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[Water_news] 5. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE - 4/30/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

April 30, 2008

 

5. Agencies, Programs, People -

 

Garcia bill on district pulled -

Imperial Valley Press

 

Opinion:

Easy steps to beat water 'crisis' -

Napa Valley Register

 

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Garcia bill on district pulled

Imperial Valley Press – 4/29/08

By Brianna Lusk, staff writer

A bill that Imperial Irrigation District officials said would have been a detriment to its operation and threatened its resources was pulled Tuesday.

Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, reached an agreement with IID to prevent AB 2564 from moving into the preliminary hearing phase scheduled today.

The bill could have seen IID energy and water split if Coachella Valley voters made up more than 75 percent of its ratepayers. Currently the Coachella area makes up about 60 percent of IID ratepayers.

To view documents about the agreement, visit:

http://www.ivpressonline.com/docs/garciaiidpr4-29.pdf

http://www.ivpressonline.com/docs/eap4-29.pdf


With a six-point plan agreed upon, Garcia said the issue of long-term planning has been addressed.

“I believe each and every measure contained in the action plan will allow elected officials from both counties to work shoulder-to-shoulder to protect our valuable water and energy resources,” Garcia said.

IID Board President John Pierre Menvielle called the compromise a victory for ratepayers.

“The main thing is keeping this thing in local control and working with her to enhance Coachella’s representation,” Menvielle said.

Garcia had previously said that adding elected positions might have been a viable option. The IID board will remain a five-member board with each director elected from Imperial County.

Garcia said the IID, which operates under the state Water Code, was no longer in line with the rules and needed to answer to Coachella consumers.

The six-point plan agreed upon by IID and Garcia includes a long-term planning process to begin by July 31, the strengthening of the energy consumers advisory committee and other measures.

ECAC members have criticized the district in the past for being a “rubber stamp” entity that had little power.

The reconstituted ECAC would meet more frequently and eight members would be nominated by city councils of Palm Desert, La Quinta, Indio and Coachella and two others would be nominated by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors and the Coachella Valley Association of Governments.

Members of the ECAC currently are solely appointed by the IID directors.

IID General Manager Brian Brady said a critical element of the agreement is working with cities in the north desert on areas of concern.

“We can assure the representation on the ECAC reflects and is representative of Coachella Valley,” Brady said.

Debate erupted over why Garcia was bringing the bill forward at this late stage in her last months in office, an aspect Garcia contended.

It was unclear whether the bill had enough support to move forward past the hearing phase, as multiple local government bodies, water and state agencies sent letters of opposition to Sacramento in recent weeks.

IID Director James Hanks, who was present at several meetings with Garcia, said the consensus is an example of what can happen when lines of communications are opened.

“We’re appreciative of her not going to legislative action. At the end of the day we both have a lot of work to do,” Hanks said.#

http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2008/04/30/local_news/news03.txt

 

Opinion:

Easy steps to beat water 'crisis'

Napa Valley Register – 4/30/08

By Tony Bogar- Napa resident Bogar works with Friends of the River, California’s statewide river conservation group. FOR is not affiliated with Friends of the Napa River.

 

California has enough water. Surprised?

We hear endlessly about the “water crisis.” Politicians like Gov. Schwarzenegger and Sen. Feinstein are pushing to build more dams, at a cost of several billions dollars each. Even the Peripheral Canal has resurfaced as a solution to our crisis. But do we really need to pile on to the state’s debt and wait decades for these “solutions” to be built? Isn’t there a quicker, cheaper, smarter answer to our problems?

 

Let’s be clear. California certainly faces major water challenges like global warming and increased demand. So some people are rushing to build dams — expensive 19th century solutions to 21st century problems. We don’t need solutions that are expensive, destructive and useless. A little common sense shows us that the real answers to our problems are easy, efficient and smart.

Why dams don’t work:

• Dams are expensive. Dams today are the most expensive option for water, costing billions of dollars each to build and maintain. Taxpayers could end up paying a bill that’s almost 50 times — yes, 50 times! — the cost of smarter solutions.

• Dams are destructive. California already has lost 90 percent of our river environment. We have lost 95 percent of our salmon and steelhead habitat. Our commercial fisheries — and the communities they once supported — are barely hanging on as it is. Building more dams will only destroy more rivers and more fisheries.

 

• Dams are useless. California already has 1,400 dams on our rivers. As a practical matter, there is very little water to collect behind new dams anymore. According to the state, new dams would provide even less reliable water than cloud seeding!

