Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
July 29, 2009
1. Top Items–
Four of five dam workers back on job; accident cause still undetermined
Oroville Mercury Record
Governor makes deeper cuts to balance budget
Schwarzenegger signs budget bills, cuts $489 million more
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Four of five dam workers back on job; accident cause still undetermined
Oroville Mercury Record – 7/29/09
By Toni Scott
OROVILLE — A week after a steel wall collapsed in a tunnel at Oroville Dam's Edward Hyatt Power Plant, most of the five injured Department of Water Resources employees have returned to work, though an official cause of the wall failure has yet to be determined.
Last Wednesday, five workers were injured in a chamber deep within the dam's power plant, while testing two 72-inch river valves, used to control temperature and water flow into the
Soon after the valves were opened, the steel, non-structural wall collapsed, and blew out on workers, creating what DWR spokesman Bill Cochran said was a "jet blast of water and air" down the diversion tunnel.
Flying debris caused minor to moderate injuries to four workers, with one employee suffering moderate to major injuries, including a broken leg.
Cochran said four of the injured workers returned to work by Monday, with the last employee still recovering from his injuries. The names of the workers have yet to be released by DWR.
Although the workers have returned to the plant, why the wall collapsed in the chamber is still undetermined, Cochran said.
"We're still doing some analysis," Cochran said. "We're still some weeks away from knowing the official cause."
Cochran did say initial investigations indicate that air pressure and turbulence caused by the river valves themselves seem to be a factor in the wall's collapse.
The testing of the valves "caused a pressure difference across the wall" Cochran said, which was designed to break away, should the plant be flooded with water.
However, Cochran said the amount of pressure the wall was supposed to endure was much higher than the pressure released by the operation of the river valves.
"It looks like we'll have a variety of contributing factors," Cochran said.
Cochran did confirm an oil spill occurred as a result of the accident, but said the oil remained within the power plant, with no threat to water sources.
He said the hydraulically operated valves likely "malfunctioned internally" leaking "some oil" into the plant.
Cochran said DWR was "working on a plan to recover" the undetermined amount of oil spilled into the plant, but maintained the oil was never released into the
Cochran also firmly stated that none of the five workers ended up in the diversion tunnel as a result of the accident, although a boat did respond to the end of tunnel as a precautionary measure, in the case that one of the five workers had been sucked down the tunnel.
"None of those injured was pulled into the diversion tunnel," Cochran said. "We initially feared someone might be in the tunnel, but no one had to be pulled out of the water."
http://www.orovillemr.com/search/ci_12934930?IADID=Search-www.orovillemr.com-www.orovillemr.com
Governor makes deeper cuts to balance budget
Funding for the Williamson Act was one of 21 vetoes the governor announced in order to bring the state's 2009-10 budget back into balance after the Legislature last week passed a plan that was slightly in the red.
The $489 million in general fund vetoes also targeted social service programs, including reducing by 10% the amount the state pays to counties for child welfare social workers.
The governor also sliced $6.2 million from the state parks budget. The cut, on top of the $8 million hit that parks took last week, could result in the closure of as many as 100 of the state's 279 parks -- but not until after Labor Day, officials said.
Schwarzenegger issued the vetoes before signing the $24 billion, 27-bill package of spending cuts and borrowing that lawmakers approved last Friday in hopes of fending off insolvency and ending the issuance of IOUs.
The governor called the vetoes "very, very tough decisions to make" -- but necessary ones so that the state has a reserve fund to deal with emergencies, such as fires.
"These are ugly cuts and I'm the only one that really is responsible for those cuts because the legislators left and they didn't want to make these cuts," he told reporters.
He signed the budget in a conference room in his office, absent the fanfare of prior years.
Another veto slashes $50 million from the Healthy Families children's health insurance program, bringing the total cut this year to $179 million.
Advocates have predicted 18,000 or more children could lose coverage in
Details on the park cuts still are being worked out, but officials said they would seek money from nonprofits to limit the number of closures.
The
Democrats suggested the governor did not have the right to veto some of the spending because it was not a new appropriation.
"We will fight to restore every dollar of additional cuts to health and human services," said Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento.
Schwarzenegger aides said they are confident the vetoes are legal.
The governor was forced to make more cuts after the Assembly last week rejected bills passed by the Senate that would have raised $1 billion by taking gas tax revenues from local governments and another $100 million by allowing oil drilling off the
Even with the vetoes, the state will have a paper-thin reserve of $500 million to cushion $84.6 billion in planned general fund spending for the fiscal year that began July 1.
Officials also released the first estimate for next year's budget gap -- a hole of $8 billion or more for 2010-11 that lawmakers will have to find a way to close.
The Williamson Act gives property tax breaks to farmers who agree not to sell agricultural land to developers. The state since 1972 has reimbursed counties for the money lost from the tax breaks.
The Legislature last week agreed to cut state reimbursements by 20%.
Tuesday's veto eliminates almost all of the remaining funding, saving the state an additional $27.8 million a year.
The governor left about $1,000 in the program, only because officials said they were not sure he had the authority to eliminate it entirely.
Valley counties are among the heaviest users of the Williamson Act, although the program's popularity has waned some over the past decade as the region has become more urban.
Also, the value of the tax break has declined since voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978, which gave all taxpayers protection against rising property tax bills.
Agreements with farmers are specified in 10-year contracts that are automatically renewed each year. So counties will have to offer the tax breaks for some time -- without any help from the state.
Including other cuts and borrowing approved by state lawmakers, the county could be out as much as $20 million this year, said Kathleen Donawa, the county's budget director.
Supervisors will likely have to reopen the budget and make more cuts, she said.
"I don't think anything is going to be above scrutiny," she said.
