For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.
IN THIS ISSUE – State Budget Radical Revision: “Everything is on the Table”
COVID-19 CHALLENGES
- Governor Radically Revising State Budget
- California Unemployment Surges
- COVID-19 Reveals Unhealthy Unemployment Insurance Shortfall; More State Financial Shortcomings
- Newsom Creates Health Corps to Massive Response
POLITICAL IMPACTS
- November Ballot Issues Uncertain…
- …And Election Drama Continues
- Political Watchdog to Change Rules for Legislators’ Nonprofits
WATER & AIR
- Proposed State Surface Water Diversion Rules Cause Wave of Opposition
- Blowing Up Dams on NorCal River Symbolizes a Struggle for the West
- Will April Showers Bring Better May Water Supply?
- US EPA Reverses Vehicle Air Emissions Rules; CA to Sue
FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 3, 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!!
Governor Radically Revising State Budget
Sacramento Bee
California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he is going back to the drawing board for his budget proposal, abandoning the $222 billion plan he laid out in January as the coronavirus pandemic hammers the state’s economy.
“The January budget is no longer operable,” Newsom said during a news conference Thursday. “The world has radically changed since the January budget was proposed, so everything is on the table.”
Californians have filed 1.9 million unemployment insurance claims since March 12, he said.
Soaring unemployment, delayed tax deadlines and a floundering stock market all spell disaster for the state’s revenues, which rely heavily on taxes on the wealthy.
In the 2017 tax year, the wealthiest 1.5 percent of Californians — people earning more than $500,000 — paid 51 percent of the state’s total income tax, according to the Franchise Tax Board. Collectively, that group of taxpayers paid about $41 billion in tax.
Tax revenue from capital gains also could plummet in a recession. In 2007, California collected $10.9 billion in taxes from investment gains. That sum crashed to $2.3 billion in 2009, when the state was mired in recession.
In 2017, California collected $14.1 billion from taxes on capital gains, according to state budget documents.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article241731126.html#storylink=cpy
California Unemployment Surges
Sacramento Bee
New jobless claims in California surged again last week, reaching an estimated 878,727, an explosion in claims far greater than the national percentage increase, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday.
The rise in state claims was even greater, measured by percentage increase, than the national surge, the Labor Department reported. Nationally, more than 6.6 million people filed for the first time in the week that ended Saturday.
The seasonally adjusted figure, an historic high, was double the previous week’s total.
There appears to be little letup to the trend in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week that 150,000 people filed for unemployment Monday, a new one-day record.
The percentage increase in last week’s new claims, which are not seasonally adjusted, was more than threefold. The new number was far higher than the previous week’s 186,333 and the 57,606 of two weeks ago.
The increases dramatically portray an economy in turmoil, if not freefall. President Trump last week signed a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus package that frees up money for business loans and promises stimulus checks of up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per child that are expected to be direct deposited or mailed starting in mid-April.
Unemployed workers will get federal help. Unemployed residents can get a maximum of $1,050 — $450 from the state and another $600 from the federal government through July.
The surge in claims has overwhelmed the state’s Employment Development Department, which manages the unemployment program.
California Labor Secretary Julie Su last week issued a directive aimed at streaming the process and expediting claims. Claims processing is proceeding around the clock, and staff from other state agencies are being brought in to help.
“For those who are eligible, the EDD processes and issues payments within a few weeks of receiving a claim,” said department spokesman Barry White.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article241695556.html?#storylink=cpy
COVID-19 Reveals Unhealthy Unemployment Insurance & State Government Finances
CalMatters commentary
The rapidly expanding COVID-19 pandemic threatens the lives and livelihoods of Californians, but it also lays bare some multi-billion-dollar shortcomings in state government finances that have been ignored for decades, despite many warnings.
The most obvious is the state budget’s unhealthy reliance on taxing the incomes of a relative handful of wealthy Californians. Income taxes generate about 70% of the state’s general fund revenues and about half of those taxes are paid by the 1% of Californians atop the income scale.
Much of their income is generated by capital gains — profits on their investments — and as the Great Recession demonstrated a decade ago, those gains decline or even vanish in an economic downturn, resulting in sharp drops of state revenue.
