5-6-09
5-6-09
Merced Sun-Star
A gift for UC Merced seniors
Cardoza will make presentation to students on campus Friday...Sun-Star Washington Bureau
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/829868.html
WASHINGTON -- The House on Tuesday presented a little graduation present to UC Merced's seniors.
Following a brief discussion -- it was not exactly a debate -- the House passed a resolution honoring the class of 2009, the first who started at freshmen at the university to graduate from UC Merced.
The resolution's author, Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, will present it to students at a campus reception Friday.
"Whether they were building a student government from scratch, creating numerous clubs or assisting in groundbreaking research, every one of these students has demonstrated a commitment to excellence in academics and a passion to lead their community in the 21st century," Cardoza said.
He said that building the first UC in the Valley "increased educational access and opportunities for the Valley's students and enhanced job opportunities, new business development, and economic growth throughout Central California."
Those students, he said, "have helped put Merced on the road to opportunity, and promise to inspire the educational dreams of young people in the Central Valley for generations to come."
Cardoza further cited the students' successful campaign to have first lady Michelle Obama deliver the commencement speech on May 16 at the university.
Lawmakers approved the UC Merced resolution by a voice vote, shortly after passing a similar resolution honoring the University of North Carolina's championship men's basketball team.
First Class: UC Merced senior has big plans for after graduation..DANIELLE GAINES
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/829885.html
Jackie Shay has applied for the Peace Corps and plans to apply for medical school after that.
At UC Merced, she's involved in the University Women of Merced Network, student government, Amnesty International, student tutoring center, a coed pre-health fraternity and she performed in the Vagina Monologues.
At a recent awards ceremony on campus, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Jane Lawrence used far fewer words when presenting Shay one of the school's "service to student affairs" awards...
Modesto Bee
Forest comment deadline extended...last updated: May 05, 2009 01:26:10 AM
http://www.modbee.com/local/v-print/story/690546.html
The public has 15 more days to comment on proposed rules for motorized travel in the Stanislaus National Forest. The deadline, originally today, has been extended to May 20. The rules would ban travel off designated roads and trails and include other measures to protect soil, habitat and other resources. A decision by Forest Supervisor Susan Skalski is expected in summer. Comments can be sent by mail to Stanislaus National Forest, Attn: Motorized Travel DEIS, 19777 Greenley Road, Sonora 95370. They can be e-mailed to comments-pacificsouthwest-stanislaus@fs.fed.us with Motorized Travel DEIS in the subject line. Comments also can be made by fax, 533-1890, or phone, 532-3671, ext. 350. More information is at www.fs.fed.us/r5/stanislaus/projects/ohv.
Stimulus puzzles Stanislaus County board...Garth Stapley
http://www.modbee.com/local/v-print/story/691834.html
Why spend $8.8 million training people for jobs that don't exist?
That was the main question asked Tuesday by Stanislaus County supervisors, who essentially rolled their eyes, shrugged and accepted federal stimulus money anyway.
"The federal government is just throwing money at anything," groused Jim DeMartini, chairman of the Board of Supervisors
In another move, the board majority kept on track the vision of a huge business park in Crows Landing despite strident objections by a West Side group and DeMartini, who represents that area.
DeMartini, a longtime Republican Party leader, calculated that the Obama administration's stimulus funding amounts to $4,000 for each of the 942 low-income youths ages 14 to 24 for whom the Stanislaus Alliance Worknet expects to find summer jobs. Employers in the public, private and nonprofit sectors have been lined up.
The Alliance Worknet also will train 119 low-income adults at more than $14,000 each and retrain 243 other jobless adults at more than $13,000 each, according to DeMartini's figures.
The calculations don't include overhead and administrative costs, Supervisor Bill O'Brien noted.
"Would you rather send the money back?" O'Brien asked DeMartini. Both ultimately joined in a unanimous vote to keep the cash.
All the supervisors are registered Republicans except Jeff Grover, who left the party in 1994. He remains unaffiliated with any party but has used Republican campaign consultants and maintains strong ties to GOP officeholders. And Grover was no more impressed with Washington, D.C.'s, largess.
"The community needs to have modest expectations. This doesn't create the jobs," Grover said. "Philosophically, this doesn't match up with anything that makes any sense."
"It's not much more than a leaf-raking project," DeMartini added.
Jeff Rowe, director of the Alliance Worknet, explained that stimulus rules tie his hands on how the money must be spent.
After the meeting, Rowe said he understands the supervisors' concerns and shares some of them but said the programs offer benefits.
The summer jobs program puts paychecks in young people's pockets that will be spent in the local economy. But more important, Rowe said, these will be the first jobs for many of the participants and it will give them the opportunity to learn how to be good workers.
"However you feel about government-subsidized employment, those kids are going to realize some benefits. ... It will help them find that next job that is not subsidized, that real job that is paid for by their employer," Rowe said.
And he said the training and retraining programs will help people find work once the economy recovers.
"A better trained work force will make Stanislaus County a more attractive place for businesses that are looking to relocate," Rowe said.
Still unpopular on West Side
DeMartini had sharp words for West Park, the industrial complex proposed at the 1,528-acre former naval air base in Crows Landing. He called it a "lousy project" that has "no public support and is unwanted and unfeasible.
Although promising thousands of jobs, the idea is loathed by many of his West Side constituents who could be inconvenienced by freight trains running to the Port of Oakland.
The four other supervisors ignored DeMartini's comments and wordlessly approved a revised preliminary redevelopment plan for the complex, and ordered environmental studies. The majority also turned aside a request by WS-PACE.org to postpone the vote.
Tuesday's vote strengthens the county's commitment to Gerry Kamilos' West Park proposal despite no binding development agreement, said Maureen McCorry, representing the West Side-Patterson Alliance for the Community and the Environment. Other opponents include the city of Patterson and the West Side's fire department and health care district.
"This is building momentum for a one-project alternative," McCorry said.
In a letter delivered Tuesday, WS-PACE President Ron Swift said the item was buried on Page 4 of the board's agenda in ordinary type size "indistinguishable from the rest of the agenda." The item technically falls under authority of the county's redevelopment agency, which convenes periodically and is also presided over by supervisors.
"Given the infrequency of these meetings, this is deceptive," Swift wrote.
County Planning Director Kirk Ford said his office ordinarily provides notice when requested. He said he did not know if opponents were notified; later Tuesday, he failed to return The Bee's calls.
North county road project could ruin downtowns...Newcorn is an author and freelance writer living in Modesto.
http://www.modbee.com/opinion/community/v-print/story/691832.html
While still under discussion and debate, the planned North County Corridor that will bypass both Riverbank and Oakdale may not be the blessing everybody envisions.
The focus is on the reduction of traffic through the towns and providing a route to enable people to travel more swiftly across the valley. And that's where the danger lies. An economic danger, usually not considered as community leaders evaluate the benefits of a bypass.
When we first came to Modesto, we drove across country. As we approached a town called Shamrock, my husband, who had worked there seven years before, described it as a pleasant hamlet with a lot going on. We agreed to stop there for the night.
What he didn't know is that the highway had gone around the town. The result: Shamrock was dead, a ghost town. Stores boarded up. Businesses gone. Residences empty. When we asked the hotel owner what happened, he summed it up: "The bypass meant nobody stopped in Shamrock anymore. It killed the town."
We have since driven across country on different routes, and over and over again, we have seen the pattern: Towns die or migrate in pursuit of the highway, leaving the original town a shell of what it once was.
Think about it. When you drive through Riverbank and Oakdale, a delightful scattering of stores and restaurants invite people to stop, browse and take a break. There will be no reason to do so once the bypass goes in. Why should somebody from the Bay Area on their way to Yosemite stop? They have already been driving for more than two hours and just want to get to their destination.
Ghost towns arise because changing traffic patterns, human and vehicular, eliminate the need for that town's existence.
Think of our region's historic towns that have vanished or shrunk to a shadow of their former selves because of changes such as the railroad, dams controlling river flows, the county seat relocating: La Grange, Knights Ferry, Tuolumne City ... the list goes on.
The impact on the downtown economies could be severe. Commercial centers logically will scramble to reposition themselves along the new main drag.
Look at Turlock, where the old downtown is working hard to survive as the majority of merchants now take up their stance along Highway 99, which made a wide swing around downtown Turlock.
When considering the impact of a bypass, communities need to weigh more than just traffic flow patterns and who will be affected by the new route ("A road to ruin," March 23, Page A-1). They also need to seriously evaluate the economic factors and steps to mitigate them.
Otherwise, someday, another community columnist may write about the former towns of Riverbank and Oakdale that faded into history once the North County Corridor went into place.
Wal-Mart pays $2M to avoid charges in death probe...FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press Writer
http://www.modbee.com/business/v-print/story/691781.html
MINEOLA, N.Y. -- ]Wal-Mart agreed Wednesday to pay nearly $2 million and improve safety at its 92 New York stores as part of a deal with prosecutors that avoids criminal charges in the trampling death of a temporary worker.
Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, who began a criminal investigation shortly after last November's customer stampede at Wal-Mart's Valley Stream store, said that if she had brought criminal charges against the retailer for negligence in the worker's death, the company would have been subject to only a $10,000 fine if convicted.
Instead, she said, the company has agreed to implement an improved crowd-management plan for post-Thanksgiving Day sales, set up a $400,000 victims' compensation and remuneration fund, and give a $1.5 million grant to Nassau County social services programs and nonprofit groups.
The agreement included no admission of guilt by Wal-Mart.
"Rather than bringing the world's largest retailer to court and imposing a small fine against them, I felt it was important to require significant safety changes that will affect the whole state," Rice said. "Our goal is for the protocols that are set up to be the gold standard for crowd management in this industry."
Wal-Mart vice president Hank Mullany said, "The crowd management plan we are announcing today was developed by a team of experts whose experience includes NFL Super Bowls, Olympic games, concerts and national political conventions."
