12-14-08

 12-14-08Modesto BeeSwelling support for canal in deltaStatewide shortages reviving water wars' once-nuclear option...Matt Weiser, The Sacramento Beehttp://www.modbee.com/local/story/532916.htmlNote: See Sacramento Bee Article below...The Delta debate: Resurrecting the canal...Chapter One...Matt WeiserInteractive maps detailing all delta islands, videw and morehttp://www.sacbee.com/1232/rich_media/1444540.htmlINFORMATION ABOUT EACH ISLANDTHE FUTURE OF DELTA ISLANDSPROPOSALS FOR NEW CANAL ROUTES - MAPS AND VIDEOSCLOSE UP ON BRADFORD ISLAND - MAPS AND VIDEOSSEE YOUTUE AND READER VIDEOSTHE STATE OF DELTA LEVEESKEY DATES IN DELTA HISTORYPAST STORIES IN THE BEEMultimediaDelta Debate: Bradford Island cattle roundup...Video...The Sacramento Beehttp://videos.sacbee.com/vmix_hosted_apps/p/media?id=2508830&f=CAMODDelta Debate: LA's new water tunnel...Video...The Sacramento Beehttp://videos.sacbee.com/vmix_hosted_apps/p/media?id=2508861&f=CAMODDelta Debate: Crisis in the avocado grove...Video...The Sacramento Beehttp://videos.sacbee.com/vmix_hosted_apps/p/media?id=2508968&f=CAMODDelta Debate: Turning sewage into drinking water...Video...The Sacramento Beehttp://videos.sacbee.com/vmix_hosted_apps/p/media?id=2509035&f=CAMODFresno BeePanel to offer a vision for Sacramento-San Joaquin DeltaAmbitious plan aims to restore state's delivery system for freshwater...Matt Weiser...The Sacramento Beehttp://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1073942.htmlBy New Year's Eve, a panel of state Cabinet secretaries called the Delta Vision Committee will send the governor and Legislature a plan to replumb and restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the hub of California's freshwater delivery system.It will be one of the most ambitious infrastructure and habitat restoration projects ever proposed in America.The delta provides drinking water to 25 million Californians and irrigates 3 million acres of farmland via diversion pumps near Tracy. But these diversions have contributed to a broad ecosystem collapse in the delta, including nine fish species in steep decline. As a result, water deliveries to the Bay Area and Southern California have been curtailed. California Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman, who leads the Delta Vision Committee, and Karla Nemeth, his liaison to the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, describe how their planning efforts likely will converge, probably in 2010, in a big decision for California voters.The committee is expected to propose a new water canal around the delta to separate demand for the Sacramento River's freshwater supply from the estuary's sensitive environment.Also expected are new water conservation measures and a new governing body to manage the delta. The Bay-Delta Conservation Plan is preparing a similar package of projects to obtain approval under the state and federal endangered species acts.How significant are these projects to the state?Chrisman: They are very significant. When you think about the vision that helped create the Central Valley Project back in the '20s, the vision that Gov. [Pat] Brown and others had to build the State Water Project, this is a big effort. These are projects that are going to be built over quite an extended period of time -- 10, 15, 20 years.Have public attitudes changed toward the idea of a delta canal?Chrisman: People recognize that a lot of time has passed since the defeat of the Peripheral Canal back in 1982. Are we talking about a canal of the size that was talked about in 1982 -- 21,000 cubic feet per second? I don't know. That's one of the alternatives. Most people recognize that we've got to do something. The "something" is what we're debating now.Delta residents will bear the brunt of these changes. We're talking, potentially, about buying out entire islands and running a canal through others. What do you have to say to them?Chrisman: We understand those concerns and appreciate those concerns, and our commitment is to continue to address those concerns.There's a lot of very strongly held views on these issues. You look at what a special place the delta is. We recognize that. Our commitment is to make sure those aren't just words, that we really live by that and work with the folks down there. Are we going to agree on everything? Of course not.Tell us how the Delta Vision Committee and the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan fit together.Nemeth: BDCP lays out a set of project objectives and marries them with a conservation strategy for species that contributes to the recovery of those species. It also identifies a dedicated funding stream. In this case, it would be contributions from the water users.One of the real benefits of the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan is that it really focuses on helping fish species recover through sustaining the entire ecosystem. We really believe the opportunities for success are high with this kind of a process.Will all this culminate in a ballot measure or legislation?Chrisman: The possibility is "yes" to all of that. Clearly there will have to be, down the road, some bond measure to help fund some of these efforts.The Delta Vision Task Force called for initial legislation by May 2009 to begin reforming government in the delta to make these large projects work. What is your time frame to have projects ready to build?Chrisman: The only deadline is the deadline that requires the Cabinet committee to send our recommendation to the governor by the end of this year. Quite frankly, these are things we really can't wait for.We have got to move and we have got to move now. The urgency is today. Sacramento BeeFrom the Editor: The Bee tells stories of the Delta in many ways...Melanie Sill, The Bee's editorhttp://www.sacbee.com/325/v-print/story/1470403.htmlIf you follow the debate over the great estuary south of Sacramento, simply called the Delta, you know some of the issues: Water supply, environmental quality and flood threats along 1,300 square miles of low-lying islands and patchwork levees.Once you read the eight-page special report in today's Bee, you'll understand the richness of the Delta story, a centuries-old narrative that binds together many threads of the California experience.A team of Bee journalists set out to tell that story in a way that went beyond policy proposals and politics, the normal framework for reporting on the Delta. They succeeded in a wonderful fashion with articles, photos, video and a truly remarkable storytelling map – words and images I think you'll enjoy even as you learn from them.The section takes advantage of what the printed page can offer: comprehensiveness and breadth. It's matched by an online report that plays to the Internet's capacity for interaction and linkage.Environment reporter Matt Weiser, who traveled to Southern California to supplement his countless trips to the Delta, offers deep and careful reporting, lyrical writing and a beat reporter's knowledge and insights.Graphic artist Nathaniel Levine, drawing on U.S. Geological Survey data and a raft of other references, crafted a two-sided map that works on many levels. It lays out the Delta's geography and hydrology, making sense of space and location.Levine's work doesn't simply illustrate Weiser's reporting. Instead, his maps provide deep reporting of their own, presented in ways that help readers understand how the Delta works, where a canal might go, what an acre-foot is and many other pieces of the story.Photojournalist Manny Crisostomo carries readers onto the Delta's islands and lifts them above the snaking waterways for a view of the estuary that provides a sense of why so many people love the place. He also takes us into the lives of those who live there.Online, graphic artist Mitchell Brooks created interactive elements that help readers look at pieces of the Delta picture and drill down deeper into parts that interest them.Crisostomo supplemented his still photography with video reports, which we've augmented with YouTube videos from Delta enthusiasts and to which we'll add more video shared by readers. We'll also run ongoing forums where you can share opinions and information.The timing seemed right for this deeper report because a group called Delta Vision (appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger) is scheduled to issue recommendations soon. The centerpiece of those ideas will likely be a plan to build a 40-mile-long canal to pipe Sacramento River water south.The Delta's fate, however, involves much more than a canal proposal. Like many epic tales, it's laced with conflict between competing human endeavors, including stewardship of the estuary's natural resources.Californians will be writing the Delta story's next chapter in the coming year or two as the canal idea and various other proposals move forward. Other issues surrounding the Delta, from policies to protect fish species to decisions regarding water allocations for agriculture, are in the news regularly.We'll work to be the go-to source for people who want to take part or just follow decisions. At www.sacbee.com/delta, you'll find today's special report, expanded photo galleries and video, other Bee coverage, links to outside resources and forums. The Delta debate: Resurrecting the canal...Chapter One...Matt Weiserhttp://www.sacbee.com/1268/v-print/story/1459470.htmlCHAPTER ONECalifornia as we know it today was built largely on this fantasy:That arid cities in the south could indefinitely satisfy the thirst of a growing population by importing water from the north. The fantasy endured for a while, buoyed by water diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, it drains 40 percent of California, transporting vital snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada across the state.Recent events have revealed the truth: California is reaching the limit of its water supplies, and the economy and the environment are suffering for it. The future offers even harsher realities: Global warming is drying up the snowpack and natural disasters could shatter the Delta.Now, the state's water planners are proposing the most sweeping landscape change in America, resurrecting an audacious notion for re-plumbing this state – a controversial idea that many thought died long ago.Central to their plan is a massive earthen canal – wider than two football fields and more than 40 miles long – that would give Southern California its first direct tap into the Sacramento River. California hasn't seen a water project of this scope in a generation.Starting near Elk Grove, the channel would divert some of the river's flow around the fragile Delta and on to existing pumps near Tracy. From there, the river would continue to serve Los Angeles, San Diego, farms in the San Joaquin Valley, and portions of the Bay Area.Several teams of researchers consider the canal essential to separating the state's water demand from a Delta environment under grave stress. Nine Delta fish species are being pushed toward extinction, in part, by this demand.This new proposal, however, bears the weight of a controversial past.California voters rejected a similar project in 1982. Then known as the peripheral canal, it won support from only eight of California's 58 counties – all in Southern California. Everybody else viewed it as a blatant water grab by the south with no advantages for the north.The campaign touched off one of the state's ugliest water wars, and resentment lingers on both sides."We feel we should get the water instead of the fish," said Chuck Badger, a third-generation citrus farmer in San Diego County, where the groves are irrigated by water imported from the Delta."Maybe if the people down south learned how to conserve a little bit, then they wouldn't be after the water so badly," said Karen Cunningham, a cattle rancher on the Delta's Bradford Island whose livelihood is threatened by environmental improvements linked to the canal.Those are the extremes. Between them, a new understanding is emerging. Southern Californians come to today's debate both more self-sufficient and more willing to pay for Delta restoration in return for reliable access to water. Northern Californians face a decision, likely in the next two years, about whether they are ready to share that water.South state is curbing its water consumptionIf you slice into an avocado grown in San Diego County, you're cutting into the Sacramento River. If you watch an episode of "The O.C." on television, the Sacramento River stars in all those gorgeous swimming pools.Southern California gets at least 30 percent of its drinking and irrigation water from two aqueducts draining the Delta. Most of this water enters the Delta from the Sacramento River, the state's largest.Though the southland has a reputation as a glutton for imported water, it has worked hard to become a better steward of this resource. Its conservation efforts now outpace those of any other region in the state.Research conducted for the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force, appointed by the governor in 2007 to wrestle