Environment

Gadfly Attorney Threatens to Sue Over Restaurant Provision – After some discussion about a potential lawsuit, the Davis City Council unanimously approved the first reading of the single-use plastic bag ordinance that was originally passed on September 10, 2013.

The ordinance applies to all retail business in Davis and there is a 10-cent bag charge for paper bags and plastic bags that meet the specification of a reusuable bag.  The ordinance would be adopted on October 22, upon council approval, and would be effective on July 1, 2014. Staff would conduct business outreach efforts during the first quarter of 2014 to provide notice of the impending ordinance to affected businesses and to assist customers with compliance on an as-needed basis.

by Robb Davis

There is little doubt that some of our neighbors in Davis have health problems that are exacerbated by wood smoke.  There is also little doubt that other neighbors enjoy having wood fires and that some use wood or wood products as a way to heat their homes.  This leads to a conflict over interests/needs, but it is a conflict that is fairly localized-that is, between people who live near one another, people who share a common space and who, presumably, would be best served by resolving the conflict themselves without the automatic threat of punishment from the city.

We have the tools and resources to deal with wood smoke conflicts in this way-to find alternative forms of conflict resolution that will serve the needs of those whose health is adversely affected while providing those who desire to burn wood some latitude to do so.

On Tuesday night, the council voted 4-1 to support the idea of variable rates for waste containers, with Councilmember Brett Lee dissenting.  Councilmember Lee primarily objected because of the six-dollar differential between the 65 gallon and 95 gallon containers, as opposed to a three-dollar differential on the difference between 65 gallon and 35 gallon containers.

He argued that the 20 percent rate increase seems excessive.  However, after the council pondered a flatter rate structure, the concerns from city staff about revenue needs as well as the limitations of the Prop 218 process that is already underway ultimately swayed the rest of council to support the staff recommendation.

Staff Will Come Back with Final Ordinance – After considerable discussion, the Davis City Council unanimously asked staff to come back with an ordinance similar to the staff recommendation on wood burning.  Brett Lee ultimately made the motion to include an exception for EPA-certified stoves, as the threshold in this ordinance would have been detrimental to a typical person.

Councilmember Lee also wanted it expanded to 365 days a year.  “We’ll call this a first step, we’ll see what happens,” he said.  “We’ll come back to this in six months’ time and then we’ll try to have something crafted based upon our experience in terms of typical person versus visible smoke.  That gets us going so that we’re in place for this winter.”

It was our initial understanding that the concern for wood smoke burning had to do with the large amount of particulate matter put into the air, particularly on days with little wind movement to blow the smoke particles out of the valley.  The result was that air quality management would issue certain no-burn days and the city has, without a huge amount of success, attempted both voluntary and mandatory regulations during those days.

Somewhere in this process the focus has shifted from a global impact of particulate matter in Davis’ air to the impact on neighbors – dubbed the nearest neighbor effect.

By Matt Williams

In Saturday’s article David Greenwald observed,  “As I read the back and forth the other day and was prompted by members of my editorial board, I realized that we have all fallen into the trap of believing the worst of people’s motivations who disagree with our own viewpoints or vision for the future.

I believe that observation was particularly timely following on the heels of the 96-comment back and forth in the prior day’s Council to Consider New Wood Smoke Nuisance Ordinance article.  Starting from the very first comment, the dominant theme was mistrust and active questioning of the motives of the various interested parties on all sides of the issue.

Back in July, the city council approved a Prop 218 notice for a residential variable rate structure that would set differential rates based on three sizes of garbage carts.

The basis for this change, according to staff, was that “residential variable rates were common in the region, variable rates can be an effective tool in helping communities meet their increased waste diversion targets, and charging a flat rate for all cart sizes does not reflect the actual costs of solid waste services.”

By Alan Pryor

The Davis Natural Resources Commission (NRC) was tasked by Council with evaluating the overall performance of that ordinance in reducing “nearest neighbor” impacts of wood smoke on residents. They were directed to report back to the Council as to the effectiveness of the program and to provide recommendations for a future ordinance. The results of that study are summarized here along with the NRC’s recommendation for a different “nuisance”-based ordinance to be implemented for the upcoming 2013-2014 wood burning season.

Davis secured its place among the more progressive communities in California Tuesday night, as the Davis City Council finally made Davis the 61st community in the state of California to pass an ordinance restricting the use of single-use carryout bags.  While there was some discussion about alternatives, in the end, the motion made by Lucas Frerichs and seconded by Dan Wolk prevailed 5-0, calling for the ordinance to impact all retail.

“The large retail option captures those 44 businesses, which is roughly 80 percent of the bags. That’s great.” Lucas Frerichs stated.  “I personally think it should be applied across the board if we’re going to do it at all.”

For years Davis has prided itself on being one of the progressive leaders in the state and, indeed, the nation.  From Village Homes to the Solar Array to bicycle paths to the smoking ordinance, the city of Davis has had a proud progressive legacy.

But in the last few decades, the rest of the state and, indeed, communities around the country have caught up and surpassed a Davis that has largely been living on its laurels.  Even its biking legacy is tainted somewhat by the slow play on the Fifth Street redesign – which has been in the works for more than a decade.