With the stock market in freefall and the overall economy declining sharply, Gov. Gavin Newsom last week essentially set aside the expansive 2020-21 budget he had proposed in January and directed state agencies to hunker down, citing “a potentially severe drop in economic activity, with corresponding negative effects on anticipated revenues for the upcoming 2020-21 fiscal year and beyond.”
Yes, California has about $20 billion in a “rainy day fund” to cushion the impact, but a major recession will quickly wash it away and the state will probably turn again to borrowing to remain afloat.
The second example of festering finances is the seemingly immense trust fund that pays out pensions to former state and local government employees. The California Public Employees Retirement System took a huge hit in the Great Recession, seeing its investments decline by about $100 billion just a few years after pension benefits had been fattened up.
Thanks to a decade-long economic boom, CalPERS’ investments recouped somewhat and hit a record $404 billion in February. Even so, however, ever-rising obligations meant it still had scarcely 70% of what it needed to meet those obligations.
As capital markets plummeted this month, CalPERS experienced a $64 billion decline from its high as of last Tuesday, thus widening the already large gap between its assets and its potential liabilities.
Finally, there’s the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), which receives payroll taxes from employers and pays out benefits to workers who lose their jobs or see their hours cut back.
Two decades ago, then-Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature — the same folks who had boosted pension benefits — also increased unemployment insurance payments, but did not raise payroll taxes to pay for them. That left the UIF with scant reserves that were quickly eaten up when the Great Recession struck a few years later.
The state borrowed $63.8 billion from the federal government to keep benefits flowing, then balked at repaying the loans and the feds raised taxes on California employers to repay the loans. Nevertheless, the UIF continued to languish.
Last year, a federal report said it was in the weakest condition of any state fund and the state Employment Development Department, in a report last May, said, “the current financing structure leaves the UI Fund unable to self-correct and achieve a fund balance sufficient to withstand an economic downturn.”
We’re now in a big downturn and the state will probably have to borrow billions of dollars again to keep unemployment payments flowing.
The common denominator in all three examples is that officialdom ignored many warnings out of political expediency.
It’s too late to fix these self-inflicted financial wounds now. But maybe those we place in office will be more willing to deal with them if and when the current crisis has passed.
Newsom Creates California Health Corps to Massive Response
Sacramento Bee
California needs “thousands and thousands” more health care workers to treat the incoming wave of coronavirus patients, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.
To meet that need, he signed an executive order that gives state officials power to let medical professionals do a wider range of work and allow nurses to oversee more patients at a time. He says the executive order will be in place through June 30, although the order itself does not mention that date.
So-called staffing ratio and ‘scope of practice’ regulations have been a controversial subject in the Legislature for years. Newsom didn’t say exactly how far his administration is going in terms of loosening those rules, but said they will give medical workers needed flexibility to fight the coronavirus.
He encouraged doctors, nurses, pharmacists, emergency medical technicians and other medical workers to sign up for the state’s new Health Corps at healthcorps.ca.gov to fight the disease.
“If you’re a nursing school student, a medical school student, we need you,” Newsom said during the Monday news conference. “If you just retired in the last few years, we need you.”
His administration estimates there are 37,000 people who have recently retired from a medical profession, are close to earning a medical or nursing degree or who are working part time in the field. Newsom encouraged those people to come forward and help the state accommodate a surge in patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus spreading across the globe.
He was pleasantly surprised when more than 25,000 signed up the first few days.
Newsom’s executive order gives Department of Public Health Director Sonia Angell power to waive licensing and staffing requirements for hospitals “while protecting public health and safety.” It also lets Angell lift some licensing requirements for doctors.
It gives Department of Consumer Affairs Director Kimberly Kirchmeyer power to waive licensing and scope of practice rules for medical workers, including nurse practitioners. It also gives Emergency Medical Services Authority Director Dave Duncan power to waive regulations for emergency medical workers.
Stephanie Roberson, the lead lobbyist for the California Nurses Association, said the nurses need to see more detail on how the executive order will be carried out. The Nurses Association opposes changes to current staffing ratio requirements, which mandate that nurses can’t be tasked with caring for too many patients at once.
