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IN THIS ISSUE – “The State Capitol Is In Turmoil”

LEGISLATURE & GOVERNOR & 2022

WATER & POWER

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.

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

FOR THE WEEK ENDING DEC. 3, 2021

 

Capitol Turmoil As Lawmakers Shuffle Seats; Move to a New Building

Politico California Playbook, Sacramento Bee & Capitol Weekly

The California State Capitol is in turmoil. Not only are Newsom and state lawmakers relocating to a new building ahead of the planned demolition and reconstruction of their current offices, but the makeup of the Legislature is in flux as district boundaries are redrawn and legislators run up against term limits and vie for leadership positions.

Several state lawmakers — including Democratic Assemblymembers Kevin Mullin of San Mateo County and Rudy Salas of Bakersfield — have already announced plans to run for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, freeing up spots in the state Legislature.

And several new developments added to the political musical chairs:

  • Newsom nominated Asm. Ed Chau, a Monterey Park Democrat, asa Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. I first reported in January that Newsom was considering tapping Chau for the judgeship — a rare move given that in the past 50 years, only six state legislators have resigned after being appointed as judges.
  • State Sen. Sydney Kamlager, a Los Angeles Democrat,filed paperworkto run for the House seat being vacated by Rep. Karen Bass, who’s running for mayor of Los Angeles. The move comes not long after Kamlager, a former assemblymember, won a special election for the state Senate seat vacated by Holly Mitchell, who’s now a Los Angeles County supervisor.
  • Asm. Jim Frazier announced his early retirement.

Meanwhile, murmurs about Speaker Anthony Rendon’s future crescendoed after he stripped Asm. Evan Low of a coveted chairmanship, instead installing Asm. Marc Berman atop the Business and Professions Committee.

We asked why Low was removed as chair of the committee, considering his fundraising chops and clear fit for the post.

“As is his practice, the Speaker makes periodic changes to committee chairs,” a spokesperson responded.

Half a dozen credible Capitol sources quickly reached out with another story.

As anyone who’s been in Rendon’s shoes will tell you, not everyone likes the person in power.

Leadership is, at times, the worst job in the building. You have to manage caucus infighting, and maneuver legislative and budget negotiations while working with the Senate and governor’s office. It’s hard!

But the last two years have been extraordinary. Frustration over the Assembly’s COVID protocol, considered less rigorous than the Senate’s, festered among members.

Then, on the final night of the 2020 session, Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks made national headlines after she was forced to bring her newborn to the chamber floor to cast votes. Rendon’s office denied her request to vote by proxy, a policy reserved at the time only for those at “high risk of COVID.” Rendon dealt with the PR nightmare for weeks. His caucus further splintered amid the criticism.

At one point this year, sources said, Low’s name popped up as an alternative to Rendon. Capitol insiders said Low never secured the necessary votes, but he did come close enough to spook Rendon’s team. Expelling Low from B&P chair was Rendon’s way of warning his caucus to fall in line, sources said.

The question now becomes whether Low will accept the public reprimand, or fight back. His allies in the LGBTQ and Asian and Pacific Islander communities have already issued statements defending his leadership, and called on Rendon to provide a reason for his removal. Low is chair of the LGBTQ Legislative Caucus and vice-chair of the Asian & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus.

“Don’t know if he has the votes and now speaker has put fear of god into anyone with that move,” one Democratic consultant told me in a text. “Power politics.”

For now, Low is laying…low.

As for the Capitol remodel: The overhaul of the granite Capitol annex, a six-story appendage to the Capitol that opened in 1952,  and the accompanying construction of a new office building a block away carry an estimated $1.3 billion price tag — reflecting an increase over the amount originally projected.

Legislative and executive employees are being temporarily located in the newly built building at 10th and O, until the Capitol annex renovation’s projected completion in three years.

When those workers head back to the Capitol, the newer building also will serve to house state workers now toiling in older structures. The new building alone has a projected cost of $423.6 million.

The annex has long been denounced by lawmakers and others as crowded, antiquated and dangerous, a fire trap in violation of rules to protect the disabled. For years, they have called for new construction.

California’s Capitol has been gone through its share of wear and tear.

Construction first commenced here in 1860, six years after Sacramento was named California’s permanent capitol, and since then a lot has changed. The Capitol housed the Legislature, the executive branch and other officials, such as the Treasurer and Secretary of State.