Jdimytai (Jimmy-tree) Damour, a temporary employee, had been on the job for about a week and had no training in security or crowd control when a crowd estimated at 2,000 broke down the Valley Stream store's doors, trapping him in a vestibule.
Built like an NFL linebacker at 6-foot-5 and 270 pounds, the 34-year-old Queens man died of asphyxiation. Eleven others, including a pregnant woman, were injured.
Earlier this year, Damour's family announced plans to sue the county, retailer and others. The family's attorney did not immediately comment on Wednesday's announcement.
Any victims who accept payment from the Wal-Mart compensation fund will be required to waive their right to a separate civil suit against Wal-Mart, Rice said. Also, she said, Wal-Mart has agreed to advertise the compensation fund in the daily and weekly newspapers that cover Valley Stream and its surrounding neighborhoods.
"Facilitating the compensation is one of the main goals of this settlement," she said.
The company also agreed to an independent review of its procedures for post-Thanksgiving Day sales. The prosecutor said her office will oversee compliance.
"We are hoping that this safety plan becomes the nationally recognized model for crowd management among all retailers and becomes an industrywide best practice," she said.
The community grant money includes $1.2 million for Nassau County's Youth Board, which helps nonprofit agencies provide career development, employment training and other opportunities. The retailer also will donate $300,000 to the United Way of Long Island's Youth Build Program in Nassau County. The deal also calls for Wal-Mart to hire 50 high school students annually to work in its five stores in the county.
EPA: ethanol crops displaces climate-friendly ones...H. JOSEF HEBERT - Associated Press Writer
http://www.fresnobee.com/news/national-politics/v-print/story/1380469.html
WASHINGTON The Obama administration renewed its commitment Tuesday to speed up investments in ethanol and other biofuels while seeking to deflect some environmentalists' claims that huge increases in corn ethanol use will hinder the fight against global warming.
President Barack Obama directed more loan guarantees and economic stimulus money for biofuels research and told the Agriculture Department to find ways to preserve biofuel industry jobs. The recession, as well as lower gasoline prices, has caused some ethanol producers to suffer, including some who have filed for bankruptcy.
Obama said an interagency group also would explore ways to get automakers to produce more cars that run on ethanol and to find ways to make available more ethanol fueling stations. "We must invest in a clean energy economy," Obama said in a statement.
The reassurances to the ethanol industry came as the Environmental Protection Agency made public its initial analysis on what impact the massive expansion of future ethanol use could have on climate change. Rejecting industry and agricultural interests' arguments, it said its rules - which will take months to develop - will take into account increased greenhouse gas emissions as more people plant ethanol crops at the expense of forests and other vegetation and land use is influenced worldwide by the demand for biofuels.
When Congress in 2007 required a huge increase in ethanol use - to as much as 36 billion gallons a year by 2022 - it also required that ethanol - whether from corn or cellulosic crops like switchgrass or wood chips - have less of a "lifecycle" impact on global warming than does gasoline. It set the threshold at 20 percent climate-pollution improvement for corn ethanol and 60 percent for cellulosic ethanol, although ethanol made from facilities already operating would be exempt.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the analysis shows corn ethanol emitting 16 percent less greenhouse gases than gasoline, even taking into account global future land-use changes.
But that's true in only one of the scenarios the EPA examined; another showed corn ethanol would account for 5 percent more greenhouse gases than gasoline. The scenario Jackson cited assumes future environmental benefits over a period of 100 years will more than pay back the initial increase in greenhouse gases from land-use changes; the second assumes a shorter payback period of 30 years.
Frank O'Donnell, president of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, said the Obama administration was "walking a tightrope" to try to reconcile the expansion of corn ethanol with its determination to aggressively address climate change. He called the assumption of a 100-year ethanol payback to make up for early greenhouse emission increases "nothing but an accounting trick to make corn ethanol look better."
But environmentalists also praised the EPA for making clear it will take into account worldwide land-use changes in assessing ethanol's climate impacts. "The devil is always in the details, but we're pleased that the EPA proposed rules that would require all global warming pollution from biofuels to be taken into account," said Kate McMahon of Friends of the Earth.
The ethanol industry and farm-state members of Congress had wanted only a comparison of direct emissions, which show ethanol as the clear winner, but welcomed the EPA's promise to examine the issue further.
"There is currently no scientific agreement or certainty to quantify domestically produced ethanol impacts on land-use change," argued Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, responding to the EPA assessment.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said he was "skeptical about the science" about the indirect land-use impacts of ethanol on climate change, but that he is pleased the EPA "recognizes the need for a thorough analysis and review of this issue prior to any final decision." Jackson said that as the EPA develops its regulation it will seek out peer-reviewed scientific views on the issue and make its final determination "based on the best science available."
More Than One Fifth of All American Homeowners Now Underwater on a Mortgage...Zillow.com
http://www.fresnobee.com/556/v-print/story/1383004.html
Continued Declining Home Values Nationwide Contribute to Fast-accelerating Rates of Negative Equity; But Some Hardest- and Earliest-Hit Markets Showing Improvement in Year-Over-Year Value Declines, According to Q1 2009 Zillow(R) Real Estate Market Repo Home values in the United States fell again in the first quarter, posting a year-over-year decline of 14.2 percent to a Zillow Home Value Index(1) of $182,378, according to the first quarter Zillow Real Estate Market Reports(2), which encompass 161 metropolitan areas and cover the value changes in all homes, not just homes that have recently sold.
Declining home values left one fifth (21.9 percent) of all American homeowners with negative equity(3) by the end of the first quarter. By comparison, 17.6 percent of all homeowners owed more on their mortgage than their property was worth in the fourth quarter of 2008, and one in seven (14.3 percent) was underwater in the third quarter of 2008.
Nine consecutive quarters of declines have left eight regions - including the Modesto, Calif., Stockton, Calif. and Fort Myers, Fla. regions - with median value declines of more than 50 percent since those markets peaked. In 85 of the 161 markets covered in the report, the annualized change over the past five years is negative or flat.
But in an early sign of improvement, several hard-hit markets in California, like Los Angeles, San Diego and Modesto, have seen two or more consecutive quarters of smaller year-over-year declines in home values. In total, 17 markets have seen improvement for two or more quarters in year-over-year results.
In the Los Angeles metro area, for example, the Zillow Home Value Index fell 18.9 percent year-over-year, a smaller decline than the 20.8 percent and 20.7 percent declines seen in the third and fourth quarters of 2008, respectively. In San Diego, home values fell 18 percent year-over-year, after falling 19.1 percent and 18.9 percent in the third and fourth quarters of last year. Both markets have been hard-hit by the housing downturn: L.A.'s home values have fallen 33.6 percent since the peak of the market in the first quarter of 2006, and San Diego's have fallen 35.4 percent since that market's peak in the third quarter of 2005.
Meanwhile, potential sellers appear to be holding back until evidence of an improved housing market. In a separate survey of homeowner sentiment(4), one-third (31 percent) of homeowners said they would be at least somewhat likely to put their homes on the market in the next 12 months if they saw signs of a recovering real estate market.
"Slowing declines in select markets are a bright spot or, at least, what passes for one given current market conditions," said Dr. Stan Humphries, Zillow vice president of data and analytics. "Unfortunately, given the magnitude of the current rates of decline, we're still many months away from a bottom even as depreciation slows. Moreover, the additional information we have this quarter on 'shadow inventory,' with one-third of homeowners indicating they would like to put their home on the market if conditions improve, confirms our earlier fears that a bottom in home values could be quite protracted. By our calculations, this could translate into as many as 20 million homes that could seep into the market as prices stabilize, maintaining a constant stream of supply that far outpaces demand, thus keeping prices flat. I'm doubtful that we'll see the bottom until 2010, and thereafter it's increasingly clear that we're likely to have a long bottom before we see meaningful recovery in home values."
In the survey, 12 percent of homeowners said they would be "very likely" to put their home on the market if there was evidence the market was turning around, while 8 percent said they would be "likely," and another 12 percent said "somewhat likely." Of the homeowners who are at least somewhat likely to put their home up for sale, 71 percent would consider increasing home sales in their neighborhoods to be evidence of a market turnaround.
In other data, foreclosures(5) and short sales(6) remained steady in the first quarter. About one in five (20.4 percent) of all transactions in the previous 12 months were foreclosures, compared to 19.9 percent the previous quarter. Short sales made up 11.9 percent of all transactions in the previous 12 months, compared to 10.9 percent in the fourth quarter.
For more information, including the full national report and 161 local reports, visit www.zillow.com/reports/RealEstateMarketReports.htm.
Best- and Worst-Performing Markets in U.S.
Q1 When %
Zillow % of All % Market Fore- % of 2008
MSA Home Q1 Homes Change was closure Trans-
(ranked by Value ZHVI% with from Last at Trans- actions
population Index Change Negative Market Current actions that were
(size) (ZHVI) (YoY) Equity Peak Level (YoY) Short Sales
United
States $182,378 -14.2% 21.9% -21.8% 2004-Q1 20.4% 11.9%
Best-performing markets
Fayetteville,
N.C. $118,121 14.4% n/a 0% 2008-Q4 16.8% 2.5%
Oklahoma City,
OK MSA $118,446 5.1% 6.3% 0.0% 2008-Q4 4.9% 6.9%
Binghamton,
NY $114,604 2.5% n/a 0% 2008-Q4 n/a n/a
Jacksonville,
NC $138,881 2.5% n/a 0% 2008-Q4 n/a n/a
Cumberland,
MD $82,174 2.3% 5% -2.2% 2007-Q1 6.1% 3.7%
Worst-performing markets
Salinas,
CA $301,793-36.6% 32% -56.5% 2000-Q2 46% 5.6%
Redding,
CA $197,193 -34.1% 21.9% -37.1% 2004-Q2 28% 10%
Stockton,
CA $175,484 -32.4% 51.1% -57.5% 2004-Q4 45.4% 5.7%
Madera,
CA $151,392 -32.1% 38.4% -55.3% 2002-Q4 48.4% 3.3%
Vallejo-Fairfield,
CA $235,385 -31.8% 46.5% -51% 2005-Q4 44.3% 7.2%
About Zillow.com(R)
Zillow.com is an online real estate marketplace where homeowners, buyers, sellers, real estate agents and mortgage professionals find and share vital information
about homes and mortgages, for free. Launched in early 2006 with Zestimate(R) home values and data on millions of U.S. homes, Zillow has sinceadded
homes for sale, a directory of real estate and lending professionals, Zillow Advice and Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. One of the most-visited U.S. real estate Web
sites, with more than seven million unique visitors per month, Zillow's goal is to help people become smarter about real estate in every stage of the home ownership
process--home buying, selling, remodeling and financing. The company is headquartered in Seattle and has raised $87 million in funding.
