For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.
IN THIS ISSUE – “The time to act is now”
Jane Dolan, Central Valley Flood Protection Board president, on preventing $1 trillion in megaflood damage
- The Gualco Group Hosts 13 Legislators & Staffers
- This is Gonna Be HARD…Legislature Opens Debate on the Deficit-Burdened State Budget
- Legislative Problem Solvers Caucus Announces Bipartisan Leaders
- “The Time to Act is Now” to Prevent Megaflood Inundation
- Can the Power Grid Handle 15X More Electric Vehicles? “Plausible, But Not Guaranteed”
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 JAN. 20, 2023
The Gualco Group Hosts 13 Legislators & Staffers
The Gualco Group, Inc. was pleased to host at its office last evening 13 Members of the Legislature who helped sponsor and support legislative staffers who are members of either the Latino, Black, or Asian staff associations who attended a six-week policy academy organized and coordinated out of the office of Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. The evening event was the culmination of their studies and homework assignments that exposed the young staff to a variety of policy areas. Certificates were handed out to an enthusiastic audience of participants.
This is Gonna Be HARD…Legislature Opens Debate on the Deficit-Burdened State Budget
CalMatters & Politico California Playbook
In its first formal response to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $297 billion spending plan, the Legislature offered some pointed feedback on Wednesday: The governor’s fiscal forecasters are being too optimistic and the state needs to prepare for a worsening budgetary outlook.
But Senators during the first Budget Committee session said Newsom shouldn’t cut climate spending. Or mental health programs. And especially not anything related to housing.
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, when asked by Politico if he would support tapping the reserves, said, “It’s early, but that’s what it’s there for. I’d rather dip into the rainy day fund than cut programs and services … (I am) super worried about the climate and transit stuff. We worked really hard to get that stuff done last year. I’m always worried about childcare.”
Nobody said balancing a budget during economic lean times would be easy.
Remember: Last week Newsom rolled out his pared down fiscal framework meant to bridge a projected $22.5 billion shortfall with cuts and delays to climate, public health and transit programs, plus a bit of fancy financial footwork.
Putting in a word for frugality at the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee hearing: The Legislative Analyst’s Office, the nonpartisan number-cruncher that issued its initial review of the governor’s plan last week.
Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek urged lawmakers to consider $14 billion in additional cuts and delays to one-time and temporary spending programs.
The senators, most of them Democrats, didn’t take issue with that recommendation. Still, they complained about the cuts that Newsom did include:
Sen. Marie Elena Durazo of Los Angeles bemoaned less proposed spending for public transportation, joining Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, who last week vowed that a “big coalition” would push back.
Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, also a Democrat from Los Angeles, urged the governor to provide more funding for workforce development to “recession proof” the economy.
First-term Democratic Sen. Caroline Menjivar of Van Nuys asked Newsom’s deputy budget director Erika Li why the administration wasn’t providing more funding for counties to set up their CARE courts after Los Angeles County announced that it would begin rolling out the new judicial system for those with severe mental illness a year early.
In response, Li said that the administration hoped to backfill some of these cuts with federal money courtesy of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.
And anyhow, she stressed, this is just the beginning of a months-long haggling session between the branches of government until the final budget is approved in June.
Li: “The governor’s budget is always the starting point for discussions…We look forward to having more discussions on this — and on all — aspects of the budget.”
One budgetary critique in particular might be on Newsom’s mind today as he accompanies President Joe Biden, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and Sen. Alex Padilla on a disaster tour of the water-logged Santa Cruz Mountains and the Central Coast.
Sen. John Laird, a Salinas Democrat, pointed to the recent devastation along the coast of his district and questioned why the governor’s budget cut spending for coastal protection and planning by 43%.
Laird: “What do you actually rebuild? What don’t you rebuild? What do you have to consider in stepping back from the ocean? So the major pot that was cut was planning money for local governments to answer these questions.”
