7-4-09

 
7-4-09
Merced Sun-Star
Calif. bullet train hits criticism on SF Peninsula...STEVE LAWRENCE, Associated Press Writer
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/280/v-print/story/933361.html
MENLO PARK, Calif. Last November, more than 60 percent of voters on the San Francisco Peninsula supported a $9.9 billion bond measure to help pay for a high-speed rail line between San Francisco and the Los Angeles area.
As planning accelerates, some of the area's residents are raising concerns about the project. They fear it could take out trees, homes and businesses and split their communities with elevated trains flashing between San Francisco and San Jose.
The objections raise the prospect that the bullet train line may not reach San Francisco, one of its key destinations.
It's a hurdle that high-speed rail planners could face in other heavily populated areas of California as they embark on the nation's most ambitious intrastate rail project, threatening delays that could stall the project for years if extensive opposition surfaces.
If completed as planned, the rail system would stretch 800 miles and link the San Francisco Bay area, Sacramento, Fresno, Los Angeles, Anaheim and San Diego with trains running at speeds of up to 220 mph.
California's line and a Midwestern project are the likely front runners for $8 billion in federal stimulus money dedicated to development of high-speed and conventional rail. It's not clear whether delays, either through neighborhood opposition or lawsuits, would jeopardize California's share.
By the time the entire California high-speed rail system is completed, the total cost is expected to top $45 billion.
In some of the neighborhoods south of San Francisco, residents are urging the state high-speed rail board to consider tunneling, trenching or making San Jose the system's terminus in the Bay Area. That step would require riders to take commuter trains from the heart of Silicon Valley to San Francisco.
Others suggest a different route, perhaps taking the trains off the peninsula and reaching San Francisco through an underwater tube from Oakland.
Their allies in the California Legislature have inserted language into a pending bill that would require the rail board to consider a different San Jose-to-San Francisco route than the one currently selected.
"We're supportive of (high-speed rail), but we have some deep concerns over potential implementation," said Patrick Burt, a city councilman from Palo Alto, a peninsula community about 30 miles southeast of San Francisco.
Palo Alto and four other peninsula cities - Atherton, Belmont, Burlingame and Menlo Park - have joined to create a unified voice on the project.
Atherton, Menlo Park and Palo Alto also are involved in a lawsuit challenging the rail board's selection of the Pacheco Pass as the primary route for trains between the Bay Area and the Central Valley. They say a more northerly route, through the Altamont Pass, would be the better choice.
Making Altamont the primary route could leave all or some peninsula cities untouched by high-speed rail, depending on where tracks are placed.
Last year's bond measure designated the San Francisco to Los Angeles and Anaheim segment as the first built. State officials hope to have it finished by 2020. Links to San Diego and Sacramento could follow shortly after, depending on funding, said Mehdi Morshed, the rail board's executive director.
Planners have settled on the corridor used by the Caltrain commuter line as the best high-speed rail route on the peninsula, but they haven't decided if trains will run above or below ground. They also haven't determined if tunneling would be more expensive than other alternatives.
Part of the 52-mile-long corridor is wide enough for Caltrain and high-speed rail tracks to run side by side. In narrower sections, tracks might have to be stacked or the state might have to obtain adjoining property through eminent domain, Morshed said.
That has some residents worried that elevated trains will split their communities, that the rail board will need to expand the right of way or both.
A Web site established by a group of peninsula residents features pictures depicting the transformation of Menlo Park's picturesque, tree-lined Caltrain station into a barren place with trains on a cement berm.
"There's going to be a huge amount of unhappiness if they don't do it right," said Malcolm Dudley, a former Atherton city councilman. "Right means tunneling it. It's done all over the world in urban centers."
Menlo Park Vice Mayor Richard Cline estimates seven to 15 miles of tunneling could be necessary to avoid major impacts on peninsula cities.
Morshed said the board will have to consider terminating high-speed trains in San Jose if environmental obstacles and public opposition are too daunting. But rail board member Quentin Kopp, a semiretired judge and former state senator, said a San Jose terminus would violate voters' intent when they approved Proposition 1A.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom also would fight any attempt to stop the trains short of his city, a mayoral spokesman said. "The economics of high-speed rail depend entirely on connecting LA and San Francisco," said Michael Cohen, San Francisco's director of economic and workforce development.
Whatever option is chosen, peninsula residents simply want a transparent process that considers their opinions, said Nadia Naik of Palo Alto, who helped form a citizens' group, Californians Advocating for Responsible Rail Design.
"That would give us tremendous peace of mind," Naik said. "Nobody's done that. We get a lot of, 'Oh, you're just 50 people who complain.'"
High-speed rail planners say they've held dozens of community meetings and will continue to reach out to peninsula residents to hear their concerns.
