Land Use/Open Space

The temperatures for the next three days in Davis are expected to push up to and then exceed 90 degrees, here in mid-October, before cooling down to more normal readings in the 70s with even a chance of showers next week.

But it has been another abnormal year.  Sacramento broke a record in September when 26 of the 30 days met or exceeded 90 degrees.  The previous record was 24 and it was set back in 1974.

“Interpretation of existing law allows for the sale of semi-automatic weapons with easily detachable magazines,” a press release from Senator Yee’s office claims. They argue that similarly-styled weapons were used in the Aurora, Colorado massacre and may have been used in Sunday’s tragedy in Wisconsin.

In a sweeping op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times, erstwhile climate-change skeptic Richard A. Muller writes, “Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct.”

Now Professor Muller, professor of physics at UC Berkeley, goes even further, arguing, “Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

Last week, a group of Northern California legislators representing the delta counties pushed to halt plans for a 15 billion dollar water conveyance project through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, until details are available on the state’s revised Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP).

“The state should not make premature commitments to a large-scale water export project before the project has been vetted and details of the BDCP are available for public review,” said State Senator Lois Wolk, a long-time advocate for the Delta and opponent of plans to build a peripheral canal.

The temperature this week will be pushing, if not passing, 100 degrees in Davis, but in reality we have no right to complain.  While it has been warm at times this summer, we have nothing like the stifling and unrelenting heat wave of the Midwest.

I tend to watch St. Louis as a barometer.  They were having day after day of 105, 107, 108 degree temperatures – record highs, virtually unheard of.  Unheard of perhaps, but not completely unprecedented. St. Louis experienced ten straight days of 100 degree plus heat from June 28 until July 7, but that has been topped before in 1936 by 13 straight days.  That was, interestingly enough, the year of the Dust Bowl.

We often think politics are contentious here. It is not that they are not contentious, but sometimes we lose perspective that Davis and Yolo County are not nearly as unique as we think they are.

Opponents of the plastic bag ban have treated this as though it were a novel idea perpetrated in weird Davis when in fact, if anything, Davis is behind a trend that will ultimately see the elimination of the use of plastic bags – it is really only a matter of time.

Indeed, June began with a funnel cloud hovering over Davis on June 1 and ended with a gentle rain on June 28, before the return of the more typical summer heat by the end of the week.

It was Wednesday around 1:45, I just picked up my nephew from school at Patwin Elementary when I saw something strange up in the sky on the horizon.  As I moved forward, it vanished behind the trees but looked like a funnel cloud.

Long before I got a political science degree, before I became the blogger and founded the Vanguard, my passion was weather and in particular tornadoes.  It is a well known quasi-joke in my family that I dream to go on a storm chase in the Midwest, going after serious twisters.

A bill sponsored by the California Redevelopment Association and League of California Cities, would redesign certain aspects of redevelopment law. SB 286, by Senator Rod Wright, underwent substantial amendments this week, and is now introduced as an alternative to the Governor’s proposal to eliminate redevelopment agencies. The bill is sponsored by the California Redevelopment Association and the League of California Cities.

As part of the CRA’s Legislative update issued at the end of last week, they made the following statement about the future of Redevelopment. “CRA recognizes that the strong reforms in SB 286 represent significant changes and may not meet with favor by all our members… The reality is that redevelopment must operate differently in the future. (CRA’s Board of Directors) also believe that the reforms contained in SB 286 will achieve those objectives and actually strengthen redevelopment and increase its support.”

Proposition 18, one of the more contentious issues on the upcoming ballot, has been pushed back to 2012.  Yesterday Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger  signed legislation that would delay the vote until 2012. The governor and other supporters of this measure fear that with the state’s economy struggling, the proposition would be defeated.

Opponents of the legislation were quick to seize the moment and complain that instead of delaying the legislation, they ought to dump it altogether.