Why common sense does work:

• Saving water is easy. Conservation really does work. California has cut its per capita water use by 50 percent over the past 40 years, even as the state has boomed. The city of Napa offers free low-flow showerheads, faucet aerators and hose timers to help us reduce our water use. Simply using the tools we already have — like new appliances and drip irrigation — we can easily cut our water use another 20 percent and still support a growing population and even bigger economy.

• Recycling water is efficient. Why spray clean, clear drinking water on our golf courses and median strips? We can use the rainwater than runs into our storm drains and recycle our wastewater. The Napa Sanitation District last year produced almost 700 million gallons of recycled water, nearly one-third of all the wastewater it treats. It distributed almost half of that to golf courses, and some vineyards and industrial parks use this recycled water as well. The proposed Milliken-Sarco-Tulocay project would be another example of using recycled water for irrigation. Through reclamation and recycling statewide we can save enough drinking water each year for 1.5 million households — roughly all of Los Angeles.

• Storing water is smart. Every year, enough water for almost 3 million households — one-quarter of all the households in California — disappears into thin air behind our existing dams. It’s much smarter to store our water underground by allowing it to seep into the water table. In fact, we already store enough water underground to fill Hetch Hetchy 15 times over — and there’s room for much, much more.

These three easy steps easily beat billion-dollar dams and canals. #

http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/04/30/opinion/commentary/doc4817fffd16c41325909657.txt

 

 




[Water_news] 4. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATER QUALITY - 4/30/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

April 30, 2008

 

4. Water Quality -

 

 

Questions Surround NID's Cement Hill Treated Water Project

Yubanet.com – 4/29/08

By: Susan Snider, YubaNet

 

GRASS VALLEY, Calif. April 27, 2008 -- Despite approval by 82 percent of voters supporting the formation of the Cement Hill Community Facilities District (CFD), the treated water pipeline project continues to face setbacks.

At last week's meeting, Nevada Irrigation District (NID) board members heard objections from several property owners who claimed they were included in the CFD without their consent. Since only registered voters within the CFD boundaries were allowed to decide the fate of the facilities district, absentee owners like Jean and John Butterfield and Frank Marshall could not participate in the official vote.

Cement Hill resident Paul Mellersh found himself similarly disenfranchised. As a British citizen, Mellersh could not participate in the decision-making vote, held in December 2007.

NID Assistant Manager Tim Crough advised those present that the water district spent a majority of 2007 working on the formation of the CFD. According to Crough, the district made every attempt to determine owner interest in obtaining treated water from NID.

The water district sent out a questionnaire in 2006 to all applicable property owners. NID sought to gauge overall interest in the CFD, installation of fire hydrants, and owner willingness to incur a yearly assessment.

Parcels within the CFD boundary would be assessed a special tax of $1385 per year, beginning in 2009.

According to Mellersh, while he responded to the questionnaire, it was his understanding that his answers did not constitute a binding agreement for inclusion in the CFD. Now he faces a $19,000 tax lien for an assessment that he did not approve.

Mellersh currently obtains water from a well on his property. He is also closer to NID's Indian Flat treated water pipeline and was advised at the board meeting that hookup would be less expensive through Indian Flat than the Cement Hill pipeline.

For the Butterfields, the situation has become more complex -- and potentially far more expensive. Originally classified as a single parcel under the proposed CFD, Butterfield has since split his property into four parcels. He now faces four yearly special tax assessments.

"The problem is, when the process began our property was only one parcel. Now it's four parcels," Butterfield told NID's board.

Other than the questionnaire, they received no additional notices until they were informed that their taxes would increase as a result of the special assessment. Butterfield and his wife are not registered to vote in Nevada County.

Property owner Frank Marshall also faces an unwanted assessment.

"When I finally got my questionnaire, I sent it to the garbage can," he informed the board. "I'm not a registered voter, so now I'm stuck. My question is, why include my parcel since I didn't respond?"

Crough responded by admitting he was not sure why Marshall's parcel was included.

"Since you didn't respond, we didn't know what you wanted, so we had to use our crystal ball," Crough added.

While Crough stated earlier in the meeting that there is no mechanism to detach parcels from the CFD, board president George Leipzig eventually deferred to NID counsel Jeff Meith.

"Can we redraw along the district line?" queried Leipzig.

Meith responded that he is not a CFD expert but advised once a lien is attached to a parcel, it can't be removed unless the debt is paid in full.