Negotiations over how the executive order will be implemented are ongoing.
https://www.sacbee.com/article241624801.html#storylink=cpy
November Ballot Issues Uncertain…
KQED-TV
California officials say the state will be ready for the November general election, despite the coronavirus pandemic. But questions remain about key issues, including whether groups pushing ballot measures will be able to collect signatures before the June deadline given current social distancing requirements.
It also remains unclear whether traditional polling places will be up and running by the fall, given concerns about the virus. In the March 3 primary election, 75 percent of registered voters in California received a vote-by-mail ballot — and Secretary of State Alex Padilla said he is confident that counties can expand that number to all voters by the fall.
Padilla said his office is working with counties to ensure that by November, anyone who wants a ballot in the mail gets one — and safe opportunities will be available for people to vote in person if they prefer.
“It’s important to recognize that throughout our nation’s history, voters have gone to the polls in times of peace, in times of war, in good economic times, during economic recessions, including the Great Depression and even during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic,” Padilla said. “We’ve had our share of challenges over the years, but our democracy has proven to be resilient. And I think it’s with that spirit that we look at how to best prepare for this November’s election.”
Padilla said many policies embraced in recent years by the state, including online voter registration and increasing the ease of using vote-by-mail ballots, “will serve us well in terms of keeping our democracy going during this public health crisis.”
Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation — a nonpartisan group dedicated to ensuring access to voting — said it’s true that California is in a good spot compared to many other states, given its commitment to voting access. But she noted that Los Angeles County saw big problems during the March primary, when it moved to a new voting system and eliminated hundreds of polling places in favor of voting centers, resulting in hours-long lines on Election Day.
“So there already was a discussion going on — and there is a discussion going on — among lawmakers, the secretary of state and the LA County Board of Supervisors about the feasibility of expanding vote-by-mail ballot distribution in Los Angeles County to all 5.5 million registered voters there,” she said.
And even if counties can get all voters a ballot in the mail, another challenge remains, noted Alexander: making sure voters know they have them.
“When voters don’t connect with their ballots, they end up showing up at polling places on Election Day asking to vote, and then they’re stuck voting with a provisional ballot. … That creates a lot of unhappy voters because they don’t want to cast provisional ballots and it makes more work for election officials,” she said.
Padilla said counties will get some practice in the coming weeks, and the state will learn some lessons, when three separate jurisdictions — Riverside County, portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties and the city of Westminster in Orange County — hold separate special elections in April and May.
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order making all three of those elections vote-by-mail ballot only.
And broadly speaking, Padilla added, voting by mail “has been gaining in popularity,” in California.
“You know, in some counties maybe 50% or slightly higher vote by mail. Other counties have been north of 70% for some time,” he said. “So moving to a model that calls for every voter being mailed a ballot automatically shouldn’t be as big of a shift for counties in California as for jurisdictions in other parts of the country.”
Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley will oversee the April 7 election in Westminster, a vote to recall the mayor and two city council members. Since about 80 percent of voters in the county are already used to voting by mail, he doesn’t think the switch to an entirely vote-by-mail election will be all that difficult.
“What we’ve done for Westminster is we’ve actually sent out a communication to every single voter in that jurisdiction,” he said.
“We would do the same thing for any upcoming election as well, to let them know, ‘Hey, here’s the options for you’.”
In the March primary, Kelley said, Orange County for the first time allowed disabled and overseas voters to electronically mark a ballot online and then mail it in — and that option is being expanded in the upcoming election to anyone affected by the coronavirus.
“To the credit of the state, and particularly the secretary of state, they’ve already put together a working group looking forward to November, how we’re gonna meet those challenges. So those discussions are just now starting to take place,” he said.
Padilla, however, said that other states may not be in as good shape as California, and he slammed Congress for not putting more than $400 million in the $2 trillion stimulus legislation signed by President Trump on Friday. California is expected to get $36.2 million from that allocation of federal funds to address voting.
“We think the model is very clear in terms of how to best serve the voters across the country as we prepare for the November general election: vastly increased vote by mail, vastly increased early voting opportunities, vastly expanded online registration in states that don’t have it already,” Padilla said. “Unfortunately, it was a missed opportunity by Congress to do exactly that. The stimulus package does include $400 million dollars for states to invest in elections, but no requirement that they do what California’s already doing, frankly.”
