Plagued by mistrust throughout the organization, out of date technology and serious inspection delays, California’s Public Utilities Commission is falling down on safety efforts in the wake of a 2010 gas explosion in San Bruno that killed eight. From Jaxon Van Derbeken at SFGate:
“Federal safety investigators concluded after the disaster that PG&E had taken advantage of a lax regulatory commission to push safety considerations to the background. The yearlong audit, prepared by the firm Crowe Horwath at the state agency’s request, suggests that a series of shakeups in the agency’s safety branch have done little to strengthen commission oversight of PG&E and other utilities…
“Critics said the audit showed the utilities commission had much work to do before it could effectively regulate a company as large as PG&E….
“Before the San Bruno explosion, it took an average of about two months for inspectors to complete reports on utility accidents and other problems. That has now swelled to around eight months, the audit said, while other states complete probes in as little as 15 days.”
As the drought drags into its fourth year, state regulators are searching for missing water – thousands of acre feet of it – that went into the Delta, but never arrived for the southern farmers who counted on it. Farmers along the Delta say it’s not missing, it’s theirs to take.
From Associated Press: “A state investigation was launched following complaints from two large agencies that supply water to arid farmland in the Central Valley and to millions of residents as far south as San Diego.
“Delta farmers don't deny using as much water as they need. But they say they're not stealing it because their history of living at the water's edge gives them that right. Still, they have been asked to report how much water they're pumping and to prove their legal rights to it…
“Delta farmer Rudy Mussi says he has senior water rights, putting him in line ahead of those with lower ranking, or junior, water rights.
"’If there's surplus water, hey, I don't mind sharing it,’ Mussi said. ‘I don't want anybody with junior water rights leapfrogging my senior water rights just because they have more money and more political clout.’"
Farmer vs. farmer water disputes are nothing new, but California has made the situation worse with a long history of overpromising water rights – giving out rights for five times as much water as exists. George Skelton has the story for LAT:
“On some major river systems, especially in the parched San Joaquin Valley, the over-allocation is jaw-opening. On the San Joaquin River itself, people have rights to nearly nine times more water than flows down from the Sierra. On the Kern, it's six times. On the Stanislaus, four.
“Water rights exceed average natural runoff on 16 major rivers, UC Davis researchers found last year. And they were only counting so-called junior rights — those granted after 1914, the last time the Legislature updated California's convoluted water allocation system.
“Stronger pre-1914 ‘senior’ and riparian (waterside) rights weren't included in the study. So that makes the over-promising even more egregious.”
So, what to do? Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Morain suggests that we look at lessons learned from the state’s energy crisis.
“Painful though it may be, remember the energy crisis of 2000 and 2001. Energy buccaneers seized control of the newly deregulated electricity market, manipulating the power grid and driving the price of electrons to historic highs, though no one fully grasped the magnitude of the fraud at the time….
“There were rolling blackouts. PG&E plunged into bankruptcy and Southern California Edison teetered, unable to afford the cost of electricity. The nation shook its collective head, wondering about California’s latest debacle and doubting its future….
“From the mess, something better emerged. It’s not perfect. Nothing ever is. But the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the grid, hasn’t declared a Stage 3 alert, the most serious level, since 2001, when there were 38 of them. Southern California Edison shut its massive San Onofre nuclear power plant in 2013. The lights didn’t flicker.”
A new report says that California is losing its edge on technology, forcing California tech companies to expand in other states. From Roland Li, San Francisco Business Times:
“California leaders must invest heavily in 21st century infrastructure, such as fiber-optic cables, and update energy rules to be prepared for the future, said Jeff Bellisario, a senior research associate at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute and an author of the report….
“One of the most urgent issues addressed in the report were California rules that have discouraged investments that would upgrade the state's tech infrastructure…
“Those rules have spurred Silicon Valley technology giants to invest elsewhere. For its high-speed Google Fiber investment, Google Inc. picked cities such as Kansas City and Nashville over locations in California.”