According to Meith, NID could record a satisfaction of lien if the water district advanced payment on the assessment.

"People who are on standby already shouldn't be part of the CFD," Meith said. "But my question is, if those people ever come back, then they will have to buy in at a future amount to effectively reimburse NID."

While Leipzig recommended that the issue go first to staff and then the district's Administrative Practices Committee before final discussion by a full board, Crough reminded the directors of time constraints with the process.

Without any formal mechanism for release of tax liens on properties for people like Mellersh, Butterfield, or Marshall, special taxes for the CFD would be levied with the county tax collector not later than August . Is Water Conservation on the Horizon?

Following one of the driest months of March in Nevada County history and with April ending pretty much the same, it is no surprise that NID's available water supplies hover around 80 percent of average.

General Manager Ron Nelson reported that while water supplies in March were near average, the lack of precipitation in April, in addition to an early rise in seasonal water use, contributed to a supply drop of 20% in roughly three weeks.

Zebra/Quagga Mussels: Should Nevada County Be Concerned?

They invade local waters, clogging power plant and public water intakes and pipes. They have disrupted the traditional aquatic food chains of many inland lakes by depleting food sources for other endemic species, especially fish. Treatment to remove quagga mussels is very expensive and can lead to increased utility bills.

While major colonies of these non-native, invasive bivalves are concentrated in the eastern United States, some mussels have been found in California. Quaggas spread by attaching themselves to aquatic plants and recreational or commercial boats.

Director Leipzig voiced concerns about potential impacts to NID's upper Sierra reservoir system and hydropower operations. He also pointed out if the invasive mussels moved downstream into Lake Wildwood, they could plug up the area's irrigation system and impact local golf courses.

NID plans to revisit the discussion on zebra/quagga mussels during a formal workshop in May.

"Best of Nevada County" Kudos to Scotts Flat Reservoir

In a recent annual 'Best of Nevada County' newspaper poll, NID's Scotts Flat Reservoir received three awards as the best location for camping, boating, and fishing.

Director Paul Williams asked those present to join him in congratulating NID staff for their work in helping the water district achieve these accolades.

NID board meetings are scheduled at 9 a.m. on the second and fourth Wednesdays of every month. The public is encouraged to attend.#

http://yubanet.com/regional/Questions-Surround-NID-s-Cement-Hill-Treated-Water-Project.php

 

 

 

[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 4/30/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

April 30, 2008

 

3. Watersheds -

 

 

Students school biologists on greening up their campus

Sacramento Bee – 4/30/08

By M.S. Enkoji, staff writer

 

Al Gore's got nothing on Jared Landberg.

 

The 11-year-old fifth-grader at Orangevale Open Elementary School eagerly led federal biologists around the 10-acre campus Tuesday, spouting his ideas for transforming it into an environmental showcase – complete with putting green.

 

OK, maybe Jared needs a little more schooling on how much water it takes to keep those greens green.

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Otherwise, he and three of his classmates were brimming with ecologically sound ideas, throwing out terms like "drip irrigation" and "butterfly preserves" and "solar panels." How about a place for ladybugs to land, a gazebo for a shady retreat?

 

"I can come here to ride my bike," Jared said, lobbying for a bike trail under rustling oak and eucalyptus trees.

 

The Fair Oaks school has been chosen as the national training ground for U.S. Fish and Wildlife's mission to help public schools turn their campuses into ecological habitat and connect their students with nature.

 

About two dozen federal scientists and administrators sat in classroom chairs a smidge too small Tuesday, learning how they can help other schools plan and execute the same kinds of habitats on campuses around the country.

 

Schools interested in replacing wide expanses of unused lawn could create outdoor laboratories for science students and useful terrain for diverse activities such as an outdoor retreat for studying. Pages in biology books will come to life, the scientists said.

 

The team will be on the school campus this week to get a plan under way, which could take as long as 18 months before landscaping and planting are done. The Fair Oaks school was chosen because parents had contacted Fish and Wildlife about replicating what the agency has done with schools in the Chesapeake Bay area.

The criteria for choosing schools have not been decided, said Carolyn Kolstad, another Fish and Wildlife biologist. But urban schools could be more likely candidates.

 

The Fish and Wildlife region of California and Nevada and parts of Oregon was allotted $100,000 this year for the program, said Debra Schlafmann, a division chief for habitat restoration.