But nine decades later, the growth of government outstripped the building. The annex was built to provide space, and it did: Before the expansion, Assembly and Senate members had to carry out business on the floor of their respective chambers, or any other place they could find.

But in recent years, the popularity of the annex has declined. In 2018, then Gov. Jerry Brown approved the annex project.

The annex functions with an aging mechanical system that was largely built from materials commonly used in the 1950’s. Over the years its problems have piled up. The failing plumbing system has led to leaks that have caused damage at the point of the leak and to the floors below.

Hazardous materials like lead, mold and even asbestos have to be addressed as well as its lack of accessibility under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. Because of this, and more, legislators in 2018 approved demolishing and rebuilding the annex.

In order to adequately provide for the housing of the Legislature and the Executive Branch during the construction of a new capitol annex, in July 2018 the Department of General Services was authorized to pursue the design and construction of a “swing” state office building located on O Street, between 10th Street and 11th Street.

The building will have approximately 472,600 gross square feet and be subject to the Capitol View Protection Act height limit of 150 feet.

The building will include 10 floors of office space, and will incorporate functional space for committee hearings, caucus meetings, general meeting rooms, and legislative and Executive Branch offices, with integrated parking.

At the Capitol, current plans include relocating the underground parking structure and adding a visitor’s center. Based on the space requirements, the preliminary estimate for the annex replacement is about $507 million, $6.4 million for the relocated parking structure and about $30 million for the visitor center.

The O Street building will temporarily house approximately 1,250 legislative and executive elected officials and staff from the Capitol Annex until the new Annex project is completed. The building will then be jointly used as office space for approximately 2,200 legislative and executive employees.

https://capitolweekly.net/new-digs-and-a-hefty-price-tag-for-legislative-office-space/

 

2022 Begins with Tensions Between Employers & Climate Change Regulators

CalMatters

As California works to balance its environmental climate and its business climate, tensions are emerging in a few key areas:

  • Oil production.Newsom’s administration has approved 12 fracking permits this year and denied 109 — an unprecedented level of rejection that suggests the state has effectively embraced a ban on new fracking years ahead of its 2024 deadline. Kern County, which is the center of California’s oil industry, and the Western States Petroleum Association have sued Newsom, arguing the denials will cost the state jobs while making it more reliant on foreign oil and increasing already inflated gas prices.
  • Gas-powered tools.Newsom recently signed a bill banning the use of most gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers by 2024, setting aside $30 million to help small landscaping businesses and self-employed gardeners switch to electric. But many say the new law could push them out of business. “You are not going to be able to get the jobs done as fast,” Ken Tamplen, owner of Ken’s Rototilling and Landscaping, told CalMatters’ Jesse Bedayn. “You’re not going to be able to make as much money.”
  • Rooftop solar panels.California regulators are set to soon unveil proposed changes to the state’s rooftop solar subsidy program, including lower reimbursements and new fees for solar-powered homes. Supporters say such changes would insulate low-income residents from paying a disproportionate share of electric grid costs; opponents say they could spell trouble for the solar industry and hamper California’s ability to reach its clean energy goals.
  • Timber.California’s destructive wildfires are causing existential problems for the timber industry, which is struggling to process the overwhelming amount of dead and dying trees. “There aren’t enough loggers, there aren’t enough trucks, there aren’t enough foresters,” Drew Crane of Crane Mills told the San Francisco Chronicle. “A lot of it will go to waste” — resulting in a pileup of dry wood that could fuel future fires.

 

Newsom’s Struggle with Dyslexia: “I couldn’t spell, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write. It was hard.”

Sacramento Bee

When Gavin Newsom hired political consultant Garry South to work on his first campaign for governor, South tried to find an issue that would humanize the then-San Francisco mayor to voters who saw him as a privileged member of the Bay Area elite. He learned from Newsom’s family that the mayor struggled with dyslexia, a condition that makes it very difficult for him to read. South thought he had the perfect story. Newsom, however, wouldn’t have it.

“Like a lot of people who have a disability, he didn’t want to be defined by that disability,” South said. Newsom didn’t want to talk about it publicly, and he didn’t like it when South and other aides talked about it with reporters, either. “He was reluctant to make an issue out of it.”

For South and other former advisers, Newsom’s story of dyslexia is one of triumph, about a child who floundered in school but overcame a major learning challenge to lead the biggest state in the country.

They point to his detailed memory, deep understanding of complicated policies and empathy for others as traits shaped by his struggle that make him a better governor.

