For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.
IN THIS ISSUE – “She is Tough, Smart…A Real Force”
CAMPAIGN 2018
- California Becomes New National Bogeyperson for GOP
- Assembly Race Tests Leftward Limits of Dems
- Gas Tax Repeal Running Out of…Gas
- Prop. 3 Water Bond – A Liquid Asset?
WATER & POWER
- Trump Administration Moves to Increase Water to SJV
- Washington State Court Ruling May Aid California River Flows for Fish
- US Moves to Open Windfarms Off Coast
- “Get Out of the Way!” – Fire-Flood Era Roars into Golden State
ECONOMY & ICONS
- California Leads in Jobs Exported to China
- 13 – Savior or Spoiler?
- In-N-Out Turns 70: “Perfectly Designed Protein Delivery System”
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!!
FOR THE WEEK ENDING OCT. 26, 2018
California Becomes New National Bogeyperson for GOP
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Republicans running in Nevada’s hotly contested races for governor and U.S. Senate are taking aim at a common target as they try to maintain GOP control of the seats: California.
As more Californians have poured across the state line over the past few years, many of them escaping sky-high housing costs, some Nevada Republicans fear a state that already has become a political battleground will begin to resemble its deep blue neighbor.
GOP candidates are appealing to conservative voters with warnings about life in California: sanctuary cities, crippling business regulations, out-of-control housing prices and a worsening homeless crisis.
Republican Sen. Dean Heller, who is in a tight re-election battle against Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen, has highlighted his opponent’s support from California billionaire Tom Steyer and Hollywood celebrities, while warning on Twitter that the state could become “CaliforNevada” if Rosen is elected.
Politicians on the right have for years demonized California as a conservative’s worst nightmare. In 2003, as a joke, a Republican state lawmaker in Nevada requested a bill be drafted to rename the state “East California,” along with making The Beatles’ song “Taxman” the official state song.
The California-bashing takes on added weight in Nevada, which has seen a greater-than-normal wave of Californians recently as housing prices and rents have soared in the Golden State. At the same time, transplants from Silicon Valley have followed Tesla, Apple and other California-grown companies as they have expanded in the Reno area.
This year, with California emerging as a political bulwark against the Trump administration, the state has become a political bugaboo for conservatives around the country. They paint it as a cautionary tale of taxes, regulation, environmentalism and illegal immigration run amok.
In Georgia, Republican candidate for governor Brian Kemp has cast his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, as a tool of “billionaires and socialists who want to turn Georgia into California.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott this summer declared that “California appears to have raised the leadership in the United States of America for socialism.”
The Republican State Leadership Committee, which works on electing Republicans to state offices around the country, declared in a campaign email that California has turned into a “liberal wasteland” of “garbage-strewn streets, never-ending tax increases, and lax immigration laws” that Democrats would replicate if they took control of state legislatures.
In Nevada, California has become a special source of angst.
Californians have long made up at least one-third of new residents to Nevada, but this year are on track to comprise 40 percent of new residents, according to drivers’ license data from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.
That influx comes as Nevada has been trending more Democratic in its politics over the last decade, swinging for the Democrat in the past three presidential elections and giving Democrats full control of the Legislature in 2016 — the first time since 1992.
It’s unclear whether the latest California influx will move the state firmly into the Democratic column this November.
Nevada’s races are at the center of the political universe again this year: The U.S. Senate race is a pivotal one for determining whether Republicans maintain control of that chamber, and whichever party wins the governor’s seat will have veto power over legislative and congressional redistricting following the 2020 Census.
“A lot of people left California because of what they didn’t like, but then they got to Nevada and said, ‘Oh, in California, we had this. Oh, in California we had that.’ The things that they left, they want to bring here,” said Chuck Muth, a conservative activist and blogger in Las Vegas.
“I think everybody has known about it, but now the candidates at the top of the Republican ticket are actually making a campaign issue out of it.”
In the governor’s race, Nevada’s Republican attorney general, Adam Laxalt, has frequently included anti-California messages in campaign appearances and statements, even when endorsing other candidates.
Laxalt cites sanctuary cities and burdensome regulations as ill-considered California policies that Nevada should avoid.
“Do you think it should be a crime in a restaurant to give you a straw when you’re trying to have a drink? How about cancer warnings on your coffee?” Laxalt said at a campaign appearance in May. “These are things we’re seeing in our neighbor, California. These are the things I’m willing to fight against so Nevada does not become like California.”
He told The Associated Press that while there’s a concern that Californians moving to the state could import liberal politics, he meets new Nevada residents “all the time that have decided that they’re utterly fed up with California” and “a lot of the just really extreme liberal policies that continue to flourish in that state.”
He said his main worry is that Nevada progressives will see California as a model.
He cited the 2017 session of the Democratic-led Legislature as an example of the state “going the way of California.” Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, a moderate, nearly set a state record by vetoing 41 bills.
https://www.apnews.com/63ab9aa1d9f0472ba33a325a52eb170c
New York Times version:
Assembly Race Tests Leftward Limits of Dems
The East Bay Assembly race between Richmond City Councilwoman Jovanka Beckles, a Democratic Socialist, and Democrat Buffy Wicks of Oakland is testing how far to the left some California voters are willing to go.
Wicks is a former Obama administration official who was key to passage of the Affordable Care Act and before that worked to organize workers at Walmart. Obama and U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris have endorsed Wicks.
“She is tough, smart and will be a real force if she is successful,” said Gavin Newsom, the front-runner to become California governor who donated $3,400 to Wicks’ campaign earlier this month. “She is just at another level. She is a special person. She is a special talent.”
