Badlands Journal

The University of California/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is bidding to site a mile from the Tracy city limitsthe most dangerous level the government designates of biowarfare laboratory. The issue and UC management problems are discussed in the articles abstracted below.

It is a win-win solution for Tracy with this bio-safety laboratory created here with the
protections and competence known to be present in the University of California labs.
Let us not be driven by fear, but rather offer our support for UC to adequately
implement this opportunity close by.

-- Chris Page, Letter to the editor of the Tracy Press, Sept. 23, 2006

-----------------

Sept. 28, 2006

Tracy Press
On the fence...John Upton
http://tracypress.com/content/view/4395/2/
Level 4 bio-lab is a hot topic in Tracy. A City Council candidate has defended a

biological laboratory that might be built near Tracy, accusing project opponents
Councilwoman Irene Sundberg and environmental activist Bob Sarvey of misleading locals.
City Council referring the proposal to the Tracy Tomorrow and Beyond committee of nine
citizens... The city has no jurisdiction over Site 300, but Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy,
previously said through a spokesman that his support for the proposal would depend on
the city’s position. “Tracy Tomorrow is nothing but an extended hand of council,” said
Roger Adhikari, who applied last year for a spot on the Tracy Planning Commission...
Like all city committees, members of Tracy Tomorrow and Beyond are appointed by the
council. Adhikari said he considered the committee selection process biased.

San Francisco Chronicle
Los Alamos...Nuke lab evacuations cited in federal probe...Keay Davidson
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/28/BAG3CLE5941.DTL&type=prin
table
Power and ventilation failures at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico forced a
half-dozen evacuations over the past four months from a building where radioactive
plutonium is handled, according to a federal investigator...incidents point to
continuing concern about the handling of radioactive materials for nuclear bombs at the
lab, which is jointly run by the University of California, Bechtel Corp. and a few
industrial partners. Failure of the ventilation system can be hazardous because of the
potential that plutonium might be sucked out of secure labs and through the structure,
and possibly into the outside environment. In a separate inspection, the investigator
noted that half the weapons lab's storage containers for fast-accumulating amounts of
plutonium used in bomb "pits" -- the explosive cores of nuclear weapons -- are possibly
substandard and could lead to further safety issues. The amount of plutonium and other
radioactive waste is growing to the point "where they impact both (lab) mission and
safety, virtually ensuring failure unless addressed as a priority," the investigator
wrote in an Aug. 25 memo.

Washington Post
The secretive fight against bioterror...Joby Warrick...7-30-06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/29/AR2006072900592_pf.html
The government is building a highly classified facility to research biological weapons,
but its closed-door approach has raised concerns. The heart of the lab is a cluster of
sealed chambers built to contain the world's deadliest bacteria and viruses. The work at
this new lab, at Fort Detrick, Md., could someday save thousands of lives -- or, some
fear, create new risks and place the United States in violation of international
treaties. NBACC's close ties to the U.S. intelligence community have also caused concern
among the agency's critics. The CIA has assigned advisers to the lab, including at least
one member of the "Z-Division," an elite group jointly operated with Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory that specializes in analyzing and duplicating weapons systems of
potential adversaries, officials familiar with the program confirm.

Sept. 24, 2006

Los Angeles Times
UCLA Lab to quickly track infectious diseases...The Associated Press
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ucla24sep24,1,1367227,print.story?coll=la-headli
nes-california
Scientists at UCLA and the Los Alamos National Laboratory will be developing a
high-volume lab that will use robots to quickly test samples for infectious
diseases...$22-million project is called the High Speed, High Volume Laboratory Network
for Infectious Diseases. It is slated to be completed within a year at Los Alamos and
will be moved to California and operated by UCLA.

Sept. 23, 2006

Tracy Press
The community would be so lucky as to have a bio-research lab built in the nearby
hills...Chris Page, Tracy...Your Voice
http://tracypress.com/content/view/4239/2/
EDITOR, It is in the interest of all the citizens of Tracy to have present in their
community more and more advanced technology with its associated staff and their
contributions as community members. Biotechnology is advancing and bringing us better protection along with better health and food. It is a win-win solution for Tracy with this bio-safety laboratory created here with the protections and competence known to be present in the University of California labs.
Let us not be driven by fear, but rather offer our support for UC to adequately
implement this opportunity close by. Let’s assist them to make it a little better with
our opinions during the environmental inquiry stage when we can all contribute and also
hear informed personnel regarding all options for improvement.

Sept. 22, 2006

Regents retroactively approve $6 million in executive pay and perks...Tanya Schevitz
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/22/BAGHNLAO5G1.DTL&type=prin
table
140 university executives can keep at least $6 million in pay and perks that they
received earlier without proper approval or public disclosure. The vote is the second
time regents have given retroactive approval for questionable payments that were cited
in three audits of the university's compensation practices. In July, the regents
retroactively approved more than $1 million in compensation items for about 60 top-level
executives. The items included matters large and small, from improper car allowances and
extra vacation time to large undisclosed bonuses and perks. Other employees got promises
of a full year's pay if they were terminated. Some, including an assortment of deans at
UC Berkeley, were granted an extra week of vacation time.

Regents vote to seek contract to keep running Livermore lab...Chronicle Staff Report
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/22/BAGHNLAG9H1.DTL&type=prin
table
The University of California Board of Regents voted unanimously Thursday to compete for
the next contract to run Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the nuclear weapons
laboratory in Livermore. Winning the contract from the U.S. Department of Energy would
let UC manage the nation's two nuclear weapons design laboratories -- Lawrence Livermore
and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Nuclear weapons foes want UC out of
the nuclear weapons business altogether.

Sept. 21, 2006

Stockton Record
Panel to analyze biolab proposal...The Record
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20060921&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=60920013&

SectionCat=&Template=printart
TRACY - A nine-member panel of real estate agents, educators and others will explore a
proposal to build a biological weapons and agricultural disease research laboratory
before the City Council takes a position on the issue, council members decided Tuesday
night. Questions abound over the risks and benefits of the University of California's
bid to locate the laboratory at Site 300, a 7,000-acre weapons testing ground south of
the city. Mayor Dan Bilbrey asked that the Tracy Tomorrow and Beyond committee delve
into the proposal and report its findings to the council in January. Councilman Brent
Ives works for the University of California at Livermore National Laboratory and recused
himself from Tuesday's discussion.

San Francisco Chronicle
Regents to vote on Livermore today...Keay Davidson
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/21/BAG1OL9ERT1.DTL&type=prin
table
A committee of UC's governing body moved to retain the university system's grip on two
of the nation's three nuclear weapons laboratories, voting Wednesday to compete for the
next contract to run Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore. The full Board
of Regents is expected to ratify the recommendation today. UC has run Lawrence Livermore
and New Mexico's Los Alamos labs for more than half a century... Both labs have had many
serious problems...Los Alamos employees inadvertently shipped radioactive materials to
several states;...Livermore employees were accidentally contaminated with plutonium --
but UC teamed up with Bechtel Corp. to beat back a strong challenge in December from a
team headed by Lockheed Martin Corp. and the University of Texas to retain control of
the Los Alamos lab it had run for more than 60 years. If UC succeeds in keeping control
of Lawrence Livermore, it would not only shore up its tarnished reputation as a manager
of national labs, but would solidify San Francisco-based Bechtel's bid to become the
industry titan behind the research wings of the world's No. 1 atomic arsenal.

'Sea change' in oversight of money...Tanya Schevitz
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/21/BAG1OL9EVQ1.DTL&type=prin
table
University of California officials announced several policy reforms Wednesday to carry
out an advisory panel's recommendations for correcting shortcomings that came to light
during an executive pay scandal last year...greater documentation and review will be
required anytime a special exception is made to a policy governing executive
compensation. UC will be more open with its compensation, making public disclosure of
the compensation of officials filling positions that require appointment by the
governing Board of Regents. The university will also provide an electronic annual report
of base salary for all UC employees and full compensation for executives. The regents
are expected to vote on a variety of compensation items today. The regents are also
expected to retroactively approve compensation for about 140 executives who received it
without proper approval or disclosure. The move goes beyond what was required in a
ruling by an Alameda County Superior Court judge in August in a case brought by The
Chronicle against the university, but it does not go so far as to open up pay raise
discussions prior to the vote.

UC system, Stanford cash in on research...Verne Kopytoff
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/21/BUGGNL9DIE1.DTL&type=prin
table
California universities are among the top in turning research into business, reaping
tens of millions of dollars annually from licensing, according to a study released
Wednesday...report by the Milken Institute. Academic capitalism, the practice of schools
owning, licensing and marketing faculty research, has played an increasingly important
role on college campuses in recent years. Universities routinely make millions of
dollars from patents, money that can be used to support faculty pay, campus services and
capital improvements, such as laboratories. However, some critics complain that
universities are losing their focus because of the potential to cash in. Instead of
making teaching and basic research priorities, some schools have become obsessed with
coming up with inventions that have businesses applications... That California schools
rank near the top is hardly a surprise. They've been leading research centers for years
and have a long history of embracing academic capitalism...the UC system earned an
average of nearly $100 million annually from licensing... UC's policy is to share any
money from licensing between a fund for future research, the UC system's general fund
and the school where the invention was developed. The inventors get 35 percent of the
revenue.

Sept. 20. 2006

Tracy Press
Under the microscope...John Upton
http://tracypress.com/content/view/4203/2/
The same nine-citizen committee that helped plan Tracy’s soon-to-be-built aquatics park
will review a University of California proposal to build an anti-biological terrorism
laboratory near Tracy. Mayor Dan Bilbrey referred the proposal to the City
Council-appointed Tracy Tomorrow & Beyond Committee during a public discussion Tuesday
night. The discussion heard from six Tracy residents, four City Council members and a
public affairs representative from the university, which has been short-listed to run
the laboratory at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories’ Site 300. University
spokeswoman Susan Houghton said the Department of Homeland Security would call for
public comment and thoroughly investigate the site if it is included in six finalist
sites this fall. “There is a very good chance the University of California’s proposal
will not make that list, but if it does we will engage (the community), as will all
entities,” Houghton said. “All the questions that have been raised tonight are really
very good ones, and they’re questions that the Department of Homeland Security needs to
address.” Councilwoman Evelyn Tolbert...“You can love this country deeply and not always
have to trust your government — it’s the duty of being an American”...

San Francisco Chronicle
Toxic mercury contaminating more species, report shows...Jane Kay
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/20/MNGNDL90AV1.DTL&type=prin
table
Mercury pollution from power plants and other industrial sources has accumulated in
birds, mammals and reptiles across the country, and only cuts in emissions can curtail
the contamination, says a report released Tuesday by a national environmental group. The
report is the first major compilation of studies investigating mercury buildup in such
wildlife as California clapper rails, Maine's bald eagles, Canadian loons and Florida
panthers. In all, scientists working with the National Wildlife Federation found 65
studies showing troublesome mercury levels in 40 species.

UC regents vote to bid for Livermore contract...Michelle Locke, AP
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/09/20/state/n100606D58.DTL&type
=printable
Leaders of the University of California took a step toward solidifying their role as
national nuclear steward Wednesday, voting to put in a bid to continue running the
Lawrence Livermore weapons lab...expected to be ratified by the full board Thursday,
comes nine months after UC successfully bid to keep running the Los Alamos nuclear lab
in New Mexico. UC in partnership with engineering expert Bechtel Corp. won the Los
Alamos competition last December, beating out a team of the University of Texas and
defense contractor Lockheed Martin.The 10-campus UC system will partner with Bechtel in
its bid for Livermore.

CSU, UC leaders promise candor on executive pay...Michelle Locke, AP
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/09/19/state/n190736D77.DTL&type
=printable
Leaders of California's public universities, roiled by reports that some top officials
were quietly paid millions, are pledging to be more open about executive pay. California
State University trustees' meeting in Long Beach on Tuesday, Chancellor Charles Reed
endorsed a proposal to make sure the system's board members and the public knows about
compensation deals given to departing executives. Meanwhile, officials at the University
of California said they would be more public about setting salaries for the top ranks.
Also...CSU and the California Faculty Association have been negotiating for months over
salaries, with CSU recently saying they are at an impasse...CFA recently filed suit
alleging that trustees illegally held a closed-door meeting to discuss the hiring of
former Chancellor Barry Munitz.

Committee's pay votes to be public...Tanya Schevitz
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/20/BAG4LL8SHR1.DTL&type=prin
table
The University of California announced Tuesday that the compensation committee of its
governing Board of Regents will voluntarily vote in public on pay proposals for all UC
officials requiring board approval. The move goes beyond what was required in a ruling
by an Alameda County Superior Court judge in August in a case brought by The Chronicle
against the university, but it does not go so far as to open up pay raise discussions
prior to the vote. "We are a public university. We do have to balance privacy rights of
individuals ... but we are carrying out the public trust and we have a responsibility to
be transparent and accountable to the public," Parsky said. "We are planning to go well
beyond the court ruling." Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, whose legislation
barring the regents from meeting behind closed doors when considering the compensation
of high-ranking executives has stalled, said that while the university's new move is
laudable, it still falls short.

UC mental health help called in crisis...Tanya Schevitz
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/20/BAGFNL45ER52.DTL&type=pri
ntable
University of California campuses have reached the crisis point in providing mental
health services to a growing number of students with depression and more serious
psychiatric problems, as well as plain old homesickness... Mirroring a national trend on
college campuses, suicide attempts and severe mental health problems have grown
dramatically on UC campuses in recent years. At the same time, UC's mental health care
budgets have shrunk. The report says that there were 29 suicides on the 10 UC campuses
between the 2000-01 school year and the 2004-05 school year... numbers understate the
problem

Sept. 19, 2006

Tracy Press
Council to talk about bio-lab...John Upton
http://tracypress.com/content/view/4177/2/
City Council debate about the proposed Level 4 bio-lab - it's the last item on tonight's agenda. Councilwoman Irene Sundberg said Monday she doesn’t want the Department of Homeland Security laboratory built next to Tracy - and she is expected to ask the rest of the council to join her in officially denouncing the project...she became opposed to the project after eating dinner with a scientist who scared her with stories of the “horrific things that could happen” should something go wrong in such a lab. The discussion will be broadcast live on Channel 26. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Site 300, which would host the laboratory, is just outside Tracy’s southwestern limits, next to a swath of AKT Development-owned land earmarked for habitat protection on the long-debated Tracy Hills housing project. Laboratory spokeswoman Susan Houghton said that information on the Web site www.universityofcalifornia.edu/nbaf/uc.html would help counter false information surrounding the proposal.