with the estuary's conflicts, found that total water consumption in Southern California – both overall and per capita – has remained flat since 1990. The population grew by about 10 percent, or 1.5 million people. But per-capita water consumption declined by 10 percent.The Central Valley, meanwhile, saw population increase 20 percent and total water consumption grow by the same amount. Per-capita consumption remained flat. In other words, Valley residents overall made no progress on water conservation.The likely cause: the thousands of lawns that came along with Valley sprawl. Landscaping soaks up at least 60 percent of urban water, and grass is to blame for most of that.Last year, the average water user in Los Angeles consumed 138 gallons per day compared to the 278 gallons consumed by the average Sacramentan.Canal's price seems no object to water consumersA Delta canal was part of the plan for the original State Water Project, first drafted in 1951 to provide Southern California's economy the water it needed to grow. Oroville Dam and the California Aqueduct were built, but not the canal, waylaid both by opposition and lagging funds.Today, a canal is the centerpiece of nearly a half-dozen planning efforts to resolve a looming water crisis and help a Delta environment in steep decline. Proposed routes flow east or west of the Delta. Some alternatives include a secondary canal through the Delta's middle.The goal of the proposals is not necessarily more water for Southern California, just more consistent delivery of existing supplies.Next year, the canal will enter mainstream consciousness as it reaches the governor and Legislature. They will wrangle over whether and how to build it, as well as over options to buy up land for 100,000 acres of environmental restoration in the Delta – and changes in state law to make both possible.A committee of government agencies is working on a related Delta habitat conservation plan, due in 2010, which also is expected to include a canal. The state Department of Water Resources is drafting an environmental impact report on canal options, also due for 2010 completion.The canal is likely to cost more than $10 billion, but that seems to be no deterrent for Delta water users – some 25 million people between the Silicon Valley and San Diego, along with farmers collectively irrigating 3 million acres.Al Stehly is one of them. Stehly grows avocados in Valley Center, a community of ranch homes and orchards scattered across rugged hills in northern San Diego County. A third-generation farmer, his organic avocados are sold at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op.Southern Riverside County and northern San Diego County together grow 95 percent of America's avocados, thanks to Sacramento River water transported more than 400 miles by the State Water Project.In an orchard he manages on a scenic hilltop, Stehly stands at the threshold of a crisis. On one side are healthy 20-foot trees. On the other are stumps, dramatic reminders of water shortages caused by the Delta's limitations.Last year, because of drought and court-ordered protections for Delta fish, growers there were required by the Metropolitan Water District to reduce their use 30 percent or face fines. Most responded by cutting some of their trees down to the stumps, putting them into a dormant state that allowed them to survive without water for up to a year.Stehly hired a crew to stump 300 trees on this plot, plus 1,200 more in an orchard he owns across the valley."I helped the guys mark off this block, and then I just kinda left," he said. "It was painful to be here. I didn't check on them as much as I would a normal crew."Avocado growers there pay more for water than just about anyone else in California – as much as $800 an acre-foot. (An acre-foot of water is about 326,000 gallons, enough to serve two average households in Southern California for a year – or one in Sacramento.)Water is Stehly's single greatest cost, reaching $3,000 per acre annually. As a result, he and his peers already have invested in efficient microsprinklers and moisture sensors.Stehly is willing to pay even more for his water to help build a Delta canal because of the security it would offer."They're going to have to find a way to move water around the Delta, or we give up on agriculture in Southern California," he said. "We can't conserve our way out of this problem."Scientists see canal as environmental assetThe peripheral canal once was seen only as a water conveyance. Now, many scientists also view it as a restoration tool and a hedge against disaster.Pumping water directly out of the Delta clearly hurts the environment. Water diversion pumps in the south Delta, near Tracy, are so powerful that they actually make the Delta's maze-like channels flow backward. Instead of draining slowly toward the sea as nature intended, many Delta sloughs are drawn toward the pumps. Fish and the food they eat get caught in this vortex.In response, a federal judge in 2007 ordered water exports curtailed during critical winter breeding months for the threatened Delta smelt, a translucent, finger-length native fish. Then, in November, the state Fish and Game Commission imposed additional limits to protect the longfin smelt, a candidate for protected status.Nature threatens the Delta, too. Earthquakes, floods and rising sea levels endanger its water supply. Recent studies by state and federal scientists show that escalating risk from this triad of dangers virtually guarantees that dozens of Delta levees will fail simultaneously by the end of the century.The resulting flood would draw a huge pulse of salt water into the Delta from San Francisco Bay. This would contaminate the freshwater supply, perhaps permanently halting Delta water deliveries.A canal, with its intake upstream on the Sacramento River, would safeguard the freshwater supply from such a disaster.Still, there are many unanswered questions, such as: Who will operate the canal, how much water will they divert, when and where? A canal intake located upstream, for instance, could threaten migrating salmon."It's a huge project that has all kinds of ramifications – ecological and political. A lot of them we haven't even thought about," said Peter Moyle, a professor at UC Davis and one of the nation's leading fisheries biologists.Moyle voted against the peripheral canal in 1982. But in July, he co-wrote a study for the Public Policy Institute of California that recommended building a canal. He became persuaded, he said, by the realities of the state's water demand and the Delta's limitations."From a fish perspective, the best thing is to stop (water) exports altogether. We recognized that's not going to happen," he said. "That means you've got to rethink how a peripheral canal would operate. You have to figure out how can you make it as fish-friendly as possible."Nobody knows how to do that yet.Delta Vision proposes a new governing body to oversee these issues. But many of the planners studying the Delta agree its waters are oversubscribed. California, between human and environmental needs, may have reached the limit of its water supplies, leaving only one option: to use Delta water better, and not count on taking more.They take 'Kill Your Lawn' classes in south stateSouthern California's efforts to become more self-sufficient grew from conservation policy and economic necessity.In Orange County, 2.3 million people now drink their own treated wastewater. Flushed down toilets and siphoned by shower drains, it is recycled via reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light by the Orange County Water District. Then it is returned to the groundwater aquifer. About nine months later, the water is pumped back into customer taps.The $480 million project treats 70 million gallons of wastewater per day – so much that the district didn't have to buy any Sacramento River water last summer."Southern California couldn't survive without imported water. But we want to reduce our reliance on that supply as much as possible," said Shivaji Deshmukh, the district's director of local resources, who drinks the water himself at home in Costa Mesa.Southern California hasn't reformed totally, of course. It is still easy to find blatant cases of water waste, just as it is in Northern California.When the mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, held a series of community meetings this fall to encourage citizens to conserve, turnout was poor. Residents failed to meet the 10 percent voluntary conservation target set by the city. They saved only 6.3 percent.Next year, said Public Utilities Director Jim Barrett, "If we're not saving enough water, I will make the recommendation to the mayor that we go to mandatory conservation – with penalties. It will be painful, because everyone is going to feel they need an exception."Still, there's a growing sense of personal responsibility about the region's deep reliance on imported water.Landscape designer Steve Gerischer began teaching "Kill Your Lawn" classes in Los Angeles three years ago for the Theodore Payne Foundation, a native-plant organization. The classes have been sellouts, requiring a larger venue for each new session."People are becoming aware of the fact that lawns really are a useless artifact of the past here," he said.Gerischer helped Lisa and Wesley Smith kill their front lawn and replace it with native plants. In the couple's sloping front yard in Eagle Rock, near Pasadena, the lawn was nearly dead after four months under heavy black plastic."I do feel like it's the right thing to do," said Lisa Smith, 42, who works for the Disney Channel. "We really didn't want to use more than our fair share of water."Southland pipeline to provide drought insuranceJohn Bednarski oversees the largest water project under construction in the southland, the $1.2 billion Inland Feeder Pipeline being built by the Metropolitan Water District. The 44-mile pipeline will provide a bigger link to the State Water Project.Conceived 20 years ago, the pipeline falls exactly in line with the new philosophy for a Delta canal. Rather than simply build a small canal to limit water exports, some planners suggest a giant one, controlled by rigid rules, so more water can be exported during times of surplus.The Metropolitan Water District pipeline will allow the district to move bigger pulses of water through the California Aqueduct into local storage. Then, when Delta pumping is limited during drought or to protect fish, the region can rely on its own stored water.Difficulties in digging a 19-foot diameter tunnel eight miles through the San Bernardino Mountains delayed the pipeline for years. But in August, the giant boring machine broke through, and now the tunnel is being fitted with a steel liner."I can imagine there's still a lot of skepticism in Northern California about how we use or don't use water down here," said Bednarski, his voice breaking the tunnel's eerie silence.Over the past seven years, Bednarski's own water bill at home in Altadena jumped from $40 per month to $100. That has been typical in the region, partly to cover projects like the pipeline and to encourage conservation.Sacramentans, in comparison, pay just $26 per month.So Bednarski also plans to replace some of his lawn with drought-tolerant plants."It's just become such a maintenance issue," he said, "and now I'm thinking, 'OK, I can take that out and cut my water use at least 20 percent.' There are a lot more people thinking like that now." Idyllic existence hangs in the balance...Chapter Two...Matt Weiserhttp://www.sacbee.com/1268/v-print/story/1459477.htmlCHAPTER TWOBRADFORD ISLAND -- The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta can be a disorienting place – at once sublime and severe. The tug of that conflict is particularly strong here.Fewer than 40 people live on Bradford Island, a 2,000-acre tract of grazing land and weathered homes on Contra Costa County's northern fringe. No roads reach here, only boats. Half of California's freshwater runoff courses by outside Bradford's fragile levees. The island lies near the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, within the great estuary that weaves between them. As such, this one-time haven for methamphetamine cooks and junk collectors now finds itself wedged between environmental and political problems that threaten the state's most important water supply.The Delta's 70 islands form a crucial part of the water system that helped make California one of the world's richest societies. Today, that plumbing is at risk.These islands are really bowls. A century of farming and development has depleted their organic peat soils, causing some island interiors to fall more than 20 feet below sea level. If flooded, these bowls would fill with salty water from San Francisco Bay, contaminating the freshwater supply and requiring painful rationing statewide.According to researchers, earthquakes and sea level rises anticipated in the next 30 years mean there is a 62 percent chance that a dozen or more islands will flood simultaneously. As these risks grow, such