Wicks has raised almost $1 million, much of it from Obama’s donors and former members of his administration. She also has tapped gun control advocates, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a 2011 assassination attempt.
Wicks’ husband, Peter Ambler, was Giffords’ deputy chief of staff and is executive director of Giffords’ Courage to Fight Gun Violence.
But in the district that includes Richmond, Berkeley, and part of Oakland, Wicks’ progressive cred is suspect.
“We view them as mainstream Democrats who respond to the corporate moderate Democrat part of the party,” Beckles’ campaign spokesman Ben Schiff said, referring to Obama, Newsom, Harris and other Wicks backers. “When [Beckles] arrives in Sacramento, she will be continuing her career responding to the people rather than corporate interests because she won’t owe anybody.”
Beckles voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president in 2016 and is endorsed by Green Party organizations.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee, a Berkeley Democrat seeking to ascend in leadership, also is backing Beckles, citing her stands for a $15 minimum wage and rent control. Sen. Bernie Sanders is heading to Oakland this weekend and is expected to tout Beckles’ candidacy.
Outside groups have spent $1.5 million to help elect Wicks, and $344,000 to boost Beckles’ prospects. A review of donors to the candidates and outside groups backing them reflects many of the rivalries on the left.
The Service Employees International Union Local and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, who represent public employees, are campaigning for Beckles. Unions that represent retail clerks and building trades are working to elect Wicks.
Charter public schools advocates support Wicks. Unions that represent public school teachers back Beckles.
Wicks has made housing development and affordable housing a core issue. Beckles has cast votes that would limit development.
Beckles calls for free college and single-payer health care for all. Given Wicks’ knowledge of the nuances of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, she has the backing of physicians and other healthcare providers.
“Wicks’ extensive, deep experience in healthcare public policy made her the clear choice for support,” Richard Stapler of the California Dental Association said.
The race has turned mean as intra-party fights are wont to do. Beckles attacks Wicks, the former union organizer, as being beholden to corporate money. The East Bay chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America created a website detailing several of Wicks’ donors, suggesting she would do their bidding. Wicks has taken no campaign checks from corporations.
Beckles’ website confronts what she says are smears against her. One is a claim that she believes in mind-controlling space weapons. Not true, she contends.
She did, however, win passage of a Richmond city council resolution in 2015 expressing sympathy for “targeted individuals” who believe they have been victims of such hostile technology.
https://calmatters.org/articles/blog/democrats-veer-left-beckles-wicks-east-bay-assembly-race/
Gas Tax Repeal Running Out of…Gas
A high-profile initiative to repeal the recent increase to gasoline and diesel taxes continues to lag with likely California voters.
Just 41 percent plan to vote for Proposition 6, according to a new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California, while 48 percent are opposed. That result is similar to a PPIC survey last month, when the measure trailed 39 percent to 52 percent among likely voters.
The small bump in support for Proposition 6, which would reverse the tax increase by requiring voter approval to raise fuel and vehicle license fees, indicates that the yes campaign has a “big hill to climb,” said Mark Baldassare, president and CEO of PPIC. There are less than two weeks left until the election, and mail voters are already starting to return their ballots.
“I don’t see momentum in this poll,” Baldassare said.
The gasoline and diesel tax hikes were part of a transportation funding plan approved last year by Gov. Jerry Brown and mostly Democratic lawmakers to pay for highway, road and bridge repairs, as well as public transit projects. It is expected to bring in an average of $5.2 billion annually over the next decade from the higher fuel taxes and a new registration fee for cars.
Republican politicians launched an initiative to undo the funding plan last fall, in part, to buttress their prospects in a tough election cycle. Proponents argue that California already has enough money available for road maintenance without charging consumers more at the pump.
The PPIC poll found support for Proposition 6 increased slightly over the last month among Republican (53 percent) and independent (49 percent) likely voters. But opposition continues to grow with Democrats, the state’s largest block of voters, just a quarter of whom plan to vote for the measure.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article220548160.html#storylink=cpy
Prop. 3 Water Bond – A Liquid Asset?
Excessive groundwater pumping by San Joaquin Valley farmers has caused a stretch of the Friant-Kern Canal to sink so much that it has interfered with irrigation deliveries to more than 300,000 acres of cropland.
A fix could come from Proposition 3, the water bond on the November ballot, which earmarks $750 million in state taxpayer funds to repair the aqueduct and other infrastructure damaged by land subsidence.
But the state neither owns nor uses the Friant-Kern. It is part of the Central Valley Project — the federal government’s massive irrigation system.
At $8.9 billion, Proposition 3 is the latest — and biggest — in a series of water bonds to go before California voters since 2006. Its largess would spread up and down the state, but the measure asks state taxpayers to subsidize Central Valley agriculture to an unprecedented degree.
Whether it is the cost of repairing the Friant-Kern and other federal canals, $675 million for groundwater management or a host of smaller programs, valley farm districts stand to reap several billion dollars’ worth of direct and indirect benefits from the bond.
The measure was put together by Jerry Meral, a veteran of California water politics who drafted the 39-page initiative based on the desires of a cross section of interests.
“This is definitely a group effort. We worked with every constituency you could imagine,” said Meral, a former state natural resources official who directs the water program for the nonprofit Natural Heritage Institute. “It’s a well-thought-out response to a huge need for water in California.”
The initiative has a $5-million campaign fund, fattened with donations from agricultural interests, and no organized opposition to speak of.
But it has some very vocal critics, who have called it “horrifying,” “garbage” and a “giveaway” that violates a long-standing principle in California: Those who use water infrastructure should pay for it.
