Following the recommendations of its staff, the Strategic Growth Council formally approved $122 million in grants for 28 projects designed to provide affordable housing and reduce carbon emissions throughout the state. This is the inaugural awarding of funds through the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grant program, which is administered jointly by the SGC and Department of Housing and Community Development. Recommended projects , which consist of affordable housing projects, totally 2,000 units, and other transit-oriented developments throughout the state, were announced ten days ago by SGC staff. Projects were selected based on a predetermined set of criteria, including potential for greenhouse gas reduction, project readiness, and promotion of other state policy goals related to compact development and active transportation.  SGC Chair Ken Alex said in a statement that the grants would "help provide housing, improve transportation and transportation options, benefit disadvantaged communities, and most importantly, reduce greenhouse gas emissions while promoting a broad array of worthwhile projects." This year's 28 recommended projects leverage nearly six to one in matching funds and will reduce an estimated 723,286 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions—the equivalent to taking 140,483 cars off the road for one year. The program is funded by monies from the state's cap-and-trade program. This year, the state has dedicated $832 million to programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  "California's investments are helping bolster innovative and sustainable transportation to limit greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change," said California State Transportation Agency Secretary Brian Kelly in a statement. "This year's cap and trade investments help increase access to housing that is close to reliable public transportation, a smart investment that improves overall quality of life in California." Seventy-seven percent of the projects selected are in disadvantaged communities; a significant increase over the program's required 50 percent. Stakeholders debated the definition of "disadvantaged" as the program was being devised last year. Fifty-two percent of recipients are considered transit oriented developments.  The program did not deliberately seek equity among the California's population centers. Nevertheless, the state's two largest metropolitan planning regions, the Southern California Association of Governments and the Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission, received eleven and ten awards, respectively.  At a time when communities across the state are promoting projects that conform to regional Sustainable Communities Strategies, the AHSC program is one of the only sources of funding from the state to promote SCS-friendly projects.  In a conference call last week, SGC Executive Director Mike McCoy said that many of the 56 projects that were considered for funding were credible, qualified candidates. Next year, the program will award around $400 million in grants. McCoy said that many projects that did not receive grants this year could qualify next year.  SGC and HCD staff will seek input and discuss next year's funding process at an upcoming series of workshops. The first two are July 14 in Sacramento and July 20 in Los Angeles. Resources:  Ranking of Applicants and Recommended Awardees  (pdf) Descriptions of Grant Recipients  (pdf) Map of Grant Recipients  (pdf)

It turns out that two of the world's biggest proponents of smart growth are Catholic. One of them is California Governor Jerry Brown, who once studied to be a Jesuit priest and, more recently, has promoted earthly initiatives like high-speed rail, the adoption of vehicle miles traveled metrics, and the most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals in the western hemisphere.  The other is the Pope.  Today the Vatican released Pope Francis' long-awaited encyclical concerning the environment. Drafted a month ago, the encyclical is essentially the Vatican's version of a white paper. It is meant to influence pretty much everyone who falls under Catholicism's sway, but it's bound to gain fans among secular policymakers.  While the world may have expected airy proclamations about preserving God's creation and such, the Pope has recommendations for revitalizing Sodom and Gomorrah just as he does for preserving Eden.  Parts of the encyclical read like Jane Jacobs, starting with the chapter heading, "Ecology of Daily Life." The Pope observes and recommends:  In our rooms, our homes, our workplaces and neighbourhoods, we use our environment as a way of expressing our identity. We make every effort to adapt to our environment, but when it is disorderly, chaotic or saturated with noise and ugliness, such overstimulation makes it difficult to find ourselves integrated and happy. The feeling of asphyxiation brought on by densely populated residential areas is countered if close and warm relationships develop, if communities are created, if the limitations of the environment are compensated for in the interior of each person who feels held within a network of solidarity and belonging. In this way, any place can turn from being a hell on earth into the setting for a dignified life. This experience of a communitarian salvation often generates creative ideas for the improvement of a building or a neighbourhood Those who design buildings, neighbourhoods, public spaces and cities, ought to draw on the various disciplines which help us to understand people's thought processes, symbolic language and ways of acting....people's quality of life, their adaptation to the environment, encounter and mutual assistance. Here too, we see how important it is that urban planning always take into consideration the views of those who will live in these areas. There is also a need to protect those common areas, visual landmarks and urban landscapes which increase our sense of belonging, of rootedness, of "feeling at home" within a city which includes us and brings us together. Creativity should be shown in integrating rundown neighbourhoods into a welcoming city Many cars, used by one or more people, circulate in cities, causing traffic congestion, raising the level of pollution, and consuming enormous quantities of non-renewable energy. This makes it necessary to build more roads and parking areas which spoil the urban landscape.  (Note to Pope Francis: Don Shoup is retiring from UCLA. Maybe his next gig can be as Vatican advisor – Pontiff of Parking? Bishop of Bicycling?) These statements are both obvious and breathtaking. They are obvious because they echo the goals that many planners have been pursuing for years. They  are breathtaking for their eloquence and, even if for agnostics, for the enormity of the source from which they emanate. They also emphasize social justice more deeply than even the most environmentally conscious planners ever do. And, really, who ever thought a pope would call out urban planning by name? If Pope Francis is ever to be canonized, he has his first miracle.  Pope Francis himself is, of course, an city guy. He's from Buenos Aires, a city full of delights and troubles. And, really, the Papacy itself is urban. Angels and Demons would have been much less interesting, if not less grating, had it not been set in the extraordinary warren of history and humanity that is central Rome. Modern Rome is what it is in part because of the presence of the Vatican.  In fact, no one has used the world's urban network as cannily as the Catholic Church has. The hierarchy of cathedrals, churches, cardinals, and bishops mirrors the world's network of cities. The Church anticipated Saskia Sassen's theories on global cities by a few hundred years. It only stands to reason that the Pope would appreciate the power, and problems, of cities.  The Catholic Church has done a few amazing things for cities. Catholic cathedrals are some of humanity's most exhilarating works. The plazas in front of them are some of the world's great public spaces. (Subjugation of much of the "public" in many of those places, including  in mission-era California , is another matter.) It's about time the Church gave the world something a little less imperialistic.  This is of course a surprising announcement for a historically conservative institution (to say the least), and it's naturally infuriating for members of the religious right, who now find themselves disavowing the figure who is, supposedly, God's messenger on earth. Unfortunately, this encyclical will probably just reinforce existing attitudes. Progressives will hail it, and ignorant, self-serving climate deniers will reject it. Maybe, though, there are folks on the margins – those who are extraordinarily devout or who were extraordinarily ambivalent – and perhaps in out of the way places, including those in the developing world, who will be moved.  For everyone else it's a welcome, and even obvious, policy. That includes Gov. Brown, former Gov. Schwarzenegger, and the countless other supporters who have put California's environmental policies. Imperfect and incomplete as those policies may be (the Pope is not a fan of cap-and-trade ), they put California at the forefront of this essential crusade. Having quit the seminary, Gov. Brown may have missed his chance to become Pope. But he's clearly a good Catholic.  May we all be so devoted to the salvation of our state and our world.