Discuss bio-lab's pluses, minuses...Our View
http://tracypress.com/content/view/4166/2/
Tracy residents know where City Councilwoman Irene Sundberg stands on the proposed federal Biosafety Level 4 laboratory in Corral Hollow Canyon...she has the issue in the public forum, and it is important that all voices are heard. Some say the bio-lab would bring 300 research scientists and other new jobs to the area. But others say locating the lab here is risky - or, as one former LLNL supervisor cautioned, “If an animal with a level 4 pathogen ever got loose, the entire valley would be gone, not just Tracy.” BioSafety Level 4 is the highest level of containment for biological organisms. Not located in populated areas Wrong. Level 4 labs are in Atlanta and San Antonio and on Plum Island, off the New York and Connecticut coast. There have been no reports of a pathogen ever escaping such labs. We urge all the council members to learn the facts about the proposed bio-lab, listen to the citizens and make an informed judgment...

Sept. 17, 2006

Stockton Record
UC offers to fight deadly pathogens...Alex Breitler
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060917/NEWS01/609170325/1001
TRACY - If it is built in the hills southwest of Tracy, a high-security laboratory where moon-suited scientists study a handful of the world's most dangerous pathogens would be one of perhaps a half-dozen such labs across the country, according to experts. The University of California has submitted a bid to the federal government to build the laboratory at a weapons testing site at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dedicated to agricultural and biological defense, at least part of the new lab would fall into the highest security category, known as "Biosafety Level 4." There are plenty of precautions, officials said. But the critics are not appeased. The University of California's application has not been released to the public, adding a veil of secrecy to the project and further spurring criticism...the university established a Web site to keep people informed. A Livermore-based Tri-Valley CAREs conservation group spokeswoman said it filed a public records request for the university's application but was denied. Although there are other Level 4 labs, this would be the first to combine agricultural, animal and public health research. Community acceptance is one factor the government said it will take into account when deciding where the lab should be built.

Sept. 14, 2006

Job suits cost UC $12 million in 3 years...Tanya Schevitz
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/14/BAGPJL5DHN1.DTL&type=printable
The University of California paid out at least $12 million over three years on employment lawsuits involving allegations such as sexual harassment, discrimination and "consensual relations" between faculty and students, according to an internal audit and letter obtained by The Chronicle...payout covers cases arising out of the 10 campuses, various medical centers and two national laboratories -- Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley -- under UC's management. Specific details about the cases were not disclosed. About $9.3 million involved 168 employment cases at the campuses and medical centers from 2002 to 2005...university paid at least $3 million to resolve 18 employment cases at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which it manages for the U.S. Department of Energy. That amount does not include two large class-action discrimination cases that were settled. Many more complaints were settled before they reached litigation, UC has reported in the past. Of the 168 cases reported on the campuses and medical centers, 55 were resolved for amounts of less than $100,000 and five for more than $250,000 -- with an average indemnity per claim of $55,000, according to Blair's letter. Of the 18 cases at the labs, 10 were settled -- six for less than $100,000 and one for $990,000. The damages paid after two court verdicts against the university exceeded $1 million in each case. Sheldon Steinbach, vice president and general counsel of the American Council on Education, which represents 1,800 colleges and universities, said the amount UC spent on litigation is not out of line with other universities. "When one looks at these numbers at first glance, they look overwhelming and possibly excessive, but in the litigious 21st century America, they are not overwhelming."

Sept. 12, 2006

Tracy Press
Meeting tonight on bio-agent lab...Phil Hayworth
http://tracypress.com/content/view/3932/2/
Local folks will get a chance to voice their concerns and compliments...about possibility of a biolab being built near Tracy...workshop from 7 to 9 tonight at the Sarvey Shoe Store, 501 W. Grant Line Road. The University of California, which manages Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the Department of Energy, said the lab submitted a proposal to Homeland Security to build a half-million-square-foot lab on 30 to 100 acres at Site 300, a bomb test site west of Tracy. If built, it would be one of the world’s largest biolabs...where experimental studies on pathogens such as avian flu would be conducted. The UC has thus far refused to release any formal information to the public about its proposal, Miles contends.

Sept. 8, 2006

Merced Sun-Star
UC Notebook: Professor to explore reasoning...Corinne Reilly
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12689362p-13387979c.html
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $300,000 grant to UC Merced professor Evan Heit to fund research that will explore human reasoning. UC Merced shares the grant with the University of Massachusetts, which will send graduate students to Merced to participate in the project. Green campus...UC Merced has launched a campuswide recycling program...tall blue collection bins are now all over the campus. On-campus offices have offered recycling bins for the past three years, but this is the first campuswide program to be implemented. Last year, university officials estimate the campus produced about 155 tons of waste, about 67 tons of which was recycled. Research honored...UC Merced professor Roland Winston has been honored for his research in solar technology. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers...chose Winston to receive its first-ever Frank Kreith Energy Award for his work in nonimaging optics. Natural sciences professor Michael Dawson was also recently honored for his research on jellyfish and the movement of ocean waters...shares the 2006 Sherman Eureka Prize for Environmental Research with a team of researchers who developed a new computer model for that helps track water movement...new technology could shed new light on climate change.

Below, you will find a series of abstracts of newsclips about the San Joaquin River Settlement. On Sept. 13, fourteen environmental and recreational organizations and 29 irrigation and water districts and four federal agencies, submitted a settlement agreement to United States District Court, Eastern District of California. The agreement proposes a plan for one of the greatest river restoration projects in American history.

One of the most important laws considered in the federal court's decision, which forced the parties into settlement negotiations, was California Fish and Game Code, Section 5937.

The owner of any dam shall allow sufficient water at all times to pass through a fishway, or in the absence of a fishway, allow sufficient water to pass over, around or through the dam, to keep in good condition any fish that may be planted or exist below the dam. During the minimum flow of water in any river or stream, permission may be granted by the department to the owner of any dam to allow sufficient water to pass through a culvert, waste gate, or over or around the dam, to keep in good condition any fish that may
be planted or exist below the dam, when, in the judgment of the department, it is impracticable or detrimental to the owner to pass the water through the fishway.

However, much -- though not all -- of the press coverage of the settlement reflects the frontier attitude of a former manager of the Merced Irrigation District:

"The price of a water right is eternal vigilance."

---------------------------

Sept. 28,2006

Lawmakers settle river dispute...Michael Doyle, Sun-Star Washington Bureau
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12785879p-13478049c.html
WASHINGTON -- Exhausted Capitol Hill negotiators agreed Wednesday on legislation to revive the San Joaquin River below Friant Dam. Establishing a new "experimental population" of salmon, while still protecting operations on local dams and water projects, were the keys to the compromise. The next big problem is time... In part, the new deal reassures water agencies that they can renew their Federal Energy Regulatory Commission licenses on the Merced and Tuolumne rivers without additional environmental requirements solely because of the new salmon population...guarantees that federal officials in protecting the salmon "will not impose more than de minimus water supply reductions, additional storage releases or bypass flows" on the water districts...agreed to devote the capital repayment from Friant water customers to the river restoration project for the next 20 years. Even so, some Valley lawmakers voiced dissatisfaction with the haggling that included environmentalists making a last-minute push for an additional concession... Merced Democrat Dennis Cardoza, while supporting the final compromise, added that "this process should never be repeated (because) legislating by lawsuit is not the way to do public policy." "I'm pleased with the progress that's been made," said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, but "we have to look at this seriously. The Congress has to take its time; we have to hold hearings."

Valley well-represented in river-restoration talks...Editorial
http://www.modbee.com/opinion/story/12786191p-13478313c.html
In poker, you can't win if you're not at the table. The same thing is true in water negotiations. Fortunately, we had a seat - several, in fact - at the table where a deal to restore the San Joaquin River between Fresno and Merced has been worked out. Wednesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein announced a deal... Included were some key third-party representatives. Among them was Modesto Irrigation District General Manager Allen Short, who represented the five irrigation districts - Modesto, Turlock, Oakdale, Merced and South San Joaquin - that depend on and manage the San Joaquin's tributary rivers. Joining him was Ken Robbins, a lawyer for Merced Irrigation District, and all five valley members of the House of Representatives. The negotiations on the bill are complete, but this game is not over. Getting this bill passed will require the help of the entire valley congressional delegation...it is doable.

Sept. 27, 2006

Sacramento Bee
River lawsuit ends; will restoration work?...Editorial
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/29845.html
It took a lawsuit by environmental groups and a sympathetic federal judge in Sacramento named Lawrence Karlton to force a compromise. The question now is how will the salmon regard the settlement? They are the true judges here. And is this legal settlement the last word? Not really. Many affected parties along the river weren't at the negotiating table. Neither was Congress, which is now wrestling with coming up with the money and deciding how a reintroduced salmon population should be regulated under the federal Endangered Species Act. The end of this contentious lawsuit means the beginning of a long and delicate process -- more negotiating, more political arm-twisting and more scrutiny of river ecolology -- with the goal of accomplishing something on a scale that has never been tried before in California. Beware of anyone declaring this mission accomplished. But celebrate an important milestone for a very troubled river.

Sept. 26, 2006

Salmon may be replenished in San Joaquin River...Michael Doyle, Sun-Star Washington Bureau
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12777978p-13470708c.html
WASHINGTON -- The negotiators returning to Capitol Hill today hope to finish crafting the legislation needed for the river's restoration. The end result of the haggling in Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's third-floor office eventually could be an estimated 500 or more spring-run chinook salmon back in the now-depleted river...the San Joaquin River salmon would swim in the shadow of the California condor, the Yellowstone area gray wolf and Florida's whooping crane. Like them, the San Joaquin River salmon would be dubbed an experimental population -- a move that can ease regulatory burdens and soften political resistance...it's become apparent that the San Joaquin River fix likely will include declaring the newly reintroduced salmon as a "non-essential experimental population." Under an Endangered Species Act provision known as 10(j), this will set the salmon apart from other protected plants and animals. Property owners wouldn't have to worry about regulators designating their land as "critical habitat," because experimental populations don't get critical habitat. It doesn't impose new regulations on private land, though critics like Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, say it can still depress land values. For that reason, the Bush administration sparked anxiety when it designated 450,288 acres as critical habitat for the California red-legged frog and 199,109 acres as critical habitat for the California tiger salamander.

Sept. 25, 2006

Fresno Bee
River worries flood west side...Mark Grossi
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/12774415p-13467443c.html
LOS BANOS - A farm road runs through the shriveled San Joaquin River where chinook salmon are supposed to swim in seven years. This peaceful farming belt may be the stage for the next legal fight over restoring the dammed and dried San Joaquin. Farmers here are afraid a restoration agreement announced this month might wind up ruining some of their land. Their lucrative crop fields butt against the old stream bed. They fear a restored river will waterlog their land and prevent crops from growing. Now their representatives are in Washington, D.C., trying to protect their interests in legislation to restore the river. Among other concerns, west-side farmers want to make sure there is enough money to properly study the effects of a restored water flow in their area. They also would like to see money set aside to pay for property damage in their area. Otherwise, they say they will have to file suit if damages occur. Aside from funding, there is another sensitive question: Will the nearby flood-control channel known as the Eastside Bypass also be used in the restoration?

Sept. 24, 2006

Stockton Record
Flow will be slow...Allen Short, Modesto Irrigation District, San Joaquin Tributary Agencies and Daniel Nelson, San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060924/OPED02/609240307&SearchID=73257838248384
After 18 years in the courts, a settlement on restoring the San Joaquin River from Friant Dam to the Merced River has arrived - but only partly...still must gain the blessing of a federal judge...needs legislation authorizing the expenditure of funds for projects to finalize the settlement. The driving force behind the settlement is restoration of river flows on the San Joaquin River to allow a return of the spring-run Chinook salmon. Specifically, the final settlement resolution must include a reasonable approach to:
» Solve fishery concerns.
» Fully fund infrastructure and mitigation for restoring 142 miles of river habitat.
» Protect water rights, including groundwater, of parties not involved as well as farms, rural communities and cities that rely on the San Joaquin River and its tributaries for water.
» Guarantee that ongoing successful river and chinook salmon restoration on San Joaquin River tributaries aren't adversely impacted.
» Protect all third parties from endangered species penalties regarding reintroduced spring- run salmon.
» Provide an inclusive process for the impacted third parties to have meaningful input into the program.
Legislators and others involved must implement a balanced, long-term solution that is fair to all parties affected by San Joaquin River restoration.

Sept. 23, 2006

How is this a successful river restoration?...Cannon Michael, Los Banos...Guest commentary
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/opinion/story/12767877p-13460874c.html
Last week, when the settlement to restore the San Joaquin River was announced...I was surprised to see such positive coverage from local media...it is important for Valley residents to remember: the restoration of the San Joaquin River was not born out of a collaborative desire to bring salmon back to the river, it was brought about by litigation. The environmentalists won their lawsuit and Friant was forced into a settlement that they felt would be better than what Judge Karlton would impose upon them. NRDC has never estimated the number of spring-run Chinook salmon the restoration program would restore... My family farms along a stretch of the San Joaquin River that will be the most difficult and costly to restore, a stretch that has been termed Reach 4-b. The settlement calls for the East Side Bypass to handle some of the initial "pulse flows" required for the restoration while the capacity is increased in Reach 4-b...the bypass would be a far less costly option than creating a new channel in Reach 4-b. I am not against trying to make the restoration work, but I hope that it can be done in a balanced and fiscally responsible way.

