What's coming down in Sacramento this month is more politics than precipitation: bills at all levels of realism, tough reexaminations of old water deals, horsetrading and litigation on big projects, and calls from Gov. Brown to revise the "Rainy Day Fund" measure on this November's ballot in case of more dry years. The LA Times ' George Skelton called it "fighting season": http://lat.ms/QAaTb2 . Here's just a little of the mid-spring wrangle, in links: If anything in the current fuss is cheering municipal planners, it's a compromise proposal from Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg to put more proceeds of cap-and-trade auctions of pollution rights into affordable housing and public transit. The plan itself first went to the public as a detailed "strategy" paper rather than drafted legislation. It called for compliance with Steinberg's own sustainability measure, SB 375, and with other existing requirements on cap-and-trade proceeds allocation. The plan's "framework" called for up to $610 million in dollar-denominated yearly spending for watersheds, water projects, waste projects, a "climate dividend" on transportation fuels, electric vehicles and a small "Green Bank" of $10 million to "assist the financing of clean energy and other environmentally sustainable projects." Any additional cap-and-trade fees beyond that amount -- and the additional could be $3 billion to $5 billion -- would become "permanent sources" of funds allocated by percentage: Out of a 40% allocation to fund "affordable housing and sustainable communities," at least half would fund housing and the rest of that category's funds would go to planning and "smart growth" development. Another 30% would go to "transit construction and operations." Sen. Steinberg did reconcile himself to Governor Brown's insistence that the high-speed rail project be in on the funds: it would get 20%, permanently. The last 10% would go to highways and roads. Steinberg's own introduction statement on the new proposal is at http://bit.ly/1nkFMyg The "strategy" text is at http://bit.ly/1i45l3y . An endorsement and favorable description from the League of California Cities is at http://bit.ly/RGvifK The California Association of Councils of Government (CALCOG) likewise cheered the proposal. Its statement cast the new proposal as an extension of Sen. Steinberg's SB 375: http://www.calcog.org/DocumentCenter/View/291 CALCOG's general-purpose Cap & Trade monitoring page is at http://www.calcog.org/index.aspx?nid=96 StreetsblogLA and its readers mostly approve. The Streetsblog writeup figures that if the total cap-and-trade proceeds available were $5 billion, the sum for "affordable housing and sustainable communities" would be $1.756 billion: http://bit.ly/QpCuf8 Our own notes on cap-and-trade news as of late March discussed Sen. Steinberg's carbon tax proposal gambit, summarized Gov. Brown's initial proposal for spending the proceeds, and recounted complaints from the Legislative Analyst's Office that some of Brown's proposed spending -- including for high-speed rail -- had tenuous links to the stated goal of reducing greenhouse gases. (Subscription): http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3458 Morris Brown, an anti-tax critic of high-speed rail, recalled Sen. Steinberg's criticisms of cap-and-trade as a revenue approach, including its unpredictability, when the Senator was promoting his carbon tax alternative earlier this year. He does seem to have dropped those complaints: http://bit.ly/1ly0Gu0 The Fresno Bee noted some of the same: http://bit.ly/1gOlp52 In other cap-and-trade developments: The April 24 agenda of the Air Resources Board includes an offset protocol for methane capture at coal mines, although California is not itself a large producer of coal: http://www.arb.ca.gov/regact/2013/capandtrade13/capandtrade13.htm Ecosystem Marketplace has context on the mine methane issue at http://bit.ly/1i9xPtD . The Yurok Tribe created the first forestry offset protocol: the tribe will sell the value of the CO2 sequestered by trees within its project: http://bit.ly/1htBEJY Among housing bills, SB 391 revived a perennial attempt to fund affordable housing with $75 real estate transfer recording fees. LA Times coverage notes the dissolution of redevelopment agencies ended about $1 billion formerly collected for below-market housing, and that proceeds from a voter-aproved below-market housing bond are "nearly gone": http://lat.ms/1eYa86W For comparison, some other subsidized-housing costs: HUD's fiscal 2012 grants to California under the McKinney-Vento homelessness program totaled just over $259 million: http://bit.ly/1tujcEH  Average costs per unit of California's first tax-credit housing allocation round in 2011 worked out to $286,664: http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/ctcac/containment/presentation.pdf Under federal and state low-income housing tax credit programs from 1987 through 2013, California built or rehabbed 292,599 subsidized housing units with some $23 billion in federal tax credits and about $1.45 billion in state tax credits: http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/ctcac/2013/annualreport/projects.pdf Surprisingly high-powered tech industry sponsors lined up behind a limited version of legislation restricting landlords' use of the Ellis Act to empty rented housing by removing it from the rental market. The measure that has picked up heavy-hitting endorsements is SB 1439 (at http://bit.ly/Pp54wc), sponsored by State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. Leno's bill would limit the law to San Francisco only. It would not allow the Ellis Act to be suspended outright, but would allow the city's Supervisors to block use of the Ellis Act by an owner who has held a property less than five years, or at a building whose purchaser previously used the Ellis Act at another building. SB 1439 got its break when some of San Francisco's top political forces lined up behind it: Mayor Ed Lee, Salesforce.com, and venture capital investor Ron Conway. The measure passed the Senate's Transportation and Housing Committee April 1. Endorsers listed in the Senate bill's April 3 analysis include not only tenant, community and housing groups, but also the city government itself and many Internet companies. Apartment owners' and real estate organizations opposed the measure -- and, as the San Francisco Business Times noted, some tech companies stayed out of the discussion.  Attention the Leno version is overshadowing the more sweeping AB 2405, introduced in February by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco. (See http://bit.ly/1kV2uKQ.) That bill would allow any county with a housing shortage to suspend evictions under the Ellis Act "until the county or city and county meets its portion of the regional housing need." It would also place confidentiality restrictions on court records of Ellis eviction cases. Initially it would have treated Ellises as civil cases on a slower calendar than regular evictions but it lost that provision in passing the Assembly Judiciary Committee. More from the SF Business Times : http://bit.ly/1iEsqcP From the San Francisco Chronicle : http://bit.ly/1i4OLAJ Prof. Hina Shah of Golden Gate University's law school, arguing what's needed is much deeper public intervention in San Francisco's housing market: http://bit.ly/RHkkXv In a unanimous en banc opinion, the Ninth Circuit backed the National Resources Defense Council's challenge to 41 long-term contract renewals for Delta irrigation water, holding that the Bureau of Reclamation should first have sought expert biological opinion on what could be done to protect the Delta smelt. The court found that when the contracts were under review in 2004 and 2005, the Bureau did consult the Fish and Wildlife Service, but not "adequately", and that the Plaintiffs' goal of forcing renegotiation of the contracts "remains available." The SF Chron 's Bob Egelko has more at http://bit.ly/1eYcByh The case is NRDC v. Jewell , decision text at http://1.usa.gov/1kz1Hiz The Associated Press reports the decision "won't affect water flows because protections for the smelt were kept in place during the lawsuit" but it does affect water planning prospectively. http://bit.ly/1fim5PU In negotiations separate from the Ninth Circuit ruling, the Dept. of Water Resources was near agreement with the State Water Contractors on provisions that may extend water contracts to 2085. The essential Maven's Notebook water blog has details at http://bit.ly/1ibhmz9 State and federal water officials announced a drought operations plan April 8. Multiple revisions and comments following from the announcement are posted at: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/tucp.shtml . The state's own public drought page suggested it would frugally provide just enough for all: http://ca.gov/drought/top-story-4.html A more technical description, also by supporters, is available from the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) at http://bit.ly/1myha51 Grist 's John Upton argued it would "screw the environment" by retaining water in reservoirs at the expense of river flows: http://bit.ly/1hjMqwB The Sacramento Bee 's Matt Weiser also reported an earful of criticisms on the plan: http://bit.ly/1k2oZMV At first there was talk of blocking three water channels with extra barriers to hold back more flow, as the Bee reported April 9: http://bit.ly/1gOAPGq The March storms led to that plan's cancellation April 18, as Department of Water Resources officials announced they would raise water deliveries to their contractors from zero to 5%: http://bit.ly/1kOqGhU Gov. Brown called a special session, set to start in late April, on a "Rainy Day Fund" that, if the Legislature approves it by a supermajority, would appear on the November ballot. The term "Rainy Day" may sound odd now, in mid-drought, but it was applied four years ago to a mandatory state savings plan, ACA 4, that has only now made it to the ballot. Governor Brown wants to revise it, hence the proposal:  http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=18481 Skelton's "Fighting Season" column said the fund could make a helpful running mate for Gov. Brown as he seeks reelection in November. The Bee explains the proposed revisions to the existing "rainy day" measure already on the statewide November 2014 ballot: ACA 4, enacted in 2010 but held back from elections until this year: http://bit.ly/1eK46Hd ; http://bit.ly/1nDX3jl ACA 4 can be viewed via the Secretary of State's site at http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/qualified-ballot-measures.htm The link to the ACA 4 text offered on the Sec'y of State's site is compressed at http://bit.ly/1jAH7vl The Delta tunnel project, AKA the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), continued