Legislative Problem Solvers Caucus Announces Bipartisan Leaders
Sacramento Bee
Former Senate Minority Leader Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, has a new title to add to his collection: co-chair of the bipartisan Legislative Problem Solvers Caucus. Wilk joins Fullerton Democratic Sen. Josh Newman in heading up the caucus, which promotes commitment to progress regardless of ideology.
“Californians could care less which political party comes up with a good idea, they just want a government that works for — rather than against — them,” Wilk said in a statement. “I look forward to working with my colleagues — more interested in collaboration than partisan bickering — to address the very real problems facing California.”
The caucus, which formed in 2021, has members in both the Assembly and the Senate.
Wilk and Newman have several ideas that they’d like to see implemented. One would make the offices of attorney general and secretary of state nonpartisan. Others would consolidate California’s more than 200 agencies, departments and commissions “with clear lines of accountability,” and create a two-year budget cycle with even years focused on “oversight of the executive branch and its vast array of departments.”
“The Time to Act is Now” to Prevent Megaflood Inundation
LA Times
The storms that have been battering California offer a glimpse of the catastrophic floods that scientists warn will come in the future and that the state is unprepared to endure.
Giant floods like those that inundated the Central Valley in 1861 and 1862 are part of California’s natural cycle, but the latest science shows that the coming megafloods, intensified by climate change, will be much bigger and more destructive than anything the state or the country has ever seen.
A new state flood protection plan for the Central Valley presents a stark picture of the dangers. It says catastrophic flooding would threaten millions of Californians, putting many areas underwater and causing death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. The damage could total as much as $1 trillion.
The plan, approved last month, calls for $25 billion to $30 billion in investments over the next 30 years in the Central Valley, and outlines recommendations that include strengthening levees and restoring natural floodplains along rivers.
Flood protection efforts have been underfunded in California for years, and the plan says much more investment is urgently needed from state, federal and local agencies.
“We need to invest in what is necessary to improve life safety, protect vital infrastructure and improve our environment,” said Jane Dolan, president of the Central Valley Flood Protection Board. “The time to act is now.”
The plan calls for spending $3.2 billion on flood protection projects in the valley over the next five years, with the largest portion of the funding from the state.
“We know we need twice to three times what’s being spent now,” Dolan said.
The plan — the state’s latest five-year update of a blueprint first adopted in 2012 — describes how global warming will push the average snow elevation higher in California’s mountains, where more precipitation will fall as rain. Scientists have also warned that large atmospheric rivers are set to become stronger, unleashing more intense flooding as they roll in from the Pacific.
“By 2072, climate change is predicted to increase peak flood flows up to five times in the Central Valley compared to past recorded events,” the plan says. “At risk are millions of people and billions of dollars of critical infrastructure, commerce, agriculture and the environment.”
Catastrophic floods would be devastating not only for California but also for the nation’s economy, the report says, and the risks will continue growing.
“Climate change is accelerating this risk faster than we have been able to address it,” the report says.
The 298-page document says that if the state doesn’t make investments to address the dangers, major floods could cause, on average, more than 500 deaths annually in the Central Valley by 2072. Officials calculated that a substantial number of lives would be saved, and damage reduced, if adequate investments are made in infrastructure and other projects.
The state’s plan focuses partly on projects that would restore natural floodplains to give floodwater room to spread out and dissipate. Doing so could ease flood risks while also helping to replenish groundwater, which has been depleted by agricultural pumping.
“Having floodwaters spread out can be beneficial to groundwater supply, along with saving lives and infrastructure,” Dolan said. “The levees are going to fail at some point, will be overtopped when there’s intense storms. So we need to make more room.”
Other issues that need to be addressed include aging levees, a backlog of deferred maintenance work on flood-control infrastructure and the expansion of development in flood-prone areas.
“In some areas, we will need to raise a levee. And yet in others, we will need to expand and then create some kind of a setback in the levee system in order to give the river the room to breathe and to meander,” said Chris Elias, executive director of the San Joaquin Area Flood Control Agency. What’s needed in many areas, he said, is a “relief valve” to let flooding rivers spread out on the landscape, where the water can slow down and percolate into the ground.
