Jerry Brown will announce a scaling back of habitat restoration plans that are part of the massive twin tunnels project. Proposed environmental restoration funding will go from $8 billion to $300 million. From Scott Smith at Associated Press:
“California Department of Fish and Game Director Chuck Bonham told The Associated Press Wednesday that the project now calls for restoring 30,000 acres for wetland and wildlife habitat — down from 100,000 acres.
“Bonham said the amount of land targeted for environmental improvements was revised because there was ‘too much complexity’ in the original 50-year plan, given the need to get permits from federal wildlife agencies against a backdrop of uncertain future climate change impacts…
"’We need to restore habitat in the Delta,’ Bonham said. ‘We've known that for a long time. There's no dispute there. Let's get going and do it.’”
Assembly Democrats torpedoed multiple GOP education bills yesterday, including changes to teacher tenure, firing and evaluations. From Jeremy White at the Sacramento Bee:
“A legislative committee on Wednesday rejected Republican education bills that would have overhauled teacher tenure and firing rules in response to a federal judge striking down California’s teacher employment laws….
“Assembly Bill 1044, by Assemblywoman Catherine Baker, R-Dublin, would have nixed last-in-first-out by declaring seniority cannot be the sole factor governing layoffs…
“AB 1248, by Assemblyman Rocky Chávez, R-Oceanside, would have extended from two to three years how long it takes for teachers to win tenure and would allow administrators to revoke tenure if teachers have consecutive poor performance reviews. Critics said that would crumble the central pillar of teacher job security...
“Also getting the ax was legislation by Assembly Minority Leader Kristin Olsen, R-Riverbank, on the deeply divisive topic of how schools evaluate teachers. AB 1078 would increase the number of ratings teachers could be assigned and would require educators to be judged in part based on student test scores. It was sidetracked to interim study on a 4-3 vote.”
On the other hand, a bill to add a new campus to the UC system did make it out of committee. Dem bill (AB 1483, Mike Gatto, D-Glendale), natch.
Katy Murpy, San Jose Mercury News: “Assembly Bill 1483 would appropriate $50 million for land acquisition and initial building costs and launch a study on the feasibility of creating an 11th campus for the research university…
“The legislation doesn't pick a spot for the campus, which Gatto envisions being akin to the private California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and specializing in science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics. Gatto has said it might be in an area near Silicon Valley, Hollywood or in a part of the state without a nearby UC campus.”
More Californians are purchasing their own individual health plans since the launch of the Affordable Care Act – and less are receiving health benefits through their employers. From Chad Terhune at the LAT:
“The number of Californians buying individual health insurance soared 64% to nearly 2.2 million as Obamacare took full effect last year, a new report shows.
“In California, 843,607 people joined the individual market both inside and outside the Covered California insurance exchange, as of Dec. 31, 2014….
“Nearly half of Californians continue to get their health benefits through their employer, but the percentage of California firms offering coverage to workers has been falling in recent years.
“Fifty-eight percent of California employers offered coverage to their workers last year, compared with 69% in 2010, according to the California HealthCare Foundation.”
Good news: a new report from the American Lung Association says that California’s air is getting cleaner. Bad news: it still ain’t good. Nanette Asimov from SFGate:
“Unhealthy smog — called ozone — has dropped at least 58 percent in every Bay Area county since 2000, when the clean-air group began collecting data. And it’s dropped by 80 percent in six counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma.
“Even Los Angeles, which remains one of the most polluted cities in the country, had its lowest smog level since reporting began. So did Sacramento, said researchers, whose new report offers new data from 2011 to 2013…
“[Transportation} remains the leading cause of pollution in California, Bard said. And wood-burning stoves — an ironic symbol of clean, country living — contribute significantly to pollution particles in the air that haven’t been washed or blown away much during California’s recent dry, stagnant seasons.”
A blog post by the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences gives a fascinating look at the economic ‘pop per drop’ of water used for agriculture – Really great charts and visualizations of data. From Josué Medellín-Azuara, Jay Lund and Richard Howitt at California Waterblog:
“Some of the most popular drought stories lately have been on the amount of what water needed to produce food from California, as a consumer sees it — a single almond, a head of lettuce or a glass of wine. The stories are often illustrated with pictures of common fruits, nuts and vegetables in one column and icons of gallon water jugs representing their water usage in the other.
“But there are more than two columns to this story. The amount of water applied to crops also translates into dollars and jobs — the main reasons for agriculture’s existence in California.”
We’re not 100% convinced that this story is legit, but it did make it to Gawker, so somebody thinks it’s worth clicking on: when a Chinese zoo’s beloved baby Francois' leaf monkey grew dangerously constipated, the zookeeper did the only thing he could think of to save the animal’s life – he licked the monkey’s butt.
“After a young Francois' leaf monkey in his care consumed a peanut that had been tossed into its enclosure, Wuhan Zoo employee Zhang Bangsheng noticed that the animal had become dangerously constipated.
“Being too big to pass through the monkey's system naturally, the peanut had to be extracted manually. Apparently, that meant licking it out.
“Zhang told local reporters the three-month-old lutung was too small for laxatives, so he had no choice but to extract the wayward legume with his lingua. After washing the its bottom with warm water (because not doing so would be disgusting), Zhang spent an hour polishing the monkey's pooper before the peanut finally popped out.”