Alexander, of the California Voter Foundation, agreed. Across the nation, elections have historically been underfunded by state and federal officials, she said, leaving counties scrambling to pick up the pieces.
And in California, the biggest unknown is the fate of the reams of statewide and local ballot measures that haven’t yet collected enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Currently, those signatures are constitutionally required to be turned in by June 20 — and supporters of the initiatives are getting nervous.
In the Bay Area city of Richmond, conservationists pushing a local open space measure sent a letter to the governor last week, noting that they are legally prevented from collecting signatures, given the statewide shelter-in-place order.
Stuart Flashman, an attorney representing the measure’s backers, asked for several remedies: a delay of the signature-gathering deadline; the opportunity to collect signatures electronically and the possibility of a special election in 2021 for ballot measures that don’t meet the signature requirements in time.
Newsom said this week that he hasn’t decided whether to delay that constitutional deadline.
But Padilla said doing so could be difficult given how early ballots and election materials have to be printed.
“We’re gonna be limited in terms of what we can do, given some practical deadlines, as we prepare for the November election,” he said. “And frankly, as we focus on November, first and foremost, we have to make sure we maintain free, fair, safe and healthy elections, and we’ll do our best to accommodate anything else.”
https://www.kqed.org/news/11809281/california-officials-say-theyll-be-ready-for-november-election
CalMatters
Pandemic or not, California is destined to play a relatively minor role in this year’s national political drama. With Republicans now irrelevant in the deep blue state, its most significant political duels are those between competing factions of Democrats and three conflicts in Southern California this year are showcases. In no particular order:
—Historically, San Diego, the state’s second-largest city, has been friendly territory for Republican politicians but has been trending blue. The city’s latest and perhaps last Republican mayor, Kevin Faulconer, is stepping down and two Democrats, Assemblyman Todd Gloria and City Councilwoman Barbara Bry, finished 1-2 in the March primary and will face each other in November.
Gloria is outwardly the more liberal of the two, enjoys strong support from labor unions and other liberal interest groups and probably has the edge as the two-person duel begins. Bry, a businesswoman and former journalist, has been taking a populist save-our-neighborhoods stance, decrying efforts by “Sacramento politicians” to force communities to accept more high-density, multi-family housing.
—The sharpest intraparty duel in Los Angeles pits the county’s district attorney, Jackie Lacey, against George Gascón, who had been district attorney in San Francisco, but resigned to return to his former home and challenge Lacey.
It’s one of many contests for state and county prosecutor positions around the nation, pitting criminal justice reformers such as Gascón, who advocate rehabilitation and treatment for felons rather than incarceration, against more traditional prosecutors such as Lacey.
Their contest is loaded with cultural crosscurrents. Lacey is a career prosecutor who moved through the ranks to become the first woman and first African-American to hold the office. Cuban-born Gascón is a former policeman who eventually became a deputy chief in Los Angeles and police chief of San Francisco before becoming that city’s top prosecutor.
Lacey, who fell just shy of winning re-election outright in March, is probably the favorite seven months out, and it shapes up as a classic battle over crime and punishment.
—The third big battle is also in Los Angeles — for control of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s board.
It’s the latest chapter in a years-long, see-saw struggle between unions, particularly United Teachers of Los Angeles, and charter school advocates for control of the seven-member board. Unions enjoy a 4-3 majority now, but all four of their seats are up this year. Two of the four are already nailed down for the unions, but they must win runoffs for the other two to retain control. Conversely, the charter faction needs to win one of the two to regain control.
While all contests for Los Angeles Unified board seats are hard-fought, the stakes are higher now because Gov. Gavin Newsom last year signed legislation giving local school boards more power over charters. If they prevail, unions openly hope to throttle the charter school movement in the nation’s second-largest school district.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/election-democratic-competing-california/
Political Watchdog to Change Rules for State Legislators’ Nonprofits
CalMatters
California’s political watchdog agency is rethinking state rules allowing elected officials to solicit donations to nonprofits, following a Calmatters investigation into millions of dollars raised by state politicians for charities controlled by them, their relatives or their staff.
