8-30-09

 
8-30-09
Modesto Bee
Just show us the money: The ball is in Cardoza's court...Mark Vasché
http://www.modbee.com/2397/v-print/story/835020.html
Steny Hoyer said he came to the San Joaquin Valley this week to get a firsthand look at one of the hardest hit areas in the nation.
But -- at least during the hour-plus I spent with him Tuesday at an editorial board meeting -- the visit by the House of Representatives' second- in-command seemed more like a campaign whistle-stop for Dennis Cardoza.
I suppose that's understandable. After all, Hoyer and Cardoza are fellow Democrats. And, after all, Americans' dissatisfaction with the Democratic-run Congress and White House is growing. And, after all, his visit came a day after Ceres rancher Michael Berryhill announced he would challenge Cardoza in next year's midterm election.
After unseating incumbent and fellow Democrat Gary Condit and then going on to win election to the House of Representatives, Cardoza has had an easy go in his three re-election campaigns. But Berryhill, a member of a longtime and well-known Republican political family in Stanislaus County, could give him a run for his money next year.
Cardoza shrugs that off, at least for the time being, insisting that nothing, including a re-election campaign, is going to shift his focus on the addressing the needs of his district.
Still, it doesn't hurt when heavy hitters from Washington, D.C., come to town and sing your praises. And that's exactly what Hoyer did. No sooner did he step into the room than he offered a ringing endorsement.
"Dennis Cardoza is the greatest congressman in the history of the world," he announced, quickly repeating it and adding for good measure, "That's my story and, as you can see, I'm sticking to it."
Through the course of our meeting, he repeatedly described Cardoza as a much-needed voice of reason, consensus builder and bipartisan advocate on Capitol Hill.
"Unfortunately, in Congress as in the rest of the country, we're becoming more and more polarized," Hoyer told us. "The real issue in America is that we are compartmentalizing ourselves -- not by force but by choice."
That has shown up most recently in the heated -- and often nasty -- town hall meetings on health care reform. Cardoza has been criticized for not holding town hall meetings, but Hoyer defended the local congressman's decision to instead host telephone sessions, which he described as "much more effective."
"People are afraid, and they're angry," Hoyer said, adding that it's understandable, given the economic crisis, the drop in value of retirement and investment funds, the housing crisis and rising unemployment. "They have a lot of anger at anyone in power. In the midst of this comes health care reform. It has become the focus for their anger and fear."
For his part, Cardoza said he hadn't been asked by one person to hold a town hall meeting. And, though he didn't say so, don't look for him to hold one anytime soon.
"We will not achieve a consensus that's good for the American people when we're yelling at each other," he said.
After hearing about the region's woes and visiting the valley, I asked Hoyer what solutions he saw.
"I don't have the solutions," he responded. "But Dennis does. ... My job is (to work with Cardoza and Fresno-area Democratic Rep. Jim Costa) to see what we can get done."
With that, the ball was back in Cardoza's court. What he does with it in terms of not just identifying solutions but getting Hoyer and the Democratic-controlled Congress and White House to provide the resources to implement them will determine how he fares when election time rolls around next year.
Just show us the money: What we need is action...Editorial
http://www.modbee.com/editorials/v-print/story/835018.html
We appreciate all the attention, but what we're really looking for is action
The San Joaquin Valley has been getting some much-needed but long-overdue attention lately from the people in power along the Potomac.
Steny Hoyer, the majority leader in the House of Representatives, made a whirlwind trip to the area Tuesday.
Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, came to Modesto a day later to talk about the dairy crisis and other critical farm issues.
Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, spent some time early last month in what arguably has become the foreclosure capital of the nation.
And Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, was in the valley a few weeks later to focus on water and drought issues.
They've all had a chance to see first hand what we who live here know all too well: Whether you're talking about the housing crisis or unemployment or water woes or health problems, the San Joaquin Valley is in a world of hurt.
In the words of Rep. Dennis Cardoza, the Merced Democrat who helped bring some of Washington's heavy hitters to town: "Everything that's ailing the country ails us worse."
The question -- for the folks in Washington and Sacramento, and in our local government centers -- is this: What can be done about it? As much as we appreciate the attention, we're much more interested in seeing some action. Or, as they say in sales, cut the talk and just show us the money.
Hoyer's visit came on the same day President Barack Obama tried to reassure us that the economic crisis has bottomed out and that there are signs thing are beginning to turn around.