As almost any transportation planner in Los Angeles County will attest, the car capital of the world is well on its way to becoming a transit capital as well. With tens of billions of dollars invested in recently opened and anticipated mass transit lines, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has transformed the county. Even so, Metro can't be everywhere.  The challenge Metro now faces – on a scale arguably larger than that of any other major city – is of getting riders to and from its trains and buses. Its proposed a is its First Last Mile Strategic Plan & Planning Guidelines.  Adopted in early April, the guidelines won a 2015 National Planning Excellence Award  for a Best Practice from the American Planning Association at its national conference a few weeks later. Though roughly 1.5 million Angelenos use Metro every day, the theory behind the program is that many more will use transit – thus reducing congestion and pollution – if transit is easer to find and get to. The guidelines propose localized, inexpensive upgrades to local infrastructure to improve wayfinding and make trips to transit stops feel easier and safer.  For the past decade, Metro has focused on the development of $40 billion worth of major infrastructure: light rail lines, busways, highway expansion, and the like, which collectively constitute the largest public works program in the country. The strategy, developed in collaboration with the Southern California Association of Governments, is the agency's way of thinking small. "First mile, last mile solutions are very good value for their dollar because they have an opportunity to encourage more users on your current system," said Hilary Norton, executive director, Fixing Angelenos Stuck in Traffic contact, a business-backed advocacy group for transportation. The guidelines are meant to achieve the goals of Metro's 2012 Countywide Sustainable Planning Policy and to achieve some of the greenhouse gas reductions that will be included in the forthcoming Regional Transportation Plan / Sustainable Communities Strategy being devised by the Southern California Association of Governments. The guidelines also are designed to support the state's Complete Streets Act.  In a dense but geographically sprawling city like Los Angeles, many workplaces, and even more residences, lie outside of easy walking distance to a transit line. According to some planners, this problem, more so than issues of routing or headway, prevents Angelenos from taking full advantage of their transit network, of which Metro provides the backbone. The guidelines identify common barriers to access, including long blocks, freeways, poor sidewalks, safety, recognizabilty of transit stops, and street configurations that discourage active transportation, such as walking and biking.  "The emphasis is going to be in investing transit dollars in such a way that it maximizes the connectivity of the system," said Diego Cardoso, executive officer for Transit Corridors, Active Transportation and Sustainability at Metro. "The system is not just the trains, the bus; it's more than that. It's bicycles, it's walking. It's understanding the better interaction between land use and transit." Metro's strategy addresses this problem on multiple fronts, acknowledging ways that different modest of transportation complement each other. It includes everything from recommendations for novel new "mobility centers," to better bike lanes and wheelchair accessibility, to partnerships with ride-hailing and bike-sharing services to attitudinal changes that neighborhood groups can effect. It also includes informational shifts, like analysis of "access sheds" and "pathway" maps of high-volume transit stops that identify the ways that passengers can arrive at and depart from a given stop.  Access sheds, for instance, identify the distances that transit users can conveniently travel to bus and train stops according to different modes of active transportation, from bikes to skateboards, to feet. A countywide analysis suggests that the vast majority of the county's population lives within a three-mile bike ride of a rail station or bus rapid transit stop. The First Mile Last Mile Guidelines hope to ensure that those three miles are safe and accessible for would-be cyclists.  Because it can be replicated countless times across the region, the strategy takes a more expansive view of transit than has ever been conceived of in Los Angeles — or, possibly, anywhere else.  "Metro went from saying, ‘we run buses and we run trains' to, we get people from their homes to the buses to the trains to their destinations,'" said Norton.  "That's a big change in their overall view of what a transit trip looks like." Among the most novel of the strategy's ideas, "mobility centers" would be a cross between a convenience store and a bus stop. They would give transit riders safe, comfortable places to wait and the chance to sip a coffee or browse a newspaper. They could come with secured bike racks, rain shelters, landscaping, and information kiosks about the transit network.  "If you're waiting for a bus for a train and it's night and you're female, you'd like to be in or near someplace that's open for business that you can be inside drinking a cup of coffee or reading a newspaper," said Norton. Importantly, Metro envisions them as being privately funded — by the retailers themselves.  Convenience store chain Famima!!, a Japanese import that has made inroads in Los Angeles, has already expressed interest in sponsoring pilot projects. The chance to increase ridership without spending a public dime has Metro officials nearly giddy.  "We welcome any strategy from the private sector that maximizes the reach of accessibility to our system," said Cardoso. More modest tactics include the installation of signs and other wayfinding devices, to help cyclists and pedestrians locate the nearest transit stop. Metro is also discussing partnerships with ride-hailing services like Lyft to arrange short-distance rides between home and the bus stop or train station.  Especially with the rise of app-based transportation, these strategies face few technological hurdles. The logistical hurdles, however, have been massive thus far. Because Metro is a countywide agency, its services run through the vast majority of the county's 88 cities and its pockets of unincorporated areas. Metro has control over only its own services and rights of way. This means that the passengers whom Metro wants to attract have traditionally been beyond their grasp.  Metro's strategy overcomes this challenge by taking a do-it-yourself, open-source approach to infrastructure development. The strategy is essentially a guidebook that cities, community groups, and businesses can follow according to their own needs, timetables, and capacities. It includes methodology for analyzing transit stops, the pathways around them, and the barriers to those pathways so that every locality can customize its approach. And it includes a "toolbox" of improvements that localities can choose from.  "The culture in L.A. was that Metro kind of stayed to its own right of way," said Metro Transportation Planning Manager Steven Mateer, who worked on the guidelines. "A lot of cites were really excited about Metro being a partner in conducting the planning work for First Mile Last Mile." Excitement, however, will not build projects. Metro is offering no significant funding stream, so jurisdictions are on their essentially on their own to find funding. Some funds could come from statewide programs like the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grants. The guidelines acknowledge that funding is limited but offer no recommendations for securing funds.  Metro is currently pursuing pilot projects. Generally, there is no master plan or timetable, and Metro will accept implementation as it comes. Metro officials are promoting these strategies in the hopes that partners will see their wisdom and jump on board. In essence, anyone can now be a transit planner in Los Angeles. In fact, Metro's strategies may apply to plenty of other cities around the region and around the country.  "Not everybody can go and build a rail system, but lots of people can address the first mile, last mile problem," said Norton. Contacts and Resources Metro First Mile Last Mile Guidelines (pdf) American Planning Association 2015 Awards Diego Cardoso & Steven Mateer, L.A. Metro , ( 213) 922-6000 Hilary Norton,  Fix Angelenos Stuck in Traffic ,   ( 213) 233-2542 A version of this article originally appeared on Next City, with support from the Surdna Foundation .

Allow me to laud something about California's state and local ballot initiative system. No, really.  Voting schemes for electing human beings to office are inevitably flawed. Whether a jurisdiction uses party primaries, open primaries, ranked choices, multiple votes, pluralities, majorities, voice votes, or anything else, no system can capture the true passions and preferences of all voters as they relate to all candidates.  The ballot initiative system cuts through these ambiguities by posing a binary choice: yes or no. However ill-conceived, ill-timed, poorly written, and disingenuously promoted (or opposed) a measure may be, at least the vote itself is clear and internally valid.  Ballot measures could, though, take at least one cue from their human counterparts: impermanence.  * A few weeks ago I tossed off a blog about Los Angeles' housing crisis. And I mean tossed off — I wrote it on a fleeting notion fueled as much by frustration as by scholarship. Clearly other people share my frustration, because it went seriously viral. It went so viral that it even reached one of the original backers of a ballot measure that I mentioned.  Passed in 1986, Proposition U was designed, as I wrote, to limit commercial development on Los Angeles' major corridors. It passed on an insane 2-1 margin, which I characterized as a symbol of Los Angeles' slow-growth movement and a precursor to today's housing crisis. (This wasn't news. Others, including CP&DR publisher Bill Fulton, have levied similar criticisms at Prop. U.) The backer of Prop. U took mild umbrage insisted that, 29 years ago, Prop. U was crafted specifically so that it does not constrain development or preservation of housing.  I don't doubt the earnestness or the wisdom of the authors' approach. As such, my criticism may have been unfair — at least in the context of 1986. The trouble, of course, is that what may have been entirely reasonable in 1986 may not be reasonable in 2015. Legislators, voters, activists, planners, planning philosophies, political alliances, and issues have changed. So have the density, function, infrastructure, economic base, ethnic makeup, and total population of Los Angeles. Try as they might to have predicted Los Angeles' needs one-and-a-half generations into the future, Prop. U's supporters were living in a different world.  Naturally, we can only legislate based on what we know and what we can reasonably predict. The ballot initiative process ignores this truism. From Prop. U to Prop. 20 (precursor to the Coastal Act) to Prop. 99 (eminent domain), to, yes, Prop. 13, many of the state's and localities' measures are structured to remain in effect until the end of time. If Los Angeles sticks around half has long as Rome has, a land-use measure passed today could remain in play in the 35th century.   I'm not a fan of term limits, and I'm sometimes disappointed to see elected officials retire (notwithstanding the immortality of Jerry Brown). But, at the very least, even the most popular elected officials have to submit themselves to re-approval every four years. Ballot measures need a similar temporal safeguard.  I don't have an ideal structure for what I'm thinking of. We obviously don't want to create chaos by yanking laws away unceremoniously. But we have plenty of options. It could be a sunset clause. It could be a mandatory re-vote at a certain juncture. It could be a failsafe, overturned only by a supermajority. Who knows. The point is that no law should ever elude reasonable scrutiny, and no law should presume to remain relevant decades into the future purely because of its own inertia. Supporters of an original ballot measure may need opportunities to gracefully update or even disavow those laws as circumstances change.  While we're at it, so do conventional laws could benefit from the same. Imagine, for instance, how much progress California might make if the California Environmental Quality Act had to be affirmatively revised and renewed?  (Naturally, concerned citizens can mount campaigns to repeal ballot measures that they don't like. But the money, effort, and political will for that kind of thing makes it effectively infeasible.) * I hardly think Prop. U is the cause of all of Los Angeles' troubles, just as I don't think Prop. 13 is the cause of all of California's troubles. Maybe even I would have voted for Prop. U in 1986. We were building some pretty hideous stuff back then; maybe some of it needed to be cut down. Our traffic wasn't nearly as bad, our rents weren't nearly as high (in real dollars), and planners didn't have many alternatives to our auto-oriented mix of residential neighborhoods and commercial strips.  Today, infill development, mixed-use buildings, walkability, transit-oriented development, environmental stewardship, transit use, design guidelines, and all the other trappings of smart growth are at play in Los Angeles. We need more development on commercial strips, because we need a better balance between jobs and housing, and we need more amenities that residents can walk to. We need opportunities to build a few levels of commercial space and then layer on a few levels of residential space. Whether development on boulevards is commercial or residential, we surely need to wean ourselves from single-story buildings, some of which are surrounded by surface parking, on our most valuable, important corridors. We need to accommodate 3.9 million people, not 3.2 million.  These are the goals that Los Angeles' planners are pursuing. Are they compatible with Prop. U? I hope so. If they are not, there should be a reasonable system by which the city can unburden itself.  If that were to happen, I, for one, think L.A. boulevards would turn out OK. They include Wilshire, Ventura, Western, and, yes, Sunset.

