton himself admitted acting unlawfully and that he testified falsely under oath. (Of course there are undeniably Democratic partisans, like Mr. Hudson today, who will deny that President Clinton broke the law because there never was an indictment.)
Getting back to Mr. Hudson, though, there is something to be divined in his statements to the Auburn Journal:
“It’s shameful,” Hudson said. “If there was a case, they should have indicted [Mr. Doolittle] within the statute of limitations.”
Normally when the statute of limitations has passed, there can be no indictment. But Mr. Hudson merely says that prosecutors "should have indicted [Mr. Doolittle] within the statute of limitations." Mr. Hudson seems to leave the door open for an indictment beyond the statute of limitations.
Let's assume for the moment that Mr. Hudson has knowledge that isn't widely known. Let's also assume Mr. Hudson knows that Mr. Doolittle has signed a tolling agreement. That would make Mr. Hudson's statement that prosecutors should have indicted Mr. Doolittle within the statute of limitations make more sense, since Mr. Hudson would know that it is possible that Mr. Doolittle will be indicted after the statute of limitations has expired.
The ACR Blog simply finds it odd that Mr. Hudson mentioned the statute of limitations in this manner. If Mr. Hudson had said, "Mr. Doolittle has not been indicted and can not be indicted due to the expiration of the statute of limitations," we wouldn't be so suspicious. Mr. Hudson's sentence construction gives us a little more confidence that Mr. Doolittle has indeed signed a tolling agreement extending the statute of limitation.
One more quick point: The clock starts on the statute of limitations when the last act in the conspiracy was committed. If the conspiracy involved concealment of these crimes, the statute of limitations may not have begun when the Washington Post blew up this story in February 2004. In that case, the statute of limitations may not have completely run its course.
An enterprising reporter ought to ask Mr. Doolittle if he's signed a tolling agreement. Let's hope Gus Thomas at the Auburn Journal is our guy.
John Doolittle, Good Cop. David Lopez, Bad Cop?...9-27-09
http://anticorruptionrepublican.blogspot.com/2009/09/john-doolittle-good-cop-david-lopez-bad.html
Attorneys for Kevin Ring, in an oral motion¹, have offered evidence purportedly impeaching some government exhibits. The government responded Sunday night. While the defense seeks to impeach a number of the government's exhibits, we're just going to focus on just the one we find most interesting.
GX 385 is a September 11, 2002 email from Jack Abramoff to Maury Litwack, a person indentified in the Ring Indictment as a "consultant" to Capital Athletic Foundation, Mr. Abramoff's "non-profit". Mr. Abramoff tells Mr. Litwack that he doesn't want Julie Doolittle (the alleged conspirator wife of former Rep. and alleged conspirator John Doolittle, R-Calif.) to work very hard for the $5,000 per month job Mr. Abramoff had just given Mrs. Doolittle²:
“I want [Mrs. Doolittle] to help, but not be overburdened with work. I am not sure what role she should play and it does not have to be significant. She should just be helpful to you as you need her. I don't want her to have to do too much, though, since she has responsibilities at home as a mother and wife."
Mr. Ring's attorneys want to show, among other things, that Mr. Doolittle did not pressure Mr. Abramoff into hiring Mrs. Doolittle. Mr. Ring's attorneys want the jury to consider what it views as impeachment material that would contradict Mr. Abramoff's statements. We're not 100% sure of the origin of the material defense attorney Andrew Wise wants to use, but it may be from an Abramoff interview report dated May 18, 2006:
"Abramoff recalled the circumstances surrounding Julie Doolittle working for him at Greenberg Traurig. He said Doolittle called him and said he was calling as a friend and made it clear there was no obligation but that Julie Doolittle was looking to expand her work portfolio and described the type of work she did. Abramoff said Doolittle made it clear there was no obligation. Doolittle was insistent there was no pressure."
The DoJ claims that the above statement refers to an earlier effort by Mr. Doolittle to get his wife a job in 2000 and isn't relevant to the actual "job" offered to Mrs. Doolittle in 2002. (If the DoJ is accurate, it makes the reference of "Julie Doolittle working for [Mr. Abramoff] at Greenberg Traurig" confusing. Mr. Abramoff worked at Preston Gates in 2000.) The DoJ also claims that the above statement does not impeach Mr. Abramoff's credibility when he said he didn't want Mrs. Doolittle to work hard for her paycheck.
In the event that U.S. District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle allows the above statement that Mr. Doolittle did not pressure Mr. Abramoff to hire Mrs. Doolittle, the government would like to respond. The government has a couple of statements it wants to use that originate, we think, from the same May 2006 interview report. The first statement suggests that Mr. Doolittle may have pressured Mr. Abramoff to hire Mrs. Doolittle after all:
*“Abramoff also speculated that Doolittle and Lopez were playing 'good cop, bad cop,' and explained Doolittle would say 'no pressure,' but Lopez would stay on him."
*"Abramoff said after he was asked, it was clearly his intention to find a job for Julie Doolittle. Abramoff said he was being pushed by Lopez and he (Abramoff) wanted to get it done. Abramoff explained that he could not just say he was unable to find a job for Julie Doolittle."
*"Abramoff said Doolittle was doing things for his client, so it would be good for Abramoff to be sure the job for Julie Doolittle got done."
The last statement may indicate that the job for Mrs. Doolittle was part of an illicit stream of things of value Mr. Doolittle received from Mr. Abramoff. Recall that we think we may have identified an official action performed by Mr. Doolittle in response to a request by Team Abramoff. According to Todd Boulanger, Mr. Doolittle wrote a June 2003 letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton on behalf of the Sac & Fox tribe of Iowa in an effort to help the tribe re-open its casino. Mr. Ring represented the Sac & Fox, and June 2003 was during the $5,000 per month job for Mrs. Doolittle.
If there is a connection between an illicit stream of things of value received by Mr. Doolittle and official action performed by Mr. Doolittle, things could get very ugly for the former Congressman.
Be sure to read the entire government filing. The ACR Blog is reporting only one of many items in it.
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¹ Ackkk! Oral motions and no Hebrew National hot dogs! The ACR Blog prefers written motions.
² The ACR Blog finds it odd that Mrs. Doolittle was being paid $5,000 per month by Greenberg Traurig, but the "work" she purportedly performed was for Capital Athletic Foundation, an entity Mr. Abramoff controlled.