Land Use/Open Space Archives - Page 2 of 3

Public Unaware of Environmental Harm of New State Fracking Oil Extraction Regulations

By uptownstudiosJanuary 22, 201315 comments

$fracking$

By Dan Aiello

Environmentalists in California worry the public is not fully aware of the potential harm Governor Edmund G. ‘Jerry’ Brown, Jr.’s proposed hydraulic fracturing, or ‘Fracking’ oil extraction regulations could do to the state’s regional groundwater tables and fertile California farmland in the Central Valley counties of Kings, Kern, Maricopa as well as those in which the Monterey Shale Deposits are located some 11,000 feet below the surface.

Fracking is an oil extraction process used on depleted wells and heavy, tar-like oil deposits. Fracking involves the injection of steam, water, sand and rocket propellant into the ground to bubble to the surface the oil reserves. It is known to make fertile farmland barren and contaminate groundwater tables.

Report Finds Climate Change Dramatically Impacting US Economy and People Already

By David GreenwaldJanuary 13, 201337 comments

The draft version of the National Climate Assessment was released on Friday, and the key finding is that “climate change is already affecting the American people.”

“Climate change presents a major challenge for society,” the committee’s leadership said in a letter on Friday. “This report and the sustained assessment process that is being developed represent steps forward in advancing our understanding of that challenge and its far-reaching implications for our nation and the world.”

New Fracking Regulations First Step To Proliferation Of Permits

By uptownstudiosJanuary 3, 20130 comments

$fracking-rig$ by Dan Aiello

Reuters reports that the draft regulations announced by the Brown administration, set forth ostensibly to improve monitoring of the oil industry’s hydraulic fracturing, or “Fracking,” method of oil extraction from the state’s depeleted oil fields, are actually intended to increase the ability of the oil industry to use fracking in oil fields throughout California.

Fracking is controversial because of its environmental impact on the land and the state’s water and groundwater supplies, turning as much as 8 barrels of potable drinking water into a toxic soup known as “produced” water for every barrel of oil rendered. Fracking’s produced water has contaminated local groundwater supplies and rendered fertile agriculture acres into barren wasteland in counties like Kern, King, and elsewhere.

Governor Proposes New Fracking Regulations

By uptownstudiosDecember 20, 20122 comments

$fracking-rig$

By Dan Aiello

The Brown administration Tuesday proposed new draft regulations that would require the oil industry to disclose where its California oil extraction operations are using hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as “fracking,” in advance of a new movie meant to bring public awareness to the environmental destruction caused by the practice.

While an oil industry spokesman says his industry is “resigned” to the long-awaited new regulations, environmentalists claim the out-of-state and resource tax-exempt oil companies largely ignore the state’s current regulations, despite earning record profits in recent years, and the governor’s proposal of new regulations will do little more than placate the public’s concern over fracking, a concern expected to increase along with awareness of the issue, once ‘Promise Land’ opens in California theaters December 28th.

September Set Global Heat Records and Further Evidence of Climate Change

By David GreenwaldOctober 16, 201230 comments

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.

How Vulnerable is California to Climate Change?

By uptownstudiosAugust 8, 201232 comments

By UC Davis News Service

The State’s third major assessment on climate change explores local and statewide vulnerabilities to climate change, highlighting opportunities for taking concrete actions to reduce climate-change impacts.

The third assessment, like its two predecessors, reflects a powerful collaborative process. Guided by a Steering Committee of senior technical staff from State agencies and outside scientific experts, 26 research teams from the University of California system and other research groups produced more than 30 peer-reviewed papers. They offer crucial new insights for the energy, water, agriculture, public health, coastal, transportation, and ecological resource sectors that are vital to California residents, businesses and government leaders.

Attorney General Harris Joins List of Supporters of California Assault Weapon Bill

By David GreenwaldAugust 7, 20127 comments

While California may have some of strongest gun control laws in the country, gun manufacturers are getting around one of the state’s most important assault weapon laws, claims Senator Leland Yee, sponsor of SB 249.

“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.

Delta Can’t Be Restored On a Wink and a Promise

By David GreenwaldJuly 31, 20124 comments

By Senator Lois Wolk

Yesterday, Governor Brown and Interior Secretary Salazar committed to the construction of a massive two tunnel project in the Delta, without any certain plan to protect and restore the dying Delta ecosystem. They ask us to “trust” that sometime over the next 15 years, an extraordinarily complex and scientifically valid plan will emerge, along with the billions of dollars to pay for it.

The revised Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) released last week remains as unaffordable, unworkable and scientifically unjustified as the previous plan that took six years of effort and $150 million to produce.

Berkeley Climate Change Skeptic, Funded by the Koch Brothers, Moves to the Other Side

By David GreenwaldJuly 30, 201267 comments

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.”

Senator Wolk and Other Representatives Seek to Halt Delta Conveyance Plan

By David GreenwaldJuly 10, 20121 comments

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.

Just Hot or Global Warming?

By David GreenwaldJuly 9, 201233 comments

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.

Plastic Bag Ban Triggers Lawsuit And San Francisco Expands Ban on the Distribution of Plastic Bags

By David GreenwaldFebruary 11, 201244 comments

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.

Strange and Extreme Weather: Fluke or Evidence of Global Climate Change?

By David GreenwaldJuly 3, 201156 comments

Tuesday this week marked what to many people was a welcomed respite from the summer heat, as a cool rain, more in place for February or March, blanketed the area for hours, dropping close to half an inch. By most measures, it would have been unremarkable, were it not for the fact that it occurred on June 28 – something that, as we know, just does not happen in California.

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.

Are Funnel Clouds in Northern California, Severe Tornadoes in Midwest A Sign of Climate Change?

By David GreenwaldJune 4, 2011112 comments

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.

SB 286 Offers Redevelopment Reform Option

By David GreenwaldMay 4, 20111 comments

By Dan Oney –

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.”

Wolk and Yamada Oppose Move to Delay Water Bond For Two Years

By David GreenwaldAugust 11, 20108 comments

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.

Bill Killed That Would Have Stopped Peripheral Canal without Legislative Vote

By David GreenwaldApril 28, 20100 comments

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.

Senator Wolk Punished For Standing Up For Her District, Environment

By David GreenwaldJanuary 12, 201011 comments

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.

Senator Wolk and Assemblywoman Yamada Express Outrage at Water Bill

By David GreenwaldNovember 5, 20091 comments

“Historic” Water Deal Puts Yolo and Other Delta Counties in a Bad Position –

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:

Who’s Serious about Delta Solutions?

By David GreenwaldSeptember 18, 20093 comments

by Shawn Smallwood –

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.

By Dan Aiello

<img decoding="async" class=" alignleft size-full wp-image-11578" style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-right: 10px; float: left;" alt="fracking-rig" src="https://davisvanguard.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/fracking-rig.jpg" height="266" width="400" width="665" height="443" />by Dan Aiello

By Dan Aiello

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