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IN THIS ISSUE – “What’s the Number We Need to Return to Normalcy?”
PANDEMIC
- Newsom’s COVID-19 Response Hits Rough Patch in Capitol – Street Protests & Irked Legislators
- Governor Names Steyer to Run Economic Recovery Task Force…
- …But Powerful Construction Unions Have Doubts About His Green Activism
- State Economy About to Go Viral
- Pandemic Data Augurs Against High-Density Housing & Transit?
WATER & OIL
- “Megadrought” Predicted for West & Mexico
- California Water War on Two Fronts
- North – Newsom Skirmish with Feds Over Delta Pumping
- South – Colorado River Water Negotiations to Resume: “There Has to be Proportionality”
- NYC Considers Petroleum Divestment
FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 24, 2020
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week, tailored to your business and advocacy interests. Please feel free to forward.
Stay current daily! For our focused updates via Twitter: @jrgualco / @robertjgore / @gualcogroup
READ ALL ABOUT IT!!
Newsom’s COVID-19 Response Hits Rough Patch in Capitol – Street Protests & Irked Legislators
CalMatters
Californians pushed back at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with protesters demanding that stay-at-home restrictions be eased and state lawmakers arguing for more transparency and a bigger role in decisions.
The action this week at the Capitol — staid inside an Assembly hearing room, rowdy on the streets outside — followed a weekend of similar demonstrations around the country and mounting frustration from some California cities and counties that want to resume some sense of normalcy five weeks after Newsom issued the nation’s first order for everyone to stay home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Protests erupted in San Diego, San Clemente, Newport Beach, and Huntington Beach while Ventura County began to ease restrictions and numerous communities — including the Sierra foothills town of Placerville and the coastal county of San Luis Obispo — pleaded with Newsom to allow businesses to reopen.
“Our freedoms are being stripped,” said Natalie Hutchison, 55, one of the protestors outside the Capitol.
“They tell you, like, ‘Oh, we don’t know when we’re going to let you out.’ What do you mean you’re not going to let me out? I’m not a rat in a cage.”
Demonstrators largely flouted public health recommendations to wear face masks in public and keep six feet of personal space. They waved American flags and hoisted signs saying “Open California now,” “This shutdown will kill more people than the virus,” “Let us work,” and “Fear God, not COVID-19.” Many marched around the Capitol on foot, while others formed a convoy of honking cars.
Hutchison — who said she heard about the protest on social media and brought her family with her from Manteca to attend — said she thinks people who are immunocompromised should stay home, but everyone else should be able to go out. She opposes vaccines — despite widespread medical consensus that they have helped rid society of many brutal illnesses — and said she instead believes “in a God-given immune system.”
The protest was organized by Freedom Angels, an activist group that last year opposed a new California law that makes it more difficult for people to exempt their children from mandatory vaccines. The group tried to put a referendum on the ballot to overturn the law but failed to gather enough signatures.
Rick Turner, public information officer for the California Highway Patrol’s Capitol Protection Section, said the CHP issued a permit for the protest with the understanding it would follow the state’s public health guidance.
“This is not what occurred today, so the CHP will take this experience into account when considering permits for this or any other group,” Turner said.
Officers were on the scene in large numbers, but the protest was peaceful, and no arrests or citations were made, Turner said. Only some officers wore face masks, and Turner said CHP recommends but does not require officers to wear face masks.
The scene was very different inside the Capitol, where nine Assembly members gathered in a large hearing room to examine how Newsom’s administration has spent money on California’s response to the coronavirus. About half of them covered their faces with masks, and all spoke into microphones topped with protective covers.
Though the tone was cordial, three themes emerged as areas where lawmakers feel irritated that Newsom has left them out of the loop:
“We often, as legislators, hear maybe five minutes before an executive order comes out, or watching live the governor’s daily updates to get information,” said Assemblyman Jim Wood, a Democrat from Healdsburg.
“That’s a challenge,” he said, adding that he often doesn’t have the necessary information to pass onto local officials in his community.
Fellow Democrat, Assemblyman Adam Gray of Merced, said he still hasn’t received information he requested from Newsom’s aides about where emergency medical supplies and protective gear are being distributed.
“It is frustrating as can be that I know more about the number of ventilators California is sending to other states than I know about the number of ventilators being sent to my district,” Gray said.
Assemblyman Phil Ting pressed Newsom’s aides about the state’s plan to test more Californians for the coronavirus — to no avail.
“You’re doing 25,000 tests a day May 1st. What’s the number we need to return to some sort of more normalcy?” asked Ting, a San Franciso Democrat. “Is it 100,000? Is it 50,000? Is it a million? What is it?”
The response from Marko Mijic, acting director of the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development:
“We are assessing that right now. I don’t have the exact number for you.”