a disaster becomes a virtual certainty by 2075."Sooner or later, nature's going to rear up and grab at least part of it back," said Raymond Seed, a UC Berkeley civil engineering professor who diagnosed New Orleans levee failures after Hurricane Katrina.The blow to the economy would be $40 billion or more. That's why water managers are pushing for a radical redesign of the Delta.Panel's call for a canal alarms island residentsSeed was among seven people – liberals and conservatives, laymen and experts – appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force. It spent nearly two years analyzing the Delta's many-faceted problems.In a final report released in November, the panel called for a new water canal around the Delta to secure the freshwater supply, plus the restoration of 100,000 acres of land to help the Delta's troubled ecosystem.A committee of state Cabinet secretaries will make final recommendations to the governor and Legislature later this month.Under most any future scenario, the Delta's 150,000 residents face the biggest changes. In the next flood, some islands likely won't be rebuilt. Their economic value doesn't justify repairing levees, so they would be left flooded. Other islands might be purchased for specific restoration projects.Though no final decisions have been made about any island, Bradford Island is among those unlikely to be saved. Local residents reject that scenario, but there's no consensus about how to respond."Whatever financial status I've got now, it was the island that gave it to me," said Brent Gilbert, a 64-year-old farmer and cattle rancher on Bradford Island. "I understand that Southern California needs water. But for crying out loud, let's don't let the farmer be the endangered species."Gilbert, a Vietnam War veteran, wears a handlebar mustache and a baseball cap pulled tight against scouring winds. As levee superintendent for three decades, he saw the island through punishing storms and savored its romantic sunsets. He battled drug dealers who thrived on the island's remoteness, and squatters who trashed its shoreline with derelict vessels."I've got a lot of deep-rooted, personal attraction to this island, and the Delta," he said.Delta's people are as unique as its environmentThe Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is not a true delta, a place where a river fans out to spill into the sea. Instead it's an estuary, an inland water body where ocean and fresh flows mingle.This estuary is the biggest on the West Coast of the Americas and may be unique in the world, because it is fed by the vast floodplains of two major rivers, with San Francisco Bay standing between them and the sea.It has always been a vital stop for migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway, and it gives birth to the richest salmon fishery on the West Coast."I've really struggled to find something like it," said Jeffrey Mount, a UC Davis geology professor who studies the river systems. "If it's not unique, it is certainly unusual."The Delta's residents are independent and diverse. They love both the natural environment and working the region's remote and maze-like landscape. It's a place where nature's extremes – understated beauty and violent upheaval – are always on the mind.Brent Gilbert has seen the worst. On Dec. 3, 1983, a high tide and fierce winds tore a hole in Bradford Island's west-facing levee. The San Joaquin River poured in, tearing another hole in the island 50 feet down to bedrock and 500 feet long.Gilbert was on the levee when it happened. The flood swept away his truck, and he survived by clinging to a drifting boat. His home was destroyed, and he was forced to move his family off the island.The river's force ripped out chunks of peat soil the size of compact cars, scattering them all over the island. Afterward, the island's soils were too salty to raise crops, and Gilbert focused instead on grazing cattle."It was pretty devastating," Gilbert said. "Not something you want to repeat."That hole in the island can still be seen in satellite images. It's a small lake now, popular with duck hunters.Farming in the Delta dates back to the 49ers, who slogged through the marshy region to seek their fortune in gold in the Sierra foothills. Some found it, instead, when their dreams played out and they returned to the Delta.Settlers dredged the meandering sloughs to clear the way for shipping, using the muck to build levees. They planted crops behind those levees and discovered the Delta's rich peat soil – an agglomeration of decaying marsh plants piled up over eons – grew just about anything in abundance.Today, farms cover about two-thirds of the Delta's 740,000 acres of land, and farming is the foundation of the economy, with recreation a distant second.The Delta is one of those rare places where the natural environment and human habitation are perpetually intertwined."It demonstrates those interactions in an unusually vivid, tangible way," said Jane Wolff, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Toronto.Wolff's 2003 book, "Delta Primer," is a celebration of the Delta's unique way of life, one displayed in microcosm on Bradford Island.It's where Mike Warren restores the Navy ship of his youth. Where Karen Cunningham raises cattle on the island's verdant grasses. It's the place Cate Kuhne visits to nurse her broken neck, where Michael Hamman dreams of a retirement home and Paul Sosnowski wants to build a resort.One of the island's peculiarities is that it can only be reached via private ferry operated by the levee district. This means the island attracts an especially strong strain of individualist. It also complicates every aspect of life.Mike Warren opens a hatch on the USS Lucid and the wind lifts a confetti of government-green paint chips inside the ship's control room. A 172-foot minesweeper, it may be the last surviving wooden warship built by the U.S. Navy.Commissioned in 1955, the Lucid ended up tied to Bradford's north shore after being acquired by a former resident, William Gardner, who was murdered on the island in 2004. Warren, a Navy veteran who served as an engineer on this very ship in his teens, came from Texas to buy it from Gardner's widow. He decided to also buy the adjacent property, and he's been a full-time resident ever since.Warren formed a nonprofit and planned to bring volunteers onto the island to help restore the vessel. But that plan was foiled when the levee district ran short of money and, in 2007, stopped running the ferry on weekends. Volunteers wanting to spend a Saturday painting and caulking planks couldn't reach the island."I really thought it was going to be a neat place to work on the ship," said Warren, 66. "My purpose out here is to save the old girl. It's a labor of love."Nature in the Delta: 'Oh god, it's so beautiful'At 1,300 square miles, the Delta is about the size of Rhode Island. It is home to about 130 species of fish and 750 plants and animals, including more than 20 that are endangered, from the green sturgeon to the riparian brush rabbit.Bradford Island lies in a zone where fresh water and salt water mix, an area of exceptional abundance."Oh god, it's so beautiful," said Michael Hamman, a San Francisco building contractor who hopes to build a retirement home on the island. "The birds out there are unbelievable. The fishing is terrific. It really is a paradise. You just take a short ferry ride and you go back 50 or 100 years in time."Unfortunately, that is the impression left by the island's levees, as well. The 7.4 miles of levee here are not impressive, even by Delta standards – which are well below those prescribed in federal law for urban areas.Bradford's levees rise, dip and swerve like a fun ride. They are constantly shifting on foundations of spongy peat soil, and they're too steep and narrow to offer robust flood protection. It's disconcerting to know these levees protect the drinking water of 25 million Californians.Like most Delta levees, those on Bradford Island are maintained by a local levee district. It raises money by taxing island property owners, mostly farmers.Typically, farmers run the districts and do levee maintenance with their own equipment.The taxing authority of Delta levee districts is limited by law and by practicalities: many islands, including Bradford, don't have enough residents to cover the high costs of levee maintenance. So the districts depend on state grants.This relationship – local wisdom and state aid – has prevented many floods. But it may not be enough to manage future threats, including up to 4.5 feet of sea level rise by 2100, the prediction last year by scientists working for the CalFed Bay-Delta Authority.The Delta has 1,100 miles of levees. Its islands have flooded 166 times over the past century. With a few exceptions, they've been rebuilt each time, at great cost, because they are vital cogs in the state's plumbing. They serve to convey the fresh water of the Sacramento River to state and federal export pumps near Tracy, and they prevent salty tides from mixing with that flow.But the state probably will concentrate future resources on strengthening populated islands with significant infrastructure, such as nearby Sherman Island, Bethel Island and Brannan-Andrus Island."The costs are so large to get Bradford Island to a level which is earthquake-resistant and flood-resistant that it becomes prohibitively high," said Mount, of UC Davis, a Delta expert. "Our argument is that at some point in the future, you abandon that island."Some proposals suggest Bradford Island would be left as open water if it floods again. Or it could be restored as tidal marsh habitat.Many residents cling to the Delta as it isDelta residents also stand to lose if the state diverts fresh water around the estuary in a new canal. Farming within the Delta requires fresh water to sustain crops. Siphoning a portion of the Sacramento River into a new canal could make the Delta saltier.Biologists believe the Delta should be saltier. Instead it is artificially maintained as fresh – using the state's network of hundreds of dams and diversion gates – to serve as a water supply.As an unwelcome side effect, this makes the Delta more inviting to foreign species. It is now considered the world's most invaded estuary, where 200 foreign plants and animals compete with native species. Four new invaders take hold every year, many arriving in the ballast water of cargo ships.Restoring tidal forces to the inner estuary could control this problem and improve habitat for native species.But many residents cling to the Delta as it is."They want us to sell it and give it back to them to put it back to nature," said Smith Cunningham, who runs cattle on Bradford with his wife, Karen. "But what's nature? The Delta is what it is now."Instead, Cate Kuhne thinks state water interests should strengthen levees on the westernmost Delta islands, and they should also learn to live with less Delta water."The solution is to put a moratorium on building in Southern California," she said.An Oakland resident, Kuhne broke her neck and was temporarily paralyzed in a 2004 car accident. She owns 9 acres on Bradford Island,and says the walking and swimming she does there are vital to her recovery. "Now they're trying to take that away from me," she said.Tom Zuckerman, attorney for the Central Delta Water Agency, also rejects the "salty future" scenario.In 2007, Zuckerman offered his own package of solutions that was largely ignored by decision makers. Its central feature: restore vast floodplains in the San Joaquin Valley to recharge groundwater, then use that supply to serve Southern California so Delta pumping could be stopped altogether.Grand resort vision vies with flood fearsPortions of Bradford's north and east levees lie about 6 inches below the 100-year flood level. Ideally, they should be 18 inches above it.This is common throughout the Delta, where flood protection is a battle against erosion, tides, and levees that shift and settle constantly.Gilbert remained as superintendent and board member of the levee district until 2005, when he sold his land. He now leases property on the island for grazing.He sold some of his land to Paul Sosnowski, who has slowly acquired enough of the island to become majority landowner and now controls the levee district.Sosnowski has grand visions of a resort on Bradford Island that have strained relations with residents and state flood control officials.At one point, locals say, the plans included a hotel-casino, linked to neighboring Jersey Island by aerial tram. Strict development limits in the Delta make that virtually impossible.Another time, Sosnowski proposed building a sandy beach with palm trees along one stretch of levee. State flood control officials quickly discouraged that idea.Sosnowski said he now plans a rural camping resort, offering hiking, horseback rides and bird watching. He intends to plant vineyards and build an old-time general store, complete with wooden boardwalk. Floating cabins anchored along the shore are also part of his plan."We don't want to have a lot of buildings. We just want to have recreation," he said. "I want you to take your family and do fishing and have barbecues. Simple things."Locals and state officials alike say attention to the island's levees has slipped in recent years. In 2007, the state awarded the levee district $150,000 in grants to design a major levee project. It must be spent this month, yet the state has seen no signs of progress."Whoa. That's not good," Gilbert said as he stopped his Ford truck atop the north levee.Hunched against the wind, he strode ahead and pointed out a crack running down the middle of the gravel levee road for about 100 feet. It dropped toward the San Joaquin River on one side and into the island interior on the other. The levee slumped an inch or two on the interior side of the crack."This is something very critical right here," Gilbert said, explaining that water could run though the crack and erode the levee from within. "It should be fixed immediately."Two months later, as winter storms loomed, the crack remained.Sosnowski later said he intends to fix it using the state grant funds, and hopes to submit plans for the work by month's end. Around that time, Delta Vision also will deliver final recommendations for the estuary's future to the governor and Legislature."We can't think everything will stay as it is for much longer," said Seed, the UC Berkeley levee expert. "The great beauty of an estuary is that it's built on constant change."  