“There are a few bright lines in California water and this bond has stepped over a big one,” said Ron Stork, senior policy advocate of Friends of the River, an environmental group. “It provides direct subsidies to state and federal [water] contractors on scales and types of projects that we haven’t seen before.”
In addition to the pot of money for the Friant-Kern, he pointed to $200 million for repair of the Oroville Dam spillways. The Northern California dam is a key element of the State Water Project, which is paid for by its largely urban users.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that when interest and principal payments are factored in, Proposition 3 will ultimately cost state taxpayers $17.3 billion.
In a departure from most water and environmental bonds, the funds would not be appropriated by the Legislature in annual state budgets. Rather, the money would automatically go to state agencies to distribute in the form of grants, as needed for specific projects.
“Who’s doing the oversight?” said Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California. “Since when did the state taxpayer pay for federally approved and managed projects?…The deeper you go, the more horrifying it is.”
State Senate leader Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) has endorsed the initiative. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) opposes it, calling it “garbage — nothing but pet projects.” Gov. Jerry Brown has not taken a position.
To garner statewide support, bond measures are inevitably written with California’s sprawling geography in mind. Proposition 3 is no exception, funding programs that appeal to both urban and rural residents in the north and the south.
There is money for wastewater recycling, flood control and Salton Sea restoration. The measure directs $750 million to safe drinking water projects, with an emphasis on improving public water systems in poor communities.
Projects to capture urban runoff and stormwater would receive $400 million. Conservancies would collect hundreds of millions of dollars for watershed protection and restoration projects — including on U.S. Forest Service lands. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is in line for $60 million; the Santa Ana River, $30 million; the San Gabriel and Los Angeles rivers conservancy, $60 million.
But the initiative is heavily salted with programs that would benefit one slice of the state: Central Valley agriculture.
The $675 million in groundwater management grants would help valley growers comply with California’s new groundwater law, which mandates an end to serious over pumping by 2040.
The bond sets aside $400 million for restoration of Central Valley fisheries and directs the State Water Resources Control Board to “take note of the funding” in setting instream flow requirements. Growers are bitterly fighting the proposed standards because they would force irrigation districts to leave more water for fish in San Joaquin River tributaries.
Other bond sections include grants to local agencies to improve fish passage and install fish screens on Central Valley rivers. That would help agricultural diverters meet environmental requirements — and lessen their costs of doing so.
The Wildlife Conservation Board would receive $300 million to buy water to improve fish and wildlife conditions. Farm districts are the likely sellers.
The wildlife board would also get $20 million for construction of a Pacific Flyway Center “to educate the public about the importance of California’s wetlands, agricultural lands (including rice) and riparian areas in benefiting waterfowl.”
The $750 million for canal repairs would go to the Friant Water Authority, which represents the city of Fresno and 14 irrigation districts supplied by the Central Valley Project. Deep and wide enough to float a destroyer, the 152-mile Friant-Kern carries water down the east side of the San Joaquin Valley from Friant Dam. The 35-mile Madera Canal runs north from the dam. Together, the two federal aqueducts, built in the 1940s, divert virtually the entire flow of the upper San Joaquin River.
Parts of the Friant-Kern have sunk three feet in the past three years. Similar problems arose during the 1977 state drought, when growers ramped up groundwater pumping.
In that case, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spent $60 million on repairs and recouped the cost in water sales to Friant Division irrigators.
Jason Phillips, the water authority’s chief executive officer, said his agency has asked the bureau for repair money but has so far gotten a mere $2 million.
It will cost as much as $450 million to fix the subsidence problems by raising bridges and canal banks, Phillips said. He added that the rest of the grant would be used to improve conveyance systems linked in some way to the two main aqueducts.
The water authority has attributed the subsidence to a jump in groundwater use during the state’s prolonged drought, when federal irrigation deliveries were slashed and Friant growers turned to their wells to keep their crops green.
But land near the Friant-Kern continued to sink an inch a month last year, when the drought was over and project deliveries were plentiful.
“This is not a drought-related phenomenon,” said Michelle Sneed, a land subsidence specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The authority is trying to determine whether groundwater pumping miles from the aqueduct is contributing to the subsidence. “We’ve got to fix the canal but we can’t have it sinking this fast,” Phillips said.
As for why state taxpayers should pick up a big bill to repair facilities that the state doesn’t own, doesn’t use and didn’t damage, he replied, “Does farming in California help you?”
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-proposition-3-20181023-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter
Trump Administration Moves to Increase Water to SJV
The Trump administration pledged to slash the thicket of federal environmental regulations that govern the Delta and much of California’s water supply, aiming to increase water deliveries to his political allies in the San Joaquin Valley.
President Donald Trump signed a memorandum directing his underlings to review a broad swath of water regulations and “eliminate all unnecessary burdens,” the president said during an appearance in Arizona.
Trump’s memo drew quick reaction from California officials, who have fought the Trump administration on multiple fronts and said water supply can co-exist with environmental goals. “We can and must do both, without sacrificing one for the other,” said spokeswoman Lisa Lien-Mager of the Natural Resources Agency. “We hope we can continue working with the federal government to achieve these shared goals.”
The order represents Trump’s latest effort to make good on a campaign promise to bring more water to Valley farmers, who have chafed for years under environmental restrictions that prioritize water for salmon, Delta smelt and other endangered species. In August, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke sent a blunt memo to his aides demanding an action plan to push more water south through the Delta and onto Valley farms.
“What’s happened there is disgraceful,” Trump said of California’s water situation. “They’ve taken it away. There’s so much water, they don’t know what to do with it, they send it out to sea …. They don’t let the water come down into the Valley and into the areas where they need the water.”