Zillow.com, Zillow and Zestimate are registered trademarks of Zillow, Inc.
(1) The Zillow Home Value Index is the median Zestimate(R) valuation for a given geographic area on a given day and includes the value of all single-family residences,
condominiums and cooperatives, regardless of whether they sold within a given period. The Home Value Index at the national and MSA levels is calculated using a
weighted average of the median home value for each county. It is expressed in dollars and is for a particular geographic region.
(2) The data in Zillow's Real Estate Market Reports is aggregated from public sources by a number of data providers for 161 Metropolitan Statistical Areas dating
back to 1996. Mortgage and home loan data is typically recorded in each county and publicly available through a county recorder's office.
(3) Negative equity indicates that the current home value as of March 31, 2009 is less than the original mortgage amount. To be conservative, principal payments and
equity withdrawals since initial loan origination have been excluded from the analysis, which is consistent with standard reporting practices.
(4) Full results of the Homeowner Confidence Survey will be released on May 14. The survey was conducted online by Harris Interactive within the United States on
behalf of Zillow.com between April 6 and April 8, 2009 among 2,123 adults ages 18+, of whom 1,266 are homeowners. Unless otherwise indicated, all percentages are
based out of homeowners who think the value of their home has increased, decreased or remained the same since this time last year. Percentages have been
recalculated to exclude "not sure" or "don't know" responses, and to exclude homeowners who already had their home for sale. This online survey is not based on a
probability sample and therefore no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. A full methodology, including weighting variables, is available.
(5) Foreclosure is a legal process by which a bank or lender sells or repossesses a mortgaged property because the borrower does not meet the requirements of the
loan, typically by missing payments. Zillow identifies foreclosures as the transfer of ownership of a property that comes about because of the foreclosure process.
(6) A short sale is a sale of a house in which the proceeds fall short of what the owner still owes on the mortgage. Many lenders will agree to accept the proceeds of
a short sale and forgive the rest of what is owed on the mortgage when the owner cannot make the mortgage payments. By accepting a short sale, the lender can
avoid a lengthy and costly foreclosure, and the owner is able to pay off the loan for less than what he owes. To calculate short sales, Zillow looks at all properties
that have loans and counts the number that were sold for less than the loan amount. We then exclude foreclosures and divide that number by the number of all
transactions in an area to come up with the percent of all transactions that are short sales. Because there is little public records data regarding short sales, these
could include instances when the homeowner sells their home for less than they owe on their mortgage and elect to pay the difference themselves.
SOURCE Zillow.com
Sacramento Bee
Here comes the rain -- and the sprinklers?...Matt Weiser
http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/v-print/story/1836996.html
It's a classic urban outrage:
In a rare spring rain, your neighbor's lawn sprinklers are flooding the gutter and sidewalk, wasting a precious resource.
This scenario has been too common in recent days as Northern California enjoys a series of May showers that have helped, but are nowhere near enough to get California out of a third-straight drought year.
In many neighborhoods, sprinklers have been in bloom during or right after our recent storms, when water piped to those yards – at great cost to the environment and the ratepayer – is least needed by the landscaping.
And there's a chance of rain again today, meaning more sprinklers will probably be running willy-nilly.
"It concerns me in that it just seems ridiculous," said Theresa Sugden, who has witnessed sprinklers working in the rain at state buildings near her home on Broadway, east of Stockton Boulevard, in Sacramento.
"Water out of the sky works just as well as water out of the sprinkler," she said.
Amazingly, few of the Sacramento area's 21 water agencies specifically forbid landscape irrigation while it rains. Many cover this abuse under a blanket ban against water waste.
"You're just wasting money and wasting water by irrigating after or during the significant rainfall we had over the weekend," said Sharon Fraser, water conservation coordinator at El Dorado Irrigation District, one of the few that specifically ban irrigating in the rain. "It's just so unnecessary."
Fraser's agency modeled its rules after those adopted by the city of Roseville.
At the other end of the spectrum is the city of Sacramento, which is updating its water conservation ordinances. It does not plan to ban watering in the rain.
Assistant City Manager Marty Hanneman said that in Sacramento, water is defined as "wasted" only if it runs off a property into the street. Which is impossible to determine when the street is already coursing with rain.
"I don't see how that is enforceable," Hanneman said.
Local water managers say the problem is usually not willful neglect. Rather, people and companies forget their sprinkler controllers are on, or forget how to control their timers.
"I think most people want to do the right thing," said Jan Gentry, spokeswoman for Sacramento Suburban Water District. "It just catches them off guard."
Technology has a solution for the forgetful. "Smart" irrigation timers adjust watering schedules according to the weather. When it rains, they automatically turn off sprinklers. No memory required.
These timers are more expensive than the traditional variety, and somewhat more complicated to install.
Water agencies in Southern California have offered rebates on such devices for years.
Three districts in the Sacramento area are currently known to offer incentives: El Dorado, San Juan Water District and the city of Folsom. Yet the benefits can be huge. El Dorado Irrigation District's Fraser said they can save 20 percent to 40 percent of the water typically applied by a conventional sprinkler timer.
California water regulators are considering requiring advanced timers as part of the governor's directive to cut statewide water consumption 20 percent by 2020.
Fraser's agency offers vouchers of as much as $650 to help 1,000 customers install smart timers, with assistance from a $480,000 state grant.
Everybody else, she said, should get in the habit of turning off sprinkler timers when they're clearly not needed. Many conventional timers even have a manual "rain" setting that turns off sprinklers without losing programmed schedules.
"We want you to save that water for when it can be put to beneficial use, and not just run off with the rain," she said.
Editorial: $100K pension club is growing
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/v-print/story/1836917.html
Using data obtained from the California Public Employees' Retirement System, a group of activists pushing public pension reform has compiled a list of retired public employees in California who earn $100,000 or more in pensions every year.
The information is likely to infuriate many readers. According to the data compiled to date, the highest paid public employee retiree in the state is Bruce Malkenhorst, the former city administrator, clerk, finance director and treasurer of the city of Vernon. Vernon is a tiny industrial enclave near Los Angeles. He earns $499,674.84 a year or $41,639 a month in pensions.
One of the top 10 pensioners listed is from Sacramento. Donald Gerth, No. 3 on the list, retired in 2003 after 19 years as president of California State University, Sacramento. Gerth receives a $278,555 annual pension, or $23,171.22 a month.
The local governmental agency with the most retirees earning $100,000 or more is the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District. Fifty former employees of the Sacramento Fire Department receive pensions of more than $100,000.
That firefighters and police officers dominate the list of $100,000 retirees should come as no surprise. At the state level and almost all local jurisdictions, public safety personnel have the richest retirement formulas. If they work for 30 years, police and firefighters can retire in their early 50s with 90 percent of their last year's salary, which is usually their highest.
Managers also dominate the $100,000 club list. These are the people who are supposed to represent the public when employee benefits are negotiated. But when government managers sit down with union leaders to dicker over compensation, they are negotiating for themselves as well. If rank-and-file workers get a wage or benefit boost, non-union managers get a commensurate hike and a matching pension benefit.
The pension disclosures are likely to stir anger and they should. With the economy in decline, more and more public money is being diverted from vital services and public employees are being laid off to keep pension funds solvent.
It's important to direct that anger at the right people. Ultimately our elected representatives – governors, legislators, county supervisors, city councils, and local fire and water district board members – are to blame. They approved these lucrative pension benefits.
The CalPERs board also bears a responsibility. Over the years, the board, which includes public employee representatives as well as governors, state treasurers and controllers, has consistently failed to warn legislators of the risk involved in benefit increases.
Legally, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to roll back benefits already earned. But the Legislature can change formulas for new hires and should do so. Retirement age should be increased to 60 or 65. Pensions ought to be calculated based on the average of an employee's last three or five years on the job, as is common in the private sector.
The $100,000 list is already making the rounds of conservative talk shows across the state. It is sparking anger that is likely to lead to a foolish backlash – a punishing initiative that would go too far, hurting future government workers and doing even more to undercut faith in government than the elected officials who have made the $100,000 Pension Club a reality.
Obama policy could help Pacific Ethanol...Jim downing
http://www.sacbee.com/business/v-print/story/1837019.html
Sacramento's struggling Pacific Ethanol Inc. got some hope from the White House Tuesday.
The company's stock jumped 17 cents, or 40 percent, to close at 59 cents, after the Obama administration announced a long-term commitment to alternative fuels and detailed new federal support, including possible financing help for struggling ethanol plants. Stocks of other ethanol makers also rose sharply.
Low oil prices, excess production capacity and swings in the cost of corn have hammered the ethanol sector. Pacific Ethanol lost $146 million in 2008 and reported in late March that it is in default on $250 million in loans.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Tuesday his agency will hurry to help refinance existing ethanol operations but didn't detail which companies might qualify.
