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IN THIS ISSUE – “I Had Hoped We Would Be Able to Land the Plane”
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
- Legislative Redistricting Panel Struggles to Meet 12/27 Deadline
- Golden State No Longer a Destination
- San Francisco “Just Doesn’t Feel the Same Anymore”
- Port Congestion Hits Another Record As Ship Traffic Lessens
WATER & POWER
- CA Water Commission Tentatively Approves New Storage…After 7 Years
- 3 Western States Agree to Slow Colorado River Water Use
- Carbon Capture or Carbon Removal? Dispute Slows Emissions Management
- Rooftop Solar Subsidies May Be Greatly Reduced, Squabble Ensues
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 service.
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FOR THE WEEK ENDING DEC. 17, 2021
Legislative Redistricting Panel Struggles to Meet 12/27 Deadline
CalMatters
California’s independent redistricting commission is less than two weeks away from its deadline to finalize the state’s new congressional and legislative boundaries for the next decade. And, in a sign of just how grueling — and divisive — the work is, the commission decided to keep revising its proposed congressional maps instead of wrapping them up this week, CalMatters’ Sameea Kamal reports.
- Ray Kennedy, a San Bernardino County Democrat and international elections observer presiding over commission sessions this week:“I had hoped that we would be able to land the plane. We were not in the end. We still have some outstanding issues.”
The contentious process has increased public scrutiny, with some political observers arguing that requiring a panel with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans isn’t representative of a state where the GOP is outnumbered nearly two to one among registered voters.
Golden State No Longer a Destination
Sacramento Bee
California is still losing population to domestic migration, because fewer people than usual are moving in from other parts of the United States. “Every single county has seen fewer people moving in from out of state since the start of the pandemic,” said the nonpartisan California Policy Lab.
It found the number of people moving to California from other states is down 38% since the spring of 2020, when the pandemic ravaged the economy and forced often-radical changes in lifestyles.
At the same time, the number of Californians leaving the state went up 12% since March 2020. That increase, over a period of 18 months, was roughly in line with the rate of departure before the pandemic.
California’s population last year was 39.5 million, up 6.1% from 2010, slower growth than the state saw in the previous decade. As a result, the state will lose a congressional seat this decade for the first time in its history. The population in the middle of the state grew, but the population in areas around Los Angeles and near the Oregon border have gone down, the Census Bureau said.
The new Policy Lab study found that in Sacramento County, the number of people leaving for other states was up 13.2%, while the percentage number moving in from other states dropped 33%.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article256589561.html#storylink=cpy
CA Water Commission Tentatively Approves New Storage, After 7 Years
Associated Press
Amid a severe drought and after 7 years of deliberation, California regulators on Wednesday advanced what could be the state’s first major new water storage project in years despite warnings it would hasten the extinction of an endangered salmon species while disrupting the cultural traditions of some native tribes.
The plan is to build a new lake in Northern California that, when full, could hold enough water to supply 3 million households for one year. Supporters need about $4 billion to build it.
Wednesday’s vote by the California Water Commission means the lake — named Sites Reservoir — is eligible for about $800 million in taxpayer money, or about 20% of the project’s price tag.
The vote is a major milestone for the reservoir, one of seven water storage projects now eligible to receive public money from a 2014 voter-approved bond. But environmental groups complained it was too early for regulators to say the project was feasible, especially since it hasn’t completed multiple environmental reviews required by state and federal law.
They argue the project would pull even more water from the state’s rivers, which are already so depleted that fish hatcheries must send fish downstream by truck to give them a chance to survive.
“Simply put, we have to stop permitting projects and financing projects that worsen this condition,” said Barry Nelson, a policy consultant with the Golden State Salmon Association.
But the climate-change-fueled drought gripping the Western United States is so severe that many of California’s 1,500 reservoirs are at historic lows. Things are so bad that, earlier this month, state officials told water agencies they wouldn’t get any water from the reservoirs heading into the new year.
“The Sites Reservoir project is not going to solve all of our problems,” said Jerry Brown, executive director of the Sites Reservoir Authority, and who is not related to the former California governor with the same name. “If we do absolutely nothing, I can guarantee you things will get worse.”