For Newsom, who wrote a children’s book about dyslexia that comes out next week, the trauma of going through school struggling to read still haunts him. Amid all his success, he continues to read materials as many as three times to master them. Shortly after becoming governor, Newsom told a class of Sacramento elementary school students he remembers his heart beating hard while sitting in class in Hall Middle School as the teacher went down the row of students asking each one to read a paragraph.

He watched the clock, sweating, urging it to move faster so the period might end before his turn. His luck ran out. He stood up, stammering, unable to find the words, as his classmates laughed.

“People literally started laughing at me because I couldn’t read,” he said. “I’ll never forget it the rest of my life.”

Dyslexia is characterized by persistent struggles with reading, said Dr. Jason Yeatman, who studies the condition at Stanford University.

“Imagine what it’s like to be a fourth grader when they’re going around in a circle and everyone’s reading aloud, and you know you’re not going to be able to,” Yeatman said. “It can be profoundly traumatic.”

Children are typically not diagnosed with the condition until third or fourth grade, dyslexia expert Dr. Marilú Gorno Tempini said, after they’ve been suffering for years in school not knowing how to read and not understanding why.

Newsom himself was diagnosed with dyslexia early, but his mother hid it from him, worried that knowing about the diagnosis would stigmatize him.

In an interview he did with child actor Ryan Quinn Smith, Newsom described how he didn’t know why he struggled so much in class and had to attend special after school and summer school programs until he found documents in his mom’s room about his diagnosis years later.

“She didn’t want me to give up,” he said. “That’s what she thought was the right thing to do.”

He credits his mother for ensuring he was always in special learning programs, even though she didn’t tell him why. Despite the extra help, his grades were so poor he says he wouldn’t have gotten into college without the partial baseball scholarship he secured to attend Santa Clara University.

In class, he says he was shy, always sitting in the back of the room with his head down. At home, he remembers throwing his pen aside in frustration and calling himself stupid, which his mother hated.

“But I felt kind of stupid. I mean, I couldn’t spell, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write,” Newsom told Ryan, who also has dyslexia. “It was hard.”

When he was lieutenant governor, Newsom served as the honorary chair of the UCSF Dyslexia Center, which Gorno Tempini runs. When he visited the center in 2016, she remembers him talking to her daughter, who is also dyslexic. She had just transferred schools and was upset, so Newsom, who made a similar transition when he was a child, comforted her and told her it had worked out for him.

“It had such an impact on her,” Gorno Tempini said. “There is still a lot of stigma involved with the word dyslexia.”

The trauma of having dyslexia can obscure strengths that come with the condition, Gorno Tempini said. Often, she finds dyslexics are better able to pick up on social and visual cues, something she observed when she watched Newsom comfort her daughter about changing schools.

“That was my impression, that he could read the room and people really naturally, and it is something we see in other dyslexic individuals, that they can pick up on social and visual cues more easily,” she said. “To me it was striking… picking up that my daughter needed exactly that in that moment.”

Former staffers also point to Newsom’s long, detailed budget conferences as evidence of his nearly photographic memory, which they attribute to his dyslexia.

When Newsom unveiled his first state budget proposal in January 2019, he talked for two hours. As he recited a litany of facts about his 280-page proposal, he often cited specific page numbers from memory.

Reporters in the audience grumbled about forgetting to bring snacks as the briefing stretched past lunch time. Veteran Capitol reporters expressed surprise about Newsom’s detailed briefing, but longtime advisers like South didn’t. “I’ve worked for some very smart politicians, including Rhodes Scholars, graduates of Stanford University and Harvard University,” South said. “Newsom has the most retentive mind of any politician I’ve worked for by far.”

South became accustomed to giving briefing books to politicians and then seeing them again the next morning, unopened. Not so with Newsom.

When he got a briefing book, he read every word, and covered it in Post-it notes and highlighter.

One day during that first governor’s race, South came to San Francisco to see Newsom. He showed up at the mayor’s office to find the door closed. South assumed Newsom was out and left.

He returned more than three hours later to find the door still closed, so he asked Newsom’s assistant if he was coming in that day. She replied that he had been in there the entire time, reading.

South knocked and entered to find Newsom sitting, sleeves rolled up, poring over a stack of documents half a foot high, painstakingly marking them up. He would do the same to briefing books, compiled in binders three or four inches thick, on policies ranging from preschool education to women’s issues.