A bipartisan coalition of legislators is taking aim at high salaries for University of California administrators, offering a bill to cap UC employee compensation at $500,000. From Nanette Asimov at SFGate:
“The bill, approved by the Assembly’s higher education committee last week, is a prime example of how Gov. Jerry Brown’s concerns over high spending at the public university have spread to the state Legislature, where the bill is one of five in play — all meant to bring UC to its knees by reining in its spending, restricting its ability to raise tuition and ending its constitutional autonomy.”
GOP hopefuls are lining up for the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors seat to be opened up by the retirement of termed-out Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich. The seat, officially non-partisan, has drawn high level Republican candidates including Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar), who declared last week. From Jean Merl, Los Angeles Times:
“Thus far, the top-tier candidates for an officially nonpartisan seat are, like the termed-out Antonovich, Republicans, a testament to the sprawling 5th District's status as a final GOP stronghold in an increasingly Democratic county.
“Among those who've filed preliminary campaign paperwork with election officials is state Sen. Robert Huff (R-Diamond Bar), the minority floor leader. He kicked off his campaign Thursday with a news conference in Monrovia that emphasized his ties to the San Gabriel Valley, part of the district he and his wife have moved into so he can run.
“Other GOP candidates are Kathryn Barger, a longtime Antonovich aide who has received the supervisor's endorsement; Deputy Dist. Atty. Elan Carr, a social moderate who demonstrated a strong fundraising ability in a Westside congressional race last year and has since moved into the 5th District; and Glendale Councilman Ara Najarian, an attorney with deep roots in the area's large, politically active Armenian community.”
And, just to add to the already endless supply of bad drought news: turns out that the lack of water is causing California’s West Nile Virus numbers to skyrocket. From Luke Whelan at Mother Jones:
The California Department of Public Health announced last week that in 2014 it recorded the most cases of the potentially deadly mosquito-borne illness since it first showed up in the Golden State more than a decade ago. The CDPH tallied 801 diagnoses, including 31 deaths—the most ever in California.
“…[According] to CDPH director Dr. Karen Smith, as the drought wears on, both birds and mosquitos have expanded their search for water closer to population centers, causing them to come into contact with each other more often and nearer to people. On top of that, more stagnated water sources mean more attractive places for mosquitos to lay eggs. The takeaway? Thanks to the drought, the number of infected mosquitos is increasing and coming closer to humans.”
Last week we noted that the Confederacy surrendered 150 years ago, marking the official end of the Civil War on April 9, 1865.
This Civil War story doesn’t go back quite that far – only to 1986. That was the year that John Potter found a faded photograph of a man in a straw hat looking at a strangely-shaped ship. That strange ship was labeled “CSS Georgia” indicating that it was the less-known cousin to the famous confederate ironclad, the Merrimac. Potter’s picture turned out to be the only photo of the ship to exist. Or was it?
Potter now says the whole scheme was an elaborate hoax concocted by he and his brother while they were in high school.
“Potter's younger brother put on a coat and straw hat went out to a marsh with a cane fishing pole and Potter took a photo. He took another photo of the 2-foot model. He cut out the boat's image, glued it onto the photo of his brother, then used dirt and Elmer's glue to create the illusion of a photo faded by age and stained by water or chemicals.
“He bought an old picture frame and beat it up even further. He put the photo in it. Then he drove 120 miles to a yard sale — or maybe it was a flea market — in Waycross, Georgia, put the picture down and took a Polaroid of it. He laughs now, when he remembers that it had seemed so important that he actually do this at a yard sale, so at least that part would be true. ‘Who knows what goes through the mind of a kid,’ he said.
“Potter sent out the photo to historical groups, setting off the sporadic, and fruitless, search for a CSS Georgia photo that he now says never existed…
“As proof to back up his new story, Potter presented AP the 8 mm movie he and his brother had made. He showed old photos. One showed a young man he said was his brother, standing in a marsh wearing a coat and straw hat and carrying a cane fishing pole — much like the figure in the ironclad photograph. Another showed the same boy carefully holding, atop his fingertips, the small model of the ship, which looks identical to the ghostly image in the photograph. Another showed a pug lying next to a model of the ship. A fourth showed the long elusive photo in its frame on a quilt, next to a K-Mart bag, a bunch of Polaroids of the photo, the model of the ship and a Mad magazine from 1984….”