California’s reservoirs are a crucial source of drinking water for the state’s nearly 40 million residents, help maintain necessary flows in rivers for fish, and irrigate California’s robust agricultural industry that grows a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts.
Severe droughts have strained the state’s supply and renewed calls for more ways to capture and store water from the state’s major rivers and streams instead of letting it flow to the ocean.
But just because California builds a new reservoir does not mean the state will have enough water to fill it. Most major reservoirs are connected to rivers and rely on gravity to fill them with water from snowmelt in the mountains. The Sites Reservoir would not connect to any river. Instead, the project must pump water from the nearby Sacramento River.
The idea is to only take water from the river when it has extra to give, such as during large storms like the one that set a single-day record for rain in Sacramento in October. But some tribal groups say that doesn’t make sense because all water in the rivers has a significant purpose.
“I think our history shows that we do listen,” he said. “We are open to others’ input and we will take that into consideration and carefully review what is put before us to ensure that what we ultimately decide on is something that’s good for all of California.”
San Francisco “Just Doesn’t Feel the Same Anymore”
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Caitlin Foster fell in love with San Francisco’s people and beauty and moved to the city a dozen years ago. But after repeatedly clearing away used needles, other drug paraphernalia and human feces outside the bar she manages, and too many encounters with armed people in crisis, her affection for the city has soured.
“It was a goal to live here, but now I’m here and I’m like, ‘Where am I going to move to now?’ I’m over it,’” said Foster, who manages Noir Lounge in the trendy Hayes Valley neighborhood.
A series of headline-grabbing crime stories — mobs of people smashing windows and grabbing luxury purses in the downtown Union Square shopping district and daytime shootings in the touristy Haight-Ashbury — has only exacerbated a general feeling of vulnerability. Residents wake up to news of attacks on Asian American seniors, burglarized restaurants, and boarded-up storefronts in the city’s once-vibrant downtown.
But the frustration felt by Foster, who moved from Seattle in search of more sunshine, is growing among residents who now see a city in decline. There are signs that the city famous for its tolerance is losing patience.
The pandemic emptied parts of San Francisco and highlighted some of its drawbacks: human and dog feces smeared across sidewalks, home and vehicle break-ins, overflowing trash cans, and a laissez-faire approach by officials to brazen drug dealing. Parents despaired as public schools stayed closed for most of last year as nearby districts welcomed children back to the classroom.
Meanwhile, residents and visitors scurry past scenes of lawlessness and squalor. Just steps from the Opera House and Symphony Hall, drug dealers carry translucent bags filled with crystal-like rocks or stand outside the public library’s main branch, flashing wads of cash while peddling heroin and methamphetamine.
“There’s a widespread sense that things are on the wrong track in San Francisco,” said Patrick Wolff, 53, a retired professional chess player from the Boston area who has lived in the city since 2005.
In a sign of civic frustration, San Franciscans will vote in June on whether to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a former public defender elected in 2019 whose critics say he’s too lenient on crime. His supporters say there’s no crime surge, and that corporate wage theft is a more pressing issue than cases like that of a San Francisco woman finally arrested after stealing more than $40,000 in goods from a Target over 120 visits. She was released by a judge and arrested again on suspicion of shoplifting after she failed to show up to get her court-ordered ankle monitor.
“Where’s the progress? If you say you’re progressive, let’s get the homeless off the street, and let’s get them mental health care,” said Brian Cassanego, a San Francisco native who owns the lounge where Foster works. He moved to wine country five months ago, tired of seeing dealers sell drugs with impunity and worrying about his wife being alone outside at night.
The day before he moved, Cassanego stepped out to walk his dogs and saw a man who “looked like a zombie,” with his pants down to his knees and bleeding from where a syringe was stuck on his hip. A woman cried out nearby in shock.
“I went upstairs, and I told my wife, ‘We’re leaving now! This city is done!’” he said.
Reports of larceny theft — shoplifting from a person or business — are up nearly 17% to more than 28,000 from the same time last year. They remain lower than the more than 40,000 larceny theft cases reported in 2019. Requests to clean dirty streets and sidewalks are the majority of calls to 311, the city’s services line.
Overall, though, crime has been trending down for years. More than 45,000 incidents have been reported so far this year, up from last year when most people were shut indoors, but below the roughly 60,000 complaints in previous years.