San Francisco ChronicleToxics battle in Merced neighborhood...Susan Swardhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/14/MNG914LO1G.DTLThe Azevedos bought their acre of land because they wanted their son to grow up in the country. The Briggs family liked their home's low price. Melissa Standish loved her acre because it reminded her of her childhood on an Ohio farm. Today Dawne Azevedo's husband is dead from cancer. Alameda Briggs keeps a list - now up to about 20 - of neighbors she says are dead or dying from cancer. And Melissa Standish says no one will want to buy her land here in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley.These people are among 2,200 residents of Merced's Beachwood neighborhood who say a nearby cooling tower fabrication plant contaminated their drinking water and soil, exposing them to cancer-causing chemicals. In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Fresno, they claim that for decades after the contamination was discovered, the plant's corporate owners failed to alert area residents to the health risk they faced, while continuing to discharge dangerous chemicals into the soil and groundwater for part of that time. If successful, the plaintiffs could win millions in damages. The companies whose subsidiary operated the plant over the years - the pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. of New Jersey and Amsted Industries of Chicago - insist they did nothing wrong. They acknowledge a pollution problem at the now-defunct plant, which was in business from 1961 to 1994. But the companies say the contamination has never posed any threat to local drinking water, which is drawn from wells. State regulators also say the water is safe to drink. Meanwhile, the companies are spending about $38 million on an environmental cleanup, their lawyer says. Whichever side triumphs, the case is likely to be watched by environmentalists and industry because it bores in on this crucial question: What are a company's duties once it knows it has contaminated an area near where people live? A powerful chemicalOf the industrial chemicals used at the plant, the one that causes greatest concern among Beachwood's residents is cancer-causing chromium 6 - a form of the chemical element chromium that is used in wood preservation, leather tanning and chrome plating."How could the plant owners do this to people - risk people's lives?" asks Pauline Hickman, 66, a retired cafeteria manager whose husband suffered for years from lung fibrosis. "It's a terrible travesty. We are just working-class people who were living here, trying to take care of our families." If residents had known of the contamination, most would not have continued to drink, bathe or irrigate their vegetable gardens with the local water supply, say plaintiffs' lawyers Mick Marderosian and Brett Runyon. They say it was "corporate irresponsibility" for the plant owners to withhold that information from local residents. Many of them now suffer from cancer, respiratory disorders, kidney dysfunction or other problems, according to the lawyers - and they blame chromium 6. Plaintiffs' experts "will testify that, based on reasonable medical probabilities, the various cancers found in this community were caused by chromium 6 from the plant," said Thomas Girardi, a plaintiffs' lawyer and veteran of past chromium 6 litigation, including the case featured in the 2000 movie "Erin Brockovich." Girardi says that in Beachwood, residents were exposed to chromium 6 by using polluted tap water and by breathing windborne contaminants from the plant.But Merck and Amsted Industries say there is no evidence that any of the plant's neighbors were exposed to chromium 6 or other contaminants from the plant - not in their drinking water, not in the air, not by any other means. Many cities in California have chromium 6 in their water at higher levels than Beachwood, says lawyer Stephen Lewis, who represents the plant's former owners. He argues that the chromium 6 in Beachwood's water could be naturally present or the result of activity unrelated to the plant.The state Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, which enforces clean-water laws, has noted chromium 6 in wells supplying the area, but it says the chemical is present in small amounts.The neighborhoodAt the center of the case is Beachwood, a neighborhood of modest tract homes and small bungalows where many residents receive government assistance or are retired.In the Depression, Dust Bowl refugees flooded into the area, and a local landowner sold lots to newcomers, recalls Ezio Sansoni, an almond grower. Bit by bit, many of the cow pastures in the area were filled up with homes.In 1961, a Kansas City company opened a manufacturing plant on a 40-acre parcel nearby. It fabricated cooling towers, heat-removal devices that are used in industry. In 1969, the plant began treating the wood it used in manufacturing with three substances - chromium 6, arsenic and copper. They were anti-rot agents, used to combat insects and bacteria.In 1975, Baltimore Aircoil Co., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., bought the plant. In 1985, Merck sold its subsidiary - and the plant along with it - to Amsted Industries. In about 1986, a consultant hired by the owners found evidence of chromium and arsenic contamination at the site, says Lewis, the companies' lawyer. Nevertheless, the plant continued to use chromium 6 in its treatment process until May 1991, records show.Although both chromium 6 and arsenic are cancer-causing substances, it was legal for industries to use them for wood treatment as long as they were handled and disposed of properly, say officials with the state regional water board. But it was against the law to pollute groundwater with the substances, the officials say.At about the time the problem was discovered, the plant built a new concrete drip pad to avoid further releases of the chemicals, says Lewis. "There was no evidence to suggest that anyone off-site had been exposed, nor is there any such evidence today," he says. In 1989, about three years after the consultant first identified the problem, state regulators noted that high levels of chromium 6 and arsenic had been found in the water of a drainage pond on plant property. They also reported that during storms water flowed from the pond into a canal running by Beachwood homes, and they raised the concern that the canal might be a pathway by which pollution was spread. The owners say they had the pond decontaminated in 1991 and began a cleanup at the site under state supervision. Today the state says the pond is clean, but the plaintiffs say their tests show that isn't true. Over the years, the state noted other problems. A plume of groundwater contaminated by the plant's wood treatment operation migrated and extended beneath a subdivision area southwest of the plant, the regional water board stated in 1993. In 1994, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control said chromium 6 and arsenic "hot spots" might be serious enough to warrant immediate remediation. Notices in the mailBeachwood residents first hired lawyers in 2006 to file a lawsuit after the canal's embankment failed during a storm and flooded nearby properties. But the nature of the dispute changed in February 2007, after the regional water board mailed notices to residents within a one-mile radius of the plant, saying the plant had caused "significant chromium and arsenic pollution."After that, the residents filed their lawsuit.In May 2007, the regional water board sent more information to worried residents: They were told that polluted groundwater had migrated off-site. But the board said it had not affected drinking water wells and there was no health threat. Six months after that, the regional water board notified residents that low levels of chromium 6 had been found in wells of Meadowbrook Water Co., which provides the area's water. Again the state said the water was safe. At about the same time, Meadowbrook issued a report to customers acknowledging that chromium 6 was present in its drinking water. Gary Drummond, Meadowbrook's lawyer, says the chromium 6 might occur naturally. The company's water quality is superb, he says.Asked why the regional water board didn't notify residents earlier about the contamination, senior engineer Duncan Austin said regulations today "require more public participation" than they did in the 1980s.For their part, Merck and Amsted Industries said they made efforts to alert nearby residents. Lewis, their lawyer, cited newspaper articles describing the plant cleanup, door-to-door visits in areas suspected of being above the contaminated groundwater and letters to residents and state announcements of hearings involving the plant. But the plaintiffs' lawyers say their clients weren't informed of the potential health risks.If they had been warned, residents argue, they could have received early testing and treatment for health problems resulting from exposure to the chemicals and could have avoided activities such as cultivation of backyard gardens.The plaintiffs also have a far different view of how the chromium 6 got in the water."Chromium can be detected in wells throughout California, but 9 out of ten times, it is not naturally occurring and is traceable back to some polluter," says Bob Bowcock, an environmental engineer working for the plaintiffs. The residentsIn the Beachwood neighborhood, many people say they now believe that some of the very ordinary things they did over the years - eating vegetables and fruit from their gardens, bathing their children, drinking tap water - may have exposed them to deadly chemicals. They believe it's the reason for many of the deaths and illnesses they have seen around them.Azevedo, 54, and her husband, Victor, moved to the neighborhood in 1983. They had a vegetable garden, fruit trees and grapevines. In 2004, at age 57, Victor Azevedo got colon cancer. He died earlier this year."This all could have been avoided," his wife says. "Had we been told the property might be contaminated, we never would have moved here."At the age of 64, Alameda Briggs says she is tormented by more than the list she keeps of neighbors who are cancer victims. She believes her husband, Bennie, a lifelong smoker who was diagnosed with lung cancer at age 67, contracted the disease in part because of the contamination from the plant. She also wonders whether the fibroid tumor she had removed from her stomach in the 1990s stemmed from the contamination.The couple and their four children moved into their home a mile from the plant in 1977. Like the Azevedos, they had a vegetable garden and small orchard. Shortly after moving in, Bennie Briggs said he got recurring rashes on his body. Now his wife thinks the rashes might have been an early warning about the pollution."It is like you are living in hell when you go through what we are going through here," she says. Standish, whose Beachwood property reminded her of her girlhood in Ohio, says she fell into a deep depression when she learned about the contamination. In Orange County she had lived in a townhouse with more than 100 neighbors and knew of only one person who died from cancer. But in Beachwood "there are 26 homes on my block and there's seven people I know of who passed away from cancer or have it," she says.Josefina Orozco, 29, a widow with two small children, says she learned about the contamination only after her recent purchase of a new home close to the plant and directly behind the canal. She says Ranchwood Homes, which sold her the house, never spoke of contamination. The company, also named in the lawsuit, didn't respond