5-8-09

 
5-8-09
Merced Sun-Star
Merced wants speakers at council meetings to fill out form
Name, address and how they feel about issues will be requested...SCOTT JASON
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/834328.html
Comment cards will soon be available during City Council meetings.
No, they're not for evaluating a council member's leadership or accomplishments.
It's the city's latest way to make more efficient its meetings, which typically last two to three hours.
The cards, set to be used at the first meeting in July, are to request time to speak on specific items during the meeting.
The forms include space for a name, group affiliation, address, phone, e-mail and whether the person supports, opposes or is neutral on the issue.
It also notes that the information can be released under the California Public Records Act.
Adding comment cards, along with the ability to reduce the amount of time a speak has, was approved during Monday's meeting.
In the past, the mayor would ask if anyone from the public wished to speak. Anyone interested would stand up, sign in on a sheet of paper and approach the microphone.
The time from seat to speech wasn't long, but the time added up. There were also awkward silences.
And sometimes people forgot to sign in, forcing the clerks to remind them to leave their name for the record.
Under the new system, the city clerk will collect the cards at the start of the meeting and call up the people when the council's ready for public input.
If there are a lot of people planning to comment on one item, the council can discuss the issue sooner so people don't have to wait around.
Another change is allowing the council to limit the speaking time from five minutes to three minutes if more than three people want to talk on one item.
Mayor Pro Tem John Carlisle voted against the changes. The spirit of the new rules was to increase public participation, he said, but the council was allowing itself to restrict the amount of time someone could address it.
Councilman Bill Spriggs argued that the longer people speak, the more time is taken away from others. The shorter time limits, he argued, will allow for more viewpoints.
Late storm helps Merced Irrigation District increase water output...JONAH OWEN LAMB
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/834323.html
It was all smiles at Thursday's Merced Irrigation District board meeting.
That's because the irrigation district unanimously voted to end its water curtailment, caused by what until last week had been a dry year.
Now, because of healthy reservoir levels from a rain storm that passed through the region last week -- the heaviest storm of the season -- the farmers of Merced will be able to get all the water they need.
In further good news for growers, MID's board voted to postpone controversial water fee increases until 2010.
The board's decision to end the curtailment came after two months of limited water sales caused by the third drought year in a row. The curtailment had reduced water use to 2.5 acre-foot per acre. (An acre-foot is equivalent to 326,000 gallons.) In normal years, the average acre-foot usage is 3.3 per acre.
Most farmers planned for a season of curtailments, so they either planted less cropland or pumped more water from the ground.
"This is good news for the Valley. Not only are MID wells turned off," said Hicham Eltal, MID's assistant manager, but "wells by growers will be turned off too."
Now they will be able to stop or slow their pumping, as MID has done. In turn, that will ease the pressure on the aquifer. It will also save farmers money on pumping costs.
"Immediately, what this will mean is we can shut our pumps off," said Louie Bandoni, an almond grower in the district.
The news was also welcomed by David Farmer who sits on the board of the Merced County Sphere of Influence Water Users Association, which represents farmers on 30,000 acres abutting MID district limits. At the meeting, the association's season was also opened by MID.
"It's a huge change for us. We've been without water for the last two years," he said.
Aside from the recent rains, much of the district's water for the season will come from snowmelt. From April to July, Eltal expects roughly 430,000 acre-feet of snowmelt to make its way to MID's reservoir.
But with the end of the curtailment, Eltal cautioned measured optimism.
Eltal expects the reservoir's level to drop by September to what it was in the fall of 2008. That means Lake McClure will have roughly 280,000 acre-feet at the end of the season.
But any fears of dropping the lake so low were eased, to some degree, by the possibility of a wet 2010. It's expected to be a wet year, said Eltal, since it could be an El Nino year.
MID delivered more than 200,000 acre-feet of water in 2008 to more than 100,000 acres of farm land in Merced, 60 percent of which is planted with almonds.
On another long-standing matter, the board decided no fee increase will take place this year. The price per acre-foot will stand at $18.25. The board will wait until 2010 to decide on future hikes.
Merced College to stage 'Youth Fest' Saturday on campus...From reports
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/275/v-print/story/833040.html
Merced College said it will stage a “College and Career Youth Fest” at its stadium on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The event is a countywide effort to encourage middle school students to focus on their academic performance and prepare for college.
“I have to give credit where credit is due," said Congressman Dennis Cardoza, one of the event’s sponsors. “My daughter, Brittany, had commented last year that with all the difficult economic times and housing issues back home in Merced County, I should try to do something uplifting for the youth and work to bring in some inspirational speakers, in addition to my work in Congress.”
Merced College president Benjamin T. Duran said that when Cardoza spoke to him about the event last fall, “I immediately saw the potential to reach our middle school students with a positive message about staying in school, doing well with their studies, and planning for college.”
Sponsored by Congressman Cardoza, Merced College, California Latino Superintendents Association, Merced School Employees Federal Credit Union, Merco Credit Union, Foster Farms, Merced County Sheriff’s Office, and county Supervisor John Pedrozo, the event is expected to draw 1,000 middle school students from across the county.
College officials said that, despite the importance of the message, Youth Fest will be entertaining, as well as informative. Los Angeles comedian Ernie G. will appear, and local middle school rock bands, such as Minor Infraction and Fallen Is the City, will also entertain the students.
Lunch will be provided, and several Merced College student groups, including the Associated Students of Merced College, Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, the Blue Devil Cheerleaders, and the College “hacky-sack” club, will be on hand to help to keep the show rolling. The Merced County Sheriff’s Explorers will also participate.