Well, that may be happening somewhere, but it's sure not happening here.
"I don't think that's the case here," Cardoza said. "We're still having a difficult time digging out. California's down on it's knees right now. It's a very serious situation."
Hoyer agreed. "You've real got a crisis," he said during his visit, "and it needs to be addressed, if not wholly at least in part."
Cardoza this week sent a lengthy letter to Obama asking him to visit the valley and declare it an economic disaster area eligible for immediate federal help.
"My constituents cannot wait any longer for economic relief," he wrote. "Absent a bolder federal response, this downturn threatens to subject my constituents and all Californians to permanent economic underdevelopment. Mr. President, it's time to apply a tourniquet."
Time will tell whether that letter will get the results Cardoza wants and the valley needs.
After all, it's one thing to agree that the valley is worse off than most of the country. It's one thing to agree that something needs to be done. It's one thing to get some big guns -- maybe even the biggest gun of all -- to cross the country and visit our valley.
But it's another thing altogether to actually solve the problem. And that's our fear: That after all is said and done, nothing -- or at least not much -- will get done.
Why are we worried?
"Everybody around the country has a problem," Cardoza told us. "We're not unique, (but) we may be more significantly affected." His point was that it's hard to single out a particular pocket -- in this case, our valley -- for special treatment. "Everybody wants equal protection."
That word -- "equal" -- is at the heart of what has been a long-standing problem: The San Joaquin Valley hasn't been treated fairly or equally by either Washington or Sacramento for decades. With only rare exceptions, the valley has received proportionately less of almost everything from the state and federal government.
That's a fact that hardly anyone would argue with that. Cardoza himself estimates that the San Joaquin Valley gets about 60 percent per capita of what most of the country receives in terms of funding and resources from the federal government. And the situation isn't any better when it comes to the state government.
We appreciate the efforts that many of our elected representatives in Washington and Sacramento are making to address the valley's most pressing problems.
But we're sadly aware that, at both the state and federal levels, they're up against a system that consistently has given our region the short shrift. Historically we have lacked the population, and thus the voting power and clout, both at the ballot box and in the halls of Congress and the Legislature. We hope the visits by Secretaries Vilsack, Donovan and Salazar, and Rep. Hoyer are signs that things are changing. We hope Obama will accept the invitation to head west and see first hand what we're up against.
And most of all, we hope that once they've come and seen and headed back home, that they'll show us the money.
Sacramento Bee
Nuclear sites fear they're the alternative to Yucca Mountain...Les Blumenthal, McClatchy Newspapers. Erika Bolstad contributed to this article.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/v-print/story/74567.html
WASHINGTON — It is among the nastiest substances on earth: more than 14,000 tons of highly radioactive waste left over from the building of the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal.
As the Obama administration and Senate leaders move to scuttle a proposed repository for the waste in Nevada, the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state — along with federal facilities in Idaho and South Carolina — could become the de facto dump sites for years to come.
After spending $10 billion to $12 billion over the past 25 years studying a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, President Barack Obama is fulfilling a campaign promise to kill it as a site for the repository. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada also stands to benefit, as polls show he could be in a tough fight for re-election next year, and Nevada residents adamantly oppose a the waste site.
Local leaders and lawmakers from the sites where the waste is now stored, however, are increasingly concerned that the Energy Department will leave it in place, even though that might violate legally binding cleanup agreements.
There's no backup plan for dealing with the waste. A promised commission to study the issue has yet to be appointed.
"We don't want to become a long-term repository without even having a discussion," said Gary Petersen of the Tri-City Industrial Development Council, near Hanford, Wash. "All of this waste is supposed to be going to Yucca. Without Yucca, everyone in the weapons complex has a problem."
Jared Fuhriman, the mayor of Idaho Falls, the largest city near the Idaho National Laboratory, agreed.
"We are all concerned," Fuhriman said. "Where are we going to store the waste we have?"
If Yucca is closed, a search for a new site for a national repository likely would start with the 31 states on the original list of potential locations. In addition to Hanford and the Idaho National Laboratory, the states with possible sites include Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi and Pennsylvania.
Scrapping Yucca Mountain also could have national security ramifications. The Navy would have no place to permanently store the used reactor fuel that's powered its aircraft carriers and submarines.
"There is a national security dimension to the problem, as an eventual disposal site is absolutely critical to the handling of spent fuel from Defense Department weapons," said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee whose district includes the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, which potentially could become a temporary storage site.