Sept. 22, 2006

Merced Sun-Star
Politicians get a look at river restoration plan...Michael Doyle, Sun-Star Washington Bureau
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12762086p-13456203c.html
WASHINGTON -- Negotiators are still refining an ambitious San Joaquin River restoration plan, with a tentative agreement this week to classify as "experimental" the salmon that will reclaim the river as its home. "experimental" label would mean the Merced and Modesto irrigation districts have less to fear from federal regulators. It is also a sign that river negotiators...may soon resolve completely how Congress will make the San Joaquin live again. One key solution...involves designating the newly reintroduced San Joaquin River salmon as a "nonessential experimental population." Under a rarely used portion of the Endangered Species Act, this softens the accompanying regulatory burden; for instance, critical habitat would not be designated for the salmon. Separately, negotiators seemingly outflanked a controversy over restoring a 22-mile stretch of the San Joaquin River that ends in Merced County..."upper 4-B" stretch is now depleted, causing doubts about its potential revival. Consequently, negotiators say they have agreed to call for a feasibility study... Remaining sticking points...what to do about federal hydroelectric licenses. The Merced Irrigation District's license for the Merced River Project expires in 2014, and the Modesto and Turlock districts' license for Don Pedro Reservoir expires in 2016. Negotiators must also resolve how to handle salmon in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta...

San Francisco Chronicle
San Joaquin River plan stall in House...Kimberly Geiger
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/22/BAGHNLAO5E1.DTL&type=printable
Conservationists and federal water authorities have reached a compromise to end an 18-year dispute over the damming of the San Joaquin River, but House lawmakers who reviewed the agreement Thursday said they will pursue changes to the plan before passing legislation required to complete the deal. The deal laid out a scheduled release of water from the dam to restore the river over the next 20 years -- and required lawmakers by year's end to pass a bill authorizing federal funding and oversight of the project...lawmakers at a House hearing Thursday said the settlement overlooks the effects on farmers and other water agencies that were not included in the negotiations. Lawmakers concluded the hearing with a request that the parties to the settlement negotiate a compromise with third-party interests before legislation goes forward.

Sept. 21, 2006

The cost of victory...Alex Breitler
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20060921&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=609210342&SectionCat=&Template=printart
MODESTO - A resurrected San Joaquin River could prove even more expensive than originally thought - costing perhaps $1 billion - while causing unintended consequences for fish, some downstream water users claim. Flows from Friant Dam near Fresno could be too warm for migrating fall-run chinook salmon, they say. Meanwhile, repairing levees and widening a channel that hasn't seen flows in half a century could require huge investments and the retirement of thousands of acres of farmland. The settlement is not the final chapter...as officials from several water districts are expected to testify before a House of Representatives subcommittee today and ask for federal funds. This week...water districts that also rely heavily on the San Joaquin drainage - but were not a part of the lawsuit - are tempering that enthusiasm. Some have spent millions over the past few decades supporting fall-run chinook populations in tributaries such as the Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Merced rivers. Also, they fear the sudden reintroduction of spring-run chinook, a threatened species, could mean new water and property-use restrictions under the Endangered Species Act. A summary of the settlement says that the document was tweaked to include the perspectives of others and that no "material adverse impacts" were expected to third parties.

Sept. 20, 2006

Fresno Bee
Reshaping Nature...Mark Grossi
http://www.fresnobee.com/special/150/story/12749797p-13444961c.html
The damming of the San Joaquin helped change the Valley floor, for better and for worse. San Joaquin River was plugged as part of the Central Valley Project, a massive plan to control flooding and provide irrigation water. The sky no longer darkens with millions of ducks and geese, feasting on the river's smorgasbord of insects...the water that no longer feeds the river has helped feed the county's growth through farming and land development. To accommodate farming, swamps and wetlands were drained. The land was leveled. On the west side, large channels were built to funnel the occasional big flows of the river around areas that flooded regularly...agriculture blossomed on 170,000-plus acres in the county as well as on an additional 800,000 acres along the Valley's east side...farming further expanded when the federal Central Valley Project began delivering water from Northern California to the west side. Tinkering with the San Joaquin began long before Friant Dam. In 1911, Southern California Edison began putting together an extensive hydroelectric system in the Sierra... Harold Tokmakian was the Fresno County planning director in the 1960s before becoming a professor at California State University, Fresno...the Valley is being eroded by "lateral expansion" -- also known as sprawl. There are other reasons, too, to value river habitat, said Bob Winter, 81, a Fresno City College biology instructor for more than a half century. For instance, the kangaroo rat might someday help medical science understand kidneys better, he said.

Planting our roots in rich Valley soil...David Mas Masumoto
http://www.fresnobee.com/special/150/story/12749818p-13444972c.html
Generation of farmers of all nationalities have transformed a desert into a garden. Then came the liquid gold from the Sierra: water. They could grow most anything here...So long as they had irrigation water. This liquid treasure, combined with an entrepreneurial spirit, gave birth to generations of farmers and their families. Fresno became a magnet for farmers...the land provided a refuge to a variety of crops and farming methods. Cattle ranches and dairies, wheat, cotton, grapes, peaches, plums, nectarines, vegetables, melons, row crops. Each decade brought new seeds of change. For some, the reality did not match their dreams. Nature played no favorites when destroying a harvest. Others found the greed of humans was no different in this Valley than any other place. Years passed and the pressures did not stop. Valley agriculture became part machine, part something else, what was grown in the fields now merely raw products for others to profit from. The old family farm with farmers and their families working to grow, harvest and sell a crop has almost vanished. Or are family farmers being vanquished -- caught between the forces of business and the explosion of growth? Could land be better suited to growing houses than peaches or grapes? They came as pioneers and today still cling to the land. They are desperate to use any means to maintain a way of life. Some call them fools, stubborn individuals refusing to let go of the bounty of this Valley. Most are still dreamers; that's why they still farm.

Sept. 15, 2006

Two parties at odds over San Joquin restoration costs...Michael Doyle, Sun-Star Washington Bureau
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12717970p-13413996c.html
WASHINGTON -- Many farmers and environmentalists now agree on restoring the San Joaquin River. They do not, however, agree on how much it will cost. Environmentalists believe $250 million will suffice. Farmers served by Friant Dam think $800 million is more like it. On Thursday, Department official Jason Peltier joined with four members of Congress, myriad staff members and top negotiators for a closed-door, Capitol Hill briefing on the ambitious San Joaquin River restoration plan... Radanovich is expressing optimism, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, exited the briefing Thursday as angry as ever...insists there's a lot more concern bubbling beneath the public surface. Representatives of the Merced Irrigation District and the so-called "exchange contractors" from the San Joaquin Valley's West Side are crafting alternative proposals in Washington this week. They hope to modify the proposed legislation that's needed to implement the river restoration plan; for instance, to protect them from further Endangered Species Act obligations when the salmon is reintroduced. The big gap in cost estimates, for instance, stems largely from uncertainty over what standards new levees will have to meet. State regulators could get the final say, as they will eventually set the levee standards.

Sept. 14, 2006

9-14-06
NRDC Press Release...9-13-06
Attachment:
Peter Moyle, Professor of Fisheries Biology, University of California Davis..."Bringing the San Joaquin River back to life will be one of the greatest restoration projects ever undertaken in the United States. Over 150 miles of river will once again provide vital habitat for not only salmon but for a wide array of other native fish, plants and wildlife. Restoring one of California's long lost salmon runs will be a strong symbol of our willingness to make California a better place for both wildlife and people. I also anticipate that restoring flows to the river will have a positive effect on the Delta, an ecosystem in crisis. This monumental restoration effort could not come at a better time."
Zeke Grader, Executive Director, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association..."Over the past century, West Coast salmon rivers have been devastated by water development and other activities. This agreement provides salmon fishermen with a ray of hope...
Dante Nomellini, Manager and Co-Counsel, Central Delta Water Agency..."Drying up the San Joaquin River harmed more than fish...
Philip Atkins-Pattenson, Outside Counsel for the NRDC Coalition, Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton LLP..."This settlement represents the triumph of optimism and collaboration among the parties...
Gary Bobker, Program Director, The Bay Institute...The San Joaquin River is the missing limb of San Francisco Bay...
Bill Jennings, Executive Director, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance..."This is a truly historic settlement that not only breathes life into a dead river but will measurably improve water quality and lessen human health impacts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta...
Lydia Miller, President, San Joaquin Raptor Wildlife Rescue Center..."Restoring the San Joaquin River will benefit salmon and numerous other native wildlife species, and it will improve the natural habitat along much of the river. It will also improve the quality of life for Valley residents and provide recreational opportunities."
Walt Shubin, Fresno County Raisin Farmer..."As a farmer who grew up on the San Joaquin River, I know that salmon and farming can coexist - I've seen it...
Chuck Bonham, Senior Attorney, California Director, Trout Unlimited..."This settlement shows the remarkable things that people can accomplish when they work together to restore damaged ecosystems...

Merced Sun-Star
River plan needs support in D.C...Michael Doyle, Sun-Star Washington Bureau
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12713171p-13409800c.html
WASHINGTON -- The political headwaters for the San Joaquin River now shift to Capitol Hill, where Congress is supposed to turn a river restoration plan into reality...ambitious river plan formally rolled out Wednesday relies on quick congressional action... Theoretically, the new San Joaquin River settlement could collapse if Congress doesn't act by Dec. 31. Ken Robbins, an attorney for the Merced Irrigation District, and other California water professionals will be listening closely on Capitol Hill today as negotiators brief lawmakers about the deal that until Wednesday remained under tight wraps. The Merced Irrigation District, for instance, is a "third party," because it was not part of the lawsuit. Robbins said the district worries about sufficient funding for river channel improvements, and new Endangered Species Act burdens resulting from the reintroduction of the threatened spring-run salmon by 2013. "It poses some enormous problems," Robbins said, adding that "we're going to propose some changes to (the bill.) ...This raises other problems, though, because the settlement agreement requires that the legislation be approved "substantially in the form" that it's been proposed by the original negotiators. On Capitol Hill, congressional staffers expect some changes, and suggest neither farmers nor environmentalists will be too quick to back out. Democratic Rep. Dennis Cardoza of Merced, while applauding the work done on the settlement, cautioned that he could not support a deal if it comes "at the expense of those not party to the legislation." Rep. Devin Nunes of Visalia, characterized the proposed legislation as a "gun to the head" of Congress.

Fresno Bee
Accord pumps new life into river...Mark Grossi and E.J. Schultz
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/12713238p-13409904c.html
The historic deal is finally done, and the San Joaquin River - barring unforeseen snags - will flow freely again...a settlement that will launch what could be the largest river restoration in the history of the American West. The deal, announced in front of a federal courthouse in Sacramento, ends an 18-year-old federal lawsuit... Environmentalists heralded the agreement as the beginning of a new era, not only for the state's second-longest river but also for the state's vast waterways. "This agreement provides that once again the San Joaquin will flow from its headwaters in the High Sierra all the way to San Francisco Bay," said Hal Candee, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the lead plaintiff in the case. The San Joaquin Valley River Exchange Contractors Water Authority, representing west-side farmers, wants to make sure there is enough money to buy land and rebuild the river where it has not existed for decades. A hydrologist for the Bay Institute, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the water used for restoration could be pumped back to farmers for use in the fields after it travels through the river. Once river water reaches the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta pumps, it can be sent back through canals to farmers. "We've done it already in tests, and it works," said hydrologist Peter Vorster...

A river shall run through it...Editorial
http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/story/12713227p-13409910c.html
A marathon legal battle over the fate of the San Joaquin River inched closer to a settlement Wednesday... If the deal is finally done, over time it will change the face of the Valley — and for the better, we believe. Federal funds and state bond money would be tapped to pay for the costs of the restoration, as part of a "San Joaquin River Restoration Fund" created under the deal. There are obstacles...a particular concern downstream...settlement language apparently includes a guarantee that land will be purchased only from "willing sellers... Another touchy subject is language in the settlement that appears to place a year-end deadline on Congress to pass the necessary enabling legislation. Here's hoping this deal turns out to be a model for future compromises, rather than an ephemeral aberration.

Stockton Record
Parties agree to go with the flow...Alex Breitler
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060914/NEWS01/609140344/1001
SACRAMENTO - Described by conservationists as the "missing limb" of San Francisco Bay, the San Joaquin River will again flow... The resurrected river will flush out pollutants and improve water quality in Stockton and San Joaquin County, conservationists say. Fish will return, followed by recreation and tourism dollars. And the algae blooms that often turn the river's waters a sickly pea green may be diminished. Wednesday's agreement among farmers, environmentalists and the federal government ends nearly two decades of courtroom clashes over water diversions at Friant Dam... The San Joaquin will become "a living ecosystem instead of a contaminated drainage ditch," said Hal Candee, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which first filed suit against the federal government and agricultural water users in 1988. "The federal government for years took a callous attitude toward the river," said Dante Nomellini, a Stockton water attorney who represents water users through the Central Delta Water Agency. While some farmers were praising the restoration plan, concerns remain over how much water they will lose...plan includes several strategies to make up for that loss, including bolstering groundwater supplies during wet years, transferring water from other groups and, when possible, recirculating any excess water from the Delta. "In many respects, the litigation has been the cork in the bottle for restoration efforts on the river," said Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources. "While that litigation was pending, it's been very difficult to pursue restoration. "We can now move forward."