The emergency measure lawmakers passed last month with bipartisan support gives Newsom sweeping power to spend up to $1 billion responding to the pandemic. Lawmakers expected that would include things like ventilators, hospital expansions, protective gear for health workers and other direct medical expenses, said GOP Assemblyman Jay Obernolte of Big Bear.
But they didn’t expect — nor did they permit — the governor to spend pandemic money on social safety net programs, Obernolte said, noting that the law specifically says lawmakers want to address the social impacts of the virus through the budget process.
Newsom’s response to the pandemic has included $75 million in taxpayer funds to aid undocumented immigrants and $42 million for foster youth, among other items that some might see as tangential to the emergency response.
“We, the Legislature, would like to partner with the governor in addressing the social impacts of COVID through the budget process,” Obernolte said. “So I feel like the Legislature has been bypassed on this issue.”
Newsom made national news nearly two weeks ago when he announced a $1.4 billion deal to buy protective gear for essential workers, including a $990 million contract for hundreds of millions of face masks made by a Chinese company called BYD.
Legislators were immediately frustrated that they got little heads-up about the enormous expenditure, and requested more information from Newsom’s administration. The governor still has not released the contract, and his director of emergency services said Monday it won’t be released until the goods arrive in California because global demand for the equipment has made it very valuable.
“Releasing the contract at this point, we believe, jeopardizes the delivery of the very supplies we need now,” said Mark Ghilarducci. “We are close to getting that flow of commodity in, and we do plan to release the contract as a matter of course when we believe it no longer jeopardizes actually receiving the (personal protective equipment).”
Ghilarducci said California did not seek bids from multiple companies when it turned to BYD. He wouldn’t say how much the state agreed to pay for each mask but assured lawmakers it was a fair price.
GOP Assemblyman Bill Brough of Dana Point didn’t seem persuaded, and said he was disappointed that Newsom didn’t turn to manufacturers who could make the masks in California “and perhaps save taxpayers some money.”
Ting, the committee chair, urged Newsom’s administration to give legislators more information about the contract, even if the whole thing can’t be made public.
“We all understand there are some issues that are sensitive,” he said. “My suggestion: it would be good to have a separate legislative briefing on issues that have particular sensitivity… even if you can’t completely share those with the public.”
Governor Appoints Steyer to Run CA Economic Recovery Task Force…
Politico
He’s signed up millions of voters in an effort to impeach President Donald Trump and run for the White House as a crusader against fossil fuels, all in the last year.
But can billionaire Tom Steyer now put California businesses back on track during the coronavirus crisis?
That’s one question as Gov. Gavin Newsom’s blue-ribbon economic recovery commission kicks off Wednesday amid worries about the state’s considerable challenges — and his choice to tap the partisan Steyer as co-chair.
Newsom’s 80-member Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery includes all four living former California governors as honorary members, in addition to industry and tech stars such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, Disney Chairman Robert Iger and Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff. Labor leaders, restaurateurs and health care officials are also on board.
But it was the appointment of Steyer that sparked concern among political insiders and corporate leaders, many of whom previously praised Newsom for his bipartisan approach in handling California’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Steyer, a Democrat who made his fortune as founder of the hedge fund Farallon Capital, spent more than $250 million on his 2020 run for president. Before that, he founded NextGen America, a powerhouse political action group credited with registering millions of young voters while gathering more than 9 million supporters for his anti-Trump NeedtoImpeach.com movement — which grew in prominence through frequent television ads.
But critics note that Steyer has not silenced his long-running, high-profile advocacy on climate change, even after his appointment to the business task force. Earlier this week, he tweeted: “Oil is in total free-fall because it is a bad investment that won’t create sustained jobs or prosperity. We need to look to the future and transition to cleaner, safer energy sources that protect public health.”
“The question is, are we gonna get Tom Steyer, the competent businessman … or are we going to get Tom Steyer, political activist who in the last three election cycles spent hundreds of millions of dollars [proposing] a host of green economy and economic reform issues?’’ said attorney Sean Walsh, who served on the White House staff of presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and was an adviser to Govs. Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Walsh notes that “at this juncture..the barn is on fire, and we’re calling everybody to grab buckets to put it out.’’ So business leaders, he said, have reason to worry that Steyer “is going try and use the economy to put proposals forward that may be interesting — but certainly are not about rushing to get people back to work.’’
As his tweet indicated, Steyer will lead Newsom’s task force just as the oil industry is suffering massive losses amid a growing glut of supply. Rob Lapsley, who heads the California Business Roundtable, said that his organization is ready to work with the task force and governor — but that many business leaders are worried that Steyer “has had a very clear agenda’’ that calls for “the elimination of fossil fuels — which represent some of the best paying middle-class jobs in this state.’’