Trump was surrounded by five Republican congressmen from the Central Valley: Tom McClintock, Devin Nunes, Jeff Denham, David Valadao and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, whom he credited with bringing the issue to his attention. “They are the ones who really led this drive,” the president said.
Denham, in a press release, said: “My number one priority has always been to deliver more water to the Central Valley. This order will reduce regulatory burdens and promote more efficient environmental reviews of California water storage projects, ensuring that Valley farmers and residents have a supply of water for generations to come.”
The memorandum, among other things, orders the administration to speed up a 2-year-old examination of the rules covering how water is pumped through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — the environmentally fragile hub of California’s elaborate water delivery network.
Trump’s insistence on strict timetables for completing that review suggests he wants to find ways to pump more water to the San Joaquin Valley’s farmers, potentially at the expense of endangered fish species that ply the Delta’s waters. Sometimes the pumps have to be shut off or throttled back, allowing water to flow to the Pacific, in order to keep fish from being sucked into the pumps.
“For the last decade people have done a lot of talking and a lot of examination (of the Delta) and the reality is that the on-the-ground results for people and species have not dramatically improved,” Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told reporters.
Bernhardt is a former lobbyist for Westlands Water District, a Valley irrigation district that has long advocated increased pumping operations. He vowed that the administration would move “in a way that’s protective to species and responsible to people.”
Asked about the timing of the memorandum, just weeks before the midterm election, Bernhardt said, “I think the administration got to a point where they’re ready to make a decision” on water issues.
Farm groups applauded the president’s initiative. “This action is an important and common-sense move that will benefit Western farmers and ranchers,” said Dan Keppen of the Family Farm Alliance.
Environmentalists immediately pounced. Noah Oppenhim of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations said Trump is trying to “gloss over the science” and his initiative would leave endangered fish populations defenseless.
The memorandum also covered environmental regulations covering the Klamath Irrigation Project in Oregon and the Columbia River Basin project in Washington state.
Earlier Friday, it appeared that Trump was stepping into one of the biggest water wars of all — the State Water Resources Board’s plan to re-allocate more of the San Joaquin River watershed’s supplies to fish at the expense of farms and cities, but Friday’s move stopped short of that.
Bernhardt said the Trump administration stands by its earlier threat to sue the state if it goes forward with the plan. But he said the administration also wants “wind through the process in a way that’s amenable to all parties.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/state/california/article220320230.html#storylink=cpy
Washington State Court Ruling May Aid California River Flows for Fish
It might be the most gruesome element of the drought conditions that have gripped the West in recent years: salmon being cooked to death by the thousands in rivers that have become overheated as water flows dwindle.
Now a federal judge in Seattle has directed to Environmental Protection Agency, in a ruling with implications for California and the Pacific Northwest, to find a way to keep river waters cool.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez, ruling in a case filed by environmental and fishermen’s groups, told the agency last week it must develop a plan to keep water temperatures low in the Columbia River and its main tributary, the Snake, to protect multiple varieties of salmon and steelhead that are covered by the Endangered Species Act.
The ruling comes at a tense time. Environmentalists and state officials throughout the West are trying to grasp the implications of a memorandum President Donald Trump signed last week to streamline environmental regulations in order to increase water deliveries to farms and cities in the region.
At the same time, drought-like conditions persist: The federal government’s U.S. Drought Monitor says 48 percent of California is in moderate to severe drought, along with 39 percent of Washington and 36 percent of Idaho. Just a month ago, the U.S. Commerce Department issued a disaster declaration for commercial salmon fishing on the West Coast, making communities that depend on those fisheries eligible for financial assistance.
Martinez’s ruling last week was sparked by an ecological catastrophe in 2015, when an estimated 250,000 sockeye salmon died on the Columbia and Snake because the waters got too warm. In California, more than 95 percent of juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon perished in the Sacramento River in 2014 and 2015 when temperatures spiked during the worst of the drought. The Chinook are protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Attorney Miles Johnson of Columbia Riverkeeper, which spearheaded the Seattle lawsuit, said things haven’t improved much since the 2015 debacle.
“On the Columbia and the Snake we’re in a crisis for water temperature; we’re in danger of losing some of our salmon and steelhead stock,” he said. “Every summer the Columbia and the Snake get too warm for the fish.”
Last week’s ruling doesn’t have legal clout beyond the Pacific Northwest. But environmental lawyers in California said it could still influence crucial court cases and regulatory proceedings over water quality and water temperatures in the state. That includes a closely-watched effort by the State Water Resources Control Board to overhaul the management of the Sacramento River, home to the endangered Chinook salmon. The state’s plan won’t be finalized for several more months.
“It adds urgency to the state water board’s (effort),” said Kate Poole, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. “It’s a similar and ongoing issue here.”
In the Northwest, the problems facing salmon and steelhead are being exacerbated by climate change. The massive fish kills of 2015 represent “a glimpse into the future as we get hotter and drier,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the Northwest’s dams are mainly used to hold back water to generate hydroelectric power. But the reservoirs are generally so shallow that the water heats up quickly if it’s stored too long. “The tension is between maximizing hydro power production and keeping the water cool enough for the fish,” he said.
In California, the tension is between fish and farms.
To keep temperatures in the Sacramento River below 56 degrees — the point at which juvenile salmon start to die — state officials during the drought held back substantial volumes of water behind Shasta Dam, whose reservoir is deep enough to maintain a pool of cold water. Then they released the cold water later in the year, when the fish returned to their spawning grounds just south of the dam. That meant curtailing water deliveries to Central Valley farmers during the height of the growing season, however.