The Fair Political Practices Commission has not yet proposed how the rules could change, but it’s making plans to begin gathering input from the public on an update to the regulations and laws that govern what are known as “behested payments.”
Such donations, made to charities at a politician’s request, have become an increasingly common way for California politicians to raise and spend money outside the limits of campaign finance law.
“We have a plan to take a look at this in a thoughtful and comprehensive way,” said commission chairman Richard Miadich. “It is something that is clearly on our radar and something we need to be focused on.”
Miadich particularly cited CalMatters’ recent Sweet Charity series, which revealed that the amount of money flowing to nonprofits controlled by California legislators or their staff has skyrocketed over the last decade — from $105,000 in 2011 to $2.9 million in 2019 — and showed that much of the money comes from corporations and unions that lobby the Legislature.
Meetings to discuss changing the rules have not yet been scheduled because Californians are under an order to stay home to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and government agencies are still figuring out how to conduct business remotely. Miadich said he first wants interested parties to offer ideas on updating the behested payments rules, and then he plans to bring recommendations to the commission. They could include regulatory changes that the commission can make, he said, or proposals for new state laws.
The focus should be on the potential for charitable donations to mask “self dealing” by politicians, said commissioner Allison Hayward.
“I’m concerned more about the behested payments process being used for the personal profit of the person doing the solicitation, whether it’s to a foundation that person controls and (uses to) subsidize their lifestyle or their income or their family’s income,” she said.
“I don’t think we‘re worried about elected officials who also happen to be leaders of their communities raising money for the Boys and Girls Club. It’s more these self-dealing areas that trouble me.”
CalMatters found that one assemblyman helped raise $588,000 for organizations that employed his wife by soliciting donations to nonprofits she worked for, and to his own foundation that in turn loaned $25,000 to his wife’s employer. Experts said the arrangement was legal; the author of California’s political ethics law said the law should be changed to prohibit politicians from soliciting money for nonprofits that employ their spouse.
Miadich declined to comment on the situation, saying he doesn’t want to prejudge what changes are necessary to the behested payment rules before hearing from the public.
The FPPC already is investigating another situation CalMatters revealed — a nonprofit affiliated with the Legislature’s technology caucus that has stopped disclosing where its money comes from.
Miadich voiced concern that legislation introduced earlier this year could wind up limiting how much information the public gets about charitable donations solicited by politicians. The bill, by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, a Bell Gardens Democrat, says elected officials would not have to report donations made in response to an invitation to an event hosted by a nonprofit organization unless the officials make “a direct written or verbal request for a payment for a legislative, governmental, or charitable purpose.”
“It seems to be written to significantly restrict the instances where the public would have information on a behest,” Miadich said.
Garcia has said that she doesn’t intend to broadly exempt politicians from disclosing their charitable fundraising activity to the public. Instead, she wants her bill to only apply to situations where elected officials’ names appear on an invitation as one of dozens of politicians on an “honorary committee” supporting a nonprofit’s fundraising event — instances where the officials typically play no role in soliciting donations.
Good-government advocates said they were happy to hear that state regulators are considering changes to the rules about behested payments, and called for stricter rules to prevent abuse.
“We are concerned that behested payments damage the public trust,” said Dora Rose, deputy director of the League of Women Voters California.
Though her organization has not yet proposed specific changes, Rose said she thinks the FPPC should consider banning officials from raising money for organizations that employ their family members, lowering the threshold for disclosing behested payments, and requiring faster reporting to the public. Currently, officials must report payments of at least $5,000 made at their behest within 30 days.
Proposed State Surface Water Diversion Rules Cause Wave of Opposition
Associated Press
California regulators set new rules about how much water can be taken from the state’s largest rivers, angering water agencies for restricting how much they can take and environmental groups for not making those limits low enough to protect endangered species.
Most of California’s water comes from snow that melts in the Sierra Nevada and flows through a series of rivers and streams to the San Francisco Bay. The state has two complex systems of canals, dams and reservoirs that deliver and store the water. The state operates one system that mostly provides drinking water for 27 million people while the federal government runs the other system that mostly provides water for the state’s $50 billion agriculture industry.