San Francisco’s well-publicized problems have served as fodder for conservative media outlets. Former President Donald Trump jumped in again recently, releasing a statement saying the National Guard should be sent to San Francisco to deter smash-and-grab robberies.
Elected officials say they’re grappling with deep societal pains common to any large U.S. city.
A high percentage of an estimated 8,000 homeless people in San Francisco are struggling with chronic addiction or severe mental illness, usually both. Some people rant in the streets, nude and in need of medical help. Last year, 712 people died of drug overdoses, compared with 257 people who died of COVID-19.
LeAnn Corpus, an administrative assistant who enjoys figure skating, avoids the downtown rinks and won’t take her 8-year-old son there after dark because of all the open drug use. Still, the city’s urban ills have crept into her Portola neighborhood far from downtown.
A homeless man set up a makeshift tent outside her home using a bike and a bed sheet, and relieved himself on the sidewalk. She called the police, who came after two hours and cleared him out, but at her aunt’s home, a homeless person camped out against the backyard for six months despite attempts to get authorities to remove him.
“This city just doesn’t feel the same anymore,” said Corpus, a third-generation native.
San Francisco residents who are generally uncomfortable with government surveillance have installed security cameras and deadbolts to prevent break-ins, and they have started eyeing outsiders with suspicion.
The other night, Joya Pramanik’s husband spotted someone wearing a ski mask on what was an otherwise warm evening on their quiet street. She worried the masked man was up to no good — and it pains her to say that, since what she loves about San Francisco is its easy embrace of all types of characters.
Pramanik, a project manager who moved to the U.S. from India in her teens, cheered Trump’s failed reelection bid but says she realized too late that Democratic activists have hijacked her city.
“If I say I want laws enforced, I’m racist,” she said. “I’m like, ‘No, I’m not racist. There’s a reason I live in San Francisco.’”
Last year, Wolff, the retired chess player, helped launch a new political organization that aims to elect local officials focused on solving pressing problems. Families for San Francisco will elect Democrats, but it’s organized outside the city’s powerful Democratic Party establishment, he said.
Wolff hopes to change a civic mindset that no longer expects much in the way of basic public services.
In hip Hayes Valley, for example, business owners tired of seeing garbage strewn about and the city not doing anything to address the issue banded together to lease enclosed trash cans from a private company, said Jennifer Laska, president of the neighborhood association. After the lease expired, the association managed to get the city to agree to buy and install new public garbage cans designed to keep trash in and pilferers out.
That was four months ago.
“We’re still struggling just to get the trash cans actually purchased,” Laska said.
In the Marina, a wealthy neighborhood with stunning views of the bay and Golden Gate Bridge, dozens of residents recently hired private security after an increase in auto burglaries.
Lloyd Silverstein, a San Francisco native and president of the Hayes Valley Merchants Association, said businesses are considering hiring security guards and installing high-definition security cameras. He rejects the idea that any one city official is to blame for the situation, and he’s optimistic the city will recover.
“We have been through big earthquakes and depressions and lots of stuff, but we have a pretty good bounce-back attitude. We’ve got some problems, but we’ll fix them,” he said. “It may just take some time.”
Port Congestion Hits Another Record As Ship Traffic Lessens
Wall Street Journal excerpt
Container imports at the largest U.S. gateway for seaborne goods trade fell sharply in November, even as backups of ships waiting to unload cargo at the Southern California ports have been growing.
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together handled the equivalent of 765,963 loaded inbound containers last month, the lightest traffic since June 2020. The import volume was down 9.6% from a year ago and off 10.1% from October.
Gene Seroka, the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, on Wednesday attributed the decline to an influx of smaller ships that have been dispatched by retailers, manufacturers and logistics companies as they scramble to get around bottlenecks and satisfy consumer demand.
Mr. Seroka said smaller ships, which are less efficient for the ports to handle than larger vessels, made up about half the ships that called at the Los Angeles port in November. By comparison, smaller ships made up about one-third of vessel calls in October, he said.
Port officials say that despite the November decline in imports, the neighboring ports remain on track to handle record import volumes for the year, surpassing 10 million boxes, in 20-foot equivalent units, a standard industry measure.