"Our prime responsibility is to do as little disruption and as little damage and inconvenience as possible...," Morshed said
Modesto Bee
Lawmakers anxious to move fast on delta project...Mark Grossi
http://www.modbee.com/local/v-print/story/769716.html
FRESNO -- A bold experiment in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta could protect threatened fish and ease California's water crisis. But it faces steep challenges.
The idea is to submerge massive barriers in river channels to prevent the delta smelt from swimming toward certain death at water pumps in the delta.
The experiment, called the Two Gates project, comes up at water rallies and political strategy sessions among San Joaquin Valley lawmakers who support the idea. They hope it will bring more water to 25 million residents and millions of acres of farmland.
The gates would be mounted on sunken barges in two large channels in the central part of the delta. They would prevent turbid water from flowing south toward the pumps. The adult smelt tend to follow the turbid water, scientists said.
With the gates closed, the pumps could continue sending water south without harming the fish.
But there are serious hurdles ahead. The public hasn't seen the details. There is no funding for the $26 million project. And environmental analysis of such projects can take years.
Still, farmers and city officials hope the gates could be installed by December. A detailed plan might be available for public review in several weeks.
Politicians are pressuring government wildlife agencies to analyze it quickly. Water officials are hoping to tap federal stimulus money.
That's not enough to bring environmentalists and fishing organizations on board.
"This thing is an embryo right now," said Bill Jennings, chairman of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance in Stockton. "I don't even know what we're talking about."
The experiment is the brainchild of state and federal contractors who are coping with reduced water deliveries to protect smelt. Further pumping cutbacks are expected for other suffering species, such as chinook salmon and green sturgeon.
The delta's pumps, long considered a factor in dwindling fish populations, send water into San Luis Reservoir. San Luis storage this summer is less than 30 percent of average because of delta pumping restrictions and the three-year drought.
The California Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation are studying the Two Gates proposal, which water contractors began assembling last year as water cutbacks continued.
City and farm contractors developed the idea with their own consultants and presented it to state and federal officials this year, said Tom Birmingham, general manager of the Westlands Water District.
Westlands and Metropolitan Water District of Southern California were among the water contractors who pushed the idea.
Meeting this month
Michelle Light, state Water Resources regional planning officer, said the engineering and design work have progressed well. She said the state's analysis is moving quickly because of water shortages and the dwindling smelt population.
Katherine Kelly, chief of the state Water Resources bay-delta office, added that there would be a meeting this month of scientists to discuss the details of the proposal. No date has been scheduled.
Even if the project is completed by December, Birmingham cautioned farmers and others not to consider Two Gates a guarantee of increased water supply.
"There is a perception that construction of this project will lead to an increase of water," he said. "This really is an experiment."
Two Gates would be an innovation compared with previous solid barriers that could not be easily opened and closed. Such solid barriers have been used to protect fish, maintain water quality and keep water at desired levels in the sprawling delta, according to the Water Resources Department.
Dan Nelson of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Authority, representing West Side farmers, said Two Gates is flexible by comparison. Besides opening and closing, the barges can be moved to see if they work better in other locations.
Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, said Two Gates has strong political support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. He said he will continue to press wildlife agencies for a quick turnaround on their study of the project.
Stockton Record
Fisherman, advocate has deep ties to Delta...Alex Breitler
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090704/A_NEWS/907040310
"Jolly Jay" Sorensen has already paid to have his ashes scattered over the Delta, his playground for the past six decades.
How jolly is that?
But Sorensen's plans don't stop with his death:
"I'm gonna be reincarnated as a 231-pound striper," he said with a straight face.
Now there's Jolly Jay.
Sorensen, 71, is one of a dwindling number of fishermen who remember the estuary from its glory days, when stripers in their spawning frenzy "made the water boil," and trees grew thick on levees that today are barren piles of riprap.
He loves the old way so much that he hired an artist to paint the Delta on the back wall of his north Stockton home. When the light hits the house just right, you can sit on the back patio and enjoy a virtual Delta sunset.
"I feel like taking my rod and reel out into the backyard and making a cast," he said.
Sorensen organized the California Striped Bass Association in 1974, and it remains the oldest freshwater fishing club in the state. His fishing guide's license, issued that same year, is also one of the oldest.
Sorensen claims to know the depth of every slough, every channel; a friend remembers how Sorensen once navigated the San Joaquin River in a dense blanket of fog and dropped anchor in just the right spot.
"My concern is, what happens when we lose the Jay Sorensens or the Bill Jenningses?" fellow fisherman and friend Dave Hurley said. Jennings is a Stockton environmentalist and activist. "These are older gentlemen who have fought the fight for a long time."
As a boy, Sorensen fished with dough balls in the Stockton Deep Water Channel, catching carp that he sold on the street for up to 15 cents - movie money.