Lapsley argued that business leaders are haunted by the inevitability of “a whole other round of layoffs’’ ahead — white-collar jobs, middle-class jobs included — on top of the 2.8 million already on the unemployment line in California.
“To be able to get the state up and running, and it’s going to take every sector, every single job,” he argues. “We can’t be in a position of wanting to eliminate fossil fuels and replacing them with green jobs, when the numbers don’t justify that.’’
But Democratic Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, the highest ranking elected official on the council — and a former housing developer — said, “I’ve known Tom Steyer for a long time. He does not waste his time on window dressing. He is action-oriented. He understands the mission. The mission is to minimize economic damage while keeping our people healthy — and not sacrificing our values.”
“I think we can get there — and I say that as a businesswoman myself,’’ Kounalakis said. “I think he is the right person to lead this. … He has a mission that he has been given by the governor; he has a task force of really, capable experienced people to help him execute it.”
In a statement late Tuesday, Steyer touted the bipartisan nature of the committee and said, “The only way to rebuild California is to do it together, and I am 100 percent committed to that goal.”
Newsom’s surprise decision to roll out his task force with Steyer as co-chair came as the governor faced intense pressure to staunch the bleeding from California’s economic shutdown as unemployment rolls swelled and small business owners called for help.
It also came days after his administration’s respected point man on business and economic issues, Lenny Mendonca, abruptly resigned for personal reasons. Steyer was tapped not only to lead Newsom’s task force, but also to serve as chief adviser to the governor on business and jobs recovery — effectively filling Mendonca’s shoes.
“When you have somebody who is in that critical role who just basically bails on you — you have to plug that hole pretty quickly,’’ said longtime Democratic strategist Garry South, who was a senior adviser to former Gov. Gray Davis. “There aren’t that many people who are willing to take on a job like that.’’
Steyer is “a well-known business person,’’ South said. “And if you’re looking for someone who understands business and the economy — and who’s pretty high profile — to replace Mendonca, you have limited options.”
Steyer will lead the task force with Newsom’s chief of staff, Ann O’Leary. The group is expected to meet twice monthly, sources said.
Already, the light schedule has alarmed some business leaders who say the current crisis requires a far more intense effort. Other critics said that not all major industries and employers are forcefully represented — including law enforcement and agriculture — and that the effort appeared to be hastily assembled.
Sources said Newsom’s task force members have already been personally surveyed to gauge their chief concerns and priorities — and that they will be broken up into smaller task forces to more efficiently tackle problems. New members are being added this week, to round out the experience and input of California’s diverse employers.
The business community has been pushing the governor to suspend a range of regulations “not urgently needed to protect public health, for all state agencies and commissions for at least six months,” as California Chamber of Commerce head Allan Zaremberg stated in an April 15 letter on behalf of dozens of industry groups. That ask, especially on various environmental fronts, could clash with Steyer’s views.
Cathy Reheis-Boyd, Western States Petroleum Association president, said that California’s economic recovery “will require leadership that brings together — not divides — the interests of our environment, our sense of social equality and the need for safe, affordable and reliable energy that powers economic prosperity.”
“If Mr. Steyer chooses a collaborative approach,” she added, “this recovery effort could be a real opportunity for us to build a better future together.”
South, who advised Davis during the 2001 energy crisis, says that while he’s heard the concerns about Steyer, and the business task force rollout, “I do think the criticism and the fears are a bit overblown.’’
“In a crisis, everyone has to rise to the occasion,’’ says South. “Gavin Newsom also picked the four living ex-governors to be on the task force .. .and I don’t think any of them will go into it with some partisan slant on how to push their own interests.”
…But Powerful Construction Unions Have Doubts About His Green Activism
Politico California Playbook excerpt, no link
Labor clearly has some concerns over Steyer’s advocacy for the Green New Deal as a priority. So there could be some rough waters ahead, given Steyer’s longstanding activism against fossil fuels amid new business concerns about jobs.
Robbie Hunter, a member of Newsom’s task force — and head of the powerful 460,000-member Building and Construction Trades Council — says he’s concerned because as many as 14,000 of his members depend on jobs related to California’s oil refinery industry. “California is already a leader in the green economy, but we are just trying to keep that economy alive,” he told POLITICO. Among those doing the heavy lifting, he argues, are union workers with “good, middle-class jobs” that support families, college tuition and home mortgages.
” What they’re doing is producing the energy, and the gasoline, that’s needed in the state of California, where there hasn’t been a refinery built in 50 years,” he says. “Even without this pandemic, refiners can barely stay up with meeting the need. … So if we shut these refineries down in California, we’d simply be making it in other countries, and bringing it here. It would do nothing for the environment, because we have very high standards here – probably the best environmental standards in the world. Transporting it here would actually hurt the environment.”