The influx of smaller ships follows a trend this year of ocean carriers pressing smaller vessels into service on lucrative trade lanes from Asia to the U.S. West Coast and of big-box retailers chartering ships, as companies rush to restock inventories in time for the holidays.
The import slowdown has also coincided with a growing backlog of vessels waiting to enter the ports. The backup reached a record 101 container ships on Monday, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California.
3 Western States Agree to Slow Colorado River Water Use
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — Water leaders in Arizona, Nevada and California signed an agreement Wednesday to voluntarily reduce their take from the Colorado River to help stave off mandatory cuts in the upcoming years.
The signing took place at the Colorado River Water Users Association annual meeting in Las Vegas, amid urgency to negotiate new rules for managing the dwindling river — which serves 40 million people — beyond 2026, when current guidelines and an overlapping drought plan expire.
The newest agreement, known as the “500+ Plan,” requires the states to cut 500,000 acre-feet in 2022 and 2023, or enough to serve 1 million to 1.5 million households annually, depending on water usage and conservation in the area. It also requires financial investment from the states – $40 million from Arizon, and $20 million each from Nevada, California and the central Arizona Project, which operates a canal system that delivers Colorado River water in Arizona. The federal government would match the funding, for a total of $200 million.
The money would fund water efficiency projects and programs to reduce usage throughout Arizona, Nevada and California, which are in the river’s lower basin.
The Interior Department joined the states and other water users in making the announcement.
The stop-gap measure upstaged what water managers had hoped to be the focus of the Las Vegas gathering — the start of negotiations for the next plan. That will have to wait, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton told attendees over video conference.
“We need to focus on near-term operational challenges,” she said.
Exactly how much water each state will contribute under the 500+ Plan is still being negotiated. The three states’ share of Colorado River water is delivered through the country’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead. The lake fell below 1,075 feet (327 meters) above sea level this year, triggering mandatory cuts for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico in 2022.
The states had volunteered to cut back on water before that threshold hit under a 2019 drought contingency plan.
Arizona relied heavily on compensated water contributions from the Colorado River Indian Tribes and the Gila River Indian Community to fulfill its obligations under the drought plan. It’s expected to do the same for the 500+ Plan.
“The reservoir is so low now that everyone realizes that they are vulnerable,” said Ted Cooke, general manager of the Central Arizona Project.
As a junior water rights holder, Arizona takes the biggest hit during any federal shortage declarations for the lower basin. Cooke said there won’t be time for a do-over if Arizona takes all the reductions.
“It’ll be too late,” he said.
Less water flowing through Hoover Dam, which holds back Lake Mead, also reduces power generation that serves 1.3 million people in three states. The dam now is running at 75% capacity. If Lake Mead falls below 950 feet (289 meters), the dam’s turbines would stop running altogether.
Lake Mead, which straddles the Nevada-Arizona line, was at 1,065 feet (324 meters) on Wednesday.
For California, which receives more than half the hydropower, the new deal is particularly urgent, said Adel Hagekhalil, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
“As levels drop at Lake Mead, it’s basically strangling everything,” Hagekhalil said.
Ultimately, Mother Nature is in charge, said Kathryn Sorensen, research director at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.
“It’s all based on modeling that may or may not be correct,” Sorensen said. “Whether even the 500+ Plan is enough, I just don’t think people know.”
Next year marks 100 years since the creation of the compact that apportioned the river’s water among seven Western states during an unseasonably wet era. Mexico was included later. Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah are in the upper basin.
In the years since, federally subsidized water projects allowed cities and farms to balloon. As scientists say climate change is making the West warmer and more arid, far less water is available in the system to meet demands of all users.
Carbon Capture or Carbon Removal? Dispute Slows Emissions Management
Grist
In the past few years, many states have passed new laws requiring that they achieve “net-zero” emissions by mid-century. Virginia, New York, Washington, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island all plan to cut emissions across their economies by 80 to 90 percent by 2050, and to offset any remaining emissions using their nature based solutions known as carbon sinks, like trees and soils, or technology to suck carbon out of the air. Several more states, including Oregon, Colorado, and Minnesota, have legally binding targets to reduce their emissions by at least 75 percent by 2050. Many of these laws were passed in response to a landmark report released by an international group of scientists in 2018. The report found that the whole world needed to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 in order to fulfill the Paris Agreement’s promise of trying to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
The planet will not stop heating up until net-zero emissions is achieved.