Tom Koehler, Pacific Ethanol policy adviser, said it's not clear his firm will benefit from the program. Still, he said, "It's a good sign, a good message."
Corn ethanol also got some bad news Tuesday. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded preliminarily that using food crops to make fuel results in deforestation and cultivation of new farmland, generating greenhouse gas emissions.
If the ruling stands, it would shrink the long-term role of corn ethanol in policies meant to fight climate change.
The California Air Resources Board last month reached a similar conclusion about the side effects of corn ethanol production.
Stockton Record
Study: Just 15% of lakes 'clean'
'Contamination is widespread' in fish sampled throughout California...Alex Breitler
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090506/A_NEWS/905060328
SACRAMENTO - It's no secret that the Delta is contaminated with mercury, PCBs and pesticides.
A new study sampling fish from a fraction of California's 9,000 lakes suggests most upstream water bodies are also tainted, from small Central Valley ponds to sprawling Lake Tahoe.
Just 15 percent of the lakes sampled were considered "clean" - that is, the average amount of contamination in fish caught from those lakes was below all human health thresholds, the State Water Resources Control Board reported.
The California Sportfishing Protection Alliance called this a "damning assessment of the state of California's lakes."
State officials, however, said more sampling is needed. "There is no reason to stop eating all fish from all lakes in California," officials said in a written statement.
Jay Davis, senior scientist with the Oakland-based San Francisco Estuary Institute, which is conducting the ongoing study for the state, said the analysis is the largest of its kind to date.
"The take-home message is that contamination is widespread in California sport fish," he said. "People need to be smart about the fish they do catch and eat, especially mothers and women who could become pregnant." Mercury has been linked to birth defects.
The biggest culprit is mercury, a poisonous metal that lingers from the Gold Rush era in streams draining from the Sierra Nevada. In the environment, mercury converts to a more toxic form and accumulates in tiny organisms that are eaten by fish.
That contamination spreads up the food chain to humans, attacking the nervous system. Seventy-four percent of the lakes in the study contained fish with mercury concentrations above one threshold for public consumption.
PCBs, chemicals used by electric utilities and industry, are also a problem. Pesticides at high levels were a less frequent occurrence.
Not surprisingly, fish from upper-elevation lakes were less likely to be contaminated, although even some of those water bodies - famously clear Lake Tahoe, Caples Lake off Highway 88 and Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, for example - fell short of standards.
The closest to home for Stockton residents was little Yosemite Lake, at the head of Smith Canal, fed by stormwater from the central area of the city. PCBs were the most significant problem there.
The study targeted popular lakes for fishing and randomly sampled a few others as well. In all, 6,000 fish from 152 lakes and reservoirs were checked; a second wave of tests was conducted, but those results have not been released.
Mother Lode fisherman and author William Heinselman said he believes the risk from eating fish is relatively low. "You should not be scared of the lakes," he said. "If you're going to consume 4 pounds of fish a day, yeah, you may damage something. But not if you're only eating one meal a week."
Region's tainted waters
Here are some nearby lakes and water bodies whose fish were contaminated:
• Yosemite Lake
• San Luis Reservoir
• Modesto Reservoir
• Discovery Bay
• Cosumnes River
• Lake Natoma
• Tulloch Reservoir
• Woodward Reservoir
• Don Pedro Reservoir
• Hetch Hetchy Reservoir
• Caples Lake
• Lake Tahoe
Some lakes on the "clean" list:
• Pinecrest Lake
• White Pines Lake
• Lake Alpine
• Lower Bear River Reservoir
Many lakes were not tested for this study. The study is available at http://tiny.cc/Edjge.
Trinitas rejection finalized
But quick end to operation may be unlikely...Dana M. Nichols
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090506/A_NEWS/905060322
SAN ANDREAS - Calaveras County's Board of Supervisors made it official Tuesday: The Trinitas golf course operation won't be legalized, and the course's owners won't be allowed to change the zoning of the 280-acre site to build a clubhouse, lodge, spa and 13 luxury homes.
The vote was the same 3-2 split as a week ago, when the board signaled its intent. Supervisors Tom Tryon, Steve Wilensky and Merita Callaway voted to reject the Trinitas golf resort proposal in its entirety.
Supervisor Gary Tofanelli and board Chairman Russ Thomas opposed the rejection.
Tuesday's vote is the climax of five years of public debate since Trinitas owners Mike and Michelle Nemee applied for the various permits to operate a golf course and build the resort, and eight years of contention between the Nemees and some neighbors who began protesting as soon as construction on the course began in 2001.
Neighbors hoping for an immediate end to what appears to be an ongoing commercial golfing operation at the course set amid grazing land on Ospital Road in far western Calaveras County may be disappointed.
"Zoning issues are very difficult to enforce," said Brent Harrington, interim director of the county's Community Development Agency and the supervisor of Planning Department staff who enforce codes.
Trinitas sits on land zoned for agriculture. Supervisors rejected the Nemees' proposal to change the zoning to recreation, which would allow golf. They also rejected a related conditional use permit for a golf business operation.
The debate over the course has long pitted those who objected to changing the rural character of the area against those who said the economic benefits of the course far outweigh any harm done to neighbors or the environment.
Immediately after the vote, Mike Nemee said, "It is a sad day for the working men and women of Calaveras County." He was referring to the dozens of jobs at the course that will be lost because of the vote.
Nemee declined to discuss details of his plans from here, including how long golfing would continue or whether he plans legal action against the county.
"We're looking at all our options," Nemee said.
Harrington said he has invited Bill Abbott, the attorney representing the Nemees, to meet and discuss the future of Trinitas.
Harrington said he hopes to begin a discussion once he knows how the Nemees hope to use their land and whether those uses are allowed in an agricultural zone.
"You cannot do a traditional public golf course. You cannot do a traditional private golf course," Harrington said. "At this point certainly, under some circumstances, people playing out there would be a zoning violation."
Harrington said he does not yet have answers to many related questions, such as whether the Nemees could simply leave in place the 18 holes with their fairways, tees, greens, concrete golf cart paths, 10 arched culvert bridges, 21/2 miles of rock work and the driving range.
"That is an item we are reviewing," Harrington said.
State and federal wildlife agencies have asked the Nemees and the county to make a full assessment of how much wildlife habitat may have been lost to the golf course construction so appropriate restoration and mitigation can be done.
Harrington, meanwhile, has less than two weeks to before the county dissolves the Community Development Agency into separate Building and Planning departments.
After that, solving zoning problems related to Trinitas will be the problem of George White, a new Planning Department director coming to work for Calaveras County starting June 1.
Manteca Bulletin
It may cost a lot more to flush
Costly federal regulations in works for wastewater treatment...Dennis Wyatt
http://www.mantecabulletin.com/news/article/3645/
Non-native minnows so small that you can literally see through them almost sent Manteca’s monthly wastewater treatment bills up to $100 per household.
State regulators concerned that young minnows in lab tests were dying at too high of a rate forced Manteca to remove even more levels of ammonia from treated wastewater. At one point the process to accomplish that would have sent monthly sewer bills for households toward the $100 mark each month. Eventually a less expensive process was found that met tougher state standards reducing the need for massive rate increases and led to the current $50 million treatment plant retrofit, upgrade and expansion project.
Now something more daunting than a minnow is threatening to send Manteca’s sewer bills sky high – federal environmental bureaucrats.
Manteca City Council members participating in the One Voice lobbying effort in Washington, D.C. where told by Congressman Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, on Sunday that the federal government is getting ready to step in and impose tougher new standards that would require cities such as Manteca that discharge treated wastewater into the San Joaquin River to adhere to even higher standards for the removal of more ammonia, nitrates, salts, and even the temperature of the water.
The potential slapping of even tougher federal discharge standards while Manteca is working to meet tougher state standards came up Tuesday during a discussion on the City Council’s decision to invest $89,000 from non-general fund accounts – sewer, water, and the redevelopment agency – to hire the Washington, D.C., lobbying firm of Van Scoyc Associates to go after federal stimulus money for construction projects as well as represents city’s interest in pending federal regulations.
Councilman John Harris noted if the lobbying firm can help the federal regulations be more reasonable “that alone would be worth it.”
Manteca isn’t the only city that will be impacted significantly if the federal government ups the ante by raising the bar even higher for nitrate, ammonia, and salt removal. Any city that discharges into the San Joaquin River watershed is on the hook. However, since Manteca is the last point before the San Joaquin River reaches the Delta it discharges into water thoroughly weakened in terms of quality issues. Most of the fresh water from the San Joaquin River is diverted at Friant Dam although rivers such as the Stanislaus and Merced flow into it farther downstream.
Tests the city hired experts to conduct almost a decade ago showed the water the city discharges into the river is actually cleaner than what is in it. Also, the ammonia levels dissipated within yards from the outflow but the state emphasized its standards call for the water to have lower levels of ammonia at the point it is discharged.
“We are paying for the sins of those who came before us,” City Manager Steve Pinkerton said.
Mayor favors going to land disposal to avoid higher costs
Although he didn’t bring it up, the news re-enforced Manteca Mayor Willie Weatherford’s longstanding efforts to push the city toward land disposal of all treated wastewater.
Weatherford has repeatedly warned ever increasing water quality standards one day would make it cost prohibitive to discharge treated water back into the San Joaquin River.
He has advocated the use of recycled water for municipal landscaping as well as farming applications where appropriate as treated wastewater is rich with nitrates and ammonia that are ideal for crops given those are among the key elements in fertilizer.
Mayor Weatherford has long championed creating a 200-acre “wetlands” in southwest Manteca on land that is in the floodplain. His vision is to plant heavy water users such as willows in the area and turn it into a nature preserve using water from the treatment plant transported via purple pipe.
