[Water_news] 5. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE - 10/19/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

October 19, 2007

 

5. Agencies, Programs, People -

 

Coast Guard drops propeller guard idea

Houseboat safety pieces won't be required. -

Fresno Bee

 

$4.7 billion buys Delta nothing -

Stockton Record

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Coast Guard drops propeller guard idea

Houseboat safety pieces won't be required.

Fresno Bee – 10/19/07

By Michael Doyle / Bee Washington Bureau

 

WASHINGTON -- The houseboats meandering across Lake Kaweah, New Melones and other popular waterways won't need propeller guards after all, the Coast Guard said Thursday.

 

Ending a six-year regulatory battle, the Coast Guard without fanfare dropped its December 2001 proposal to require added protections against propeller injuries. Officials sided with boat builders, who contend mandatory propeller guards would cost too much and provide too little benefit.

 

"The Coast Guard believes its resources would be better directed toward regulatory projects that would have a greater impact on propeller injury avoidance," the agency said in its entry in the Federal Register, where agencies propose rules and regulations.

 

Some think otherwise, like Florida resident and boating accident survivor Phyllis Kopytko.

 

"My lacerations resulted in fighting off ... lake bacteria, my left arm's amputation four inches below the shoulder, months in intensive care, years of therapy, as well as other injuries too horrific for me to present," Kopytko told the Coast Guard in describing the 1994 boating accident that also killed her husband.

 

Kopytko was one of about 190 people to weigh in on the propeller guard proposal. This was a spit in the ocean compared to other federal disputes. More than 45,000 people, for instance, commented on a National Park Service proposal to limit snowmobile use in national parks.

 

But not far below the surface, propeller safety has been churning up strong emotions.

 

Manufacturers including Honda fought the proposed rule, warning of high costs and onerous requirements. The Houseboat Industry Association and National Marine Manufacturers Association mobilized their members. Even some who weren't part of the formal fight concluded the mandatory propeller guards weren't necessary.

"It's just not that common anymore, to have people run each other over," said Jim McDaniel, houseboat repair manager at Lake McClure's Barrett Cove. "The injuries from houseboats are pretty slim."

 

McDaniel said he can only recall one propeller-related injury at the Yosemite-area lake in the past 16 years, and that one involved a bass-fishing boat.

On the other side, marina managers at Lake Camanche east of Lodi as well as the Bassbusters of Santa Clara County fishing club said the propeller guards could prevent accidents. The Santa Clara county fishermen, for instance, noted they had been "dismayed at the sketchy instructions" offered to boat renters throughout northern and central California.

 

"In the past 30 years that I have boated on Shasta Lake, I have seen a number of people being injured by boat propellers," added Redding resident Robert P. Morgan. "And safety is out the window when each year 3,000 students converge on the lake for three days of party time."

 

Whipping around at 3,200 revolutions per minute, boat propellers can quickly disfigure or even kill.

 

The Coast Guard counted 14 injuries from accidents involving houseboats last year, out of 3,474 injuries from boat accidents overall. From all kinds of boats, 234 injuries involved someone being hit by a propeller.

 

An estimated 100,000 houseboats are now afloat in the United States. The Coast Guard originally estimated that houseboat owners could install propeller guards themselves, at an estimated cost of $300 per boat. The proposed regulation was cheered on by Kopytko and other accident victims, who together formed a group called Stop Propeller Injuries Now, based in Los Osos.

 

The boat manufacturers, too, mobilized, and the proposed regulation fell into limbo for several years. By Thursday, the Coast Guard said it had concluded that installing propeller guards would actually cost closer to $1,500 each.

 

"The Coast Guard remains deeply concerned about propeller injuries, and is committed to reducing them," the agency stated Thursday. "In doing so, though, the cost and effectiveness of alternative measures must be reasonably considered."

http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/168577.html

 

$4.7 billion buys Delta nothing

Stockton Record – 10/19/07

By Michael Fitzgerald, columnist

 

The unwieldy agency supposed to fix the Delta, the CALFED Bay-Delta program, has burned through $4.7 billion, yet the Delta is worse off than ever, AP reports.

 

$4.7 billion.

 

Astonishing.

 

Give me $4.7 billion, and I would permanently transform this region. And, like Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, there would not be a big difference between how I live and how most middle-class people live.

 

Seriously, in an era of a $9 trillion national debt, perhaps $4.7 billion seems like chump change.

 

But, at the risk of digressing, consider what such vast resources could do locally:

» Clean San Joaquin Valley's air ($3 billion).

» Widen Interstate 205 by two lanes ($92 million) to the Altamont Pass.

» Take care of Stockton Unified's $673 million capital improvement needs.

» Build a new county jail ($100 million).

» And the county's $29 million Agriculture Center.

» And its $108 million administration building.

» Pay off Stockton's $35 million new City Hall.

» And Stockton's $114 million Strong Neighborhoods Initiative.

» Repair all county roads ($277 million).

» Seed Stockton State University ($100 million).

 

Such outlays would change the business climate, modify the culture and improve the quality of life for decades. We're talking major transformation.

Yet the Delta is worse than ever.

 

Why? CALFED, a "collaboration" of 25 state and federal agencies, may have been doomed from the start.

 

The first reason is the agency had no authority to force its participants to accept solutions. If different interests could not agree, status quo continued.

Southern California water interests could block consensus, then contend they'd given it the old college try, but, sigh, now they just have to go with a "through-Delta conveyance."

 

But the real reason, to my mind, was the outmoded notion that "We'll all get better together," another way of saying everybody could get what they want.

 

Even though the Delta's limits clearly had been reached.

 

So the program was a $4.7 billion exercise in self-delusion, sustaining for seven years the California dream that the environment could support perpetual growth.

Hey, it's California. There are no limits. Nature is infinitely pliable. The model here is not sustainability; it's Joan Rivers' face-lifts.

 

To give the devils at CALFED their due, they did nibble around the edges of the Delta's crisis, cleaning up things upstream and teaching Southern California ways to conserve water.

 

Something like 2 million acre-feet of water came on line as the result of the agency's efforts. Arguably half the money went to good use, by one estimate. Of course, that implies a $2.35 billion boondoggle, but it's only money.

 

Southern California water users did not really want to tackle the core issue, the dying Delta, because that involved facing cutbacks on water exports, said state Sen. Michael Machado.

 

"We never got to a conclusion, to anything in the Delta, because nobody wanted to tackle the difficult problems," Machado lamented. "So they took the low-hanging fruit."

 

They took it until their avoidance drove the Delta's crisis into federal court. Now it's a different game, with legislators at odds over the remedy.

 

The sustainable solution is being blocked by Republicans demanding new dams and reservoirs.

 

They still have not learned. The era of unsustainable taking is over. Delta water quality has to be a part of the solution.

 

You would think for$4.7 billion, the state's big water contractors would have at least shed their illusions about that. Instead, they're hoping the federal judges will blink and the whole farce can continue.#

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071019/A_NEWS0803/710190333/-1/A_NEWS

 

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