After decades of failure, California dusts off controversial Delta tunnel water project
DALE KASLER and RYAN SABALOW, SacBee: "Here we go again.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration revived the Delta tunnel project Wednesday, unveiling a downsized version of the controversial, multibillion-dollar plan to re-engineer the fragile estuary on Sacramento’s doorstep that serves as the hub of California’s over-stressed water-delivery network.
After three years with little to no public activity, the state released an environmental blueprint for what’s now called the Delta Conveyance — a 45-mile tunnel that would divert water from the Sacramento River and route it under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta so that it can be shipped to farms and cities hundreds of miles away. The blueprint, a 3,000-page draft version of an environmental impact report, is a necessary initial step in securing approvals for the project."
California labor gets a new leader
LINDSAY HOLDEN, SacBee: "Former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, officially began her tenure Wednesday as executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation — and she brought the United Farm Workers with her.
Gonzalez, a longtime champion for labor interests in the Legislature, announced in January she was resigning to take on the new role. During her time in the Assembly, Gonzalez authored Assembly Bill 5, which curtails when businesses can designate workers as independent contractors, rather than employees entitled to benefits.
The 2019 law was controversial, and rideshare apps Uber and Lyft pushed back against it."
California Supreme Court chief justice will not seek re-election, plans to retire in January
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: “California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, a moderate who has led the state’s highest court since 2011, announced Wednesday she will not seek a new term in November and will retire in January after 32 years as a judge. Gov. Gavin Newsom, if he wins re-election in November, will nominate her successor.
Cantil-Sakauye, now 62, took office in January 2011 after being appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. She had been a Sacramento County prosecutor and a staff aide to Gov. George Deukmejian before he appointed her as a county judge in 1990, and Schwarzenegger promoted her to the Court of Appeal in 2005.
A Sacramento native, she was a student government leader and homecoming queen at McClatchy High School, then attended UC Davis and its law school. Her father worked on sugar cane and pineapple plantations in Hawaii, and her mother, an immigrant from the Philippines, was a farmworker in the Central Valley. She is the second woman, after Rose Bird, and the first person of color to serve as chief justice.”
Lawyers in Aryan Brotherhood case want secret reports compiled by dead prison official
SAM STANTON and WES VENTEICHER, SacBee: "Lawyers for an Aryan Brotherhood defendant charged in a racketeering and murder case in Sacramento federal court are asking a judge to order prosecutors to hand over confidential reports about alleged wrongdoing inside California State Prison, Sacramento, written by a prison whistleblower who killed himself last year.
The effort by attorneys for accused Aryan Brotherhood member Brant “Two Scoops” Daniel comes as two guards at the prison have pleaded guilty to a cover-up at the facility, and as the FBI is investigating allegations that guards have planted drugs and weapons on inmates and conspired to help inmates murder other prisoners.
Daniel’s attorneys, Timothy Warriner and John Balazs, argue they need the documents to rebut guards’ claims that they found a 6-inch handmade shank inside Daniel’s cell and that he planned to use it to assault or kill a guard."
What does S.F.’s unprecedented Black leadership mean for disappearing Black residents?
The Chronicle, JUSTIN PHILLIPS: “San Francisco has a Black mayor, district attorney and police chief, marking an unprecedented level of representation in a city with a marginal and declining Black populace. Yet these officials appear willing to drag the city into a new mass incarceration era where the folks destined to suffer the most are Black and Latino.
This current battle over public safety priorities is just the latest example that, in San Francisco, Black residents can be well represented in political office but poorly represented when it comes to the issues that affect them most.
How did we get here? History tells the story.”
One of California’s tallest redwoods is 2,000 years old. Inside the fight to keep it safe
The Chronicle, GREGORY THOMAS: “Standing on the side of Highway 116, which winds through the dense forests of western Sonoma County, John Dunlap looked across the Russian River into a stand of tall trees and pointed out one old redwood in particular.
“It’s really a hidden gem here that’s kind of out of sight, out of mind,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t deserving of our attention.”
Up from the riverbank near Guerneville is the county’s tallest tree, an estimated 2,000-year-old, 340-footer known as the Clar Tree. Once thought to be the highest tree in California, it carries the name of a timber family that lived in the area back when it was a logging capital. It is easily identifiable by its dead, forked crown — the result of a lightning strike some years ago.”
California drought official quits, blasting Newsom for ‘gut wrenching’ inaction
LAT, IAN JAMES: “In his time at the California State Water Resources Control Board, Max Gomberg has witnessed the state grapple with two devastating droughts and the accelerating effects of climate change.
Now, after 10 years of recommending strategies for making California more water resilient, the board’s climate and conservation manager is calling it quits. The reason: He no longer believes Gov. Gavin Newsom and his administration are willing to pursue the sorts of transformational changes necessary in an age of growing aridification.
In a resignation note posted online this month, Gomberg accused the governor of siding with defenders of the status quo and also faulted those in his agency who failed to push back.”
Some experts see less value in a new L.A. mask mandate at this stage of the pandemic
LAT, MELISSA HEALY: “As successive waves of COVID-19 have swept across the Southland, Michael Matteo Rossi, a 35 year-old filmmaker who lives in Los Feliz, has gamely masked up whenever he shopped, ate out or visited with his parents, who are in their 70s.
“I’ve never been like someone who walks into a Walmart without a mask, looking to make a big stink,” said Rossi, who is vaccinated. “I’m all about respect.”
But now, with Los Angeles County potentially on the verge of a renewed indoor masking mandate, his feelings have changed. With hospitalizations and deaths far below the peaks of the winter Omicron surge, Rossi said he feels safe mingling, maskless, in indoor spaces with his parents and friends.”
He found a way to create more homes for Bay Area’s workforce. Now comes the backlash
The Chronicle, JK DINEEN: “Architect Dera-Jill Pozner had been living in the Bay Area for 20 years when she developed serious medical problems that required her to cut back on work she took in. She had been renting in San Francisco’s North of Panhandle neighborhood, but with the decrease in income, she needed to find a less expensive place.
She looked at what her new budget would afford in San Francisco — “a moldy dark basement” — and decided to search across the bridge in Marin County, where the offerings weren’t much better. While looking around, however, she stumbled on the Summit at Sausalito.
A 200-unit garden-style complex with swimming pool, hot tub and sweeping views of Richardson Bay, the Summit at Sausalito appeared to be just another upscale apartment community positioned to capture the hefty rents that come with the Marin County lifestyle.”
US economy shrank 0.9% last quarter, its 2nd straight drop
AP, PAUL WISEMAN: “The U.S. economy shrank from April through June for a second straight quarter, contracting at a 0.9% annual pace and raising fears that the nation may be approaching a recession.
The decline that the Commerce Department reported Thursday in the gross domestic product — the broadest gauge of the economy — followed a 1.6% annual drop from January through March. Consecutive quarters of falling GDP constitute one informal, though not definitive, indicator of a recession.
The GDP report for last quarter pointed to weakness across the economy. Consumer spending slowed as Americans bought fewer goods. Business investment fell. Inventories tumbled as businesses slowed their restocking of shelves, shedding 2 percentage points from GDP.””s