Historically, the federal government has set the rules for both systems in cooperation with state officials. But this year, California says the federal government’s rules do too much harm to the environment and have sued to block them.
California finished its own rules for the State Water Project. But those rules have angered both water agencies and environmental groups for different reasons and will likely be challenged in court.
The federal government’s rules do not limit how much water can be pumped out of the rivers during storms or months when there is a lot of rain. The state’s rules do, limiting agencies at pumping no more than 6,250 cubic feet per second. One cubic foot per second equals more than 1.5 million gallons (5.8 million liters.)
That means different rules for state and federal water agencies that are both taking water from the same source. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a regional wholesaler that provides water to 26 public agencies who deliver it to nearly 19 million people, is already considering a lawsuit.
“We have to put restrictions and not take water, but our neighbor is free to take it,” said Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. “Obviously we want to work closely with the (Gov. Gavin) Newsom administration, but we’re pretty disappointed by this result. We don’t think it’s based on sound science and it’s going to be hard for us just to let it go.”
The purpose of the pumping limits is to protect four endangered species of fish: The delta smelt, longfin smelt and both winter-run and spring-run chinook salmon. If the water agencies pull too much water from the rivers too fast, the fish aren’t strong enough to swim away and they get sucked up into the pumps and killed.
But the state’s new pumping limits are 25% higher than the old limits, which environmental groups say are too high and warn will put the endangered species in even more peril. Some scientists say the delta smelt are already “effectively extinct” because there are too few of them left to monitor.
“I think that the Newsom administration is employing some cold, political triangulation and their position here is that, ‘We don’t have to protect our endangered species, we don’t have to protect water quality in the delta or the San Francisco Bay estuary fisheries, we just have to be better than Trump,” said Jon Rosenfield, senior scientist for San Francisco Baykeeper.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) Director Chuck Bonham says the old pumping limits were set more than 10 years ago and were “somewhat arbitrary.” He said state scientists now believe the new limits are safe to keep fish from being sucked into the pumps, which environmental groups dispute.
Bonham also noted the rules let the state store blocks of water during wet months they can release in the spring and summer to help the fish. The rules allow for the state to release 150,000 acre feet of water in the spring and another 100,000 acre feet in the summer. One acre foot of water (43,560 cubic feet) is more than 325,000 gallons, the amount of irrigation water that would cover one acre to a depth of one foot.
The State Water Project removes more than 3 million acre-feet of water per year.
“I would ask that all those parties just take a breath and think long term,” Bonham said. “If you really think about the long term stability, the long term needs of the species here that are involved, this permit is pretty creative. And it’s going to do right by both water supply and environmental protection.”
Blowing Up Dams on NorCal River Symbolizes a Struggle for the West
Associated Press
KLAMATH — California’s second-largest river has sustained Native American tribes with plentiful salmon for millennia, provided upstream farmers with irrigation water for generations and served as a haven for retirees who built dream homes along its banks.
With so many demands, the Klamath River has come to symbolize a larger struggle over the American West’s increasingly precious water resources, and who has claim to them.
Now, plans to demolish four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath’s lower reaches — the largest such demolition project in U.S. history — have placed those competing interests in stark relief. Tribes, farmers, homeowners and conservationists all have a stake in the dams’ fate.
“We are saving salmon country, and we’re doing it through reclaiming the West,” said Amy Cordalis, a Yurok tribal attorney fighting for dam removal.
The project, estimated at nearly $450 million, would reshape the Klamath River and empty giant reservoirs, and could revive plummeting salmon populations by reopening habitat that has been blocked for more than a century.
The proposal fits into a trend in the U.S. toward dam demolition as these infrastructure projects age and become less economically viable. More than 1,700 dams have been dismantled nationwide since 2012.
Backers of the Klamath Dam removal say the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could vote this spring on whether to transfer the dams’ hydroelectric licenses from the current operator, PacifiCorp, to a nonprofit formed to oversee the demolition. Drawdown of the reservoirs behind the dams could begin as early as 2022, according the nonprofit, the Klamath River Renewal Corp.