A motion to approve AB 1594 by Assembly Member Alyson Huber died in committee for lack of a second.  Senator Lois Wolk and Assemblymember Mariko Yamada joined a press conference Monday in support of Assemblymember Alyson Huber’s bill, AB 1594, that would prohibit construction of a peripheral canal through the Delta without a full fiscal analysis and vote of the state legislature.

AB 1594 prohibits the construction of a peripheral canal unless expressly authorized by the Legislature. It further requires the Legislative Analyst’s Office to complete an economic feasibility analysis prior to the enactment of a statute authorizing the construction of a peripheral canal.

Last fall when Democrats were crumbling in the face of water bill demands by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, one the Democrats who stood the strongest against potential destruction of the Delta was Senator Lois Wolk in her first term as Senator after spending six years in the Assembly.

Capitol Alert now reports that Senator Wolk has been punished for her leadership and vision in protecting the delta by having been stripped of key committee positions.  She has just two of the seven committee assignments she previously held.

While the Governor and Democratic Leadership are lauding the water deal as an historic achievement, local leaders such Senator Lois Wolk and Assemblymember Mariko Yamada in addition to environmental groups are lamenting it as the prelude to a peripheral canal that will end the delta as we know it by diverting water away from the delta and to the south.

Said Governor Schwarzenegger:

It’s easy to forget that Yolo County encompasses a portion of the San Joaquin Delta — one of the Earth’s great estuaries.  Most of us in Yolo County live in upland areas relatively far from Delta waterways.  We often drive to Sacramento oblivious to the Delta’s presence beneath and around us, because the Delta was radically transformed from what most of us imagine a delta waterway is supposed to look like.  Where shallow flows in meandering and braided stream beds once supported expansive marshes and riparian forests, usually empty flood control basins now support agricultural crops over most years of the 10 to12-year El Nino climate cycle.  A levee system contains Delta streams within relatively linear channels, as well as periodic floodwaters within the flood control basins during El Nino events.  It’s when Yolo County’s flood control basins are filled that we in Yolo County are more aware of the Delta’s presence.

Those who transformed the San Joaquin Delta undoubtedly believed that their fete vastly improved conditions then and into the future for Californians.  Their work supplied much of the water needed to fill the Los Angeles Basin with people and to irrigate millions of acres of the Central Valley.  Their work also freed land for residential developments in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, brought shipping to Stockton and Sacramento, and fostered recreational boating and fishing.  The transforming work done during the Great Depression also employed many and helped bring America out of the Depression.  These benefits, however, come with great costs, most of which were unseen for decades but which are mounting as many interest groups draw battle lines to protect the specific benefits they realized from the Delta’s transformation.

Delta representatives Senator Lois Wolk (D-Woodland) and Assembly member Mariko Yamada (D- Solano), withdrew their authorship and support of S.B. 458 following extensive amendments to the legislation by Senate President Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) which both legislators opposed.

Wolk’s action came in response to being notified by Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) that her legislation would be amended in a Conference Committee with provisions Senator Wolk and the five Delta counties opposed. Wolk has been replaced with Senators Steinberg and Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) as the authors of SB 458.

It is becoming more and more clear that the path has already been set out to increase water exports out of the Delta.  The Water Conference Committee set up by Senator Darrell Steinberg last week excluded Senator Wolk, Assemblymember Mariko Yamada and the other legislators who represent districts in and around the Delta.

When Wolk became notified by Senate Pro Tem Steinberg that her legislation, SB 458, establish a Delta Conservancy would be amended in the Water Conference Committee with provisions that she and the other Delta counties opposed, she withdrew her authorship.  She has been replaced with Senators Steinberg and Joe Simitian as the authors of SB 458.

The legislature returned this week from their August break by taking up what is undoubtedly the most contentious topic this side of the budget, and perhaps even including the budget, water and what to do about the Delta.

Facing the legislature are five bills, packaged together to address critical issues of facing California Water and the Delta.  Tuesday was largely an informational that saw the issues laid forth.