The Energy Department is fully aware of how thorny an issue Yucca has become.
In a report late last year to Congress, the department warned that by not providing adequate and timely storage for the defense nuclear waste, it would be "unable to honor" its commitments to the states where the waste is currently stored, including Washington, Idaho and South Carolina.
In a letter earlier this year to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, 25 House members issued a similar warning.
"Without a viable repository program to provide a reliable means of disposition, (the Energy Department) spent fuel and high-level waste will become stranded, and the sites themselves will become de facto repositories," said the letter, signed by House members from Washington, Idaho, South Carolina and other states.
Yucca Mountain is in the desert, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. A brothel, 15 miles away, may be the closest commercial structure. The plan is to dig deep tunnels underground where the waste could be stored for 10,000 years as it decays. The Bush administration applied for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to operate the site.
The decision to place the repository in Nevada was as much a political decision as a scientific one. In 1987, the hunt for a site had been narrowed to three locations: Yucca, which is on the edge of the Nevada Test Site, where nuclear weapons had been tested; Hanford, which started producing plutonium for nuclear weapons during World War II; and Deaf Smith County, in the Texas Panhandle.
Congress picked Yucca Mountain. It was a matter of political clout. At the time, the House speaker was Rep. Jim Wright of Texas, and the House majority leader was Rep. Tom Foley of Washington. Nevada was represented by a senator who suggested using a rocket ship to shoot the waste into the sun. It was referred to as the "Screw Nevada Bill."
The immediate concern was the 63,000 tons of used radioactive fuel from the nation's 104 operating nuclear power plants. The used fuel is now stored at each nuclear power plant, either underwater or in dry storage. Safety and security concerns about that approach persist, however.
Yucca was also supposed to hold the waste from the production of nuclear weapons dating back to the World War II-era Manhattan Project. The waste, which includes used nuclear fuel from reactors that produced plutonium, is stored at 16 federal sites in 13 states, though most of it is at Hanford, the Idaho National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
At Hanford alone, there are 53 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste, 2,100 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and nearly 2,000 capsules containing radioactive cesium and strontium.
The biggest concern has been the liquid waste, stored in aging and occasionally leaking underground tanks. Current plans call for the waste to be vitrified, or solidified into glass-like logs, and shipped to Yucca Mountain. The logs would be encapsulated in two-foot diameter, 14.5-foot-long stainless steel containers that would weigh about four tons each. The waste treatment plant would generate about 480 glass logs a year and somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 by the time the last of the waste is processed.
The waste treatment plant is scheduled to start producing glass logs in 2019. Yucca was scheduled to open sometime after 2020.
Neither regulators from Washington state nor the federal Environmental Protection Agency seem particularly concerned, saying the plan was always to temporarily store the glass logs at Hanford.
Stephanie Mueller, Chu's press secretary, said that the department was "honoring its commitment to manage our nuclear waste." She said Chu's commission would look at the full range of storage, recycling and disposal issues.
Petersen, of the Tri-City Industrial Development Council, remains skeptical, however.
"Have you ever seen anything more permanent than a temporary DOE building?" he said, adding that the communities surrounding Hanford and other DOE sites where waste was stored would probably "push back" to reverse the Yucca decision.
David Beckman: Water-collecting strategy offers flood of benefits
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/v-print/story/2146800.html
In June, water use in Los Angeles fell to a 32-year seasonal low, a remarkable savings considering the steady population growth the region has seen over that period. The bad news is that this performance was spurred in part by drought conditions that are gripping California for the third year in a row; and that drought and the effects of global warming severely threaten our remaining water supplies.
Given that much of California is a desert or close to it, Californians have a curious relationship with water. When it rains, we channel this fresh water into concrete and metal pipes and dispose of it as fast as we can in rivers and ultimately the ocean. As all this water, as much as 10 billion gallons during a winter storm in Los Angeles, flows over the unending urban hardscape, it washes with it a flood of pollutants, creating a severe water pollution problem. That's enough water in one day to supply more than 60,000 families for a whole year, but somehow we allow it to literally fall through the cracks.
But having sent billions of gallons of water out to sea, without a second thought we then take water from hundreds of miles away, pump it through deserts and over mountain ranges, and direct it to our taps and sprinklers to make sure we can enjoy a cold drink or water our lawns.