 

A key part of the planning involves getting feedback from parents – who could be contributing elbow grease – and students.

Jared did his share.

 

A pond would be nice, he said, walking an acre of wooded land with biologist Chantel Jimenez.

 

When Jimenez suggested that the pond could be dangerous at a school where children as young as 5 attend, Jared crossed his arms to ponder.

"How about a cool little picket fence that you see in those happy '50s movies?" he suggested.

 

The other students strolling with Jimenez chimed in with their budding sense of aesthetics: no chain link fences like the one enclosing the ball field. Too ugly.

Elyssa Clauson, 10, envisions a desertscape, there in the back, she said, pointing to an off-limits unkempt sweep of tall grass. "Sand and cactus could go there – and some lizards."

 

She held her ground when the boys pooh-poohed her idea as impractical because the lizards would slither off.

"The fence can have small holes," she said.

 

Sam Tayarani, 11, said that a lot of students – the older ones – pine for a quiet place to study away from smaller kids, he said.

"They know the buzzwords," said Jimenez. But the new landscape could actually broaden their understanding of the terms they've picked up, such as how drip irrigation conserves water, she said.

 

The fifth-graders, one of about a dozen groups who walked with biologists, were ecstatic to be polled for their opinions.

 

"Usually at the school, we never get to pitch our ideas," said Jared, who gladly sacrificed his recess time to participate.

 

Dana Davies, 10, spread her arms wide to take in the rambling campus. "Now we're helping the school," she said.

 

To get your school involved, e-mail carolyn_kolstad@ fws.gov, one of the federal biologists.#

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/900888.html

 

 

[Water_news] 2. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: SUPPLY - 4/30/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment 

 

April 30, 2008

 

2. Supply –

 

New boat ramp planned at Lake Oroville to offset declining water level -

Sacramento Bee

 

New ramp to be built as Lake Oroville level drops -

Oroville Mercury Register

 

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New boat ramp planned at Lake Oroville to offset declining water level

Sacramento Bee – 4/29/08

By Matt Weiser, staff writer

 

State water officials will build a new, longer boat ramp at Lake Oroville's Bidwell Canyon to ensure continued boater access after an expected decline in lake levels this summer.

 

The Department of Water Resources plans to start construction on the ramp in mid-October and finish the project four to six weeks later. A cost estimate has not yet been developed because the project is still being designed, said spokesman Ted Thomas. The project will be financed with State Water Project funds, accrued through payments by state water contractors.

 

The existing boat ramp at Bidwell Canyon extends to a water surface elevation of 700 feet, which DWR projects will be reached by mid-August, putting the ramp out of commission. The new ramp will extend down to an elevation of 640 feet. The lake is now about 48 percent full, with a water elevation of 753 feet.

Advertisement

The Sierra Nevada snowpack was about average this year. But runoff is expected to be below normal because last year's drought conditions left soils very dry, so much of the runoff will be absorbed. March and April have provided almost no precipitation, which also reduced the runoff forecast.

 

Oroville is California's second-largest reservoir, with a capacity of 3.5 million acre-feet of water at a surface elevation of 900 feet. For more information, call the Lake Oroville Visitor's Center at (530) 538-2219.#

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/901097.html

 


New ramp to be built as Lake Oroville level drops

Oroville Mercury Register – 4/29/08

Staff Writers

 

OROVILLE -- The boat ramp at Bidwell Canyon Marina on Lake Oroville will be lengthened this summer and fall as the lake water level continues to drop.

All of the existing boat ramps at the lake are expected to be out of the water by mid-August.

 

The Department of Water Resources will take advantage of the low water to build a ramp 500 feet long, which will extend to a lake elevation of 640 feet above sea level, according to Oroville Field Division engineer Bill Cochran.

 

When full, Lake Oroville is 900 feet above sea level. Currently, it is at 753 feet.

 

Lake Oroville usually gains water from winter rains and snow melt in spring, then gradually declines during summer and fall.

 

But the last two years have been dry. In 2007, the lake dropped under 700 feet, and was only 36 percent full. Winter's storms have only increased the lake to 48 percent of capacity.

 

DWR is working with the Department of Parks and Recreation — which administers the recreation area at Lake Oroville — to keep boating access available this summer.

 

The lake's bass and coho salmon fisheries remain strong, DWR Biologist Eric See said.

