Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
August 7, 2007
5. Agencies, Programs, People -
Editorial:
Daniel Weintraub: Republicans tangle with old foe on global warming -
Sacramento
Malibu
Restaurants and other beach services are in the works after years of rebuilding delays. -
Los Angeles
New group takes on a hot topic by asking counties nationwide to cut warming emissions 80 percent by 2050 -
Contra Costa Times
Editorial:
Our View: Much hot air on melting glaciers
Boxer’s calls for economy-killing laws against greenhouse gases aren’t backed by latest research -
Marysville Appeal Democrat
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Editorial:
Daniel Weintraub: Republicans tangle with old foe on global warming
Sacramento
Jerry Brown, who has been confounding California Republicans for more than 30 years, is at it again.
The Democratic attorney general -- who served as governor in the 1970s and 1980s, led the California Democratic Party, ran for president and then served as mayor of
Brown has made global warming one of his top areas of concern, and he is using his office to pressure local governments to account for the potential increase in greenhouse gas emissions when they consider new development. He has sued
Brown's campaign has put the state's business leaders on edge, and their complaints found a receptive audience among Republicans in the state Senate. As part of the price for their votes on the state budget, those lawmakers are demanding a provision that would stop Brown -- or anyone else -- from filing any more such lawsuits until 2012.
Sen. Dick Ackerman of Irvine, the Senate Republican leader, said Brown's attempt to use global warming to slow development harkens back to his time as governor, when he proclaimed an "era of limits" and "basically stopped all freeway construction and development" for his eight years as chief executive.
Ackerman fears that Brown also will try to use global warming to restrict the use of public works bonds voters approved last fall.
"When the people of
In an interview, Brown told me that all he is doing is enforcing the California Environmental Quality Act, which requires local agencies to consider the potential environmental impacts of new development and take reasonable actions to reduce those effects.
Assembly Bill 32, the state's historic bill to fight global warming, requires
First, the Air Resources Board must write the regulations. Then, Brown suspects, business groups will sue to try to block many of those new rules.
In the meantime, Brown said, state and local officials should be doing everything they can to avoid making the problem worse, and he believes they were required to do so even before the passage of the new law.
"With AB 32 it becomes obvious that this is the state's goal," he said. "This is where we are going. Why keep adding if we can find feasible measures to reduce, if we are serious, if we believe global warming is as serious as 95 percent of the scientists say it is?"
Brown said he believes his office will soon reach a settlement with
Brown was a champion for growth in
The dispute has also put Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a political bind.
As a proud advocate of AB 32, the governor has traveled around the country and around the world promoting
Behind the scenes, Schwarzenegger's staff has been trying to broker a compromise that would limit lawsuits over land-use planning until the state establishes standards for local governments to use in measuring the potential greenhouse gases from development. A provision restricting the use of AB 32 in such lawsuits might satisfy Senate Republicans, even though Brown says he believes the state's other environmental laws give him wide leeway to intervene.
A perpetual minority, Republicans in the Legislature have leverage only when a bill requires a two-thirds majority to pass, as is the case with the budget. That's the only time their votes matter, and that's the only time anyone listens to them. At the moment, on this issue, they're making it clear that they want to be heard.#
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/311807.html
Malibu
Restaurants and other beach services are in the works after years of rebuilding delays.
By Martha Groves, staff writer
It's one of the leading coastal landmarks of
Over the years, the pier has been lashed by a series of winter storms that destroyed pilings and forced costly repairs. It has endured construction delays caused by financially overextended contractors. Its revival has spawned legal or verbal tiffs between contractors, between the state and its concessionaire and between concession partners.
Since 1995, the pier has stood forlornly at the southern end of
A sign in the window of what was once
That target, like many others, was not met, but things are finally looking up. A sportfishing operation offers two departures a day. Dozens of people visit the pier regularly to stroll or fish. Concessionaire Malibu Pier Partners has opened the pier to special events, such as surf contests and free outdoor film screenings.