One part of the Central Valley that faces substantial risks is the Stockton area, where local flood protection projects have been underfunded, Elias said.
With climate projections showing how much larger flows could come raging down the San Joaquin River, the existing levees are undersized, Elias said. “We need to really work hard to make some improvements, to take a look at those levees, rework them to be able to handle the increases in flows,” he said.
Next to Stockton, large residential developments have been built in recent years in the low-lying communities of Manteca and Lathrop. To address such risks, the plan lays out priority projects from upgrading levees to expanding a bypass called Paradise Cut, which is intended to relieve pressure on the levees.
Restoring more of the valley’s natural floodplains can also nourish ecosystems and help struggling populations of fish and other wildlife. State officials say that would bring big environmental benefits because most of the valley’s wetlands and riparian habitats have been drained and destroyed, with only about 5% remaining.
Dolan said the Central Valley needs to identify appropriate areas for widening floodplains. She said that will mean replicating efforts like the Dos Rios Ranch Preserve, the state’s largest floodplain restoration project, located at the confluence of the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers. The nonprofit group River Partners restored the floodplain by removing berms that farmers had built, opening the way for water to seasonally flood about 1,000 acres.
“When you can spread water out across the landscape safely upstream of a neighborhood or a residential area, you can hopefully convey that water more safely through,” said Julie Rentner, president of River Partners.
The new flood plan is a “broadly supported road map” for addressing flood hazards in the valley, Rentner said, but one that still needs political will and a lot more investment.
“It’s just staggering when you really look at how destructive a big flood would be,” Rentner said. “We only have a short amount of time, a decade or two, to get underway with the big solutions that we think are going to work.”
Scientists have studied catastrophic scenarios, examining the 1861-62 floods that left Sacramento underwater as well as larger floods that occurred centuries ago. In 2011, researchers released an analysis of a scenario they called ARkStorm, named for Atmospheric River 1,000 Storm, in which a series of powerful atmospheric river storms would leave large portions of the Central Valley and the Los Angeles Basin underwater.
In a study last year, scientists Xingying Huang and Daniel Swain found that climate change is dramatically increasing the risk of a catastrophic megaflood in California. Their research showed climate change has already doubled the likelihood of a once-in-a-century flood in any given year.
They projected that by the latter part of the century, an extreme series of storms will likely bring 200% to 400% more runoff in the Sierra Nevada because of increased precipitation, and because more of that precipitation will come as rain rather than snow.
Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, said the new flood protection plan for the Central Valley represents a positive step for the state to become more prepared.
“I think that California would be in a better place from a flood risk perspective if the entire plan were fully implemented, and funded,” Swain said.
However, he said, the state still needs to do flood modeling for ARkStorm scenarios based on the latest science. Swain said that will happen this year with funding from the state Department of Water Resources and a high-resolution flood model used by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
“What we’re going to do is essentially run these ARkStorm scenarios as if they were real events and say, OK, who gets flooded? How deeply? For how long?” Swain said. “And hopefully, we’ll be able to get a much more comprehensive answer to just what the actual floods would look like during one of these kinds of plausible, either present or future era, megastorms. It’s going to be ugly.”
Such a flood could leave many areas underwater, displacing millions of Californians and causing untold loss of life. Highways and evacuation routes could be cut off, and low-lying airports could be flooded. The monumental damage inflicted could hobble much of the state for months or longer.
When the catastrophic floods come, whether it turns out to be 10 years or 30 years from now, Swain said: “I don’t want to be reflecting in retrospect that we really could have prepared for it and didn’t. Because at this point, I think the warning signs are pretty clear.”
Deirdre Des Jardins, an independent water researcher and advocate, said modeling where floodwaters will go is urgently needed. She said she is very concerned that the state is seriously unprepared.
“We’re continuing to build in floodplains through various loopholes. And so we have this expanding bull’s-eye,” Des Jardins said. “We should not be building housing in Stockton until there is adequate flood protection. There’s just pressure from developers to look the other way, and I fear it will not end well.”