to bump into obstacles and, thus far, to dig its way through them. Friends of the River said the BDCP wasn't posting negative comments about its proposals on its official Web site. So the organization set out to post them all on its own site: http://t.co/b7B2r3OWu6 Maven's Notebook has been keeping up on the BDCP's workshops and conference calls to discuss plans and impacts one area at a time: http://mavensnotebook.com/tag/bay-delta-conservation-plan/ Assemblymember Jim Frazier took his own AB 1671 off calendar for the time being, according to ACWA, an opponent of the bill. It would require the state legislature to give specific approval for every federal water conveyance, including those for the BDCP project: http://bit.ly/1jATojq ; The bill is at http://bit.ly/1nlobWR Attorneys from the Best Best & Krieger firm posted a detailed analysis of the March Property Reserve ruling (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3448), which required the BDCP to obtain orders for eminent-domain takings before it could send in staff to do precondemnation studies on potential tunnel sites. The BBK analysis -- at http://bit.ly/1hjYXAf -- suggested California Supreme Court review was likely, but if not overturned it could take up time and money from government entities and property owners alike by putting them all through the more complex eminent domain actions instead of the simpler "entry" procedure that the state had set out to use in the Property Reserve case. Quite a lot of California newspapers editorially announced in the past month that it was time to get serious about managing groundwater. A lot of people had been making sure they heard about it. Amid this buzz -- both politically generated and drought-driven -- Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, now brings SB 1168 and other bills before her state Natural Resources and Water Committee April 22. KQED has details at http://bit.ly/1k3AKmh . The agenda is at http://sntr.senate.ca.gov/agenda The Governor's Office of Planning and Research has held a series of workshops, most recently April 16, on groundwater management. Much of the material is available at http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_groundwater.php . The California Water Action Plan, posted in January, has a substantial groundwater section that calls for state intervention where a basin "is at risk of permanent damage" due to overdraft: http://resources.ca.gov/california_water_action_plan/ The Chico Enterprise-Record suggests this effort has begun to filter out to local communities and officials as a warning to tend to local basins locally rather than risk state intervention. http://bit.ly/1hk6cId Maven's Notebook had near-daily coverage from early March through April 11 of legislative hearings on groundwater, including the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife committee, jointly with the budget committee that considers resources and transportation; and the State Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water: http://mavensnotebook.com/tag/groundwater/ The ACWA is publicizing recommendations for more careful "management and accountability" of groundwater basins: http://www.acwa.com/category/issues/groundwater Its recommendations are at http://bit.ly/QC6nJ9 .ACWA leaders placed this op-ed in the Modesto Bee: http://bit.ly/PpIlQR Some of the ACWA recommendations sound a lot like the March 11 Legislative Analyst's Office report that we wrote up at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3448 -- for example, at a very basic level, the call to recognize that groundwater basins' inputs, outputs and contents can and should be measured, and that surface water and groundwater are physically related to each other. A Stanford report is out from the Water in the West project: "Before the Well Runs Dry: Improving the Linkage Between Groundwater and Land Use Planning." See http://waterinthewest.stanford.edu/groundwater_landuse . Case studies cover the Paso Robles, Orcutt/Santa Maria, Butte County and Kings Basin groundwater basins. The Somach environmental litigation firm (item via Maven) suggested a Tulare County court ruling "may be a sign of things to come" in that it told a a private company, Sandridge Partners, LP, http://www.somachlaw.com/alerts.php?id=275, to stop pumping and moving water out of the local Tule subbasin for irrigation pending a trial on whether it has the right to do so. California's high-speed rail plan, like the water tunnel project, bumped along through practical obstacles while the Legislature argued about its funding. AP reported the State Public Works Board gave the California High-Speed Rail Authority power to take 14 properties near Fresno by eminent domain, out of 144 it had identified that it might need on the way to Bakersfield. http://bit.ly/1k2HpNj The rail authority issued its final EIR for the same Fresno-Bakersfield stretch, per the Fresno Bee , which says the EIR takes up 20,000 pages: http://bit.ly/1h5vvSJ The Fresno Bee reported construction may start in May, likely near Madera: http://bit.ly/PpP511 Persons with the courage to read the EIR are referred to http://www.hsr.ca.gov/Programs/Environmental_Planning/final_fresno_bakersfield.html Bakersfield officials already want a part of the EIR redone that they say would cut through a park and the landscaped Kern River Parkway: http://bit.ly/1qfIB2y The San Mateo Daily Journal reported the rail authority's latest business plan predicts 5% lower revenue, based on fewer trips than originally projected: http://bit.ly/1kVVsFF Some plan documents are among the April 10 agenda materials for the board at http://hsr.ca.gov/Board/monthly_brdmtg.html. In case you missed it, two ballot initiative petitions are still circulating against the high-speed rail measure. The texts of the measures, linked from the Secretary of State's site, are at http://bit.ly/1jlOABX and http://bit.ly/1a6fUMc The SF Business Times and E&E News reported the man promoting one of them has an idea to organize travel by vacuum-powered tubes instead: http://bit.ly/1pnYdEa ; http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059993099/print A March poll by the Public Policy Institute of California said 53% of adult Californians favored the high-speed rail project, which is stronger support than some previous results. The data did not address the California public's sentiments on travel by tube. http://ppic.org/main/pressrelease.asp?i=1483 via Sacramento Business Journal at http://bit.ly/1iF1VnD).

Stadium proposal is battling stadium proposal in Oakland, a mid-sized city with limited resources that wants to keep its name on big-time sports marquees. So far, professional sports team owners appear to be tilting toward a proposal to build a new football stadium, and possibly a new venue for baseball, on the current Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum site. At the same time, Mayor Jean Quan and some powerful downtown Oakland business leaders are pushing a competing project in a site closer to downtown, on the Howard Terminal; and yet Quan is hedging her bets by supporting the Coliseum-site option as well, just to make sure the city ends up with new stadiums to keep sports teams in the East Bay city. Any predictions, however, may be premature until August, when developers of the two competing projects are slated to file proposals with the city. One question for Oakland sports fans is whether the city or local developers can convince some restless local sports franchises that Oakland remains a good place to play ball and make big-league money. Subsidies in Oakland, a city with a broad swath of poverty and limited resources, are already a thorny issue among some City Councilmembers and Alameda County Supervisors, especially in view of the poor deal that the city made to bring the Raiders back more than a decade ago. As a venue for Major League Baseball and the National Football League, Oakland is a glass half full. The city has not shared equally in the rising tides of high-tech wealth that have lifted many boats in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. On the plus side are the availability of land, the support of elected officials and a central location in the Bay Area, in terms of both freeways and mass transit, especially in relation to neighboring San Francisco. In the minus column, however, is a public image of Oakland, fair or not, as an unglamorous place with some patchy, even dangerous, neighborhoods. Team owners are eyeing the suburbs. Despite the recent trend of building stadiums in downtown areas, Oakland team owners are aware that their fan base is made up largely of well-heeled suburbanites, who can afford season tickets. The San Francisco 49ers moved this year from the unpopular Candlestick Park in the tough Bayview Hunters Point district of the city nearly 40 miles east to affluent Santa Clara. In a similar bid to court the bulging wallets of Silicon Valley, the Oakland A's last year attempted to move the franchise to San Jose last year. Despite enthusiasm from local officials, Major League Baseball nixed the San Jose deal. (The proposed venue is less than six miles from the 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, and the 49ers want to control the South Bay baseball market. But the City of San Jose is still pursuing an antitrust appeal on the matter before the Ninth Circuit.)     One thing that's certain is that the status quo is a no-go. Both the city's baseball team, the Oakland A's, and its football club, the Raiders, are dissatisfied with the aging Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Football aside, the Coliseum qualifies as one of  the oldest stadiums in baseball, a sport that places a high value on newness. Neither team has adjusted well to the hybrid facility, which attempts to accommodate both sports by awkwardly reconfiguring the field for each. Baseball and football are not the only pro sports franchises itching to leave the city of Jack London behind. Basketball no longer seems a possibility in Oakland: On April 21, Oakland's basketball team, the Warriors, announced they were buying a 12-acre site in the Mission Bay area, near the UC San Francisco medical school campus. The purchase, which won praise from coastline-preservation activists including former mayor Art Agnos, is less controversial, and a far easier candidate for government approvals, than the previously intended site on the Piers 30-32 just south of the Bay Bridge.  