Opponents, including a group of residents who live around a reservoir, say without the dams, their waterfront properties will become mudflats and their homes will lose value.
“If we get halfway through and they blow a hole in the dam just to let the water out — to say, ‘Yeah, we done this’ — they can walk away from it. And we have no recourse whatsoever,” said Herman Spannus, whose great-grandfather first ran a ranch in the area in 1856.
The structures at the center of the debate are the four southernmost dams in a string of six constructed in southern Oregon and far northern California beginning in 1918. They were built for power generation, and none has “fish ladders,” concrete chutes fish can pass through.
Two dams to the north are not targeted for demolition. They have fish passage and are part of a massive irrigation system that straddles the Oregon-California border and provides water to more than 300 square miles (777 square kilometers) of crops.
Those farmers won’t be directly affected but worry the demolition will set a precedent.
“Dam removal on this scale is kind of unprecedented,” said Ben DuVal, who farms 300 acres (121 hectares). “I don’t want to be the one who ends up giving up my livelihood in order to fix a problem down there that was caused by a big experiment.”
The demolition plan is good business for PacifiCorp, which holds the dams’ hydroelectric licenses. They’re expired, and renewing them would require more than $400 million in federally mandated modifications.
Under the demolition plan, $200 million will come from California and Oregon ratepayers, and $250 million will come from a voter-approved California water bond, with no liability for PacifiCorp.
For the region’s tribes, the push to remove the dams is much more than financial calculus.
“I actually credit a lot of our men and women’s depression to the fact that they fish for days and days and days and days and don’t catch anything,” said Georgiana Gensaw, who is Yurok and lives on the reservation. “We want to bring salmon home.”
Coho salmon from the Klamath River are listed as threatened under federal and California law, and their population in the river has fallen anywhere from 52% to 95%. Spring chinook, once the Klamath Basin’s largest run, has dwindled by 98%.
Fall chinook have been so meager in the past few years that the Yurok canceled fishing for the first time in the tribe’s memory. In 2017, they bought fish at a grocery store for their annual salmon festival.
Yet even demolition advocates say dam removal won’t be enough on its own. Salmon face deteriorating ocean conditions due to climate change, and the many tributaries that feed into the Klamath River are degraded.
For their part, homeowners around the biggest reservoir, Copco Lake, feel a strong sense of place in the houses they built decades ago, with no idea the dams could ever come down.
“The real estate people are not anxious to take listings here because it’s the rumors there all the time,” said Tom Rickard, who had to take his home off the market last summer when it didn’t sell.
“You hear people from Los Angeles, the Bay Area, all over the place, and they keep asking, ‘Well, what’s going to happen to the dams?’”
https://apnews.com/123c32c70ee4ff21712e0569edae24f0
Will April Showers Bring Better May Water Supply?
Sacramento Bee
Despite a few March storms, the Sierra Nevada snowpack remains well below average, California officials reported Wednesday, suggesting that water supplies will be tight this summer and fall.
The Department of Water Resources said its monthly manual survey of a broad field near Echo Summit showed the snowpack was about one third less than normal for this time of year.The survey, conducted behind the site of a former stagecoach stop off Highway 50, showed 43.5 inches of snow and a “snow water equivalent” of 16.5 inches. That was 66 percent of the average for the start of April.
The survey, traditionally a closely-watched barometer of California’s “water year,” was conducted without any media members present because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The results from the site at Phillips, near the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort, were roughly in line with electronic sensors measuring the snowpack elsewhere. Those sensors show the snowpack’s snow water equivalent at 15.2 inches, or 53 percent of normal.
Officials had hoped for a March Miracle after a nearly rain-free February in most parts of the state. The weather disappointed them.
“While today’s survey results show our snowpack is better off than it was just last month, they still underscore the need for widespread, wide use of our water supplies,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the water agency, in a prepared statement.
The measurements represent the latest evidence of California’s dry winter. The U.S. Drought Monitor, produced by several federal agencies, last week showed 40 percent of the state was facing drought-like conditions and another 35 percent was considered abnormally dry.