This article was corrected on June 2, 2015. The longtime battle over Newhall Ranch has spilled into unusual legal territory with a fight over the status of the private water company that would likely serve the development project. Uniquely, the Valencia Water Company (VWC) may be California's only active large-scale water provider that is neither public, nor mutual, nor regulated as a private entity by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). VWC still supplies water day by day to some 31,000 existing hookups serving about 120,000 people in the Santa Clarita Valley of Los Angeles County. But legally VWC has been in an odd state of existence for a little over a year.  Opinions differ whether VWC is public or private, what rules apply to its continued operation, and even by what right it operates at all. A former subsidiary of the Newhall Land and Farming Company, VWC was purchased in 2012 by the Castaic Lake Water Agency (CLWA) in a settlement of an eminent domain action. Local environmental groups promptly challenged the purchase. In February 2014, the CPUC ruled that the cordial $73 million settlement -- which it termed a "consensual condemnation" -- meant VWC was no longer a "private corporation" eligible for CPUC regulation. The ruling canceled VWC's certificate of public convenience and necessity. This March, however, a county judge rejected a parallel challenge to VWC's current status, contradicting the CPUC's position. That ruling is on appeal. Many of the challengers have spent decades opposing the Newhall Ranch project -- the proposed development by the Newhall Land and Farming Company that, per current plans, would build nearly 20,000 new residential units in the Santa Clarita Valley of Los Angeles County. VWC is envisioned as the water provider for the Newhall Ranch project. CLWA's general manager, Dan Masnada, formerly served as general manager of VWC for the development company. Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment (SCOPE), a longtime leading environmental group in the area, first challenged the VWC purchase with a CPUC complaint in 2012. It alleged the whole purchase was improper and that the deal included an "apparent prejudicial preference to former parent company promised by a regulated utility" through terms in a purchase contract prior to the transfer of ownership. It said the CPUC previously required VWC to file a new Water Management Plan before supplying water to the Newhall Ranch and to serve old and new customers fairly -- but that Article VI of the agreement nevertheless promised actions that would help protect water supplies for the development. Masnada, with exasperation, described SCOPE and its ally Friends of the Santa Clara River as "trying to dictate land use planning in northern L.A. County" by "trying to keep us from augmenting our water supplies." But from the environmental groups' perspective the Valley's resources are already stretched thin, and the Newhall Ranch proposal is the biggest demand placed on them. SCOPE president Lynne Plambeck wrote that she was "frankly tired of being accused of trying to stop growth every time we demand good planning that is common practice in many other parts of the state or any time we demand that laws be followed as is required of most people and most developers." Parties on all sides said they would like to see Valencia Water become public -- but they have different ideas of what "public" should mean, and for the present the company's unusual private status is jammed in place by the dispute itself. Valley of Litigation The legal fronts in the war over Santa Clarita Valley real estate development seem endless. As recounted in CP&DR 's January coverage , one case in the multipart Newhall Ranch litigation is awaiting an oral argument date before the California Supreme Court, on issues that significantly include greenhouse gas reduction rules under AB 32. As also reported in January , SCOPE and other groups are separately challenging the plan's Landmark Village and Mission Village phases, and have sued over federal agencies' environmental resource reviews. On April 21, 2015, the Second District Court of Appeal, Fifth Division, issued an unpublished ruling that upheld the Landmark Village environmental impact report (EIR) -- a decision welcomed by Newhall Land and Farming. Plambeck said this newer ruling raised emissions issues similar to those before the state Supreme Court. In late May, SCOPE asked the Supreme Court to review this new decision as well. Yet another front may be about to open. In early June, Los Angeles County Regional Planning was about to hold an introductory public hearing on a third Newhall Ranch development phase, 1,574-unit Entrada South, which is queued in the planning process behind Landmark and Mission Villages. A separate dispute over a landfill expansion is further testing whether the valley can or should accommodate more new residents and businesses. Focus on the Water Fight This spring, however, the VWC dispute seems the most active front, or at least the most innovative one, in the Santa Clarita Valley land-use war. Last year after the CPUC decision, a statement from the Newhall County Water District (NCWD), where Plambeck is one of five board members, called the resulting lack of either CPUC regulation or a public board of directors "taxation without representation." On March 10, 2015, however, Judge Robert H. O'Brien of the Los Angeles Superior Court disagreed with a complaint by SCOPE, ruling that the purchase was legal and that VWC continued to exist as a private entity distinct from CLWA. Although last year's CPUC ruling is currently in effect, the CPUC case is awaiting a Commission decision whether to grant Newhall Land's request for rehearing. SCOPE appealed the March Superior Court decision in May. A parallel court challenge by NCWD to the VWC purchase is still pending. Plambeck argued there was no legal provision available for a private entity to sell water without being regulated by the CPUC. She said water sellers can be municipal agencies, mutual water districts, county waterworks, state-established agencies like CLWA, or CPUC-regulated private entities -- yet VWC is now none of those. She wrote, "Their action is illegal. They are operating illegally. There is no structure in California law to permit them to operate as they are operating. They are cowboy outlaws." But Ed Casey of Alston & Bird, an attorney for VWC, said, "Every private water company has the authority to sell water in the state of California. Simply because it's not subject to the PUC's regulatory requirements doesn't mean it doesn't have the legal right to sell water and if somebody wants to show me a legal argument to the contrary I would like to hear it." In the Superior Court lawsuit leading to the March ruling, SCOPE had argued CLWA's purchase of VWC was improper in part because, as a legislatively created wholesaler of water from the State Water Project (SWP), CLWA lacked authority to sell water at retail except within boundaries specified by its authorizing legislation. The boundaries in question were defined in AB 134 of the 2001-02 session, which was a legislative response to a similar dispute following CLWA's 1999 purchase and absorption of the Santa Clarita Water Company (now CLWA's Santa Clarita Water Division). AB 134 was approved amid litigation, brought by Plambeck among others, over the propriety of the 1999 purchase, principally in Klajic v. Castaic Lake Water Agency (2001) 90 Cal. App. 4th 987 ( Klajic I ) and Klajic v. Castaic Lake Water Agency (2004) 121 Cal. App. 4th 5. ( Klajic II ). In his recent March decision, Judge O'Brien found CLWA's purchase of VWC was not blocked by Article XVI, § 17 of the California Constitution, which allows public entities to acquire stock of "any mutual water company or corporation" in order to supply water. He found Klajic I "did not decide the constitutionality of the Agency's acquisition of a company other than a mutual water company," and hence did not settle whether the words "...or corporation" included VWC. On that issue, he flatly contradicted the Public Utilities Commission's 2014 decision -- which, drawing on legislative history, had found § 17 gave permission only for public entities to purchase not-for-profit mutual water companies. O'Brien wrote that the CPUC reasoning was not binding -- and instead he held as a matter of statutory construction that the VWC purchase was allowed. Further, O'Brien held there was no barrier to CLWA's ownership of VWC under § 12944.7 of the state Water Code, which provides that if an agency is restricted by its authorizing legislation to wholesale distribution of water -- and CLWA is under that restriction in the VWC service area -- then the only way it can sell water at retail is under a written contract with a CPUC-regulated water corporation providing retail service to the area in question. O'Brien agreed with CLWA that it was not acting through VWC, only owning it. The five directors on Valencia's board consist of Masnada, CLWA's administrative services manager, the retail manager of the Santa Clarita water division, and VWC's general manager and vice president. But O'Brien found the operations were not sufficiently merged to justify SCOPE's "alter ego" allegations. Water is, however, conveyed from CLWA to VWC. Masnada wrote that CLWA received 33,875 acre feet (AF) of imported water in 2014, consisting of 451 AF of currently contracted SWP water, "7,746 AF of SWP 'carryover' from prior years and most if not all of the roughly 14,000 AF extracted from our banking programs." (CLWA owns water banking rights in two storage districts in Kern County.) Of that he wrote that 7,668 AF were delivered to VWC. Meanwhile he wrote that VWC pumped 21,428 AF of groundwater and recycled about 500 AF. Since VWC occupies the "sweet spot of the aquifer," Masnada said Valencia has been trying to pump more than its share of groundwater to spare the other Santa Clarita Valley retailers, since some wells are going dry at the upward east end of the valley. He wrote that VWC expected to withdraw less water from storage in the current year, when SWP customers have been offered a 20% allocation, and likely would not need stored water at SWP allocations above 25%. What's public now? Adding to the uncertainty, earlier this year VWC conducted a ratemaking proceeding in the style of a Proposition 218 governmental process, but continued to assert its private status, both in the board's approval resolution and in a separate response to a SCOPE member's public records request. Casey saw no contradiction: "If there is no alter ego relationship, the identity of the entity that owns Valencia Water Company is irrelevant, which means that Valencia Water Co is not a public agency within the meaning of either Prop 218 or the Public Record Act." Casey said "Valencia Water Company is subject to the same rules any private entity would be subject to," in that a private corporation must turn over records for reasons such as litigation or subpoenas "but there is no other so-called public disclosure requirement." He said, "We comply with the self-same procedures. If some people like to have more, that's their policy position. But at this point in time there is no legal requirement to do so." But Casey and Masnada each said VWC voluntarily conducted a public meeting on the ratemaking with opportunities for public comments. Masnada wrote that fewer than 40 protests were filed, so "VWC customers appear to be satisfied with the service they are receiving and, more to the point, don't have the so-called concerns that SCOPE has in regards to acquisition of VWC by CLWA." Plambeck contended the ratemaking process was improper. But Casey said, "We decided to follow the PUC process because it was a process and we had been under that process for years and we thought it better to continue that process until some entity, whether it's the court or the PUC, told us that it did not have jurisdiction over us." He said "I don't think it's fair ... to criticize Valencia for what it did, when we tried to promote transparency and receive direct customer input to the board." Are Profits OK? The ratemaking procedure surprised Danilo Sanchez, program manager of the water branch for the Office of Ratepayer Advocates (ORA) at the CPUC. Making clear he spoke only for ORA, not for the utilities regulator itself, he said, "They can't be for-profit and not under the Commission's jurisdiction." He said that would be an "unregulated monopoly." In reading through VWC's posted rate-setting document , he said the water rates were comparatively cheap at lower billing tiers but he was surprised to see projected "returns on equity". He asked, "If they are part of a public agency, should they be for-profit?" Reading through the document, he said, "I've never seen anything like this before." Regarding the concern Sanchez raised about profits, Casey offered "the same exact response" regarding the irrelevance of the identity of VWC's owner in the absence of an alter ego relationship. Sanchez further said that in his view the VWC tariff sheets listing water prices would have become invalid 30 days after last year's decision ended CPUC jurisdiction. Future Public Status? Masnada treated the separation of the entities as temporary, saying, "Until the litigation is resolved, the utility will continue to operate as a separate corporate entity." Regarding VWC, he said "We would dearly love to take it public." But he suggested SCOPE was "waving the red flag of AB 134" against allowing it to become public. An attorney for CLWA, Jeffrey Dunn of Best Best & Krieger, put it more strongly: "They are trying to stop the public from getting public ownership of a private water company." Dunn said nobody had heard "a rational reason for why somebody would do that, other than that they just want to sue." From SCOPE's side Plambeck favored a standalone public status for VWC: "It would be wonderful if the (VWC) ratepayers owned their own company and could hold elections." But she opposed its incorporation with CLWA, saying it would create a less accountable "vertical monopoly" between CLWA, as a water wholesaler, and VWC, as a water retailer. She said a public agency is supposed to safeguard the resources and the long-term sustainability of the community, and "what they are doing is directing water to special interests, not protecting the community." Legislative Suspicions A side dispute developed this spring when SCOPE questioned whether CLWA could be seeking legislative ratification of its hope to run VWC directly, as happened with AB 134. This year's AB 727 by Assemblymember Scott Wilk, D-Santa Clarita, provides for adjustments to CLWA's enabling legislation. SCOPE especially questioned whether the old AB 134 boundaries that limit retail housing might be expanded by a phrase authorizing activities in groundwater basins "both within and outside the boundaries of the agency." But Wilk's office wrote that he "has made sure since day one that this legislation not improve or alter the issues concerning CLWA ability to provide retail water." And Masnada wrote that "The intent of that language had nothing to do with administration of VWC's groundwater resources on a retail (or any other) basis." Instead he wrote that it had to do with recharging aquifers with recycled and imported water. The bill has been held over until next year.