to a request for comment."When I bought this house, I was really excited and my kids were so happy," Orozco says. "But now I feel really sad."The cleanupMeanwhile, the cleanup effort begun in 1991 is still under way. So far, about 3,000 tons of soil have been hauled away and 5,400 pounds of chromium have been removed from the groundwater. The plant's former owners hope the project will be done in two years. Merck - which under an agreement with Amsted is responsible for the bulk of the cleanup - is doing a "Cadillac" job at the site, says Austin, the regional board engineer.No trial date has been set for the case, which will be heard by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger.For Merck, the lawsuit represents another headache. Earlier this year the company announced it was starting to cut checks in its $4.8 billion settlement with former users of the painkiller Vioxx, pulled from the market after it was linked to heart attacks and strokes. Girardi, a plaintiffs' lawyer in the Beachwood case, also represented people who sued Merck over Vioxx. Earlier, Girardi helped negotiate plaintiffs' settlements with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. totaling about $633 million in connection with chromium 6 contamination in the San Bernardino County town of Hinkley and the Kings County community of Kettleman City. The Hinkley case became the basis for the movie "Erin Brockovich," which recounts a law clerk's fight for the residents.Defense attorney Lewis argues that the plant's former owners "aren't callous people. They care about people living near any plant who may have illnesses." But he says that in Beachwood, "there is simply no connection between the plaintiffs' alleged illnesses and the plant."Lewis' arguments don't convince Beachwood plaintiffs.Hickman, the retired cafeteria manager whose husband suffered for years from lung fibrosis, recalls taking her husband, Charles, to Stanford Hospital in 1998 after his health had plummeted. After doctors examined him, they asked if he had been exposed to chemicals.She told them no. Within four years, at age 73, he died of a heart attack. Hickman now thinks her husband was exposed to contaminants from the water that the couple drank every day from the tap."I never thought he would get sick and pass like that," she says, tears rolling down her cheeks. "I really do feel robbed, deprived of my husband."Had she known of the plant contamination, she says she could have told her husband's doctors "and they might have been able to treat him specifically for that problem." "Our lives would have been different. If you know what you are fighting, you have a better chance than fighting in the dark."Feds to reopen forests protecting spotted owl...Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Timeshttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/14/MNQD14G1FD.DTL&type=printablePort Angeles, Wash. -- Scott Gremel makes his way swiftly and surely up the steep trail, across a frigid stream, through colossal stands of hemlock and Douglas fir.On the ridgeline, thousands of feet above where he left his truck on the valley floor, Gremel points the antenna on his tracking device toward the next valley. A faint ping responds, the radio tag of a single barred owl that has laid claim to two entire valleys.As Gremel made his way from the Olympic National Park visitor center a few miles back, he pointed at several locations where a much more famous - and more reclusive - bird once nested. Nothing.Gremel has traipsed through these trees since the spring snow melt, calling out the telltale whoop-woo-hoo-hoooo of the northern spotted owl. He hasn't been able to find more than two mating pairs in this 11-square-mile region. Once, there were five.Across their entire range in Washington, Oregon, Northern California and British Columbia, there are thought to be fewer than 5,000 northern spotted owls. In the dense forests of the Olympic Peninsula last year, spotted owls were found in 19 of the 54 sites they once had populated. Their numbers have declined by one-third since the 1990s, when old-growth logging across the Pacific Northwest came to a virtual halt in an effort to protect their habitat.The declines have been so persistent - averaging 4 percent a year - that a growing number of scientists have come to think the most immediate culprit is not logging but the aggressive barred owl, which has crept into the West Coast forests from Canada over the last few decades.Bigger, more fertile and with an appetite less finicky than its threatened cousin, the barred owl has taken over in forest after forest, experts say - claiming spotted owls' nests in the warmer, lower elevations."This barred owl pair showed up right at a nest tree where we'd had the same male spotted owl who'd been banded in '92," Gremel said. "He was last seen the year right before (the newcomers) showed up. Then this spring, a park visitor found a dead spotted owl in the campground here."There is no way of knowing whether the old owl left of its own accord, was driven out or simply died of old age - but it is troubling, he said.Now, as the spotted owl continues to decline, the federal government is taking what many conservationists say is the worst step possible: reopening more of the bird's forests to logging.In what probably will be one of the final environmental battles of the Bush administration, 18 environmental groups filed motions in federal court last month to block a vast remapping of federal lands in the Pacific Northwest. Proposals by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service, which officials hope to have in place by the end of the year, would open up for logging large tracts that had been set aside as breathing space for the owls - nearly 1.8 million acres.The moves amount to a wholesale reworking of the Northwest Forest Plan. The 1994 compromise - brokered by the Clinton administration to end the timber wars of the Pacific Northwest - set up a system of protections for the region's old-growth forests, allowing them to be thinned but not cut down.Those classic groves, all but about 20 percent of which have been lost to logging and development, are essential not only for the spotted owl but the marbled murrelet (a threatened small seabird) and a host of other plants and animals whose survival is considered a barometer of the planet's ecological health.The management plan has been a lightning rod for blame in a paralyzed logging industry; it turned the spotted owl into a much-maligned poster child for closed mills and economic ruin.Timber industry officials say the compromise never worked. A combination of environmental lawsuits and inadequate federal appropriations for timber management, they said, resulted in lumber mills getting little more than one-quarter of the 1.1 billion board feet a year of timber they had been promised, and the Northwest's forests were left overgrown, bug-infested and dangerously prone to fires.But conservationists say the latest attempt by the Bush administration to dole out owl habitat to the timber industry marks a blatant power play by the government's top political advisers - over the advice of Fish and Wildlife Service scientists."Saying the Northwest Forest Plan hasn't done much for owls by protecting all that habitat, so we should protect less habitat, doesn't make any sense at all," said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice. "The science has said we need as much habitat protected as we possibly can, and we likely need to protect much more habitat in light of the uncertainties of climate change."Ross Mickey of the American Forest Resource Council called the remapping "a small step in the right direction. There should be millions of acres taken out of what they say is critical habitat."The industry group has charged that past federal management plans set aside unreasonably large areas of the Northwest - including newer plantations of trees - that should never have been considered classic spotted owl habitat.Michael Campbell, spokesman for the BLM in Oregon, said the agency spent five years producing its latest plan, one that would put the lumber mills back to work and protect the owls.What many people don't realize, Campbell said, is that Pacific Northwest forests are amazingly productive and quickly can regenerate so-called "old growth" habitat for the owls to replace whatever large trees are lost to logging.Habitat aside, Gremel said, there is still the problem of the barred owl. The spotted owl has proved unable to defend its territory against the invaders.He recalled the first time that he and his colleagues took a decoy out and began making barred owl sounds in an attempt to catch and band one of the birds. Almost immediately, a barred owl swooped down and "literally ripped the head off the decoy," Gremel said. "It was so busy ripping up the thing, it didn't even care about us approaching."What chance, he wondered, would a spotted owl have against such an adversary?"At this point," he said, "you look at all the sites where we still have spotted owls, and I can pretty much see barred owls occupying all of them."Contra Costa TimesPort air pollution riles regulators, neighbors...Denis Cuffhttp://www.contracostatimes.com/environment/ci_11228462Community groups and clean air advocates and regulators were counting on big commitments from the Port of Oakland this fall to slash diesel truck pollution that has contributed to a higher cancer risk in West Oakland.Now they are fuming, saying the city-owned seaport has pulled back rather than pay out for cleaner air, and public health as well as the port's long term financial health may suffer as a result.The tensions are ramping up as ports and truckers struggle to meet new California pollution requirements in the midst of hard economic times sweeping over the shipping industry.Oakland port commissioners voted Nov. 19 to indefinitely postpone a planned $5 million contribution to a government pool of grants for owners of old trucks to install diesel soot filters required by the state for trucks that want to keep visiting ports after Jan. 1, 2010.Without enough clean trucks, port business could be severely disrupted, air quality regulators say, because hundreds of the 2,000 trucks that use the port are believed to need pollution upgrades.Port commissioners also postponed a Dec. 2 vote on a master plan to cut port pollution, and a container fee that would make companies that ship the goods pay millions of dollars annually to finance pollution reduction measures for diesel trucks, ships and trains.'Pulling back'"We see the port as essentially pulling back from their commitments to deliver cleaner air," said Jack Broadbent, chief executive officer of the nine-county Bay Area Air Quality Management District. "We are extremely disappointed that the port did not follow through." One environmental leader was harsher."These delays in reducing pollution protect the interests of shipping companies and their customers, like Wal-Mart and Costco, at the expense of public health in Oakland," said Brian Beveridge, co-director of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project.Port officials said the troubled economy is hitting the shipping industry so hard that the port, a landlord for many interrelated maritime businesses, has a fiscal responsibility to reassess how it spends to reduce pollution."We haven't in any way abandoned our commitments to air quality," said Richard Sinkoff, the port's manager of environmental programs and planning. "The central issue for the port is its financial health and making sure that the benefits from it can accrue."The port is the region's biggest concentrated source of diesel soot, which can penetrate deep into the lungs and contribute to a variety of health problems, including asthma, cancer and heart disease, regulators say.In March, the California Air Resources Board released a risk analysis that concluded the 22,000 residents of West Oakland face a cancer risk some three times higher than the rest of the Bay Area because of air pollution, much of it from traffic on local roads and freeways, but some from port traffic. The pollution also escalates cancer risk to a lesser degree in much of western Alameda and Contra Costa counties, officials said.Pool createdVowing to cut pollution risks quickly, the California Air Resources Board, the Bay Area air pollution district and the port each planned to chip in $5 million to create a $15 million pool for grants to clean up diesel truck models from 1994 to 2003. The maximum grant would be up to $15,000 per truck for soot filters that can cost up to $20,000, leaving a large share for truckers to pick up.The grant program will go ahead, but if the $5 million in port money is not restored, fewer trucks will receive help to upgrade, When they balked at approving the money last month, port commissioners discussed the dark cloud over port finances, and a dispute arose about who should bear the burden of truck filter costs not covered by grants.Some of the many independent truckers who do business at the port complained