BOTTOM LINE: Newsom has navigated the early days of the Covid-19 crisis with high poll numbers and even higher praise from both sides of the aisle — especially from Trump. But that may have been the easy part. The next chapter will be a slog that lasts for months, if not years — under intense pressures from the business community, environmentalists and activists, whose goals conflict on many fronts. Not so easy to play superhero in this landscape — where there’s plenty of pitfalls ahead.
State Economy Poised to Go Viral
State Dept. of Finance
Personal income tax cash receipts for the first nine months of the fiscal year are $2.056 billion above forecast. Personal income tax cash receipts to the General Fund for March were $375 million above the month’s forecast of $4.273 billion. Withholding receipts were $20 million above the forecast of $6.783 billion, and other receipts were
$228 million higher than the forecast of $1.371 billion. Refunds issued in March were $589 million below the expected $3.805 billion. Proposition 63 requires that 1.76 percent of total monthly personal income tax collections be transferred to the Mental Health Services Fund (MHSF). The amount transferred to the MHSF in March was $7 million higher than the forecast of $77 million.
Sales and use tax cash receipts for the first nine months of the fiscal year are $156 million below forecast. Cash receipts for March were $147 million below the month’s forecast of $1.907 billion. March cash includes the second prepayment for first quarter sales and use tax liabilities.
Corporation tax cash receipts for the first nine months of the fiscal year are $152 million below forecast. Cash receipts for March were $134 million below the month’s forecast of $1.551 billion. Estimated payments were $149 million below the forecast of $756 million, and other payments were $60 million lower than the $921 million forecast. Total refunds for the month were $75 million lower than the forecast of $126 million.
The U.S. unemployment rate increased from 3.5 percent in February to 4.4 percent in March; the California rate increased from 3.9 percent to 5.3 percent. In March, the national labor force fell 1.6 million to 162.9 million, while the state labor force fell 252,000 to 19.3 million. The U.S. lost 701,000 nonfarm jobs in March, and California lost 99,500. About two-thirds of U.S. and California job losses were in the leisure and hospitality sectors. The March survey reflects early impacts of COVID-19—but precedes stay-at-home measures implemented in the second half of the month.
California housing units authorized by building permits totaled 126,000 in February, down 11.2 percent from January’s 142,000 and up 39.3 percent from February 2019. Single-family units were up 6 percent from January to 77,000 housing units, while multifamily units were down 29.5 percent to 49,000 housing units. Nonresidential building valuation dropped from the prior month by 12.5 percent to an annualized valuation of $26.5 billion.
Sales of existing, single-family homes in California increased 6.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 421,670 units in February after falling 0.8 percent in January. The statewide median home price was $579,770 in February, up 0.8 percent from January and up 8.5 percent from February 2019. The 30-year fixed-mortgage rate averaged 3.47 percent in February, its lowest point since October 2016.
http://www.dof.ca.gov/Forecasting/Economics/Economic_and_Revenue_Updates/documents/2020/FB_April.pdf
Pandemic Data Augurs Against High-Density Housing & Transit?
CalMatters commentary
The COVID-19 pandemic is a horrible human tragedy whose global toll is continuing to rise, but it’s also an exercise in collecting and examining data for clues to how it is spreading.
The numbers change minute-by-minute but suggest that in America your chances of being infected may depend on where you stand on the economic ladder, how closely you live and work in the company of others, and how diligently you and your neighbors take precautions.
Take, for example, the startling contrast between what’s been happening in New York and its neighboring states versus what’s been happening, or not happening, in California.
As of Tuesday, according to the New York Times, the nation had counted 37,818 COVID-19 deaths, but New York alone had 14,347 or 38% of the national total, and adding New Jersey (4,377), Pennsylvania (1,366) and Connecticut (1,331) brought the region’s share to nearly 57%.
Three-thousand miles away in California, with twice the population of New York, COVID-19 had claimed just 1,225 lives — tragic for those Californians’ families, of course, but a blessing for the state as a whole. In fact, at just 3 deaths per 100,000 of population, California has had one of the nation’s lowest mortality rates to date while New York’s 74 per 100,000 is 25 times as high.
Why the huge difference?
Someday we’ll have a complete scientific answer, but clearly the high densities of living, working and traveling (often on crowded subway trains and buses) in New York City and environs have contributed to the heavy human toll, as did New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s footdragging on imposing precautions.
Most Californians, meanwhile, live in low-density neighborhoods, either in single-family homes or small rental complexes. Californians are often mocked for preferring cars to mass transit, but it’s probably saved thousands of lives.
California also instituted some of the nation’s earliest shelter-at-home measures to limit person-to-person contact and Californians, most of us anyway, have been diligent about adhering to them.