The strategy pleased no one. Farmers fumed but the temperatures shot past 56 degrees anyway. Well more than 90 percent of the juveniles died in 2014 and 2015. For a species with a three-year spawning cycle, that left the salmon potentially headed toward extinction.
Water conditions have improved since then, but so many juveniles were wiped out that the population hasn’t been able to recover. Estimates by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife put the Chinook population in the upper Sacramento at just 1,155 in late 2017, marking a steady decline in recent years.
“They were really hammered two years in a row, 2014 and 2015,” Poole said. “We’ve had really low populations (of adults) coming back to spawn. When we have a good water year, there’s not that many fish in the system.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article220466120.html#storylink=cpy
US Moves to Open Windfarms Off California Coast
California’s aggressive pursuit of an electric grid fully powered by renewable energy sources is heading in a new direction: offshore.
On Friday, the federal Interior Department took the first steps to enable companies to lease waters in Central and Northern California for wind projects. If all goes as the state’s regulators and utilities expect, floating windmills could begin producing power within six years.
Such ambitions were precluded until now because of the depths of the Pacific near its shore, which made it difficult to anchor the huge towers that support massive wind turbines. “They would be in much deeper water than anything that has been built in the world so far,” said Karen Douglas, a member of the California Energy Commission.
Several contenders are expected to enter the bidding, equipped with new technology that has already been tested in Europe.
California’s determination to fully rely on carbon-free electricity by 2045, mandated in a bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in September, is forcing the state to look beyond solar power and land-based wind farms to meet the goal.
“We are early in the process here,” Ms. Douglas said, “but offshore wind has potential to help with our renewable energy goals.”
The potential rewards from offshore wind development are not without potential downsides, however, and will almost certainly not come without conflict. Development along California’s coast has long been a sensitive and highly regulated issue. As has happened elsewhere, there will surely be objections from those who feel their ocean views are being blighted. And the potential impact on birds, fisheries and marine mammals will be closely scrutinized.
California would not be the first place to develop floating wind turbines in the United States. The University of Maine, with $40 million from the Department of Energy, designed its own floating wind platform and produced a test version that it plans to develop as a commercial project to power 8,000 to 14,000 homes by 2021.
But California is a particularly opportune spot for such a project, given the length of its coast and the size of its population. And the coast offers an added advantage: winds over the ocean tend to pick up strength as the sun sets, just when the contribution of solar power is done for the day.
“California has very good offshore wind,” said Walt Musial, a principal engineer and manager of offshore wind efforts at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, part of the Interior Department, identified three areas for leases: a parcel off Humboldt County in Northern California, and two sites in the Morro Bay area on the central coast, near Hearst Castle and Diablo Canyon, the location of the state’s last operating nuclear plant.
Offshore wind projects in California will largely benefit from existing power lines to keep costs down. Several power plants along the coast have closed or will be retired because of pollution and other environmental concerns. And power lines on the state’s western side are less congested than those on the eastern side.
In addition to the federal reviews, the wind projects must be cleared by several state agencies, including the California Coastal Commission for impact on federal and state waters; the California State Lands Commission; and the Department of Fish and Wildlife because of concern about protected species.
It is expected that the wind farms would be about 15 to 30 miles off the coast, making them less visible from land and less of a hazard to seals and migratory birds.
But even at that distance, other marine life could be threatened, including sea birds and whales migrating through the channels. In addition to towers hundreds of feet tall, there would be streams of cables connecting the windmills to the electric grid on shore.
“I would have some questions whether those cables would mean that whales would not use the area the same way as they have,” said Francine Kershaw, a marine mammal scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports wind power, including offshore development. “But collisions with sea birds is probably the major concern.”
Much will depend on the size of the projects. Proposals are expected from the Redwood Coast Energy Authority in Humboldt County, which is seeking developers for 10 to 15 floating wind units that can help it meet the carbon-free mandate.
Redwood Coast, a government-run utility serving 60,000 customers in a mostly rural area, expects to spend about $500 million for the wind farm.
“That level of generation would be a significant chunk of our energy load,” said Matthew Marshall, Redwood Coast’s executive director. “Offshore wind is really the big untapped resource.”
California’s path toward offshore wind development began two years ago when the governor formed a task force with federal and state authorities. Demonstration projects of floating wind turbines off the coast of Norway and Denmark, as well as a small five-turbine farm in Scotland’s waters, encouraged the California efforts.
“Get Out of the Way!” – Fire-Flood Era Roars into Golden State
California is entering what experts call the “fire-flood” era: a formidable one-two punch prompted by warmer temperatures, bigger wildland fires, and more intense winter rain dumps, even in drought years.
Fall fire season sets the table by denuding millions of acres of hillsides and baking the soil surface so that it becomes non-absorbent, or, in scientific terms, hydrophobic. When heavy winter rains hit, the water cannot penetrate the burned soil, and instead rolls downhill in the form of a mud and ash soup, similar to a flash flood, carrying boulders and trees with it.
“We know where things are headed,” climate scientist Daniel Swain of UCLA said. “We are just entering this era, and it is only going to get more interesting from here.”
Debris flows can run for miles, burying highways, ripping up gas lines, destroying homes and taking human life. A quarter-mile of Highway 101 was buried in 12 feet of mud soup that morning. Battered cars and trucks ended up dumped on the beach below town.
California’s wild-land fires were massive and destructive again this summer. SWAT teams from the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection have been busy scouring fire-scarred hillsides across the state in recent weeks and identified areas ripe for fire-flood debris flows should heavy rains hit.
