For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.

IN THIS ISSUE –  “I really do think the sky is falling. And at some point, you’ve got to be ready for it to hit the ground.”

Local water district engineer on the difficulty of getting State permission to store flood waters

“We Can’t Miss It Any More…To Many People’s Lives Are At Stake”

Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique client service.

FOR THE WEEK ENDING FEB. 24, 2023

 

Does California Need 2,600 New Laws?

CalMatters

California doesn’t really need 2,600 new laws, right?

Nevertheless, state lawmakers proposed 500 new bills last Friday, the 2023 session’s introduction deadline, bringing the total to about 2,600. That’s the most in more than a decade. More than 1,000 are “placeholder” bills without specific language. Reminder: More bills are typically introduced in odd-numbered years, the first year of the Legislature’s two-year sessions.

Last year, when about 2,000 bills were introduced, the Legislature passed almost 1,200 of them — and nearly 1,000 became law with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature, including ones on wage transparency and housing.

Some of the new bills tackle California’s hot-button issues. Assembly Bill 3 by new Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a Democrat from Bakersfield, would increase oil production in California just as the state aims to scale back fossil fuels to battle climate change.

Her bill, proposed in the special session called by Gov. Gavin Newsom on an oil profits penalty, would require 60% of all crude oil refined in California to be produced in the state in 2030 and 50% in 2035. California now produces only about 30% of its crude oil, while the rest is imported from South America, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Sen. Dave Min, a Democrat from Costa Mesa, introduced Senate Bill 559 to end offshore oil drilling in California’s waters.

Another hot topic: the fentanyl crisis, which has spurred nearly two dozen bills introduced since December. Last week, bills were introduced by Republican Assemblymember Jim Patterson, from Fresno, and Democratic Assemblymember Carlos Villapudua, from Stockton. Both bills seek to increase the penalties for selling the drug. And Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, a Democrat from Oakland, introduced SB 287, which would make social media platforms liable for promoting the illegal sale of fentanyl to minors.

Here are a handful of other key bills introduced last week to beat the deadline:

Health care

 

Attorney General’s Legislator-Spouse No Longer Oversees His Budget

Politico’s California Playbook

The budget subcommittee chaired by Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Oakland) will no longer oversee funding matters related to her husband’s Department of Justice, Budget Chair Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) announced late Wednesday.

The change comes after days of pressure from KCRA-TV News about whether it was ethical for Bonta to oversee funding for the department run by her husband, Attorney General Rob Bonta. Mia Bonta had initially rebuffed the suggestion of any conflict of interest before agreeing to recuse herself from matters related to the DOJ on Sunday. Ting’s decision goes one step further — taking the issue out of her committee completely.

 

Declines Hit Two Economic Mainstays in Golden State

CalMatters commentary from Dan Walters

During World War II, California became the staging point for the Pacific Theater and an industrial powerhouse that manufactured ships, planes and other implements of warfare.

Industrialization, which continued after the war, replaced resource industries such as agriculture and mining in economic importance and fueled California’s postwar population boom into the nation’s most populous state.

However, California’s industrial age was relatively short-lived. By the 1970s, factories were beginning to close, sparking uncertainty about the state’s economic future.

Southern California economic and civic leaders opted for what came to be known as “logistics,” making the region the prime entry point for the goods that a resurgent Asian economy was producing for the American market.

The region committed billions of dollars into upgrading the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and improving transportation facilities to whisk goods from the ports into massive warehouse complexes in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Logistics created millions of new blue collar jobs, particularly for immigrants pouring into the region from Latin America and Asia.

Meanwhile, the state’s other major metropolitan area – the counties surrounding San Francisco Bay – opted for exploiting the region’s cutting-edge research into the possibilities of silicon chips. As high technology corporations such as Apple, Intel and Facebook exploded, they transformed quiet suburban communities into what came to be known as Silicon Valley.

The Bay Area became California’s most important economic engine, drawing investment capital and ambitious techies from every corner of the globe and creating enormous wealth that, among other things, is the state’s most important source of tax revenue.