In reviewing a project's consistency as part of an environmental review, a city need not comply with every single general plan policy so long as it concludes that most general plan policies are being followed, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. In a case involving a proposed bridge and parking garage in Balboa Park, the appellate court also overruled a trial judge's ruling that the City of San Diego violated its own municipal code by concluding that there would be "no reasonable beneficial use" of the famed Plaza de Panama if the bridge project were not built. The case involves a proposal to remove automobiles from the Plaza de Panama in order to avoid conflicts between pedestrians and automobiles. The proposal would include construction of a new bridge, the Centennial Bridge, that would connect the historic Cabrillo Bridge to a new underground parking garage south of the Plaza.  The relevance of the court ruling isn't clear, however. In 2013, then-Mayor Bob Filner simply closed the Plaza to traffic, so currently cars do not traverse the Plaza even though the bridge has not been built. Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who supports the new bridge, said the city staff would review the ruling to see whether the bridge project should go forward anyway.  After the City Council approved the bridge project in 2012, Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO), a prominent historic preservation group in San Diego, filed suit against the city on a wide variety of grounds. Most significantly from a local perspective, SOHO argued that the city had violated Municipal Code Section 126.0504, which requires – at least in situations where there are impacts on historic resources -- that the city find that there can be "no reasonable beneficial use" of the property in question unless the project is constructed. The city acknowledged that the new bridge would have a significant visual impact on the historic resource of Cabrillo Bridge. However, it found that there could be "no reasonable beneficial use" of the property without the new bridge because conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles in the Plaza de Panama would continue. Superior Court Judge Timothy Taylor ruled in favor of SOHO, saying there was no substantial evidence for the ruling. But the appellate court disagreed. Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Justice Alex McDonald said the city had demonstrated that "denial of the Project would mean traffic congestion and conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles would continue to burden the users of the (Plaza de Panama) Complex, and denial of the Project would prevent City from recapturing those areas currently being claimed and used by vehicles as thoroughfares and parking lots and reclaiming those lands for parklands and pedestrian spaces." More important from a statewide perspective was SOHO's challenge to the city's conclusion – again under the municipal code – that substantial evidence exists to support the conclusion that the project would not adversely affect the city's land use plans.  The EIR documented in detail a wide range of land use plans and policies calling for improvements to pedestrian use of the Plaza and a decrease in pedestrian-vehicular conflicts, including the city general plan, the Balboa Park master plan, and the Central Mesa precise plan. The EIR also documented many aspects of the proposed project that promoted those goals.  However, as McDonald put it, "SOHO appears to assert that, as long as a project opponent can identify any stated goal or policy within an applicable land use plan that would be adversely affected by a project, the decision-maker is precluded from finding approval of a project would not adversely affect the applicable land use plans even if the decision maker finds, based on substantial evidence, the proposed project would be consistent with vast majority of the goals and policies of the applicable land use plans." As Judge Taylor had, the trial court, the appellate court rejected this reasoning. In fact, he said, case law stands contrary to this proposition.  Justice McDonald quoted at length from Sequoyah Hills Homeowners Assn. v. City of Oakland (1993) 23 Cal.App.4th 704, in which the First District wrote: "It is beyond cavil that no project could completely satisfy every policy stated in the , and that state law does not impose such a requirement A general plan must try to accommodate a wide range of competing interests—including those of developers, neighboring homeowners, prospective homebuyers, environmentalists, current and prospective business owners, jobseekers, taxpayers, and providers and recipients of all types of city-provided services—and to present a clear and comprehensive set of principles to guide development decisions.  Once a general plan is in place, it is the province of elected city officials to examine the specifics of a proposed project to determine whether it would be 'in harmony' with the policies stated in the plan. It is, emphatically, not the role of the courts to micromanage these development decisions. The Case: Save Our Heritage Organization v. City of San Diego , No. D063992  The Lawyers: For Save Our Heritage Organization (plaintiff and appellant): Susan Brandt-Hawley, susanbh@preservationlawyers.com For Plaza de Panama Committee (real party in interest and appellant): G. Scott Williams, Seltzer Caplan McMahon Vitek, swilliam@scmv.com  For the City of San Diego (defendants and respondents): Jana Mickova Will, Deputy City Attorney, jwill@sandiego.gov

The federal government issued its long-awaited "Waters of the United States," or WOTUS, definition yesterday, extending federal authority to California's vernal pools and other naturally forming pockets of water. However, the new rule does not regulate groundwater nor many subsurface flows and states it will maintain existing provisions for stormwater systems and some ditches. However, business and Congressional opposition to the rule remains fierce. The Association of California Water Agencies expressed disappointment with the rule, saying "ACWA remains concerned that the final rule is too broad and our requests that water conveyance systems and water infrastructure adjacent to 'navigable waters' be excluded from the proposed rule was not met." Developers and local officials as well as agricultural and industrial businesses had sought to limit the "Waters of the United States" definition for fear it might impose Clean Water Act permitting processes on construction and water management proposals that had hitherto required only local approvals. The rule does make concessions to concerns from business, real estate and rural local governments that existing drainage systems and permit exemptions might be disrupted. California voices were very much included in this pattern, and many California local governments expressed anxiety about their stormwater discharge permits. As the "WOTUS" abbreviation suggests, the rule has been strongly identified with the Obama Administration by its opponents; the White House backed the rule with a supportive statement from the President. It cross-posted a position paper from the EPA, which prefers to call it the "Clean Water Rule." But it's debatable whether the new final rule expands federal authority or merely restores some of the scope intended by Congress before the question of the Clean Water Act's application to smaller waters was muddied by ambiguous Supreme Court rulings and the EPA's interim attempts to apply them practically.  The rule itself states it defines a narrower "scope of jurisdiction" than "under the existing regulation."  As anticipated, it applies federal Clean Water Act regulation to many small and intermittent water sources, such as marshes, small streams, California's vernal pools and the Eastern peat bogs known as pocosins. At the same time it emphasizes waters' status as tributaries to larger flows. It requires a tributary to have a "bed, bank and ordinary high water mark" and protects other waters through the logic of "significant nexus" to navigable waters. It says it "does not add any additional permitting requirements on agriculture".  Clean water advocates from arid regions may be disappointed by a logic that views the nature of headwaters in terms of tributaries rather than groundwater. It states it "does not regulate shallow subsurface connections nor any type of groundwater, erosional features, or land use."  The most favorable news for public officials and real estate developers may be a statement in the EPA's announcement summary that ditches are only covered if they could carry pollution downstream and that the rule "maintains the status of waters within Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems." The rule's preamble says it does not change exemptions from existing federal stormwater permitting requirements. As noted in an early commentary from the Allen Matkins law firm, the new rule limits itself to new jurisdictional determinations, locking in most existing decisions on Clean Water Act applicability. The EPA's opening assurances suggest the new final rule may not do much to change the terms of �402 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for runoff or wastewater, but it might well broaden the applicability of �404 permit requirements for "discharge of dredged or fill material" into "waters" that can include wetlands and ditches. Other potentially affected areas include state and federal water quality standards and the coordination between them, oil spill prevention programs, pesticide permits and Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) standards for specified pollutants in waterways. (Quantities of trash in urban waterways are increasingly regulated under TMDL standards in California.) The full 297-page rule, in pre-publication form, is available on the conspiciously user-friendly Web page that the EPA has devoted to the "Waters Of" rulemaking process. It was expected to appear in the Federal Register imminently. Bitter National Publicity Campaign In recounting California's bad bygone days, Carey McWilliams relates a story that the land baron Henry Miller used to take title to public acres by claiming they fell under laws for distribution of "swamp and overflow lands" -- and would bolster those claims by having himself dragged over the land in a boat by teams of horses. Lately agribusiness, industry and real estate groups, and a fair percentage of Congress as well, have accused the EPA of claiming public jurisdiction over private lands by nearly similar standards. For a year and more, large-scale agricultural and industrial business groups, especially the American Farm Bureau Federation, have framed the "Waters Of" rule as a leading current menace in their campaigns against federal regulatory authority in general and the EPA in particular. By some accounts more than a million public comments were filed on the rulemaking. The EPA has responded by promoting the rule publicly to an extent that has drawn criticism in light of federal lobbying rules. The competing Twitter hashtags #ditchtherule and #ditchthemyth call up separate large clouds of commentary with predictably different moods. Similarly, the EPA page mirrors the Farm Bureau's "Ditch The Rule" Web site. The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) was prominent among environmental groups treating the rulemaking process as an occasion to broaden EPA jurisdiction. Environmental advocates' comments on the rule were often phrased in somewhat muted and technical language and often spoke in terms of public health rather than stewardship of natural habitats. This was presumably to avoid offering targets to right-wing indignation. Initial NRDC reaction to the May 27 announcement took the form of a blog post by president Rhea Suh. Reflecting the sense of an ongoing campaign rather than a victory, it was captioned, " Americans Need the Clean Water Rule to Keep Our Drinking Water Safe" . The Farm Bureau's initial reaction to the final rule said "we find little comfort in the agency's assurances that our concerns have been addressed in any meaningful way," attacked the EPA's "aggressive advocacy campaign," and said that in reviewing the rule "we are looking in particular" at the rules on ephemeral waters. Difficult Legal History The two main court cases in the "Waters Of" interpretive tangle -- Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , 531 U.S. 159 (2001) (known as SWANCC) and Rapanos v. U.S. , 547 U.S. 715 (2006) -- both involved choices to fill in wetlands that had formed at distances from the "navigable waters" that are at the core of Clean Water Act jurisdiction.  