the filter costs are an extreme hardship on their modest incomes.To solve the problem, the truckers and Teamsters union representatives have urged the port commission to require trucking companies to put the independent truckers on their payroll as full-time employees. If that is done, it's up to the trucking companies to absorb the costs.But other truckers have told the port commission they want to remain contractors to keep their freedom as independent businessmen, even if it means absorbing the cost to clean up trucks. As independent contractors, the truckers cannot legally be organized by labor unions.The labor issue remains unresolved as the port waits for a study to be issued next year on how to address the truckers' status. In the meantime, air pollution officials said they are growing more anxious that trucks using the port may not be ready for the 2010 deadline to clean up."We need the port to show leadership instead of coming up with more reasons for delays," said Mark Ross, a Martinez city councilman on the Bay Area air pollution board. "They have lagged behind Southern California ports in cleaning up." Port officials acknowledge they are concerned about the clean truck deadline, but they said that some cargo owners are considering giving financial assistance for truck upgrades or replacements."I think we'll hear more about partners that are receptive to helping," said Tim Leong, a port environmental scientist. "They understand that operating green is part of doing business at the port."Massive restoration project to turn salt ponds into wetlands...Julia Scott, San Mateo County Timeshttp://www.contracostatimes.com/localnews/ci_11226457?nclick_check=1MENLO PARK — The Ravenswood salt ponds do not look like a place where wildlife would thrive. Decades of being cut off from the Bay by a tall levee has turned this national wildlife "refuge" into a lifeless expanse of mud flats, silent but for the hiss of nearby traffic climbing onto the Dumbarton Bridge, with former salt production ponds crusted in white and tinted the red-brown color of iodine. Starting in January, this unlikeliest of places will become a staging ground for the biggest wildlife comeback in Bay Area history. Ravenswood will be the first major part of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge to be transformed into tidal wetlands, a 50-year, $1 billion project that will boost habitat for endangered species at former salt ponds from Hayward and Menlo Park to San Jose. The prospect of finally seeing the changes take place energized Mendel Stewart, refuge manager with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as he carted a series of brightly-colored maps along on a tour of Ravenswood in October."In the springtime, in the summer, there should be thousands of birds nesting out here," said Stewart, his eyes sweeping the landscape.Specifically, the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project will restore habitat for endangered species such as the California clapper rail and the salt marsh harvest mouse, which require varying degrees of salinity to survive, as well as American avocets, black-necked Stilts, and delicate western snowy plovers. A handful of levees will be breached to allow the Bay tides to wash into certain salt ponds during the next 10 to 15 years, and these sites will act as test cases for the future success of the project on a wider scale.By 2060, officials hope to open at least 50 percent and someday, hopefully, as much as 90 percent of the project's 15,100 acres to tidal action."It will compensate for many of the things that have happened since people got here," said Stewart. "If it's successful and we can manage it, it shows that over time, we can bring it back."A new home on the flatsBringing life back to the former Cargill salt ponds, acquired by the Fish and Wildlife Service for $100 million in taxpayer dollars in 2003, will not be as simple as poking a hole in a levee and watching the water rush in.It took a long time to engineer the salt ponds into being — first by the Ohlone and then by Spanish padres who started solar saltworks projects near San Jose in the 1800s. Most of the South Bay had become a compartmentalized network of levees by the time the Leslie Salt Company came in and absorbed the competition in the 1930s.Cargill bought Lesley Salt in the 1970s and perfected the five-year process of crystallizing and harvesting salt, a technique resembling a gigantic conveyor dumping water and collecting salt around the Bay. Machines wrote the legacy of the salt ponds, and machines will be needed to restore them due to the fragility of wildlife the ponds will be put in place to protect.Rather than fully breach the handful of levees designated as part of Phase 1, officials will allow a certain amount of water to enter particular ponds up to a specific level, depending on which birds they are trying to attract.The ponds near Alameda Creek in Hayward at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve — 6,300 acres in all — will be divided into six mini-compartments of increasing salinity, with Bay water brought in and evaporated out of them in succession in an effort to lure species of shorebirds, including eared grebes, which prefer saltier environments and like to feed on super-salty brine shrimp.At Ravenswood, a single large pond will be divided in two. One part will be transformed into a marsh filled with a foot of water and raised mounds of dirt to create a habitat coveted by black-necked Stilts. A rear open area closer to University Avenue will be retained as a dry mud flat for nesting Western snowy plovers, which Stewart said they will find reminiscent of the beaches where they usually like to lay their eggs. "They like the blasted moonscapes, is what I call it," he said.That sinking feelingIf Cargill's legacy made the salt ponds inhospitable for many forms of wildlife, the salt ponds had the opposite effect on promoting growth in Bayside communities. Millions of residents have settled into homes and offices on dry land protected from flooding hazards by a system of levees that are in some areas nearly a century old. In the meantime, much of the land has sunk beneath them.Parts of the South Bay near San Jose have subsided by as much as 14 feet because of groundwater extraction starting in the 1930s. Places such as the Google headquarters and Moffett Field in Mountain View only exist because of the levees protecting the shoreline from incoming tides, according to Stewart.That's why Phase 1 of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project will only affect areas that don't present flood control problems — all the crucial levees will stay in place until new ones are built closer to the shoreline to raise or replace them.That also accounts for the $1 billion price. Planning, building, and maintaining levees is notoriously expensive. In 2007, taxpayers spent $2 million just to maintain levees around the Bay for habitat value and flood control. The Army Corps of Engineers isn't expected to present a new design for local flood protection for at least another decade. When they do, most of the cost will be borne by flood control districts that represent the Santa Clara Valley and Alameda County respectively.San Mateo County, however, has yet to come up with a funding source for its levees at Ravenswood and elsewhere. That could eventually become a major problem, especially considering Ravenswood Point is the most exposed portion of all the salt ponds in the Bay Area. On a map, it sticks out like a fist into the Bay. Keeping those levees intact will cost a lot of money. "It's flat as a pancake out there. If those levees don't hold up, the water could come in there and top Bayfront Expressway," warned Steve Ritchie, executive program manager for the restoration project. "It's a good reason to make sure we do something sooner than later."Facing down a floodThere's another good reason to try to speed up the process: sea level rise. Scientists have predicted the oceans could rise by as much as one meter, or 3.3 feet, in the next 90 years. If the water comes in more quickly than that or in the form of a New Orleans-type epic flood event, it could overtop some levees and utterly thwart the benefits the wetlands officials are working so hard to create. "If sea level rise starts to occur too fast, we will end up with large areas of mud flat and open water and we will have lost the opportunity for tidal marsh. By then we'll be building flood walls as opposed to a levee-wetlands combination," said Ritchie. An area of transition between open water and dry land, tidal marsh has more hidden benefits than any inventor could have imagined. Its spongy surface, filled with plant life, actually absorbs storm surges and deflects the pressure of wave action, removing the need for levees the size of castle walls. Tidal marshes are one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth, producing plant material to absorb carbon from the air at a rate scientists say rivals that of trees. Saltwater tidal zones, like the ones around the Bay, also do not emit high levels of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) like freshwater marshes — so there's no risk of further polluting the atmosphere. Wetlands solve water pollution by binding to pollutants, such as nitrogen, phosphorous, and even oil and heavy metals, and breaking them down over time before they are buried in the sediment. "I had a friend who used to refer to (tidal marshes) as the lungs of the Bay, breathing in and out," said Ritchie.Walking along a levee at Ravenswood that will be closed to the public when construction begins next month, Stewart said locals have so far failed to grasp that this site and a handful of others will be part of "the next big thing" for the coming decade — an enterprise so ambitious in its proportions that other cities around the world with the potential for similar projects will be watching to see what happens.More than anything, he would like to see locals begin to bridge the disconnect between their notion of nature and the rich diversity of life taking shape in the salt ponds they pass every day on their way to work. "They go to Yosemite, they go to other parts of the Bay Area for nature," said Stewart. "This project is all about changing that."Santa Cruz SentinelLocal water supplies remain tight despite wet weather...Kurtis Alexanderhttp://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_11230668Locals may grumble about the forecast this weekend, but water managers and farmers are counting their blessings.Forecasters say showers through early next week will likely bring this year's level of precipitation, currently below average, back to normal. In fact, most are saying that rainfall will be pretty normal over the next several months, and the year could shape up to be a pretty average one.That's the good news. The bad news is Santa Cruz County is coming off two dry years and local water supplies would stand to gain from more than just average rainfall."None of our supplies are sustainable at current demand levels," said John Ricker, director of the county's Water Resources Division. "We'll have to address this issue whether we have a wet or dry year."Most of Santa Cruz County relies on groundwater for its business and household needs. The water, which collects in aquifers beneath the earth's surface, has soaked in over a long period of time, which Ricker explains is now being piped out more quickly than it can return.While a wet year, or even an average year, might normally help replenish the aquifers, the benefit is lost when the groundwater is continually drained for human use.This is the case with aquifers in Scotts Valley, Soquel and Watsonville, which a bulk of county residents depend upon."The impacts from just these last few dry years are already being seen," said John Eiskamp, president of the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau. A number of wells in the Pajaro Valley have dried up recently because of the dwindling aquifer levels, Eiskamp said."And the less rainfall we have each year, the more it's going to hurt the groundwater supply," he said.Saving our suppliesFor water managers, conservation remains the top strategy. The county's handful of water agencies are encouraging residents to do things like take shorter showers and install low-flow toilets so pressure on the aquifers eases and the aquifers can begin to recharge.Santa Cruz County, as a result, has used less water -- about 3 percent less annually than a decade ago, according to a 2008 United Way report. But whether that's enough depends on how conservation trends hold up and how quickly the aquifers can recover."It takes many years for mountain water to infiltrate back into our groundwater," said Laura Brown, general manager of the Soquel Creek Water District, which counts on the Purisima Aquifer and the Aromas Red Sands Aquifer for its supplies. "We've never recovered from the dry years decades ago."The Soquel district, which serves about 50,000 residents, now faces the same threat that