New water czar

Jun 9, 2021

After a bitter fight, Southern California’s water kingpin has a new leader

 

SAMMY ROTH, LA Times: "The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has hired Adel Hagekhalil as its next general manager, following a bitter power struggle over the future of an agency that delivers hundreds of billions of gallons each year from the Colorado River and Northern California to a region that otherwise wouldn’t have nearly enough water to support 19 million people.

 

Hagekhalil was previously second in command at the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, where he helped develop strategies for cutting the city’s use of imported water — and therefore its reliance on Metropolitan. He said he’ll bring a shift in focus to the agency, putting more emphasis on recycling sewage water, capturing rainwater and cleaning up groundwater aquifers.

 

Those local supplies could help fortify Southern California against climate change, which is fueling what some scientists describe as “aridification” across the American West. The region is currently suffering yet another drought, with California’s Sierra Nevada snowpack almost entirely gone as summer gets underway and several other states experiencing record dryness.

 

Safety for pedestrians, cyclists targeted in legislation

 

ERIC FURTH, Capitol Weekly: "An effort backed by advocates for pedestrians and bicycle riders would set up experimental programs in several California cities to get drivers to obey traffic laws, in part through the use of red-light and speed cameras.

 

More than 3,700 people died in California traffic-related accidents last year, most of them involving passenger cars,  while some involved motorcycles and light trucks. But while vehicle-crash deaths have generally flatlined, pedestrian deaths have risen.

 

In 2018, 893 pedestrians were killed on California roadways, a 26% increase over a four-year period, and in 2018 alone, more than 14,000 pedestrians were injured. About 7,500 pedestrians were killed during the decade after 2009."

 

California Highway Patrol pay to be restored in agreement with Newsom administration

 

WES VENTEICHER,  SacBee: "The California Association of Highway Patrolmen has reached an agreement with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to undo the pay cuts patrol officers took last year.

 

Newsom and the Legislature imposed pay reductions on officers along with the rest of state employees last July, when lawmakers were expecting a $54 billion budget deficit from the coronavirus. The state instead ended up with a large surplus going into the new budget year, and Newsom’s administration has been negotiating new union agreements to lift the pay cuts in July.

 

The officer union’s new agreement with the administration will undo a 4.62% reduction the officers took last year, according to a copy of the agreement posted on the state Human Resources Department website."

 

California ban on private prisons, immigration detention centers ‘extreme,’ feds say

 

NADIA LOPEZ, SacBee: "An ongoing battle between state officials and federal immigration authorities over a California law that bans privately run immigration facilities intensified Monday during a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals hearing, when attorneys representing the Biden administration urged the court to strike down the “extreme” measure.

 

The hearing represented the latest attempt by attorneys for the federal government and the private prison company GEO Group to overturn AB 32, a 2019 law that phases out the use of private prisons and for-profit immigration detention facilities in California by 2028. A district court upheld the law in October, spurring the government — then under the Trump administration — and company to appeal the decision to the Ninth Circuit.

 

The GEO Group, one of the country’s largest private prison companies, owns and operates federal immigration detention centers in the Kern County cities of Bakersfield and McFarland, as well as Adelanto in San Bernardino County."

 

Talk of Batman cocaine and murder: how the FBI tricked criminals with encrypted phones

 

KRISTINA DAVIS, Union Tribune: "The full extent of an unprecedented FBI effort to beat the criminal underworld at its own encrypted-communications game became clearer Tuesday following a two-day takedown, with some 800 arrests worldwide and San Diego racketeering indictments against 17 high-level targets, according to federal authorities.

 

Dubbed Operation Trojan Shield, the effort was largely led by FBI agents and federal prosecutors in San Diego who covertly created a closed-loop encryption cellphone service, called ANØM, and then convinced trusted voices already embedded in criminal syndicates to distribute the customized phones.

 

The agents secretly read each message that poured in — 27 million in all. They read about shipments of cocaine stamped with Batman logos, cocaine hidden in tuna cans headed to Belgium, cocaine sent in French diplomatic pouches and cocaine in refrigerated fish destined for Spain, according to a search warrant unsealed this week.

 

S.F. building inspector put on leave in widening City Hall corruption probe

 

J.K. DINEEN, Chronicle: "A senior San Francisco building inspector has been placed on administrative leave after he allegedly failed to report a loan from a politically connected developer for whom he had performed multiple inspections.