Sept. 13, 2006

Restoring the San Joaquin...Michael Doyle, Bee Staff Writer and Mark Grossi, The Fresno Bee
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12708691p-13405707c.html
WASHINGTON - More water should start flowing down the San Joaquin River by 2009 under a long-awaited settlement... Farmers and environmentalists have worked out the details during months of negotiations. The agreement will be presented to a federal judge in Sacramento this morning, in hopes of settling an 18-year-old lawsuit...agreement includes an apparent deadline for Congress to approve by Dec. 31. Feinstein will introduce the legislation to authorize the river fixes. Outside parties not allowed to sue...draft of the legislation authorizes the federal government to buy land from "willing sellers." All environmental laws must be complied with - a blow to some water agencies hoping for exemptions. Outside parties - such as the Merced Irrigation District - can't sue if they're unhappy with how the settlement works. The proposed legislation establishes a "San Joaquin River Restoration Fund... The agreement will not automatically dissolve if the legislation strays beyond the deadline, said Friant Water Users Authority lawyer Dan Dooley.

Irrigation districts worried about costs, loss of water...Michael G. Mooney, Bee Staff writer
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12708700p-13405719c.html
Stanislaus and Merced water agencies are voicing concern about an agreement to restore a 153-mile stretch of the San Joaquin River. The $1 billion plan - assuming it wins congressional approval - will be one of the largest river restoration projects in the nation's history... would send more water through the San Joaquin River by 2009 and reintroduce salmon by 2013. "We believe there should be a settlement," Garith Krause of the Merced Irrigation District said Monday, "but that settlement shouldn't add additional burdens to those of us downstream." The Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts have questioned the settlement pact, as have the Westlands Water District, San Joaquin River Exchange and the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority. Key concerns include:... Allen Short, general manager of the Modesto Irrigation District, and the others will lobby for legislation that will:... If the legislation substantively differs from what negotiators agreed to, at least one lawmaker said, the deal could fall apart.

Stockton Record
Agreement reached on river restoration (11:05 a.m.)...The Record
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20060913&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=60913002&SectionCat=&Template=printart
A historic agreement to restore water flows for salmon in the San Joaquin River below Friant Dam near Fresno while undertaking one of the West’s largest river restoration efforts was announced today by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Friant Water Users Authority and U.S. Departments of the Interior and Commerce...settlement, filed this morning in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, ends an 18-year legal dispute over the operation of Friant Dam and resolves longstanding legal claims brought by a coalition of conservation and fishing groups led by NRDC.

San Francisco Chronicle
Settlement will restore San Joaquin River...Glen Martin
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/13/BAGG9L4KHQ1.DTL&type=printable
The San Joaquin Rive will be restored under a settlement announced today...be announced at news conferences in Sacramento and near Fresno, is the result of years of negotiations over a lawsuit filed in 1988 by environmental groups and fishing advocates. Sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a federal gag order, told The Chronicle that the settlement between water users and environmental groups requires that Friant Dam release between 364,000 and 462,000 acre-feet of water in normal years to help restore spring and fall salmon runs. One acre-foot is equivalent to 326,000 gallons, or roughly enough to meet the annual needs of five people. Kole Upton, a farmer and chairman of the Friant Water Users Authority, said the judge's decision required everyone involved to compromise. "If you have a judgment inflicted from above, you can end up feeling like the Germans after the Treaty of Versailles." "The important thing here is that we now have a partners in restoration and mitigation, not adversaries. That makes all the difference."

Sept. 12, 2006

Modesto Bee
Be careful about restoring San Joaquin River...Allen Short, general manager of Modesto Irrigation District and represents the San Joaquin Tributary Agencies
http://www.modbee.com/opinion/community/story/12704925p-13402258c.html
After 18 years in the courts...a settlement of the San Joaquin River...but only partly. The driving force behind the settlement is restoration of river flows to allow a return of the spring run Chinook salmon. Millions of dollars have been expended and more than 500,000 acre-feet of water released by irrigation districts and water agencies to provide conditions in the tributaries to improve and sustain the fall run. These efforts might be severely jeopardized if water temperatures exceed safe limits for fall run salmon fry. This could happen if sufficient Friant water does not flow through the existing shallow San Joaquin River channel upstream (south) of the Merced River on its way to the delta. These efforts must be recognized and protected from any negative effects as a result of the court and legislative action needed to complete the settlement. Specifically, the final settlement resolution must include reasonable approaches to:... Now is the time to support our representatives' efforts to obtain authorizing legislation that will complete the settlement process. Legislators and others involved must be careful to implement a balanced, long-term solution that is fair to all parties affected by San Joaquin River restoration activities.

The UC Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is on the short list to play host to the most dangerous type of biological warfare laboratory in the United States. It is seeking to locate the level 4 lab just outside the city limits of Tracy.

Tracy is the hereditary capital of that area composed of the adjoining congressional districts of RichPAC Pombo, Whale Slayer-Tracy, and Dennis Cardoza, Polar Bear Slayer-Merced, called in these pages, Pombozastan.

The general idea -- if it reaches the level of an idea -- of local, state and federal
government in Pombozastan is to urbanize as much farm and ranch land as possible, rendering the environment toxic in the process. But, the level-4 biowarfare lab is a twist worthy the Chairman Himself, Pombo, who heads the House Resources Committee, guiding it with fervent pre-World War II faith in the infinity of land and natural resources, and the infinite capacity of the globe to stay cool and the air to cleanse itself.

One Tracy city councilwoman tried to get the rest of the council to vote on the issue earlier this week. The mayor adroitly deflected the issue to a 9-member committee called Tracy Tomorrow and Beyond. One possible interpretation of "Beyond" was mentioned by a former UC/LLNL supervisor: “If an animal with a level 4 pathogen ever got loose, the entire valley would be gone, not just Tracy.”

A typical level-4 pathogen is Ebola Zaire, which rapidly turns its victims' organs into slime, producing a high percentage of mortality. Moreover, there doesn't seem to be a cure for Ebola at present.

All Valley residents should feel safer now, knowing the decision will be made by the wise, far-seeing Tracy Tomorrow and Beyond Committee. But somehow, not all of us do feel safer. UC/LLNL flaksters insist that there is no example of the most lethal pathogens ever escaping a biowarfare lab. Supposing that there had been an escape at some point, we also suppose it would have been a matter of the highest national security not to reveal it, for fear of making the public nervous or worse.

The American public is generally aware that the Bush administration is promoting the redesign and upgrade of the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world, ours, and is also promoting development of a new generation of biowarfare weapons, necessary for development of antidotes to protect the public in case of biological attack. What remains murky, however, is the testing of the weapons and the defenses against them on the American public.

Particularly murky is the issue of consent to be tested.

Heather Wokusch, author of The Progressives’ Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now (Volume I), explained to readers of Commondreams.com this morning:

There’s a tricky clause in Chapter 32/Title 50 of the United States Code (the aggregation of US general and permanent laws). Specifically, Section 1520a lists the following cases in which the Secretary of Defense can conduct a chemical or biological agent test or experiment on humans if informed consent has been obtained:

(1) Any peaceful purpose that is related to a medical, therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, or research activity.

(2) Any purpose that is directly related to protection against toxic chemicals or
biological weapons and agents.

(3) Any law enforcement purpose, including any purpose related to riot control.

The definition is a little too open-ended for comfort; apparently there are a lot of
circumstances under which the Secretary of Defense can test chemical or biological agents on human beings, but at least informed consent has to be obtained in advance.

Or does it. Get a load of Section 1515, another part of Chapter 32, this one entitled "Suspension; Presidential authorization": After November 19, 1969, the operation of this chapter, or any portion thereof, may be suspended by the President during the period of any war declared by Congress and during the period of any national emergency declared by Congress or by the President.

You got it. If the President or Congress decides we’re at war then the Secretary of
Defense doesn’t need anybody’s consent to test chemical or biological agents on human beings. Gives one pause during these days of a perpetual "war on terror."

It’s not a stretch to wonder what kind of clandestine WMD tests the Defense Department could be conducting in the US right now, on military or civilian populations, without consent, let alone on populations abroad.

Nov. 19, 1969 -- Nixon remains among us.

It's probably just a coincidence, but ...

Normally, people of some agricultural experience would look at the statements of the federal government and the press concerning the outbreak of E. Coli as merely more of the laughable and witless distraction we have come to expect from an administration, one of whose most subtle, effective forms of domestic terrorism is absurd utterance.

Otherwise, we can look at it as the inevitable result of the corporate vegetable deal, setting aside for a moment the question of why lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers and green onions grown in the Salinas and San Benito valleys somehow escaped suspicion.

Earthbound Farms, the suspected producer of the tainted spinach, claims
to farm 26,000 acres, all or most of it in organic vegetables for the fresh market. It also claims to employ more than 1,000 people. Earthbound is reported to have sales of $500 million in 2006, a dramatic increase from a reported $156 million in 2004.

From this information, the public would not be illogical to assume that the corporation, probably together with the largest distributors in that trade, have dispatched to Washington DC a phalanx of expensive attorneys of impeccable reputation and deep personal relationships with members of the administration. Perhaps the lettuce growers also have sent some legal representatives to the capital to make damn sure none of this wipes off on them. There, they are no doubt meeting with officials of the Food and Drug Administration, the agency whose corruption has turned the entire American public into unwitting guinea pigs for the biotechnology industry and has done severe damage to American growers in some international grain markets. Together, they are pointing
fingers here, there, and everywhere, in order to evade liability.

In short, common sense and experience would suggest a medium-sized fix is in -- nothing as big as Mad Cow Disease, but a serious corporate effort at damage control. However, who really knows these days?

Bill Hatch
-------------------

References:

Rumsfeld’s Guinea Pigs: US Citizens at Risk for Military-Weapons Testing
by Heather Wokusch
CommonDreams.org - Sept. 21, 2006
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0920-31.htm

Discuss bio-lab's pluses, minuses...Our View
http://tracypress.com/content/view/4166/2/
Tracy residents know where City Councilwoman Irene Sundberg stands on the proposed federal Biosafety Level 4 laboratory in Corral Hollow Canyon...she has the issue in the public forum, and it is important that all voices are heard. Some say the bio-lab would bring 300 research scientists and other new jobs to the area. But others say locating the lab here is risky - or, as one former LLNL supervisor cautioned, “If an animal with a level 4 pathogen ever got loose, the entire valley would be gone, not just Tracy.”
BioSafety Level 4 is the highest level of containment for biological organisms. Not located in populated areas Wrong. Level 4 labs are in Atlanta and San Antonio and on Plum Island, off the New York and Connecticut coast. There have been no reports of a pathogen ever escaping such labs. We urge all the council members to learn the facts about the proposed bio-lab, listen to the citizens and make an informed judgment...

Under the microscope...John Upton
http://tracypress.com/content/view/4203/2/
The same nine-citizen committee that helped plan Tracy’s soon-to-be-built aquatics park will review a University of California proposal to build an anti-biological terrorism laboratory near Tracy. Mayor Dan Bilbrey referred the proposal to the City Council-appointed Tracy Tomorrow & Beyond Committee during a public discussion Tuesday night. The discussion heard from six Tracy residents, four City Council members and a public affairs representative from the university, which has been short-listed to run the laboratory at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories’ Site 300. University spokeswoman Susan Houghton said the Department of Homeland Security would call for public comment and thoroughly investigate the site if it is included in six finalist
sites this fall. “There is a very good chance the University of California’s proposal
will not make that list, but if it does we will engage (the community), as will all
entities,” Houghton said. “All the questions that have been raised tonight are really very good ones, and they’re questions that the Department of Homeland Security needs to address.” Councilwoman Evelyn Tolbert...“You can love this country deeply and not always have to trust your government — it’s the duty of being an American”...

UC regents vote to bid for Livermore contract...Michelle Locke, AP
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/09/20/state/n100606D58.DTL&type=printable
Leaders of the University of California took a step toward solidifying their role as
national nuclear steward Wednesday, voting to put in a bid to continue running the Lawrence Livermore weapons lab...expected to be ratified by the full board Thursday, comes nine months after UC successfully bid to keep running the Los Alamos nuclear lab in New Mexico. UC in partnership with engineering expert Bechtel Corp. won the Los Alamos competition last December, beating out a team of the University of Texas and defense contractor Lockheed Martin.The 10-campus UC system will partner with Bechtel in its bid for Livermore.

E. Coli Pervades Harvest Area; Salinas Valley waterways are known to carry the bacteria that poisoned at least 145 people and killed one who ate tainted spinach
Los Angeles Times – 9/21/06
By Marla Cone
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-water21sep21,0,2311007.story?coll=la-home-headlines
The bacterium that has sickened people across the nation and forced growers to destroy spinach crops is so pervasive in the Salinas Valley that virtually every waterway there violates national standards.
"There are many sources of water coming into the watershed, and I guarantee you that they all have generic E. coli," and many carry the deadly E. coli strain linked to food poisonings, said Christopher Rose, an environmental scientist at the state's Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, which tests the region's waterways...

Earthbound Farms: http://www.ebfarm.com/About/EarthboundInnovations.aspx

Live Oak native’s work found in kitchens all over the US
Suwannee Democrat-Sept. 12, 2006
http://www.suwanneedemocrat.com/suwannee/local_story_255165107.html?keyword=topstory
...With the explosion of growth in organic foods, even Wal-Mart has jumped on board. Sweat has steadily guided Earthbound Farm's sales from $50 million in 1998 to $500 million in 2006...

Nutrition Business Journal: January 2005: NBJ's Business Achievement Awards & Executive ReviewBronze: Earthbound Farm for expanding organic sales by 28%. ... 30, 2004, gross sales were $165 million or 56.5% higher than the same period in 2003. ...
nbj.stores.yahoo.net/ja20nbbuacaw.html - 46k

Monterey Herald
Ire over plan's ag land proposal...Larry Parsons
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/local/15571138.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
A proposal to offset the future loss of Monterey County farmland to development in the proposed county general plan provoked heated protests Wednesday before county planning commissioners. Another proposal to require water-quality tests on new agricultural wells in the draft general plan -- a 20-year growth blueprint for unincorporated areas -- also hit sore points with members of the public and some commissioners. Christopher Bunn Jr., a farm industry spokesman, said the proposal to require farmland developers to preserve twice as much farmland elsewhere in the county "is particularly designed to send a
farmer's blood pressure up." County planners said the farmland-protection measure was suggested as a means of mitigating the inevitable loss of important farmland to development during the next 20 years. Commissioners suggested changes that would make the program an option, rather than a requirement, to move ahead with a farmland-conversion project...critics said, the proposal would increase land and housing costs and prove very expensive to developers seeking to acquire farmland conservation easements from a shrinking pool of farmland owners willing to sell development rights.
The Planning Commission is in the midst of reviewing the draft general plan -- the
fourth land-use blueprint produced by the county during a seven-year, politically charged debate over rural growth...