The forced marriage of baseball and football at the Coliseum has bred discord between the sports and made headaches for Coliseum management, a joint effort of Oakland and Alameda County. The squeakiest wheel among team owners is arguably Lew Wolff of the A's, who angered many Oakland fans last year by attempting to move the team south to San Jose. For the inconvenience of staying in the Coliseum, Wolff wants a consolation prize in the form of a giant new scoreboard. He wants the scoreboard so much, in fact, that the A's owner has proposed relocating the team "temporarily" to another Northern California stadium until the Coliseum buys and installs the new hardware -- an idea described as "flying-unicorn nuts" by Mercury News sportswriter Mark Purdy. When the stadium balked at paying for the signage, Wolff said he could pay the bill if it were amortized over five years and offered to sign a lease extension for that duration. Surprisingly, Coliseum officials said no. The reason was concern about alienating the Raiders. Last year, team owner Mark Davis, the Dutch Boy-coiffed son of the legendarily flinty Al Davis, signed a one-year lease extension at the Coliseum. The younger Davis, who appears no less decisive than his dad in the bid to elevate the Raiders brand, apparently believed that the old Coliseum was soon to be demolished (or that the Raiders were soon to be playing in another city). Accordingly, the Coliseum may not have five years to wait for Wolff to pay off his new scoreboard. New development at the Coliseum site may solve problems for both teams, however. The program calls for two new stadiums, along with plentiful housing and retail on 800 acres. Colony Capital, a real estate financier, assumed control of the floundering project after the previous developer, Forest City, dropped out of the deal, presumably for lack of financing. To date no deal has been publicly announced, although Colony Capital, a real estate finance firm, is lobbying strongly for the project. Colony must assemble a development team and come up with a preliminary design before approaching the city for a building permit. According to the Mayor's office, however, the deal needs another $500 million to $600 million, and even in the high-rolling world of commercial real estate, that sum is considered a lot of money.  Coliseum City is just a recent example of the growing trend among developers to use sports stadiums as "anchors" for large-scale development. Recent stadium developments nationally, such as the proposed Atlanta Braves stadium in suburban Cobb County, Ga., routinely include plans for retail, commercial and/or housing development, on a large scale. An optimistic way to view this stadium-plus style of development is that sports facilities attract investment and credibility to the immediate area, and cities can use stadium projects as a way to pursue large-scale urban reinvestment schemes. A skeptical view is that developers and team owners impose high costs of stadium development on the public sector while using the generous development rights attached to the project to enrich themselves with multi-family and retail projects. Oakland's rival to Coliseum City is Howard Terminal, a waterfront site controlled by the Port of Oakland. On March 1, port officials removed an obstacle to stadium development by reviewing, and turning down, three alternate uses for the waterfront site. As a precondition for conveying the 170-acre site to stadium builders, the port had to demonstrate that commercial development would not displace any important maritime use. With that formality out of the way, the port appears open to proposal from a group of Oakland businessmen calling for multiple stadiums at Howard Terminal. The waterfront site was endorsed by Mayor Jean Quan, who has also spoken glowingly of the Coliseum project. Quan's endorsement may be a mixed blessing: Quan is an unpopular mayor with limited political capital. Further, Quan embarrassed herself, and potentially the financiers behind the Coliseum project, by incorrectly stating that the crown prince of Dubai was a partner in the deal.  (Her spokesperson later backtracked on the claim.) With or without Quan's support, the Howard Terminal proposal looks jinxed, largely by the disinterest of the team owners. Davis, the Raiders owner, has come out publicly in support of the Coliseum City project. Wolff, for his part, says the A's will never play at Howard Terminal, nor is he willing to sell the team to a new owner who would field the team at the port location. If developers are serious about building a new stadium complex in Oakland, they may have do it without subsidies. A number of elected officials, including several Alameda County Supervisors and Oakland City Council members, oppose tossing public money into a new stadium deal. Those officials have a genuine basis for concern: Oakland has still not paid off the $200 million spent on improvements to the Coliseum 20 years ago, as part of the arrangement that brought the Raiders back to Oakland from Los Angeles. Taking on that debt was a tall order for a city whose budget for FY 2013-14 is $430.16 million. The next proverbial shoes to drop are a feasibility report for Howard Terminal, to be followed by actual proposals in August. At that point the city expects at least one of the projects to be far enough along to sign an exclusive-right-to-negotiate with the city. Will Oakland, the long-suffering suitor of sports teams, participate in either project? "We'll see then," says mayoral spokesperson Sean Maher.

It has been a busy few weeks in toxics and nuisances. Southern California air quality enforcers battled lead, arsenic, chromium-6, red jalapeños and chicken manure. The Bay Area AQMD adopted a new greenhouse gas control program. A study found air pollution is worse in communities of color. Another found further evidence that pollution from traffic is bad for your heart. The Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments on rail yard emissions, the state water board proposed three new TMDL standards, and the state public health department proposed new chromium 6 rules for public drinking water. All over the state, activists and local governments worked to discourage fracking in local wells, and local officials from Berkeley to Sacramento grew concerned about rail movements of oil from fracking. Vice Magazine accused Chevron of founding a local news site to buffer its image, and a crowd turned out to debate the EIR for Chevron's proposed plant upgrade to treat higher-sulfur crude. As told in links: In Vernon, in the LA industrial corridor, it's hard to tell how much of the lead recently found in soil may be from the Exide Technologies plant. The plant recycles lead-acid batteries such as car batteries and has a long history of complaints and accusations over lead and arsenic emissions. Driven by local outcry, overlapping regulatory, legislative and political efforts are afoot to clean up its emissions or shut it down: Exide's statements; most recently April 8, regretting denial of its request for more time to meet a new "negative pressure" standard for operations: http://www.exide.com/en/about/news.aspx The AQMD's page on Exide's alleged violations and responses, including near-daily violation notices since repair work began March 22: http://www.aqmd.gov/prdas/AB2588/Exide/Exide.html The AQMD's April 11 filing for an Order of Abatement: http://www.aqmd.gov/news1/2014/ExideOrderOfAbatement.htm State Sen. Ricardo Lara's SB 712, to suspend Exide's operations pending renewal of its operating permit, which has reportedly not been renewed since 1981: http://bit.ly/1fUnNH2 An FAQ from Southern California Public Radio: http://bit.ly/1hM2gnY; April 11 update: http://bit.ly/1qXwiZ4 March LA Times coverage: http://lat.ms/1gfoYWp; http://lat.ms/PBHM6P Three activist groups working on the matter: Communities for a Better Environment: http://www.CBECal.org East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice: http://www.eycej.org California Environmental Justice Alliance: http://caleja.org/ The South Coast AQMD pursued Hixson Metal Finishing, a chrome plating and anodizing plant in Newport Beach, over alleged emissions of carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium 6. See http://www.aqmd.gov/news1/2014/HixsonPR.htm and http://lat.ms/PyfHgX. In a dispute over nuisance odor effects from chili peppers, the city of Irwindale declared the Sriracha hot-sauce plant a public nuisance: http://lat.ms/1i3M3q4 . The Pasadena Star News and LA Weekly reported the South Coast AQMD received variously 61 or 73 complaints but 41 of them came from the same four households, and only four of the complaints were traced back to the sauce plant. They reported the AQMD conducted "chili-grinding bench tests of its own" and later was working with the company to improve its filters but did not issue a notice of violation. But Irwindale's consultant, equipped with a Nasal Ranger Field Olfactometer, found fluctuating odors that at times "burned eyes in some locations": http://bit.ly/1f6wu0T; http://bit.ly/1gIuTi9 Yes, the Nasal Ranger is a real item: http://www.nasalranger.com/ The company at first offered reassurances that it had an 18-month supply and would make necessary changes before that ran out: http://lat.ms/1iBqY8v More recently owner David Tran talked about leaving Irwindale and got plenty of offers to move his plant elsewhere: http://lat.ms/1gIstjM ; http://lat.ms/1hbtrUP Sriracha is made with red jalapeños from Underwood Ranches in Kern County, which has said it won't stop planting the peppers: http://bit.ly/1lj4oDk The sauce is inspired by a Thai recipe originally enjoyed with seafood: http://t.co/pyOl2q5SJi (via @sonnylebythebay) It has also been celebrated in cookbooks, cocktail recipes and a festival: http://lat.ms/1nvgKJT and a film: http://bit.ly/QupxAN This "Sriracha hoarder" was pictured last December in mid-forage: https://twitter.com/805foodie/status/413025524290572288 In late March and early April, the owner of the former Escondido Country Club fertilized part of the property with chicken manure, creating an alleged "Level 5 stench". Cited by the county and facing possible court action and fines, the owner brought in a cleaning service to remove it -- while also saying it had made a legal use of a legal product. Neighbors reportedly said the manure was dumped on the part of the property nearest the densest group of homes, and they told reporters the grass there was dead anyway. The owner, Stuck in the Rough, LLC, has been in a dispute with the same neighbors for two years over its plan to build houses on the property. http://bit.ly/RwVjhA ; http://bit.ly/1gzamQE ; http://golfdig.st/1r6qwCv The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) adopted a "10-Point Climate Action Work Program" for greenhouse gas reduction: http://bit.ly/1tktzLf . The Marin I-J quoted several Marin County climate and environmental activists as approving: http://bit.ly/1f6ExLb A University of Minnesota study found nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant from cars and other engines, is pervasively worse in