January 7, 2012 | 9:47 AM | By

Drain it! Pay More for the Water! The Hetch-Hetchy Saga Continues

San Francisco’s use of the Hetch-Hetchy Valley to store 85% of its water has come under fire…again.

Craig Miller

The Yosemite Valley offers some of the most spectacular views in California. Some people would like to see the Hetch-Hetchy Valley restored to a similar state.

Over the past couple of weeks San Francisco’s water supply and fixed annual fees for that water have come under attack by Republican Congressmen from other parts of the state. The first parry came from Representative Dan Lungren who represents the area stretching east from Sacramento. Lungren has a self-proclaimed “love affair” with Yosemite and thinks it’s worth spending some money to find out if restoring the valley is feasible. On KQED’s Forum program, Lungren argued that, “The possibility that we might have a second Yosemite Valley is something that at least I believe ought to be looked at. And yet everyone who opposes us seems to be afraid of looking at the facts.”

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FILED UNDER: Water, Hetch Hetchy, Water & Power, water storage
January 6, 2012 | 8:43 AM | By

Keeping Central Valley Crops and People Safe From Floods: A Costly Proposition

Big plans to revamp the Valley’s piecemeal flood management system…if there’s money for it

Now that the state’s revamped Central Valley Flood Protection Plan (big PDF) is out for public perusal, the question is whether the political will — and the cash — will be there to make it happen.

David McNew/Getty Images

California's status as an agricultural powerhouse is largely due to the fertile lands in the Central Valley, which are also prone to floods.

The Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins run through the valley and can overflow their banks threatening more than a million people and an estimated $69 billion in assets, according to the report. The current flood management system has been in place for about a hundred years and was designed specifically to keep water from the rivers off the land so that people could grow crops. Now the system has varied uses including conservation of habitat, water supply and water quality. The old system really isn’t up to the job anymore and almost everyone agrees that it will take a serious investment to bring it up to snuff.

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FILED UNDER: Government & Business, Water, Agriculture, Department of Water Resources, flood control, San Joaquin Valley, water plan, Yolo Bypass
January 5, 2012 | 8:36 AM | By

Who Generated the Most Climate “B.S.” in 2011?

Despite flagging media coverage, there was plenty to go around, says a Bay Area scientist

Despite a dozen billion-dollar weather catastrophes in the US alone, year-end tallies show that overall, coverage of climate change continued to flag in the mainstream media.

That isn’t to say that there wasn’t plenty of public jabber about it, much of it wrong, according to Peter Gleick, who heads the Oakland-based Pacific Institute. Gleick is a hydrologist and one of the more outspoken science figures on Western water and climate issues. As a countermeasure against what he calls climate “disinformation,” Gleick and some colleagues have started handing out yearly Climate B.S. (Bad Science) Awards. In so doing, Gleick doesn’t spare the media itself. His list of 2011 “winners” came out today (gratefully we’re not on it). The following are Gleick’s words. Some of the links are mine. May I have the envelope, please: Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: The Science, Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick
January 4, 2012 | 4:44 PM | By

American Pika Gets Another Shot at Endangered Status

Doug Von Gausig

The American pika can only survive within a narrow temperature band and can suffer heat stroke at temperatures as mild as 80 degrees.

The California Fish and Game Commission is asking for public input on the status of the American pika. The small, alpine mammal has been at the center of a prolonged debate over whether to list it under the Endangered Species Act. If the pika ultimately wins endangered status it would be the first species to do so with climate change cited as a major factor contributing to its decline. The Center for Biological Diversity originally petitioned for the pika to receive protected status, considering it to be a bellwether for climate change in California. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Get Involved, The Science, endangered species, Pika, Sierra Nevada
January 3, 2012 | 6:30 PM | By

Making Hay While the Sun Shines: A Flap over Solar Panels in Farm Country

The same things that make the San Joaquin Valley ideal for growing crops, plenty of sun and land, is also attracting large-scale solar power developers.

Hear the companion radio feature Wednesday morning, on The California Report.

Sasha Khokha/KQED

Aaron Barcellos and his yellow lab, Maddox. Barcellos hopes to plant rows of pomegranate trees next to rows of solar panels.