Within the state, too, one finds very disparate conditions. California’s hot spot is Los Angeles County, which has a quarter of the state’s population but has accounted for more than half of its COVID-19 deaths.
While California’s death rate is 3 per 100,000 Los Angeles County’s is twice as high at 6, by far the state’s highest.
Why Los Angeles County?
Most Angelenos, unlike New Yorkers, live in low-rise homes and apartments. However, past studies have told us that because of poverty and a chronic lack of affordable housing, two or even three families may live in one housing unit and that auxiliary units, such as illegally converted garages, are common in poor neighborhoods. It’s difficult to practice social distancing in such crowded circumstances, making infection more likely.
Moreover, Los Angeles County has the state’s highest rate of poverty, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, with at least 40% of its population rated as poor or near-poor. The pandemic-induced recession has hit Los Angeles County particularly hard, with an estimated 50% of its jobs at least temporarily erased.
On Monday, Los Angeles County health officials released preliminary results of a study suggesting that roughly 4.1% of the county’s adult population has already had the coronavirus, which translates to between 221,000 and 442,000 people, many times the number of confirmed cases.
That study indicates that the pandemic potentially has a long way to run and that Los Angeles will continue to be its California epicenter. The data also imply that we shouldn’t be eagerly pushing Californians to live in high-density housing, give up their cars and ride transit.
“Megadrought” Predicted for West & Mexico
Sacramento Bee
The western United States and northern parts of Mexico could experience a record-breaking megadrought, according to the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
“A new study says the time has arrived: a megadrought as bad or worse than anything even from known prehistory is very likely in progress, and warming climate is playing a key role,” the Earth Institute said.
Scientists based the study on modern weather observations, 1,200 years of tree-ring data and many climate models, according to Earth Institute.
“Earlier studies were largely model projections of the future,” author Park Williams, bioclimatologist at Columbia University, said in the news release. “We’re no longer looking at projections, but at where we are now. We now have enough observations of current drought and tree-ring records of past drought to say that we’re on the same trajectory as the worst prehistoric droughts.”
The study looked at nine states in the western U.S.: Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, according to a map from Science.
“Their conclusion: as measured against the worst 19-year increments within the previous episodes, the current drought is already outdoing the three earliest ones,” Earth Institute said. “The fourth, which spanned 1575 to 1603, may have been the worst of all — but the difference is slight enough to be within the range of uncertainty.”
Thanks to recent rainfall, none of the western states are currently experiencing extreme drought, according to Drought Monitor. Parts of Oregon, northern California and Washington, however, are experiencing severe drought.
The researchers say that rising temperatures are responsible for about half of the severity of the current drought, according to the Earth Institute.
“It doesn’t matter if this is exactly the worst drought ever,” author Benjamin Cook of the Lamont and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said to the Earth Institute. “What matters is that it has been made much worse than it would have been because of climate change.”
The drought could continue for the foreseeable future as temperatures will continue to rise, researchers said.
“Because the background is getting warmer, the dice are increasingly loaded toward longer and more severe droughts,” Williams told the Earth Institute. “We may get lucky, and natural variability will bring more precipitation for a while. But going forward, we’ll need more and more good luck to break out of drought, and less and less bad luck to go back into drought.”
Researchers say the effects are palpable. Major water sources, like the Colorado River and Lake Mead, have begun shrinking already, according to researchers. Lake Mead, though up from last year, is still 131 feet below full, according to the Lake Mead Water Level.
Wildfires also continue to breakout across the West., researchers point out.
As temperatures continue to rise, the warmer conditions will make droughts worse, causing them to go on for longer and be more widespread, scientists say.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article242151676.html#storylink=cpy
Newsom Skirmish with Feds Over Delta Pumping
CalMatters
President Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom may have set aside their incessant squabbling over most issues to cooperate on the pandemic, but they are poised for showdown over who controls the state’s vital water supply.
Last year, Trump’s Bureau of Reclamation, reflecting his 2016 campaign promises to San Joaquin Valley farmers, issued new operating criteria for the federal Central Valley Project that would send more water to agricultural irrigators and less to bolster habitat for fish and other wildlife in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The bureau’s 871-page “biological assessment” was aimed, it said, to “maximize water supply and delivery” while maintaining adequate protections for fish.
The state Department of Water Resources quickly disagreed by issuing its own draft of operational guidelines for the State Water Project. DWR Director Karla A. Nemeth said the guidelines would implement “a more sophisticated and nimble way to manage the State Water Project to improve our ability to protect species and operate more flexibly.”
More recently, that position was finalized in an “incidental taking permit” issued by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, aimed at improving wildlife survival as water is diverted from the Delta.