neighborhoods where people of color live. The study found differences based on income as well as race, but the racial differences in pollution were more dramatic. Emily Badger wrote it up for the Washington Post at http://wapo.st/1kxTJpR . We already knew pollution from traffic is bad for the heart, but the ARB just hosted a talk on a new aspect of the badness: damage to "the expression of genes in pathways that are important to adverse cardiovascular outcomes." http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/seminars/delfino2/delfino.htm Courthouse News took the trouble to cover 9th Circuit oral arguments in the NRDC litigation over diesel emissions from rail yards: http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/04/10/66960.htm The State Water Resources Control Board has opened comment periods for proposed changes to "Total Maximum Daily Load" (TMDL) standards for pollutants in three coastal areas. All of these have been locally approved but now are in new comment periods before consideration by the state board: Separate metals and toxics changes for Ballona Creek, and a toxics change for Marina Del Rey, have comments due May 13 at noon per State Department of Water Resources notification emails. See items marked R13 and R14 at: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/losangeles/water_issues/programs/tmdl/tmdl_list.shtml A new TMDL for toxicity and pesticides in the Santa Maria River Watershed was approved by the Central Coast Water Board January 30. Comments are due to the state board by noon May 21. The proposed new standard is at http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralcoast/water_issues/programs/tmdl/docs/santa_maria/pesticide/index.shtml The California Dept. of Public Health has proposed a rule saying all the chromium 6 you should drink is about 10 parts per billion. Some others say it should be less. The LA Times ' Boxall says it's the first drinking water standard for that chemical in the U.S.: http://lat.ms/1mlmSV4 The proposed reg is at http://www.cdph.ca.gov/Pages/NR14-038.aspx Yes, that's the "Erin Brockovich" pollutant. No, Ms. Brockovich is not pleased: http://bit.ly/1tkwALv Neither is the NRDC: http://www.nrdc.org/media/2014/140415.asp At first, concern about trains carrying oil from the North Dakota fracking fields came across as climate-focused activism -- a campaign serving big-picture environmental goals as much as any one locality. This spring, however, it began to resonate more as a local safety concern -- one that politicians with pragmatic public images could get behind. This from the Bee , first posted in late March, describes cooperation among cities to protect local safety on the route taken by oil trains from the North Dakota fracking operations to refineries in Benicia, Martinez and other coastal cities: http://bit.ly/QvvPzU. Environmentalists represented by Earthjustice have sued Kinder Morgan and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to block shipments of crude oil from North Dakota by rail through the city of Richmond. Earthjustice's statement is at http://bit.ly/1lGTQBH. The CBS affiliate KPIX had more at http://cbsloc.al/1mHdGwH By early April Sacramento officials were addressing the subject in earnest:. http://bit.ly/1mKFu3a Citing last year's Lac-Megantic disaster in Quebec, Assemblymember Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, announced April 17 that he would introduce legislation to train and inform local first responders about petroleum shipments through their areas, and to set up contingency plans and grant programs for responses: http://bit.ly/1jU6x95 ; http://bit.ly/RytZPX The Valero and Tesoro companies, whose large refineries have been mentioned in the oil trains debate, have said little on their Web sites on the subject, but Tesoro did announce in February that it was updating its rail car fleet with new safety designs: http://bit.ly/1mmNtkE The movement against fracking in California oilfields likewise has changed tone this spring, shifting from high-minded big-picture rhetoric to local anxiety about water use, water safety, earthquake risks, and emissions: The Chico Enterprise-Record reports Butte County hasn't added an oil or gas well in "more than two decades, and nobody has ever sought permission to conduct a 'fracking' operation," and the county's water director told the Supervisors that local geology wasn't best suited for it anyway. So the Supes' 4-1 vote to have an anti-fracking ordinance drafted for Butte County may have been a bit on the symbolic side: http://bit.ly/1jld3E1 On the other hand, Los Angeles' City Council has actual wells at stake as it moves toward a fracking ban within the city limits (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3448). There are equally real stakes for the Mitchell-Leno fracking bill, SB 1132, to block all "well stimulation treatments" until a study could be completed on public safety requirements to be attached to future such treatments. The Culver City Observer , in Democratic Sen. Holly Mitchell's district, quoted Mitchell saying, "The largest urban oil field in the country is in a predominantly minority, residential neighborhood of my district." http://bit.ly/1eRnEte The bill, which has won its first committee approval, is at http://bit.ly/1eMTtmP. Culver City's Council was edging toward adoption of a proposed fracking ban in March but has taken no definite action as yet. Fracking was an issue in the April 8 Council election there, in which sitting councilmembers Jeff Cooper and Jim Clark were reelected: http://bit.ly/1egvcQo ; http://bit.ly/1kMWLqh ; http://bit.ly/1kMX7gP Long Beach has resisted calls to limit its lucrative oil facilities more strictly while the town of Carson has issued a temporary ban on oil and gas drilling that it might extend. (See http://bit.ly/1gVMEOO via CaCities.org.) In Santa Barbara, an informal hearing on fracking, hosted by Assemblymembers Das Williams, D-Santa Barbara, and Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, filled the Supervisors' hearing room with people interested to hear political and scientific expert speakers on tracking and regulating the practice in California: http://bit.ly/1r0B5cd KQED has a special report online about fracking as a use of water on the Monterey Shale deposit near Wasco outside Bakersfield, where water rights are fiercely disputed. http://blogs.kqed.org/science/audio/with-drought-new-scrutiny-over-frackings-water-use/. With oil producers and processors on the whole less than popular, the Chevron refinery in Richmond has founded an online community paper, the Richmond Standard , that announces on its front page: "We aim to provide Richmond residents with important information about what's going on in the community, and to provide a voice for Chevron Richmond on civic issues." The eternally brash Vice Magazine has loudly criticized the paper as a public relations ploy: http://www.vice.com/read/crude-journalism . The lefty East Bay Express reported an activist who had bought a ticket to a Chevron event in Oakland on "energy and sustainability" was removed before he could distribute a handout mocking the Standard : http://bit.ly/1mmy0n6 So is the Standard slanted? It does seem a little heavy on Chevron's charitable and environmental initiatives. See http://richmondstandard.com. As for more contested matters, here's the Standard 's writeup of a recent community meeting on an EIR for a refitting at Chevron's plant that "would allow crude with higher sulfur content to be used": http://bit.ly/1ngqWZF Here's the San Jose Mercury News on the same meeting: http://bit.ly/QnjUV8

A pair of local ballot measures supported by the Port of San Diego Ship Repair Association will remain on San Diego's June 3 city ballot thanks to an April 4 court decision. Measures B and C are an effort by the "Protect Our Jobs Coalition", in which the shipyards are significant members, to overturn a recently approved community plan update for the mixed-use Barrio Logan neighborhood. More than half the 1000-acre plan area is part of the Port of San Diego or the Naval Station. The plan's goals include health and safety protections for residential areas, new housing development, and an effort to insulate residential and industrial uses from each other. The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote, "the shipyards feared the plan might interfere with their suppliers and possibly lead to loss of contracts and a decline in their contracts ? even after five key blocks were set aside as a buffer between industry and housing." The Environmental Health Coalition, which supports the community plan update, petitioned to disqualify the shipyards' measures from the June ballot, alleging the signature campaign to qualify Measures B and C for the ballot had used misleading statements to gather signatures. The disputed statements contended the Barrio Logan Community Plan would interfere with San Diego's working waterfront, harming local maritime jobs and allowing residential development to encroach on industrial land. In a written ruling, Judge Randa Trapp found most of the disputed statements were matters of opinion and therefore permissible. But she did find one claim had been outright misleading: that the initiative would save 46,000 jobs and $14 billion in annual revenue. She found those figures in fact referred to the economic activity of "the entire maritime industry" in the area, not just of the shipyards. Her decision said the specific figures were taken out of the signature gatherers' materials midway through the campaign but "the signatures prior to the change were still counted." Despite this finding, Trapp ruled that "the balance of equities favors having the matter go to a vote." Although the shipyards' Protect Our Jobs Coalition campaigned to put Measures B and C on the ballot, they will now be campaigning for a "No" vote on each measure. The measures ask, respectively, whether the City Council's resolution and its ordinances updating the plan shall be approved. Accordingly a "No" vote sides with the shipyards and a "Yes" vote sides with the plan update. That leaves the Environmental Health Coalition campaigning for a "Yes" vote on the very measures it tried to take off the ballot. The ship repair association has been represented in the matter by Bradley W. Hertz and Jim Sutton of the Sutton Law Firm, a prominent campaign law firm. Relevant links: U-T coverage with texts of the court decision, parties' statements: http://bit.ly/1sxtraS Barrio Logan Planning page: http://www.sandiego.gov/planning/community/cpu/barriologan/ Measures B and C and plan text: http://www.sandiego.gov/city-clerk/elections/city/140603.shtml CP&DR Publisher Bill Fulton is Director of Planning for the City of San Diego. He did not participate in the drafting of this article.