He swept the floors at Mike's Bait Shop on Weber Avenue and tagged along on fishing trips. Then one day people were calling him to take them fishing.
His stories are the stuff of legends. Like the white pelican that Sorensen says perched on his boat and gazed at him like a sad basset hound until he pitched a handful of shad into its beak.
True tale, or fisherman's fable? Sorensen insists it's true.
He owned a shop for 10 years but sold it as his health deteriorated. Sorensen has diabetes and neuropathy, which affects his balance.
And while he still writes the occasional angry letter to bureaucrats tussling over the Delta's future, he is no longer as active an advocate as he once was, prompting questions of who will fill his shoes as well as those of the region's other aging anglers and conservationists.
"I'm getting burned out," Sorensen said. "I'm sick of meetings."
But he still comes alive in his favorite place.
"When he's on the water, he's like a young man," Hurley said. "It's like he totally transforms. He's just a little kid again."
Tracy Press
Powerline project hits setback...Jennifer Wadsworth
http://www.tracypress.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Powerline+project+hits+setback%20&id=2884116-Powerline+project+hits+setback&instance=home_news_bullets
Plans to string up 600 miles of power lines from Lassen County and through San Joaquin County were stalled this week when a major utilities company withdrew its support for the project.
The Sacramento Municipal Utilities District completed a feasibility study that a spokeswoman said raised concerns about cost and actual benefit of constructing new high-voltage transmission lines.
The $1.5 billion project is spearheaded by a group called the Transmission Agency of Northern California, which consists of 15 public utilities. The Sacramento district that pulled its support forced the agency to postpone public outreach meetings scheduled for July, including some in San Joaquin County.
The withdrawal throws the future of the project into question, said transmission agency spokesman Brendan Wonnacott.
“It’s too early to tell where this is going to end up,” he said. “With (the district) withdrawn, the overall setup of funding and designing this project, that all changes.”
The Sacramento company budgeted $13 million for the planning phase of the project and has already spent $2 million on it, according to the district.
Farmers and environmental nonprofits have strongly opposed the project, saying 150-foot towers and miles of power lines could devalue property and endanger wildlife. Some of those lines would stretch across farmland just north of Tracy.
The public comment period originally ended in April, but lawmakers and landowners demanded more time to weigh in, which now ends July 30.
About 70 people showed up to an April meeting in Tracy about the power lines. Many of them voiced worries that the plan would threaten property values and public safety, planners said.
The transmission agency said it will use the public’s feedback to refine its plans, which are still in the very early stages.
“We haven’t even started our environmental review,” Wonnacott said. “We are still in the very early stages, and there is still plenty of time for people to comment on this.”
Wonnacott said new power lines are important to ease congestion in California’s energy superhighway. He said as the state builds more solar and wind farms and taps into more renewable energy sources, utility companies need more power lines to transmit that energy.
If everything goes as planned, construction would begin in 2014 at the earliest.
For more information about the project, go to www.wapa.gov/transmission/ttp.htm, www.tanc.us or call the project hotline at 916-353-4777.
To submit written comments, send a letter to David Young of the Western Area Power Administration at 114 Parkshore Drive, Folsom, CA 95360. Send e-mails to TTPEIS@wapa.gov and faxes to 916-353-4772.
At a glance
• WHAT: Transmission Agency of Northern California, a team of 15 public utilities, proposes stringing 600 miles of transmission lines from Lassen County and through the Central Valley and southern Bay Area.
• WHY: The agency says the power lines will widen the “energy highway” for future solar and wind farms to supply power to local utilities and help them meet state mandates to draw more power from renewable sources.
• WHEN: The public comment period has been extended through July 30, and the completion date is set for 2014 at the earliest.
Our Voice: McCloskey is must-see TV...The Editorial Board
•“Pete McCloskey: Leading from the Front,” airs at 6 p.m. Sunday on KQED Public Television (Channel 9). Narrated by the late Paul Newman, this program tells the colorful and inspirational life story of Pete McCloskey, a war veteran, lawyer and former Republican congressman.
http://www.tracypress.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Our+Voice-+McCloskey+is+must-see+TV-%20&id=2884114-Our+Voice-+McCloskey+is+must-see+TV-&instance=home_opinion_lead_story
A new documentary, “Pete McCloskey: Leading from the Front,” airs this holiday weekend on KQED Public Television after eight years in the making.
It takes us back to 2005 when the former congressman came to town to find someone — anyone — to unseat Tracy’s own rancher-Rep. Richard Pombo, a seven-term U.S. congressman who’d cut his teeth on the Tracy City Council. At the time, McCloskey was a 78-year-old Republican, a decorated military veteran and retired attorney living on his farm in Yolo County and looking for a Republican in the 11th Congressional District to take on Pombo in the primary.