“It’s kind of painful to watch when you see the briefing book he read the night before and how much time he must have spent,” South said. “I think his ability to absorb and process information is to some degree a product of his dyslexia because he has to put so much effort into reading.

“That’s the only way I can really explain the awesome ability he has to absorb and process and synthesize information.” Newsom told Ryan, the child actor, that he typically has to read everything three times to understand it, but by the third time he knows it really well.

Mendoza, like several of Newsom’s former aides, said his memory amazed her. “He’s not a skimmer, he’s very methodical,” said Mendoza, who now serves as chief of strategic relationships for Salesforce. She and the other staffers would know if Newsom had read a document if he had marked it up.

Papers that Newsom read never came back clean, instead filled with notes, underlined words, highlighted sections.

Newsom struggles to read speeches from a teleprompter, and says he has to practice for hours to prepare for even short ones. At most of his public appearances, he speaks off-the-cuff in meandering but detailed sentences.

MORE:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article256237922.html#storylink=cpy

 

State Water Agencies Prepare Drought Restrictions Statewide

Associated Press & Sacramento Bee

Water agencies in drought-stricken California that serve 27 million residents and 750,000 acres of farmland won’t get any of the water they’ve requested from the state heading into 2022 other than what’s needed for critical health and safety, state officials announced Wednesday.

It’s the earliest date the Department of Water Resources has issued a 0% water allocation, a milestone that reflects the dire conditions in California as drought continues to grip the nation’s most populous state and reservoirs sit at historically low levels. State water officials said mandatory water restrictions could be coming and major water districts urged consumers to conserve.

“If conditions continue (to be) this dry, we will see mandatory cutbacks,” Karla Nemeth, director of DWR, told reporters.

The low allocation, while unprecedented, doesn’t mean Californians are at risk of losing water for drinking or bathing. The State Water Project is just one source of water for the 29 districts it supplies; others include the Colorado River and local storage projects.

The state will provide a small amount of water for health and safety needs to some of the districts that asked for it. But they won’t get water for any other purpose, such as irrigation, landscaping and gardening, which consume significant amounts of water.

The State Water Project is a complex system of reservoirs, canals and dams that works alongside the federal Central Valley Project to supply water up and down the state of nearly 40 million people. Lake Oroville, its largest reservoir, is only 30% full, about half of what it normally is this time of year.

Districts that rely on the state have a maximum amount they can request each year and the allocation represents how much the state can give based on available supplies.

The percentage may be adjusted in early winter and spring depending on how much snow and rainfall the state receives. Last year, the state’s second-driest on record, districts’ allocation went from 10% in December down to 5% by March. The only other time since 1996 that districts have been granted nothing was in January of 2014, during the last drought.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is the state’s largest customer and it supplies water to about 19 million people. A third of its supply comes from the state. The district declared a drought emergency in November and mandated that people conserve water, a message its leaders emphasized on Wednesday. It will get some water for health and safety purposes.

“The dramatic reduction of our Northern California supplies means we all must step up our conservation efforts,” Adel Hagekhalil, the district’s general manager, said in a statement. “Reduce the amount you are watering outside by a day, or two. Take shorter showers. Fix leaks. If we all do our part, we’ll get through this together.”

While the district as a whole has access to water from other sources, like the Colorado River, some of its member agencies in Los Angeles and Ventura counties rely almost exclusively on state supplies. Three of those districts issued a joint statement calling on residents to reduce how much water they use on outdoor projects like landscaping.

The state water allocation typically, but not always, goes up from the first December estimate to May, after winter storms that replenish snowpack water supplies have ended. But state water officials warned that dry times are likely to continue, creating a tough year ahead. The state has so far failed to meet a goal Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom set in July of a voluntary 15% reduction in water use.

Nemeth, the DWR director, said the state could set mandatory restrictions if local districts don’t set their own and if the voluntary efforts still fail to meet the goal. The State Water Resources Control Board recently proposed emergency regulations that would ban certain “wasteful” practices such as watering lawns when it’s raining or washing cars with nozzles that don’t automatically shut off.

The State Water Project’s zero initial allocation speaks to the severity of the drought and the degree to which available supplies are stretched perilously thin.

What’s more, Nemeth announced that state and federal officials have asked the State Water Resources Control Board to relax water-quality standards in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the estuary that serves as the hub of California’s water system.