When a new shopping center at the edge of town might skim off customers from existing businesses, how far can a planning department go to protect against "urban decay"? Quite some distance under current CEQA law, and a little farther in light of an April 1 partial publication order from California's Third District appellate court. The order gives the weight of precedent to the core of a February 28 decision in California Clean Energy Committee v. City of Woodland . The February ruling overturned an EIR for a new shopping center, saying it did not impose enough mitigations of the urban decay risks and did not fully justify its rejection of a mixed-use alternative. The court got requests to publish the decision not only from the Davis-based California Clean Energy Committee (CCEC) as successful plaintiff, but also from the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment; the Santa Cruz environmental law firm of Wittwer Parkin; and noted Los Angeles attorney Beverly Grossman Palmer of Strumwasser & Woocher LLP, representing the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City. (The Santa Monica group is in its own separate litigation against a large development project proposed for the Bergamot stop on the expanding LA County light-rail line, but that matter is not mentioned in Palmer's letter.) The city and developer opposed publication. Amanda Berlin of the Remy Moose Manley firm, which represented the city of Woodland, wrote, "The decision focuses on the record for the Gateway II project, so if the decision remains published, it's not clear whether it will have significant implications for other cities." But Ryan Moroney, an associate with Wittwer Parkin, said the opinion helpfully stated a need for "objective measurable criteria" in mitigation measures, whereas "We see a lot of EIRs that have this sort of wishy-washy mitigation measure that says, 'We're not sure what we're gonna do but when the time comes we're gonna do our best'." He said it re-enunciated CEQA's basic purpose: "The whole principle is you're supposed to mitigate to the extent feasible if you've identified impacts." And while some deferral of mitigation measures may be allowed, "you've got to really have a plan about what you're going to do." At issue in Woodland was an edge-of-town shopping center known as Gateway II, proposed by Petrovich Development Company, LLC. Petrovich's Gateway I, an existing 49-acre residential and commercial development, was already completed and leasing when the company proposed Gateway II. The Woodland Daily Democrat reported the existing Gateway Center now contains a Costco, Target and Best Buy. Woodland's City Council granted annexation and zoning approvals for the Gateway II project but reduced it from the proposed 234 acres to 61.3 acres, and imposed mitigation measures to reduce urban decay both downtown and at the existing County Fair Mall. The Council's approval resolution predicted the project "would result in physical deterioration and urban decay" of existing retail centers, especially if existing big box retailers moved to the new property -- though it said changes imposed on the project would "avoid or substantially lessen" such effects. Plaintiff CCEC argued the mitigation measures weren't enough. The trial court mainly sided with the city but the Third District held the city should have done more under CEQA to protect its existing retail businesses. The parts of the decision that were granted publication mainly considered whether the city imposed correct and sufficient requirements to mitigate "urban decay" effects. The city had required the developer to seek a master conditional use permit requiring uses that would not compete directly with existing downtown retail; to prepare its own market study; pay half the cost of two city planning studies; and work with the County Fair Mall on a strategic land use plan. The court found the market study should not have been delegated to the developer to prepare and that it failed to require specific mitigations. It found the rest of the measures weren't improper, but lacked enough clear promises of action to protect existing retail elsewhere in town. The court was not reassured by the city's plan to conduct later more detailed reviews of individual construction plans that would be tiered on the initial larger-scale approvals. Palmer's letter, provided by the Santa Monica group, emphasized aspects of the ruling that limited deferred mitigation and required enforceable criteria in promised mitigations: notably, "fair-share" payments for measures whose cost and methods are not yet spelled out, and abatement efforts "lacking any 'criteria for success'". She described one holding as "a logical extension" of Sundstrom v. County of Mendocino (1988) 202 Cal.App.3d 296, "which held that development of mitigation measures may not be delegated to unaccountable agency staff members." She wrote that the Woodland case went a step farther in the same area by refusing to delegate the task of developing mitigation measures to the project proponent. Palmer's letter further noted findings that an issue was sufficiently preserved on appeal "so long as the 'specific objections' are raised by any member of the public". In a less detailed section of the opinion that Palmer's letter likewise flagged as important, the court agreed with CCEC that the city gave inadequate reasons for turning down a mixed-use alternative that would have developed 93 acres of housing and commercial uses, including "a local-serving commercial town center" with housing above the shops, on a 154-acre annexation parcel. It said the draft EIR emphasized claims that mixed-use or reduced commercial use alternatives were economically infeasible, but the city's final decision claimed without real evidence that the mixed-use alternative would have worse environmental impacts than the proposed project. Further, the court accepted CCEC's argument that the energy impacts, including transportation effects, were not properly analyzed. Palmer saw importance there in the court's finding that reference to state energy standards were not enough because they "do not address several impacts that are within the scope of CEQA, such as transportation impacts, and the question of whether a project should be built at all." In sections of the decision that remain unpublished, the court rejected a CCEC objection based on alleged noncompliance with the city General Plan rather than CEQA, finding CCEC asserted it too late in the litigation. The court also refused to call the city the "prevailing party" in deciding who should pay for preparation of the record. The CCEC organization has a modest public profile despite some environmental litigation and regulatory successes in recent years. Public records show CCEC shares an address with its lawyer, Eugene Wilson, in Davis. Reached for this article, Wilson declined to comment about the case or the organization. Two members of the original three-judge panel, Justices Ronald Robie and Andrea Lynn Hoch, issued the publication order. The third member, Justice Elena Duarte, joined in the original decision but not in the publication order. Links: The case: http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/C072033.PDF. Online docket including notes on the publication requests: http://bit.ly/1qrIrFt. Analysis on the Remy Moose Manley site: http://bit.ly/1eqAi2b. Background from the Woodland Daily Democrat : http://bit.ly/1sKwbBK. On Santa Monica's Bergamot Transit Village litigation: http://bit.ly/1sTQL2J

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has placed its water quality concerns in direct conflict with the state's affordable housing shortage by filing a complaint with the Regional Water Quality Control Board against the City of San Jose over its Coyote Creek encampment, unofficial home to 150 or more people who reportedly live without access to basic utilities. The Mercury News reported at http://bit.ly/1gGkC4Q that the complaint came from Lt. Byron Jones of Fish and Wildlife, "a retired 22-year veteran of the San Jose Police Department" and it "charges that city administrators and police 'have refused to remove the encampments and protect the water.'" The charges followed two years of pressure for cleanups amid a level of expressed resentment by conventionally housed neighbors that Mercury News reporter Bruce Newman described as "an organized resistance movement." http://bit.ly/1snjvRp U.S. cities with encampments increasingly face the choice whether to provide (or permit the provision of) infrastructure such as clean water, sewage and garbage removal, sturdy shelters, electricity or responsive policing, or instead remove the encampments themselves because of nuisance conditions that appear at high population densities in the absence of urban systems such as sewerage. A news analysis based on interviews with experts about the San Jose situation is at www.mintpressnews.com/city-san-jose-cleansing-homeless-encampments/187406/. Prior news reports on grave environmental concerns about Coyote Creek water pollution include two from 2012: the Mercury News at http://bit.ly/1eilrkJ and the San Francisco Chronicle , focusing on the Save the Bay organization's  "trash hot spot" rating, at http://bit.ly/1lIl0rF. Last summer a drama-laden photo essay in Business Insider referred to the encampment as "The Jungle" and called it "the largest homeless encampment in the continental United States." http://www.businessinsider.com/the-jungle-largest-homeless-camp-in-us-2013-8?op=1. It said up to 175 people may live there at a time. Another perspective is offered by a report prepared on Sacramento's 2011 American River encampment conditions by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation. The rapporteur, Catarina de Albuquerque, called on the United States to meet the needs of all its people for access to sanitation with dignity. At the Sacramento camp, where such provisions were otherwise absent, she praised a man named Tim who at the time of her visit was making weekly journeys by bicycle to carry bags of human waste away from the camp for disposal in a public restroom. See http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/04/4238427/un-investigator-urges-sacramento.html and the UN report (PDF) at http://bit.ly/1g22rrn.