Restless and enraged by House Republicans who had changed the ethics rules to protect Rep. Tom DeLay (later indicted on campaign finance charges), he’d formed a group called Revolt of the Elders. He drove a bus with the slogan, “Restore Ethics to Congress.”
McCloskey was no newcomer to politics, of course, having run against Richard Nixon for the Republican nomination for president back in 1972. One of his claims to fame was being the first member of Congress to publicly call for the impeachment of President Nixon after the Watergate scandal.
This time, he also had an environmental ax to grind. As a congressman from Palo Alto from 1967 to 1982, he had co-authored the 1973 Endangered Species Act — the very same act that Pombo was trying to dismantle.
Finding no other Republican up to the task of challenging Pombo, the maverick McCloskey threw in his own old hat, moved to Lodi and made his way along the campaign trail to the district’s four counties and many cities, including Tracy.
During the primary, McCloskey asked Pombo to meet him for a public debate, but the closest they got was the Tracy Press’ forum — a packed one — at Williams Middle School.
McCloskey said he was “perfectly agreeable to losing, if I can make my point and make it hard.”
And he did lose, with only 32 percent of the primary vote. Then he endorsed Democrat Jerry McNerney, who bounced out Pombo in the general election.
McCloskey changed his party affiliation to Democrat in 2007. In a letter to the Tracy Press, he stressed that a “new brand of Republicanism” had finally led him to abandon the party he’d joined in 1948.
We need people like McCloskey, who are willing to fight for a cause regardless of the prevailing political winds. That’s why we’ll watch the McCloskey documentary with a smile.
San Francisco Chronicle
TV review: 'McCloskey: Leading From the Front'...David Wiegand
McCloskey: Leading From the Front: A "Truly CA" documentary. Narrated by Paul Newman, produced and directed by Robert Caughlan. 6 p.m. Sunday on KQED, with encore broadcasts.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/04/DDNU18FMIR.DTL&type=printable
Even those who agree with former Rep. Pete McCloskey on every issue may find the new film "McCloskey: Leading From the Art" a bit of a valentine.
Then again, producer-director Robert Caughlan makes his case that if there's anyone in American politics who deserves a whole box of valentines, it's the former Peninsula congressman who was able to balance his Republican beliefs about government's role in our lives with outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, support for abortion rights and the need for vigilant environmental conversation.
Narrated by McCloskey's friend the late Paul Newman, Caughlan's film airs Sunday as part of KQED's "Truly CA" documentary series, created in association with the Bay Area Video Coalition and the San Francisco Film Society.
McCloskey came out of the Korean War as a war hero, but says that if he'd had to bayonet one more enemy soldier, he might have bolted. As a platoon leader, he explains in his disarming matter-of-fact style, his job was to be at the front of advancing troops.
After the war, McCloskey set up an environmental law partnership in Alameda. Think about that for a minute: environmental law advocacy at a time when "environment" wasn't even part of usual political discourse. But McCloskey did not want Northern California to go the way of the southern half of the state, where acres and acres of land had been pillaged for tract housing and other development.
McCloskey was always a maverick. As some of the nation's cities were blazing with racial unrest in the '60s, he reached out to African Americans in East Palo Alto to create a dialogue as a way of finding solutions to problems before violence erupted.
Only a couple of weeks after being elected to Congress from California's 11th District, McCloskey went to Vietnam, where, he says bluntly, he and other American politicians were lied to by the military about the chances of winning the war as a way of getting more troops and equipment out of Congress. In the long run, it didn't matter what the military told him in 'Nam: The Republican McCloskey announced his opposition to the war and later co-sponsored the repeal of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that had authorized the war. Richard Nixon's response was to invade Cambodia.
Some other highlights of McCloskey's career, both during his 1967-83 tenure in Congress and after, included: breaking with his party to call for Nixon's impeachment for abusing his powers, co-chairing the first Earth Day and co-authoring the Endangered Species Act and, in 2006 at the age of 78, running a pro-environment GOP primary battle against incumbent Rep. Richard Pombo - whom McCloskey labeled a "land developer" instead of an environmentalist. Pombo was later defeated in the general election by Jerry McNerney, thanks in part to the effectiveness of McCloskey's primary attacks.
It was probably inevitable that McCloskey's outspokenness would lead to his defeat in politics, but as he once said to an interviewer, "What this country needs is politicians willing to lose." McCloskey did lose a bid for the U.S. Senate, in part because he supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - an unpopular stance at the time.