Madera County Supervisor Frank Bigelow said his county will be out $1.3 million. "We're either going to have to borrow the money ... or we're going to have to make cuts to police or libraries," he said.
State funding for the Williamson Act has been routinely targeted by Schwarzenegger and other governors.
But Valley lawmakers, especially Republicans, made it a priority and were able to save it -- until now.
"For the past five or six years, this day has been coming, and now the day is here," said Assembly Member Connie Conway, R-Tulare. #
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1563746.html
Schwarzenegger signs budget bills, cuts $489 million more
By Steve Wiegand
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a 27-bill budget-balancing package Tuesday, but only after making another $489 million in spending cuts and likening the experience to "the good, the bad and the ugly."
"This has been a very tough budget, probably the toughest since I have been in office here in
Schwarzenegger's signings essentially rebalanced the budget he and legislators approved last February for the fiscal year that started July 1.
The state's general fund spending will amount to $85 billion, including the reserve. That's a 7.2 percent drop from spending in the last fiscal year, and a whopping 17 percent less than two years ago.
The governor characterized the rebalancing efforts as "kind of like the good, the bad and the ugly":
• "Good" because it contains no tax increases, makes government "live within our means" and includes reforms of some programs.
• "Bad" because it includes $16 billion in draconian cuts in almost all state programs, particularly those serving
• "Ugly" because the package legislators sent Schwarzenegger last Friday lacked a reserve and was $156 million short of being balanced, causing the governor to make even deeper cuts that those agreed to earlier by legislative leaders.
"That's ugly, when already we've cut so much and then we had to make additional cuts," he said.
To eliminate the $156 million deficit and create the $500 million reserve, the governor made $489 million in extra cuts, borrowed $50 million from one of the state's special funds and found about $117 million in savings from money not spent in the last fiscal year.
The biggest single cut was $80 million in funds allocated to counties to pay for programs that investigate and remediate cases of child abuse and neglect. Officials said the program had been spared in earlier rounds of budget cuts.
"The situation has just gotten to the point we can't exempt them anymore," said Mike Genest, Schwarzenegger's finance director.
Other new cuts include:
• $60.6 million from funds used to pay for Medi-Cal eligibility workers at the county level. Aid to recipients was not cut, but they will likely have to wait longer for service.
• $50 million from Healthy Families, a 12-year-old program providing low-cost medical insurance to low-income families that don't qualify for Medi-Cal.
Health care advocates said that coupled with earlier cuts totaling $128.6 million, the reductions could affect more than 900,000 children statewide.
The number ultimately losing coverage will depend on decisions by the state Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board, which runs the program.
The board is scheduled to meet Thursday to consider options. The board's staff has recommended that the program begin actively disenrolling tens of thousands of children a month starting in the fall.
• $52.1 million from the Office of AIDS Prevention and Treatment. Officials said the cut means the elimination of all services except providing drug assistance and monitoring the number of cases.
• $27.8 million from the Williamson Act program, which provides money to counties that give tax breaks to landowners who keep their land as open space. Because the governor couldn't unilaterally abolish the program, he cut the budget to a token $1,000.
• $6.2 million from state parks. Parks director Ruth Coleman said that coupled with earlier reductions, the cuts could mean the closure of about 100 of the state's 279 parks after Labor Day.
Which parks will close, she said, will be determined by several factors, including what kind of revenue they produce and whether sponsors and/or partners can be found among local governments and private organizations and individuals to keep them open.
"Before we just roll out a list and start the closures, we're going to try and find as many partners as possible," Coleman said. "We're not going to give up on these parks. We're hoping Californians will step up and help us."
Democratic legislators concurred with the governor's characterization of the new cuts as "ugly" but disagreed that Schwarzenegger has the legal authority to make them without legislative approval.
"We will fight to restore every dollar of additional cuts to health and human services," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said in a prepared statement. "We question whether the majority of these vetoes are legal."
Steinberg contended that while governors have the right to "blue-pencil" spending when a budget is sent to them, the package signed Tuesday was only a revision of an existing budget and thus not subject to line-item vetoes.
"This is not the last word," he warned.
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-
"The governor's actions today have not just caused harm," Bass said in a prepared statement, "his actions today put lives in jeopardy. ... He and his staff may be lighting cigars to celebrate these cuts, but they should also be concerned about the devastating harm they are causing."
But administration officials contend the governor has all the legal standing he needs.
"The budget bills that the Legislature sent to the governor contained items of appropriation," said Finance Department spokesman H.D. Palmer. "and therefore is subject to the governor's constitutional authority."
Moreover, finance director Genest said the cuts made Tuesday represent almost all the choices left to Schwarzenegger without having to seek legislative approval to abolish programs.
"There was very little left he could cut without a law change," Genest said.
The state's financial gurus are banking on Tuesday's budget-balancing being enough to persuade Wall Street lenders to provide
That would allow state Controller John Chiang to stop paying many of the state's bills with IOUs.
Genest said administration officials would be huddling with Chiang and state Treasurer Bill Lockyer to figure out exactly how much in loans the state should seek, and when Chiang can turn off the IOUs.
"It's not going to be as easy as it has in the past," he said.
Genest also acknowledged that even if all of the budget's machinations work, and the state has no unforeseen emergencies and no one successfully sues the state to thwart some budget-balancing effort,
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2064003.html?mi_rss=Top%20Stories
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DWR’s California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the DWR Public Affairs Office. For reader’s services, including new subscriptions, temporary cancellations and address changes, please use the online page: http://listhost2.water.ca.gov/mailman/listinfo/water_news . DWR operates and maintains the State Water Project, provides dam safety and flood control and inspection services, assists local water districts in water management and water conservation planning, and plans for future statewide water needs. Inclusion of materials is not to be construed as an endorsement of any programs, projects, or viewpoints by the Department or the State of
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