 

Information on Lake Oroville elevations and availability of boat launch ramps may be found online at www.lakeoroville.water.ca.gov or by calling 538-2219.#

http://www.orovillemr.com/news/ci_9100931


 

 

 

 

[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 4/30/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

April 30, 2008

 

1.  Top Items -

 

 

Peripheral canal bill dies

Fresno Bee – 4/29/08

By E.J. Schultz, staff writer

An Assembly committee on Tuesday shelved legislation to build a canal around the suffering Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, telling the bill's author to try again next year.

 

Two years in the making, Senate Bill 27 tackled a subject so politically charged that author, Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, carefully avoided using the "P" word -- peripheral canal -- as he presented the bill as a way to shore up state water supplies without harming the environment.

But with environmentalists, farmers and Delta-area interests all opposed for different reasons, the legislation went the way of so many other water bills -- to the shelf to wait for more studies.

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"We don't know what will fix this yet ... so to leap to the conclusion that it is a conveyance facility and to focus attention on that I think truly is premature," said Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, head of the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee.

 

"Conveyance" is the other word for canal. SB 27 would have created a new seven-member authority to contract for the design and construction of a new facility to move water from the Delta to pumps that send the water to cities and farms. A $4 billion bond measure would have been put on the November ballot to help pay for the project, which would also be funded by users.

 

Urging Simitian to wait for more findings, the committee did not vote on his bill. He plans to scale it back to include only short-term fixes, like beefing up state plans to respond to a Delta earthquake. He vowed to tackle the canal again in a new bill next year, after the release of a much-anticipated report from the Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger-appointed Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force.#

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/899623.html

 

 

 

[Water_news] 5. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE - 4/29/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

April 29, 2008

 

5. Agencies, Programs, People -

 

Reporter, political figure Hale Champion dies

San Francisco Chronicle

 

Levee District 1 has financing to straighten bend -

Marysville Appeal-Democrat

 

Solving global warming with giant vacuums

Los Angeles Times

 

News Release - ACWA

ACWA Participates in Scoping Meeting on Bay-Delta Plan

 

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Reporter, political figure Hale Champion dies

San Francisco Chronicle – 4/29/08

By David Perlman, staff writer

 

Hale Champion, a San Francisco reporter who left journalism for an extraordinary public service career in California state government, the White House and academia, died Wednesday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 85.

 

The cause was complications from prostate cancer and kidney failure.

 

Mr. Champion was known widely for his political savvy and wisdom, his ironic sense of humor, and his affable but tough-minded skill in pushing through progressive social programs and legislation.

 

He became a powerful figure in the two-term administration of now-dead California Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, serving the governor first in 1958 as press secretary, then executive secretary, and finally as state finance director.

 

In what even critics conceded was a virtuoso performance, Mr. Champion helped lead Brown's successful efforts to push through such major achievements as the California State Water Project, the Master Plan for Higher Education, the state Economic Development Commission, and the state's pioneering Fair Employment and Housing legislation.

 

After the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, Mr. Champion tried and failed to persuade the Legislature to appropriate a mere $3 million to buy the entire ski area as a state park. It was one of his few political failures, he later confessed to friends as Squaw Valley and its world-famous ski runs grew more and more profitable and the income went to the ski corporation rather than the state.

 

Pat Brown's son, the current state attorney general and former Gov. Jerry Brown, knew Mr. Champion well in those years.

 

"My father admired him tremendously, and they were very, very close," Jerry Brown recalled. "In fact, he was my father's major policy adviser for many years."

When Pat Brown lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan in 1966, Mr. Champion accepted an invitation to become a Kennedy Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics, the first of several tours at Harvard.

 

In between, he was recruited by Boston's Mayor Kevin White as director of the city's Redevelopment Authority, where he oversaw the planning and creation of $1 billion in major new civic projects, including the rebuilding of the famed Quincy Market into a vibrant commercial center.

 

That success led the University of Minnesota to recruit him as executive vice president to oversee the school's five campuses. Later, Harvard President Derek Bok asked Mr. Champion to return to the university as vice president for financial affairs, where among other achievements he developed the idea of building a cogeneration power plant.

 

Mr. Champion's reputation for political skill and liberal social policies led to an invitation to become undersecretary of health, education and welfare in the Jimmy Carter administration.

 

"In those days, neither Medicare nor Medicaid recognized the concept of HMOs - health maintenance organizations - and it was Mr. Champion who got Medicare's first approval for the Kaiser Health Plan's HMOs - and that broke the logjam nationally," said former Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano. "It was a major achievement in bringing health care to millions of working people."