Caughlan, his editor Steven Baigel and cinematographer Jaime Kibben have crammed a whole lot of history in a short period of time. They could be faulted for lingering a snickering minute too long on a movie sequence showing McCloskey's GOP primary opponent Shirley Temple Black as a tap-dancing moppet, but more substantively, the one thing you'll want after viewing "McCloskey" is more. Revealing commentary is provided by Daniel Ellsberg, McCloskey biographer Lou Cannon and others, but it's just not enough: Pete McCloskey's too interesting, too refreshingly candid and seemingly singularly principled to be confined to an hourlong documentary. The only stumble in his life appears to have been the dissolution of his first marriage, to Stanford sweetheart "Cubby" Wadsworth. She always wanted a more traditional marriage, but her husband, now happily remarried, was too busy fighting for one cause or another. Wadsworth is among those who readily shed light on the singular life and career of Pete McCloskey in the film and, yes, that light is as close to a halo as you can get.
More
Schedule of Showings over July 4th weekend on KQED Public Television:
KQED 9
Sun, Jul 5, 2009 -- 6:00 pm
KQED Life
Mon, Jul 6, 2009 -- 7:00 pm
Tue, Jul 7, 2009 -- 1:00 am
KQED World
Sun, Jul 5, 2009 -- 10:00 pm
Mon, Jul 6, 2009 -- 4:00 am
Contra Costa Times
Divisive Delta canal now on the fast track
Fears loom that moving water south could devastate, contaminate supply...Mike Taugher
http://www.contracostatimes.com/top-stories/ci_12749643
CLARKSBURG — Chuck Baker grows pears on land his family has worked since 1851 and has a farmer's sensitivity to the plagues of modern agriculture — pesticide regulations, the intrusive hand of federal regulators, the threat to private property posed by wetlands restoration — and, most of all, the need for water.
So, he sympathizes with San Joaquin Valley farmers who are short of water this year, but he also has little patience for the argument being trumpeted by valley politicians: that the problems confronted by valley farmers can be reduced to the simple equation of "fish versus farmers."
"I don't think we'd be in this situation if they paid any attention to their own rules," Baker said. "They're the ones that ruined the fish. Not me, not me who's been irrigating the same piece of land for 150 years."
The "they" Baker was referring to was not so much his kindred farmers, but the state and federal agencies that ship them Delta water. Those agencies, he said, created the ecological crisis by taking more water out of the Delta than they should have.
As Delta pumping increased in recent years, fish populations collapsed and triggered new rules to prevent fish from going extinct. Those rules will affect water deliveries for years, but so far have had a minor impact because shortages this year are mostly due to dry conditions and drawn-down reservoirs.
Now, the solution proposed to keep Delta water flowing south — a peripheral canal — poses a threat to water rights his family has held since statehood, Baker said. It is not something north Delta framers like Baker should have to worry about. They have the law, contracts and water-quality standards on their side.
But given a long record of broken promises and aborted plans, Baker and others say there is no reason to trust the government will protect their rights from the thirst of others, especially the farmers in the San Joaquin Valley.
"They're going to build this canal whether we want it or not," he said. "The best we can do is fight them until we run out of money."
Baker's son, Brett, a 25-year-old UC Davis graduate who represents the sixth generation of his family to live on the same 30-acre orchard, put it this way: "This is being framed as a fish-versus-people issue, when in actuality it's a people-versus-people issue."
Plans to build a peripheral canal, the massive aqueduct rejected by voters 27 years ago to take water from the Sacramento River to pumps near Tracy, have quietly moved in recent weeks to a more intensive phase. Tentative details are emerging, and the environmentalists, regulators and water agencies who are hammering out the plan are coming to broad agreements on how it might be designed and operated.
The version now under consideration would be nearly 50 miles long, 500 feet across at the water's surface and include massive levees that would further widen the path it would cut through the Delta, most likely around its eastern flank.
It would be capable of carrying 15,000 cubic feet of water per second, smaller than the 22,000-cubic-feet-per-second version that was defeated in 1982 but still large enough to do enormous environmental damage if it were run indiscriminately.
The canal is the centerpiece of an ambitious Bay Delta Conservation Plan that is on a record-shattering, and probably unrealistic, schedule to have the studies and permits needed for construction done by the time Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger leaves office after the 2010 election.
Such plans usually take far longer, and the Delta plan is extremely complex. A far simpler habitat plan that focused mostly on housing development in East Contra Costa County, for example, took 10 years to complete.
The Bakers say the canal could divert so much water that it could diminish their water quality by allowing salt to creep into their supplies from the Bay. They are also concerned about plans to recreate marshes on or near their property.
To major water users, some environmentalists and outside experts, however, the conservation plan strategy provides the best chance to halt the downward spirals of water reliability and the environmental health of the West Coast's biggest remaining estuary.
"If we don't resolve this issue it's going to get really ugly," said Jay Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis and an engineer who helped write a pair of influential reports sponsored by the Public Policy Institute of California that recommended a new canal.
