This subject is not exactly politics but I found it interesting.

President Obama and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced today that the brown pelican population has sufficiently recovered and has been removed from the endangered species list.

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to photograph brown pelicans as they sat on the breakwater of the South Beach marina in San Francisco. We were motoring through the marina on a 34-foot sailboat, and these spectacular birds lined the wall with the San Francisco Bay Bridge in the background. I am a big fan of pelicans of all kinds.

Brown pelican in South Beach marina, San Francisco. November 2009. Photo by Lisa Vorderbrueggen

Read on for the full press release. Read the rest of this entry »

San Francisco’s top environmental enforcer, a notable crusader against climate change, has been selected by President Barack Obama to become this region’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

Jared Blumenfeld, 40, will run the EPA’s operations in California, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, the Pacific Islands and more than 140 tribal nations. Here’s an interesting interview conducted with him about a year ago.

For eight years, Blumenfeld has directed the San Francisco Department of Environment, serving as the top environmental decision-maker for 28,000 city staff and a $6.5 billion city budget; he also did an eight-month stint as interim manager of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department. He is a founder of Business Council on Climate Change; a former director of the Treasure Island Redevelopment Authority; and led the first United Nations World Environment Day hosted by the United States. He holds law degrees from the University of London and the University of California.

“I look forward to working closely with Jared Blumenfeld on the range of urgent environmental issues we face, in Region 9 and across the nation,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a news release. “At this moment of great challenge and even greater opportunity, I’m thrilled that Jared will be part of our leadership team at EPA. He will certainly play an instrumental role in our Agency’s mission to protect our health and the environment.”

U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is moving ahead with her cap-and-trade climate change bill despite Republican threats to boycott next Tuesday’s mark-up session.

“That won’t stop us. We’re going to use every tool at our disposal to get that done,” she said this afternoon during a visit to Blue Bottle Coffee Co. on Webster Street near Oakland’s Jack London Square, at which she was touting her efforts to support small businesses through the economic downturn. Asked to elucidate on “every tool at our disposal,” she replied, “We’ll use the rules of the committee.”

“We are going to sit down on Tuesday, we’re ready to go, we’re not canceling it,” she said “I’m still hoping the Republicans will come to the committee room and do their work.”

Boxer said she can’t imagine why anyone with a chance to end America’s dependence on foreign oil, combat climate change and create jobs all at the same time would boycott such an opportunity, going “absent without leave, AWOL” at a moment so vital to the nation’s interests. She urged the committee’s Republican members to “try to work with us, let’s try to get something done.”

Part of the small-business support scheme of which Boxer spoke today was affordable health care, which she said absolutely must contain a public option. U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., this week said he’ll refuse to caucus with Senate Democrats to break a filibuster on any health care reform legislation containing a public option.

Boxer in 2006 was among Senate Democrats who went to Connecticut to stump for Lieberman in the Democratic primary – angering many of her more liberal constituents, given his support of the Iraq war and other stances – though she later supported Democratic nominee Ned Lamont in that year’s general election. And Senate Democrats have been kind to Lieberman since, including letting him keep his chairmanship of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in hopes he would caucus with them on vital votes such as this.

Asked today what she thought of Lieberman’s health care stance, Boxer replied she “can’t answer for him, I just want to say that we have to get this (health care reform) done.”

“All of our colleagues will be making important decisions, but at the end of the day, we can do this with a majority, not a super-majority,” she said, making it clear she was speaking for herself and not for Senate Democratic leaders.

Democrats would need 60 votes for cloture to overcome a Republican filibuster and bring a health-care bill to the floor for a final vote, but there’s been talk that they might use a procedure called “budget reconciliation” to move the bill through with just 50 votes.

Almost $18.3 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act economic stimulus money and state funds has been doled out to East Bay agencies for water quality improvement projects, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger touted today.

It’s part of $717 million in such funding for 160 projects statewide that the governor says will help stimulate the state’s economy by saving and creating jobs while protecting public health and the environment.

“My Administration awarded this funding in record time to boost our state’s economy and get Californians back to work. In fact, the State Water Board approved its first Recovery Act project the very same day it received funding from Washington,” he said in his news release.