 

Before the Carter administration ended, Mr. Champion - married and with two growing children - announced he was broke and returned to Harvard to become the first executive dean of the Kennedy School of Government.

 

After that post, Mr. Champion became chief secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under Gov. Michael Dukakis before returning to Harvard.

Mr. Champion was born in Coldwater, Mich., in 1922. He was originally named Charles after his grandfather, but to avoid confusion he used only the name Hale throughout his life.

 

He attended the University of Michigan for three years, heading for a career in journalism, but left in 1942 to join the Army and serve as a sergeant in a military government unit in Europe until the end of World War II.

 

After the war, he worked as a reporter in Wisconsin. He later hitchhiked to California and worked for the Sacramento Bee before enrolling at Stanford University, where he graduated in 1952.

 

At Stanford, he met and married a classmate, the former Marie Tifft.

 

In 1952, he joined The Chronicle, where he covered politics and investigated local frauds. In one probe, for example, he discovered that many local television repair scam artists were cheating customers with faked repair bills - and his work won convictions of several of them with evidence provided by his wife, who pretended that their own TV was broken.

 

The scam artists responded with death threats, and Mr. Champion and his family hid out for weeks in the home of a Chronicle colleague until the threats ended.

After covering Pat Brown's winning 1958 campaign for governor, Mr. Champion joined the new governor's staff, and then, a few years later, to California's horror in 1965, the Champion family became victims of the most sensational crime of the times.

 

Two armed men, just released from an Oregon prison after serving time for rape and murder, invaded the Champions' modest Sacramento home and kidnapped Mr. Champion, his wife and their 19-month-old daughter, Katherine. The Champions' 11-year-old son, Tom, and his cousin, Paul Thornbury, slept undisturbed in a backyard cottage.

 

For more than 24 hours, the kidnappers drove the Champions across Sierra back roads and through the Nevada desert, heading for Mexico while one of the greatest manhunts in California history sought to find them.

 

It ended near a Tonopah, Nev., casino after a local cardsharp recognized the pair and fired a shot at their car just as deputy sheriffs were moving in. The would-be vigilante wounded Mr. Champion with a bullet to his hip and the kidnappers drove off, but they soon released the family and were later caught.

Said Mr. Champion of his kidnappers: "Well, I've been treated worse in the (state) Capitol."

 

Less than two weeks ago, and knowing he was terminally ill, Mr. Champion remained irrepressible. He took a somber-voiced sympathy phone call from an old Chronicle colleague one day and in response to the sad voice said in a flash and a laugh, "Hey, I'm going on a strange journey - you want to come along?"

 

Mr. Champion is survived by his wife, Marie, of Cambridge, Mass.; his son, Tom, of Somerville, Mass.; his daughter, Katherine Murphy, of Cambridge; and three grandchildren.

 

Memorial contributions may be made to the Cambridge Health Alliance, c/o the Alliance Foundation, P.O. Box 398037, Cambridge, MA 02139.

A memorial event at the Kennedy School of Government is being planned.#

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/29/BAQ410AJL1.DTL

 

Levee District 1 has financing to straighten bend

Marysville Appeal-Democrat – 4/28/08

By John Dickey, staff writer

 

Levee District 1 will get an early round of state bond money to fix the weakest spot in its levees, ending any uncertainty over project funding to fix Star Bend.

The State Department of Water Resources issued a decision memo Friday that allocated $16.33 million in Proposition 1E and Proposition 84 money for the district's Star Bend setback levee project.

 

"You've got your money now, you're ready to go," Jeff Twitchell, engineer for LD 1, told the district's board Monday.

 

Fixing Star Bend by building a setback levee farther from the river would reduce the risk of a failure at one of the district's biggest trouble spots. The district's levees protect Yuba City and parts of Sutter County in the Yuba City Basin.

 

The money will allow the district to move ahead with land acquisition, one of the tasks still remaining before construction. The district still has to go out for bids, and get permits from various agencies.

 

Twitchell said work could start in April 2009. The district would like to start construction even sooner, but will probably have to put off most of the work until next spring to avoid working on the levee during flood season.

 

The levee district started work on an environmental study for the setback project in 2005. At the time, it may have been a bit of a gamble for the maintenance district to take on the much bigger job of building a levee.

 

"We're a maintenance district — we were kind of putting our neck out there," said district Director Mike Vinsonhaler.