Experts at Davis and elsewhere have been eyeing a canal even before the latest environmental and water supply crisis hit the Delta. Those crises have only added urgency.
The problem, as Lund sees it, is that the channels that guide water today through the Delta from Northern California are so vulnerable to their inherent fragility, rising sea levels, floods and earthquakes, that they are certain to fail.
Subsequent flooding could draw seawater into a water-supply system that provides about one-third of the water used in the Bay Area and Southern California.
"Many of those islands are goners. It's just a matter of time," said Lund.
A peripheral canal could secure water supplies for those water agencies in the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California that rely on Delta pumps, and it could reduce or eliminate the damage Delta pumps do to fish populations.
But critical questions remain. Among them: How much water would be left in the Delta to provide fish habitat and dilute runoff and polluted discharges, and how much water would be allowed to flow down the Sacramento River for migrating salmon?
"Until they have an answer to those questions and what the Delta needs they can't possibly develop any of these alternatives," said Russell van Loben Sels, a farmer and the head of a Delta caucus that represents farmers in Contra Costa and other Delta counties.
Still, the plan will have to be approved by regulators, and a handful of environmental groups are helping draft it. Although the parties agreed this week on a range of alternatives to study — a range of options that essentially determine how water will be split between water users and the environment — the results of those studies are unknown, and it is unclear whether they will agree on a plan in the end.
"It will all depend on operating the system very cautiously so that we don't create new environmental impacts, particularly on species like salmon," said Ann Hayden, a senior water resource analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund and a member of the steering committee that is crafting the plan. "This is all a big unknown."
Sixty miles south of the Baker's farm, another Delta farming family is running its own battle near Manteca.
In the south Delta, farmers' adversary is salt. And salt levels, they contend, are made worse by the state and federal pumps.
The problems faced by Alex and Mary Hildebrand provide a cautionary tale for any promises that might accompany a new canal, Delta farmers say.
To protect south Delta agriculture, regulators set a salinity standard in the 1970s and later assigned responsibility for meeting the standard to state and federal government.
Having that responsibility means state and federal water agencies have to adjust their operations or build facilities to limit the flow of salt into the south Delta.
But the Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation failed to meet a series of deadlines to do so.
In 2006, state regulators ordered the agencies, yet again, to take steps to prevent those standards from being violated. They even issued a drop-dead deadline, saying they "will not extend the date for removing the threat of noncompliance beyond July 1, 2009."
That date came and went this week with no action. State and federal water agencies blamed recent federal rules to prevent salmon from going extinct for their inability to build salt gates in Delta channels even though it has been clear for several years that they would not be able to meet the deadline.
The state and federal water agencies still have no plan other than to pursue a gate project they have little hope of building, according to testimony during a hearing this week and last week to once again extend the deadline.
It is unclear what, if anything, regulators will do.
"Having protections in place on paper has not served us," said Mary Hildebrand, who farms near Manteca with her father.
It is not just water-quality standards that have been ignored. State water managers also operated for years without a permit required under the state's endangered species law, and they delivered more water under a discount water program than they told regulators. Both of those indiscretions allowed the Department of Water Resources to move more water out of the Delta.
That track record is convincing evidence that the government cannot be trusted with infrastructure that can do harm, no matter what laws or regulations are in place, Hildebrand said.
"Our only option, as we see it, is to prevent them from having the physical ability to harm us," Hildebrand said.
How it works: The Bay Delta Conservation Plan...Mike Taugher
http://www.contracostatimes.com/environment/ci_12749741
In early 2005, state biologists began sharing some alarming new information: The populations of an entire suite of Delta fish species had begun a nose dive three years earlier.
Since one of those fish was protected under endangered species laws, the findings meant Delta pumps surely would be more tightly regulated.
This confronted big water agencies with two basic problems: First, they already knew the channels that convey water to the southern Delta pumps were becoming increasingly unreliable. Second, endangered species laws were now threatening to restrict their access to Delta water.
The solution was to attempt an escape from the strict, extinction-preventing rules of the Endangered Species Act by turning to a more flexible section of the law. The shift would allow water agencies to partially escape tight regulatory oversight, but it also requires them to come up with a detailed "habitat conservation plan" to improve the fate of all sorts of wildlife, including endangered fish.
The success of such plans has been mixed, but in theory they turn efforts away from single species to broader conservation goals. In the process they can provide regulatory stability — in this case, assurances that water supplies will be predictable.
By making the plan's centerpiece a resurrected peripheral canal, the highly controversial aqueduct rejected by voters in 1982, the plan could solve water users' twin problems at once: It would eliminate their dependence on Delta levees, and their water operations would have a full regulatory blessing under endangered species laws.