the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency faces to the south -- salty ocean water spilling into the emptying aquifers."If we start losing wells to seawater intrusion, that would be nearly impossible to reverse," said Brown.She hopes this year proves to be a wet one, and the same with following years.Hopefully a wet winterThe city of Santa Cruz, because it relies on surface water instead of aquifers, is perhaps the most vulnerable to weather fluctuations. However, despite two dry years and with area rivers and creeks running below normal, the city's water supply remains in decent shape."We need rain, there's no doubt about it, but .... we're managing to stumble along," said city Water Director Bill Kocher.Kocher said demand for water has fortunately dropped with the supply. The city, he said, barely tapped its reserves at Loch Lomond this year, and the reservoir there remains 70 percent full after the dry season.That doesn't mean the city is not looking to expand and diversify its supplies. The desal plant and exploring new groundwater sources are on the agenda, efforts that would help water officials get by less anxiously through dry years like the past two.This year has been dry so far, too. Santa Cruz County has had just 30 to 50 percent of the normal rainfall since the wet season began in July. However, water managers say, with the rainy months still ahead, that number doesn't mean much."We'll get a fair amount of rain over the next week, and that may take us up to normal," said Ryan Walbrun, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey.Climate models, said Walbrun, show no extreme weather patterns this winter, like an El Nino or La Nina. Rainfall, he said, is expected to be about average.Los Angeles TimesThousands of small banks still waiting to qualify for $700 billion rescue program...CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Economics Writerhttp://www.latimes.com/business/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-banks-meltdown,0,6098933,print.storyWASHINGTON (AP) — Many small community banks are growing frustrated about their inability to access the government's $700 billion financial rescue fund, nearly two months after large banks began tapping the fund for much-needed capital.Trade groups representing the banks complain that the delay is putting smaller institutions at a competitive disadvantage to publicly traded banks, more than 50 of which have received capital injections."They took care of Wall Street first, and it seems like Main Street got left behind," said Cynthia Blankenship, vice chairwoman of Bank of the West in Irving, Texas, which has $250 million in assets. Blankenship is also chairwoman of the Independent Community Bankers of America.Some small banks, especially in areas such as California and Florida where the housing slump hit hardest, carry troubled real estate loans and likely would benefit from the government cash, Blankenship said.Publicly traded banks have been eligible since the Treasury Department began the $250 billion capital injection program Oct. 14. The department opened it on Nov. 17 to about 3,800 small, privately held banks. A few publicly traded community banks already have received government money.But the department has yet to issue the necessary guidelines for about 3,000 additional private banks. Most of them are set up as partnerships, with no more than 100 shareholders. They aren't able to issue preferred shares to the government in exchange for capital injections, as other banks can.The Treasury Department has come under fire from members of Congress for not ensuring that the capital injections lead to more lending. The ICBA also argues that healthy smaller banks are more likely to use government money to make loans than are big banks that need to shore up their capital after writing down billions in mortgage-related losses.Hundreds of the banks have applied for government money, the ICBA said in a letter Tuesday, as a precautionary step. But they can't access the money.As a result, the government needs to figure out what it can receive in exchange for capital. Treasury officials say they are working on it but that the task is technically difficult."I have not seen a good answer yet," Neel Kashkari, director of Treasury's Office of Financial Stability, said Monday at a housing conference.The vast majority of small banks are financially healthy, the ICBA says. Most did not get caught up in the housing meltdown that hasso damaged Wall Street banks. But groups such as the ICBA say the rescue fund is supposed to be available to all healthy banks.Banks that aren't eligible may lose out to other lenders that have received government money, the American Bankers Association added in a letter Dec. 5 to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson."They can only watch while many of their competitors, strengthened by capital injections from the government, seize opportunities to meet credit needs of their communities," the ABA letter said.Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, urged Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in a letter Dec. 5 to open the program to the remaining small banks by the end of December.Bert Ely, a banking consultant, said one possible solution would be for the government to receive some type of debt instrument rather than equity.The Treasury Department is still struggling to hire enough staff to operate the capital-injection program, the Government Accountability Office, an auditing agency, said in a report earlier this month.The department has handed out more than $155 billion to 77 banks. Of that sum, $115 billion has gone to the eight largest, including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.Some smaller banks that haven't yet been able to access the federal money are particularly irked by the efforts of nonbank financial institutions, such as life insurers and credit card companies, to get a slice of the money. At least four life insurers, including Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and Genworth Financial Inc., are seeking to buy small thrifts to become eligible for the capital injections."The law was passed to help banks, and now companies are trying to get in front by becoming a bank," said Paul Merski, chief economist for the ICBA, which has about 5,000 members. "It's a little bit frustrating."The banks that aren't eligible control just a small slice of the nation's banking assets. They make up about one-third of community banks, which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. defines as banks with less than $1 billion in assets.Overall, community banks hold 11 percent of the industry's total assets, according to Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Still, they play a vital role in small business and agriculture lending.Community banks provide 29 percent of small commercial and industrial loans, 40 percent of small commercial real estate loans and 77 percent of small agricultural production loans, Bair said in congressional testimony last month. The FDIC doesn't have more precise data for the type of banks that aren't eligible for capital injections.The delay in accessing the rescue money is just one aspect of the program that has frustrated small community banks and their directors.The government has said the $250 billion it set aside for capital injections is intended for healthy banks. Yet the money has been widely referred to in press reports as a "bailout." As a result, many well-capitalized banks worry that if they take money from Treasury, their customers might see them as weak, Blankenship said.Conversely, if they don't receive any funds, customers might wonder if they were turned down, she said. Treasury lists banks that have received money. But it won't say which banks have applied.Finally, the ICBA has raised concerns about a measure governing the capital injections that would let the Treasury Department "unilaterally amend" the program. For example, Congress could require banks that have received government money to do more lending, Merski said."That's a bit concerning," said Dan Blanton, chief executive of Georgia Bank & Trust, based in Augusta, Ga. "If they decide they want to change the rules after you've taken the money ... you have to live with it."Still, Blanton said his bank has applied for federal funds, though he hasn't decided yet whether to take the money if his bank is approved.Federal agencies and trade groups have encouraged banks of all kinds — including those not yet technically eligible — to apply for the capital, to preserve the option. More than 1,000 community financial institutions have applied, Bair said in her testimony last month.But some small banks that are eligible are saying no. Financial services firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a recent report that at least 82 banks have publicly said they won't seek funds.Evergreen Federal Bank, based in Grants Pass, Ore., for example, has a link on its home page that reads, "We Don't Need a Bailout."New York TimesFinal Days Fire Sale...Timothy Egan  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/opinion/14egan.html?sq=endangeres%20species&st=cse&scp=3&pagewanted=printImagine if President Bush, on his last day in office, invited his friends to lift the Lincoln portrait from the White House Dining Room, take the 18th- century furniture from the Map Room and — for good measure — poison the Rose Garden on the way out.In essence, he is doing the same thing this month with land that belongs to every American — the magical redrock country of the Southwest.Well before it was a bumper sticker and a chant at Sarah Palin rallies, “drill, baby, drill” became the overriding mission of the political hacks who oversee more than 200 million acres of public land for Bush. At a frantic pace, they have opened up to oil and gas leasing canyons of golden slickrock, mesas once known only to hunters and pronghorn antelope, and little hideaways near the open-aired art galleries of the Anasazi.Take what you want, they said — and get while the getting is good. It was a plunderfest that produced a gangster culture, with dozens of high-level Interior Department employees exchanging sex, cocaine and gifts with the industry they were supposed to be doing arms-length business with, according to a scathing and quickly forgotten report this year by the agency’s inspector general.At the time of the report, with gas reaching $4 a gallon, many people shrugged and said we need the oil — drill, baby, drill. Now gas is selling for a pittance, but that hasn’t stopped the fire sale. Everything must go! On Election Day, the Bush administration announced it would open 360,000 acres of public land in Utah to oil and gas leasing, including about 100,000 acres near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, and Dinosaur National Monument.As with the $700 billion bailout that Bush insisted had to be given to the very bankers, insurance companies and other tassel-loafed failures who got us into the economic meltdown, the president now wants every dead-ender in the energy business to have one last treat.Solitude and ageless stone may not be commodities as easily quantified as a couple of thousand barrels of oil. But to the American inheritance, they are the equivalent of those first-edition Audubon books and presidential portraits in the White House. The administration never even consulted with the parks before announcing they would have oil and gas rigs on their borders. The giveaways went far beyond public land. For the coal industry, the parting gift was a federal rule that makes it easier to dump mining waste into streams. Anyone who has spent time in Appalachia of late has seen the handiwork — entire mountaintops lopped off in an end-of-days rush for a dirty fossil fuel. On Thursday, Bush handed out another goodie: a rule that largely frees federal agencies from having to consult independent biologists before constructing something that could lead to the extinction of birds, fish or other endangered species.Following a storm of outrage by park officials and the incoming Obama team, the government has now backed off from some of the more egregious sales in the Southwest. But on the upcoming Friday before Christmas, it will still auction off more than 150,000 acres near some of the most stunning scenery in the world.In a concession, officials promised that oil and gas operations would be camouflaged — the rigs and drills painted a desert red so that visitors to the wildlands of Utah would not have industrial clutter marring their sunset picture.It would be one thing if we needed the fuel. Of nearly 9,000 oil and gas permits approved on public land in Utah, barely a third of them have been drilled. The way this game works is that oil companies buy the leasing rights — in some case for as little as $2.50 an acre — then wait for Saudi Arabia to force another oil price spike. Then they drill. And the impact on price or domestic supply? Nothing. Even if all the accessible oil and gas were taken from federal land in Utah, it would have zero impact on prices, according to several studies.But the loss is incalculable — “geologic architecture that has inspired our American character,” and places where “the curvature of the earth is not only seen but felt,” as the ever-lyrical Terry Tempest Williams wrote in a recent essay in The Los Angeles Times. So why do it? Because they still can. The only urgency is Jan. 20.Eight years ago, in an act of frat-boy vandalism during their departure from the White House, members of Bill Clinton’s staff ripped W’s off computer keyboards and glued shut some shelves. If only Bush could revert to his college character type, and leave us with such a benign exit mark.Nascar’s Sponsors, Hit by Sticker Shock...SUSANNA HAMNERhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/business/14nascar.html?