Both Merced College and Congressman Cardoza are committed to helping prepare local students for college careers,” said Duran. “We want them to know that it's important to do well and work hard in school.”
Middle school students who want to participate should contact their school teachers. For more information on Youth Fest, call Merced College at (209)381-6470.
Loose Lips: Change? UC can use a little of that
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/834296.html
What's the cost of excellence? You could charge it to a MasterCard and call it priceless. But in one instance, it means about $700,000. That's UC Merced's estimated bill for throwing an event for first lady Michelle Obama and the legion of spectators who'll flood the campus. It swelled from what was set to be a $100,000 affair for mom and dad.
The school has raised more than $100,000 from sponsors, so it just needs about a half million more.
Campus leaders are still figuring out a way to pay for the party, so Lips figured it'd lend a hand with a slate of ideas.
One -- Ask the 16th Street homeless people to take up a collection for the university. The signs could read, "Bring change to UC Merced."
Two -- "UC system student fees are going up by 9 percent? Make that 19 percent at UC Merced."
Three -- Shave a hair or two off top managers' salaries. Populism is the new black.
Four -- With the campus expansion approved, leaders could have a fairy shrimp feed. They're delicious!
Five -- Take out a second mortgage against the Early Childhood Education Center. When in Merced ...
Citizen Kang
Lips has lost track, but it looks as if UC Merced has four campus newspapers and two literary journals. As in print. Most don't even have Web sites.
Maybe it's a fad, like listening to vinyl records or wearing leg warmers.
Or maybe it's the beginning of an old-fashioned newspaper war.
Nevertheless, we're pleased to see Chancellor Steve Kang allowing such a free market of ideas, ones that range from left to right to wrong.
To recap: There is The Prodigy, the school's mainstream media publication. Then there's the Right Side. The name says it all.
Recently, two more popped up.
The Donkey Press (with the subtitle "We're not just asses") is run by student Democrats. The eight-page issue on stands features an article about the upcoming election, fresh food and, of course, discussions on the elephants in the room.
The latest edition comes with a report about a debate held on campus between the two leading political parties. Guess which one won?
The Other Child, a satirical publication, takes aim at all subjects (word is the Greek community isn't laughing). It's in its second edition -- the final for the year.
It's hard to say which one will end up dominating the media landscape. Given the industry's woes, some are bound to become long-forgotten fish wrap. The Fury Shrimp Times seems to have calmed down to the point of disappearing.
We're glad there's a band of students carrying the flickering torch of broadsheets and ink.
Rosebud!
UC Merced professor has biomass study published
Plant matter converted to electricity is more efficient...Sun-Star staff
UC Merced said a study by Assistant Professor Elliott Campbell and two other researchers in the online edition of this week's Science journal suggests that biomass used to generate electricity could be the more efficient solu
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/834316.html
Scientists are examining biomass -- plant matter that's grown and used to generate energy -- as a potential power source. Two biomass technologies involve ethanol and electricity. Biomass converted into ethanol, a corn-based fuel, can power internal combustion vehicles. Biomass converted into electricity can fuel a vehicle powered by an electric battery.
In the study, Campbell, along with Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and David Lobell of Stanford University, the scientists found that biomass converted into electricity produced 81 percent more transportation miles and 108 percent more emissions offsets compared to ethanol.
In other words, said Campbell, vehicles powered by biomass converted into electricity "got farther down the road" compared to ethanol. As a result, Campbell added, "we found that converting biomass to electricity rather than ethanol makes the most sense for two policy-relevant issues, transportation and climate."
The authors said their study looked at two criteria, transportation and greenhouse gas offsets, but didn't examine the performance of electricity and ethanol for other policy relevant criteria.
"We also need to compare these options for other issues such as water consumption, air pollution and economic costs," Campbell said.
Campbell joined UC Merced as an assistant professor in the School of Engineering in 2008. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Stanford University and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa.
A copy of Campbell's abstract can be viewed online at: http://www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress/recent.dtl
First Class: Top math student will pursue graduate studies at UC Merced...DANIELLE GAINES
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/834310.html
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is one of several that will chronicle the lives of members of the UC Merced inaugural graduating class. As pioneers at UC Merced, their contributions will leave a lasting effect on the Merced community.
When it comes to his favorite college memory, "nothing really sticks out" more than anything else. And when the summer job market in Merced proved impossible to break into, he saved money by living on bread and Kool-Aid.
Born and raised near San Diego, the 21-year-old has switched majors three times since he enrolled at UC Merced in 2005.
Add it all up, and Paul Tranquilli remains a pretty laid-back dude.
Still, the self-described "apathetic high school student" has proved to be no loafer in the classroom at UC Merced.
"I was a really big underachiever in high school," Tranquilli explained. "I did well in classes, but because I was smart, not because I tried hard."
At UC Merced, that mellow way of life quickly fell by the wayside.
"You can't really skate through engineering classes, so I buckled down right when I started here," Tranquilli recalled.
Like many college students these days, Tranquilli dabbled in several fields before settling on one. In his freshman year, he majored in computer science engineering, then switched to applied math. Later, he majored in mechanical engineering, before flopping back to applied mathematics.
He settled on applied mathematics because "it will give me the ability to get involved in a lot of fields. The flexibility is what makes it interesting," he said.
By definition, applied mathematics creates equations and computer models used to provide a mathematical basis to guide other areas of innovation like design or engineering, said UC Merced professor Mayya Tokman.
Tokman has been working with Tranquilli for about a year on a research project to create a more efficient wood-burning stove for Prakti Designs, a company based in Pondicherry, India.
"This is a project that can have a really big impact on the lives of people in developing countries," Tokman explained. "There are millions of people who use wood burning stoves."
