After nearly three decades, the state's aerial and ground effort known as CAMP -- the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting -- is being eliminated, replaced by a leaner federal operation headed by the DEA out of San Francisco.
From Julie Johnson in the Press Democrat: "California's 28-year-old marijuana eradication program that has destroyed millions of pot plants in public and private wilderness areas is no more."
"The Campaign Against Marijuana Planting — CAMP as it was commonly known — was dropped this year after the state cut funding for the program. It is being replaced this season with a new name, new bosses and a scaled-down approach."
"The effort to eliminate large-scale pot farms on public land will continue under federal direction, with the Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Forest Service taking lead roles rather than state officials."
Speaking of marijuana, the Los Angeles City Council voted to ban dispensaries after hours of impassioned debate.
From the LA Daily News' Rick Orlov: "After years of controversy over medical marijuana, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday decided to ban every clinic in the city - but left the door open for some to reopen in the future."
"The 14-0 decision came after some five hours of debate, including three hours behind closed doors, as well as passionate opposing testimony from medical marijuana advocates and neighbors frustrated by the problems the clinics create."
"In a separate vote, the council OK'd a plan to study allowing 182 dispensaries to open in the future, following more extensive analysis by the Planning Department over the next several months. City Councilman Jose Huizar, a co-author of the ban, said the city has simply been unable to properly control the dispensaries. In Eagle Rock, for example, he said, there are 13 clinics."
Gov. Brown and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today are going to formally unveil a new plan today to move more Northern California water south to the Valley and Los Angeles along the edge of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
From Lauren Summer at KQED: "Political wrangling over the governor’s announcement has already begun. Two weeks ago, 11 members of Congress [PDF] urged officials to release more details about the costs and benefits of the plan before moving ahead. Senators Feinstein and Boxer sent a letter in support of the plan and urged them to meet the February, 2013 deadline to complete it."
"The Delta isn’t a place that most Californians know much about, as recent polls have shown, but the inland estuary just east of San Francisco Bay plays a crucial role in the state’s water supply. Delta water is pumped hundreds of miles across the state, reaching Silicon Valley, Southern California cities and millions of acres of farmland in the Central Valley."
"California’s dependence on this supply has come with an ecological cost. Ten years ago, fish populations in the Delta crashed, including Delta smelt and longfin smelt. Numbers of endangered Chinook salmon were so low in 2008 that the commercial salmon fishery closed for two years."
The cities' redevelopment agencies have been abolished but a fight continues unabated over their money, with the state billing the cities for the revenue.
From the Chronicle's Wyatt Buchanan: "California cities are in a high-stakes fight with officials in Sacramento over money that the state says the cities owe as part of the winding down of redevelopment agencies."
"County officials, under the state's direction, have sent letters of demand to cities throughout the state in recent weeks, many for millions of dollars. Several cities, including El Cerrito, refused to pay and sued the state, which is threatening to penalize cities by withholding sales tax revenue that cities rely on to pay for police, parks and other general operating expenses."
Some local officials warn that if the state follows through with its threat, struggling cities could be pushed off the fiscal cliff. Recently, fiscal crises prompted three California cities - Stockton, Mammoth Lakes and San Bernardino - to declare bankruptcy."
Proposition 13, the voter-approved, 1978 ballot initiative that cut property taxes 57 percent, made the locals dependent on the state and dramatically changed California's poltical landscape, has survived yet another legal challenge.
From the Bee's Dan Walters: "The 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles on Tuesday denied, without comment, an appeal of a lower court decision rejecting a challenge to the measure from Charles Young, the former chancellor of the UCLA campus."
"Although Proposition 13 was upheld by the state Supreme Court shortly after its passage, Young contended that by requiring a two-thirds legislative vote for imposing new taxes, the measure constituited a "revision" of the state constitution that could not be enacted by voters."
"While voter-approved initiatives can amend the constitution, revisions -- a more fundamental form of change -- must go through a constitutional convention or a constitutional revision commission."
And from our "Long, Hot Summer" file comes word from NASA that 97 percent of Greenland''s ice sheet has melted in just four days. Scary. And you thought Sacramento had it bad during the summer.
"For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its 2-mile-thick (3.2-kilometer) center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface, according to measurements from three independent satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists."
"On average in the summer, about half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet naturally melts. At high elevations, most of that melt water quickly refreezes in place. Near the coast, some of the melt water is retained by the ice sheet, and the rest is lost to the ocean. But this year the extent of ice melting at or near the surface jumped dramatically. According to satellite data, an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid-July."
"Researchers have not yet determined whether this extensive melt event will affect the overall volume of ice loss this summer and contribute to sea level rise."
What about Iceland? ...