By Alan Pryor

On the City Council agenda consent calendar for tonight’s meeting, Staff is recommending that Council reapprove and amend last year’s expired wood burning ordinance that was effective from last November 1, 2012 through February 1, 2013.

That ordinance, the first wood burning ordinance in Davis’ history, prohibited wood burning on those days otherwise designated by the Yolo Solano Air Quality Management District as voluntary “Don’t Light Tonight” alert days. Exceptions were allowed in cases of power failure, economic hardship, and the lack of alternative gas or electric heating sources. Residents burning in EPA Phase II-approved wood or pellet stoves or burning manufactured wood logs were also exempt. Last year, there were only 16 days when burning was so restricted out of the 120-day wood burning season – or less than 10% of the days.

Based on council’s discussion back in early July, city staff has taken the council’s comments at the time, and revised the proposed ordinance to reflect some of the concerns raised by council.  They present a more comprehensive ordinance that treats businesses more equitably, looking at the types of exemptions that other communities have implemented, and eliminates the business reporting requirements, among other changes.

That discussion arose from comments by Councilmember Brett Lee, who expressed the view that he would prefer to see a charge for all bags, and by Mayor Joe Krovoza, who expressed the belief that all businesses should be treated equally and directed staff to examine the exemptions that other communities have to see what makes most sense for Davis.

I was reading a rather pointed letter to the editor of the Enterprise suggesting that “[t]elling some businesses they may no longer use plastic bags versus telling all businesses they may no longer use plastic bags is selective fascism versus total fascism.”

They then proceed to argue, “Democracy means that the people decide! Put plastic bags in Davis to a vote of the people of Davis!”

By Rob White

This week was marked by the announcement that Elon Musk (of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX fame) announced that he is making significant plans to explore a new high speed transportation option that could result in a 30 to 45 minute trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco. As explained yesterday to Bloomberg Businessweek, the Hyperloop is a “a solar-powered, city-to-city elevated transit system that could take passengers and cars” between major cities in very short periods of time. The technology also “immediately poses a challenge to the status quo-in this case, California’s $70 billion high-speed train that has been knocked by Musk and others as too expensive, too slow, and too impractical.”

The Bloomberg article goes on to further explain that “the Hyperloop would avoid many of the land issues because it’s elevated. The tubes would, for the most part, follow I-5, the dreary but direct freeway between L.A. and San Francisco. Farmers would not have swaths of their land blocked by train tracks but could instead access their land between the columns. Musk figures the Hyperloop could be built for $6 billion with people-only pods, or $10 billion for the larger pods capable of holding people and cars. Altogether, his alternative would be four times as fast as California’s proposed train, at one-10th the cost. Tickets, Musk says, would be ‘much cheaper’ than a plane ride.”

Citing a study that shows that both solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar water heating are considerably cheaper energy options for Davis residents than using grid-sourced electricity and natural gas, the Natural Resources Commission has proposed a Davis Renewable Energy Ordinance.

Their report shows that installing solar PV could reduce a consumer’s monthly electricity cost by more than 30 percent.

The debate against an ordinance related to carryout plastic bags has been dogged by misperceptions and outright errors.  I will fall on the sword for some of this.  One of our readers for months has been telling me to stop calling it a plastic bag ban.

The reason I had been insisting on calling it a proposed plastic bag ban is, frankly, I do not believe in using sanitizing language – let us call a spade a spade, and then debate the merits of the proposal.  The problem is that I was wrong.  It is not a ban on plastic bags at all or at least all kinds of plastic bags from all businesses; it is in fact an ordinance that deals much more generally with single-use carryout bags.

Nearly two weeks ago the Obama Administration finally responded to critics that he lacked an aggressive policy on climate change, and unveiled a sweeping plan to slow carbon emissions.  The plan, which bypasses Congress, calls for, among other things, tougher emissions standards for power plants; raising efficiency standards for appliances, buildings and trucks; speeding up the leasing of public land for renewable energy projects; and shoring up infrastructure to protect it from more fierce storms and higher sea levels.

“We can choose to believe that superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence, or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late,” President Obama said.

There was a time when Davis was the environmental leader, the innovator.  But those days are long over.  Davis finds itself fighting some remarkably rear-end fights on issues like plastic bags where more than sixty jurisdictions already have ordinances in place, or green waste containerization where it is perhaps twenty years behind the curve, and even on issues like fluoridation where most communities have long since come to a solution – one way or another.

Green Waste Containerization: On Tuesday, during the integrated waste management portion of the discussion, Councilmember Brett Lee put forward an interesting suggestion for creating an on-call program to deal with the few times when citizens have excessive amounts of green waste.

It was Councilmember Brett Lee who seemed to derail some of the discussion on the Single Use Carry-Out Bag ordinance, when he argued that the plastic bag ban was “misnamed.”

“It’s a plastic bag ban if you happen to be a supermarket, drug store, or liquor, there’s a whole broad group of businesses that are not touched by this approach,” he said.  “Are plastic bags bad or are they only bad when they come from a supermarket?”

A few years ago one of the more controversial proposals was a green waste containerization plan.  While the city implemented a brief pilot plan at the time, ultimately, community dissent led to the city coming up with a compromise to keep green waste and tree trimmings out of the bike paths.

The city simply double-striped the bike paths with the hope that the trimmings would be confined outside of the paths on arterial roadways.