Farmer Aaron Barcellos bristles at the idea that putting solar panels on his land is “paving it over,” as some critics have contended. Harvesting electrons, he says, is not the same as pouring concrete to build houses or a shopping center. Solar isn’t permanent: he can simply pull out the posts holding up the panels when he wants to plow the land under again. In the meantime, using a small part of his farm to generate power for the grid is a good way to bring in some guaranteed income, helping him weather the ups and downs of drought and crop prices.

But on Barcellos’s farm, the ground closest to a PG&E substation is considered “prime” farmland. That means he has to get permission from county supervisors to take his land out of the Williamson Act, which gives farmers a tax break for keeping prime farmland in agriculture. I explore that controversy in my radio story on today’s California Report.

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FILED UNDER: Power, Agriculture, solar
January 3, 2012 | 4:40 PM | By

Sierra Snow Outlook is Bleak

Water users may be relying heavily on leftover water storage from last year

Danielle Hougard

Hard to imagine now: A snowed-over road near Lake Tahoe in March.

It was startling to see the state’s lead snow surveyor kneeling on bare grass near Echo Summit, trying to find enough snow to measure the water content. But so it went with the first official survey of the season, conducted by California’s Dept. of Water Resources.

The manual survey affirmed what remote sensors had already relayed — that water content in the Sierra snowpack stands at just 19% of the average reading for this time, right around New Year’s. The readings are just seven percent of where things usually stand on April first, meaning we have a long way to go, to get back to “normal.” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Water, Sierra Nevada, snow pack
December 22, 2011 | 3:09 PM | By

End is Near for Solar Tax Credit

Solar companies in the Bay Area are asking Congress to extend a popular renewable energy tax program that expires at the end of the year.

Craig Miller/Climate Watch

The 1603 program reimburses companies for a portion of the cost of installing solar projects.

Solar companies benefit from a 30 percent tax credit, but there’s a problem: most companies developing solar projects don’t have enough income to take the deduction. That’s where the 1603 treasury grant program comes in. It gives companies a cash grant up front in place of the tax credit.

“This program really was a fix that brought liquidity back to the market and enabled developers to move forward with their projects,” said Arno Harris, the CEO of Recurrent Energy, a San Francisco-based solar developer. “It’s definitely going to have an impact, if it’s not extended, on our appetite to continue investing in the US solar market.”

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FILED UNDER: Power, solar, tax credits
December 20, 2011 | 9:34 PM | By

Soot in Your Stocking: A Spate of Spare-the-Air Days in the Bay Area

Don’t light that Yule Log just yet

Max Howell/Flickr

30% of the particulate matter found in the air during the winter comes from wood smoke.

If it seems like we’ve had a lot of Spare-the-Air days recently in the Bay Area, you’re right. Wednesday will bring the total to eight air quality alerts since November 1st, when the season began.

Blame the weather. Last year there were only four all season, November-February, mostly because it was so rainy. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the agency responsible for issuing the alerts, has recorded up to 20 in a single winter. So eight in a month and a half is pretty significant, though it’s hard to know if the trend will continue since weather patterns change constantly.

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FILED UNDER: Government & Business, The Science
December 20, 2011 | 5:51 PM | By

House Member Says Air Board Tried to “Mislead Congress”

The National Academy of Sciences/Flickr

Mary Nichols chairs the California Air Resources Board.

ARB’s response to inquiry wasn’t what Orange County Republican had in mind

Orange County Republican Darrell Issa says he remains “deeply troubled” by what he calls a “lack of candor” & “internal inconsistencies” in the California Air Resource Board’s (ARB) response to his November 9th letter probing negotiations toward a new national fuel economy standard. (You can read my original post on Rep. Issa’s and Nichols first round of correspondence here.)

Issa now charges that the initial response from ARB Chair Mary Nichols “appear[s] to be a deliberate attempt to mislead Congress and obstruct an official investigation.” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Government & Business, CARB, Tailpipe emissions
December 20, 2011 | 9:02 AM | By

Poll: Indy Californians Still Support Climate Action

Independent-voter survey says two-thirds consider themselves “conservationists”

Craig Miller

Independent California voters are feeling the heat from climate change, according to a new poll.

The nearly unanimous rejection of climate science by Republican presidential candidates has not swayed most independent voters in California, according to a new poll.

The survey, commissioned by the California League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, finds that nearly two-in-three (63%) voters who decline to state a party affiliation, agree that “climate change is occurring and is a major problem that needs to be addressed.” Thirty-one percent said that climate change is not an issue worth addressing, as the science is still unclear. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Get Involved, climate policy