Overall, the decisions of the 1970s on post-industrial economy worked out better for the Bay Area than they did for Southern California – especially after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s nearly wiped out Southern California’s last remaining major industrial sector: aerospace.

That said, the economic mainstays of both regions now face existential threats.

Southern California’s logistics industry is being whipsawed by a decline in ship traffic due to tougher competition from East Coast ports, local transportation bottlenecks, new air quality mandates, such as eliminating diesel-powered trucks, that raise costs, and increasing opposition to inland warehouse expansion.

Last month, a coalition of 60 Inland Empire groups sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, asking for a moratorium on warehouse construction, citing environmental degradation from heavy truck traffic.

“We have a right to a life not impacted by asthma, heart disease, cognitive, and reproductive problems related to pollution exposure,” the letter states. “We have a right to not be made sick by the air we breathe.”

Four-hundred miles to the north, meanwhile, Silicon Valley is seeing thousands of jobs disappear as major technology firms slash their staffs and a major out-migration of workers who cannot afford to live in the region’s superheated real-estate market. More than 90,000 workers left the region during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and venture capital has declined sharply.

Last week, a local industry group, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, issued its annual report on the region’s economy, highlighting its transition from a yeasty mixture of start-up companies to reliance on a few giants such as Apple.

“Tech is going through a painful period,” Russell Hancock, president of the organization said as the report was issued, but added, “There is no way to construe what is happening as a crisis” for the tech sector.

Perhaps not, but the fact remains that Southern California’s logistics industry and the Bay Area’s technology industry are facing headwinds they had not experienced previously, and the stakes in their futures are immense for the entire state.

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/02/california-economy-logistics-silicon-valley/?utm_source=CalMatters+Newsletters&utm_campaign=0242f2ef34-WHATMATTERS&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_faa7be558d-0242f2ef34-150181777&mc_cid=0242f2ef34&mc_eid=2833f18cca

 

State Water Board Approves Emergency Water Storage…

CalMatters

California’s water board decided Tuesday to temporarily allow more storage in Central Valley reservoirs, waiving state rules that require water to be released to protect salmon and other endangered fish.

The waiver means more water can be sent to the cities and growers that receive supplies from the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta through the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. The state aqueduct delivers water to 27 million people, mostly in Southern California, and 750,000 acres of farmland, while the Central Valley Project mostly serves farms.

The flow rules will remain suspended until March 31.

Environmentalists reacted today with frustration and concern that the move will jeopardize chinook salmon and other native fish in the Delta that are already struggling to survive.

The order from the State Water Resources Control Board, signed by Executive Director Eilleen Sobeck, comes eight days after Gov. Gavin Newsom suspended two state environmental laws and urged the board to act. Water suppliers and growers had criticized the state for “wasting” water during the January storms by letting it flow through rivers out to sea instead of capturing it in reservoirs.

On the day that Newsom issued his order, the state Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — which oversee reservoirs and water exports in the Delta — petitioned the board to lift the flow rules.

If the state’s flow rules had remained in effect, water would have to flow through the Delta at a rate of 29,200 cubic feet per second. But as of Feb. 21, outflow was less than half that,14,300, Rosenfield said.

The water board at its meeting today heard both criticism and congratulations from the public, illustrating the great divide in California.

MORE:

https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/02/water-board-waives-environmental-rules-delta-water/

 

…But Regulatory Roadblocks Still Hinder Water Supplies:

“We Can’t Miss It Any More…To Many People’s Lives Are At Stake”

NY Times

It sounds like an obvious fix for California’s whipsawing cycles of deluge and drought: Capture the water from downpours so it can be used during dry spells.

Pump it out of flood-engorged rivers and spread it in fields or sandy basins, where it can seep into the ground and replenish the region’s huge, badly depleted aquifers. The state’s roomiest place for storing water isn’t in its reservoirs or on mountaintops as snow, but underground, squeezed between soil particles.