The Three Mile Island of Biotech?
John Nichols
The Nation -- Dec. 12, 2002
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20021230/nichols

... According to research by the ACGA, US corn farmers have already lost more than $814 million in foreign sales over the past five years as a result of restrictions on genetically modified food imports imposed by Europe, Japan and other countries.

"When it comes to what is being proposed, and what is actually happening with regard to genetic modification of food crops, we're absolutely navigating uncharted waters at a high rate of speed. And we're being pushed to speed up by people with dollar signs in their eyes and no concern whatsoever for farmers or consumers," says Nebraska Farmers Union president John Hansen. "There may be a television program here or an article there about what's happening, but I don't think most Americans have any idea of the extent to which things have been pushed forward without the kind of research and precautions that ordinary common sense would demand." ...

Top Department of Interior watchdog, Inspector General Earl E. Devaney, testified last week before a House subcommittee that Interior was corrupt and incompetent.

"Simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior, Devaney told the House Government Reform subcommittee on energy and resources.

"I have observed one instance after another when the good work of my office has been disregarded by the department," he continued. "Ethics failures on the part of senior department officials -- taking the form of appearances of impropriety, favoritism and bias -- have been routinely dismissed with a promise 'not to do it again.' ''

Devaney reported that through bureaucratic neglect, incompetence or "stovepiping," billions in royalties owned the federal government have been lost on deep ocean oil wells. When department officials discovered the error in the contracts, they tried to cover it up, Devaney told the subcommittee.

These charges ought to concern the San Joaquin Valley because Interior controls the Bureau of Relamation, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Minerals Mangement Service, US Geological Survey, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. These agencies have major responsibilities in the Valley on issues as diverse as last week's Friant Dam settlement agreement, enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, Yosemite National Park, oil and gas leases, geological mapping and Indian casinos.

Officials at Interior are under relentless pressure from chairman of the House Resources Committee, Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Whale Slayer-Tracy, other members of his committee like Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Polar Bear Slayer-Merced, their contributors and other special interests. The public has witnessed examples of Interior officials giving in to that pressure. However, Devaney said his office was under constant pressure from congressmen and senators, special interests and Interior officials, yet he managed to do his job at least in this report. Yet, without an investigative article by the New York Times in March, he might not have had the political support to do it.

"I have unfortunately watched a number of high-level Interior officials leave the department under the cloud of OIG investigations," Devaney said, referring to the Office of Inspector General. "Absent criminal charges, however, they are sent off in the usual fashion, with a party paying tribute to their good service and the secretary wishing them well, to spend more time with their family or seek new opportunities."

The Times reported Sunday:

Three years ago, Devaney scathingly criticized the Interior Department's auditing program for oil and gas royalties. Beyond finding that investigators had missed millions of dollars in underpayments, his office uncovered evidence that agency auditors had lost key files and then tried to fool investigators by forging and backdating the missing documents. In an acid rebuke of the agency, Devaney noted that the agency gave a bonus to the official who came up with the false papers.

We hope the government reform committee might oversee Interior and members of the resources committee who require constant watching.

-------------

References:

September 13, 2006: Chairman Issa: Interior Cover-up Prevented Price Threshold Omission from Being Fixed
http://reform.house.gov/ER/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=50033

Interior Dept. blasted for ethics breaches
Agency officials accused of ignoring cover-ups, cronyism
- Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times
Thursday, September 14, 2006

The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Friant Water Users Authority reached an unprecedented settlement agreement Wednesday to restore the flow of the San Joaquin River. NRDC, representing a number of local, state and federal environmental groups, and the FWUA had been at war in court for 18 years.

"Bringing the San Joaquin River back to life will be one of the greatest restoration projects ever undertaken in the United States,” said Peter Moyle, professor of Fisheries biology at UC Davis.

A 60-miles stretch of the river in western Fresno County has been dry since the dam was built in the late 1940s due to irrigation diversions south in the Friant-Kern Canal and north in the Madera Canal.

The settlement agreement documents were handed at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning to the court of Judge Stanley Karlton, United States District Court, Eastern District of California, Sacramento Division.

It is anticipated that the increased flows to the river will be enough to provide for both spring and fall runs of Chinook salmon. Before the Friant Dam was constructed, creating Lake Millerton at the base of the Sierra foothills east of the City of Fresno, the San Joaquin River was the southernmost range of the Chinook.

“As a farmer who grew up on the San Joaquin River, I know that salmon and farming can coexist-I’ve seen it,” said Walt Shubin, Fresno County raisin farmer.

Between now and 2026, between 15-20 percent of the water formerly flowing to long-term Friant irrigators will go to restoring the river. A number of financial devises, which the settlement agreement suggests in draft federal legislation should be under the control of the secretary of the Department of Interior, will pay for restoration of the river channel and flood control downstream of the Friant Dam. Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, chairman of the House Resources Committee Subcommittee on Water and Power, has already scheduled in hearing to hear this suggested legislation. Both sides expressed optimism Wednesday that the House could pass it before the end of the year. According to the settlement, the agreement is void-able if the resources committee – chaired by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy – does not approve the bill.

Kole Upton, representing the 15,000 farmers on about one million acres and a number of towns in FWUA, already experienced in conjunctive use techniques, expressed optimism that the irrigators would find the right combination of recirculation, recapture, reuse and exchange or transfer programs to continue farming. He said the irrigators needed certainty about the amounts of water they would receive, which the settlement gives them.

The settlement proposes that about $11 million per year in fees currently paid by the irrigators will be dedicated to river improvement; the proposed legislation (part of the agreement) could produce an additional $250 million in federal funds, either through bonding, guaranteed loans or other financing. The settlement also anticipates financial participation by the state of California. Greg Wilkerson, attorney for FWUA, said the $5.4 billion Clean Water and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2006 (Prop. 84) contains $100 million earmarked for San Joaquin River restoration.

After the press conference, Hal Candee, lead attorney for NRDC, released an orphaned Red-Tailed Hawk, raised by the San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center before a crowd of about 50 people from the media and parties to the lawsuit.

What people are saying about the settlement agreement:

Restoring the San Joaquin River will benefit salmon and numerous other native wildlife species and it will improve the natural habitat along much of the river. It will also improve the quality of life for Valley residents and provide recreational opportunities. – Lydia Miller, president, San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center

… Over 150 mile4s of river will once again provide vital habitat for not only salmon but for a wide array of other nativ3 fish, plants and wildlife. Restoring one of California’s long lost salmon runs will be strong symbol of our willingness to make California a better place for both wildlife and people. I also anticipate that restoring flows to the river will have a positive effect on the Delta, an ecosystem in crisis. This monumental restoration effort could not come at a better time. – Peter Moyle, professor of fisheries biology, UC Davis.

Over the past century, West Coast salmon rivers have been devastated by water development and other activities. This agreement provides salmon fishermen with a ray of hope. A restored San Joaquin River will literally bring back to life one of California’s greatest salmon rivers. Our fishing communities deserve a little good news. – Zeke Grader, executive director, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association

Drying up the San Joaquin River harmed more than fish. It virtually destroyed the water supply for farmers in the Delta. Restoring the San Joaquin River will help rectify a national disgrace by restoring fisheries and improving water quality, benefiting farmers along the San Joaquin River and in the Delta. Restoring the river is good for farmers, the Delta and all of California. – Dante Nomellini, manager and co-counsel, Central Delta Water Agency.

This settlement represents the triumph of optimism and collaboration among the parties. A jointly supported restoration plan is the best outcome for all. It reverses a historic wrong by reviving a living San Joaquin River for the California public, which owns this important resource. This agreement also demonstrates that the laws protecting the public’s rivers are alive and well. – Philip Atkins-Patterson, outside counsel for the NRDC Coalition, Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton LLP

The San Joaquin River is the missing limb of San Francisco Bay. Dewatering the river severed the connection between the Bay and a critical part of its watershed. Restoring flows and salmon to the San Joaquin will not only revive a great river but also improve water quality and habitat conditions in the Bay, at a time when it is facing unprecedented threats. – Gary Bobker, program director, The Bay Institute

This is a truly historic settlement that not only breathes life into a dead river but will measurably improve water quality and lessen human health impacts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. State and federal agencies would do well to consider the elements of this settlement as they begin to fashion a vision for the future of the Bay-Delta estuary. – Bill Jennings, executive director, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance

…this agreement to restore the San Joaquin can bring back this important part of our natural heritage. In fact, restoring flows for salmon could be the best thing to happen to our overdrafted aquifer in Fresno and Madera counties in 60 years. Walt Shubin, Fresno County raisin grower

The settlement shows the remarkable things that people can accomplish when they work together to restore damaged ecosystems. Trout Unlimited and its 15,000 California members are thrilled that this historic agreement puts California on a course to bringing salmon back to this once-mighty river. – Chuck Bonham, senior attorney, California director, Trout Unlimited.

Some irrigation districts north of Fresno, who unsuccessfully tried to enter the settlement meetings before the agreement was reached, have expressed concerns about its impacts on them and are lobbying for a say in decisions during the implementation stage of the agreement.

Today, UC Merced, through its local outreach organ, the Merced Sun-Star, proclaimed that it is taking extraordinary pains to build the campus to be "earth-friendly."

This reminds us of the frequently heard claim of developers before local land-use jurisdictions that they are "creating open space" when they put a golf course in a subdivision built on a sprawling expanse of seasonal pasture.

UC Merced and its congressman, Dennis Cardoza, Polar Bear Slayer-Merced, are riding the alternative energy fashion for all its worth, to hide major failures. UC Merced failed to even apply for its Clean Water Act permit before building its first phase and now, seeking to expand onto critical habitat land, there is a danger the US Army Corps of Engineers will reject its CWA application. Meanwhile, in the past three years, Cardoza has introduced three bills -- two to change the critical habitat provisions in the Endangered Species Act and a third to gut the whole act of its power to enforce -- and all have failed.

Cardoza's pompously titled "Empower America Act of 2006" heavily backed by the solar industry, merely extends existing federal subsidies for solar power already in place and lifts some other language from existing bills. But it comes in tandem with the state Legislature's "California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006," largely a policy statement leaving the thorny issues of implementation and enforcement to another day.

Both UC Merced and its congressman are rapidly disappearing into clouds of techno-babble about solar energy, costuming themselves in jungle-green camouflage. Nevertheless, the rapid urbanization of the Central Valley will be the most proximate cause of rapid snow melt in the Sierra in coming years.

Of late, there has been a great deal of talk about regional planning in the San Joaquin Valley. It is driven by county-wide associations of governments charged with promoting transportation expansion to accommodate new growth while simultaneously paying lip service to cleaning up air pollution in our extreme non-attainment basin. They are responsible for several of county sales-tax-increase measures to chum the local pork barrel with local contributions to entice federal highway funds.

But regional planning is not yet perfected in the two congressional districts known locally as Pombozastan (Cardoza's and the adjoining district of Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Whale Slayer-Tracy). The problem is again the University of California Board of Regents and it sovereign land-use authority. The UC Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is in the running to site a biowarfare laboratory of the highest level of danger on Corral Hollow Road, on the same site as its explosives lab, about 60 miles from the UC Merced campus. I don't think there are enough tons of green UC flak to cover that one over.

Meanwhile, to make our born-again green cross even more of a burden, Angelo Tsakapoulos is threatening to sue the City of Tracy if it does not approve a sprawling development called Tracy Hills, also located on Corral Hollow Road.

We hope and pray that Tsakapoulos will offer a solar option on his housing products and that there willbe no accidental explosions at the lab that disperse Ebola over his subdivision and strike down golfers putting on open space.

Bill Hatch
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References.

9-9-06
Merced Sun-Star
UC Merced succeeding in goal to be Earth-friendly campus...Corinne Reilly
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12695010p-13392585c.html
UC Merced say they're taking unprecedented measures among college campuses to conserve resources. While numerous environmental groups have questioned where the university is building - at full buildout, UC Merced's proposed 900-acre campus would destroy about 70 acres of rare wetlands - criticism of how the university is building is hard to come by. UC Merced has pledged to construct every campus building to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's "silver" standard - a mark no other college campus has met... Mark Maxwell, who oversees the UC Merced's environmental building efforts, said environmental stewardship became a priority at the campus long before construction began. Last year, a small group of students founded the UC Merced Green Club, which lobbied to start the campus-wide recycling program launched last week.
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Tracy Press
Trouble in the Hills...John Upton
http://tracypress.com/content/view/3900/2/
Nearly a decade after it was given the green light...proposed Tracy Hills development

remains a controversial project. Councilwoman Evelyn Tolbert has described a 5,500-home

project slated for southwest Tracy since the 1970s as a mistake by today’s planning

standards...said AKT Development’s lawyers could bankrupt the city if development there is

nixed. The project would, however, take up a swath of land that is home to a bounty of

local wildlife. About 2,000 acres of habitat for raptors, rattlesnakes, coyotes and

endangered tiger salamanders would be bulldozed for the project seven miles from Tracy’s

heart, but AKT was forced to abandon more than 3,500 acres of rugged land that is almost

completely covered with native grass species under strict laws that protect endangered

species. Tracy Hills was dreamed up in the 1970s as a county project, and it was lassoed

into city limits in 1998. AKT bought the land from Grupe Development in 2001 after Tracy’s

voters passed a slow-growth law. AKT will level the land and lay infrastructure, while

Souza will help the company navigate city politics and sell land to builders, according to

Mike Souza of Souza Realty.
Site 300 is wrong spot...Beverly King, Livermore...Your Voice
http://tracypress.com/content/view/3878/2/
Putting a biolab that will deal with deadly pathogens in the hills outside Tracy is simply

a bad idea. Site 300 is LLNL’s high – explosive testing range, and it is already so

heavily polluted with radioactive and toxic contaminants that it is a federal Superfund

cleanup site. LLNL’s mission is to design nuclear weapons of mass destruction. A scary

truth about the biological research to be conducted at Site 300 is that it is “dual

purpose,” meaning it could be used for defensive or offensive purposes.
-----------

Site 300 is wrong spot
Written by Tracy Press/
Putting a biolab that will deal with deadly pathogens in the hills outside Tracy is simply a bad idea.