The Delta Diablo Sanitation District gets $6,405,136 for its Antioch Recycled Water Project; Oakland gets $3.45 million for removal of stormwater pollutants at Lake Merritt and the Oakland Estuary, and $1.3 million more for a rainwater harvesting program; Piedmont gets $4,171,500 for a sewer rehabilitation project; and Alameda gets $750,000 for installation of mechanical trash racks at three stormwater pump stations.

And the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) gets $1,801,010 to implement its “Taking Action for Clean Water” partnership to reduce sediment, PCBs and pesticides in local waterways, the Bay and the adjacent coastal ocean, as well as $392,000 for the El Cerrito Green Streets program.

The California League of Conservation Voters is not very happy with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It just sent out a critical statement of the governor, saying he has vetoed the vast majority of the important environmental bills that came across his desk this weekend.

Read on for its full press release: Read the rest of this entry »

State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord

I talked with three Contra Costa state lawmakers via telephone this morning about their views on the Big Five water talks under way in Sacramento today. I did not hear much optimism about a the chances of a deal by tonight’s deadline.

Sen. Mark DeSaulnier and assemblymembers Joan Buchanan and Tom Torlakson view the closed-door talks on the controversial and complex subject as unlikely to produce a package that will attain either legislative or public support, and urged the resumption of public hearings.

DeSaulnier of Concord, who scuttled his planned trip to Spain this week in order to participate in the California water negotiations, called Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s move to hold hostage 700 bills on his desk pending a water deal counter-productive.

“The governor’s unique talents are unsuits for this time right now in Sacramento,” DeSaulnier said. “He just not very good at negotiation.”

“What’s the rush?” he added. “Are they worried it will start raining and with the drought over, the pressure will be off to pass reforms? I think we can get a deal but we need to do it with continued public hearings and public discussion, not artificial deadlines.”

Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo

Assemblyman Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch

Even if the Big Five emerge today or Saturday arm-in-arm with a package, the East Bay legislators say the question of how to pay for it remains a huge sticking point.

All three say they oppose financing the estimated $8 billion to $12 billion package through general obligation bonds. Repayment of general obligation bonds comes right of the top of the state’s general fund, which means the money cannot be used elsewhere.

They favor the use of revenue bonds, which are repaid by water users including residents, businesses and farmers.

“It the midst of these horrible deficits, and we’re facing additional horrendous challenges next year, do we want to cut more from schools or higher education?” said Torlakson, D-Antioch.

“The payment on a $12 billion bond is $700 million a year,” said Buchanan, D-Alamo. “If we are going to pass legislation and ask voters to pass a bond, we need to ask how we’re going to pay for it.”

Buchanan also says that she and other Delta area lawmakers will demand sufficient time to evaluate any proposal and talk with their constituents.

“A half a million people live in the Delta and the impacts of new policies could last decades,” Buchanan said. “You can bet that I and my staff will be reading every word.”

Postscript: DeSaulnier’s trip to Spain was, ironically, a Senate-sponsored event to study the country’s national water system. “I learned more about water by staying home,” DeSaulnier said.

Hot on the heels of Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner’s energy-efficiency event yesterday and the running battle between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and would-be governor Meg Whitman over whether to halt California’s work toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a new study suggests California will save money and jobs by fighting climate change.

Using price forecasts from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Annual Energy Outlook, the study estimates that without diversifying California’s energy portfolio toward more renewable fuels and energy efficiency, the state risks losing more than $80 billion in Gross State Product and more than a half million jobs by 2020. But implementing 33 percent renewable energy, combined with 1 percent annual improvement in energy efficiency, shields the economy from higher energy prices and yields a growth dividend, increasing GSP by $20 billion and generating 112,000 jobs, the report says.

“Energy Prices & California’s Economic Security” was authored by University of California, Berkeley Adjunct Professor David Roland-Holst for Next 10, an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit aimed at educating and engaging Californians to brighten the state’s future; it’s the same group that runs the online “Budget Challenge” each year.

“There has been considerable public debate over the projected economic impacts of California’s first-in-the-nation climate policies,” Next 10 founder F. Noel Perry said in a news release. “To date, no one has modeled the economic impact of doing nothing to change our energy mix. Today’s report clearly reveals the economic risk inherent in over-reliance on fossil fuels.”

Said Roland-Holst: “The global financial crisis has hit hard in California, where unemployment, mortgage foreclosures and an unprecedented state budget deficit are among the highest in the nation. But the current decline in demand in global energy markets is temporary and risks lulling policymakers and the public into a state of denial about long-term fossil fuel price trends.