 

Senior Building Inspector Bernard Curran came under scrutiny last month after admitting that he had accepted a $180,000 loan from Freydoon Ghassemzadeh, whose family business, SIA Consulting, has been one of the city’s most prolific developers in recent years, according to City Hall sources and public documents.

 

 

Commentary: Newsom owes apology for EDD’s failings

 

DAN WALTERS, CalMatters:  "Were Gov. Gavin Newsom as humble as he often proclaims to be, he would interrupt his “California Comeback” campaign long enough to issue a personal apology to hundreds of thousands of Californians who remain mired in the managerial meltdown at the Employment Development Department.

 

Yes, as Newsom constantly reminds us, the threat from COVID-19 has diminished and the state’s battered economy is slowly recovering. Nevertheless, California has the nation’s second highest unemployment rate and well over a million California workers are still jobless, many of whom qualify for unemployment insurance benefits — if they can ever get their applications resolved.

 

Journalists who write about economic issues, including yours truly, receive steady streams of emails from frustrated claimants who can’t get their calls answered and/or have their benefits frozen for reasons that are never explained."

 

Pulling out trees, trucking water for cows: California farmers take drastic measures in drought

 

TARA DUGGAN, Chronicle: "Normally, the biggest vegetable grower in Sonoma County, Humberto Castañeda Produce, grows heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, watermelons and other crops on 180 acres outside of Santa Rosa. But this year, Humberto Castañeda and his son, Gabriel, are farming only 17 acres after receiving a fraction of their normal allotment of water from the city of Santa Rosa.

 

“I could plant the whole farm and have water that might last me for a month,” said Gabriel, 27, who is managing the farm Humberto founded in the 1980s for the first time this season. “After that the plants are going to die.”

 

The Castañedas are among countless farmers across the state taking drastic measures to deal with the drought, either because they’re not getting their usual irrigation allotments or because the ponds they normally rely on are drying up in the second year of California’s drought. Almond growers are pulling still-productive trees out of the earth in enormous numbers, and a Fresno County vegetable farmer made the local TV news after discing under rows of green asparagus he couldn’t irrigate. Dairy farmers are trucking in water for their cows, and beef operations are cutting back on production."

 

Marin school district chief arrested in child molestation probe

 

GARY KLIEN, Marin Independent Journal: "The superintendent of the Shoreline Unified School District, a 40-year education veteran in Marin and Sonoma counties, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of child molestation.

 

Robert Patrick Raines, 67, was booked into Marin County Jail on a count of lewd and lascivious acts against a child younger than 14. His bail amount was $50,000.

 

Raines, who is just weeks away from his retirement, was released on bail Tuesday afternoon pending a review by the district attorney’s office."

 

25 arrested in Riverside County operation targeting adults seeking sex with children

 

CITY NEWS SERVICE, Press-Enterprise: "A series of law enforcement operations throughout Riverside County targeting individuals soliciting sexual encounters with children netted 25 arrests, authorities reported Tuesday.

 

The county’s Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force joined other agencies statewide in “Operation Intercept,” in which law enforcement personnel utilized social media and other online platforms to target adults seeking to lure children under 14 years old into engaging in sexual acts.

 

“The intent of `Operation Intercept’ was to locate potential sexual predators who actively sought minors on social media platforms for the purpose of committing lewd acts,” according to a statement released by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. “This operation was also meant to reduce Internet `child predators’ actively seeking to commit lewd acts with minors throughout Riverside County.”

 

Water: Amazing new map shows the path of every raindrop that hits the United States

 

PAUL ROGERS, Mercury News: "Water is like electricity. Most people don’t think about it much until it’s gone.

 

Now, as California and other Western states find themselves heading into a severe and worsening drought, a new interactive map is providing a breathtaking journey that shows where America’s water comes from and ends up.

 

The project is called River Runner. It allows anyone to click on any place where a raindrop would fall in the United States, and then track its path through watersheds, into creeks, rivers, lakes and ultimately the ocean."

 

These parts of California are going under a red flag warning, signaling high fire danger

 

NORA MISHANEC, Chronicle: "The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning Tuesday signaling the coming of high-danger fire weather as gusty winds and worryingly low humidity levels stretch across the eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range to western Colorado.

 

The red flag warning will remain in effect until 11 p.m. Tuesday evening and will resume on Wednesday, according to NWS meteorologists based in Reno. Red flag warnings are the agency’s highest alert and are used to indicate the potential for extreme fire behavior.