In effect, these bureaucratic actions comprise an historic split between federal and state water officials, who for decades have cooperatively managed their separate but intermingled water systems.
Both capture water via dams and reservoirs on major streams and release it into the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, which merge into the Delta. Pumps pull water from the Delta near Tracy and into canals that deliver it to San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California cities.
Competing demands among agricultural and urban users and environmental advocates for a limited supply of Delta water have played out in political and legal arenas for decades, but in recent years, efforts have been made to forge so-called “voluntary agreements” to end the bickering.
Trump’s election complicated the negotiations, as did the Legislature’s passage of a bill last year that would have locked pre-Trump federal environmental rules into state law. Newsom vetoed the bill after being warned that his signature would torpedo the negotiations and re-ignite water wars.
The federal-state split over water management seems to be headed in that direction anyway, as letters issued by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and three Democratic members of Congress warned last week.
Feinstein has been a major figure in the peace negotiations and in the letters to Newsom and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the Westlands Water District, urged that a head-on collision be averted.
Feinstein, et al, told Berngardt he must “preserve the longstanding practice of coordinated operation of California’s State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. The next few weeks are likely the last remaining opportunity to achieve that outcome.”
The senator and the Congress members also warned Newsom that “California is facing a real risk of a fundamental breakdown of our water delivery system” if negotiations fail.
Given Trump’s campaign promises, it’s difficult to see any settlement of the federal-state water conflict in this election year.
Were Trump to be re-elected, the battle would continue, most likely in the courts, over whether federal or state officials have the last word on Delta habitat protection. Were Trump to lose, farmers would be playing a weaker hand in negotiations over how much water they get from the Delta.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/california-federal-state-water-war-trump-newsom/
Colorado River Water Negotiations to Resume: “There Has to be Proportionality”
LA Times
The people of California’s Imperial Valley can be as unforgiving as the region’s harsh desert climate.
It’s been 16 years since Bruce Kuhn cast the fateful vote to transfer tens of billions of gallons of Colorado River water from the valley’s sprawling farms to thirsty coastal cities, reshaping water politics in California and across the West.
But for many locals, it might as well have been yesterday.
Voters sent Kuhn packing from the Imperial Irrigation District’s board of directors last month after a primary campaign in which his leading opponent, J.B. Hamby, hammered him over the consequences of the water transfer — including the accelerated demise of the Salton Sea, a giant lake that is spewing lung-damaging dust into the air as it shrinks.
“We cannot afford another four years that look just the same as the last 16,” Hamby said at a January debate.
Kuhn finished third in the primary, missing the November runoff by 44 votes — a razor-thin margin even in an election that saw just 5,000 people cast ballots. Hamby was the top vote-getter and will square off against attorney Ryan Childers.
The results could echo far beyond Imperial County.
Tucked away in California’s southeastern corner, Imperial holds a century-old right to one-fifth of all the water allocated along the Colorado River. The water fuels a $2-billion agriculture industry that produces much of America’s winter vegetables.
Forty million people from Los Angeles to Wyoming depend on the Colorado for drinking water, making the five members of the Imperial Irrigation District board some of the region’s most powerful — if little-known — elected officials.
State and federal agencies are gearing up for crucial negotiations over which cities and farming districts will receive less water — and how much less — during future shortages. And shortages are likely. There’s already more Colorado River water allocated across seven states than has historically flowed through the river, and climate change is putting additional strain on its flows.
Solving the Colorado River basin’s long-term problems won’t be possible without the Imperial Valley, said John Fleck, director of the University of New Mexico’s water resources program. Cities and farming districts will need to band together to limit consumption — and that includes the Colorado’s biggest water user, the Imperial Irrigation District.
“We’re not going to have a future where the rich, politically powerful urban areas across the basin are doing without water while we’re still irrigating 3 million acre-feet a year of water in Imperial,” Fleck said. “There has to be some proportionality.”
Even after the water transfer, the Imperial Valley accounts for more than half of California’s overall draw from the Colorado River. In 2018, the valley consumed about as much water from the river as the state of Arizona, and more than any other state.
Imperial’s massive pull on the Colorado stems from a history unlike that of anywhere else in the West.
The valley’s fertile soil is hundreds of miles from the river’s headwaters in the Rocky Mountains. But local farmers were some of the first white settlers to stake a claim to the Colorado, digging canals to irrigate their fields starting in 1901. A few years later, a broken levee flooded the low-lying Salton Sink with the river’s full force, creating California’s largest lake by surface area.
Today about 500 families own most of the Imperial Valley’s irrigated farmland. They form a sort of ruling class in a county where crops are picked mostly by Latino farmworkers, and where poverty levels are higher than almost anywhere else in California.