It would be expensive, and it would be politically difficult. But it got the full backing of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the agreement of many observers that, given the eye-opening and widespread failures in the Delta, even radical solutions deserved, perhaps demanded, a second look.
Because the developing habitat conservation plan would cover a dynamic and highly degraded estuary that is home to dozens of species, and because of the multitude of demands on the Delta's land and water, the plan appears to be the most complex of its kind ever undertaken.
By 2006, a deal was struck to try to strike a habitat conservation plan deal.
The plan, called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2010, but key milestones have been missed along the way.
Water users, regulators and environmentalists, for example, were scheduled to have the outline of an all-important key "conservation strategy" by the beginning of this year.
Then it was supposed to be done this week. It is now is supposed to be done by the end of July.
That strategy could include an approach for determining how much water would flow into the canal compared with how much would flow more naturally through the Delta for environmental benefits, details that could help determine how big to make a canal if it is built.
Los Angeles Times
Another wave of foreclosures is poised to strike
Mortgage defaults have surged to record levels amid rising unemployment and falling home prices. Lenders are expected to move quickly to clear up backlogs as moratoriums on foreclosures expire...Don Lee
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-foreclosure4-2009jul04,0,844223,print.story
Reporting from Washington — Just as the nation's housing market has begun showing signs of stabilizing, another wave of foreclosures is poised to strike, possibly as early as this summer, inflicting new punishment on families, communities and the still-troubled national economy.
Amid rising unemployment and falling home prices, mortgage defaults have surged to record levels this year. Until recently, many banks have put off launching foreclosure action on the troubled properties, in part because they had signed up for the Obama administration's home-stability plan, which required them to consider the alternative of modifying loans to make it easier for borrowers to make payments.
Just how big the foreclosure wave will be is unclear. But loan defaults are up sharply. And with many government and banks' self-imposed foreclosure moratoriums expiring, the biggest lenders indicate that they are likely to move more aggressively to clear up a backlog of troubled mortgages.
Nationally, home sales have been steadying, thanks largely to an abundance of cheap foreclosed properties, government incentives and record low mortgage rates. Housing construction starts have flattened out, helping to bring supply into balance with demand. The rate of housing price declines has slowed as well, even turning up in some communities.
But rising foreclosures will depress home values, pushing more homeowners underwater. Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com estimates that 15.4 million homeowners -- or about 1 in 5 of those with first mortgages -- owe more on their homes than they are worth.
Also, consumer confidence is already exceedingly low, and another jolt to the housing market could further crimp spending, which has been pummeled by the deep recession and persistent weakness in the job market. The latest unemployment rate, for June, rose to 9.5%, and many analysts predict that it will keep rising until the middle of next year.
The rapid pace of layoffs is of particular concern. Employers shed nearly a half-million jobs in June. Homeowners who are out of work have little chance of having their mortgages modified. That puts many homeowners on a collision course with banks that are preparing to take a more aggressive stance.
"Absolutely," Chase Bank spokesman Tom Kelly said when asked about an impending surge in foreclosures. Since April 6, Chase has approved modifying 138,000 loans under Obama's program. But an undisclosed number of other Chase borrowers didn't meet modification eligibility, and many of those homeowners face possible foreclosure.
Separate from that group, Kelly said, Chase is proceeding to deal with an additional 80,000 borrowers in default whose foreclosure process had been voluntarily halted by the lender starting late last year.
Bank of America, the nation's largest servicer of home mortgages, also did not release the volume of likely foreclosures. The bank said it had extended offers to modify loans to more than 45,000 borrowers under the Obama plan. Bank of America spokesman Dan Frahm said the company was projecting a "slow increase" in the number of monthly foreclosures, potentially reaching 30% above previous normal levels.
Much will depend on how quickly lenders can push the process along. It generally takes three months to a year from the time a borrower receives a notice of default to a foreclosure sale, in which case the lender usually takes title to the property.
Government and company reports show that the number of completed foreclosures nationwide slowed sharply late last year and into early this year, largely because of various moratoriums in effect during much of the first quarter.
But anecdotal reports indicate that foreclosure sales have started to climb again in the second quarter. And the pipeline is clearly getting fuller.
In the first quarter, some 1.8 million homeowners nationwide fell behind on their loans by 60 to 90 days, a 15% increase from the prior quarter, according to Moody's Economy.com. The research firm said that loan defaults rose sharply as well, to 844,000 in the first three months of this year.
California accounts for an outsized share of mortgage loan defaults. A stunning 135,431 homeowners in the state were hit with notices of default in the first quarter, an increase of 11% from the earlier peak in the second quarter of 2008, according to real estate information service MDA DataQuick. Foreclosure sales in the state have been moderating after averaging a high of 26,500 a month last summer.