In an outcome more helpful to residential than institutional customers, the Public Utilities Commission has interpreted the AB 327 solar legislation of 2013 to grant a 20-year extension of the current Net Energy Metering (NEM) payback deal for solar panel owners who send energy back into the grid. The extension will apply for 20 years for each customer of Pacific Gas and Electric, San Diego Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison who connects a solar system to the grid before either July 1, 2017 or the date the local cap for participation is reached, whichever comes first. The cap will be reached when the local utility's "eligible customer-generators" together have the capacity to meet 5 percent of the system's peak demand. Customers who beat that cutoff date will have the right, for 20 years from their respective dates of connection, to be paid for power they generate based on the existing NEM tariff structure. Among many other findings, the decision said that, since 2010 in California, it takes residential customers 8 to 12 years to break even and commercial customers 8 to 18 years, so a 20-year grandfathering period meets the AB 327 requirement for a "reasonable expected payback period". It said the paybacks to solar generators at NEM rates might cost other ratepayers as much as $1 billion per year by 2020 if by then the 5 percent capacity limits had been reached. For people and companies newly entering the program after the cutoff date, and for the initial adopters after their 20-year periods end, a new tariff structure is to be set that will likely pay solar-generating customers less for their energy in order to reduce burdens on other ratepayers. Some commenters in the PUC proceeding had said the initial rates should be maintained for up to 30 years, based on the expected useful life of a solar power system. The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote that "Schools and water districts that installed solar sought a 30-year transition to a new tariff and fear they may ultimately lose money." It said "Many publicly financed solar projects have a long payback period". See http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/mar/28/solar-tariff-grandfathered/. Because the value of a solar energy system will depend in part on whether it qualifies for the NEM tariff structure, the decision told the utilities to report their progress toward the "transition trigger level" cutoff point when the program will stop accepting new participants on the original terms. Likewise it said "The Commission expects solar installers to provide honest and complete disclosures". The PUC press release is at http://bit.ly/1lxlKxk and the proposed decision that was approved is at http://bit.ly/P83Zt0.

An academic study that gauges sprawl in cities nationwide has placed San Francisco very high in its compactness rankings ? one alternate standard, buried deep in the report, actually ranks it first. It also rates Los Angeles above a surprising number of other cities, considering it's stereotyped as suffering from low-rise growth. The study, "Measuring Sprawl," rates cites on a spectrum from "sprawl" to "compact and connected" based on four factors, each representing a basket of variables: "development density" (residential and otherwise), "land use mix" (based on data about WalkScores and types of jobs near each other), "activity centering" (roughly, whether downtowns are busier than peripheries), and "street accessibility", which values short blocks, four-way intersections and "blocks that are urban in size". This four-factor approach ranks the New York/White Plains/Wayne NY-NJ metro area highest for compactness, followed by San Francisco/San Mateo/Redwood City, California. Next in California are Santa Barbara/Santa Maria/Goleta, #4, Santa Cruz/Watsonville, #6, and Santa Ana/Anaheim/Irvine, #10. The Los Angeles/Long Beach/Glendale metro comes in at #21. San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos is #103 and Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville is #120. At the other end of the scale, the Riverside-San Bernardino/Ontario metro comes in at #215 out of 221 areas rated. The most sprawling metro in the ranking is Hickory/Lenoir/Morganton, NC, just below Atlanta. The co-authors of the study are Professor Reid Ewing and Shima Hamidi, a graduate research assistant, both of the University of Utah's Metropolitan Research Center. The reports mention project team members from the National Cancer Institute and Smart Growth America and preparation for those entities plus the Ford Foundation. The Smart Growth America site offers an executive summary and 51-page version of the report at http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/measuring-sprawl. A 203-page version of the report and other supporting material are posted at http://gis.cancer.gov/tools/urban-sprawl/. Asked about the California compactness ratings, Ewing wrote: "The favorable results for California probably mostly from high housing costs, which translates into higher densities." The 2014 study built on a 2002 predecessor effort by Ewing, who was then at Rutgers University, together with Rolf Pendall of Cornell and Don Chen of Smart Growth America. That study, with its separately posted ranking table for high and low levels of sprawl, is at http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/research/measuring-sprawl-and-its-impact/. Ewing confirmed the research team chose to make few comparisons between the 2014 study and its 2002 predecessor due to the risk of "apples to oranges" misunderstandings. He wrote: "Metropolitan area definitions changed, and the variables we used to measure sprawl changed." The main 2002 study ranked Riverside-San Bernardino worst for sprawl. At the top end of the scale, the New York City MSA's top ranking was followed by Jersey City, the Providence, R.I. area, and only then San Francisco. Los Angeles was then 39th, just below San Diego. Ewing noted that an alternate set of "apples to apples" comparisons appears in Chapter 9 of the large report text on the Cancer Institute site. That chapter sets out and applies an alternate sprawl standard that is able to use data available in the same forms for both 2000 and 2010 with respect to 162 large "urbanized areas" (as distinct from metropolitan areas) that had populations of 200,000 or more as of 2010. Tables on Pages 109-111 of the large report's PDF show urbanized areas' compactness levels changed little from 2000 to 2010 according to these "apples to apples" standards. In each case the most compact urban area was San Francisco-Oakland, California ? this is the alternate form of the study in which San Francisco actually ranked highest. In 2010 the top-ten list also included Oxnard and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim in eighth. In 2000, the only California urban area after San Francisco-Oakland on the top-ten list was Visalia. In both decades the only California urbanized area among the "most sprawling" ten was Victorville-Hesperia. In each case the "most sprawling" metro area was Atlanta, Georgia.   Boston and other Massachusetts towns weren't in either the 2014 rankings, nor the 2000-to-2010 comparisons, because they used Local Employment Dynamics (LED) data, which Massachusetts is alone in choosing not to collect.

As Phil Frank's "Farley" cartoon said years ago, "If in-laws are outlawed, only outlaws will have in-laws!" Phil Frank didn't live to see it, but the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has finally created a process for homeowners to legalize "in-law" units built within single-family homes. In-law unit owners will be allowed to submit information to the city for a pre-screening process in which owners will suffer no penalty if they decide not to go through with improvements that the city's reviewers prescribe for legalization -- unless the city notes an "imminent and substantial hazard". Legalization will be closed to units that have been the subject of no-fault evictions in the past ten years. The SF Chron story is at http://bit.ly/1kEbJx3. Draft minutes from the April 1 approval meeting, including notes of amendments, are at http://bit.ly/1hmBwMa. The Council's tracking page on the legislation, including ordinance draft texts and staff reports, is at http://bit.ly/1imIUlQ. Eminent domain upheld for new Sacramento Kings arena Sacramento has won its eminent domain action to take over a former Macy's store at 600 K Street for a Kings basketball arena. The Sacramento Bee reports that when the Third District Court of appeal refused to block a Superior Court order allowing the action, it gave the city "full control" of the whole site for the planned arena. The land on the site is owned by the California Public Employees Retirement System. Securities investors represented by a U.S. Bank trustee are owners of the building and the trustee contested the eminent domain on their behalf. CalPers reportedly did not contest the city's action. The city now turns to finalizing terms of the eminent domain purchase deal and completing public design review. A City Council approval vote on the deal is set for May 13. See news reports at http://bit.ly/1jIg0AI and http://bit.ly/NVXxVE. The city Planning and Design Commission will take up details of the arena plan at its April 10 meeting; the agenda, which links to detailed planning and EIR documents on the project, is at http://bit.ly/1jW5I0b. The 7-page Sacramento Superior Court decision of March 20, available at http://bit.ly/1iqn4zj, cites briefly to last fall's SB 743. As CP&DR reported last fall at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3404, some of the less far-reaching provisions of SB 743 were enacted to smooth the way for a new NBA venue to replace the existing Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento. Among several provisions to advance the project, SB 743 created an addition to the Public Resources Code that provides specifically, "The city may prosecute an eminent domain action for 545 and 600 K Street, Sacramento, California..." SB 743's preamble and text are at http://bit.ly/1lM4qY8. The Third District appellate decision is not posted online but the register of actions for the appeal is at http://bit.ly/1stxQeW. AB 1970 would create anti-emission grants for local governments AB 1970, a bill to use cap-and-trade revenues for local greenhouse gas reduction projects, passed the Assembly Natural Resources Committee on April 7, as the League of California Cities was happy to report at http://bit.ly/1kkYfKQ. The bill would make the Strategic Growth Council the administrator of a "Community Investment and Innovation Program" that would provide grants and financial assistance to local governments. The state bill tracking page, with legislative counsel and committee analyses, is at http://leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=ab_1970&sess=CUR&house=B. Higher meter prices teach SF drivers which parking hopes are realistic UCLA Prof. Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking , has a study out that says San Francisco's SFPark approach to meters has reduced circling ("cruising") in search of parking by half. NextCity has details at http://bit.ly/1eaAgeM. SFPark varies parking meter prices by time of day in some busy areas of San Francisco according to measured levels of demand. The system makes a smartphone app available for finding open parking spaces, but the main point of the study is that any driver, smartphone user or not, will learn from this congestion-charging approach to look for parking in lower-demand areas where prices are set lower, and hence won't take up space with unrequited searching for available places on high-demand blocks of downtown. A direct link to the study is at http://bit.ly/1g1XezG. Monterey water ballot measure can't claim "Local Ownership and Cost Savings" The Measure O referendum for the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District may no longer be called the "Monterey Peninsula Water System Local Ownership and Cost Savings Initiative" per an April 3 court order by Judge Thomas Wills. The Monterey Herald said Wills ruled in three parallel cases that neither local ownership nor cost savings is definitely promised by the measure, so those words must be removed from the title. Wills allowed such words to remain in proponents' ballot arguments as statements of opinion, but found some of proponents' other statements excessive "and worked with attorneys on editing them from the bench." For details see http://www.montereyherald.com/news/ci_25488380/water-war-judge-orders-revision-measure-o-ballot. The Herald said the decision was issued in three parallel lawsuits listing Richards J. Heuer III, a local businessman, as plaintiff, but the paper described the cases as a challenge by California-American Water Company to Measure O. If passed, the measure would establish a policy in favor of public ownership of the district's water systems. It would require the district to consider acquiring Cal Am's water system as public property, and, if appropriate, to go forward with seeking to purchase it, possibly by eminent domain. An earlier news report has more background at http://www.montereyherald.com/news/ci_25428620/cal-am-backed-suit-challenges-measure-o-ballot. The sponsor of Measure O, Public Water Now, has posted the initiative text at https://www.publicwaternow.org/the-ballot-initiative/. Costa Mesa trying again with a city charter Costa Mesa's City Council is working on a second proposal to adopt a city charter. A prior charter proposal was rejected in a November 2012 referendum. See http://www.ocregister.com/articles/city-606377-charter-costa.html. The City Council's agenda site at http://www.costamesaca.gov/index.aspx?page=1675 has video of the contentious March 18 Council discussion on the charter proposal and notes a special meeting of the Council is scheduled April 22 on the proposal. Could this golf course make more money as a marsh? The San Diego Union-Tribune reports on a proposal to turn a golf course near the San Luis Rey River into a wetlands, creating a "land bank" of environmental mitigation credits that would be sold to developers by the acre. For more on this "inverse real estate development" scheme, see http://m.utsandiego.com/news/2014/apr/06/bonsall-golf-land-bank-wetland/. LA City Council rolls back Hollywood zoning code to 1988 CBS affiliate KNX1070 (item via CACities.org) is reporting the LA City Council has agreed to repeal the much-contested 2012 amendments to the Hollywood Community Plan pending negotiations over new zoning. It reported the 2012 provisions were recently defeated in litigation and that the old 1988 code will take effect while disputes are resolved over changes in the new code, especially height limits. See http://cbsloc.al/1hkmP6i. The Council's tracking page on the Hollywood Community Plan Update is at http://bit.ly/1hyplWV. According to a city staff report at http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2012/12-0303-S4_misc_d_03-18-14.pdf, the Los Angeles Superior court decision defeating the 2012 plan amendments was issued February 11 in Fix the City v. City of Los Angeles , Case No. BS138580. Subway allowed into Beverly Hills The Los Angeles subway dig may advance under Beverly Hills High School per a ruling by Judge John A. Torribio. See the Beverly Hills Courier at http://bit.ly/1ebh7cH and LA Times at http://lat.ms/1i4uXsI, both items also via CACities.org Santa Monica persists in having other ideas for its airport Disputes continue in Santa Monica over efforts to close its small and reputedly noisy local airport -- although, as Ben Rubin of the Nossaman firm explained at http://bit.ly/QZfep7, a federal court threw out the city's quiet title suit on the airport property in February. On March 25 the Santa Monica City Council took up the subject again -- see Item 8a in the agenda, staff report and video at http://santamonica.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=3248. The item began with an announcement that 101 people had asked to speak at public comment. Per the unofficial meeting "wrap up" at http://www.smgov.net/departments/council/wrapup.aspx, it ended with the Council agreeing, "with staff direction," to "continue to pursue City control of the use of its Airport land" and move toward a plan to close the airport after July 1, 2015. More background, from an aviation source via CACities, is at http://bit.ly/1qfgJvx. Housing more out of reach than ever The National Low-Income Housing Coalition has its annual Out of Reach report out on housing costs, and it's more dismal than ever. See http://nlihc.org/oor/2014 for the latest granular data by state, county and MSA on just how many minimum-wage jobs it takes to afford a two-bedroom apartment on the increasingly quaint assumption that housing should cost 30 percent of total income. Per the report's California state data page, at http://nlihc.org/oor/2014/CA, the average California "housing wage" is $26.04 per hour, or $54,168 per year, which works out to 3.3 minimum wages per household at the California statewide minimum of $8 per hour. Also in the news Gil Kelley, former director of planning for Portland, Oregon, and, previously, Berkeley, has been named Director of Citywide Planning in San Francisco. See  the second item in the San Francisco Chronicle news report at http://bit.ly/1jWRiNh. The city's press release is at http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?recordid=244&page=3418. Sacramento's 336-unit McKinley Village infill project, whose proponents include former State Treasurer Phil Angelides and developer Angelo Tsakopoulos, is hung up on opposition to its proposed exit and entry points, which could affect existing residential areas. Critics are calling on the developers to build a railroad undercrossing tunnel at a less sensitive spot to serve the new development. The tunnel's importance and likely cost are disputed For more see the Sacramento Bee at http://bit.ly/1ennVOO. AB 2104, by Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, would allow HOA residents to plant drought-resistant landscaping even if the HOAs' landscaping requirements dictate otherwise . See the U-T at http://bit.ly/1dW7jCP. The measure passed the Assembly on April 3 and was referred to the Senate. The bill tracking site is at http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140AB2104.

National and local writers have been all over the San Francisco Supervisors' April 1 decision to grant a Class 6 categorical exemption from CEQA to a pilot program for tech industry commuter shuttles, so instead of retelling the whole saga here we've gathered some links to CEQA and policy aspects of the story: The city's pilot program has been allowing the "Google Bus" and other tech industry shuttles to pick up and drop off employees at public bus stops in exchange for a payment to the city of $1 every time a bus makes a stop. While the shuttles reduce car trips by commuters between San Francisco homes and Silicon Valley tech campuses, they have been criticized for encouraging displacement of lower-paid San Francisco residents near the bus stops and inducing increased development to serve high-paid shuttle users -- which the CEQA appeal to the Supervisors described as having a discriminatory impact. Complaints are also made that the buses interfere with public transit service at the bus stops, are bad for roads, and themselves pollute the air. A related charge is that the buses relieve what might otherwise be pressure on Peninsula towns such as Mountain View to allow more housing closer to the campuses. Environmental and social activists may appeal the Supervisors' decision. Just some of the material on this locally symbolic issue: - Board of Supervisors tracking page on the agenda item, with activists' appeal letter contesting the CEQA exemption and SFMTA transit agency's staff response: http://bit.ly/1g235oR - San Francisco Chronicle account of the meeting: http://bit.ly/PhELs4 - League of Pissed-off Voters argument against the shuttles: https://medium.com/p/9765445ad685 - Pacific Legal Foundation objecting to the use of CEQA: http://blog.pacificlegal.org/2014/ceqa-special-interest-groups-favorite-toy/ - Exchange between two smart lefty writers, Julia Wong and Darwin Bond Graham, about the CEQA process and whether it aids or blunts activism: https://twitter.com/DarwinBondGraha/status/451190095131848705 - Critical artist and designer Alfred Twu's renderings of Silicon Valley tech campuses hypothetically rebuilt to hold high-rises, so that each campus would contain all of the housing needed by its thousands of workers. See https://sites.google.com/site/techcampushousing/. - Stamen Design's unofficial maps of corporate shuttle routes as an unadvertised parallel transit system: http://stamen.com/zero1/ - Via NextCity, a speeded-up view of tech buses stopping and filling with riders at one public bus stop in San Francisco on one morning: http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/a-time-lapse-look-at-san-franciscos-commuter-buses - SF Chron report, a few days after the vote, on a small company, "Bigcommerce", trying to scout talent away from tech companies by flyering the Eighth and Market tech bus stop: http://bit.ly/1lHElt6 One recruiter told the Chronicle : "We're just trying to get people off the bus... I mean, why have a three-hour commute to the valley?"