EDITOR,

I recently read about the dangerous proposal to build a huge bio-warfare agent research complex at Livermore National Laboratory’s Site 300 on Corral Hollow Road. The new facility would cover 30 acres and have 500,00) square feet of lab space, including a BSL-4, which looks like a science fiction movie where researchers wear moon suits and special breathing apparatus to experiment with deadly pathogens for which there is no known cause, such as Ebola virus.

A Site 300 spokesman said that the bio-facility would research diseases that affect agriculture and animals as well as humans. Site 300 is LLNL’s high –explosive testing range, and it is already so heavily polluted with radioactive and toxic contaminants that it is a federal Superfund cleanup site. Do we want biological agents like live anthrax, mad cow disease and bubonic plague spreading from Site 300 as well

LLNL’s mission is to design nuclear weapons of mass destruction. The lab is developing a new submarine-launched nuclear warhead. How I the lab going to assure the world that it is not interested in researching new bio-weapons A scary truth about the biological research to be conducted at Site 300 s that it is “dual purpose,” meaning it could be used for defensive or offensive purposes.

I thank the Tracy Press for covering this issue and I urge your readers to become involved by attending a study group and workshop from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday at Sarvey’s Shoes, 501 W. Grant Line Road.

Beverly King, Livermore

Hypocrisy at Davis (1)

UC Davis, where pedestrians must constantly dodge bicyclists, presents itself as an environmental paradise. Recently, it has decided to voluntarily study its own greenhouse emissions, joining a group of 88 members of

the climate registry ... created by state law in 2000 as a strictly voluntary program for businesses, governments and organizations wishing to measure their output of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the
atmosphere.

Davis "prides itself on environmental research, eight cents of every research dollar goes to air-quality studies." It also graduates legions of environmental specialists who become consultants to teach local land-use authorities how to dodge the California Environmental Quality Act, the federal Endangered Species, Clean Air and Clean Water acts so that California can continue to grow, particularly in the only two areas -- Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley -- where air quality has reached a unique nadir: "extreme non-attainment" of the health goals set by the Clean Air Act.

In the last decade, UC Davis has also sought to include the most dangerous level of biowarfare laboratory in the nation (and probably the world) on its campus. The Davis City Council made its extreme displeasure known and UC backed down. Now, UC's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is trying to site the same kind of facility just outside Tracy. UC Davis successfully defeated a citizen's group in court in its plans to build faculty housing on a plot originally deeded to the campus for agriculture. This housing project will worsen air quality in Davis.

UC Davis was perhaps responding to the hoopla around the recent passage by the state Legislature of AB 32, California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

"I give them a lot of credit because they're willing to do this," said Joel Levin, the registry's vice president of business development. "Some of the campuses are very reluctant to turn the microscope on themselves."

This is despite avid support by the UC Office of the President for systemwide
participation.

Maric Munn, associate director of energy and utilities for the UC system, said many of the campuses are growing, and officials are nervous that their global-warming emissions are rising as a result.

"They're afraid of criticism from the outside," Munn said. "That's been a huge
impediment."

UC Merced's former chancellor, Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, is so nervous about global warming that in public she called it "climate change."
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UC Bobcatflak

The Discovery Room (2)

At UC Merced, thanks to a donation from the Gonella family, it seems as if both the campus and students will have a place to test new technology. First in line is an electronic blackboard.

Our only question is so dumb it is almost not worth asking, nevertheless ... Given the enormous amount of flak ceaselessly generated from the most efficient offices at the campus, its public relations group, this is supposed to be the greenest, most environmentally friendly UC campus among the 10 of them. Completely contradicting this claim is the equally ceaseless barrage of flak about the high energy-use technology installed there. It is as if, in the weird world according to bobcatflak, in order to be a legitimate UC campus, UC Merced must master the bad-faith lingo of environmental hypocrisy while bulking up on energy-squandering technological gadgets.

"This is like the IMAX classroom instruction," said Instruction Librarian Michelle Jacobs.

"It really engages students."

Dude!
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Meanwhile, down on the boardwalk (3)

UC Santa Cruz is suing to obstruct two measures that would give City of Santa Cruz residents the right to vote to approve extending sewer and water services to further expansions of the campus beyond Santa Cruz city limits.

This is viewed by UC flak as a "town and gown" problem, of the sort the new town beyond the city limits of Merced is supposed to cure (with other peoples' sewer and water services). It is also intended to conjure up images of barefoot Parisian beggars mugging gowned professors disputing nominalism and realism during the Black Plague.

What the story fails to mention, because it is sourced solely from UC flak and city officials, is that local citizens -- neither barefoot, poor or uneducated -- have brought an excellent suit against UCSC expansion plans on environmental grounds.

The local rebellion against UCSC expansion also reveals that UC can almost always come to some sort of agreement with the local land-use authority, whose pro-growth elected officials seem to nearly squeal with joy to be in the company of UC officials, while the citizens of the city and surrounding region are no longer charmed.

Another coastal cloud shadowing these proceedings is the recent state Supreme Court decision concerning nearby CSU Monterey Bay (the former Fort Ord), which clearly states that public universities and other state agencies in California can no longer get by with just identifying off-site impacts from their construction and growth -- they have an obligation to pay for them.
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UC Merced

Guinea Pigs (4)

The campus received a $300,000 grant to

work with undergraduate students over the next three years to gain new information about how humans make logical and intuitive decisions.

The research aims to produce a computer model of how the brain works when making decisions, and to determine if people can be taught to use logical deliberation, even when it conflicts with their intuition and personal beliefs.

Apparently, the grant is shared with the University of Massachussetts, which will dispatch graduate students to study UC Merced undergraduates.

Bobcatflak claims the study as

an opportunity to engage more undergraduate students in research -- a top priority for the university.

From guinea pig to research scientist in one easy lunge for the pork!

Problems we see in this study:

U Mass is not a bastion of California culture, considered by a number of students of the state to be one of the most complex cultures in the world. UC Merced takes great pride that its students are the "true face of California." There are going to be some interesting culture clashes that may not relate too clearly to either logic or intuition.

The way to teach logical deliberation is to teach logical deliberation. There are books on the subject -- a great many of them, all the way back to the Greeks. You teach and study them to develop an understanding of logic. It is called education. It is quite a venerable tradition that has worked for a lot of people.

The way to develop intuition in students is to give them good literature to study and to discuss it with them.

Students' personal beliefs ought to be left alone. That route can very quickly lead to violation and psychological trouble.

The purpose of an education is to develop the students' capacity for both logic and intuition. It is not to make them guinea pigs in an experiment to develop a computer model.

The bobcatflak, of course, contradicts the fundamental rules of such research projects and invites the problem of the "dreaded Hawthorth Effect," in which the human objects of the study become engaged in the study and contaminate the data. Either the flak is just the usual UC babble to the barefoot townies, or these people are incompetent to run such a study.

In fact, the whole idea of UC involvement with logic is suspect, given that its public utterance is almost entirely purile sophistry, only occasionally leavened with a bit of mediocre rhetoric.

In the Badlands editorial board's research into logic, we have noted that it is often accompanied by critical thinking. We propose that UC Merced students be placed before the environmental impact reports on the campus and asked to grade them according to logic. Following that exercise, perhaps they could study transcripts from the hearings of the various local land-use authorities that approved these documents, the legal briefs arising out of those approvals, and the judges' decisions. From this study, they might intuit something new and different, something critical, in fact.
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Bobcatflak

A real heavyweight (5)

Dr. Rolland Winston received the first annual Frank Kreith Award for his advanced original work in non-imaging optics, which improve the efficiency of solar power panels, among other applications. This year Dr. Winston also completed the first textbook on the subject.

If the community, the university, and its shared newspaper had any sense of priority in these matters, this item would have led, because this is authentic research, brought to fruition and of great potential significance.

We live in a community whose congressman, Dennis Cardoza, Polar Bear Slayer-Merced, has just introduced a modestly title bill, "Empowering America Act of 2006," to provide more federal government subsidies to the solar power industry. No more gutting the ESA for the former Shrimp Slayer. He's into
energy now.

Solar energy lobbyists analyze the bill this way:

The "Empowering America Act of 2006" would extend federal solar investment tax credits for homeowners and business through 2015, and make modifications similar to those contained in S. 2677 and H.R. 5206, the "Securing America's Energy Independence Act." The popular solar tax credits are currently set to expire next year.

In other words, small potatoes with a pompous title, about what we would expect.

We have also seen in the last week passage of a bundle of alternative energy bills in the state Legislature, the largest of which is the momentarily famous California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

Kreith, a professor of mechanical engineering in Colorado, worked for years at the government's solar power lab in Golden.

Winston did most of his work at the University of Chicago. In 2004, a North Carolina-based company, Solargenix, obtained from the University of Chicago exclusive worldwide licenses and rights to develop and market Winston's technology for "all solar applications."

Art Linkletter, a Solargenix investor, proclaimed at the time with a hyperbole to which Cardoza could only aspire, “We have, through Dr. Winston, a patent on the sun.”

What Linkletter and other investors had, in fact, was technology good enough to interest Acciona, a Spanish construction and energy corporation, who bought a controlling interest in Solargenix in February of this year for around $30 million.

The solar industry strategy of the moment is to use solar power as a domestic or
commercial peaker plant, supplying the last 10 percent of energy during peak-use times. This seems to account for the problems of manufacturing and installation. The California bill provides more subsidy in the beginning than at the end of the program. It doesn't seem to make sense from the solar industry point of view, but it may relate to expectations of lower state revenues in coming years.

Cardoza installed solar panels on his house. More people in town ride bicycles, too, but mainly because they are desperately trying to save on gasoline bills. Cardoza's installation and a great many more like it, if they occur, are not going to lift this Valley out of the extreme non-attainment category it shares only with Los Angeles.

The problem is primarily the cars that come with all the new houses, not the houses themselves. But, if, like Cardoza, you've made your entire career out of politically clearing away obstacles to the manic growth boom -- starting with siting the UC campus in Merced on through the various attempts to change environmental law and pressure the regulatory process -- you have done nothing but worsen the environment and public health in Merced, feathering a few favored nests along the way.

It is almost impossible to imagine in the midst of this housing boom, but there are 10 states in the northeast and the midwest with static populations and North Dakota is losing population.

Hats off to Dr. Winston for his achievements. But, we should not be diverted by the glamor of UC technology or Winston's fame, from the fact that air quality, water quality and quantity, and public health diminish here with this manic construction boom induced by the location of UC Merced. In the Valley we don't need UC to teach us how pork barrels work and for how few they work.

Bill Hatch
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References

1. UC Davis takes stock of its own air impact
School with a reputation for environmental study tallies its greenhouse emissions as part of a climate registry program.
Sacramento Bee - Sept. 5, 2006

At the University of California, Davis, which prides itself on environmental research, eight cents of every research dollar goes to air-quality studies. Yet the university does not know how much its campus contributes to global warming pollution.
An answer to that question is coming.
As one of the newest members of the California Climate Action Registry, UC Davis is in the midst of calculating its own emissions of greenhouse gases.
Once an obscure exercise done mainly by organizations most interested in environmental stewardship, taking inventory of greenhouse gases is going mainstream ...

2. UC Merced opens room for technology
Merced Sun-Star - Sept. 7, 2006

Today's college students are accustomed to living in a technology-infused world. Laptop computers and the Internet are standard in most college classrooms.
But as a 21st century research university, UC Merced is aiming to take campus technology to the next level, university officials say.
In a small classroom on the second floor of the university library -- the Gonella
Discovery Room -- some of the latest technology is auditioning for a campuswide role.
Among the technologies the university is testing is a Smart Board, a modern-day chalkboard that operates electronically.
The 72-inch board allows instructors to project an interactive image of a computer screen large enough for students in the back of the room to see.
Colored electronic marking pens -- they work by sending signals to the computer
controlling the board -- allow teachers and students to "write" on the board over
projected information, such as lecture notes, outlines, maps or diagrams.
"This is like the IMAX classroom instruction," said Instruction Librarian Michelle Jacobs.
"It really engages students."

3. UC sues Santa Cruz over water measures that could limit expansion
San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/06/BAGD7L01C71.DTL&type=printable

The University of California is suing to block...city of Santa Cruz from casting ballots on two measures that could restrict expansion of UC's local campus...measures placed on the Nov. 7 ballot by the Santa Cruz City Council and would...give city voters the final say over providing water and sewer services for future campus growth. The university...opened its Santa Cruz campus in 1965, believes the measures would undercut and violate its historic water rights granted under agreements signed with the city decades ago. In two weeks, UC's governing Board of Regents is expected to discuss a long-range development plan that would expand the Santa Cruz campus northward to add about 4,500 more students by 2020. All of UC's nine undergraduate campuses are expected to grow in coming years. Measure I would bar the city from providing any municipal services for the northward expansion outside city limits until the university has mitigated any negative impacts from the growth, particularly on housing, traffic and water. Measure J would amend the City Charter to require voter approval before the City Council could provide water and sewer services for the new growth. The university's suit alleges that the city did not do an adequate environmental review as required by state law before
placing the measures on the ballot and did not provide enough opportunity for public review and comment. In addition, the suit says, the city and university have contracts dating to the 1960s for the city to provide UC Santa Cruz with water service. Under agreements from 1962 and 1965, the city is obligated to provide water services to all parts of the Santa Cruz campus, including areas outside city limits, the suit says. Santa Cruz City Attorney John Barisone...We are not opposed to growth. What we are opposed to is campus growth that is not mitigated....the city relies on surface water, and during the last drought, the city had to impose water rationing...the city wants the university to delay its expansion until the city knows it will have more water.

