Commentary: Gloating Over the Demise of Zipcar?
![Zipcar-sf](https://davisvanguard.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Zipcar-sf.png)
The city deserves criticism for being sloppy with the contract that they approved. I would add that the council rushed through an entire agenda and failed to scrutinize it sufficiently.
The city deserves criticism for being sloppy with the contract that they approved. I would add that the council rushed through an entire agenda and failed to scrutinize it sufficiently.
Initially the city was asked to subsidize the program, paying roughly $9000 – a very small amount, given the fuss. Once the vehicle usage topped 40 percent, the fee was dropped and the service was provided to Davis at no cost.
A year after San Jose approved its Bring Your Own Bag ordinance; the City has released its initial findings on the plastic bag ban’s effectiveness. And the city is trumpeting the program as a success.
Among the justifications for the declaration of success, the City had assigned resources to evaluate the impact that the first year had on the use of plastic bags, their prevalence in trash processing facilities, and related water-borne pollution. The resulting data showed a significant reduction in bag-related waste.
The Mitigation Agreement (“Agreement for the Management of Burrowing Owl Habitat at the Grasslands Regional County Park” 2004) included a Management Plan (“Yolo County Grasslands Park Burrowing Owl Habitat Management Plan”, Albion Environmental, Inc. September 2004) for the Reserve. The Management Plan requires the vegetation on the Reserve be kept short, as burrowing owls require short vegetation to avoid predators and see their prey in order to survive.
Last week the council, by a 5-0 vote, implemented new mandatory wood burning restrictions. In a press release on Wednesday, Jacques DeBra of the Public Works Department attempts to explain the rules to the public.
On the one side were some environmentalists and some health advocates concerned with both the impact of wood burning on the environment as well as health implications. On the other side were citizens who, for a variety of reasons, use wood during the few cold months of the year to heat their homes and provide themselves with some sort of aesthetic enjoyment.
It took a while and council had to sort out competing views from the public – one group of whom expressed concern about the intrusion into their private lives, the other concerned about personal or public health impacts of wood-burned smoke.
In the end, the council moved forward with a rather modest compromise measure by a 5-0 vote that will allow them to come back in a year and see what impact the measure had on the issue.
Each of these recommendations or proposals are similar in that they would prohibit wood burning on certain days when PM2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 um diameter) concentrations in the region are expected to exceed certain thresholds. Each of the recommendations also differ with respect to which projected PM2.5 threshhold is used to issue mandatory “No-Burn” advisory, which air quality agency’s PM2.5 projections are used, and whether EPA Phase II stoves and pellet stoves are exempted from compliance with the otherwise mandated “No-Burn” notices.
Instead, they are proposing restrictions on days where the impact of smoke would be most detrimental to the health of some very sensitive residents, but also impact the health of all residents because the atmospheric conditions would hold the smoke in rather than blow the smoke out and disperse it throughout the valley.
Since 2009, the City has been implementing a voluntary wood burning program in coordination with the Yolo Solano Air Quality Management District (YSAQMD). During this period the City and YSAQMD coordinated on air quality monitoring activities and consideration of alternatives to the voluntary policy.
The city council last night heard from a wide variety of experts, many of whom have been in countless hours on the issue of wood burning.
On Monday December 22, 2008, the Vanguard broke the news that local group, Frontier Fertilizer Superfund Oversight Group (FFSOG) was concerned about the discovery of new detection levels of TCP at the Target Superfund site. The group was asking for new testing before Target was set to lay the foundation for the new store on January 5, 2009 (coincidentally today).
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