An emerging water retention and stormwater management design approach called low impact development, or LID, however, may hold the key to increasing the local, stable supply of water in California while reducing pollution from stormwater runoff.
LID effectively mimics nature's own hydrologic features. Instead of channeling rainfall away from where it lands, LID seeks to collect the water on site to be used later, either by letting it soak into the ground to recharge local groundwater supplies or by capturing it in rain barrels or cisterns so it can be used to water lawns, flush toilets or channeled to other non-drinking applications. LID thereby prevents pollution from flowing to our beaches and other waters.
A second benefit of LID is the stable, local, low-energy supply of water it provides – especially important as we face a continuing drought and the impending effects of climate change. It takes a lot less energy to supply water from a tank 10 feet from your house or office, or to pump it from 100 feet down in the ground, than it does to supply it from hundreds of miles away.
The potential benefits of LID are impressive. The Natural Resources Defense Council's recent LID report found that if every new development or redevelopment project at a commercial or residential site in urbanized Southern California and portions of the Bay Area were built using LID practices over the next 20 years, by 2030 we could supply enough water for some 800,000 families in California every year, or roughly two-thirds of the water used by the entire city of Los Angeles.
While drought and climate change will continue to pose a significant challenge to our ability to ensure the safe, reliable supply of water in California, we're lucky enough to have a clear, sustainable source of water right outside our doors and windows, falling on our roofs and driveways. All we have to do is reach out and catch it.  
Feds review mountain-dwelling pika for threatened-species list...The Seattle Times
http://www.sacbee.com/702/v-print/story/2148628.html
EASY PASS, North Cascades National Park -- Pikas don't ask much.
With brave squeaks, belted out from atop their rock piles, they defend their realm in the talus slopes way up here in the mountains, more than a mile in the sky, far from anyone, anywhere.
Yet even in their remote realm, the small, furry pika, a close relative of the rabbit, may be affected by humans.
Some wildlife advocates warn that pikas, with their preference for the cool, lofty high country, are at risk of extinction throughout the West by the end of the century as the climate warms. They have sued the feds to determine whether the animal should be listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
But others say losses of some local populations don't spell extinction risk for an animal still abundant in many places.
A decision is due from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by February.
Meanwhile, in a separate effort, scientists are studying pika populations at North Cascades National Park, in a first-ever, one-year pilot study funded by Seattle City Light, which tracks habitat in the North Cascades, where it operates hydroelectric dams. The study is intended to build a baseline of data about where pika are presently found.
"Climate change is the biggest issue facing our national parks," said Chip Jenkins, park superintendent. "Scientists have determined that our climate is changing, and it is changing rapidly. What we are doing is looking for key indicators, key species that are likely to be the ones that show the first response to climate change."
To many scientists, pikas are a perfect study candidate because they are sensitive to temperature. They can be killed by temperatures higher than 78 degrees Fahrenheit, and prefer the rugged, rocky habitat found typically, but not exclusively, at higher elevations.
Ochotona princeps spend their summers gathering and stowing vegetation in great haypiles in their homes in the crevices between rocks. There are 36 recognized American pika subspecies in North America, 31 of which live in islands of unconnected habitat flung across nine of the western United States, including Washington and Oregon.
The pikas' signature call is a one-note squeak, blurted out to sound an alert, or defend their territory. Sweet-faced, with round ears and egg-shaped, furry bodies, pikas have cute down cold.
Adapting to a warming world could be a challenge for the pika, however. Erik Beever of the U.S. Geological Survey has found seven of 25 populations of pika reported earlier in the 20th century in the Great Basin appear to be lost. He thinks climate is the primary driver.
Shaye Wolf of the Center for Biological Diversity, headquartered in San Francisco, which sued to force the feds to consider listing, links population losses with climate change, and fears more to come.
"The loss of pika really shows that climate is impacting wildlife in our own backyard," Wolf said. "It's happening right now; it is not a distance problem for our grandchildren to worry about."
But other scientists caution that while pika are an excellent indicator species to study, localized losses don't mean the animals are doomed.
"It is not a question of them running off the tops of summits until there is no more space," said Connie Millar, a senior research scientist for the U.S. Forest Service, based in Albany, Calif. Pika have turned up in abundance in her own surveys in the East Sierra, south of Lake Tahoe. "I don't see any evidence of their decline in this region," Millar said.
In the advocates' claim for listing, Andrew Smith of Arizona State University sees a case of going overboard, and extending implications from limited studies.