4. Professor to explore reasoning
Merced Sun-Star -- Sept. 8, 2006

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $300,000 grant to UC Merced professor Evan Heit to fund research that will explore human reasoning.
Heit will work with undergraduate students over the next three years to gain new
information about how humans make logical and intuitive decisions.
The research aims to produce a computer model of how the brain works when making decisions, and to determine if people can be taught to use logical deliberation, even when it conflicts with their intuition and personal beliefs.
Heit says the research is not only a way to discover new information about how humans think, but also an opportunity to engage more undergraduate students in research -- a top priority for the university.
Eventually, the research could help track the development of thinking skills in elementary and high school students.
UC Merced shares the grant with the University of Massachusetts, which will send graduate students to Merced to participate in the project.

5. Research honored
Merced Sun-Star -- Sept. 8, 2006

UC Merced professor Roland Winston has been honored for his research in solar technology.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, which honors innovations in conservation and renewable energy, chose Winston to receive its first-ever Frank Kreith Energy Award for his work in nonimaging optics.
Winston will accept the award in Chicago in November at the ASME's annual conference.

6. National Center for Photovoltaics, PV Roadmap, Executive Summary

The state Legislature passed a bill to address global warming.

www.leginfo.ca.gov, AB 32, Enrolled

AB 32, Nunez Air pollution: greenhouse gases: California Global
Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

This bill would require the state board to adopt regulations to
require the reporting and verification of statewide greenhouse gas
emissions and to monitor and enforce compliance with this program, as
specified.

The bill would require the state board to adopt a
statewide greenhouse gas emissions limit equivalent to the statewide
greenhouse gas emissions levels in 1990 to be achieved by 2020, as
specified.

The bill would require the state board to adopt rules and
regulations in an open public process to achieve the maximum
technologically feasible and cost-effective greenhouse gas emission
reductions, as specified.

The bill would authorize the state board to
adopt market-based compliance mechanisms, as defined, meeting
specified requirements.

The bill would require the state board to
monitor compliance with and enforce any rule, regulation, order,
emission limitation, emissions reduction measure, or market-based
compliance mechanism adopted by the state board, pursuant to
specified provisions of existing law.

The bill would authorize the state board to adopt a schedule of fees to be paid by regulated sources of greenhouse gas emissions, as specified.

Nearly the same dismal roll call of Valley Assembly members that helped defeat a bill to add a doctor and an environmental specialist to the Valley air board voted against this one:

NOES

Aghazarian, Blakeslee, Cogdill, Matthews, Maze, McCarthy, Parra and Villines.

The political careers of Valley Assembly members hinge on their ability not to see air pollution, smell it, hear about it or speak its name. The believe in the Maricopa County AZ version of heaven: carpenters building houses for other carpenters.

Assemblyman Dr. Keith Richman, who declared to the Sacramento Bee this weekend that "the system is corrupt," also opposed this historic bill. He must have taken the Hypocritic Oath.

The bill passed in the Senate along straight party lines.

How does a commitment to confronting global warming violate Republican Party principles? Is the only kind of aggressive bipartisan support in this political system to be acts of destruction of environmental law, like the gut-the-ESA bill launched last year in Congress by representatives RichPAC Pombo, Whale Slayer-Tracy and Dennis Cardoza, Polar Bear Slayer-Merced, on behalf of the greediest, most environmentally destructive special interests in their districts?

The bill is fairly vague and there will be a lot of room for polluters to maneuver -- but it showed some political imagination, at least. If, however, this "vision" is allowed to overcome reality, nothing will be done about the present, the urgent, the immediate environmental problems, as local, state and federal resource agencies vie to ignore or sidestep existing law and regulation and to create firewalls against having to enforce any of them. Bellowing a vision is impressive, but in these matters a large stick is required.

The bill was opposed by the entire array of agribusiness, aggregate and shippers, the Building Industry Association, the state Chamber of Commerce and several Valley chambers.

It was supported by nine pages of impressive, diverse and prominent interests. But it is entirely possible the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 is just a huge LA feel-good con and and a latter-day gasp of California can-do arrogance.

SB 1056, a bill to amend the California Seed Law to deny local authority over seeds and plants failed to pass the state Senate last week, according to one official state Legislature website and several environmental groups.

The environmental groups said the bill was strongly backed by Monsanto and other biotech corporations.

There are two strong arguments against this legislation. First, it would preempt local authority, inviting state consitutional challenge. Secondly, the state has no policy on the poltential health and economic hazards of genetically modified organisms.

This bill, authored by Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, originally

required the San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District to submit on or before July 1, 2006, a report to the Legislature regarding the feasibility of adopting concrete and easily administered incentives to reduce agricultural air pollution.

This is called to "gut-and-amend" one bill with entirely new language.

The first time Florez tried to get this bill and do the bidding of the Biotech Industry Organization, he used the identical technique in an Assembly committee, not even providing written language for it. But, at that time, he had not refined it to grandfather in the counties who already had already passed anti-GMO measures. This time, he did grandfather them in.

No one doubts the bill will be back next year. Only the bill to be gutted and amended remains in question.
---------

Reference:

1. www.leginfo.ca.gov

The defeat of legislation to expand the board of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District to include members from three cities and two public members, a physician and an environmental expert, appears to be such a story. This bill (SB999) was introduced more than a year ago and went through 10 votes and 10 analyses before it was defeated. A majority of Valley legislators voted against it although it was sponsored by one of their own, state Sen. Mike Machado, D-Linden. other regional air boards have physicians and environmental experts on them.

Hear what the Assemblywoman from his own county said of the bill:

Assembly Member Barbara Matthews, D-Tracy, called the bill a "solution in search of a problem," adding during floor debate Tuesday that "there is no evidence that the current system is broken."

This a barbaric statement. One is six children in Fresno have asthma, triple the national average.

In 2001, the federal Environmental Protection Agency downgraded Valley air quality from "serious" to "severe" non-attainment

In 2003, the state Legislature took away agriculture's exemption from air pollution regulation.

In 2004, the EPA downgraded the Valley air quality from "severe" to "extreme" non-attainment, a category previously "attained" only by Los Angeles, until recently the worst air pollution basin in the US. But, there was a kicker to this downgrading. At the "severe" level, federal highway funds would have been cut off. At the basketcase "extreme" level, they weren't. The Valley was put on a tight schedule to come up with a plan. Given the record of the Valley air board to come up with and to implement plans, as well as enforce existing regulations, the public has a right to be highly cynical about this plan.

Now, the San Joaquin Valley is considered to be as bad an air basin as Los Angeles, thanks in large part to the Valley air board, composed of eight county supervisors and three city council members.

Meanwhile, despite the dominant roll of cars and trucks in producing air pollution, these same eight counties are embarking on a regional transportation plan under the auspices of CalTrans. Four of the eight counties currently have transportation sales tax measures before the voters, which will increase sales taxes to generate matching funds to attract federal highway funds, primarily, and secondarily, funds to repair existing streets and roads. Focusing on traffic congestion caused by irrational, extreme urban growth, a proven danger to the health of our most vulnerable citizens -- children and the elderly
-- they want to build more roads and streets to stimulate more growth.

These same eight county boards of supervisors who control the Valley air board approve the lion's share of the new subdivisions being built. Most of those subdivisions are being built on prime farmland. When the Farm Bureau joined the Building Industry Association and the Chamber of Commerce, landowners, not farmers, were speaking.

They want nothing -- even a mounting public health crisis -- to interfere with their right to sell land to developers.

What Machado wanted to do was let a little "sunshine" into the decision-making process of the Valley air board. Originally, he wanted four new members. He compromised on two, out of a board of 13. The special interests prevailed. Democrat Assemblywoman Nicole Parra, D-Hanford, joined Matthews in crossing the partisan line.

This weekend, Dan Walters (Sacramento Bee political columnist) interviewed a termed-out moderate Republican, a physician who will be returning to his medical practice.

As Richman sees it, "the system is corrupt," not in the conventional sense of under-the-table payoffs, but in having lawmakers so beholden to powerful interest groups -- business, labor, Indian tribes, etc. -- that, with term limits and gerrymandered legislative seats, they utterly control who can run and get elected to the Legislature. And because term limits induce lawmakers to be constantly seeking other offices, they must kowtow to the interest groups that have life-and-death power over their careers.

Dr. Richman voted against SB 999, and he cannot even keep his political logic straight for a short paragraph. Special interests maintain control over the careers of our corrupt local, state and federal legislators through money; whether it is below-the-table just before a vote or above-the-table during the next campaign, the legislators are still selling their votes.

Richman doesn't sound nearly as much like the victim of a corrupt system as he does like an ordinary hypocritical politician with a remarkable lack of self-awareness. But it makes an interesting column.

For the Valley however, far more important than the system is the immediate air pollution crisis. Even the UC Merced, from whatever mixture of motives, sees this crisis. Regardless of how much special interest money political candidates are gathering for their fall campaigns, there are other numbers that are more important, at least to the people of the Valley.

These are American Lung Association national air-pollution rankings from 2004.

Metropolitan Areas Most Polluted by Short-term Particle Pollution (24-Hour PM2.5)

2. Fresno-Madera
3. Bakersfield
8. Sacramento, etc.
9. Visalia-Porterville
11. Modesto
12. Hanford Corcoran
15. Bay Area- 27 percent comes to Valley
23. Merced
-------

Metropolitan Areas Most Polluted by Year-Round Particle Pollution(Annual PM2.5)

2. Visalia-Porterville
3. Bakersfield
4. Fresno-Madera
9. Hanford-Corcoran
17. Modesto
18. Merced (equal to NYC)

Top 26 U.S. Counties Most Polluted by Annual Particle Pollution (Annual PM2.5)

4. Tulare
5. Kern
6.Fresno
22. Merced = NYC

Metropolitan Areas with the Worst Ozone Air Pollution

2. Fresno-Madera
3. Bakersfield
4. Visalia-Porterville
6. Merced
7. Sacramento, etc.
8. Hanford-Corcoran
20. Modesto

Counties with the Worst Ozone Air Pollution*

2. Fresno
3. Kern
5. Tulare
8. Merced
10. Kings
12. Sacramento

No rural region in the nation approaches these levels of air pollution. After paving over the Valley, plutocrats will be climbing into their airplanes and escaping to some pleasant place, leaving us with a steadily worsening crisis. We've run out of time for hypocrites and crooks in office.

Bill Hatch
------------------------

References:

1. SB 999, http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/
2. Air board expansion fails in the Assembly, Fresno Bee, Aug. 31, 2006
3. http://www.epa.gov/region9/air/sjvalley/
4. California State Assembly Passes Landmark Clean Air Bill, September 11, 2003,
http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/003/california_state_assembly_passes_landmark_clean_air_bill.html
5. EPA agrees to lower smog rating for Valley, Fresno Bee, April 11, 2004
6. San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Worsens, Union of Concerned Scientists USA, Feb. 3, 2005
7. In Central Valley, Angelides Vows to Take On Childhood Asthma, Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2006
8. A citizen-politician's frustration underscores Legislature's woes, Sacramento Bee, Sept. 3, 2006
9. http://www.valleyair.org/Board_meetings/HB/agenda_minutes/north/Minutes/HB-NR-Minutes-2006-February-1.pdf
10. CRS Report to Congress, California's San Joaquin Valley: A Region in Transition, Dec. 12, 2005

Cardoza is co-sponsoring a bill that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration and earmark the federal income from it for alternative energy development. - Modesto Bee, Aug. 23, 2006

Of course the principle sponsor of the bill is Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy. We pondered the Pomboza's co-sponsorship of this bill and considered upgrading their party affiliations to suit their growing arrogance and destructiveness. Pombo should now be called Whale Slayer, and Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Polar Bear Slayer-Merced.

While covering a complicated debate about milk nutrition at the state Capitol in 1999, I asked Cardoza, then chair of the Assembly Committee on Agriculture, how legislators, very few of whom are scientists, deal with conflicting expert scientific testimony. He replied that not all scientific testimony was always the best, leaving unanswered how legislators judge between the best and the rest. In that case, an Arizona dairy processor was trying to crash the California skim milk market with lower-standard federal skim milk. The Arizonan had a lot of money and Southern California was rapidly losing its dairies in Chino and San Diego County. However, he was going against the biggest dairy state in the nation.

His argument that there was no difference between the nutritional quality of federal standard skim milk and California standard skim milk was found not to have been the best science.

After several days of reviewing clips on the so-called 2007 Farm Bill and the Pomboza's recent, perfectly coordinated tangents, I recalled the story, the tedious research, the mountains of material presented by the California dairy lobbyist and the Assembly ag committee's chief consultant, and my editors' irritation at the convoluted results. Yet, no one asked the simple question: if it's good enough for 49 states, why isn't it good enough for California? Presumably this was because Cardoza represented our district, was the chief of Assembly ag, and Merced is the second largest diary county in the nation. The debate was about market share, not science.

The same was true about Cardoza’s plan to mitigate the loss of farmland caused by UC Merced and its induced growth through the Williamson Act, which turned out to help developers holding farmland as much as it has farmers in his district.

On Aug. 23, Cardoza, now a congressman and a member of the House Committee on Agriculture, held a breakfast at the Stanislaus Agricultural Center where, in an address supposedly focused on the 2007 Farm Bill, he spoke almost exclusively about alternative fuel sources, mainly ethanol. Two days later, Pombo, appointed vice chairman of the agriculture committee in March, held a workshop in Stockton on alternative fuel sources, centered on a proposed site for a biodiesel plant. At present, Pombo remains chairman of the House Committee on Resources, where Cardoza also serves.