That includes areas on the western edge of Redding and around remote Whiskeytown where the Carr Fire burned in July and August, as well as charred mountain slopes above Interstate 5 north of Redding.
Debris flow conditions can last several years after a fire. Montecito and other Santa Barbara County communities remain at risk, as do areas around Santa Rosa and Napa, where destructive fires hit in 2017.
A debris flow earlier this month during a cloudburst at the Ferguson Fire site near Yosemite forced closure of Highway 140, blocking people from getting in and out of the national park.
In Southern California, where more people live in steep canyons, the risk is more acute, officials say. Riverside County has issued warnings to residents of Trabuco Canyon about debris flow potential from the Holy Fire. The state Office of Emergency Services, Cal Fire and others have sent crews there to do prep work.
The ‘fire-flood” debris flow phenomenon is not new. Hydrologists, geologists and others in government and academia have studied post-fire flash floods for decades and know how fast and deadly they can be. One in 2003 killed 14 people at a church camp in San Bernardino.
Debris flows are sometimes described as mudslides, but the two are not the same. Mudslides occur when a hill becomes saturated and large amounts of subsoil slump and slide. Debris flows take only the top layer of soil with them, and run more like flash floods, moving fast and sweeping up debris.
“A debris flow is a flood on steroids,” said Jason Kean, a United States Geological Survey research hydrologist. “You add rocks, boulders and other objects. That weight, it is lethal. You can’t block it with a sandbag. You can’t outrun a debris flow. You need to get out of the way.”
The January flood storm in Montecito – home to Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Rob Lowe and other celebrities – offered a laboratory-like lesson for emergency operations officials around the western United States.
It started in early December with the Thomas Fire, then the biggest wildfire in state history, which burned for more than a month, prompting more than 100,000 evacuations and destroying 1,000 buildings along miles of coastal mountains.
As emotionally exhausted residents returned to their homes post-fire, county and state officials were meeting in war rooms with their eyes on upcoming January storms. In December, county crews cleared out drainage basins to ready them for the flash floods.
Thirty hours before the rainstorm hit, Santa Barbara emergency operations officials issued an evacuation notice to hillside residents.
County emergency management director Rob Lewin said his team suspected the debris flows would follow creeks and watersheds, but didn’t know how far they would spread. So they drew a line across the hill in the middle of town along East Valley Road. Uphill from that line, evacuations were mandatory. Downhill, they issued a voluntary evacuation warning.
The storm turned out to be huge, at one point dumping more than a half-inch of water in five minutes on the fire-baked hillsides. Officials estimated that some flows racing through neighborhoods may have been 25 miles per hour and tall enough to engulf vehicles.
Lewin was taken aback by their reach and ferocity. “We knew we were going to have debris flows,” he said. “We never anticipated it would be to the degree it was.”
With fires, “you can smell the smoke, see the flames, you understand what a fire can do. But in public responses, they didn’t know that mud can kill,” said Mark Jackson of the National Weather Service.
Officials now are debating whether better warnings can be issued in the future, based on more precise analysis of where flows might run and how big they will be.
The U.S. Geological Survey annually publishes maps that show which fire-scarred hillsides they and state officials believe are at risk for debris flows. The problem, the USGS’ Jason Kean said, is “our maps show where the debris flows (might) begin, not where they go. That is a tool we don’t have yet. That is something that clearly needs to get done.”
UC Berkeley geologist Bill Dietrich contends the techniques are available to accomplish that, using lidar, a combination of laser and radar, to analyze topography. He said officials need to commit to using the technology more widely now.
“The Montecito case is a prime example of a failure to tell where things will go,” he said. Dietrich drove through Montecito the day officials reopened the muddied roads. The flow routes were predictable, he said.
After the Jan. 9 flood, state officials did step in and assemble maps, as Dietrich suggests, that show better guesses of where flows might run. Similar work is being done at the Holy Fire site in Riverside County.
Santa Barbara County now faces another high-risk winter. County emergency chief Lewin has begun holding public meetings with the message to be alert and prepared. Have a plan. Heed instructions. And go when told to.
An early October rainstorm “triggered a lot of emotions” on the hillside, he said. “We know the community has a level of trauma.”
Jackson of the National Weather Service also has been giving presentations about debris flows. In those talks, he warns that what happened in Santa Barbara County last January is not a solo event.
“There are other Montecitos around California.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/weather/article219881260.html#storylink=cpy
California Jobs Exported to China
California has lost more jobs to China than any other state since 2001, fueled by Silicon Valley outsourcing and the continued shrinking of Southern California’s apparel industry, according to a report released Tuesday by a Washington, D.C., think tank.
Some 562,500 jobs were displaced in the Golden State, the equivalent of a 3.34% share of California’s total employment of 16.8 million jobs in 2017, the Economic Policy Institute concluded.
In the U.S. overall, 3.4 million manufacturing jobs were lost since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, according to the report, which reached its conclusions by subtracting job opportunities lost to imports from those gained by exports.
“The U.S.-China trade relationship needs to undergo a fundamental change,” according to the institute, which is affiliated with labor-union critics of unfettered globalization. “Addressing unfair trade, weak labor, and environmental standards in China, and ending currency manipulation and misalignment, should be our top trade and economic priorities.
The report, titled “The China Toll Deepens,” comes as President Trump’s trade war with China continues to escalate.
He has accused the Asian nation of unfair trade practices and slapped tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods, roughly half of what China sells to the U.S. each year. He also has threatened to launch a third round of tariffs on $267 billion in Chinese imports if a new trade deal is not reached.