In his own work in Bodie, Calif., begun in 1969, Smith said he found pika capable of adapting to temperature swings by haying at night, instead of during the day, if it is too warm. He also has found the animals at low elevations, where they were not documented previously, complicating the theory that pikas are being chased relentlessly upslope.
"We really think pikas are at risk, and we should learn more about them, and be monitoring them at lower elevations," Smith said. "They should tell us an incredible amount about climate change. But they are not endangered."
Jason Bruggeman of Beartooth Wildlife Research in Farmington, Minn., is the researcher leading the study of pika populations at North Cascades National Park. So far this summer, he's investigated pika populations in 17 areas and found pika in 14 of them. "They definitely are widely distributed," Bruggeman said. His survey work will continue into September.
The population survey is intended to help the park build an ongoing inventory of the park's vital signs, including a review of the status of land birds, subalpine vegetation, mountain lake ecology, amphibian populations, and more.
Jenkins, the park superintendent, says pika matter. "They are the icon of the wild high country.
"It's pretty cool that any kid could come up to the Cascades now and go to Easy Pass, or Cascade Pass, and they will hear that screech, and see that animal, just as people have for the last 100 years. What if we lost that? What happens if my kids' kids don't get to hear or see that? We lose something important. We lose a symbol of the park, of the wild Cascades."
FACTS
American Pika
Pronunciation: PIE-ka
Size: About 7 inches long, with no visible tail
Local habitat: typically talus slopes at alpine and subalpine areas in the Cascades.
Near relative: rabbit
Predators: weasel, ermine, eagle, fox
Fun facts: Pikas spend their days haying - cutting vegetation and caching it for winter food supply - and musing on their rocks. They don't hibernate, but rather forage under the snow for lichen and other food, to supplement feeding from their stored haypiles.
San Francisco Chronicle
A $54 billion water bill...Editorial
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/30/EDJ019DHLC.DTL
Water. California never has enough of it.
That makes it one of the few state issues to rival the importance of our busted budget right now. For six months, the Legislature has been working on a package of bills that would drastically shift the way Californians use and receive water. At the same time, a comprehensive Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta restoration and water plan supported by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger just got an eye-popping price tag: at least $23 billion, and maybe as much as $54 billion.
These costs are merely estimates and should be treated as such. But the estimates, which came courtesy of a consulting economist's report last week, underline the tremendous cost of addressing such a huge problem. No wonder Sacramento has avoided doing it for so long.
Thanks to those costs, Sacramento may be able to sit on its hands just a little longer. With less than two weeks left in the legislative session, it seems unlikely the Legislature will pass its five-bill package of complex and costly reforms that took six months of work to complete.
"Most water legislation of less ambition than this has taken years," said state Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis. Wolk authored one of the bills in the package, which would create a Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy. "We just don't have answers to a lot of the big questions."
The biggest question of all is how the state of California is going to pay for anything.
Legislators claim that any new projects will be paid for with a mix of bond money and user fees. But the price tags for these projects call for drastic measures - probably more drastic than most Californians realize.
"If you look at the cost of an $11 billion bond, that's $800 million a year in interest," Wolk said.
State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, has already said he doesn't want to pass any water bonds larger than $10 billion. Considering the state's finances - and its shoddy credit rating - that may not be a problem.
And if those "user fees" require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to pass, it's highly unlikely that any Republican legislator will sign off on them. The result could be another monthslong standoff, just like the budget.
The governor 's fix for the collapsing delta relies on enormous new infrastructure projects - dams, levees, aqueducts and the ever-controversial "water conveyance" (formerly known as the peripheral canal) idea. (It's been updated in the governor's plan to a tunnel under the delta instead of a canal around it.) Every one of these projects will be contentious. But he, too, is likely to run into the same larger problem: How is the state going to pay for any of this?
This is an awful conundrum for California. We desperately need a new water plan - one that supports the ecosystem of the delta, honors conservation and water recycling, and ensures that cities, residences and farmers get their fair share of good-quality water at appropriate prices. The growth of our state depends on this. Unfortunately, the state's budget problems have made it impossible to plan for the future.
Mercury News
Union Pacific, high-speed rail board are talking...Gary Richards
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_13224575?nclick_check=1
Now that a judge has thrown the high-speed rail route into the Bay Area into limbo, attention has shifted to a dispute over a segment between Gilroy and San Jose along tracks owned by Union Pacific Railroad.
Officials with the railroad and the California High Speed Rail Authority confirmed that they have held discussions in hopes of resolving their differences, which if not settled soon could cost the rail authority $3 billion in federal stimulus aid and state bond money, delay construction in Northern California and leave in doubt the electrification of Caltrain.
Earlier this summer, the railroad declared it would not allow high-speed trains to run in its right of way parallel to Monterey Highway, citing safety reasons. Its freight trains travel at 79 mph compared with the 200-mph-plus pace at which high-speed trains can travel.
The dispute took center stage Wednesday, after a Superior Court Judge Michael Kenney ruled that an environmental report failed to address the railroad's concern.
"Our position continues to be the same as what we've said in the past," Union Pacific spokesman Tom Lange said from Omaha, Neb. "The high speeds of these trains is simply not compatible in our right of way.
"We've had discussions with them, but the bottom line is that safety comes first and foremost."
High-speed trains would run initially from Anaheim to San Jose and on to San Francisco, and later to San Diego and Sacramento, at a cost of at least $40 billion. Voters approved a $10 billion bond transit measure last year, with $9 billion earmarked for high-speed trains.
The rail board has approved a route into the Bay Area over Pacheco Pass, along the railroad line from Gilroy to San Jose and then north on the Caltrain corridor into San Francisco.
The plan is to begin construction in three years, but losing $3 billion could push back the start date, and the Bay Area segment could be a casualty.
If the railroad and California officials cannot work out a deal, high-speed rail officials will look at other options along the Highway 101 corridor in the South Bay. But they were mum on what those alternate routes might be.
Kenney is expected to issue a follow-up ruling, detailing what must be done to address shortcomings in the agency's environmental study.
Timing is critical — and that has some officials saying the railroad's stance is a negotiating ploy, partly because the line is lightly used. Currently, just 14 trains run each day between Gilroy and San Jose — six freight, six commuter and two Amtrak trains.
On Oct. 2, the rail authority plans to submit its application for federal stimulus money. It needs approval of those funds soon to meet Washington's requirement that construction be under way by 2012.
If the judge rules that the entire environmental study be revisited, "that could be the death knell for construction on the Peninsula," said high-speed board member Rod Diridon. "If it's a remedial action, we can deal with that."
The recent ruling may also delay Caltrain's long-range plans to expand commuter service by converting its diesel trains to electric. This would enable the agency to speed up service and run more trains more quickly. It is relying heavily on stimulus cash to bankroll the $785 million initiative, $516 million of which is still unfunded.
Stimulus dollars are a key, as money from state-approved voter bonds can only be used to match another funding source, and stimulus grants appear to be one of the few options available.
The railroad appears to have the upper hand in the standoff with the rail authority. Diridon called the freight company's stance a "negotiating ploy," adding: "They have the negotiating advantage. We need the corridor."
Tough negotiations with freight companies are nothing new. Twenty years ago, it took more than two years of talks before Caltrain agreed to buy the San Jose-to-San Francisco tracks from Southern Pacific for $242.3 million. Talks between the Valley Transportation Authority and Union Pacific dragged on for four years before the VTA agreed in 2002 to pay $80 million to run the BART-to-San Jose extension down the UP corridor between Fremont and San Jose.
"We've negotiated with them on several acquisitions, and they are very difficult negotiators," VTA General Manager Michael Burns said. "They are a private company out to protect their interests.
"But I will be very surprised if at the end they don't reach an agreement."
Opponents of high-speed rail include the cities of Menlo Park and Atherton, along with several environmental groups. They hope the court ruling opens up a second look at running high-speed trains over the Altamont Pass and into the Bay Area across the Dumbarton Bridge train trestle, and then along freeways like U.S. Highway 101 or Interstate 280.
But the judge's ruling described those options as "unreasonable."
Other route choices north of Gilroy are unclear. The authority's executive director, Mehdi Morshed, said the authority may look at space near 101 but said nothing had been given serious consideration.
"We recognize that UP doesn't want us there," he said. "So we'll have to look at other options (near Gilroy), but I don't know what they are."
Finding another route may be the only choice, said Richard Tolmach of the California Rail Foundation, one of the groups that filed suit against the rail board. The railroad's stance, he says, is no bluff.
"UP views this as their overflow route," he said. "I don't see how they would benefit from any sale of the critical 30-mile piece between San Jose and Gilroy. They would have to spend much more than a billion to replace it."