One source of revenue to proceed with the project is the agricultural and wetlands preservation and restoration fee charges on new development as required by state law. The funds can either go to city projects that accomplish that goal or elsewhere in the valley.
The city was issued a cease and desist order on April 30, 1999. Part of the cost of the city’s project to meet the state ammonia standard was met with $8 million in state bond money secured by former State Sen. Mike Machado. That alone has been able to save every household in Manteca over $1,000 in construction and finance costs for the treatment plant project.
A decision by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board to change the quality level of treated water that’s returned to the San Joaquin River is tested put Manteca out-of-compliance after years of meeting and exceeding state standards.
Initially, the city met all requirements from the more stringent standards issued in June 1997 except the bioassay test that measures the impact on river fish.
The state allowed the city to use juvenile rainbow trout in the test that were between 15 and 30 days old. Monthly tests showed the city achieved compliance using the trout.
Then in June 1997, the state demanded the city switch to the non-native minnow larvals. The end result was a higher kill rate in the laboratory.
Tracy Press
Fight the power lines...Jennifer Wadsworth
http://www.tracypress.com/pages/full_story?article-Fight%20the%20power%20lines%20=&page_label=home&id=2501489-Fight+the+power+lines&widget=push&instance=home_news_
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Some conservationists worry that a proposed network of power lines that would stretch from Mt. Lassen and through the Central Valley could endanger wetlands and waterfowl.
Called the Transmission Agency of Northern California Transmission Project, the massive 600-mile network of power lines would connect dozens of utility plants throughout Northern California. The wires would branch off a few miles north of Tracy — westward to Livermore toward San Jose and east toward Modesto.
The proposed project would help ease congestion of California’s power grid much like widening a freeway would speed up traffic, said an agency spokeswoman. Less electrical “traffic,” she said, prevents power failures.
One of the proposed substations would sit just west of Mountain House, connected by wires that would extend across dozens of miles of privately owned Delta island wetlands just north of Tracy.
If built, the wires would cross too much restored wetland and migratory bird paths, say environmental groups Ducks Unlimited and the California Waterfowl Association. The power lines would cut through the Sutter National Wildlife Refuge, Stones Lake National Wildlife refuge and Butte Sink in Sacramento County and Yolo wildlife area. They would also stretch through lots of private, but federally protected wetlands.
Raptors, swans, geese and other large birds could run right into the wires, clip a wing and drop to the ground, said Rudy Rosen of Ducks Unlimited.
“Especially if it’s a foggy day, which you see a lot of in the valley,” he said. “If they’re not killed outright, usually predators will get them after they fall to the ground.
“Sometimes, you’ll see dead birds littering the ground beneath these power poles.”
Transmission Agency officials say they welcome the criticism and will include the feedback in the draft environmental impact review, which should be published sometime within the year. The public comment period ends May 31. If all goes as planned, construction would begin in 2014 at the earliest.
Rosen said he would rather see the wires follow the same paths as some existing utility networks, instead of winding through large swaths of untouched land. Otherwise, he said the proposed routes would mar 250,000 acres of wetlands — a fraction of what’s left from what used to be 5 million acres of undeveloped habitat for Northern California’s water birds.
Many private owners have restored wetland on their property that they placed on federal or state protective status, Rosen said. As planned, the power lines would span many of those easements.
“We’re talking about some of the most valuable wetlands in the state that this project would threaten,” Rosen said. “And for private property owners, it could even devalue their land.”
Rosen’s organization is encouraging people to write letters to the Transmission Agency — which represents 15 public utilities — to demand that officials revise the plan to more carefully consider its effects on wildlife.
About 60 percent of the Pacific Flyway’s waterfowl, and 20 percent of those in all of North America, winter or migrate through the Central Valley, according to Rosen.
He said he’s not opposed to the project itself, just the way it’s mapped out because he believes it could degrade public lands.
More than 1,000 people, including environmentalists, landowners and elected public officials, have commented on the proposed project since the comment period opened a couple of months ago, according to the Transmission Agency.
San Francisco Chronicle
Super polluted, super expensive. Who pays?...Cameron Scott...The Thin Green Line
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/green/detail?entry_id=39601
According to the Center of Public Integrity, it's a common problem. Small companies create big pollution problems, necessitating Superfund cleanups. The law establishes that the guilty party should pay for the cleanup, but if the company is no longer in business, cleanup costs theoretically come from the eponymous "superfund," a pool collected from companies in polluting industries. But Congress refused to renew the tax in 1995, and the well ran dry in 2003.
That's the rub with the Brown & Bryant Superfund site in Arvin, California. The business bought and distributed chemicals, handling them sloppily. Shell Oil continued to sell toxic chemicals to Brown & Bryant even after it knew that the chemicals were routinely spilled. Eventually, Brown & Bryant itself became insolvent, leaving no one to pay for the cleanup, which, to date has cost $1.3 million to date.) But yesterday the Supreme Court found that Shell Oil is not liable for the cost of the cleanup because it wasn't formally in charge of "arranging for disposal" of the toxics.
As companies buy and sell interests in one another (whatever that even means), the issue of legal accountability becomes muddied. In fact, it's a similar technical issue that has allowed Dow Chemical to do nothing to clean up the catastrophe that occurred at its chemical plant in Bhopal, killing roughly 13,000. Shell doesn't own Brown & Bryant, but it surely sounds to this educated layman that the company would have some liability for the damages caused by its continued sales of dangerous substances to an irresponsible customer: Imagine a gun dealer selling a weapon to a known felon.
The stimulus package directs federal money at some Superfund sites, but Arvin is not among them. Obama has proposed reinstating the tax on polluters in 2010, ostensibly after the country emerges from the current recession. But, meanwhile, the toxic runoff at Arvin sits within a mile of six municipal wells that provide water to 7,800 people and irrigate about 19,600 acres of crops.
What should be done about it, and who should pay?
Feds: Mountain-dwelling pika may need protections...MIKE STARK, Associated Press Writer
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/06/state/n100915D04.DTL&type=printable
Salt Lake City, UT (AP) -- The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the American pika — a hamster-sized mammal of the West that some worry is threatened by global warming — may need federal protections.
The agency said Wednesday that environmentalists' petition to list the pika under the Endangered Species Act contained enough information to take a closer look. Federal officials will now launch a thorough review of the species and submit findings by Feb. 1, 2010.
The pika mostly dwells in high, rocky mountain slopes in 10 Western states. As the West warms, scientists say some pikas have tried to move upslope to find cooler refuges but have run out of room.
If it's eventually listed, the pika could be the first species in the lower 48 states to get protections primarily because of threats of climate change.
Scientists side with Drakes Bay oyster farmer...Peter Fimrite
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/06/MNIQ17ERPE.DTL&type=printable
Supporters of a Marin County oyster farmer claimed victory Tuesday after a panel of scientists concluded that National Park Service officials made errors, selectively presented information and misrepresented facts in a series of reports about his Drakes Bay shellfish operation.
The findings mark the second time in a year that the Park Service has been put under a spotlight for essentially fudging data in its attempts to show that the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. harmed the environment.
While the report did not specifically accuse anyone of misconduct, it raised serious questions about governmental misuse of scientific data.
"I find it troubling and unacceptable that the National Park Service exaggerated the effects of the oyster population on the ... ecosystem," U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., wrote in a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
In fact, the farm, which operates under a federal lease until 2012, had no demonstrable negative impacts on the bay's ecosystem, harbor seals or native eelgrass, biologists with the independent National Research Council found.
The findings were widely seen as vindication for the oyster company, which has been embroiled in a rancorous dispute with the Park Service over its impact on the pristine estuary along the Point Reyes National Seashore.
Started in 2005
The trouble started in 2005, when Kevin Lunny, a local rancher, purchased the oyster farm from Johnson Oyster Co. He was required to get a special-use permit from the California Coastal Commission, which had placed a cease-and-desist order on the property as a result of previous problems.
In the midst of those negotiations and discussions about extending the 2012 lease, the Park Service came out with accusations of environmental damage, setting off a series of dueling scientific reports.
"What has happened is the National Academy of Sciences has shown that all the claims made by the National Park Service are wrong," Lunny said. "It gives us a clean bill of health."
Lunny and others claim Jon Jarvis, the Pacific West regional director of the National Park Service, deliberately misrepresented data to bolster his own ideological agenda.
Jarvis apologized Tuesday for mistakes that were made on the initial report but defended the Park Service's handling of the science.
"They didn't say our research was wrong. They just said it was incomplete," Jarvis said. "What there really is here is a disagreement among scientists about the level of impact on the environment. That does not mean that one side is guilty of misconduct."
The battle intensified in 2007, when the Park Service issued a report claiming, among other things, that oyster farming reduced the number of harbor seals and damaged eelgrass beds.
Lunny, who is trying to persuade the Park Service to renew a 40-year occupancy agreement in 2012, was furious. His case was helped by Corey Goodman, a biological scientist who reviewed Park Service studies on oysters.
They accused Park Service officials of fabricating environmental problems to drive the oyster company off the bay where explorer Sir Francis Drake purportedly landed more than 430 years ago.
Among the disputed claims was a complaint that Lunny expanded his farm to an area historically used by female harbor seals and their pups, and that oyster boats were observed scaring off seals in the area. The Park Service said the number of harbor seals declined from 250 to 50 in the area Lunny developed.
Park Service officials also claimed the oyster farm could hasten the spread of destructive nonnative species that hitchhike on the oyster shells. The voluminous waste produced by oysters, they said, increased sedimentation in the estuary.
Goodman used Park Service records to refute much of the disputed data, including evidence that the amount of eelgrass in the bay doubled between 1991 and 2001, and that the number of harbor seal pups increased overall in the bay while oyster harvesting was under way.
Complained to Feinstein
Lunny and his supporters complained to the Marin County Board of Supervisors and Feinstein. The inspector general of the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a report last year accusing Park Service officials of exaggerating data.