The SWANCC ruling held the EPA could not stop plans to dump municipal garbage in a former gravel pit despite the EPA's argument that ponds in the pit had become a habitat for federally protected migratory birds. The much-debated split decision in Rapanos concerned a property owner's unilateral act of filling in a wetland that was miles from any "navigable" water. Rules derived from SWANCC and Rapanos , however, have not been limited to such stark changes in landscapes. For example, the National Association of Counties warned in a briefing on the issue last year that �404 permits have been required for maintenance of ditches, including ditches managed by county governments. In the text of the new rule, the EPA and Corps read Rapanos as showing agreement among the Justices that the Clean Water Act applies beyond "navigable waters." They grant importance to a rule stated by Justice Anthony Kennedy in a concurrence that added the tiebreaking fifth vote to an opinion otherwise stated more conservatively by Justice Antonin Scalia writing for four justices. Kennedy's much-debated rule would apply the Clean Water Act to peripheral waters or wetlands that have a "significant nexus" with navigable or potentially navigable waters. The EPA and Corps apply this "significant nexus" principle in stating distinctions under the rule. Opposition in Congress Bills are pending in Congress to block the rule from taking effect -- and those are only the latest of several efforts at legislative overruling. An initial attempt to stop the EPA and Corps rulemaking trajectory passed last year's House as H.R. 5078 . That bill died with the session but the "Cromnibus" year-end budget bill forced the EPA to withdraw a March 2014 "interpretive rule" from the "Waters Of" proposal that would have addressed farm conservation activities. The bills moving to block EPA over the past several weeks are H.R. 1732 and S. 1140 . ( Politico has detailed coverage of recent reactions and maneuvers in Congress and anticipated lawsuits.)  The leading bill on the matter in Congress, H.R. 1732, passed the House on May 12. It would specifically invalidate the new rule and would require the EPA and Corps to start the rulemaking over in mandatory detailed consultation with state and local officials and "stakeholders".  S.B. 1140 was a recent subject of hearings before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's  Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife. It would invalidate any interpretive rule on the "Waters Of" question to the extent it failed to comply with new rules for consultation with state and local officials and restrictions on content including avoidance of "intrusive Federal oversight".  Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, said in introducing H.R. 1140 last month, "What the administration is proposing now simply makes no sense. Under ... the new rule they are proposing, isolated ponds could be regulated as waters of the United States. This is the kind of pond that might form in a low-lying piece of land with no connection to a river or a stream. It could be in someone's back yard." But at the hearing, which was dominated by supporters of H.R. 1140, Prof. Patrick Parenteau of Vermont Law School protested that the bill was "based on bad science, bad law, and bad policy," particularly in assumptions that some water bodies could be "isolated" or that a stream could be fairly defined as a "natural channel" considering the existence of structures such as the lower Los Angeles River.

A developers' group is promoting a new piece of legislation that would postpone implementation of SB 743 – the bill that would change traffic analysis to vehicle miles traveled in environmental review – for a year. The bill has apparently revealed a split among developers who say they focus on infill projects. Sponsored by Assemblymember Cristina Garcia (D-Norwalk), who was elected in November, Assembly Bill 779 would postpone implementation of SB 743 until 2017. A lobbying group called the Infill Builders Federation is sponsoring a bill that, depending on its final form, would postpone the implementation of SB 743. Supporters insist that they embrace VMT but say that the two years are needed to help developers prepare for the switch and to work out what they see as kinks in the law. (The City of Pasadena has already implemented most of the provisions of SB 743.) The bill has progressed relatively smoothly through the legislative process. It passed easily, 15-0, through the Committee on Transportation and Natural Resources and has been heard by the Appropriations Committee. Whether Governor Jerry Brown, an avowed proponent of smart growth, will veto the bill remains to be seen.  The trouble, say the bill's opponents, is that California's cities need SB 743 yesterday. "Sure, there's a transition, but that's not a reason not to go ahead," said Curt Johansen board president of the Council of Infill Builders (CIB),  a nonprofit advocacy group that was once affiliated with IBF .  Garcia's office declined to speak to CP&DR on the record. IBF's lobbyist Erin Niemela declined as well. IFB board members did not respond to repeated requests for interviews. CIB, as well as other critics, claim that the IBF does not truly represent the interests of infill developers but rather is a front for greenfield developers (some of whom also do infill).  "The idea that's coming out of a nominally infill builders organization is really disappointing," said Ethan Elkind, Associate Director of the Climate Change and Business Program at UCLA Law School and advisor to the Council of Infill Builders. "Their arguments are wrong, but I also question why a group of infill builders would be pushing a measure that would hurt infill." The apparent concerns of AB 779's supporters are threefold:  (1) VMT analysis may unfamiliar, and therefore potentially burdensome, to many developers;  (2) because cities may still impose their own metrics, regardless of CEQA's requirements, some developments may be subject to two analyses;  (3)  given the litigious history of CEQA, VMT analysis — and, potentially, unforeseen holes in SB 743 — could provide more grounds on which opponents of a project could sue.  Supporters of VMT, and, specially, of the way SB 743 was crafted, reject all of these claims.  While CEQA provisions have been used in unfathomably creative ways since the law's 1970 passage, concerns about litigation are, supporters say, covered largely by the fact that projects in what the law defines as "transit priority areas" — a half-mile radius around an existing or planned "major transit stop" — and that are consistent with specific plans that have already passed CEQA scrutiny are exempt from VMT analysis entirely.  "A traffic study is a huge component of the time and the cost involved with entitlement work," said Johansen. "To be able to get an exception by a well located project…(is like) getting a free pass."  Supporters of AB 779 question the effectiveness of this provision in practice, given the historical aggressiveness of many project opponents and CEQA attorneys. One proposed solution that supporters are reportedly proposing would give the Office of Planning and Research the authority to determine significance thresholds – the levels of impacts at which a project would be considered in violation of CEQA. This sort of authority would be unprecedented for OPR.  OPR is proceeding with its guidelines process. OPR staff declined to be interviewed for this article, but Chris Calfee, senior counsel at OPR, issued this statement: "The Office of Planning and Research has conducted extensive public outreach over the past year and a half on its preliminary discussion draft and is currently developing a revised draft that responds to input received from the bill's sponsor as well as other stakeholders.  We look forward to completing the process that Senate Bill 743 set in motion." This provision does not, of course, shield developers outside transit areas, but that is by design. Under VMT analysis, they still may be subject to suits claiming insufficient analysis or mitigation just as they are today under LOS. Supporters of SB 743 say that this is intentional: the law discourages greenfield, less dense, and/or non-transit-adjacent development by measuring vehicle traffic and, in many cases, preventing developers from mitigating impacts simply by expanding roads (to relieve congestion at affected intersections).  "LOS basically allows you to buy your way out of traffic impacts," said Johansen.  Whether VMT analysis — by itself or in conjunction with conventional LOS analysis — is more burdensome for non-exempt projects remains to be seen. Supporters of VMT say that the burden will be negligible, especially since much of the data-gathering will be identical to previous methods and that there are widely accepted methods for analyzing data to estimate VMT.  "All the factors you need to calculate LOS accurately are the same as the factors you would need to calculate VMT," said Jeffrey Tumlin, principal and director of strategy at transportation planning firm Nelson-Nygaard.  "It's incredibly straightforward," said Elkind. "Compared to a stack of papers for a traffic study--you're talking 3-4 phonebooks--it's as off-the-shelf as it can get. The standard of review to challenge a VMT analysis is much higher." Tumlin noted that cities may have legitimate concerns about switching to VMT. Cities have often used LOS analysis as an exactions tool, to get developers to cover mitigation measures that cities otherwise might have to fund themselves. Likewise, SB 743 may impact highway projects developed by Caltrans. Neither cities nor Caltrans appear to be involved with AB 779. There are no representatives from any public entities on the IBF board.  While AB 779's supporters claim to support infill development and the wisdom of VMT, their opponents suggest that IFB and others are concocting objections to SB 743 in order to protect the interests of greenfield developers.  "I think what's happening is both the sprawl industry as well as under-resourced municipalities are finally understanding that this is real and that it's going to change the way they do business," said Tumlin.  The debate over AB 779 is but the most tangible manifestation of a rift that opened several years ago between rival groups. Representatives of the Council of Infill Builders, which used to be aligned with the IBF, say that they have not been invited to discuss the bill with Garcia's staff or with the IBF. CIB is a nonprofit advocacy group whereas IBF is a registered lobbying group.  "The makeup of the two organization probably speaks volumes about the principles that each one ascribes to," said Johanasen.  SB 743's supporters say that its passage would undermine the aggressive climate change goals that Brown has consistently set and, of late, codified in an executive order calling for a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.  "This seems to me like it would be a step backwards, and I would be surprised if he supports it," said Johansen.  Resources SB 743 Legislative Information   http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB743 SB 743 Transit Priority Areas http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_transitorienteddevelopmentsb743.php AB 779 Legislative Information http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB779

As California's drought continues to worsen, the state's 500-plus local governments face a twofold challenge: complying with state-mandated reductions in urban water use while at the same time planning for long-term development. While the state's housing needs are manifest – 220,000 units per year just to keep up with latent demand – the long-term water supplies required to supply new development and redevelopment have become less certain thanks to the drought.  In the wake of Gov. Jerry Brown's recent executive order, many districts are imposing cutbacks on institutional users, such as park and school districts, and on homeowners collectively. But unlike the 1990s, only a few communities appear to be placing moratoria on new development as result of the drought. But experts predict that further water conservation measures – including more water-efficient new residences – could take the pressure off of development moratoria in the future. The San Jose Water Company is one of the largest water providers at the high end of the reduction scale. It must cut 30 percent. That district is allocating thirteen 780-gallon units of water per home – as compared to the 2013 average of 19 units – regardless of a home's size. Homeowners will pay penalties for usage above their allocated units. Bakersfield is restricting outdoor water use to three days a week.  The Association of California Water Agencies has posted a list of water agencies, an interactive map, describing their responses at http://www.acwa.com/content/local-drought-response . Much of the information refers to regulations put in place in 2014, as many cities and agencies are still rolling out their plans to comply with current state restrictions.  One water official compared the statewide to rection to the drought to the "five stages of grief." "The first stage is denial," said Celeste Cantú, general manager of the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority. "I think we've pretty much moved past denial. We were in denial last year." Executive Order & Responses Roughly 40 percent of the state's water is "unused" and instead remains set aside for conservation, stream flows, and riparian habitats. Of the remainder, roughly 80 percent is used for agriculture and 20 percent for residential, industrial, and other urban uses.  With the state's snowpack at less than 10 percent of average in what is now the fourth year of drought, Gov. Jerry Brown finally ordered mandatory water restrictions in March, when it became clear that the current rainy season was going to give little relief.  A cascade of events and policies has followed that declaration, which ordered a 25 percent cut in urban use statewide. The state Water Resources Control Board has set conservation goals for the state's 400 urban water districts, with different reductions for different communities. Meanwhile, many of the state's farmers—including the almost growers who have become the symbol for thirsty agriculture – press on under their own set of water rules, many of which make their rights unassailable. (A group of farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta recently proposed voluntary reductions of 25 percent.) DWR has established a sliding scale for cities depending on their per capital water use. Water-efficient cities – which tend either to have strong environmental policies and/or relatively poor populations – must cut only as little as 8 percent compared to 2013 levels. They include places like East Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco.  The cities that must cut the most, 36 percent, are a mix of wealthy cities, like Beverly Hills and South Pasadena, and middle-class suburbs with relatively low density, such Hemet and Colton. Central Valley cities including Bakersfield and Redding are at the high end too; their hot climates lead to extremely high water use, partly because water evaporates quickly from irrigated lawns.  "There's a lot of pushback on this from inland districts," said Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. "They feel that they're being unfairly targeted because their weather is warmer and it takes a great deal more application of water to have verdant lawns and gardens." Districts that fail to achieve these reductions can be fined up to $10,000 per day. Cities and the water districts that serve them are employing a variety of penalties and incentives to compel residents to do their part. Gov. Brown's order and DWR's targets do not mandate the ways that districts must meet targets. They leave each district to develop programs, penalties, and incentives on their own.  While Mount said that this laissez-faire approach makes sense because "no two districts are alike," Cantú said that many water districts are frustrated and, per the second stage of grief, "angry."  "The water retail community is angry, and understandably so, because they've….successfully protected communities in Southern California from the impact of drought for years," said Cantú. "Now we need to step it up because our designed drought of 3-4 years—we've kind of exceeded that." The Los Angeles Department of Water and power is restricting outdoor watering and is policing domestic runoff that flows into streets. DWP is also one of several water agencies to offer cash rebates for removal of lawns; a cottage industry of turf removal companies, such as Turf Terminators, has cropped up to remove residents' lawns for free in exchange for the proceeds from the rebates. (Lawns consume far more water than anything that takes place inside a home.) One method cities are not employing is charging more to heavy users, as proposed by San Juan Capistrano. That approach, called tiered pricing, was ruled unconstitutional by the 4th District Court of Appeal, in April.  A Few Moratoria A handful of small communities have opted for the most extreme conservation policies: imposing moratoria on new water hookups as the drought has worsened over the past 1-2 years.  "Some of the coastal communities that were particularly hard hit in the Central Coast will find themselves having to ask some very painful and difficult questions because they don't have a diversified water supply," said Mount.  The perennially drought-prone community of Cambria, on a remote stretch of the Central Coast, instituted a water hookup waiting list in 1986. New applications are accepted according to projected water supplies in any given year. The list was closed to new applicants in 1990, and currently no applications are being approved. The upscale Los Angeles County city of South Pasadena, which is largely built-out, instituted a moratorium on new water hookups in July of last year.  The Paso Robles Groundwater Basin instituted and "urgency ordinance" in 2013 requiring new development to offset its water uses at a 1:1 ratio. Given the scarcity of water sources in the Paso Robles area, this ordinance effectively acts as a moratorium on new residential and agricultural development.  Some communities have pretty much run dry regardless of state targets and local policies. They largely include communities in the Central Valley that rely on tapped-out wells. For the most desperate communities, Gov. Brown approved a $1 billion package of emergency assistance.  To Grow or Not to Grow These cases of immediate moratoria and severely restricted development are, so far, anomalies. The vast majority of cities, large and small alike, are not deliberately restricting growth because of the drought. Ten or twenty years from now, water could be far more scarce than it is even today it could, effectively, be far more abundant. Both of these scenarios can occur regardless of whether normal weather patterns return.  Many officials assume that the vagaries of long-term weather patterns will even out and that water supplies will return to normal. In that sense, curtailing development today because of uncertain future shortages could prove pointless and reactionary.  "The governor's emergency declaration doesn't specifically step in and address the land use question," said Mount. "I think we're going to see more and more people talking about that as this drought grinds on."  To optimistic planners and developers, four years of drought is nothing compared to the decades of anticipated development and population growth. The state projects an increase in population from 38 million today to 50 million by 2055.  Santa Barbara city planner Renee Brooke said that her city council is not yet concerned about new development. "They see it being such a small percent of our overall water demands, they don't want to unnecessarily restrict development or a particular sector of our community," said Brooke.  Flinn Fagg, planning director in Palm Springs, said that the idea of a moratorium "pops up occasionally in public forums" but that no such restrictions are being seriously considered. "I think development is going to occur based on the market rather than on water supply," he said.  Growth in California is often seen as a force of nature, as inevitable as earthquakes if not rainstorms.  "In my experience, growth happens regardless of whether you plan for it or not," said Cantú. In 2014, roughly 85,000 new homes were built in the state, about as many as the previous year, according to the California Homebuilding Foundation.  One reason why development might continue is that cities' financial droughts may be more powerful than their hydrological droughts. Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot measure that curtails property taxes, is one of many incentives for cities to keep growing.   "This is one of the perverse side effects of Prop. 13," said Mount. "It spurs communities to create new development in order to increase revenue." Prius Desert Some speculate, in fact, that the drought may be a blessing in for those who want the Golden State to keep on growing. For all the pains that cities and water agencies are now going through, this much is clear: the more comfortable Californians become with brown lawns, the greater the state's water supplies will be in the future.  "One of the things we may see from this big push in conservation is that if conservation during this drought is kept in place afterward, that's going to probably free up a lot of water for development," said Mount. "That's one of the side-effects nobody thought about." In other words, conservation methods adopted today are likely to stick around even when the rains return.  "We've had a long history of being an oasis in the desert, especially Palm Springs and it was appreciated for its rather lush landscapes," said Fagg. "That attitude is changing…and I think people are generally aware of the severity of the drought that we are in and recognize that we do need to make some changes in our lifestyles." Mount noted that the state's population has grown by 8 million since 1990 without an appreciable increase in domestic water use.  Moreover, new development tends to be more water-efficient than many existing developments. So the marginal impact even of suburban single-family homes may be negligible. Dave Codgill, president of the California Building Industry Association, said that home built today, "have 50 percent reduction in the amount of water used in new homes compared to homes built prior to 1980." He noted that 9.1 million of the 13.6 million homes in the state were built before 1980 and may be ripe for retrofitting or replacement.  Brooke, of Santa Barbara, confirmed that "new development can result in a reduction in water use overall just because everything is so efficient." Any major development must comply with Senate Bills 610 and 221, a pair of addendums to the California Environmental Quality Act that require large developments – and general plans – to provide adequate water supplies for 20 years. Technological improvements, such as low-flow toilets, can be factored into a proposed development's long-term water needs fairly easily, according to David Todd, of the Department of Water Resources' Land Use Water Program. But shorter showers and xeriscaping may hold less promise for cities that want to grow.  "If it was a behavioral thing, that would be far more difficult to document" for the sake of SB 610 and 221, said Todd.  Codgill said that his industry is more than willing to institute further efficiency measures in order to keep up the pace of development. He supports the statewide application of the Model Landscape Ordinance and the speeding up of a "purple pipe" ordinance that was not scheduled to go into effect until 2017.      "We definitely consider ourselves as an industry as part of the solution and not part of the problem," said Codgill. "I've made it very clear to the governor and the water boards that we're willing to do whatever we can to help." On the opposite end of the planning spectrum from faucets and cactuses, new state planning strategies might also curb some of California's demand. Senate Bill 375, passed in 2008, is intended to reduce driving and greenhouse gas emission. But, by promoting compact development – which, by definition, includes less green space – SB 375 might also result in less use of thirsty landscaping.  "I hope that is the direction that we go in," said Cantu, referring to SB 375.  That will give us a much more secure vision of what a resilient community will look like down the road. "more density…is healthier anyway. We can easily accommodate growth and have a robust economy and a healthy environment in our current (water) budget. "I think this drought is a wake-up call that puts us firmly into the 21st century," said Cantú.

When I consider Wendell Cox's ideas, I remind myself that I am taking in not just a series of ideas but rather a whole worldview. It's kind of like reading Dune , which depicts the famously comprehensive desert world of Arrakis as imagined by sci-fi novelist Frank Herbert.  Cox spoke the other day to ULI's Los Angeles chapter along with USC demographer Dowell Myers. The two weren't exactly adversaries, but they were a study in forms of reasoning. Cox is all induction, beginning with theory and explaining how the facts match it. Meyers is deductive, presenting the facts and going from there.  Cox's a worldview that does not, I think, correspond well to reality -- certainly not the reality of California -- but it's a nonetheless a complete, mostly consistent view. An analysis of Cox, then, relies on finding those moments when his world matches up with the real world just closely enough to make a comparison.  Cox's narrative is a familiar Libertarian one -- and it's fine, as far as it goes. Rather than belabor it, I'd like to pick out a few of Cox's claims, all of which are worth considering if only because they are provocative.  In no particular order (numbered for future reference):  1. The US average for home purchase prices is three times annual household income. California is north of 5x and climbing towards 10x. 2. On a ranking of average commute times in world megacities, Los Angeles ranks last, with 28 minutes. The top city clocked in at 1 hour, 15 minutes.  3. It's sexy to tell stories about how milennials love living in center cities. But not nearly as much as everyone else loves living in suburbs, with 90 percent of new households forming on the fringes.  4. Anyway, even hipsters are going to move away once their kids are old enough to go to school.  5. The Los Angeles region has plenty of land on which to build.  6. The dispersion of employment centers in concert with the dispersion of residential areas has led, on average, to shorter commutes.  7. Construction costs are the same as they are in center cities as they are on the urban fringe, but land costs are lower, and there's less opposition.  8. Cox says that he helped pass the funding legislation for the Los Angeles subway. He's not a fan of subways, but he'd do it again because otherwise the RTD (predecessor to LA Metro) would have squandered money on something else.  9. SB 375 will "force" developers to reduce suburban greenfield developments but will not, because of "regulations," promote much infill.  10. Accounting for housing costs, the poverty rate in California rivals that of Mississippi.  11. Cities with regulations limiting land development have the worst ratios of purchase prices to annual incomes (Hong Kong is the worst globally).  (No offense to Myers, who had a great presentation on demographics, but, you know, if you're not willing to say that Mojave should become the next great L.A. suburb then, well, you're not going to get as much press.) Some responses. See which one of us you agree with.  1. If you compare California to the entire rest of the country , you end up comparing it with many places that aren't nearly as prosperous, not nearly as appealing, and, therefore, not nearly as expensive. With that said, yes, we have a housing crisis .  2. Rankings depend on the objects being ranked. The No. 1 city on Cox's list was Jakarta. Does anyone think that Jarkarta is relevant to a policy discussion about Los Angeles?  3. True enough. It is a sexy story, and we shouldn't be seduced by anecdotes. But you know what's a salient, if less sexy, story? That of all the people forced into the suburbs -- not by choice but by necessity -- because of lack of supply in the center cities.  4. We do need to fix the schools. Before we do that, we need to fix the funding schemes that hurt urban schools. Prop. 13, I'm looking at you.  5. Here's where Myers and Cox got into it. Myers helpfully pointed out that Los Angeles has some pretty significant barriers to development, one of which is called the Pacific Ocean. That's when Cox gestured towards the desert. I'm still having trouble figuring out why it's more preferable to build houses Victorville and Palmdale, which have more meth labs than offices, than it is to build apartments in Santa Monica, which has twice as many jobs as it has bedrooms.  6. Surely this claim is spot-on for some people. If you live in Upland and work in Claremont, more power to you. If you live in El Monte and work in Century City, not so much... 7. This got me thinking. It's true that land on the fringe follows different economic rules than that in the center. Land is dear in the center, so landowners can estimate highest and best uses and charge accordingly. The cagiest landlords effectively suck up all the economic rent. On the fringe, one parcel is a lot like the others; it's a buyers market, and the buyers can bid land costs down. Oh, and there's Prop. 13 again, which encourages landlords to hang on to their properties, sans improvements, indefinitely.  8. 150,000 daily riders thank him. So do the drivers aboveground on Wilshire Bl. (If only we had sandworms to dig tunnels for us!) 9. Most of Cox's arguments are based on passionate readings of actual data and are supported by theories that carry some glimmer of truth. This one, however, nudges discomfortingly into Tea Party / Agenda 21 conspiracy theories.  10. This is a crime and a travesty. See responses to 1 and 11.  11. I've saved the richest one for last. Over and over and over we hear free-market advocates and/or fans of sprawl decry the constraints and distortions of regulations. I'm not unsympathetic, just as Cox isn't, to be fair, a raving maniac about it. But the effect of regulations depends in large part on where you stand: one person's restraint is another person's savior. I'm also tired of wholesale condemnations of "regulations." That does two things: first, it enables conservatives and aggressive developers to nod knowingly and self-satisfyingly; second, it prevents us from actually enacting regulatory reform. See, "regulations" can mean anything you want it to mean -- usually CEQA, sometimes AB 32, sometimes SB 375, lately AB 779 . Prop. 13 isn't a "regulation" of course, because it's all about property rights and freedom. I challenge Cox and his fellow travelers no longer to refer to "regulations" but instead to refer to the specific regulations that they want to change. That approach with force them to explain why the regulation is bad and maybe to propose a solution. He also might consider whether regulations precede or follow the enormous demand that may have pushed up prices in the first place.  Interestingly, Cox aimed his critique largely at regulations that complicate the development of greenfields. I did not hear him express support for, say, looser restrictions on density in urban areas. Houses will solve our real estate crisis, but, somehow, apartments will not. Regulations that protect virgin land are bad, but regulations that constrain the highest and best use of infill parcels � be they height restrictions, density restrictions, or parking requirements�are, I guess, fine.  It's worth noting the location of this event: Century City. We were on the 22nd floor of an office building, 50 miles from the nearest desert, with westerly and northerly views of single-family homes, the Los Angeles Country Club, and the Santa Monica Mountains. The audience consisted of developers who have probably never heard of Victorville, much less been there. They're all trying mightily to develop in Los Angeles � higher, denser. The jobs are already here and the demand is already here, whether Cox likes it or not.  I left the presentation at 9:30 a.m. and crawled westward on Olympic Boulevard. I was caught in the morning traffic. Everyone at that hour is trying to get into Santa Monica, from the east. They can't come from the west. There's an ocean there. Valet, please bring me my sandworm...