In perhaps the most important development, state parks officials announced in June that Malibu Pier Partners had struck a deal with Ruby Restaurant Group, based in
The company has for years operated restaurants at piers in Balboa,
There are also plans for coastal boat tours, a surf museum, a gift shop, a bait and tackle shop and beach equipment rentals.
Jefferson Wagner, owner of the nearby Zuma Jay surf shop, will handle the rentals of kayaks and boogie boards. But it's a far diminished role from what Wagner, a local surfer who decades ago was a boat-cleaning hand on the pier, had in mind when the state chose him as the pier's concessionaire in 2003. In need of funds, he subsequently agreed to become a partner with Alexander Leff, a
Until recently, parks officials have been none too pleased with Leff. In December, the agency notified him that Malibu Pier Partners was in breach of contract for, among other things, failing to pay rent on time or submit timely construction documents and for allowing a shirtless man to collect parking fees from the back of a pickup truck without offering receipts.
But the prospect of relaunching the time-consuming bidding process prompted the state to work out its differences with Leff.
"Yes, it's true this took much longer than we wanted," said Roy Stearns, a state parks spokesman. "If ever there was a project where every pitfall possible emerged, it was this project. We are ecstatic that we will have the pier fully open this year."
Leff said he believed that "the wait will have been worth it and that both the local
It's hard to imagine why this classic pier on busy
The structure was commissioned in the early 1900s by businessman Frederick Rindge and his wife, May, as a shipping wharf for hides and grains from their 17,000-acre Malibu Rancho. It also served as a dock for unloading materials for building the Rindge family's private 20-mile railroad, which ran from Las Flores Canyon to the
During the 1920s and '30s, film studios shot sea epics at the pier. In 1929, the Rindges' daughter, Rhoda Rindge Adamson, erected a tower-like home for her son at the highway end of the pier, within view of her tile-bedecked Adamson House. (In 1972, the tower became part of the newly opened Alice's Restaurant.) Protecting the tower was a rubble-studded concrete-block wall.
In 1934, the pier opened to the public, with Cesar Romero and Buster Crabbe among the many
After the Rindges' land development company, Marblehead Land Co., went bankrupt in 1936, the pier was taken over by bondholders who had helped finance
During World War II, the Coast Guard used the pier as a lookout post. After a storm demolished much of the structure in the winter of 1943-44, businessman William Huber bought it for $50,000 and rebuilt it. After the war, Huber constructed the familiar twin buildings at the seaward end for a bait and tackle shop and restaurant. In 1980, the state purchased the somewhat battered property.
A 1983 El Niño storm destroyed many of the pilings, and parks officials closed the pier for 18 months. Soon after it reopened, the state named it a historic point of interest. But big storms in 1993 and 1994 again trashed much of the structure, and it was closed in 1995. The pier has been in limited use for the last few years.
One of those looking forward to having the pier back in action is Jose Amato, 48, a Hollywood Hills resident who was fishing there one recent dazzlingly sunny afternoon.
"It's a beautiful place, but we don't have any facilities," he said. "I've always wondered why all the locations are empty. They can open some restaurants for the tourists walking the pier. It's going to be a very nice place that people can go and enjoy."#
New group takes on a hot topic by asking counties nationwide to cut warming emissions 80 percent by 2050
Contra Costa Times – 8/7/07
By Chris Metinko, staff writer
Environmental consciousness is nothing new to the
In July,
Counties also will try to apply pressure to urge the federal government to adopt legislation requiring an 80 percent emissions reduction by 2050 and raising fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon within a decade.
"The federal government is doing nothing right now on this issue," said Scott Haggerty, president of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. "That's why we need a grass-roots effort like this. We need counties and cities to come together and get the federal government to do something."