And they’ve spent the last half-century fighting to maintain control of the Colorado River water they see as their birthright.
In 2018, a group of growers known as Imperial Valley First bankrolled an unsuccessful campaign to unseat two irrigation district directors who insisted on fighting a lawsuit brought by Mike Abatti, a powerful landowner and former director himself, seeking greater control of water supplies for farmers. One of the besieged incumbents, Jim Hanks, held on to his seat by just 41 votes.
Kuhn faced the same kind of wrath from landowning farmers in 2004, when he first lost a reelection bid over his vote to approve the water transfer. He eventually came back into favor with the agriculture community and was elected to the same seat in 2012.
But renewed attacks over the water transfer, and its effects on the Salton Sea, helped sink Kuhn’s bid for a fifth term in 2020.
The lake is largely sustained by farm runoff, so it’s shrinking faster than ever as less water irrigates Imperial Valley fields. As the shoreline recedes, dry lake bed is exposed, polluting the air with windblown dust that may contain pesticides and heavy metals.
The president of the local Border Patrol union, Mike Matzke, endorsed Hamby, writing that Kuhn “decided that your children having chronic nose bleeds, asthma and cancer were worth the 125 million dollars that flows into IID’s Budget annually.”
A few days before the election, signs paid for by the Border Patrol union began appearing around the valley, typically next to “Vote Kuhn” signs. The new signs read: “Got water? No, KUHN sold it.”
The transfer isn’t the only issue that may have hurt Kuhn with voters this time around. But for some locals, his decision from 16 years ago probably looks worse now than ever, because California still hasn’t followed through on its pledge to fix the Salton Sea.
A study published this month, from researchers at the University of New Mexico, estimates that fine particle emissions from Salton Sea lake bed that dried up between 1998 and 2014 probably caused about 100 additional respiratory deaths during those years.
Kuhn and Childers pledged to oppose additional water transfers. But Hamby — a 24-year-old farmer’s son and Stanford University graduate — went further, questioning whether the existing transfers to San Diego County should continue if state officials don’t take stronger action at the Salton Sea. He also proposed that all future transfers be subject to a two-thirds public vote.
“It is time for wealthy metropolitan areas across the Colorado River Basin to adapt to the 21st century and pay for the full cost of their sprawling, unsustainable growth through [desalination], reuse, recycling, conservation and smarter planning,” Hamby wrote in a Facebook before the election. “It is not Imperial Valley’s responsibility to supply their reckless demands.”
That kind of talk worried Kuhn, who said in an interview that Imperial can’t afford to cast itself as an “isolationist” in regional talks.
“If you’re going to be such a stick in the mud that you won’t bend, they’ll snap you. And they’ll snap the IID,” he said.
Kuhn said his decision to approve the water transfer was more complicated than critics make it out to be.
He originally voted “no” on the so-called Quantification Settlement Agreement, leading to the water transfer’s defeat in a 3-2 vote. He switched to “yes” only after the federal government put immense pressure on Imperial by trying to revoke a big chunk of its water supply unilaterally — and even then, only after state lawmakers passed a bill promising to restore the Salton Sea.
Kuhn said payments from San Diego County Water Authority, the main beneficiary of the transfer, have funded water efficiency measures at farms that have allowed Imperial to reduce consumption while keeping nearly all its irrigated acreage in production.
“Did I want to do it? No. But has it been working? It’s been working since that kid was 5 years old,” Kuhn said, referring to Hamby.
The campaign was also marked by speculation over which candidates might secretly be backed by which local power brokers — a common pastime in Imperial, whose insular politics are defined by family ties, small-town allegiances and deeply held mistrust.
Some locals pointed to ties between Hamby and associates of Abatti, whose lawsuit against the irrigation district is continuing.
Abatti’s sister-in-law Deborah Owen, the county’s assistant district attorney, was Hamby’s high school mock trial coach. He once described her as “a bit of a mentor to me.” Hamby also received a $10,000 college scholarship from — and briefly interned for — ZGlobal Inc., an engineering firm that developed a close relationship with Abatti through several energy and water projects.
J.P. Menvielle — a former irrigation district board member who lost his seat in 2012 after Imperial Valley First spent heavily to defeat him — worries that Hamby’s candidacy is another effort by dissatisfied landowners to assert control over the public agency.
“They’re trying to get three votes on the IID board to get control of the water,” Menvielle said.
Hamby countered that he and Childers both received contributions from farmers who had previously given money to Imperial Valley First, suggesting there was no unified front from agriculture in this election. Hamby also said he has faced criticism from farmers unhappy with his insistence that neither landowners nor the irrigation district truly own the valley’s water supply.
He described Owen and her husband, Jimmy Abatti, as family friends, but said they didn’t provide any support to his campaign.
“In the Imperial Valley, everybody pretty much knows everybody,” Hamby said in an interview.
Asked about upcoming Colorado River negotiations, Hamby struck a more conciliatory note than he did during the campaign. He said Imperial should work closely with other farm districts, rural areas and Native American tribes across the West to to make sure their collective interests aren’t steamrolled by cities. And he acknowledged Imperial has a role to play in staving off shortages.
“What we need to do is not be insular and cut off from the rest of the world and only come out to blow things up,” Hamby said.
Childers said one of his top priorities in regional talks would be establishing Imperial’s right to store Colorado River water in Lake Mead outside Las Vegas. The valley would get a bank account to tap during dry years, and other farm districts and cities would benefit because the stored water could help keep Mead from dropping to levels that would trigger cutbacks across the Southwest.
“We have to strike a balance that addresses our interests in terms of keeping our water here in the valley, but also shows that we’re willing to be a player in addressing issues on the river,” Childers said. “That may be a very difficult balance to strike.”
In the Imperial Valley, one thing is certain. If the winning candidate doesn’t strike the right balance, voters won’t forget.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-04-23/salton-sea-dust-voters-polls
NYC Considers Pension Fund Petroleum Divestment
Huffpost
The fight to force financiers and insurers to abandon fossil fuels may soon get some powerful new recruits: the New York City Council.
On Monday, lawmakers in the nation’s largest city are set to introduce a resolution to formally demand the banks, asset managers and insurance giants with which the city government does business divest from oil, gas and coal.
The resolution, shared with HuffPost in advance, names banking behemoth JPMorgan Chase, asset manager BlackRock and insurer Liberty Mutual as targets of the statement. The move comes as top U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase, are preparing to seize oil and gas producers crushed by plummeting oil prices.
As New York City’s death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic soars past 10,000, the legislators behind the resolution hope to lay the groundwork for how “we can emerge more prepared to do what we know we have to do to mitigate and prepare for the devastating consequences of the climate crisis that’s coming,” Brad Lander, the councilman from Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, told HuffPost.
“We are in the midst of a devastating short-term crisis … but the most devastating long-term risk to New York is the climate crisis,” said Lander, the lead author of the bill. “If we’re going to have any chance at actually bending the curve on CO2 emissions, we have to confront the capital that is driving it at its scale.”
The bill ― which already has 10 co-sponsors ― would itself do little beyond taking a principled stand. But if passed, the resolution would add momentum to a fast-growing campaign to shame and pressure the institutions that climate activist and writer Bill McKibben described in The New Yorker last September as providing the “oxygen on which the fire of global warming burns.” The widely circulated essay signaled the opening of a new front in the decade-long campaign to pressure investors to stop funding the extraction of more oil, gas and coal at a moment when scientists say the world needs to rapidly phase out fossil fuels.
The resolution could open the door to policy ideas that once seemed fringe in the capital of global finance. The city would likely face new pressure to redirect its banking services from JPMorgan Chase to an alternative such as Amalgamated Bank, which in 2018 started offering “100% fossil fuel free” portfolios. It could spur new calls for the city to establish its own municipal public bank, which would, in theory, fund clean infrastructure in poor neighborhoods where traditional investment historically displaces residents, if it happens at all.
“It’s a different and, in some ways, much harder problem, where to put money in and not just take money out,” said Pete Sikora, a senior adviser to the climate and housing nonprofit New York Communities for Change. “There’s something of a contradiction here, because capitalism isn’t set up to fund fair and just results. It’s set up to make money for people who own capital.”
A public bank, he said, would help to “use the system to produce better results.” But it’s a complicated and costly proposition in a city whose resources are already stretched thin battling both the pandemic and an openly hostile president with little support among voters in his hometown.
The resolution offers a preview of New York City’s major election next year, suggesting climate change will be a major campaign theme in open races for positions including mayor, comptroller and 35 of the City Council’s 51 seats.
Lander, a progressive firebrand, is considered a top candidate to succeed Comptroller Scott Stringer, who is himself one of three leading candidates for mayor.
“There’s a unique role around finance that the comptroller’s office of New York City has in particular, this being the headquarters of massive amounts of corporate finance,” Lander said, noting that Stringer made significant progress but could have “moved faster.”
“I would make the climate crisis the number one issue focus of the office,” Lander added.
During his time as the city’s chief fiscal and auditing officer, Stringer began the byzantine process of divesting roughly $5 billion in city workers’ pension funds from fossil fuel companies, a step he’s likely to highlight early next year when campaigning begins in earnest. Council Speaker Corey Johnson, another top mayoral contender, shepherded severalmajor climate bills through the legislature last year, an achievement he’s also likely to promote as he pitches himself to voters still scarred by the memory of 2012’s