The snowpack is a critical factor in California’s water supply, as melting snow helps get the state through the bone-dry summer and fall. However, officials said California’s reservoirs were in good shape heading into this winter, which will blunt some of the impacts of what’s become a dry winter.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/weather-news/article241695866.html#storylink=cpy
US EPA Reverses Vehicle Air Emissions Rules; CA to Sue
The Hill
The Trump administration rolled back an Obama-era law that pushes automakers to produce more fuel efficient vehicles, severely limiting a rule designed to decrease pollution from transportation in the face of climate change.
The new rule cuts the year-over-year improvements expected from the auto industry, slashing standards that require automakers to produce fleets that average nearly 55 mpg by 2025. Instead, the Trump rule would bring that number down to about 40 mpg by 2026, bringing mileage below what automakers have said is possible for them to achieve.
California authorities immediately said they were reviewing litigation.
The Trump administration has argued that cutting Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards will allow automakers to produce cheaper cars, something they say will save lives as lower prices spur consumers to upgrade to new vehicles with better safety features that guzzle less gas than older models.
“This rule reflects the Department’s No. 1 priority — safety — by making newer, safer, cleaner vehicles more accessible for Americans who are, on average, driving 12-year-old cars. By making newer, safer, and cleaner vehicles more accessible for American families, more lives will be saved and more jobs will be created,” Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao said in a statement announcing the rule.
But the rule has been mired by doubts that it will actually save lives.
Earlier government analysis found that while 600 to 700 Americans might be saved by better safety features, nearly 1,000 might die prematurely given the increase in smog and air pollution from vehicle emissions, according to documents obtained by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.).
And even with historically low gas prices, consumers are expected to pay more at the pump. An analysis from Consumer Reports found U.S. drivers would spend $300 billion more on gas over the lifetime of the vehicles because of the decrease in fuel efficiency.
The increased cost to consumers holds true even if gas falls to $1.50 per gallon, as prices are expected to rebound by the time frame most of the new vehicles would be produced.
“Unemployment claims skyrocketed to more than 3 million last week, so millions of Americans are now going without a paycheck, and our nation is at risk of a recession because of the COVID crisis,” David Friedman, vice president for advocacy with Consumer Reports said on a call with reporters, referring to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
“So it’s absolutely stunning the administration would finalize a plan that will cost drivers more money at the pump for years to come. Consumers, workers, small business owners are the engine of America’s economy. And the last thing they need is to get stuck spending more on gas,” he said.
The economic blow could also hit manufacturers themselves, with global buyers steering clear of American-made vehicles that lag behind their competitors.
The Trump rule requires 1.5 percent year over year improvements in mileage, compared to 5 percent under Obama. The auto industry, however, has said it could improve fuel efficiency by 2.4 percent each year even without regulation.
But the issue is hardly just a financial one. Transportation is now the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the nation, according to research by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with pollution from cars and trucks outpacing that of electricity production as utilities move away from coal.
“The administration is unraveling the biggest and most successful climate policy on the books, one that has also saved consumers millions of dollars in gasoline costs, cut air pollution, and helped grow the auto industry,” Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement.
States like California — which has engaged in a long battle with the Trump administration to block the rule — have long argued the tougher measures are needed to reduce air pollution that is dangerous both for health and the environment.
When the CAFE standards were first proposed in 2018, it was rolled out alongside another measure that would have created one national standard for vehicle emissions — undercutting tougher standards drafted by California and adopted by more than a dozen other states.
The Trump administration is already facing suits over its decision to revoke that power from California, but a subsequent deal between the state and automakers showed there is an appetite to meet fuel economy standards similar to what Obama promised.
In July, four automakers agreed to produce vehicles that could average 50 mpg by 2026.
Experts say this Trump administration rule is particularly vulnerable to legal challenges given the numerous efforts to tweak the cost-benefit analysis underlying the rule, something critics called an attempt to make the overall rule appear more favorable.
But another central issue is that the law requires pushing automakers to innovate.
“Based on NHTSA statute they must set the standard at the maximum feasible level,” Friedman with Consumer Reports said, referring to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
“And if you’ve got several automakers who are already saying they can do a lot more, that pretty much tosses out the window any claim that the administration rolled out the maximum feasible standard. That’s going to prove a serious challenge in the courts,” he added.