An appellate court has upheld a CEQA exemption for the 2011 deputy sheriffs' charity rodeo at the Santa Cruz County fairgrounds in Watsonville. Although it was the first rodeo held there in a generation, the court held a categorical exemption was proper for the event on the grounds that, environmentally speaking, the rodeo was much a "normal operation" as any other livestock or equestrian event at that venue. Plaintiffs objecting to the rodeo had claimed "unusual circumstances" existed that might have a "significant effect" on the environment because of a risk that manure from the event would harm nearby Salsipuedes Creek, and also, per the court, because of "proximity to residential and agricultural land, or a public safety risk of bull riding". The March 26 decision by California's Third Appellate District upheld decisions by Sacramento County Superior Court judge Lloyd Connelly that had allowed the 14th District Agricultural Association, which runs the fairgrounds, to grant the rodeo a Class 23 categorical exemption from CEQA environmental review as "normal operations of existing facilities for public gatherings." Per the case history in the decision and local news reports, Connelly allowed Stars of Justice Inc., a nonprofit created by the Santa Cruz County Deputy Sheriff's Association, to go ahead with its charity rodeo in October 2011 after the county had gone "two decades" without one. Just under 1000 people reportedly attended. Connelly later confirmed his approval in 2012. (See http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_18993102; http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19819481; http://bit.ly/1jSZyjO.) Since the rodeo itself was over long ago, the appeal that followed from rodeo opponents was moot, but the appellate court chose to rule on the environmental issue as a public interest matter "likely to recur and capable of evading review." The court found the rodeo was part of "normal operations" at the fairground because it was essentially similar to other events held at the same site. It said the site did not have to be compared to other kinds of public venues, nor to other fairgrounds, to determine what was normal. It distinguished a series of cases involving refusals to grant categorical exemptions, arguing that the exemptions were denied not because nearby neighbors or watercourses presented unusual circumstances, but because the activities in question were new ones, with new, unaccustomed effects. Plaintiffs had claimed that, in adopting a Manure Management Plan to protect the creek, the fairground managers essentially gave up their claim to a categorical exemption by admitting there was a hazard to mitigate. The court found the same sanitation measures applied to all events involving horses and livestock, not just the rodeo, and were not new, just recently formalized and possibly increased. The plaintiffs contesting the rodeo were Citizens for Environmental Responsibility, Eric Zamost, and his Stop the Rodeo organization. The stoptherodeo.org Web site objects to rodeo events as promoting a culture of violence entailing mistreatment of animals and also, in fewer words, to the discharge of "raw manure" into Salsipuedes Creek. The case is Citizens for Environmental Responsibility v. State of California ex rel. 14th District Agricultural Association , at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/C070836.PDF.

A challenge by dissident conservationists to the Lake Tahoe Regional Plan Update is in the hands of U.S. Judge John A. Mendez following oral arguments in Sacramento March 26. The arguments put a bookend to a fierce, prolonged exchange of court papers heavy with mutual exasperation, between parties who may disagree more utterly than most. The Sierra Club and Friends of the West Shore, plaintiffs in the litigation, are holdout critics of the 2012 Regional Plan Update (RPU), which forms the centerpiece of a major political and regulatory settlement on California and Nevada officials' shared environmental governance of the Lake Tahoe basin. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3435.) Based on claims that the RPU erodes previously established scientific standards, the Sierra Club plaintiffs have been contesting its validity in federal court for the past year. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), as defendant in the litigation, is being pressed to justify the work of negotiators at many levels, including some Tahoe Basin conservation leaders, who put years of effort into crafting the RPU. The Sierra Club plaintiffs depict TRPA as soft on developers; TRPA depicts the plaintiffs as destructive perfectionists. According to the Tahoe Daily Tribune (See http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/10781943-113/plan-lake-tahoe-trpa) and a statement released by TRPA, the oral arguments themselves addressed well-established themes in the briefing. Mendez will now decide competing motions for summary judgment that could very possibly end the case. Fractious briefing The lawyers exchanged indignantly phrased briefs through early 2014, taking extra bites at each other's arguments by filing oppositions to amicus briefs and judicial notice requests. TRPA's counsel tried during the last week before the hearing to gain an extra edge from two recent high-profile cases in which courts trusted agencies' judgment on environmental plans. One was Judge Jay Bybee's call for deference to administrative-branch expertise in the Ninth Circuit's Delta Smelt decision  (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3448). The other was the California Second District's choice to accept "adaptive management" of the endangered spineflower in proposed Newhall Ranch development areas. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3461 and Center for Biological Diversity v. Department of Fish and Wildlife at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/B245131.PDF.) Judge Mendez did not focus on the two new cases. TRPA's John Marshall answered an email query: "The recent cases were not discussed at the oral argument". Earthjustice's Wendy Park answered a parallel query: "The Judge only commented at the beginning of the hearing that argument on those two cases was not necessary since they were only marginally relevant (they'd be "the last case in a string cite")." Invited to respond to Park, TRPA spokesman Jeff Cowen wrote: "TRPA has no response to the statement." In earlier 2014 briefing, TRPA, joined in an amicus brief by the California and Nevada natural resource agencies, suggested the difficulty and extent of the bi-state public process that created the RPU was itself an argument for the RPU's validity. Plaintiffs countered that the court's review was limited to the legality of TRPA's proceedings and the adequacy of supporting evidence. In late February the plaintiffs quoted a warning out of Laurel Heights v. UC Regents , 47 Cal.3d 376 (1988), against the risk that "bureaucratic and financial momentum" would overrun "environmental concerns that could be dealt with more easily at an early stage." Otherwise TRPA continued to defend the Regional Plan Update as a pragmatic shift toward regulation via incentives for environmental retrofitting and reduction of ground coverage via denser redevelopment. Supporters of the RPU have argued that its new frameworks for regulation are based on scientific advances and physical changes in the lake basin's environmental needs that have appeared since the prior Regional Plan's 1987 approval. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3435.) Disputes in the 2014 briefing included whether the RPU would provide adequately for ongoing enforcement of required Best Management Practices (BMP) on developed properties, and whether the lake's Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) standards would be either strict enough or sufficiently enforceable, especially on the Nevada side and in areas where local jurisdictions would be taking over enforcement tasks. In an argument that TRPA may have meant to answer by quoting the Newhall Ranch spineflower decision, the plaintiffs claimed in a January brief that TRPA's "adaptive management" approach to BMP enforcement "amounts to possibly reacting to worsened conditions (in an unspecified manner)" instead of getting ahead of them. TRPA retorted in its papers that the standards were real, sufficient and sufficiently enforceable to improve on current conditions, complaining meanwhile that "Plaintiffs persist in failing to distinguish between TRPA's BMP Retrofit Program for existing legacy development, and BMPs required for new development or redevelopment." TRPA further accused plaintiffs of "ignoring an overwhelming scientific and technical consensus" supporting the TMDL "load reduction credits" system of regulation, and of cherry-picking both laws and regulations to find fault. Plaintiffs argued in their series of briefs that TRPA hadn't sufficiently studied the true likely effects on runoff and soil from the RPU's incentives for developers to restore properties in fragile areas and transfer development credits to town center areas. TRPA accused plaintiffs of shifting ground improperly by leading with a water quality analysis in their opening brief, then shifting emphasis to soil conservation arguments in later papers. TRPA argued the EIS had met the necessary standard on soil conservation because it modeled and analyzed "potential impacts on nutrient cycling" and discussed effects on vegetation and on fish habitat. Plaintiffs wrote that "'Redevelopment' Means More Development" and predicted the RPU would allow "183 more acres of coverage region-wide" and that "the transfer of 960 development rights from... undeveloped and undevelopable parcels to developable parcels located in centers" would increase overall construction. Plaintiffs disagreed with a group of business and real estate amici on whether a new "resort recreation" designation of 315 acres of prior "recreation" lands at the Edgewood and Heavenly resort properties would expand urban boundaries. On the contrary, in its press statement about the March 26 oral arguments, TRPA reiterated its position that "The Regional Plan will result in less impervious land coverage in the Basin, more open space, and will accelerate the removal of legacy land coverage from sensitive lands." As for ozone monitoring, said by the plaintiffs to be neglected under the RPU (their January brief said there were no monitors at all in South Lake Tahoe), TRPA replied in its papers that the RPU would reduce vehicle use, that auto emissions standards have caused ozone levels to decline, and that more monitoring is not required by law. TRPA's statement quoted Executive Director Joanne Marchetta as saying, "We all want Lake Tahoe to continue to be one of the most protected watersheds in the nation and our plan will do that... This litigation boils down to how we balance strong environmental protections with the need to upgrade existing development that is impacting the Lake." The Tahoe Daily Tribune reported Judge Mendez took the case under submission without specifying a date for his decision.