The Fourth District Court of Appeal has upheld the City of Newport Beach's decision to "approve" a development project on Banning Ranch, saying that the city complied with both the California Environmental Quality Act and its own general plan. A trial judge had ruled that the city complied with CEQA but violated its own general plan.  The project is still pending before the Coastal Commission. It was the second time in less than three years that the Fourth District upheld Newport Beach's action on the Banning Ranch project. In December 2012, the court ruled that the city's EIR had properly analyzed the impact of the project on adjacent parks.  Banning Ranch  is a 400-acre parcel of land located on a coastal bluff above the Pacific Ocean in Newport Beach that was formerly the site of oil drilling. The development plans calls for remediation of the oil drilling's damage, as well as construction of 1,375 residences, 75,000 square feet of retail space and a boutique hotel to be built on approximately one-quarter of the property. A local conservancy has opposed the development project and advocated for public purchase of the entire property.  Newport Beach's coastal land use plan, or CLUP, was approved by the Coastal Commission in 2005. However, the city has never submitted an implementation plan to the Coastal Commission, so even though the city reviews development projects in the coastal zone, the commission still must approve all permits. Furthermore, the coastal land use plan specifically excludes Banning Ranch, categorizing it as a "deferred certification area" – a strategy that was apparently intended to ensure that controversy over Banning Ranch did not hold up certification of the CLUP. Thus, any action on Banning Ranch must include not just permit approval but approval of the coastal land use plan for the Banning Ranch property. The general plan's land use element calls on the city to "coordinate with state and federal agencies" – more specifically to "work with appropriate state and federal agencies to identify wetlands and habitats to be preserved and/or restored and those on which development will be permitted."  The coastal land use plan, which is part of the general plan, calls on the city to identify environmentally sensitive habitat areas, or ESHAs, in reviewing any coastal project.  In challenging the city's "approval" of the Banning Ranch project, the Banning Ranch conservancy argued that the city violated the general plan by not identifying and mitigating for the loss of wetlands and other environmentally sensitive lands prior to project approval; and that the city violated CEQA by not identifying ESHAs in the environmental impact report. Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert Louis Becking ruled that the city complied with CEQA but violated the general plan. A three-judge panel of the Fourth District affirmed Becking on the CEQA issue but overturned him on the general plan issue, effectively upholding the city's final action.  Upholding Becking on the CEQA issue was a relatively straightforward matter for the appellate court. The court agreed that the CLUP states that the city must identify ESHAs in reviewing any project in the coastal zone. However, the court pointed out that the CLUP specifically excludes Banning Ranch, which will be subject to a separate land use plan that will require separate certification from the Coastal Commission. The court's reasoning on the general plan issue required a much longer and more closely reasoned argument, which turned on the question of what constitutes "coordination" under the general plan. In arguing that the city violated the general plan, the Banning Ranch Conservancy relied heavily on California Native Plant Society v. City of Rancho Cordova (2009) 172 Cal.App.4th 603. In that case, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled that the City of Rancho Cordova, outside of Sacramento, did not sufficiently coordinate with state and federal agencies in designing mitigation for lost wetlands, as called for in its own general plan. Judge Becking bought the argument. But the Third District did not. Referring to specific provisions in the Rancho Cordova and Newport Beach general plans, Justice Raymond Ikola wrote: "… he City's LU 6.5.6 is not as clear as Rancho Cordova's NR 1.7.1.  In the context of discussing the substantive requirements for mitigation, NR 1.7.1 issues a specific command to Rancho Cordova to coordinate with a specific agency (‘Mitigation shall be designed by the City in coordination with the . . . Service') to accomplish a specific task (i.e., the design of the mitigation measures). … The mitigation at issue pertained to a biological resources evaluation that had to occur ‘prior to project approval.' "In contrast," he added, "LU 6.5.6 (entitled "Coordination with State and Federal Agencies") does not compel coordination with the Coastal Commission prior to approval of the Project: ‘Work with appropriate state and federal agencies to identify wetlands and habitats to be preserved and/or restored and those on which development will be permitted.' The Coastal Commission is not mentioned in the text or in the referenced implementation actions.  There is no indication in LU 6.5.6 that this ‘work' must be completed before the City approves the Project."   Justice Ikola criticized Judge Becking sharply for the way he interpreted the city's general plan. Ikola acknowledged that in the Rancho Cordova case, the general plan required "something in between consultation and capitulation". He added: "The appellate court declined to dictate the terms of the writ of mandate, leaving it to the trial court." In the Banning Ranch case, however, Judge Becking went much further, even though the general plan language required less. Justice Ikola took Becking to task for what he characterized as judicial activism: "The court does not explain what it means, in practical terms, to coordinate and work with the Coastal Commission prior to project approval. Presumably, it is something in between consultation and capitulation.  But the lack of specific guidance in the general plan indicates to us that it is unreasonable to find the City's view of LU 6.5.6 to be arbitrary.   He added: "It is improper for courts to micromanage these sorts of finely tuned questions of policy and strategy that are left unanswered by the general plan.  Cities are free to include clear, substantive requirements in their general plans, which will be enforced by the courts.  But courts should not invent obligations out of thin air." The Case: Banning Ranch Conservancy v. City of Newport Beach , No. G049691 (May 20, 2015)  The Lawyers: For Banning Ranch Conservancy (Plaintiffs and Appellants): John G. McClendon, Leibold McClendon & Mann, john@ceqa.com For City of Newport Beach (Defendants and Appellants): Whitman F. Manley, Remy, Moose & Manley, wmanley@rmmenvirolaw.com For Newport Banning Ranch LLC (Real Party in Interest): Susan K. Hori, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, shori@manatt.com For Coastal Commission (Amicus Curiae): Jamee Jordan Patterson, Deputy Attorney General, jamee.patterson@doj.ca.gov

This morning, Hector Tobar, a respected Los Angeles-area commentator, personally heaped all the ecological sins of humankind on to the current residents of Los Angeles in an editorial in the New York Times , a publication that has gotten increasingly feisty about its hatred for California of late. Tobar writes:   "As a native of Los Angeles, I am significantly more responsible for global warming than your average resident of planet Earth. We pioneered an energy-guzzling lifestyle for the masses and taught the world to follow our lead. Now a parched, endless summer is our punishment.   "My own sins against Mother Nature started when I was 15, growing up in the suburb of South Whittier in the 1970s. Every day, I drove my mother's Pinto station wagon an hour to my first job, downtown. Back then, we burned gasoline with abandon, churning greenhouse gases into the atmosphere before any of us were familiar with the phrase. The clouds of smog that choked the Los Angeles basin of my childhood eventually came to smother Beijing, New Delhi and Cairo."  As a "native of Los Angeles," Tobar should know better.  If The New York Times is going to report old news, why not tell us about the sinking of the Titanic while they're at it? You could poll all 40 million collective residents of Beijing, New Delhi, and Cairo and every one of them would tell you something unflattering, and at least partly true, about Los Angeles' environmental impact. It's not like people didn't notice the 250-mile scar that William Mulholland dug in the Earth in 1913. In the 1950s, Los Angeles wasn't called "Smog City" for nothing.    I can accept old criticism if it's useful and true. Dispiriting self-flagellation is another matter.   In blaming his 15-year-old self, Tobar implies that every choice about releasing carbon is a conscious, autonomous act that inherently acknowledges and accepts its own consequences. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth — especially in the 1970s. Humanity did not know then what it knows now about climate change. We learn slowly as a species, and we implement policy changes even more slowly. That doesn't mean that a kid in Whittier — or any of the 10 million others who live in the L.A. area — needs to blame himself.  People in Los Angeles, even those blinded by some orange-hued vision of the American dream, did not just wake up one day and decide that they "wanted" what they got. The sprawl, freeways, and (not incidentally) segregation of Southern California was as much a function of policy as economics. The federal government's role in suburbanization (partly through the GI Bill) is well documented. Banks contributed too. Plenty of companies, from homebuilders to pipe-forgers loved the idea of building sprawling, infrastructure-intensive developments. This pattern persisted all over the country. (Levittown, the first mass-produced suburb, is in Long Island.)  So let's also look at the national picture. Tobar's ecological footprint isn't large because he's from Los Angeles. It's large because he's from the United States . With the exception of a few oil-rich states, we as a country use more energy and create more emissions per capita than any other peoples in the history of the world. Amid this orgy, guess where California ranks among the states in per capita energy consumption? Forty-ninth . We're not Manhattan — which is remarkably efficient, because of shared walls and non-car transport — but we're not Bloomfield Hills either. (Here's an interactive nationwide map of carbon footprints. See if you can spot the center cities.) Tobar blames Los Angeles for ushering in the global age of the automobile. But being first doesn't mean that we are responsible (or even that we are "we" — anyone who had a drivers license in 1925 is long dead). If L.A. hadn't done it first, I'm sure Detroit would have found some other place willing to build roads, highways, and parking garages. Some other city's trolleys would have fallen into disrepair, and the people of that city probably would have been just as thrilled to discover the freedom of the automobile as the people of L.A. were.    I've published many choice words about the short-sightedness and intellectual myopia of Modernist planners — the ones who, following Le Corbusier, dreamed of motion, freedom, and compartmentalization -- but I don't necessarily blame them. Even Robert Moses was doing what seemed right for the time. What's wrong is to keep doing that same thing in the face of evidence of its harm. If I may agree with Tobar for a moment, it's further inaction that makes us sinners today. It just seems like Tobar would have us cut off carbon and turn all of that ticky-tack into apartment buildings all at once. (Elon Musk might be able to help us with the first part; developers will tell you that the second part is going to take a while.)  Tobar solemnly decries our past reliance on driving only to imply that nothing has changed: "In response to the drought emergency, the state is trying to force people to use less water, but only the bravest California politician would suggest we force people to drive less to fight global warming " (emphasis added).  In so doing, he ignores the literally millions of people who are trying to repent, incrementally, at least — and who didn't need his beratement to understand their opportunities and responsibilities to create a more sustainable Southern California.   In fact, by Tobar's measure, California's politicians should be storming the beaches of Normandy. Since the editors of the Times op-ed page didn't bother to check Tobar's facts here, for the record, are a few tidbits that Californians have supported, signed, voted for, and implemented:  AB 32 : The Global Warming Solutions Act (2006)  SB 375 and the regional Sustainable Communities Strategies (2008 and ongoing)  SB 743 : Replacing Level-of-Service metrics with Vehicle Miles Traveled (2014)  Los Angeles Measure R: $40 billion for transportation , only 20 percent of which is for roads (2008)  Los Angeles' Sustainability City "pLAn" (2015)  Gov. Brown's executive order on greenhouse gas emissions (2015)  In cities and counties across the state, not to mention at the Capitol, this list grows nearly by the day. This may not qualify as heroism. We haven't reversed the thermometer yet. But I'll be damned if people aren't trying. And,yes, every one of these policies calls, explicitly or implicitly, for Californians to drive less. I literally cannot go to a conference without multiple public officials touting a car-free future.  These laws, policies, and funding measures — which have made California the greenest jurisdiction west of Iceland -- represent the will and effort of politicians like former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Assemblymember Fran Pavley, former Senate President Pro Tem Darrel Steinberg, the board and staff of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his staff, current Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and his staff, the majorities of the state Assembly and Senate, the staffs and boards of the state's metropolitan planning organizations, and, indirectly, the voters who elected them.  Speaking of voters: one of those policies, Measure R, represents 67 percent of Los Angeles-area voters in the 2008 countywide election. That's 2.039 million people -- 2.039 million people in our smog-choked wasteland who get to be proud of the progress they are trying to make and who are primed to support more efforts to come.  I guess Tobar wasn't one of those voters. But that's OK. We don't need him. We have a long road ahead of us (hopefully one with fewer roads) and many brave souls leading the way.