The 12 founding counties in the new green initiative are among the largest in the country -- with more than 17 million people across 10 states living in those counties -- including King County in Washington, Fairfax and Arlington counties in Virginia, Nassau in New York, Montgomery and Queen Anne in Maryland, Miami-Dade in Florida, Cook in Illinois, Shelby in Tennessee, Hennepin in Minnesota and Dane in Wisconsin.
That
The county already has a handful of projects under way to cut its carbon footprint: County facilities are conserving $6 million of energy a year and generating on-site power through 3.1 megawatts of solar installations and a 1-megawatt fuel cell at Santa Rita Jail in
The county also has two different types of hybrid cars in its fleet and one car powered by vegetable oil. In addition, it has started the Alameda County Climate Protection Project, a campaign the county's cities can join in an effort to cut emissions.
"
Haggerty said counties and local governments have to set an example, especially considering it is those bodies that set rules for others.
"If we're going to make businesses follow certain regulations, government also has to watch what it's doing," Haggerty said. "That's only fair."
Haggerty added that despite slower revenue growth and rising costs for county programs, initiatives such as the Cool Counties program are too important to delay.
"It's not always about the money," said Haggerty, pointing to the $6.1 million fuel cell project. "This board (of supervisors) has always been extremely supportive of issues such as this. It's up to us, local government and even the state to show we are willing to put our money where our mouth is."
Laura Garcia Darensburg with Contra Costa County said that although that county has yet to enter the Cool Counties campaign, it has joined the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, a group of governments committed to environmentally friendly development and the study of greenhouse gas emissions.
Haggerty said he is hopeful a majority of
That could happen if similar programs in the past are an indication. The Sierra Club's Cool Cities program, working in conjunction with Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, has been encouraging cities to sign on to the
Josh Dorner, a spokesman with the Sierra Club, said that although the Cool Counties program is a necessary outgrowth of the Cool Cities initiative, counties have more control over land use and transportation and regional planning in general.
"Cities can do a lot," Dorner said. "But counties can do even more."#
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_6563128?nclick_check=1
Editorial:
Our View: Much hot air on melting glaciers
Boxer’s calls for economy-killing laws against greenhouse gases aren’t backed by latest research
Marysville Appeal Democrat – 8/6/07
Sen. Barbara Boxer returned from a helicopter and boat tour of Greenland to breathlessly announce that because of global warming, “this massive glacier that’s five miles wide and 500 miles long ... (is) crashing into the sea ... moving, and it’s melting and every single day, 24 hours a day, 20 million tons of ice comes off that glacier and streams into the ocean.”
Her remedy? Pass a half-dozen new laws in Congress to stem evil manmade, greenhouse gas emissions by imposing Draconian limits on all industries. “From this trip,” she intoned, “you get the sense of urgency.”
Alarmists like Boxer claim
“The problem for global warming alarmists,” wrote James M. Taylor, senior fellow for environmental policy at the Heartland Institute, “is that the poles currently show no sign of human-induced global warming.”
Worse yet (for Boxer and her co-alarmists), Greenland just had its two coldest decades since the 1910s, and “recent temperature readings indicate the cold spell is continuing,”
Boxer and her contingent of equally alarmed congressional tourists were presented with an illustration of what “could” happen “if”
The
Before climbing aboard Boxer’s global warming tour bus, consider that the latest global warming research goes against alarmism. In the “most comprehensive ever” study on Greenland glacier movements, Danish researchers found in 2006 that “Greenland’s glaciers have been shrinking for the past century, suggesting that the ice melt is not a recent phenomenon caused by global warming,” let alone by recent manmade CO2 increases.
A 2006 study from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Space and Remote Sensing Sciences found
Physicist Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, former director of
And, in July, Dr. Nigel Calder, co-author of “The Chilling Stars: A New Theory on Climate Change,” said flatly: “In reality, global temperatures have stopped rising. Data for both the surface and the lower air show no warming since 1999.” Meanwhile, CO2 has increased during that period, completely undermining alarmists’ call for Draconian measures to curb greenhouse gases.#
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/articles/warming_52221___article.html/greenland_global.html
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