But although California passed some of the first and strongest laws to tackle climate change in the nation, its legally mandated economy-wide emissions goals stop at 2030.
“We like to talk about how we’re leading the nation in the fight against climate change,” State Assembly Member Al Muratsuchi told Grist. “But increasingly we’re falling behind.”
This past legislative session, Muratsuchi introduced A.B. 1395, a bill that would have brought the state up to speed by enshrining in law a goal to achieve net-zero by 2045.
Muratsuchi and his coauthor, Assembly Member Cristina Garcia, worked hard to appeal to diverse constituents by including provisions they thought would serve fossil fuel workers and frontline communities alike. But the bill failed to pass muster with either group and ultimately died on the Senate floor.
The story behind A.B. 1395 highlights one of the biggest areas of tension in the politics of climate change around the world right now: disagreement over the need for carbon capture and carbon removal.
Carbon capture systems can be installed in the smokestacks of power plants and industrial facilities to trap carbon dioxide before it reaches the atmosphere. Carbon removal refers to solutions that siphon carbon dioxide that has already been emitted out of the air, whether by planting trees, or building giant fans that literally suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, known as direct air capture machines.
That landmark 2018 report, and many studies since, have concluded that both carbon capture and carbon removal will be needed to stabilize the climate. But a large contingent of the climate and environmental movement, including researchers, justice advocates, and policy experts, reject these solutions due to concerns about locking in dependence on fossil fuels, further burdening communities with pollution, and wasting time and resources on plans that may never pay off.
As seen in California, the debate threatens to slow climate action at a time when it’s becoming increasingly urgent.
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Rooftop Solar Subsidies May Be Greatly Reduced; Squabble Ensues
NY Times
California regulators on Monday proposed requiring people with rooftop solar panels to pay more of the costs of operating the electric grid, a plan that some supporters of clean energy argued could greatly reduce the incentive for new residential installations.
The proposal from the California Public Utilities Commission would impose higher utility fees on people who install solar panels on their homes and, over time, homeowners who already had them. The impact could be significant because about 1.2 million California homes have solar panels, more than in any other state, and the state’s approach is often copied by regulators elsewhere.
Electric utilities and solar installers have long fought about how much money homeowners have to pay to connect to the grid and how much they can expect to earn as credits from the electricity that their rooftop panels produce and send to the grid. California and many other states typically allow those customers to earn credits equivalent to the retail electricity rates. These credits can lower utility bills, sometimes even to zero dollars.
Utilities like Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s largest, have argued that this credit system, known as net metering, is not fair to people without solar panels who are left to bear the cost of operating the grid. Solar installers argue that the system fairly compensates homeowners and encourages greater use of renewable energy.
In their new proposal, California’s utility regulators seemed to suggest that they agreed with the utility view and said that its current net-metering approach “negatively impacts nonparticipating customers; is not cost-effective; and disproportionately harms low-income ratepayers.”
The state’s utilities, which called for significant changes to the rooftop solar policies, welcomed the proposal. It will now be subject to public comments and a final vote by the utilities commission, expected on Jan. 27.
“Sensible reform is necessary to support customer equity and help continue California’s success toward a clean energy future,” PG&E said in a statement.
The proposal angered the solar industry, which said the higher fees proposed by the commission were excessive. The California Solar and Storage Association said the average home with solar panels would see its monthly energy costs jump by more than 50 percent under the commission’s plan.
The association said the average solar customer in the areas served by PG&E currently pays about $133 a month toward the cost of their system and for the energy they use from the grid. The proposed decision would increase that to roughly $215.
“This is a proposal to kill rooftop solar overnight,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the state solar association. “It’s a disaster.”
Sean Gallagher, vice president for state and regulatory affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association, a national trade group, said his organization had proposed less drastic steps to balance any disparity that may exist between people with solar systems and those without. He said the proposed rates were so high that California would go from being a leading promoter of solar energy to charging people with panels more in fees than any other state.
“The rate is higher than anywhere else in the country,” Mr. Gallagher said. “It’s higher than Alabama, which previously had the highest installed capacity fee. This is very much what the utilities were looking for.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/business/energy-environment/california-solar-roof-incentive.html