Tokman and Tranquilli created a mathematic equation to simulate the efficiency of the stoves. Using that equation, Prakti can test various prototypes of the stoves quickly and with relatively little expense.
"It will basically keep the consumer's cost down by avoiding multiple physical prototypes," Tranquilli explained. With the virtual version, the company could conduct billions of tests until the best design is created.
Tokman said the new design could decrease the amount of smoke -- and the related health issues -- in homes with wood-burning stoves. It could also provide a more efficient heat source in communities where wood is hard to find.
That's not the first research project Tranquilli has been involved with at UC Merced.
In 2007, he was listed as a co-author with UC Merced professor Arnold Kim on a study published by the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer.
The article, titled "Numerical solution of the Fokker-Planck equation with variable coefficients," was Tranquilli's first published work as a scientist.
This past March, Tranquilli was awarded the campus' first math prize.
Led by professor Francois Blanchette, members of the UC Merced faculty devised the UC Merced Applied Mathematics Prize to recognize the achievements of the most outstanding undergraduate math student on campus.
Tranquilli qualified for the prize by earning the highest GPA in the math program, doing so consistently in upper division and math courses.
Before deciding to attend UC Merced, Tranquilli was ready to pack up and attend a private engineering school in New Jersey.
Since then, he hasn't regretted his decision to attend UC Merced once because the school is like "a private school at a public price" with its emphasis on research and small class sizes, he said.
Even though he loves UC Merced so much he's returning next year to start a Ph.D. program, Tranquilli isn't afraid to criticize the campus -- even for silly things.
"You look out toward Merced and you don't see a hill for 10 miles," he said, gazing out a window at the library building. "Yet, every day, you have to walk up this big hill to get to class."
While he thinks there could be more businesses aimed toward college students in town, Tranquilli has made good use of local facilities by taking the bus to campus each day.
Tranquilli isn't sure yet which career he will apply his mathematics education to.
"Right now I am having a good time doing this," he said.
And Tranquilli doesn't know where he wants to settle either; San Diego is too crowded, but Merced is too sparse.
Someday, he will calculate a future that's just right.
Modesto Bee
Bill a little steep for first lady's visit...Editorial
http://www.modbee.com/opinion/v-print/story/694681.html
It's not every day that a university gets to graduate its first four-year class.
And, it's not every day that the nation's first lady decides to come to the party.
Thus, it's understandable for the University of California at Merced to want to go all out for a special celebration with a special guest.
Then again ...
It's not every day that the state of California is in such dire financial straits that public agencies — including the UC system — are slashing staffing and services right and left.
And it's not every day that college students — including UC students — are facing yet another tuition hike to help balance the budget.
Thus, the $700,000 price tag on UC Merced's commencement on May 16 seems more than a little over the top.
When the UC Merced students surprisingly landed Michelle Obama with a creative Valentine card campaign, the commencement morphed from a small affair for the university's pioneer class with family and friends into a media frenzy.
That in turn fueled a campus spending frenzy.
Now university administrators and professors, local and state elected officials and thousands more are seeking invitations for a chance to see the first lady up close. It's a very tough ticket to get, and this event will put the newest UC campus on high-profile display.
UC officials say private donations will help offset some of the cost; so far, they've received $100,000 in cash and services from the private sector, and they're looking for more sponsors.
With the first lady's visit, security costs went up dramatically, which is understandable and appropriate. Those costs will be borne by the UC police force, the California Highway Patrol and local law enforcement. And, of course, the Secret Service. The cost for the university police alone is expected to run about $90,000.
The largest cost — at $300,000 — is expected to be for an audiovisual company to broadcast the first lady's speech to the thousands expected to gather at the campus and in nearby areas. That bill seems a bit excessive to us.
On a brighter note, campus officials say another vendor will broadcast the event on the Web free of charge.
And they note that some of the improvements, such as grass and landscaping, will last well beyond the first lady's visit.
UC Merced officials defend spending nearly three-quarters of a million dollars on the event.
"The graduation of our first full senior class is an important milestone. Having the first lady adds to the significance of the event for our students, their families, our faculty and staff, and the San Joaquin Valley," campus spokeswoman Patti Waid Istas told us in an e-mail. "The positive visibility of the campus and our region — that often makes headlines in less-than-preferred ways — is something that shouldn't be underestimated."
We don't disagree with any of that. But $700,000 still is a lot of money, and UC officials should consider stepping back and asking whether such spending makes sense in these troubled economic times.
Fresno Bee
Harassment lawsuit filed against Sam's Club...Tim Sheehan
http://www.fresnobee.com/updates/v-print/story/1388564.html
Hispanic employees at Fresno's Sam's Club membership warehouse store were victims of verbal harassment and racial taunts, according to a federal lawsuit filed today against the company.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleges that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Sam's Club's parent company, subjected workers to a hostile workplace because of derogatory remarks about their Mexican heritage.
Anna Park, an attorney with the EEOC's district office in Los Angeles, said the suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Fresno on behalf of 10 Sam's Club employees. Park said much of the alleged harassment took place in 2006 and 2007.
"The harassment started with one particular co-worker, but ultimately this has to do with management's failure to stop the harassment," Park said. "After it was reported to managers, they didn't do anything about it and allowed it to continue."
Local Sam's Club store managers referred calls to Wal-Mart's corporate office in Bentonville, Ark. A corporate spokesperson could not be reached for comment today.
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlaws discrimination against people because of their national origin.
Park said three Sam's Club employees initially filed complaints with the EEOC; the agency's investigation turned up seven more alleged victims. "We believe there may be others," she said.
EEOC officials said the suit came after failed attempts to reach a voluntary settlement with Wal-Mart. In addition to monetary compensation for the victims, the suit seeks a court order for the company to change its practices for dealing with discrimination and harassment complaints, training for employees and court monitoring of the company's complaint procedures.
A sinking feeling...Sandy Nax...News Blog...5-6-09 
http://fresnobeehive.com/news/2009/05/a_sinking_feeling.html
Zillow reports that 21.9% of U.S. homeowners - that's more than 1 of every five - owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth. That percentage, by the way, includes families who have paid off their houses.
Home values in the first quarter of 2009 posted a year-over-year dip of 14.2%, the ninth consecutive quarter of declines. The central San Joaquin Valley has been particularly hard hit with home values plummeting almost 59% in Merced, 55% in Madera and 44.6% in Fresno since the peak in 2006, Zillow says.
In Fresno, prices are at 2003 levels, and 88.5% of the loans issued in 2006 and 86.5% of those in 2005 are under water (assuming 5% down payments).
However, some areas, including Modesto, Merced and other regions where prices fell hard and fast, are showing some signs of improvement, said Stan Humphries, a Zillow vice president.
In those areas, year-over-year price declines have slowed for two or more consecutive quarters. Maybe next quarter figures will be better; Fresno County, for example, even experienced a small price gain in March.
Gov't faces weekend deadline on polar bear rule...H. JOSEF HEBERT,Associated Press Writer
http://www.fresnobee.com/news/national-politics/v-print/story/1388935.html
WASHINGTON The Interior Department is letting stand a Bush administration regulation that limits protection of polar bears from global warming, three people familiar with the decision told The Associated Press.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will announce on Friday that he will not rescind the Bush rule, although Congress gave him authority to do so. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to pre-empt the secretary's announcement.
A year ago, the iconic polar bear was declared a threatened species because global warming is causing a severe decline in Arctic sea ice, the bear's habitat. But the Bush administration rules limit that protection, saying no action outside the Arctic region could be considered a threat to the bear under the law.
Environmentalists have strongly opposed the rule as have many members of Congress. They argued the limits violate the Endangered Species Act because the release of greenhouse gases from power plants, factories and cars indirectly threaten the bear's survival.
In March, federal lawmakers authorized Salazar to scrap the Bush regulation without going through a long regulatory process. The deadline for such action was Saturday, 60 days after Congress acted.
Salazar was expected to say that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will further study the limitations established by the "special rule" issued by the Bush administration in March 2008 when the bear was officially declared a threatened specie because of the reduction in Arctic sea ice, which is the bear's habitat.
But business groups and their supporters in Congress have argued strongly that the Endangered Species Act is the improper vehicle for addressing climate change and that there are other ways to deal with the global environmental issue.
Congress is trying to craft broad legislation that would limit greenhouse gases and, separately, the Environmental Protection Agency has begun a lengthy regulatory process that could lead to heat-trapping emissions being controlled under the federal Clean Air Act. Last month, the EPA declared carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and other greenhouse gases a danger to public health.
But after the polar bear was declared threatened in March 2008, and brought under the protection of the Endangered Species Act because of climate change, environmentalists hoped they could use the species law to force broader nationwide limits of greenhouse gases.
The Bush special rule for the polar bear "significantly undercuts protections for the polar bear by omitting global warming pollution as a factor in the polar bear's risk of extinction," said Jane Kochersperger, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, which delivered 80,000 petitions to the Interior Department after they were collected by the two environmental groups.
On Thursday, Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, the ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, urged Salazar to keep the Bush rule in place.
"This reaches far beyond the scope of polar bears in the Arctic and could put jobs and economic activity across the entire nation at risk," said Hastings.
Coal ash is contaminating water, damaging health in 34 states, groups say...RENEE SCHOOF,McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.fresnobee.com/news/national-politics/v-print/story/1388486.html
WASHINGTON People in 34 states who live near 210 coal ash lagoons or landfills with inadequate lining have a higher risk of cancer and other diseases from contaminants in their drinking water, two environmental groups reported Thursday.
Twenty-one states have five or more of the high-risk disposal sites near coal-fired power plants. The groups - the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice - said a 2002 Environmental Protection Agency document that the agency didn't release until March of this year adds information about toxic releases from these facilities to nearby water systems and data on how some contaminants accumulate in fish and deer and can harm the health of people who hunt and fish.
The report said that people who live near the most problematic disposal sites have as much as a 1-in-50 chance of getting cancer from drinking water contaminated by arsenic. The highest risk is for people who live near ash ponds with no liners and who get their water from wells.
The report said the ash ponds also produced an increased risk of damage to the liver and other organs from exposure to such metals as cadmium, cobalt and lead, and other pollutants.
Although the health information mainly came from an EPA study released in August 2007, the information was largely neglected and was too technical for most people to understand, the groups said. The report and a chart of the sites "takes the numbers and fleshes them out so the most dangerous units are identified," said Lisa Evans, an attorney with Earthjustice.
Evans also said that the actual number of coal ash disposal sites is nearly three times larger. EPA has long estimated there are about 600 ponds and landfills storing the material, but its 2007 survey only looked at 210.
Coal-fired power plants annually dispose of an estimated 100 million tons of ash and sludge scrubbed out of their emissions. The EPA has found that the highest health risks are from water contamination from unlined ponds where both coal ash and other waste products from coal are mixed. It also found unlined ponds increased the risk of other problems, such as damage to the liver and other organs. The risk also is elevated when the disposal sites are only lined with clay.
Evans said that proper storage requires drying the ash and sealing it in a landfill with a double liner of clay and a synthetic material, plus groundwater monitoring and a collection system for any water and pollutants that leak out. She said the EPA should require this kind of storage and close poorly lined lagoons and landfills and safely secure their contents.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said that making a decision about whether to regulate the ash sites would be a priority for her. The EPA sent questionnaires about the disposal sites to companies and is collecting the information.
The EPA plans to propose coal ash regulations by December.
Since the spill at Kingston, the EPA has been working to prevent future threats to health and the environment, said EPA spokeswoman Adora Andy.
"Working closely with other federal agencies and the states, EPA is expeditiously evaluating all liquid coal impoundments in the country to determine whether they raise the type of structural integrity issue that led to the TVA spill," she said. "EPA is also quickly moving forward to develop regulations to address the management of coal combustion residuals."
The two environmental groups said that the Bush administration withheld information about the health risks from coal ash until the EPA released the 2007 report, and that it never agreed to their request that it release the 2002 report. In other cases, the Bush administration replied to document requests by giving materials with the health risks blacked out, they said.
The EPA for decades has declined to impose regulations on coal ash disposal. Then in December, the issue gained new attention when a Tennessee Valley Authority pond burst and spread contaminated sludge near Kingston, Tenn.
Based on information from most of the nation's utilities, the EPA estimates there are 427 coal ash ponds, the environmental groups said.
A previous EPA estimate showed 300 ponds.
(The 21 states mentioned in the second graf and the number of sites in each are: North Carolina (17); Indiana (15); Illinois (14); Ohio (12); Georgia (11); Kentucky (11); Tennessee (11); Texas (10); Alabama (9); Iowa (7); Michigan (7); South Carolina (7); West Virginia (7); Wisconsin (7); Wyoming (6); Kansas (5); Louisiana (5); Maryland (5); North Dakota (5); Oklahoma (5); and Pennsylvania (5).
ON THE WEB
The Earthjustice/EIP report, charts of sites and other documents: http://environmentalintegrity.org/pub640.cfm
California left out of key USDA jobs
Obama team shuts out the state in filling USDA positions...Michael Doyle, Bee Washington Bureau
http://www.fresnobee.com/business/v-print/story/1388801.html
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration has all but bypassed California in Agriculture Department appointments, even though the state leads all others in farm production.
In a remarkable shutout, none of President Barack Obama's 13 Agriculture Department nominees requiring Senate confirmation come from California. At lower levels, too, the state with $36 billion in annual farm production seems shortchanged.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has named some 41 staffers who do not need Senate confirmation. Only two appear to have any California roots, a review of nomination documents show.
"I think Mr. Vilsack is a great guy, but I'm very disappointed we don't have more Californians in the administration," said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, a Merced Democrat and member of the House Agriculture Committee.
The Agriculture Department's non-California cast was on display Thursday, as the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee conducted a confirmation hearing for four department nominees. The latest nominees will handle key areas including rural development, research and education.
None of the four considered Thursday comes from California, although assistant secretary nominee Pearlie Reed, an Arkansas native, did work for a few years as a state conservationist in California.
"It's the first time in a long time we've had no representation at the top," Cardoza said.
An Agriculture Department spokesman could not be reached by telephone or e-mail to comment Thursday.
An unwritten tradition that a Californian hold either the No. 1 or No. 2 position at the Agriculture Department prevailed for a number of years. This culminated during President George W. Bush's first term, when Modesto native Ann Veneman was the first female secretary of agriculture. She had previously served Bush's father as the first female deputy secretary of agriculture.
Some states have fared particularly well, especially Vilsack's home state of Iowa.
So far, California's primary representation seems to come from the appointment of UCLA graduate and Southern California native Jay Jensen to deputy undersecretary overseeing the Forest Service. Most recently, Jensen has worked out of Colorado.
A University of California at Riverside graduate, Carol Clifford, is an adviser on labor issues. Clifford has worked for many years out of the Washington, D.C., area.
Strictly in terms of political patronage and payback, some consider this ironic. California politicians frequently complained the Bush administration ignored their state because it voted so reliably Democratic. Now, that same Democratic reliability gives the Obama administration little political reason to curry favor through appointments.
Sacramento Bee
California air board sued over fee tied to global-warming fight…Jim Downing.
http://www.sacbee.com/378/v-print/story/1844003.html
A collection of business and taxpayer groups sued the California Air Resources Board on Thursday for allegedly failing to provide certain documents detailing the administrative costs of waging the state's war on global warming.
Air board spokesman Stanley Young said the agency has complied with the groups' Public Records Act requests.
The dispute concerns a new fee on energy the air board is scheduled to propose today. The fee would cover agency salaries and other expenses associated with implementing Assembly Bill 32, the 2006 law that requires the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
Revenue from the fee would total about $50 million annually, Young said.
In a news release, the business groups said the board has not provided documents "that would substantiate the basis for and the amount of fees to be collected."
Plaintiffs include the California Chamber of Commerce, California Small Business Alliance, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the Western States Petroleum Association. In a news release, they claimed the suit is the first associated with AB 32.
Home Front: Ten years after the bust, how will Central Valley look?...Jim Wasserman
http://www.sacbee.com/business/v-print/story/1844019.html
California's 400-mile Central Valley and its largest metro area, Sacramento, are almost perfect poster children for housing boom excesses that doubled home values, then quickly shredded them in a torrent of foreclosures.
In circles where scholars run numbers and make maps, Highway 99 is a pitiless corridor painted red with danger: damaged credit scores, vacant homes, loan-modification scams, unemployment in the high teens.
How will we view this crisis in 10 years? The topic filled the room Thursday when Modesto-based Great Valley Center took a look ahead at its annual conference in the capital.
The assumption, first off, in a gathering of homeowners losing equity by the minute, was that it will have ended by then.
Yet it was said we'll wonder in 2019 what builders were thinking in the century's opening decade. What was with all the 3,000-square-foot houses – and larger – in Manteca, Modesto and Merced, to name just a few area cities not famous for great-paying jobs? Gone will be the risky loans – with few questions asked – that made such homes affordable in 2004.
"There are too many 3,000-square-foot homes for the low median incomes in the Valley," said Chelsey Norton, a planning consultant with Sacramento-based Mintier Harnish. She said it's not just that most people can't afford them. Many won't want them.
In 2015, just 10 percent of Valley households will be the traditional nuclear family with a mom, dad and kids, she said. The Valley, said Norton, "is increasingly graying." It's filling with a multitude of varying lifestyles, "with people who don't need isolated large suburban houses."
Norton said today's "millennial" generation, born between 1981 and 2001, may have grown up in suburbs. But it wants to live near work and not necessarily in the single-family homes that the boom brought to the Valley.
"How to keep this generation in the Valley?" she asked a crowd of people mostly older than herself. "They want different kinds of housing than that found in the Valley."
It's an old lament in a huge, flat expanse where land has been inexpensive and builders say they were providing homes the market wanted.
Among the possibilities for 2019 is a lot more of the same.
Sacramento-area home builders alone have 109,400 new home lots in varying planning and conceptual stages for a future when the market turns back up, says Metrostudy, a Houston-based building industry tracker.
How many of those lots in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties are envisioned as single-family detached homes? The type described Thursday as the wrong dominant model for the Valley?
All of them.
Growth is coming
Don't worry, there will be another housing boom. A competing panel at the Great Valley Center conference predicted 13.6 million people living between Bakersfield and Redding in 2050. That's about the time this month's high school graduates will retire.
Today, there's just shy of 7 million people in that area – about one-third of them in the Sacramento region. The good news for the capital: It has been gaining brains and income with its growth, according to Joseph Hayes, research associate at the San Francisco-based Public Policy Institute. Not so for the rest of the Central Valley, he said...
Peter Moyle, John Durand and William Bennett: Change needed for better Delta ecosystem...The authors are ecologists affiliated with the Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California, Davis. The reports are available from ppic.org.
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/v-print/story/1843878.html
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is changing, and the pace of change is accelerating. While the ecosystem still contains an abundance of fish, invertebrates and plants, many are undesirable species that were not around a few decades ago. In the near future, we can expect to see even more dramatic change. We can either fight it at great expense – and lose – or figure out how to make change work in our favor.
Most big decisions for the Delta today are made in reaction to lawsuits, levee breaks and droughts, often to prevent change. We think it is possible to break this cycle of reactive management by understanding the Delta's history. Understanding the past makes possible reasonable predictions of the future, allowing a more proactive approach to managing the Delta and its ecosystem.
The Delta began as a vast freshwater tidal wetland, intimately connected to its inflowing rivers and their floodplains, as well as to saltier parts of the San Francisco Estuary downstream. Starting in the mid-19th century, the Delta was altered by blocking off floodplains with levees, creating Delta islands through diking and draining marshlands, and diverting water upstream.
Then, dozens of dams were built for irrigation and urban water supply. At the same time, myriad non- native species invaded the region. The native fish were left to survive in barren rock-lined channels and tiny bits of floodplain and marsh habitat.
Given the extent of the transformation, it is a miracle that only two native fish species were driven to extinction, with most species remaining fairly common until recently.
The present crisis has its origins in the big water projects that diverted more and more water from the rivers, culminating in the completion of Oroville Dam in 1967. Although voters rejected a peripheral canal in 1982 – in part from fear of a "water grab" – more and more water moved south. The diked channels of the Delta were increasingly treated as canals to convey water to Valley agriculture and to Southern California and Bay Area cities.
In response, estuary-dependent fishes such as Delta smelt, longfin smelt and striped bass declined, while freshwater lake species such as largemouth bass, bluegill and catfish increased. This shift would have gone by virtually unnoticed were it not for the state and federal endangered species acts.
Only when Delta smelt, green sturgeon, winter and spring chinook salmon and longfin smelt reached critically low numbers and became listed as threatened or endangered did management of the Delta ecosystem begin to change. However, initial responses to the crisis were feeble.
They involved mainly minor changes in timing and amount of water diversions and allocations, followed by more studies and lots of hand-wringing. The fish continued to decline. Finally in 2007 and 2008, Judge Oliver Wanger issued decisions stating that protective actions for smelt and salmon were insufficient, ordering reduced exports from the giant pumps in the south Delta.
Meanwhile, sea level continues to rise and farmed islands continue to sink, indicating that the Delta ecosystem is headed for another transformation. Two recent reports by UC Davis scientists and the Public Policy Institute of California indicate that major changes will come from levee failures on the most deeply subsided Delta islands, especially from inevitable earthquakes.
Much of the western and central Delta will shift from fields of alfalfa, grass and corn to expanses of open water, 15 to 30 feet deep. Most likely, the water will be too salty for export.
This inevitable increase in open water will probably be good for some fishes now in decline, such as Delta smelt, longfin smelt and striped bass,and bad for some non-native species, such as largemouth bass and sunfish. Regardless, the new Delta will be unlike anything that existed previously.
There are a variety of ways to deal with these changes including creating a more "natural" pattern of water flow through the Delta, reconstructing large expanses of variable tidal marsh habitat in both fresh and brackish water, re-creating floodplains and deliberately flooding some islands before levees collapse. Given the increased difficulty of channeling water exports through the Delta, a peripheral canal that conveys some Sacramento River water around the Delta to the pumps is likely to be part of the solution. This assumes, of course, that Californians will still want to export significant amounts of the water to cities and farms.
Creating a Delta that is better for desirable fish and for most Californians is not simple. The choice is whether to take action now or wait to respond to a "disaster," as we humans like to call sudden change. The UC Davis/PPIC studies indicate that a reasoned response will be cheaper than a reactionary one. It is also more likely to result in a Delta that will be better for fish and humans alike.
UC chancellor pay goes up as student fees rise...Laurel Rosenhall
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/v-print/story/1844201.html
Within hours of raising student fees Thursday by more than 9 percent, University of California regents offered massive pay hikes to the new leaders of UC Davis and UC San Francisco.
They named Linda Katehi chancellor of UC Davis, and gave her an annual salary of $400,000 – $85,000 more than outgoing Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef makes.
The new chancellor of UC San Francisco, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, will make $450,000 a year – almost 12 percent more than her predecessor.
UC President Mark Yudof said the salaries are low compared with those of chancellors at similar universities nationwide.
Even lower salaries wouldn't allow him to recruit the kind of talent needed to run California's prestigious public universities, he said.
"In times like this, you need leadership," Yudof said. "I felt like I got a pretty good discount, as a matter of fact."
The job offers that regents made around lunchtime Thursday were in stark contrast to the testimony they heard earlier in the morning, when throngs of angry students begged them not to increase the cost of their education.
Testifying by phone from San Diego, Irvine and Santa Barbara, students said the university's pattern of raising fees every year is hurting them and their families.
Next year's $693 hike – from $8,027 a year for in-state undergraduates to $8,720 – will force them to spend more time at their jobs, some students said. It will turn their little brothers and sisters to community college instead of the university.
Students chanted. Some cried.
Yudof said most students will not feel the pinch from higher fees.
More than 80 percent of students with family incomes below $180,000 "will not pay an extra nickel of this," he said, because it will be covered by tax breaks and grants in the federal stimulus package.
Regents said they were unhappy about raising fees but felt they had no choice because of limited state funding.
They approved the fee increase on a 17-4 vote and moved on to hiring the new chancellors.
Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, who also is a regent, voted against the fee increase and abstained from voting on the chancellors' appointments and salaries.
"At a time when students are having to pay increasing fees, I think it's wrong to provide salary increases and what I would consider to be excessive salaries," he said.
Yudof said UC salaries have been frozen in response to the state budget crisis.
But recruiting new leaders is a different matter, he said, because there is so much competition from private industries and other schools.
Desmond-Hellmann, the new chancellor of UCSF, comes to the university from Genentech, where she earned a base salary of $725,666 and $1.3 million in incentive compensation, not including stocks.
Katehi made $356,000 as a provost at the University of Illinois – more than the $315,000 UC Davis Chancellor Vanderhoef now brings in. Yudof said it would be unfair to ask her to take a pay cut.
"This woman has 16 patents," he said. "Private industry would eat her up in a minute and hire her."
Katehi is an expert in electronic circuit design. She specializes in developing circuits for small, inexpensive wireless devices.
Many of her inventions are used in cell phones and military radar. She got a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UCLA and has held leadership positions at University of Michigan, Purdue and University of Illinois.
"We have seen the outflow of many capable people from public institutions to private," Katehi said.
When public universities set salaries, she said, "there is always a trade-off between trying to be sensitive to the difficult economic times we face and trying to retain good people."
She described her salary as "a result of this trade-off."
In addition to her salary, Katehi gets a relocation allowance of $100,000 as well as payment of moving costs, a car allowance of almost $9,000 a year and free housing in the Davis chancellor's house.
UC Davis will consider her husband, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Illinois, for a similar position here.
State Sen. Leland Yee blasted the deal.
"The UC administrators just totally have their head in the sand," he said. "They don't understand that we are in some tough economic times and that one ought not to be paying any administrator these exorbitant salaries. They continue to raise student fees to pay for these increases."
He said UC has too much control over its spending and suggested it might be time for a constitutional change that would give the Legislature more oversight.
San Francisco Chronicle
Obama administration tries to save local salamander...Bob Egelko
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/08/BALS17GOBT.DTL&type=printable
SONOMA COUNTY -- The Obama administration has reversed a Bush administration decision and is proposing to restrict development on 74,000 acres in Sonoma County that is habitat for the endangered California tiger salamander.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service settled a lawsuit this week by an environmental group challenging its decision in 2005, under President George W. Bush, to withdraw the designation of land on the Santa Rosa Plain as critical habitat for the rare amphibian.
The area covers farmland, housing and open space from Windsor in the north to Skillman Road northwest of Petaluma.
Under the agency's proposal, any development that might harm the salamander or its habitat would have to be cleared with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Federal officials could require developers to take protective measures or make offsetting investments in nearby land set aside to protect the species.
"The California tiger salamander will finally receive the protection it needs to survive," Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the suit, said Thursday.
The tiger salamander is relatively large, 7 to 8 inches long, and is black with yellow spots. The creature once occupied the entire Santa Rosa Plain, Greenwald said, but now lives in only a few locations and is threatened with extinction by urban sprawl.
The agency declared the salamander's Sonoma population an endangered species in 2003, in response to earlier lawsuits, and was sued a year later by farmers, home builders and others whose development or commercial activities were restricted as a result.
A federal judge upheld the listing. The Bush administration proposed setting aside 74,000 acres as critical habitat in August 2005, but changed course four months later and endorsed a conservation plan backed by developers, local governments and some environmental groups. It would have banned development in only a few areas but required builders to replace, at a 3-1 ratio, any known salamander grounds they damaged.
That plan was never carried out, however, because local governments ran short of funding to implement it, said Al Donner, spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento.
The settlement, approved by a federal judge, requires the agency to propose the critical habitat area for public comment within 90 days and submit the final boundaries by July 2011.
Higher salaries for UC's new administrators...Jim Doyle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/08/BAQA17GQ7C.DTL&type=printable
The University of California's governing Board of Regents on Thursday approved the appointment of Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, a cancer researcher and biotech industry executive, as chancellor of UC San Francisco.
Her salary will be $450,000 a year - a nearly 12 percent increase over her predecessor, who earned $402,200.
The regents also approved the appointment of Linda Katehi, 55, as chancellor of UC Davis at a salary of $400,000 a year - an increase of about 27 percent over her predecessor, who earned $315,000.
Both chancellors will also receive on-campus housing and an auto allowance of about $9,000 a year.
Criticism was swift from some quarters to the salaries of these top administrators.
State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, recalled that earlier this year the regents appointed two additional executives at salaries of more than $350,000 a year and authorized paid administrative leaves to two former campus chancellors -one receiving $402,200 a year and the other $315,000.
"I find it extremely frustrating when UC continues to give these double-digit increases when we have state workers who are being furloughed, losing their jobs and losing their homes," Yee said. "I'm very embarrassed for UC. They seem to have no shame in their cavalier attitude of giving administrators these rather rich salaries while our students year after year pay these high fees."
In addition, the regents on Thursday appointed Dwayne Duckett as vice president of human resources for the UC system at a salary of $300,000 a year. Duckett, 45, previously served as vice president for human resources at Heinz North America.
Duckett's benefits will include moving expenses from Pittsburgh, plus a $75,000 relocation allowance. He is also entitled to reimbursement of temporary living expenses not to exceed $15,000, expenses to assist with house-hunting and a subsidized mortgage loan.
Santa Cruz Sentinel
UCSC laboratory fire causes haz-mat concern...Jennifer Squires
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_12323053
SANTA CRUZ -- A solvent caught fire in a chemistry lab at UC Santa Cruz on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of the Physical Sciences Building and initiating a response from five fire departments.
However, the fire was contained to the third-floor laboratory and the UCSC firefighters who were first to the scene were able to put out the flames.
No injuries were reported but concern about the potential exposure to hazardous material led fire officials to close the building for much of the afternoon.
Apparently, two graduate students were working in the lab when a half-full 4-liter bottle of hexane ignited around 2:20 p.m., according to campus spokesman Jim Burns.
The four-story Physical Sciences Building is largely a research facility. It also houses offices and lecture halls. Burns said some classes were in session at the time and 100-150 people had to evacuate when the fire alarm sounded.
Fifth-year science student Natalie Garcia, 22, was doing research one floor below the damaged lab when the fire sparked.
"I was under the fume hood and then all of a sudden" the fire alarm rang, she said. "I thought I caused the fire."
In addition to UCSC firefighters, crews from Central, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and Felton fire departments responded.
"This level of response is absolutely customary for a building of this size," Burns said. Fire crews remained on scene for about two hours while a hazardous materials team monitored air quality inside the building to make sure it was safe to breathe. Around 4:15 p.m., people were allowed back inside, Burns said.
The fire occurred in the lab of associate professor Rebecca Braslau, who works in synthetic organic chemistry. Burns said neither Braslau nor the two undergraduate students who also work in her lab were present at the time.
The fire was not large enough to trigger the building's fire sprinklers, but the water used by firefighters to extinguish the blaze did cause a small amount of water damage, according to Burns.
Also, a section of McLaughlin Drive near the building was closed during the incident. Traffic and campus bus service was rerouted onto Heller Drive.
UC regents approve student fee increase...Larry Gordon...L.A. Now
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/05/uc-regents-approve-student-fee-increase.html
Despite student protests, the University of California regents today approved a 9.3%, or $662, increase in most student fees for next year. Given the grim outlook for the state budget, the regents said, the only --  and much worse -- alternative was deep reductions in class offerings and student services.
"I don’t know where else to go. I simply do not know where to go," UC President Mark G. Yudof said of the fee hike during a regents meeting held by conference call from 13 locations around the state. He also insisted that expected increases in financial aid and federal tax credits would cover the fee hike for most students, even those from upper-middle-income families.
However, students denounced the raise, which would bring the average basic cost for an undergraduate UC education to about $8,720 a year, not including room, board and books. Including those other living costs, the overall annual price tag for students living in dorms would be about $25,000.
Lucero Chavez, a UC Berkeley law student who is president of the statewide UC Student Assn., noted that fees had doubled over the last decade and that while the basic fees might be comparable to those  at other public research universities around the country, high living costs in California make a UC education among the most expensive. Even if extra financial aid is available, she said, low- and middle- income students might be scared off by "sticker shock" and never even apply to UC or for the aid.
"There are only so many more steps before we privatize the university and that’s not where we want to go," Chavez said.
The regents voted 17 to 4 for the fee hikes. Regents Eddie Island, Odessa Johnson and Lt. Gov. John Garamendi as well as student regent D’Artagnan Scorza voted against it.
Years of steady fee increases threaten to change "the fundamental nature of the university," Island said.  "Access and affordability are slipping away."
Regents board Chairman Richard Blum and Yudof placed the blame on state government, which is expected to cut UC’s $3 billion in general revenue funding by at least $115 million next year and not cover an additional $200 million or more in increased salaries and other costs. They warned that the situation could get worse if voters later this month do not approve state ballot measures aimed at helping to close the state budget deficit