The Park Service agreed to pay for the latest review, which pointed out that Park Service scientists did not mention in six reports that native Olympia oysters lived in the estuary until they were over-harvested and wiped out.
Although the Park Service corrected mistakes in later reports, the panel concluded that the agency "selectively presented, over-interpreted, or misrepresented the available scientific information on potential impacts of the oyster mariculture operation."
Pete Peterson, a professor of marine biology at the University of North Carolina who chaired the study committee, said political pressure, funding issues and conflicting mandates, not deliberate misconduct, are concerns.
"I'm disturbed by the recognition that what went on at Drakes Bay is part of a bigger picture nationwide in which the Park Service has a dual mandate," Peterson said, "the use and enjoyment of cultural resources and the responsibility that those resources are sustained for future generations. That's almost a catch-22."
Jarvis said the new research will be valuable to the Park Service to guide scientific studies that will assist it in making future decisions. But he does not intend to extend the oyster farm's lease in 2012, despite Feinstein's request for that in her letter to Salazar.
"The permit of use and occupancy expires in 2012," Jarvis said, "and that really is a policy and law issue, not a science issue."
Drakes Bay home to birds, seals, oysters
Also called Drakes Estero, the bay is home to tens of thousands of endangered birds, including 90 separate bird species, and the largest seal colony on the coast.
It is located within an area of the seashore that was designated a wilderness area in 1976, meaning it has special protected status as an unaltered ecological region. The bay itself is listed as "potential wilderness" only because the oyster company is there.
Once the oyster farm is gone, park officials say, the bay would become the only marine wilderness on the West Coast from Canada to Mexico.
The Drake's Bay Oyster Co., which was Johnson Oyster Co. until it was purchased by Kevin Lunny in 2005, has been thriving. It produces about 460,000 pounds of shucked oysters a year, plus about 1 million Manila clams a year.
With 30 employees, it is one of the largest oyster farms in California, far outstripping the production of growers in nearby Tomales Bay.
UC president points to progress...Jim Doyle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/06/MNJQ17CKF9.DTL&type=printable
When Mark Yudof took over as president of the University of California a year ago, it came at one of the most challenging times ever.
The university's bloated management had spawned a subculture of preferential treatment among top administrators, students were staging noisy protests over tuition hikes, some rank-and-file workers complained of poverty-level pay and the university had become a target for criticism in the state Legislature.
The icing: a state budget meltdown that has only grown worse with each day of the recession, forcing the university to turn away some eligible freshmen and threatening even deeper funding cuts.
As the first president hired from outside the system since 1899, Yudof vowed in June "to regain the trust of Californians and the Board of Regents."
But nearly a year later, the former chancellor of the University of Texas is struggling to burnish UC's tarnished image, compete with Stanford and other selective universities for the best and brightest students and persuade Californians and lawmakers to provide greater financial support to the 10-campus system.
The job "is like being manager of a cemetery," Yudof joked. "There are many people under me, but no one is listening."
'Excellent job'
Richard Blum, who chairs UC's governing Board of Regents, said Yudof is "doing an excellent job under very difficult circumstances."
"We disagree on almost nothing," said Blum, who played a key role in hiring Yudof away from Texas. "If I were giving Mark a grade, I would give him an A-plus. He gets along with everybody, but he's not afraid to make tough decisions."
Those tough decisions may involve salary cuts, furloughs and more staff layoffs if Sacramento imposes deeper budget cuts later this year.
"I don't envy President Yudof," said Dr. Stan Glantz, a UCSF professor of medicine and frequent critic of UC executives.
"We have a situation where the students are continuing to pay more and get less," Glantz said. "The problem is that the state has not been adequately funding the university, and I place responsibility for this right at the governor's doorstep."
Student and union leaders agreed that the state has shortchanged higher education, but they also noted that UC has continued to give bonuses and perks to some top administrators at the same time tuition is being increased and jobs are being cut.
"They have a long ways to go to earn back the public's trust as well as the students' trust, but President Yudof has been a good middleman to renegotiate that this year," said Lucero Chavez, president of the UC Students Association.
"It'll be a tough year for students," Yudof said the other day - at the same time he recommended a 9.3 percent increase in tuition next fall.
But he spoke proudly of his accomplishments, including the hiring of a new image-building team to highlight UC strengths. Yudof, whose compensation package is about $828,000 a year, has continued to pare down the university's budget and staff, cutting hundreds of jobs at UC headquarters in Oakland and saving more than $50 million annually.
He has imposed a salary freeze on high-paid administrators and has focused his staff on financial management.
He has also hired a team of specialists to develop a marketing and communications strategy to help the university move past the legacy of his predecessor, Robert Dynes, whose tenure was embroiled in executive-compensation scandals.
"I don't think our image is perfect, but I think we remain the best public university system in the world," Yudof said. "There's always going to be concerns about accountability and disclosure."
His new image team includes a communications strategist who worked previously in Washington and New York, an award-winning marketing director from North Carolina State University and a creative director from Chicago.
"I'm not looking for whiz-bang Madison Avenue types," said Yudof, adding that poor communications exacerbated the problems for Dynes.
Marketing director Jason Simon, hired at a salary of $180,000, is attempting to capture the character of the UC system and present its basic message - that the university is integral to the lives of Californians - in online videos, informational pamphlets and promotional materials.
The team also plans to overhaul the university's Web site and possibly buy advertising.
"Marketing is not a dirty word," said Lynn Tierney, the strategist who heads Yudof's new communications team at a salary of $239,000 a year.
$4 million budget
With a staff of 33 and a budget of about $4 million, Tierney plans to emphasize UC's achievements, the availability of financial aid and internal communications. Staffers will also attempt to tell compelling stories about UC students and faculty members, including their award-winning research projects. One of Yudof's aims is to persuade the state's most talented high school graduates, including gifted minorities, to attend a UC campus rather than other highly selective colleges.
He wants to bolster the UC system's rankings in the annual U.S. News and World Report survey, which examines such statistics as median Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores and the percentage of undergraduate applicants who are offered admission. Although UC Berkeley is ranked first among the nation's public universities, it is ranked 21st among national universities - public and private. UCLA is ranked third among public universities and 25th among national universities.
But one of the image-building team's first efforts was not applauded by everyone.
In an April 11 letter to Yudof, UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Charles Schwartz castigated a new brochure - "The UC Budget: Myths and Facts." The retired physics professor said the four-page pamphlet's "lies and half-truths" are part of UC's "program of mis-information."
Schwartz dismissed as "accounting fraud" the claim that the state budget does not cover UC's cost of instruction. State funds fully pay the cost of UC's undergraduate education, he said, but not the cost of its faculty research.
The brochure was distributed to state lawmakers, UC employees, the media, students and faculty.
"We have a long-standing respectful disagreement with Professor Schwartz," Yudof's office said in a statement. "We believe the facts presented in our document accurately characterize the tremendous fiscal strains the university is operating under."
The cost of a UC education includes not only instruction but also faculty research, officials said, because students expect their professors to be leaders in their fields.
UC in the news
Financial and public relations problems facing University of California before and since Mark Yudof became the university system's president in 2008:
2004-09: Union unrest leads to repeated strikes and work-stop actions at UC's 10 campuses and five medical centers.
2005-06: A series of disclosures by The Chronicle of excessive pay and perks to top UC administrators.
April 2006: An outside auditor reports UC gave many of its top executives bonuses and other perks that weren't publicly reported or approved by regents.
May 2006: The Bureau of State Audits reports UC's compensation practices are rife with problems, ranging from bookkeeping errors to policy violations involving millions of dollars in extra compensation.
September 2007: Scathing report from the Monitor Group, a Cambridge, Mass., consulting company, cites a breakdown in public confidence in UC President Robert Dynes and his administration.
2008: State budget meltdown leaves UC system more than $400 million in the hole.
Yudof's presidency
June 2008: Mark Yudof takes office as first president from outside the UC system in more than 100 years.
December 2008: Yudof prohibits employees in his office from collecting full severance checks and being rehired at other UC locations.
January 2009: Regents approve Yudof's recommendations to freeze the salaries of top administrators and to limit freshman enrollment at the campuses.
February 2009: Regents approve Yudof's recommendation to make the most significant changes to UC's eligibility standards for student applications in the past 50 years.
April 2009: Yudof directs his staff to begin planning for the possibility of salary reductions and furloughs.
May 2009: Yudof nominates two women for chancellorships at major campuses - UCSF and UC Davis. Currently, there is only one other woman chancellor.
Los Angeles Times
New standards could cut tax breaks for corn-based ethanol
Rules proposed by Obama administration set the stage for a battle between Midwest grain producers and environmentalists who say the gasoline additive actually worsens global warming...Jim Tankersley
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-corn-ethanol6-2009may06,0,2626243,print.story
Reporting from Washington — The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed renewable-fuel standards that could reduce the $3 billion a year in federal tax breaks given to producers of corn-based ethanol. The move sets the stage for a major battle between Midwest grain producers and environmentalists who say the gasoline additive actually worsens global warming.
For much of the last decade, federal officials have touted the potential of corn ethanol as a substitute for gasoline and a tool for reducing global warming and foreign oil dependence.
However, environmentalists and others have questioned the wisdom of that support.
A recent Congressional Budget Office study found that increased ethanol production was responsible for 10% to 15% of last year's increased U.S. food costs. And the rush to produce more corn for fuel has had a global environmental impact as forests and other vegetation have been cleared to make way for cropland.
The Environmental Protection Agency's climate-change rules are subject to public comment and revision before they become final. And exactly how big their impact will be on corn producers' tax breaks depends how corn ethanol is determined to affect the environment.
The wide range of possibilities was evident in the EPA's analysis of various fuels' contributions to global warming. Corn ethanol could be substantially worse for the climate than traditional gasoline, or it could be substantially better -- depending on how it is produced and on the accounting methods the EPA settles on for tallying its greenhouse gas emissions.
"The rules are kind of in the category of wait-to-see-what-happens," said Rodney Weinzierl, executive director of the Illinois Corn Growers Assn.
However, industry officials were cheered Tuesday by the announcement that nearly $1 billion in stimulus funds would go toward advanced biofuel research and that the government would take new steps to promote ethanol-powered cars and fueling stations.
Although biofuels as a whole -- including those made from grasses and even algae -- are considered promising alternatives to petroleum, some researchers have begun challenging the use of corn for this purpose.
In particular, they point to the "indirect land-use" effects of pulling corn out of the world food supply, which could force farmers in developing nations to clear rain forests -- and release massive amounts of carbon dioxide in the process -- in order to plant corn.
Congress in 2007 mandated an increase in biofuel production, peaking at 36 billion gallons a year by 2022. It also called for corn ethanol to emit 20% fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline, and ethanol made from crops such as switchgrass or wood chips to release 60% less.
The EPA rules proposed Tuesday include indirect land-use calculations in tallying emission. Many crops grown specifically for biofuels, such as switchgrass, pass the test easily. In many cases, corn and soy-based biodiesel do not.
The move comes on the heels of a California Air Resources Board decision last month to factor indirect land use into the state's renewable fuels standard.
Nathanael Greene, director of renewable energy policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that the administration "looked at the science and decided they were going to do the best analysis they could on land-use impacts. . . . They stuck by it through a lot of political pressure."
Industry groups seized on the EPA's pledge to conduct "peer reviews" of the science underlying indirect land-use analysis, which ethanol interests and many independent scientists say has too high an error margin to be used when calculating a fuel's emissions.
Washington Post
EPA Proposes Changes To Biofuel Regulations...Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/05/AR2009050503731_pf.html
The Obama administration waded deeper into climate regulation yesterday, proposing new standards for alternative motor fuels and setting off a debate among ethanol producers and environmentalists about scientific assumptions that could be worth billions of dollars to industry.
The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed regulations are designed to curtail greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change and to make sure that alternative fuels, such as ethanol or biodiesel, do not have indirect effects, such as deforestation in other countries, that could inadvertently increase levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
But the administration did not take a position on key regulatory issues, instead inviting comment from scientific experts and businesses on how to measure carbon emissions from the full lifecycle of biofuels, from land use to fertilizer to manufacturing process to delivery. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson also said that existing corn ethanol distilleries or ones under construction would probably be "grandfathered," or exempt from the new regulations.
Jackson's statement blunted criticism, especially from corn-based ethanol producers that have been targeted for competing with food crops and for using substantial amounts of fertilizer in fields and fossil fuels in distilleries.
In a telephone call with reporters yesterday, Jackson said the administration wanted to make sure that its final rule on renewable fuels is "informed by the best science."
Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, said his group would "participate aggressively" to shape the final regulations. "There's a great deal of uncertainty about this," he said.
Dinneen said the EPA had failed to count the indirect costs of petroleum production, had underestimated improvements in productivity of corn growers, and had overstated the impact of corn ethanol on U.S. food production and thus exaggerated the expansion of new crop planting in forests and savannahs of places such as Brazil.
"We don't think the theory of indirect land use change will hold up," said Wesley Clark, co-chairman of Growth Energy, an ethanol industry group. "It's unfairly applied only to ethanol."
Some environmentalists were also concerned about the EPA proposals. The EPA raised the possibility of computing greenhouse gas costs over a 100-year period instead of a 30-year period. The longer time frame would make the benefits of corn-based ethanol seem greater while discounting the initial costs, such as the loss of untilled land, over time. For example, the EPA said corn-based ethanol is 16 percent better than regular gasoline if its costs are calculated over 100 years, but 5 percent worse over 30 years.
"EPA has left open the option that an exception to good science could be made in the case of a favored special interest," said Frank O'Donnell, who heads Clean Air Watch.
But even as politicians and lobbyists sought to protect traditional biofuels, business experts said the recent corn ethanol boom and subsequent crash had soured many investors on such ventures.
"Since then, the focus has basically been on second-generation biofuels. It's given people time to think about alternatives," said Kevin Parker, global head of asset management for Deutsche Bank Group. "It's become clear to us, in the work that we've done, that converting photosynthesis into transport fuel is very inefficient. There's no sense of rolling back the clock on that one. The world has moved on."
For Old Drugs, New Tricks
Advice Veers Away From Flushing Unused Pills...Susan Q. Stranahan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/01/AR2009050103243_pf.html
At the Leesburg Pharmacy, located in a Loudoun County strip mall, a big, round fish tank sits atop the prescription counter. There are no fish inside, not even any water: The tank is a repository for unused medications. People can drop off the Vicodin that didn't get used once the pain of a root canal subsided. Or the heart pills remaining after a grandmother's death. Or an asthma inhaler that had passed its expiration date. Or an antidepressant that turned out to have unpleasant side effects.
Once a week, the tank is emptied; the drugs are packed in cartons by pharmacy personnel and ultimately incinerated by a commercial waste firm.
"Our customers are thrilled because they had no idea what else to do with this stuff," said Cheri Garvin, chief executive of the employee-owned pharmacy.
These are customers who are trying to do the responsible thing. Over the years, Americans have been alerted to the dangers of a lot of problematic waste materials -- paint thinner, batteries, air conditioners. But leftover pills can seem so small, so easily disposable, that many people routinely flush them down toilets, wash them down sinks or throw them in trash that goes to a landfill.
And then they often end up in places where they shouldn't be, like the public water supply.
The average American takes more than 12 prescription drugs annually, with more than 3.8 billion prescriptions purchased each year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The most commonly cited estimates from Environmental Protection Agency researchers say that about 19 million tons of active pharmaceutical ingredients are dumped into the nation's waste stream every year.
The EPA has identified small quantities of more than 100 pharmaceuticals and personal-care products in samples of the nation's drinking water. Among the drugs detected are antibiotics, steroids, hormones and antidepressants. Last year, the Associated Press reported that trace amounts of drugs had been found in the water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas; water piped to more than a milllion people in the Washington area had tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.
The EPA does not require testing for drugs in drinking water and has not set safety limits on allowable levels. While the minute quantities now being detected appear not to pose an immediate health risk, according to federal authorities, "there is still uncertainty about their potential effects on public health and aquatic life" over the long term, the EPA's water chief, Benjamin Grumbles, told a Senate committee last year. But the impact of long-term exposure of drugs on humans as well as on other species is less clear. Hormone-disrupting pharmaceuticals, for example, are one possible cause of a high incidence of "intersex" fish in the Potomac River basin: male smallmouth bass producing eggs, females exhibiting male characteristics.
Until recently, federal guidelines recommended that surpluses of highly toxic medications be flushed down the toilet; the same advice applied to drugs with a high potential for abuse or "diversion" -- the industry's word for what happens, for example, when kids help themselves to the OxyContin or Percocet in their parents' medicine cabinet. For other drugs, consumers have been directed to adulterate the medication by mixing it with an unpalatable substance -- such as cat litter or coffee grounds -- and put it out with the household trash.
But this spring, concerns about pharmaceuticals in the water supply led the Office of National Drug Control Policy to amend its advisory, telling consumers to avoid flushing unless the label or patient information specifies that method of disposal. The new guidelines still describe the cat-litter method of putting drugs in the trash, but they also encourage consumers to make use of community drug take-back programs.
And that's the problem: In much of the country, including the Washington area, drug take-back sites like the Leesburg Pharmacy are almost impossible to find. An informal survey of the District and 10 surrounding jurisdictions turned up no city- or county-organized drug disposal programs.
"We are farther ahead with recycling our garbage than we are with recycling drugs," said Babs Buchheister, the nursing director of Calvert County.
Fairfax and Prince William counties have prepared safe-disposal information for residents, available on county Web sites. Their advice echoes the new federal recommendations. "Like a lot of jurisdictions, we're keeping an eye on chemicals and drugs that may be in our water," said Brian Worthy, a Fairfax County spokesman. "That's the reason we're encouraging people not to flush their medications."
The Washington Metropolitan Council of Governments has studied a regional drug take-back program, according to Steve Bieber, a staff water resources manager. "It is a complicated issue, and there are a lot of potential hurdles," Bieber said. "It's just not something that's gotten to the point that we have any ideas ripe for regional consideration."
A major hurdle in any take-back program is what to do with controlled substances -- for example, morphine -- which constitute about 10 percent of all prescription medications in this country. Under Drug Enforcement Administration rules, a third party -- beyond the patient and pharmacist -- may not legally have possession of such drugs. Thus, a family member or caregiver cannot return an unused portion of a controlled substance to a take-back program on the patient's behalf. And any take-back program must have a DEA-registered representative -- a pharmacist or a law enforcement officer -- present to accept the drug.
The problem of disposal becomes especially acute for hospice providers, who often are confronted with a medicine cabinet full of painkillers after a patient dies or when a drug regimen is changed.
"There is a very delicate balance with an immediate need to avoid abuse potential versus the long-term need to protect the environment," said Catherine J. Woods of ExcelleRx, a Philadelphia medication management company that serves 800 hospices nationally. "They are both legitimate needs." Woods said hospice workers often feel forced to flush the drugs simply because there is no other convenient alternative.
Clarifying the chain-of-custody rules is one of the key changes in the Safe Drug Disposal Act, introduced in February by Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.). The bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), is intended to foster state take-back programs. The bill would allow caregivers as well as the patient to turn over regulated medications for disposal in DEA-approved, government-run programs. The bill also would bar pharmaceutical companies from independently recommending flushing as a disposal method.
The goal of the bill is to eliminate obstacles to getting unwanted medication out of circulation. The growing problem of drug diversion to illicit users "makes the issue all the more compelling," said Julie Simpson, an aide to Moran. The measure would require the DEA to create five take-back models from which states may choose.
For now, instituting a take-back program requires determination and persistence. When environmental concerns led Cheri Garvin of Leesburg Pharmacy to see what she could set up, she found bureaucratic roadblocks everywhere.
"The problem with this whole take-back issue, the minute you want to do it, there are all these agencies telling you why you can't," Garvin said. "I got indignant. I said I'd find a way."
Garvin struck a deal with a company known in the industry as a reverse distributor, which already collected unsold and expired medications from her drugstore and returned them to the manufacturer for credit. Under the deal, the company would also collect medications returned by customers (which, unlike unsold drugs, cannot be returned to the manufacturer) and incinerate them at a waste-to-energy facility. (She had to scramble to find a new reverse distributor after discovering that a company she first used was putting the waste in a landfill.)
At least for now, the reverse distributor is making enough money from the credit to cover the cost of incineration. But the cost of collection and disposal is a commonly cited obstacle to setting up take-back programs. In Washington state, pending legislation would have the costs borne by the pharmaceutical industry. In Maine, which began a groundbreaking mail-back program this year, the costs are borne by a federal grant, supplemented with state funds.
Meanwhile, Garvin's fish tank stays on the counter, and customers fill it up; she believes the chain-of-custody registry she maintains complies with DEA regulations. She estimates that for every three cartons of unsold medications from her pharmacy, there are 10 from customers, which are hauled away every two months.
The program has been running for a year and a half. "People come in with grocery bags full [of drugs]," Garvin said. "They've been saving them for years, not knowing what to do. And to think, we're just a small pharmacy in Northern Virginia."
New York Times
West Coast Job Market Woes...Edward L. Glaeser. Edward L. Glaeser is an economics professor at Harvard.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/west-coast-job-market-woes/?pagemode=print
Is this recession easing up or slouching toward 1929? It depends on where you live.
Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its local unemployment statistics, which revealed a striking divide across states and cities. In some places, like New York, unemployment rates have started to fall, albeit slightly. In other areas, like California and Michigan, unemployment rose strikingly. Will a national stimulus plan be well suited to address a mosaic of local economies, some of which are already headed to recovery while others head toward collapse?
Before I delve into the local numbers, some caveats are necessary. Month-to-month numbers come with a lot of error, and the bureau doesn’t seasonally adjust these figures. As a result, it makes sense to be cautious in interpreting anything. Still, there seems to be enough of a pattern in the figures to at least begin thinking about what they mean.
The good news is on the East Coast. Between February and March, the unemployment rate fell in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, the District of Columbia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. The unemployment rates in Maine, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia and Florida were all unchanged. New Hampshire was the only state on the Atlantic Seaboard where unemployment went up, from 6.3 percent to a still low 6.6 percent.
The really bad news is on the West Coast and in parts of the Midwest.
The unemployment rate in California increased by one-half percentage point to 11.5 percent. That state now has 19 metropolitan areas with double-digit unemployment rates. Oregon increased by 1.2 percentage points to 12.9 percent. Washington State increased from 9.1 to 9.7 percent. Michigan already had the highest unemployment rate in the country in February, and it increased another seven-tenths of a percentage point to 13.4 percent. Unemployment rates also increased in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.
Unemployment rates also generally increased in the Southwest, but in those places, like New Mexico and even Arizona, unemployment remains modest, generally below 8 percent. It is striking to compare the highly Hispanic communities of Texas, such as Brownsville or McAllen, where unemployment rates are in single digits, with the highly Hispanic communities of California, such as El Centro or Merced, where unemployment is over 20 percent.
Across metropolitan areas, there was what economists call divergence. Places that started with higher levels of unemployment saw their unemployment rates increase further, as shown in the attached graph, which shows only those metropolitan areas with more than 500,000. Instead of spreading nationwide, the crisis seems to be hitting particular areas of the country ever more severely.
Source: Edward L. Glaeser
Why is this pattern emerging? I have written consistently on New York City’s strengths — competition, skills, industrial diversity — which seem to be enabling it to weather the downturn relatively well. In the latest numbers, the city’s unemployment rate has fallen from 8.4 to 8.2 percent. Perhaps the strength of the East Coast reflects the strengths of New York City writ large.
Manufacturing has long fled the East Coast, and the region is dominated by services and ideas. America’s high human capital workers may be poorer, but they are not unemployed, and many already seem to be figuring out how to profit from the downturn.
By contrast, economies dominated by durable goods production, agriculture and new construction have been doing terribly. The unemployment rates in those three sectors are 13, 19 and 21 percent respectively. The problems in Michigan are completely understandable, given the state of the automobile industry.
But California’s problems are harder to understand.
After all, the West Coast also has plenty of human capital and innovation. While the centers of skilled industries, like Seattle and San Francisco, have been doing better than their states, they are still faring badly relative to the East. Some of these cities, like Los Angeles, have more manufacturing than their East Coast equivalents. Some areas in California still have agriculture.
Still, I am puzzled why the West Coast is doing so badly relative to the East. What do you think?
Bloomberg.com
Shaved Heads Keep Barbers Idle as Drought Sears California...Ryan Flinn and Jeran Wittenstein
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&sid=a8X3k8FhImlc
The drought in California’s Central Valley is so severe that it’s drying up money for haircuts.
One customer waited six months to get a $10 haircut, then asked to have his head shaved so he could wait another six months, said Armando Ramirez, a barber in Firebaugh.
“People come in and say, ‘Hey Armando, how about I give you a dollar for a cut, it’s all I have,’” said Ramirez, 63, who has owned his shop for four decades. “Saturday is supposed to be my busiest day, but I’m lucky if I get one customer before I go to lunch.”
Businesses are casualties of the three-year drought that is forcing farmers to leave hundreds of thousands of acres fallow in the Central Valley, the semi-arid agricultural region running 400 miles (600 kilometers) down the middle of the state. The drought may cost the valley 35,000 jobs and $959 million in lost revenue this year, said Richard Howitt, chairman of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis.
“I’ve never seen a drought this bad,” said Bob Diedrich, who has been farming near Firebaugh, 140 miles southeast of San Francisco, since 1973. “It’s putting a chokehold on us.”
Diedrich laid off all five of his full-time workers in anticipation of receiving no water this year to irrigate the 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of land where he grows almonds and tomatoes. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in February cut off water deliveries to Central Valley farmers for the first time in 15 years because reservoir levels were low. The reservoirs collect rain and melted snowpack from the Sierra Nevada for transport to farm irrigation systems.
Multiplier Effect
Farms hire workers for planting, picking, sorting, packing and other jobs. Most wages are spent locally, so when fields aren’t cultivated it hurts stores and other businesses, and a multiplier effect rolls through the economy, Howitt said.
“Our mom-and-pop shops are hurting,” said Hope Morikawa, director of the Hanford Chamber of Commerce, 30 miles south of Fresno, which has lost dozens of its 700 members this year and began offering its services for free.
Stacey Marshall can look out the window of her women’s clothing boutique in Hanford and see four empty storefronts.
“We’ve lost the scrapbook store, a cigar store and the bakery,” said Marshall, whose sales are dropping at a rate of about 13 percent this year. “The wine cellar and Boogie’s, a restaurant, closed.”
Rainfall in February and March eased the shortage, said Wendy Martin, drought coordinator for the California Water Resources Department, “bringing us back from the edge of disaster.” Still, Martin said she thinks this drought may rank among the state’s worst.
Third Dry Year
Snowpack runoff is forecast to be 66 percent of average in the year ending Sept. 30, following years of 58 percent and 51 percent, said Elissa Lynn, senior meteorologist for California’s Water Resources Department. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in February, asking residents of the world’s eighth-biggest economy and the most populous U.S. state to cut water use by 20 percent.
In the heart of Central Valley, half of the 30 communities in Fresno County had unemployment rates above 20 percent in March, when the state rate was 11.5 percent.
Farmers in the Westlands Water District, which includes Fresno County and part of Kings County, are planting about 200,000 acres, down from 500,000 in wetter years, said Sarah Woolf, spokeswoman. It’s the largest agricultural irrigation district in the U.S., she said.
Almonds, cotton, beans, grapes, tomatoes and other crops are raised in the area about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Fresno County grew $5.35 billion of produce in 2007, said Steve Lyle, a spokesman for California’s Food and Agriculture Department.
Hunger Amid Plenty
California’s agricultural output ranks highest among U.S. states. Now some Central Valley residents are going hungry.
“People don’t have enough to eat, and there are no jobs,” said Phyllis Baltierra, 74, the community services coordinator in Firebaugh, where unemployment is 28 percent. More than 1,000 people showed up for a food giveaway in March, compared with 200 in July or August, she said.
“We’re down to bottom here,” Baltierra said. “People are moving in with each other because they can’t afford to live by themselves.”
Mayor Robert Silva is helping organize food drives in nearby Mendota, where 85 percent of jobs are related to agriculture and unemployment exceeds 40 percent.
“My community is suffering,” Silva said. “There are a lot of tragedies going on here.”
Loss of Customers
Di Amici Cafe, the only coffee shop in Mendota, sells espresso drinks and wrap sandwiches to 60 customers a day, down from more than 200 when it opened in January 2008. Sam Rubio, 25, who left medical school to open the business, said he may have to consider closing.
Ramirez, the barber, said he tried to sell his business earlier this year but didn’t find any takers.
“You couldn’t even give it away,” said Ramirez, who works one day a week at his sister’s beauty salon more than an hour away to earn some extra cash.
A few businesses are benefiting from the downturn. At Castaway Concepts, a consignment clothing store in Hanford, more people are bringing garments to sell and more customers are buying them, said Jan Gray, the owner.
“My sales are really up,” said Gray, 53. “The economy has been a plus to me.”