Little if anything was reported about either congressman addressing local farm issues, even dairy subsidies, let alone cotton and rice. Cardoza waxed rhapsodic about alternative energy, the Modesto Bee reported:

The upcoming federal farm bill provides a chance to pursue alternative energy sources, Rep. Dennis Cardoza said Tuesday.

Cardoza, speaking to about 75 people at the Stanislaus County Agricultural Center, said the bill could promote ethanol and other fuels extracted from corn, dairy manure, cottonseed and other farm sources.

The legislation would outline five years of spending on agriculture and nutrition. Cardoza said the bill, which he is helping to craft as a member of the House Agriculture Committee, could include a section on energy.

The Merced Democrat said farmers in the upper Midwest are prospering because of ethanol production from their corn, and windmills and solar energy systems on their land.

Huh? So what? The highest priority in Cardoza's district is saving farmland from urban development. To legitimately represent farming in his district, he had to address Farm Bill programs that might help arrest slurb.

The most obvious effect of more Midwest corn and soybeans going into ethanol is a rise in corn and soybean prices California dairymen import from the Midwest. According to one Merced dairyman, they are already receiving a $15/ton fuel surcharge from the railroads to account for higher fuel prices.

So, given that Cardoza is just babbling to an audience of Washington energy lobbyists about the 2007 Farm Bill, let's drift back to the money and see if anything is revealed. According to the Environmental Working Group's farm subsidy databank, corn is the commodity that receives the largest amount of farm subsidies: $42 billion from 1995-2004, while dairy program subsidies amount to only $3 billion. We would have thought, in the second largest dairy-producing congressional district in the nation, the congressman might have spoken about raising that a bit.

But, there is another factor that probably provided the primary guidance for Cardoza's remarks – he lives in Pombo's hip pocket. At a workshop on alternative energy attended by the US Secretary of Commerce, Pombo took aim at next year's energy bill to say that the federal government must help private energy companies develop alternative fuel supplies. Presumably, this means tax credits and subsidies. However, it might also mean that Pombo is in the tightest race of his career against a wind energy consultant, Jerry McNerney. McNerney, a Democrat, has already been endorsed by US Army Gen. (ret.) Wesley Clark and Pombo's two Republican primary opponents, Tom Benigno and Pete McCloskey. Pombo, is a crook, voted one of the 13 most corrupt members of US Congress, who should have gone the way of Tom DeLay, has been blasted by the New York Times, the San Jose Mercury-News and the Sacramento Bee for his corrupt, lawless activities as chairman of the resources committee.

Given the stench of corruption surrounding Pombo, it is a certainty that it extends to Cardoza, the rear end of what some local dairymen call the "Pomboza."

We inquired into the subject of biofuels, the ostensible reason for Pombo's all-day theater at the Port of Stockton, because it did not quite ring true to us that the Pomboza is now promoting small, independent entrepreneurs to replace the large energy companies.

In fact, it occurred to us that whatever happens in the upcoming energy bill, it will -- probably regardless of what party controls the House at the time -- be dominated by the Bush/Cheney administration, committed to the obscene profits of oil and gas company top executives.

We did not have to look any farther than the UK Monsanto website for the answer to our question in its informative article about biodiesel. When Rudolph Diesel first demonstrated his engine at the 1900 Paris Exposition, he ran it on peanut oil. He designed the engine to run on a variety of fuels so that farmers far from a source of petroleum would be able to use locally produced vegetable oils. He was quite possibly murdered by agents of oil interests for this fuel promiscuity. Fascinating as the fate of Diesel was, more to the point was the observation made by an executive of a Colorado biofuel start-up, SunFuels, who expressed confidence "big oil" would not try to suppress them:

"They are going to need us once they need to improve their fuel because of the EPA's requirement to remove sulfur from diesel," Lafferty says. "The big boys let the little boys-like us-hash it out, work out the kinks, then buy us out. It's a common trend."

In other words, the Pomboza, acting at the direction of the energy corporations, gets as much R&D subsidy and credits as possible for the entrepreneurs to work out the price, then the energy corporations buy them out. What looks like a pitch for the creative innovation sparked only by economic competition is a front for the oil cartel's control of the creators, the government, the politicians and the market.

Lafferty's remark provided context for the comments of a biofuel executive attending the Port of Stockton workshop, where nothing but a biofuels plant site has yet been proposed:

American Biodiesel Chief Executive Office, Lisa Mortenson, who led the tour of the proposed facility, applauded the renewable energy incentives in the last energy bill.

By extending a biodiesel tax credit, you have given our investors confidence, she said. It is very important to have that commitment at the Federal level.

(In other words, without sizeable federal subsidies, this industry will not begin.)

American Biodiesel's website announces that it will begin construction by mid-2006 on a biodiesel plant in Toledo, Ohio. It's main investor is Michigan-based Delta Fuels, a high profile Clean Air Act violator. American Biodiesel also announces it will produce a 100-percent biodiesel product but will also produce blends

Biofuels produce less greenhouse gases. Depending on the blend, biodiesel is somewhat cleaner than ethanol, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

It is instructive, however, to ask the question: how does this help California? If we converted our entire shrinking farmland acreage to the production of corn and soybeans to take advantage of the new market for biofuels, would we be better off?

Not only would our economy certainly not be better off, but an argument proposed by UK Guardian science columnist George Monbiot suggests that biofuel is one of the most dangerous enthusiasms of the times. Markets, he points out, are not about people; they are about money. The exploitation of natural resources in a finite world reaches a finite end, and there is an immense cruelty when, on the anticipated global level, land committed to subsistence farming is converted into biofuel production. He noted the tremendous destruction ongoing in Malaysia as forests are burnt to make way for palm-oil groves, which will soon wipe out an entire suite of rare and endangered species starting with the Orangutan. He noted huge destruction of Brazilian rain forests for the production of soybeans for livestock feed. He predicted that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s plan to turn Africa into a biofuel plantation would cause immense human suffering and starvation. He concluded his investigation into the subject with these words:

We need a solution to the global warming caused by cars, but this isn’t it. If the production of biofuels is big enough to affect climate change, it will be big enough to cause global starvation.

About the time Pombo was holding his workshop on alternative energy, farmers and developers in his district were trying to reach some accommodation about mitigation for farmland loss. They failed, as usual and as badly as the state Legislator failed to produce a flood bill that would provide responsible local land use policy, including fiscal responsibility for land-use decisions, and would at the same time appease the insane greed of developers.

So, what happened politically in the north San Joaquin Valley last week? This latest performance was straight Pomboza Theater of Diversion. People here, as everywhere in the nation, want to know how to get out of Iraq before we leave an army there, as Napoleon once did in Egypt. Farmers, naturally, want to know what is in it for them in the new Farm Bill. Many people were appalled by Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, particularly by the unexploded cluster bombs left in the last 72 hours of hostilities, when Israel knew the war was ending. Already, these unexploded bomblets have claimed nearly 100 victims. Growing numbers of people from all political persuasions, many of them Jews, think Israel is guilty of major war crimes in that assault. Bush’s popularity has not been out of the mid-30-percent range for weeks. Yet Democrats, even a Democrat like Cardoza, running unopposed, will not stand up.

A friend counseled me that there are many people these days who don’t know the difference between right and wrong and have no moral fiber. Perhaps that’s the answer and perhaps it can be extended to a majority of the members of Congress.

What we may be witnessing here is a large group of elected officials who have enormous power, given the nation in which they serve, without any idea of how to use it for anything but bad purposes because ideologically they don't believe in government and are hopelessly bought by special interests with single issues and no responsibility for intelligent compromise to produce wise policies.

Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas, put it this way:

What we have watched unfold for a few decades, I have argued, is a broad reversion to 19th-century political form, with free-market economics understood as the state of nature, plutocracy as the default social condition, and, enthroned as the nation’s necessary vice, an institutionalized corruption surpassing anything we have seen for 80 years. All that is missing is a return to the gold standard and a war to Christianize the Philippines.

Nick J. Rahall, II, Ranking Democrat on House Resources Committee spoke against the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act, enthusiastically supported by Pombo, the chairman of the resources committee. Rahall is from West Virginia, where they know more about human costs of energy production, worker exploitation and corporate greed than the Pomboza will ever comprehend. It is so utterly unlike any political discourse we will ever hear in this region and it is the voice of a patriotic American, I quote it in full. Rahall names the national enemy to which the Pomboza sold its soul.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in opposition to the pending legislation on the basis that I am unwilling to vote against America’s energy independence.

This bill would continue to mortgage our Nation’s future to a handful of multinational oil conglomerates. It demands a continued addiction to a petroleum diet. It would only further enslave us, as a Nation, as a society, to the oily ways of the past, which do not bode well for our energy future.

It is telling that the so-called "Energy Week" proclaimed by the Republican Majority consists of a single piece of legislation that would only further shackle the Nation to the whims and caprices of the petroleum industry.

It is telling that this is their idea, as it has been all along, of what energy
independence means.

As Paul Revere did on that famous midnight ride, those of us opposed to this ill-conceived bill are raising an alarm.

The drumbeat that we hear pounds out a call of freedom.

Freedom to be done with those who profit and plunder at the gas pumps throughout this country. Freedom from the price gougers, and freedom from the merchants of profit and power over our American values. And the freedom to devise new and alternative fuels to our petroleum dependency.

It is time to stand up and be counted. To hoist up the flag and salute it. To strike a
resounding chord that will reverberate across this great land of ours.

I say to my colleagues that today is truly Independence Day here in the House of
Representatives for we are given an opportunity to vote against this bill.

And vote against it on the following grounds.

First, it would improperly and, perhaps unconstitutionally delegate to the coastal States virtually all decision-making powers over the disposition of a federal resource. It says to all of the other owners of our offshore waters and energy resources – whether they reside in Arizona, Idaho, Ohio or West Virginia – that you have no say in the matter. No say whatsoever. That we are going to vest all of the power with a few, to the detriment of the many.

Second, it would grab the second largest source of income to the Federal government after personal income taxes, yank this revenue out of the Treasury, and redistribute it to those few.

Let us be clear. This bill would reallocate existing revenue from OCS oil and gas leases to willing coastal States. Not just future, potential, revenue streams but also those currently being dedicated to the benefit of the Nation as a whole.

It would rob the majority of the American people, and bankrupt the Land & Water Conservation Fund so cherished by communities and localities across this great land.

According to the Administration, the revenue sharing provisions of this bill alone, alone, would constitute a $74 billion hit over the first 15 years.

Envision this massive raid on America’s resources and what it will mean to the average American.

Third, this bill would deprive most of us of jobs and economic benefits in most of our regions.

Those of you from the Midwest – from the cornbelt – forget about ethanol. This bill demands petroleum. Vote for it, and you vote against your interests. You vote against jobs in your region, and against the economic benefits the production of ethanol brings to your farmers.

Those of you from the coalfields – where we have sought for many years to broaden our employment base, and to reduce our Nation’s petroleum fixation, with liquid fuels made from coal – vote for this bill and you are voting against the future of your coal miners.

With a Nation hard and fast on a petroleum diet for decades to come brought forth by the pending legislation, the widespread commercialization of coal-to-liquids technology to fuel our vehicles will continue to be an elusive goal.

I have never forsaken the coal miners in my Congressional District, and I am not about to do so now.

And fourth, this bill is simply not necessary. Under the Bush Administration alone, the Interior Department has offered leases covering 267 million acres of the OCS (Outer Continental Shelf-BH). Industry has only sought to acquire 24 million of those acres. Contemplate that for a moment. There are still 243 million acres available for leasing that the oil and gas industry has not yet seen fit to bid upon.

In all, in total, over 40 million acres of the OCS are under lease and less than 7 million of those acres are in production.

Is there a crisis in the OCS? Is there evidence that legislation such as that before us, which shreds long-standing moratoria, is needed?

The facts tell us not.

Those who bring forth this legislation represent an era that should now be in our past, seeking to place all our eggs in a black basket woven of petroleum.

They would defend the predominance of Big Oil, those with wealth and power, over our energy destiny.

Those of us opposed to this legislation bring with us the conviction that there are limits to what the American people will suffer for the sake of profit and power.

This is indeed a turning point for America. I urge the defeat of the pending legislation and reserve the balance of my time.

Nope. I don’t buy the Pomboza Theater of Diversion. This four-footed thing in humping along into the pockets of Big Oil. This is bad for the 11th and 18th congressional districts of California and for the nation.

If the San Joaquin Valley had the character of Appalachia and not just similar economic problems, we would not elect representatives like Cardoza and Pombo. But as long as we act like political chumps, the Pomboza is what we deserve.

Bill Hatch
---------------

References

1. Cardoza promotes farm-based fuels, Modesto Bee, Aug. 23, 2006
2. Interior secretary travels to ANWR to promote oil drilling, Associated Press, Sept. 1, 2006
3. Environmental Working Group Farm Subsidy Databank, ewg.com
4.Incumbency has its privileges for Pombo, Stockton Record, Aug. 24, 2006
5. Experts buzzing at Port of Stockton, Inside Bay Area, Aug. 25, 2006
6. www.votepomboout.org
7. www.jerrymcnerney.org
8. It's like oil and water, Stockton Record, Dec. 21, 2005 12-21-05
9. The Biodeisel Revolution, http://www.monsanto.co.uk/biofuels/, July 12, 2002
10. Pombo named vice chairman of ag committee, Ag Alert, California Farm Bureau, March 22, 2006
11.Feeding Cars, Not People, www.monbiot.com, Nov. 23, 2004
12. Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll Announces Six State Class Action Filed against Bayer, CropScience, Aug. 28, 2006
13. Plan to save SJ ag land is discussed, Modesto Bee, Aug. 23, 2006
14. 'New Democrats' Rendezvous With Oblivion, New York Times, Sept. 1, 2006
15. Statement by U.S. Representative Nick J. Rahall, II, Ranking Democrat - House Resources Committee, Floor Consideration of H.R. 4761, June 29, 2006
16. americanbiodiesel.net