Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
September 5, 2007
5. Agencies, Programs, People -
Aspiring to be America
State commitment helps Sacramento
Editorial: A judge's landmark ruling roils Delta waters
Could ruling to protect smelt drive foes to the table to agree on restoring the Delta? -
No
A federal judge rules against Energy officials, who say they need 8 million gallons to continue work on the
Ranchers sue ACID over water cutbacks -
Redding Record Searchlight
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=
Aspiring to be America
State commitment helps Sacramento
Sacramento
By Mary Lynne Vellinga - Bee Staff Writer
Green is the new black, and everyone wants to take a turn on the runway.
"Our goal is to become the most sustainable city in
If that seems a tad ambitious, keep in mind
The California Environmental Protection Agency headquarters downtown was the first office building in the nation to earn the platinum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council, which developed the widely used Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system to measure a building's energy efficiency.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now mandates that new state office buildings at minimum qualify for a LEED silver rating.
Developers submitting bids on a 1.4 million-square-foot state office complex in the works must not only meet the silver standard, but also show their buildings will produce 10 percent of their own power with solar panels or through some other method, said Anne Cavanagh, a project manager with the state Department of General Services.
"That's a new thing for the state," Cavanagh said.
A Bee analysis of data from the U.S. Green Building Council found that
"Being the state capital is a big advantage," Fong said.
Being near the
"We've got some progressive utilities, and we've got a great climate for solar," said Jim Bayless, president of Treasure Homes, which is finishing a development of 32 energy-efficient, solar-powered homes in
Like many cities,
City staff members are drawing up a list of incentives to encourage green building by private sector developers. Another possibility: an enterprise zone for green technology companies.
One of the first steps the city took was to have its greenhouse gas emissions certified by the California Climate Action Registry, said Keith Roberts, a senior engineer in the city's General Services Department who is responsible for keeping track of the city's energy use.
The city of
Roberts has cobbled together a draft "climate plan" with proposed programs to achieve this goal. He figures they would cost about $850,000 a year.
He has yet to win approval from the City Council. "I'm trying to get consensus now that this is what we should be doing," he said.
At this point, the city's sustainability efforts rank somewhere in the middle of what municipalities around the country are doing, said David Gottfried, who originally developed the LEED rating system and now works as senior vice president for sustainable development at Thomas Properties Group, which manages the Cal-EPA building.#
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/360985.html
Editorial: A judge's landmark ruling roils Delta waters
Could ruling to protect smelt drive foes to the table to agree on restoring the Delta?
Sacramento
For years, anyone watching the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has known that a smack-down was looming over endangered smelt. These tiny fish, a bellwether for the ecosystem, have declined over the last decade while water exports from the Delta have been rising.
The Endangered Species Act gives judges wide latitude in curtailing government operations that prompt the extinction of a species. And while the smelt and other Delta fish appear to face a variety of threats -- including invasive species, water pollution and loss of habitat -- it's hard for a judge to overlook the impact posed by the massive state and federal pumps that move water through the Delta.
That day of judgment has now arrived. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger issued a landmark ruling that could significantly reduce the 1.9 trillion gallons of water pumped annually through the Delta, largely to Southern California and the
It's hard to overstate the impact of this ruling. For the first time, the most crucial valve in
This time those irrigators and government lawyers failed to convince Wanger that the smelt weren't being sucked toward a perilous fate. "The evidence is uncontradicted that these project operations move the fish," the judge said from the bench Friday.
The question now is how the state and federal governments will respond to Wanger's ruling, which limits pumping from the Delta from December to June. An initial review by state officials suggests these restrictions could reduce overall water deliveries south of the Delta by as much as 35 percent.
But Wanger also called for increased monitoring of young and old smelt, as a way to inform decisions about pumping. That means that the ruling's full impact might not be known until winter, when water managers put the order into effect.
Whether or not the outcome is "devastating" to the state's economy, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger warned Friday, it should send a jolt of electricity into discussions about how to fix the Delta and use water more efficiently. The current agenda needs to focus not just on possible fixes that will take years, such as a peripheral canal, but on ones that would have more immediate benefits for the Delta.
As an advisory panel recently recommended, the state can and should move immediately to restore marshlands and reduce invasive species that are threatening the Delta's native fish. There also may be interim ways to move water through the Delta that minimize the fish-sucking impacts of the pumps.
Meanwhile, everyone who uses water south of the Delta should brace for some uncertain years. The state's water future is now in the hands of the courts and the weather. The forecast is cloudy, with a high likelihood of lawyers.#
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/360479.html
No
A federal judge rules against Energy officials, who say they need 8 million gallons to continue work on the
By Ralph Vartabedian- Staff Writer
The Energy Department's controversial plan to build a nuclear waste dump in
Energy officials said they needed the water to drill test holes at
President Bush and Congress approved the site in 2002, but a series of legal and political setbacks has stalled the project -- and raised questions about when and if the dump will open.
In a stinging rebuke Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Roger L. Hunt denied an injunction sought by the Energy Department against
"The validity of Western states' groundwater rights and the right to regulate water in the public interest is not a right to be taken lightly, nor is it a right that can cavalierly be ignored or violated by a federal agency," Hunt said in his 24-page opinion.
Hunt said Energy officials had acted with "arrogance" and possibly misled Bush when they said
Energy spokesman Allen Benson said the department had just received the ruling and would have no immediate comment.
"It was a very strongly worded opinion," said Joseph R. Egan, a nuclear energy attorney representing
Without access to millions of gallons of state-controlled water, the Energy Department's only option may be to truck in water over long distances, placing another burden on the project and starting another activity that state officials could block.
The water fight between federal and state officials has been raging since the project's outset, when the state engineer first denied water permits to build at
Hunt said agency officials had waffled on why they needed to drill so many holes.
If so, the federal government is in trouble. All site characterization was supposed to have been completed in 2002, when Energy officials said Yucca had met its criteria as a suitable site.
If the drilling program is essential to understanding the site and eventually getting a license, then "it would appear that the DOE misled Congress and the president," Hunt said.
Energy officials deny that the drilling is part of site characterization, but Hunt wrote: "Its own documents contradict that argument."
Robert R. Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the ruling was important because it prevented federal officials from collecting data that would be crucial to any future license application to build the dump.
Loux said the Energy Department ultimately would need sweeping exemptions from federal environmental, health, water and transportation laws to move forward with the dump.
Energy officials said they would file an application to build the dump next year.#
Ranchers sue ACID over water cutbacks
Redding Record Searchlight – 9/5/07
By Tim Hearden – staff writer
The Anderson Cottonwood Irrigation District is being sued by a customer, Churn Creek Bottom residents Bill and Maudie Gregory, over the district's curtailment of irrigation water in anticipation of a new contract with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
In the lawsuit, the couple assert irrigation cutbacks were a breach of their contract with ACID and have damaged their cattle ranch, where they have tried to maintain 28 acres of pasture.
The district's failure to restore services to earlier levels will cause the Gregorys to "suffer continuing deterioration of their pasture and property from the lack of water, such that their ongoing cattle operation, livelihood and real personal property will continue to be damaged," the lawsuit states.
The suit originally named the board and former general manager Dee Swearingen as defendants, then added current general manager Stan Wangberg after he replaced Swearingen in late 2005.
Bill Gregory and his Red Bluff attorney, Todd Bottke, declined to comment about the lawsuit, which is set to go to trial Oct. 23 in Shasta County Superior Court.
Michael Connerley, the
"That's our position," he said. "It's based on measurements that have been taken by the current general manager."
Connerley said the two parties have a settlement conference scheduled for Monday.
"The parties are working hard to resolve it," he said.
The lawsuit, filed in October 2005, followed a crackdown on water usage that sparked anger among dozens of residents in the Churn Creek Bottom area. In 2004, Swearingen began to strictly hold residents to the district's long-standing formula of one hour of irrigation for each acre being watered.
The crackdown was in anticipation of the district's Bureau of Reclamation contract, which gives the district 121,000 acre-feet of water annually rather than the 165,000 acre-feet it had received before. An agreement on the new 40-year contract was reached in the summer of 2004.
Bill Gregory, president of the Shasta County Cattlemen's Association, ran unsuccessfully in 2001 against Brenda Haynes for the ACID's seat serving the Churn Creek Bottom area. Haynes is now board president.
"Bill Gregory's claim just has absolutely no merit and it appears to be just harassment against the irrigation district," Haynes said. "We all suffered a bit that summer, but he's the only one who chose (to sue). ... I find it shameful that he would do this to our irrigation district."#
http://www.redding.com/news/2007/sep/05/ranchers-sue-acid-over-water-cutbacks/
No comments:
Post a Comment