_r=1&ref=business&pagewanted=printAT the Indianapolis Motor Speedway last July, the parking lot was filled with excited Nascar fans chugging beer, roasting pigs and exchanging drivers’ statistics. But in an office inside the racetrack, the scene was far from celebratory. Executives of the Big Three Detroit automakers told Brian France, the Nascar chief executive and chairman, that they planned to cut their investments in the sport sharply in the 2009 racing season. Since then, Chevrolet has said it is cutting back on advertising and sponsorship deals with 12 tracks. Ford is trimming Nascar spending by 20 percent, and Chrysler by 30 percent. The economic crisis is hitting industries around the globe, and the pain is beginning to filter down into professional sports. Many sports may face smaller crowds and shrinking player salaries, with, of course, exceptions for stars like the Yankees pitcher C. C. Sabathia.General Motors said in September that it wouldn’t buy any advertising time for the Super Bowl in February; earlier this year, it withdrew Cadillac’s sponsorship of the Masters golf tournament. It has also terminated its $7 million-a-year endorsement deal with Tiger Woods. The National Basketball Association and the National Football League recently announced staff layoffs, and the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants and Jets of the N.F.L. are still trying to find companies willing to pay to put their names on stadiums under construction. Honda said recently that it was dropping out of Formula One and selling its team. “The economic crisis is going to hit all sports. Every team should operate under the worst-case-scenario assumption,” says Michael E. Rapkoch, founder of Sports Value Consulting, based in Dallas. “Many sponsors’ contracts that are up for renewal this year or next probably won’t be renewed. For the long-term contracts, I won’t be surprised if they try to get out of them through bankruptcy or some other way.” Nascar, which relies on corporate sponsorships more than other sports, is particularly vulnerable. In the 2008 racing season, 400 companies put up more than $1.5 billion to sponsor races, cars and drivers. About a third of that was provided by auto companies, which are now struggling with the economic downturn, if not possible bankruptcy. Automakers aren’t the only ones pulling out. Longtime sponsors — including Kodak, Texaco and Domino’s Pizza — are abandoning Nascar. Even Craftsman, the Sears brand that has been the title sponsor of the truck series since it started in 1995, is cutting its ties.And this summer, Chip Ganassi Racing shut down the team of Dario Franchitti, the 2007 winner of the Indianapolis 500, after being unable to find a sponsor for his car following his switch to Nascar.“Many of the major sponsors pulling back have been involved in our sport for decades,” Mr. France says. “They’re making cuts, and we’re affected.”It’s a big comedown for Nascar, which has had sizzling growth over the past decade. A multibillion-dollar TV deal in 2001 helped propel it from a regional sport that drew most of its revenue from sales of tickets and merchandise into a popular franchise with a national following. Its top-level Sprint Cup series of 36 races draws an average of 7.8 million television viewers a race, making Nascar the second-most-watched sport, behind professional football. It can attract crowds — more than 200,000 for the Daytona 500 and Talladega — that exceed those for a Super Bowl, a World Series game and an N.B.A. finals game combined. Over all, Nascar sanctions more than 1,200 races at 100 tracks in the United States and abroad.This year, revenue was approximately $3 billion, a 50 percent increase from 2001. That’s better than the N.F.L., the N.B.A. and the National Hockey League in the same period. Only Major League Baseball grew faster. “If you go back to 1998, there is no question Nascar has shown the biggest growth,” says David Broughton, research director of SportsBusiness Journal.But the sport will not see those kinds of impressive numbers next season. TV viewership has slipped in the past year or so, and so has attendance. The truck series’ official sponsor is now Camping World, the largest retailer of recreational vehicle equipment. Nascar gave the retailer a substantial discount: Camping World will pay approximately $2 million a year, half of what Craftsman is estimated to have paid. While it is gaining as well as losing sponsors, Nascar expects its take from title sponsorships to drop 20 percent next year, to about $150 million. “We told them what we could afford,” says Marcus Lemonis, chief executive of Camping World. “They were very sensitive to us and offered an appropriate price for the market conditions.”This kind of cost-cutting has forced the three separate entities of the sport — teams, racetracks and the privately held Nascar company — to lay off about 600 employees. Storied teams with revered family names like Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Petty Enterprises have no choice but to merge with other teams. Some teams unable to land a season’s worth of sponsors, like Doug Yates and the Wood Brothers, can afford to participate in only a handful of races. The boom years made drivers a little spoiled, with many flying in private planes and riding in luxury motor coaches, says the longtime racer Jeff Burton. But, he added, “this is our wake-up call.”BRIAN FRANCE, the Nascar chairman, was not born in a car, but he might as well have been. His grandfather, Bill France Sr., known as Big Bill, founded Nascar in 1948. His father, Bill Jr., who took over in 1972, built the sport into a behemoth.Bill Jr. took Brian to races when he was still in diapers. At 14, Brian shocked fans when he marched down the stairs of a race control tower to announce to the press that the driver Donnie Allison was the winner of that day’s race, seconds after his father had flagged Richard Petty the champion. After poring over the scorecards for several hours, officials ruled the teenager correct.When Brian France began his first season as chairman and chief executive in February 2004, he faced many doubters inside and outside the sport. Fans viewed him as a Hollywood elitist who couldn’t relate to them, the polar opposite of his father, a “good old boy” who would hang out with drivers on the track.But the number of skeptics dwindled after Mr. France, 46, transformed a sport once fueled by moonshine and bravado into a technologically sophisticated entertainment juggernaut.DirecTV and Sirius Satellite Radio have channels that allow fans to watch or hear a race from the vantage point of a single driver. Fans can follow a race on their computers through TrackPass RaceView on Nascar.com, using an advanced 3-D feature that lets them track a car or change the perspective. At the track, Sprint FanView is a next-generation scanner offering live audio and video, as well as real-time stats. And Sprint Cup Mobile lets fans listen to the radio broadcast over the phone.In 2007, Mr. France persuaded Toyota to compete in the Nationwide Series and the Sprint Cup. The move to bring in a big-spending foreign competitor was controversial at the time, but it could help Nascar weather the economic storm now that the Detroit Big Three are pulling back so many dollars.Perhaps Mr. France’s greatest achievement occurred, when, as executive vice president, he persuaded track owners to consolidate their broadcast rights in 2001, striking a six-year, $2.4 billion deal with Fox and NBC. Viewers across the country could see the sport every week. In 2005, Mr. France reached a $4.48 billion, eight-year TV deal with ABC-ESPN, Fox, the Speed Channel and TNT.Intent on keeping his sport blazing hot, he took a risk that may be contributing to the sport’s current woes. Determined to make Nascar mainstream, he promoted it in a way that may have alienated some of his core fans, industry experts say. Rustic racetracks have been replaced with stadiums filled with skyboxes for the wealthy and corporate sponsors. The tough, good-old-boy personalities of the drivers Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt have shifted to the clean-cut, movie-star-handsome images of drivers like Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards. In 2003 the legendary Winston Cup Series title was bought out by Nextel, now Sprint Nextel, ending 32 years of the tobacco brand’s sponsorship. “Brian comes across as somebody who wants to be known as a great C.E.O., like a Paul Tagliabue or a David Stern,” says David Poole, a journalist and co-author of “Nascar Essential: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Real Fan.” “He wants to talk about the sport’s marketing successes. The sport needs leadership in that area, but among those who live with grease under their fingernails, that goes over poorly.” Perhaps that’s why, this year, Nascar announced an effort to go back to its roots, including allowing drivers to express themselves.Yet, to keep the sport growing, Mr. France needed to garner a wider audience in different demographic groups. More than half of Nascar fans earn less than $50,000 a year. As the economy worsens, many fans could have a hard time justifying plopping down $92, on average, each race weekend. Mr. France’s most radical change to the sport — the “Car of Tomorrow” — has backfired. Concerned with safety, Mr. France in 2000 required all teams to start developing vehicles with such strict safety standards that drivers could survive crashes that would once have been fatal. He required that all teams drive such models exclusively by this year. The move to create safer vehicles gained momentum when Dale Earnhardt, father of Dale Earnhardt Jr., was bumped while rounding the final turn at the Daytona 500 in February, 2001; he slammed into a wall and was killed.The Car of Tomorrow was also intended to cut costs and level the playing field financially by requiring all teams to drive variations of the same car. But since its introduction last year, the car has pushed up costs just when revenue has been going down. Tracks have different lengths, grades, shapes and layouts; in the past, large teams had about 20 cars that were used for varying conditions. But the gradual introduction of the new car forced teams to maintain old fleets and crews on top of new ones.Mr. France acknowledges that costs have risen for some teams, but says that the new car should save teams substantial money in the long run.The worst problem, though, is that the Car of Tomorrow has made sponsors feel that their cars are indistinguishable. In the past, a Nascar Dodge did not look much like a Dodge on the street, but fans wouldn’t mistake it for a Ford Fusion. Now the cars look identical. Jimmie Johnson’s Chevy looks the same as Carl Edwards’s Ford, Kasey Kahne’s Dodge and Brian Vickers’s Toyota. Car manufacturers say they are exploring ways to make their race cars look more like models in dealer showrooms. WHEN the 2009 season starts in February, there are likely to be more empty seats in the stands, fewer cars on the tracks, blank spots on cars where logos used to flash, and smaller crews in the pits. Even Toyota is cutting its Nascar budget by 10 to 20 percent.To avert a collapse of the sport, analysts say, Nascar must push through sweeping changes to its business model, like reducing sponsorship rates, cutting back the number of races and trimming the distances of some of them. For example, a handful of premier races would run the traditional 400 or 500 miles, but the rest would become 200- or 300-mile events. Some analysts say Nascar should take cues from the N.F.L. and explore placing sponsor dollars in an official pool, with each team receiving an equal share. They also suggest a salary cap.Mr. France has announced that there will be no preseason and in-season testing at its tracks next year, saving teams an estimated $1 million a car. He is also toying with the idea of cutting back the number of team members who can come to the races, which would save each team an additional $500,000.In hindsight, Mr. France’s broadcast deal, which brings in about $500 million a year, may be the main thing that saves Nascar from ruin. “We’ve got to work hard and be willing to sacrifice,” says Jeff Burton, the driver. “We’re going to definitely struggle next year and the following.”