In some communities such as Stockton, Calif., where the real estate market has been among the hardest hit in the nation with home prices plunging 60% in the last two years, many people are expecting a large increase in foreclosures.
Sales of foreclosed houses soared last year as investors and first-time home buyers swarmed over what were considered bargain houses. This year it's been unusually quiet, says Jerry Abbott, a broker and co-owner of Grupe Real Estate in Stockton. That doesn't make sense, he said, because he sees many houses in foreclosure in the city.
But just recently, said the 37-year real estate veteran, there's been a surge of requests for so-called broker price opinions, or appraisals that lenders often ask brokers to provide just before they put a foreclosed property on the market.
"I think it's going to be a very big wave," he said. "Just like what we saw through 2008."
The effect on prices won't be as severe, Abbott said, because values already have plunged and there's hearty demand for such properties.
Still, he said, "It will keep prices low. . . . It'll just slow the recovery down in general."
Michael Chee, 43, of Burbank is among those worried about what a rise in foreclosures could mean for his home.
Chee was laid off from a healthcare consulting firm in March. With jobless benefits, he figures he will be able to hold on until he finds a new job. His three-bedroom house, though down 20% to 30% in value, isn't underwater -- for the present.
"We're OK right now," he said, noting that his brother's home in Montebello is in foreclosure. "But going forward, who knows? The way things are going. . . ."
The Obama administration is racing to avert as many foreclosures as possible. So far, more than 240,000 distressed borrowers have been approved on a trial basis under the Home Affordable Modification Program, in which their loans are being reworked so monthly payments are targeted at 31% of their gross income, said Seth Wheeler, a senior advisor to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.
Wheeler said the program's goal was to prevent as many as 4 million borrowers from losing their houses over the next 3 1/2 years. And in August, Treasury officials hope to bolster those efforts with guidelines that could encourage banks to allow more borrowers to sell their properties in a short sale, in which the lender averts a foreclosure by accepting less than the balance of the mortgage.
"We're very unlikely to implement another moratorium," Wheeler said. But he noted that Treasury would closely monitor how many foreclosed homes were dumped onto the market, suggesting that officials could take other steps to prevent a flood of lender-owned properties.
Few people would venture a guess on the magnitude of foreclosure increases. Part of that will be driven by the job market and the financial condition of so-called prime borrowers and homeowners holding adjustable-rate mortgages, both of which are showing more stress.
Even as defaults among subprime borrowers have trended lower this year, newly initiated foreclosures involving prime mortgage loans saw a significant increase in the first quarter, jumping 21.5% from the fourth quarter, according to a government report of loan data from national banks and federally regulated thrifts.
New York Times
10 Years, 430 Dams...Editorial
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/opinion/04sat3.html?_r=1&sq=endangered species&st=cse&scp=4&pagewanted=print
Ten years have gone by since a modest but important moment in American environmental history: the dismantling of the 917-foot-wide Edwards Dam on Maine’s Kennebec River.
The Edwards Dam was the first privately owned hydroelectric dam torn down for environmental reasons (and against the owner’s wishes) by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Bruce Babbitt, the interior secretary at the time, showed up at the demolition ceremony to promote what had become a personal crusade against obsolete dams. The publicity generated a national discussion about dams and the potential environmental benefits — to water quality and fish species — of removing them.
It certainly helped the Kennebec and its fish, and dams have been falling ever since. According to American Rivers, an advocacy group and a major player in the Edwards Dam campaign, about 430 outdated dams (some of them small hydropower dams like Edwards) have been removed with both public and private funding. In one case, the removal of a small, 50-foot dam on Oregon’s Sandy River was paid for entirely by the electric utility that owned it in order to improve salmon runs.
More lies ahead. Three dams that have severely damaged salmon runs in Washington State are scheduled to come down in 2011. A tentative agreement has been reached among farmers, native tribes and a power company to remove dams on California’s Klamath River, the site of a huge fish kill several years ago attributed mainly to low water flows caused by dams.
Maine, where this all began, will be the site of a spectacular restoration project. Under an agreement involving the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a coalition called the Penobscot River Restoration Trust and PPL, a power company, two dams will be removed and a fish ladder built at a third to open up 1,000 miles of the Penobscot River and its tributaries so that fish can return to their traditional spawning grounds.
A half-dozen species should benefit, including endangered Atlantic salmon. The federal government has now imposed “critical habitat” protections in nine Maine rivers where the salmon return to spawn.
NOAA’s heightened interest in Atlantic salmon has raised hopes that it may now take aggressive — if politically risky — steps to protect salmon on the West Coast by ordering the removal of four big dams on the Lower Snake River. This page has recommended such a move, which two previous administrations have ducked. It seems now within the realm of possibility.