Can the Power Grid Handle 15X More Electric Vehicles? “Plausible, But Not Guaranteed”
CalMatters
As California rapidly boosts sales of electric cars and trucks over the next decade, the answer to a critical question remains uncertain: Will there be enough electricity to power them?
State officials claim that the 12.5 million electric vehicles expected on California’s roads in 2035 will not strain the grid. But their confidence that the state can avoid brownouts relies on a best-case — some say unrealistic — scenario: massive and rapid construction of offshore wind and solar farms, and drivers charging their cars in off-peak hours.
Under a groundbreaking new state regulation, 35% of new 2026 car models sold in California must be zero-emissions, ramping up to 100% in 2035. Powering the vehicles means the state must triple the amount of electricity produced and deploy new solar and wind energy at almost five times the pace of the past decade.
The Air Resources Board enacted the mandate last August — and just six days later, California’s power grid was so taxed by heat waves that an unprecedented, 10-day emergency alert warned residents to cut electricity use or face outages. The juxtaposition of the mandate and the grid crisis sparked widespread skepticism: How can the state require Californians to buy electric cars if the grid couldn’t even supply enough power to make it through the summer?
At the same time as electrifying cars and trucks, California must, under state law, shift all of its power to renewables by 2045. Adding even more pressure, the state’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, is slated to shut down in 2030.
With 15 times more electric cars expected on California’s roads by 2035, the amount of power they consume will grow exponentially. But the California Energy Commission says it will remain a small fraction of all the power used during peak hours — jumping from 1% in 2022 to 5% in 2030 and 10% in 2035.
“We have confidence now” that electricity will meet future demand “and we’re able to plan for it,” said Quentin Gee, a California Energy Commission supervisor who forecasts transportation energy demand.
But in setting those projections, the state agencies responsible for providing electricity — the California Energy Commission, the California Independent System Operator and the California Public Utilities Commission — and utility companies are relying on multiple assumptions that are highly uncertain.
“We’re going to have to expand the grid at a radically much faster rate,” said David Victor, a professor and co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at UC San Diego. “This is plausible if the right policies are in place, but it’s not guaranteed. It’s best-case.”
Yet the Energy Commission has not yet developed such policies or plans, drawing intense criticism from energy experts and legislators. Failing to provide enough power quickly enough could jeopardize California’s clean-car mandate — thwarting its efforts to combat climate change and clean up its smoggy air.
“We are not yet on track. If we just take a laissez-faire approach with the market, then we will not get there,” said Sascha von Meier, a retired UC Berkeley electrical engineering professor who specializes in power grids. The state, she said, is moving too slowly to fix the obstacles in siting new clean energy plants and transmission lines. “Planning and permitting is very urgent,” she said.
The twin goals of ramping up zero-emission vehicle sales and achieving a carbon-free future can only be accomplished, Victor said, if several factors align: Drivers must avoid charging cars during evening hours when less solar energy is available. More than a million new charging stations must be operating. And offshore wind farms — non-existent in California today — must rapidly crank out a lot of energy.
To provide enough electricity, California must:
- Convince drivers to charge their cars during off-peak hours: With new discounted rates, utilities are urging residents to avoid charging their cars between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. But many people don’t have unrestricted access to chargers at their jobs or homes.
- Build solar and wind at an unprecedented pace: Shifting to all renewables requires at least 6 gigawatts of new resources a year for the next 25 years — a pace that’s never been met before.
- Develop a giant new industry: State officials predict that offshore wind farms will provide enough power for about 1.5 million homes by 2030 and 25 million homes by 2045. But no such projects are in the works yet. Planning them, obtaining an array of permits and construction could take at least seven to eight years.
- Build 15 times more public chargers: About 1.2 million chargers will be needed for the 8 million electric cars expected in California by 2030. Currently, about 80,000 public chargers operate statewide, with another estimated 17,000 on the way, according to state data.
- Expand vehicle-to-grid technology: State officials hope electric cars will send energy back to the grid when electricity is in high demand, but the technology is new and has not been tested in electric cars.
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