 

But it appeared the gamble would pay off when state officials put the district's setback levee on a list of projects for early funding from the Proposition 1E levee bond. Friday's decision memo said the department will send an agreement to the district authorizing the funding.

 

"We started a long time ago, and it's a good thing we did, or else we wouldn't have had the funds," said Vinsonhaler.

 

Star Bend has been as a trouble spot since the Sutter County grand jury report following the 1955 flood. The report called for the bend to be straightened.

Flooding in 1997 brought the bend to the brink of failure. Aggressive flood fighting and thousands of sandbags held the levee together.

Sutter County and Yuba City also are providing funding for the levee project.#

http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/district_63287___article.html/levee_money.html

 

 

 

Solving global warming with giant vacuums

Los Angeles Times  - 4/29/08

By Alan Zarembo, staff writer

 

Here's a simple solution to global warming: vacuum carbon dioxide out of the air.

Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University, said placing enough carbon filters around the planet could reel the world's atmosphere back toward the 18th century, like a climatic time machine.

 

 After a decade of work, his shower-sized prototype whirs away inside a Tucson warehouse, each day capturing about 10 pounds of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas as air wafts through it.

Only a few billion tons to go.

In the battle against global warming, technology has long been seen as the ultimate savior, but Lackner's machine is a clunky reminder of how distant that dream is.

He estimates that sucking up the current stream of emissions would require about 67 million boxcar-sized filters at a cost of trillions of dollars a year.

The orchards of filters would have to be powered by complexes of new nuclear plants, dams, solar farms or other clean-energy sources to avoid adding more pollution to the atmosphere.

Despite the scope of the proposal, the allure of high technology is irresistible for modern humans. Salvation has arrived again and again over the last century: the automobile, the jet, the Internet, the iPod.

That dream has pushed scattered groups of scientists to work on massive schemes to reengineer the planet.

One idea is to block sunlight, either by constructing artificial volcanoes to blast sulfur particles into the atmosphere or by launching millions of tiny satellites into space and arranging them into a giant mirror.

Another concept is sprinkling iron over the oceans to nurture plankton colonies that would absorb carbon dioxide from the air and transfer it to the depths.

But while the science of dialing back the planet's thermostat is straightforward, the execution is fabulously expensive, complex and grandiose on a scale that boggles the mind.

"Nobody doubts it is possible to take CO2 out of the air," said David Keith, a professor of engineering and economics at the University of Calgary in Canada and one of several scientists around the world working on the problem. "The issue is, 'What does it cost?' "

Some policy experts argue that blind faith in technology is a harmful distraction from the hard sacrifices needed to control global warming.

"The temptation is to say, 'Let's get John Wayne on horseback or Bill Gates . . . and solve this problem,' " said Dale Jamieson, director of environmental studies at New York University.

But some scientists say that the potential of such ideas cannot be ignored given the world's political paralysis on controlling emissions and its myopic addiction to cheap and dirty coal.

"There are not that many alternatives," Lackner said.

The attraction of a technological silver bullet lies in the failure of the world to solve global warming through the obvious solution: reducing emissions.

The 1997 Kyoto accords were supposed to bring the world together to address the problem, but the two biggest polluters, the United States and China, have refused to cap their emissions, and Europe is failing to meet even its modest targets.

Worldwide annual emissions of carbon dioxide -- the main culprit in global warming -- have climbed 28% over the last decade, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The rise has been largely driven by industrializing countries, such as China and India, which argue that they have the right to exploit their coal reserves to catch up with the West.

 

It is clear that cheap energy is a drug that civilization will not give up. But big technological solutions could allow society to keep its drug.

Among the options, carbon filtering is the most direct and best understood. If industrialization is a process of transferring carbon stored in the earth to the atmosphere, filtering seeks to put it back.

 

The technology is decades old. Bottled oxygen used in hospitals started out as plain air before nitrogen, carbon dioxide and other gases were filtered out. Space capsules and submarines extract carbon dioxide to maintain breathable air for crew members.

The process for removing atmospheric carbon involves putting one compound, usually a hydroxide, in contact with the air, setting off a reaction that grabs CO2 and incorporates its carbon atoms into a carbonate compound.

Then, in a reaction that requires a large input of heat, the carbonate compound is broken apart, reconstituting and trapping the carbon dioxide.

Researchers propose pumping the captured CO2 into the ground, a practice already used to increase the pressure in oil wells. Geologists say there is room in subterranean rock formations to lock it away forever.