“Even using conservative official estimates, we find that California risks far greater economic peril by remaining heavily dependent upon fossil fuels,” he said. “Energy efficiency and renewables offer a valuable hedge against the risks of higher energy prices.”

Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, and a bevy of energy-efficiency experts gathered in Berkeley this morning to urge the governor’s signature of a bill that would move California toward retrofitting its older buildings to save billions in energy costs.

The bill, AB 758, co-authored by Skinner and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, would direct the California Energy Commission to develop and implement a comprehensive program for bringing the state’s older residential and commercial building stock up to modern energy-efficiency standards in terms of lighting, heating, insulation, water consumption and other parameters. Skinner said she was inspired by a pair of ordinances Berkeley enacted almost 30 years ago, which have resulted in that city having the lowest per-square-foot energy consumption in the state.

About 75 percent of California’s homes and apartments, and more than 5 billion square feet of commercial space, pre-date the modern standards, leaving them as “the largest source of untapped energy savings in the state,” Skinner said at the news conference outside L.J. Kruse Co., a plumbing, heating and cooling company which retrofitted its warehouse to meet the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System’s “platinum standard.”

Taking steps to have other business and home owners do the same could bring California 12 percent of the way toward meeting its carbon emissions reduction goals set out by its landmark global warming law, AB 32, Skinner said. She said it could reduce the state’s energy use by 6,000 megawatts – that’s two million homes’ worth, eliminating the need for a dozen new 5,000-megawatt natural-gas power plants. And, she said, a $1 billion investment – not allocated by this bill – would translate into 6,700 stable, good-paying jobs.

The bill would require the energy commission to undertake its work with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act economic stimulus money already allocated to California, Skinner said. The state Senate passed it on a 27-8 vote Sept. 10, and the Assembly passed it on a 51-27 vote the next day.

More on the bill, and on the governor’s stance, after the jump…
Read the rest of this entry »

What do Congressional Republicans, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and GOP gubernatorial candidate and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner have in common? All advocate a waiver of the Endangered Species Act to help ease California’s water crisis.

The Act is the basis on which water pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River has been severely curtailed, in protection of a species of fish called the delta smelt. Farmers, urban water utilities, environmentalists and everyone else who uses water have faced off over the dwindling supply.

Poizner, speaking to a small-business roundtable at the Fremont Chamber of Commerce today, called upon House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – whom he noted is the first Speaker of the House from California – to support Republican legislation that would grant California a waiver from the Act to speed irrigation of parched Central Valley farms. Pelosi supported such a waiver for New Mexico several years ago but won’t do the same for California now, he charged. (Actually, what House Republicans wanted brought to the floor this summer was a wholesale suspension, not a temporary waiver, of the Act as it pertains to Delta pumping.)

Feinstein called for such a waiver too as she announced Wednesday she’s working on comprehensive Delta restoration legislation. A Republican Senate amendment for a waiver hasn’t had much luck.

Progressives see such a waiver as an end run around environmental protection laws to benefit big agribusiness, which could do more economic harm than good.

In a related matter, Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, on Wednesday blasted House Republicans for opposing his H.R. 2442, the Bay Area Regional Water Recycling Program Expansion Act of 2009, which would add six water recycling projects for the Bay Area providing 7.2 million gallons of non-potable water per day for landscape irrigation, parks and so on – thus freeing up other water for agriculture and drinking. “When it comes to providing clean water to California, congressional Republicans have now shown their true colors. The legislation that the House voted on today would supply California with much-needed funding for alternative water supplies — but congressional Republicans just said no.”

State Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley; Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley; and various water and law enforcement officials are scheduled to cut the ribbon tomorrow morning on a new drop-off station for unwanted medicines.

The station – in the lobby of the Elihu Harris State Office Building at 1515 Clay St. in Oakland – aims to collect unwanted over-the-counter and prescription pharmaceuticals to prevent them from being flushed down toilets, washed down sinks or sent to landfills, from which they can end up polluting local watersheds and the Bay.

Studies have found at least trace amounts of various drugs in surface water across the nation, and scientists fear this contributes both to increased bacterial resistance to antibiotics as well as to interference with normal growth and reproduction in aquatic wildlife such as fish and frogs.

Tomorrow’s event is part of California’s No Drugs Down the Drain week; last year, the week’s observance led to collection of about 30,000 pounds of unwanted medicines across the state.