That would allow the two water projects to keep more water in the system and let less water flow to the ocean. Still, the state can’t ignore Delta water quality altogether. Lake Oroville, the linchpin of the State Water Project, is less than one-third full, and most of its water will be dedicated to flushing salinity out of the Delta.

If too much saltwater pours into the Delta from the Pacific, it renders much of the delivery network inoperable. But some of the water stored in Oroville and San Luis Reservoir, the main reservoir south of the Delta, will go for urban usage. Metropolitan, which serves 19 million Southern Californians, will get about 80% of that supply.

https://apnews.com/article/business-environment-and-nature-california-droughts-a358a378b5d9826950adc53c10f05743?campaign_id=49&emc=edit_ca_20211202&instance_id=46800&nl=california-today&regi_id=80823166&segment_id=75905&te=1&user_id=ebedd9f525ae3910eeb31de6bb6c4da0

And:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/water-and-drought/article256261092.html#storylink=cpy

 

“A Head-On Collision” – Ag Industry Copes with Drastic Water Use Reduction

Sacramento Bee

The groundwater crisis is especially problematic in the San Joaquin Valley, where farming is the main economic engine. Decades of pumping have left its groundwater basins in such rough shape, they’ve been declared “critically overdrafted” by the Department of Water Resources.

Farmers and community leaders are grappling with the realization that vast stretches of Valley farmland will become permanently retired by 2040, when the groundwater law is fully implemented.

But talk about poor timing: California farmers are supposed to start throttling back their groundwater pumping to comply with a state law called the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA.

Some areas of the Valley are taking an aggressive stance on implementing SGMA, which is known to many as “sigma.” They’re already cutting back on pumping, idling land and getting an uncomfortable glimpse into the future. But in many parts of the Valley, farmers are still pumping — and some are pumping heavily.

In the meantime, though, the pumping goes on — and so does the drilling of new wells. If current trends hold, about 640 new wells will be drilled in the San Joaquin Valley this year, a 14% increase from last year, according to a Sacramento Bee analysis of Department of Water Resources data.

That’s still short of the record well-drilling activity that took place in the last drought. But the numbers are certainly growing; the 2021 figure will represent a 58% increase over 2018. Nearly all of the new activity is occurring in Fresno and Tulare counties, The Bee’s analysis shows.

“Water is No. 1 in the Valley,” said Josh Van Haaster, manager of Strickland Well Drilling in Sanger, east of Fresno. “They can’t tell us you can’t drill.” This year’s drought has Van Haaster and other drillers scrambling to deploy their rigging equipment as quickly as possible. “We have the rigs out,” he said. “We don’t even take them back to the yard. They go straight to the next job.”

Farmers have been pulling water out of the ground for years. Groundwater accounts for about 40% of the state’s water supply in a normal year, and as much as 60% during droughts.

While no precise figures show how much groundwater is used, on average, Californians overdraft their aquifers — that is, they pull more water out of the ground than they put back in — to the tune of an estimated 2 million acre-feet a year, according to the Department of Water Resources. About 79% of all the groundwater is used for farming, the state says.

Dependence on groundwater is particularly vital in the Valley, where climate change and environmental restrictions have made rivers and canals increasingly unreliable.

In the Tulare Basin region of the Valley, the water table in 2018 was an average of 195 feet below ground — compared to a mere 25 feet in the Sacramento River region.

The problem keeps getting worse: Over the past 20 years, about 37% of the Valley wells that are monitored by the state have seen their water tables fall by at least 2.5 feet a year. Portions of the Valley floor have sunk because of over-pumping, a phenomenon known as subsidence. That’s caused sections of the state’s most important irrigation canals to buckle and is creating bottlenecks in California’s water-delivery system. It’s a problem that feeds on itself; if canals can’t deliver water efficiently, farmers will pump more from the ground.

In 2014, as the last drought was intensifying, the Legislature declared that enough was enough. Signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, the sustainable groundwater law says the over-drafted basins must be brought into “sustainability” by 2040 for the hardest-hit basins and 2042 for the rest.

Sustainability is defined as reducing consumption to the point that farmers are no longer causing “chronic lowering of groundwater levels” or other “undesirable results.”

But the law didn’t really kick in until last year, when newly-formed regional Groundwater Sustainability Agencies were required to submit their plans for reining in pumping over the next two decades.