Yet even this winter, when the skies delivered bounties of water not seen in half a decade, large amounts of it surged down rivers and out into the ocean.

Water agencies and experts say California bureaucracy is increasingly to blame — the state tightly regulates who gets to take water from streams and creeks to protect the rights of people downriver, and its rules don’t adjust nimbly even when storms are delivering a torrent of new supply.

During last month’s drenching storms, some water districts got the state’s green light to take floodwater only as the rains were ending, allowing them to siphon off just a few days’ worth. Others couldn’t take any at all because floods overwhelmed their equipment.

In the Sonoma County wine region, north of San Francisco, a group of vineyards and local agencies is working with the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians on a multimillion-dollar system of pumps and pipes that would grab large gulps of the Russian River during storms and distribute it to growers’ fields. The challenge, said Philip Bachand, an engineer on the project, will be persuading California water officials, who he says are overly concerned that allowing people to reroute floodwater will deprive others downstream.

“We’re beyond that time when you can just fiddle around,” Mr. Bachand said. With climate change straining water supplies that are already attenuated after decades of overuse, “I really do think the sky is falling,” he said. “And at some point, you’ve got to be ready for it to hit the ground.”

Erik Ekdahl, deputy director in the Division of Water Rights at California’s water-rights regulator, the State Water Resources Control Board, acknowledged local agencies’ challenges. The board has worked to streamline its procedures, he said, but the state’s century-old system of water rights generally protects existing rights-holders against new claims to water supplies.

“We are in many ways — I don’t want to say stuck — but we have to follow state law,” Mr. Ekdahl said. It is up to California’s legislature, he said, to decide whether the system is still working well in an era of climate change.

The trillions of gallons of water that have fallen over California this winter have broken the state’s driest three-year stretch on record. But they have hardly guaranteed it an easy ride the next time precipitation goes scarce.

While the state’s giant reservoirs and towering piles of snow in the Sierra Nevada get more attention, California’s groundwater aquifers can hold vastly more water — eight to 12 times as much as all of the state’s major reservoirs combined. Gravity and chance have helped some of the recent rains percolate into aquifers, but humans need to steer more of it there if the state hopes to bank enough for prolonged droughts.

“The need and desire out there is enormous,” said Paul Gosselin, deputy director for sustainable groundwater management at California’s Department of Water Resources.

Even in this wet winter, however, the pilot projects the state has approved have managed to capture just a trickle of their potential.

For landowners and irrigation districts who don’t already have water rights to a particular creek, taking and storing water from it — even when storms are filling it with far too much to go around — requires a permit in advance from the State Water Board.

The permitting process is meant to ensure that the takers aren’t encroaching on other people’s water rights or harming fish and wildlife habitats. There are meetings and consultations to hash out details, and a public comment period to hear objections. The whole process can take months. And the resulting permit allows the holder to divert water only on a temporary basis, usually 180 days, and only when specific hydrological conditions are met.

Some water agencies argue the State Water Board makes these conditions unduly strict, out of deference to water users downstream. Hauling up and storing floodwater requires pumps, canals and, in some cases, wells that inject water deep into the earth. If permit holders are allowed to collect water only when the river level is extremely high, the infrastructure that can handle that much water can be costly to build. And if such torrential flows appear only once every four or five years, for a few days each time, the investment might not be worthwhile.

Another complaint: The process is too slow and cumbersome to help corral big floods that come, like this winter’s, out of the blue.

The Omochumne-Hartnell Water District, which operates along a stretch of the Cosumnes River near Sacramento, applied for a permit last August. When the storms started up in December, its application was still pending.

“It was frustrating,” said Michael Wackman, the district’s general manager. He and his colleagues called up the State Water Board: “What’s going on there? Let’s get these things moving.”

Its permit finally came through on Jan. 11, more than a week after the swollen Cosumnes had crashed through nearby levees and killed at least two people. By that point, so much water was roaring down the river that it damaged the pumps that were supposed to send it away, Mr. Wackman said.

The Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, northwest of Sacramento, got a permit on Jan. 26, three weeks after applying. That allowed the district to grab only a few days’ water before flows down the local river, Cache Creek, tapered off, said Kristin Sicke, the district’s general manager.

The McMullin Area Groundwater Sustainability Agency, near Fresno, first applied for a recharge permit in August 2021. The state board rejected its application the following March, after the rainy season had already mostly passed. The board said the agency hadn’t provided enough information to show its actions wouldn’t be harming other water users.

Matt Hurley, the agency’s general manager, said California had been stuck in a pattern for more than 70 years. After every flood, it declares its water worries over. After every drought, it wonders why it missed the chance to hold onto more water.

“We can’t miss it anymore; we just can’t,” he said. “Too many people’s lives and treasure are at stake.”

MORE:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/climate/california-storms-groundwater-aquifer-recharge.html?campaign_id=49&emc=edit_ca_20230222&instance_id=86006&nl=california-today&regi_id=80823166&segment_id=125986&te=1&user_id=ebedd9f525ae3910eeb31de6bb6c4da0

 

Cleaning Up Freight Trucks Shifts Into First Gear

Grist

Trucks play a foundational role in the U.S. economy. Forty million of them roam the nation, carrying nearly three quarters of its freight. They generate 23 percent of the country’s vehicular greenhouse gas emissions and 23 percent of its nitrogen oxides, or NOx, a main contributor to air pollution. Going electric would significantly cut those emissions and nearly eliminate the NOx. As the country begins to decarbonize its trucking fleet, drayage trucks – which transport cargo containers from ports and rail yards to distribution centers – provide a logical place to start. They run short routes that require less battery range, and operate out of centralized locations where they could charge. Electrifying them would have a transformational impact on the frontline communities near drayage hubs that struggle to breathe heavily polluted air. No state has moved more aggressively to decarbonize drayage than California, where 33,500 trucks trundle in and out of ports and rail yards. Statewide, medium and heavy-duty vehicles account for one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions. But as the state’s effort to electrify the sector begins, some fear it is moving too quickly and could drive small operators out of business. The acceletated decarbonization timeline for drayage is an acknowledgement of the logistical challenges of electrifying long-haul trucks. About half a dozen manufacturers offer battery-electric big rigs, but none offer mora than about 200 miles of range. Charging can take hours, an impractical proposition for a driver who must cover 500 miles in day. “if you’d told me five years ago that batteries were going to haul freight, I’d have said no way,” said Mike Roeth of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency. “Now, manufacturers have started to deliver, but it’s still very early stages.” Early, but perhaps far enough along for drayage. The trucks often travel just 50 to 100 miles daily and could charge between shifts. “because they have a contained route, it’s a predictable, controlled atmosphere.” Said Roeth. Focusing on transportation around ports and rail yards also addresses the industry’s toxic impact on frontline communities. According to Roeth, drayage has historically been the real, of older, less reliable vehicles. “Drayage is where diesel trucks used to go to die,” he said. “They were spewing emissions.” Those pollutants expose residents to dangerous levels of ozone and particulate matter that can cause respiratory conditions, cardiovascular disease, and other illnesses. This is true of the cities around the port of Long Beach and Los Angeles, which sit alongside each other on San Pedro Bay. Together they comprise the largest port complex in the United States and the ninth largest in the world.

If California’s Advanced Clean Fleets rule foes into effect as expected, some fleet operators would have to buy zero-emissions vehicles as soon as next year. Adovcates for trucking fleets said that would be impossible for many operators.

“The road to get there will be littered with the corpses of businesses that no longer are going to be able to afford to do business in California,” said Matt Schrap, CEO of the Harbor Trucking Association, a trade organization that represents drayage fleets on the west coast.

An Air Resources Board spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the board is still taking public comment on the regulation. “We listen to trucking industry concerns as well as those of other parties, including utilities, environmentally impacted communities and environmental advocates.”

MORE:

https://grist.org/transportation/california-is-racing-to-electrify-trucks-can-the-industry-keep-up/