The report describes how the composition of Chinese imports has fundamentally changed.
Most striking was the huge displacement in computer and electronic parts employment, according to the report, which found a net of 1,209,900 U.S. jobs eliminated, 36% of the total losses in manufacturing. In California, the Silicon Valley-based industry accounted for 56% of all jobs displaced by China trade.
“Since it entered the WTO in 2001, China has moved rapidly upscale, from low-tech, low-skilled, labor-intensive industries such as apparel, footwear, and basic electronics to more capital- and skills-intensive industries such as computers, electrical machinery, and motor vehicle parts,” it noted.
The result: a loss of high-skill, high-wage jobs, stagnating wages and widening U.S. inequality, the report asserted, adding that many of the industries absorbing displaced workers are in sectors such as retail and home healthcare, which pay less with fewer benefits.
Economist Robert Scott, coauthor of the report, said that his analysis should not be read as bolstering the case for Trump’s policies, which he said are “at best ineffectual and likely to make the trade deficit worse, not better.”
Republican-supported tax cuts and spending increases, Scott added, will turbocharge the U.S. budget deficit with “a sugar-high that pushes up interest rates, attracting capital from abroad and strengthening the dollar. The rising dollar will make Chinese imports cheaper.”
“Hitting China with 25% tariffs is not the solution,” he said.
The report notes that the U.S. goods trade deficit with China grew from $83 billion in 2001 to $375 billion in 2017. Scott said that since 2001 “virtually all of the growth in the U.S.’ global deficit of $807 billion last year is due to the growth of trade deficits with China.”
China’s exports to the U.S. in 2017 were nearly four times greater than U.S. exports to China.
However, Los Angeles economist Sung Won Sohn, an expert on Pacific Rim trade, said that even as much of California’s computer and electronics hardware manufacturing moved to Asia, “a lot of software jobs were created in Silicon Valley, and a lot of the hardware we import from China and Korea uses software manufactured in the U.S.”
Sohn cautioned that the numbers in the institute report may be “overstated,” but he added, “the conclusions are correct: We are losing jobs as a result of the huge trade deficit, and I blame much of it on unfair trade practices by China.”
The 2001-17 China trade deficit has led to job displacement in every state and congressional district, the report noted. After California, the states with the highest losses were Texas (314,000) New York (183,500), Illinois (148,200) and Pennsylvania (136,100).
Of the top 10 congressional districts with the highest share of job displacement, five were in California and the top three were in Silicon Valley, including the 17thCongressional District. That district — ranging across Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Santa Clara, Fremont, Newark, North San Jose and Milpitas — lost 59,500 jobs, or 17.2% of its overall employment, the report asserted.
In Southern California, San Diego County’s 52nd Congressional District lost 16,900 jobs, 4.8% of its total, and Orange County’s 45th Congressional District lost 16,100 jobs, 4.5% of its total, according to the report.
The researchers also found that between 2001 and 2011 the growing trade deficits with China reduced the incomes of “directly impacted” U.S. workers by $37 billion per year. And in 2011 alone, competition with imports from China and other low wage-countries reduced the wages of all U.S. non-college graduates by $180 billion per year.
“Most of that income was redistributed to corporations in higher profits, and to workers with college degrees in the very top of the income distribution in higher wages,” the report said.
The institute’s research, which has tracked China trade for two decades, was sharply disputed by the US-China Business Council, a trade association for American corporations doing business in China.
The group acknowledged that “some workers … do lose their jobs to lower-cost imports,” but characterized the study as “based on the faulty assumption that every product imported from China would have been made in the U.S. otherwise.
“Much of what we import from China replaces imports from other countries, not products we make in the U.S. today,” the group said in a statement. “Think about the television in your home. The label on the back probably says ‘Made in China.’ Fifteen years ago the label likely would have said ‘Made in Japan’ — but it was still an import.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-china-trade-20181023-story.html
Prop. 13 – Saving or Spoiling California Dream?
It was within reach. That was the lure of the California dream.
“The highest possible life for the middle classes,” is how the late historian Kevin Starr described the promise of the Golden State.
By the mid-1970s that dream was in peril. Housing prices and property taxes spiked. Homeowners worried they wouldn’t be able pay their bills. In 1978, voters backed Proposition 13. At its core, it was a vote to preserve the California dream of owning and keeping a home.
Forty years later, that election continues to shape the state.
Prop. 13 changed the formula for funding schools, libraries and other public programs. It influenced the building of houses and commercial properties. To this day, Prop. 13 plays an outsized role in who can afford to live here and what it costs to own a home.
So did Prop. 13 save the California dream or spoil it? To answer this question, we focused on a single block in a middle-class neighborhood in North Oakland.
That’s where we found stories you could hear on almost any block, almost anywhere in the state.
Access the stories:
In-N-Out Turns 70: “Perfectly Designed Protein Delivery System”
The late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain called In-N-Out Burger’s Double-Double a “perfectly designed protein delivery system.”
The ground-breaking fast food chain is also a delivery system for the California dream.
That could explain why In-N-Out has achieved cult status.
The fast food chain celebrates its 70th anniversary on Monday, Oct. 22. The first location, a tiny stand, opened its doors in Baldwin Park on Oct. 22, 1948.
In-N-Out will mark the occasion by releasing its 2019 T-shirt in restaurants on Monday, according to Denny Warnick, vice president of operations. And an official party will take place Nov. 17 at the Fairplex in Pomona in partnership with Hot Rod Magazine.
In-N-Out grew at the same time as Southern California’s freeway system and suburbs and, as “California’s first drive-thru,” is a part of California’s car culture.