In the meantime, many Valley farmers were essentially thumbing their nose at the Legislature. In the year after Brown signed the bill — the drought year of 2015 — a Sacramento Bee analysis showed that more than 2,000 wells were dug in the Valley, far and away the most on record. In 2016 another 1,500 wells sprouted in the Valley.

Farmers said it was a matter of preserving their livelihoods. It’s no secret that curbing groundwater pumping, even gradually, could bring devastating economic results for the chronically impoverished Valley.

The region relies on agriculture for about 20% of its economic output, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Now a good chunk of its farmland is going to go out of production over the next 20 years as groundwater pumping is reined in.

Climate change is likely to make the economic problem worse. As the state dries out, less water will be running through the rivers and aqueducts in most years.

And because of the groundwater law, farmers will have less and less freedom, with each passing year, simply to turn on their pumps to compensate. “We’re going to have to account for more severe droughts because of climate change,” said Paul Gosselin, the state Department of Water Resources’ deputy director for groundwater management.

A 2019 study by the Public Policy Institute said as many as 700,000 acres of farmland could be permanently idled by 2040 as groundwater pumping dwindles. That estimate is already looking outdated. The study’s lead author Ellen Hanak said the number of retired acres will likely grow. “We could be looking at something more like 1 million,” she said.

Detailed statistics from this year aren’t yet available, but clearly farmers are pumping to make up for the shortage of water from rivers and aqueducts. Well-drillers and farmers around the Valley say water tables have fallen by 100 feet or more this year.

“There’s a huge amount of overdraft,” said Aaron Fukuda. Fukuda manages the Tulare Irrigation District and runs his area’s groundwater sustainability agency — one of several dozen regional entities in charge of setting and enforcing pumping limits in the coming years.

Gosselin said that farmers pumping more groundwater this year is hardly surprising. That doesn’t mean they’re ignoring the sustainability law. What matters is that the regional sustainability agencies appear to be on the right path toward setting realistic restrictions that will bring groundwater basins back into balance. “I believe we’re making good progress … to achieve the end goal within 20 years,” he said.

MORE:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/water-and-drought/article255780576.html#storylink=cpy

 

California Oil Pipeline Dispute Illustrates National Energy Transition Dilemma

Associated Press

A proposal to replace an oil pipeline that was shut down in 2015 after causing California’s worst coastal spill in 25 years is inching though a government review, even as the state moves toward banning gas-powered vehicles and oil drilling.

Consideration of the $300 million proposal by Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline is expected to enter a critical phase next year at a time when new scrutiny is being placed on the state’s oil industry after an offshore pipeline break in October near Huntington Beach. That rupture released at least 25,000 gallons (94,635 liters) of crude that closed beaches and took a deadly toll on sea life along one of the world’s fabled surf breaks.

Farther north, the 123-mile (198 kilometer) Plains pipeline travels along the coastline near Santa Barbara before turning inland. It’s buried and nearly invisible for much of its length to Kern County, in the state’s midsection. For decades it was a vital link between oil platforms off the coast and processing plants on shore, with shipments averaging 1.8 million gallons (6.9 million liters) a day.

Oil has been drilled in California since the 19th century, but the project is being debated as the state reckons with its fraught history with fossil fuels. Climate change is expanding the threat of wildfires, drought and tidal surges, and the state has positioned itself as a global leader in renewable energy and pioneering policies intended to slow the planet’s warming.

California — by itself the world’s fifth-largest economy — plans to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035 and end oil production a decade later. The recent spill in Huntington Beach renewed calls to halt all drilling off the coast.

The Plains pipeline inevitably will be a symbol of that conflict: the desire for oil to fuel cars, heat buildings and make plastics versus growing political pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Biden administration — which recently auctioned vast oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico — faces the same dilemma.

California Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla opposes the Plains proposal, bluntly warning of future risks.

“We’ve seen time and time again how damaging offshore oil spills are to our coastal ecosystems as well as to our outdoor recreation and tourism economies,” Padilla said in a statement. “We should not risk repeating history by rebuilding or restarting the Plains pipeline.”

Plains spokesman Brad Leone said the company safely transported 90 billion gallons (341 billion liters) last year throughout North America. “Plains is committed to designing, constructing and maintaining these lines in a safe, reliable manner,” he said.

The project faces numerous hurdles, including a federal class-action lawsuit from property owners who say Plains lacks the right to use existing easements for a new pipeline. Lead trial counsel Barry Cappello said the project would rip up vineyards and coastal ranches and “our clients never signed up for that.”

Shon Hiatt, an associate professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, said the company’s motivation to revive the pipeline is obvious.

“They make money on that,” Hiatt said. “The price of oil is not going to be going down.”

He said the cost of a barrel of oil could top $100 next year. It’s about $77 now.

Documents filed by Plains with Santa Barbara County say the replaced pipeline, though smaller than its predecessor, could move up to nearly 1.7 million gallons (6.3 million liters) a day. At current prices, that much oil would be valued at more than $3 million daily, or potentially over $1 billion a year, though pipelines often do not run at full capacity.

California’s oil and gas industry directly and indirectly supports over 365,000 jobs and has an annual output of over $150 billion, one study of 2017 data estimated. Nationally, the industry supported nearly 17 million jobs in 2020, according to a report from the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, a trade group. California ranked second in direct industry employment, with about 75,000 jobs, though it was far behind Texas, the nation’s leading producer with nearly 350,000 jobs.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has spoken about the economic challenges of retiring the industry even as he promotes a greener future for the state. His office declined to comment on the Plains project, noting it was under review by government agencies.

Environmentalists have pointed to the risk of spills — as well as earthquake threats — in arguing against a new line.

California is known as a birthplace of the modern environmental movement, and a watershed event was a massive 1969 spill off the coast of Santa Barbara.

The Plains pipeline was last in service on May 19, 2015, when a corroded section above ground and running west of Santa Barbara ruptured, sending 140,000 gallons (529,957 liters) of oil onto a state beach and into the ocean.

Federal inspectors found Plains operators working from a Texas control room more than 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) away had turned off an alarm that would have signaled a leak and, unaware a spill occurred, restarted the hemorrhaging line after it shut down.

Plains apologized for the spill and paid for the cleanup. Plains later was fined over $3 million. The cleanup cost $100 million, and a 2017 company report estimated costs from the spill at $335 million, not including lost revenues.

A key step in the review of the proposed pipeline — a complex environmental study conducted by Santa Barbara County — is expected by spring. Roughly a dozen federal, state and local agencies have a hand in considering the project, first proposed in 2017.

It largely would snake along the existing route. The new line — technically two connected pipelines, like its predecessor — crosses environmentally sensitive areas, including slices of the Carrizo Plains National Monument and Los Padres National Forest.

Three ExxonMobil platforms that relied on the line have been closed since the spill. ExxonMobil proposed establishing interim trucking routes to transport oil, which would allow the dormant offshore platforms to resume production. In a divided vote in early November, the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission urged county supervisors to deny the company’s proposal.

Bob Nelson, who chairs the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, said he would wait for detailed environmental reports next year before making a decision but was encouraged by what he has seen so far. He noted Plains could have sought to repair the existing pipeline but instead wants a new line built to modern safety standards.

“What it means is jobs,” Nelson said. With a continuing demand for oil, even as the state transitions away from fossil fuels, “I think that we should find a way to safely deliver it in an environmentally friendly … fashion.”

https://apnews.com/article/climate-business-environment-and-nature-california-houston-1e7aa14b429941d585e796dc37d2cbe7

 

Newsom Names New Public Utilities Commission Chief

Politico California Playbook

On Dec. 30, Marybel Batjer will retire from her position as president of the California Public Utilities Commission. On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom named her replacement: senior adviser Alice Reynolds.

“As my lead energy policy expert, Alice has been indispensable in our work to move California toward a cleaner, affordable and reliable energy future, navigate the bankruptcy of the state’s largest investor-owned utility and accelerate the state’s progress toward meeting our clean energy goals, among other critical issues. I look forward to her leadership as President of the California Public Utilities Commission,” Newsom said in a statement announcing the appointment.

Reynolds, a Democrat, has served as senior adviser to Newsom since 2019, and prior to that she served as an adviser to then-Gov. Jerry Brown.

Reynolds will take over an organization wrestling with instability in the power grid and investigations into the state’s largest utility, PG&E, over its role in California wildfires.

Reynolds’ appointment is subject to Senate confirmation; if it is approved, she would earn $228,964 annually.

Gov. Newsom offered praise for the outgoing Batjer, saying she stepped up with “exemplary leadership, smarts, humility and commitment to public service” to head the CPUC.

“I thank Marybel for her distinguished service to the people of our state and wish her well in her next chapter,” Newsom said in a statement