The beauty of carbon capture is that it scrubs the planet without intruding on it, unlike artificial volcanoes and sun reflectors, which could cause enormous planetary damage in the form of acid rain or giant shadows that stunt crops.

The filters could be placed anywhere in the world, since carbon dioxide disperses throughout the atmosphere.

For all its appeal, the process is hideously inefficient. Carbon dioxide makes up less than 0.04% of the atmosphere, and removing climate-changing quantities of it requires filtering massive amounts of air.

Lackner calculated that sucking up all 28 billion tons of CO2 released worldwide each year would require spreading out his machines over a land area the size of Arizona.

That seems like a reasonable sacrifice to save civilization, until you consider the expense.

Experts estimate that it would cost up to $200 a ton to filter and store carbon dioxide from the air. That means the yearly vacuuming bill could reach $5.6 trillion.

Even filtering the greenhouse gas from smokestacks, where it is hundreds of times more concentrated and thus much cheaper to capture, is still deemed too expensive for commercial use.

The enormous cost raises the question: Who would pay?

It is the same impasse that has stymied efforts toward a global agreement to reduce emissions. China argues that the West should foot the bill because it created the problem over the last two centuries. The United States says China must accept its share of responsibility as the world's new top polluter.

The cost of the technology will surely fall over time, but without government action that is unlikely to happen soon enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

Without at least a 50% cut in emissions by mid-century, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that the temperature rise will exceed 2 degrees, resulting in worsening drought, a dangerous sea level rise and widespread extinction of species.

Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, said that the failure to cut emissions might force the world to reshape the environment through drastic use of technology.

The risks could be enormous, but the risks of failing to reduce emissions could be greater, he said.

Crutzen said that only out of a "sense of despair" had he come to favor the last-ditch option of spewing more than a million tons of sulfur a year into the air.

It's a dirty proposition that, in some ways, is its own environmental crime. But it works, as shown by the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, which temporarily cooled the planet by almost 1 degree Fahrenheit. "It might be the last escape route from the problem," he said.

The power to reengineer the planet raises another question: Who gets to control the thermostat? Despite the perception that climate change is a global problem, it is in reality a series of regional transformations that benefits some places and harms others.

Countries in the far northern latitudes have less incentive than tropical countries to counteract the warming. Russia has already laid claim to the North Pole in hopes that the arctic thaw will open access to new oil reserves. Canada is pondering the possibility of its vast expanse of tundra becoming a breadbasket.

With enough carbon filters, a single country or even several rich individuals would have the power to set the world's temperature.

"No matter how you go about it, there will be a lot of politics," Lackner said.

For now, his machine, a solitary prototype, continues to hum away in the Tucson warehouse. With no good place to store the carbon dioxide it traps, the gas is simply released back into the air.#

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-sci-carbon29apr29,1,2160719.story?track=rss

 

News Release - ACWA

ACWA Participates in Scoping Meeting on Bay-Delta Plan
Association Calls Process a Critical Step toward Comprehensive Water Solution

 

Sacramento — Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) President Glen Peterson today took part in the first in a series of scoping meetings in the environmental review process for Bay-Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP). The plan is a collaborative effort by state, federal and local agencies and environmental organizations to map out a comprehensive conservation plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The BDCP process is aimed at protecting Delta species in way that provides for sufficient and reliable water supplies. Improving the sustainability of the Delta is a key policy priority for ACWA, and association members will be participating in scoping meetings around the state in the coming weeks.

Peterson said ACWA members view the BDCP process as a critical step toward fixing the troubled Delta and the larger goal of securing a more sustainable water system for California.

“We welcome the start of this environmental review process because there is not a minute to lose when it comes to the Delta,” Peterson said. “We need to get moving on a solution because every day we wait is another day of environmental decline and lost water supplies.

“Improving the sustainability of the Delta is in everyone’s best interest. California simply cannot hope to achieve a comprehensive water solution without a plan to stop the Delta’s downward slide.”

He noted that without a sustainable Delta, important tools such as recycling and local surface and groundwater storage cannot work effectively in many areas of the state. Significant public investments in local programs are at risk as a result.

The scoping meetings continue through May 14. The environmental review process is expected to be completed in 2010.

ACWA is a statewide association of public agencies whose 450 members are responsible for about 90% of the water delivered in California. For more information, visit www.acwa.com.#

http://www.acwa.com/mediazone/newsreleases/view_release.asp?ID=670

 

 

 

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