In-N-Out is owned by the descendants of its founders, Harry and Esther Snyder, does not franchise and maintains a strategy of slow, deliberate growth. Its current president, Lynsi Synder, recently told Forbes she doesn’t foresee opening restaurants east of Texas.
It has 334 restaurants in six states, fewer than one for every 100 of the 36,000-plus McDonald’s locations worldwide. Yet it punches above its weight and has an international reputation. In its early years, it actually beat McDonald’s with some of its innovations, such as drive-thru speaker systems.
Here are some of the highlights of In-N-Out’s 70 years.
Origins
- Founder Harry Snyder (1913-1976) graduated from Venice High School in 1932. In the late ’70s, the musical “Grease” was shot at his alma mater, according to venicehighalumni.com.
- Harry’s wife Esther (1920-2006) got a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Seattle Pacific University in 1947. The couple married in 1948 and moved to Baldwin Park.
- Baldwin Park was a farm community with fields, dairies, chicken and turkey farms when the Snyders moved there.
- The newlyweds lived near a restaurant called Johnny No-Bone Steakhouse. It inspired Snyder with its short, simple menu, according to Stacy Perman, author of “In-N-Out Burger.”
- In-N-Out was one of California’s first drive-thru restaurants, if not the first. It is often claimed that Red’s Giant Hamburg in Springfield, Mo., was the world’s first drive-thru restaurant. It opened in 1947.
- In-N-Out’s innovation was two-way speakers. Harry Snyder built his own system in his garage to better take orders from cars going through the drive-thru, according to a timeline on In-N-Out’s website.
- The opening day menu consisted of hamburgers, 25 cents; cheeseburgers, 30 cents; fries, 15 cents; and bottled soft drinks, 10 cents.
- October 1948 is also the month that Richard and Maurice McDonald shut down the original San Bernardino McDonald’s drive-in to streamline their operation and their menu. When they reopened weeks later, they were serving little more than burgers and shakes, much like In-N-Out. That transformation set the stage for McDonald’s’ future as a fast food giant.
- Construction of the I-10 Freeway forced the Snyders to close their original stand in 1954 and rebuild nearby.
- A replica of the original In-N-Out stands at 13766 Francisquito Ave., Baldwin Park, near the footprint of the first building. The public can visit it 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.
In-N-Out today
- In-N-Out’s corporate headquarters have been in Irvine since the early 1990s, but it still has a large presence on Francisquito Avenue in Baldwin Park, including a flagship restaurant, an employee training facility called In-N-Out University, a company store selling T-shirts and other merchandise, and the 1948 replica stand.
- Two-lane drive-thrus with limited outdoor seating were the standard for In-N-Out restaurants until the chain opened its first dining room in Ontario in 1979. Nearly all stores built since then have dining rooms.
- Drive-thru customers receive “lap mats” (same as place mats) if they tell their servers they want to enjoy their food in their cars. Harry Snyder started the practice.
- Current president Lynsi Snyder, Harry and Esther’s granddaughter, was added to the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans with a net worth of $3 billion. At 36, she is the youngest woman on the list
- In-N-Out has grown from strictly serving Los Angeles County to 334 stores in six states: California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas and Oregon. The newest restaurant opened days ago in Las Vegas.
- Its seventh state will be Colorado, but not until at least 2020.
- Los Angeles County has the most In-N-Out restaurants, 74, with one planned for Monterey Park. The Inland Empire follows with 33, with two planned in Upland and Eastvale. Orange County has 26, with one planned for Rancho Mission Viejo.
- For hardcore fans, In-N-Out has a printable Road Trip Location Guide. You can check off restaurants as you visit them.
- Customers can book Cookout Trailers for large parties, weddings and corporate events four to six months in advance. The vehicles are self-contained units with In-N-Out associates serving burgers, soft drinks and chips. The trucks can’t make fries or shakes. Service is available in Los Angeles and Orange counties, and parts of the Inland Empire and Ventura County. In-N-Out has a cost calculator on its website that shows a four-hour party for 200 people in California would cost $2,728.70.
- You can download the In-N-Out theme song for free on the chain’s website.
The menu
- In-N-Out takes pride in fresh ingredients, boasting on its website that it has no heat lamps, microwaves or freezers in its kitchens.
- Milkshakes are made with real ice cream but come from soft serve machines
- Beef comes from three facilities in Baldwin Park; Lathrop, south of Stockton; and Dallas.
- In Southern California, In-N-Out’s sponge-dough buns are supplied by Puritan Bakery in Carson.
- In June, In-N-Out closed all of its Texas locations for two days because of sub-standard buns, creating a flurry of news headlines. “Breadgate,” as El Paso station KFOX called it, affected other chains as well, including Raising Cane’s. The problem was said to be an “unbalance in the yeast” by an unnamed supplier.
- The Thousand Island-like dressing that comes on burgers is called spread, not sauce.
- French fries are made with Kennebec potatoes, a variety that was developed in Maine and released in 1948, the same year In-N-Out opened. Potatoes are sliced in-store with potato cutters and fried in sunflower oil.
- The Double-Double — two meat patties and two cheese slices — wasn’t added to the menu until 1963, when it cost 60 cents.
- In late 2017, In-N-Out started serving Ghirardelli hot cocoa, its first menu addition since it started serving lemonade 15 years earlier.
- Burgers and fries make a big dent in a person’s 2,000 calorie diet. A hamburger with no cheese and fries contain 785 calories. A Double-Double and fries contain 1,065 calories.
- Spread accounts for about 80 calories and 9 grams of fat in a burger.
More: