A San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District permitting process for dairies has been rejected by the Fifth District Court of Appeal because the district did not conduct an adequate assessment of public health impacts. The decision marks a significant victory for environmental justice advocates and clean air supporters in the San Joaquin Valley who argue the air district has not done enough to regulate air pollution from the region's large-scale dairies. They insist dairy operators should alter feed, better manage animal waste and even house livestock indoors so that emissions may be captured. In 2003, state lawmakers approved a series of bills intended to force improvements to the San Joaquin Valley's deteriorating air quality. Specifically, SB 700 (Florez) eliminated agriculture's exemption from air quality regulations and required the air district to adopt and implement a rule requiring confined animal facilities to reduce the emission of air contaminants. The district followed up by adopting Rule 4570, which established a permitting process for large confined animal facilities – essentially dairies. The rule called for controlling emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a precursor to ozone, with various management practices. The group Association of Irritated Residents (AIR) sued, arguing the district failed to perform a health effects analysis of the permitting process, failed to address ammonia and other air pollutants, and failed to adopt a rule actually reducing VOC emissions. Several large dairy organizations intervened in the lawsuit on behalf of the air district, and Fresno County Superior Court Judge D. Tyler Tharpe ruled against AIR. The Fifth District overturned the ruling, finding a necessary public health assessment to be completely missing. The air district and dairy organizations pointed to a district staff report and estimates of how many tons per year of VOC the permitting process would reduce. The court was unmoved. "If the goal is healthier air, the district has not shown whether it has taken steps toward reaching that goal," Acting Presiding Justice Rebecca Wiseman wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel of the Fifth District. "For example, the district claims that rule 4570 will reduce VOCs by 7,563 tons per year; however, it makes no statement about how this will impact public health concerns. "The report discusses how much the changes in feed and waste management will cost facilities and identifies a number of possible controls which have been rejected because of higher cost. If costs are going to justify mandating lesser controls instead of tougher ones, the public is entitled to know what the cost of this decision will be to public health," Wiseman continued. "If the available science is insufficient to justify more expensive, tougher environmental controls, the public is entitled to know this as well." The court rejected AIR's other contentions, including the argument that the district must regulate dairy ammonia emissions. The 2003 legislation was intended to address ozone and ozone precursors and not all air pollutants from agriculture, the court ruled. The Case: Association of Irritated Residents v. San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District , No. F053956, 08 C.D.O.S. 14250, 2008 DJDAR 17107. Filed November 19, 2008. The Lawyers: For AIR: Luke Cole, Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, (415) 346-4179. For the district: Philip Jay, SJVUAPCD, (559) 230-6033. For the dairies: David Cranston, Greenberg, Glusker, Fields, Claman & Machtinger, (310) 553-3610.

A 7-year-old City of Los Angeles ordinance prohibiting new off-site signs has been upheld by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the argument that the ban combined with a city contract permitting advertising at city-owned bus stops violated the First Amendment. In overturning a District Court ruling, the Ninth Circuit determined that the Los Angeles ordinance is "essentially indistinguishable" from a San Diego ordinance the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in the pivotal 1980 billboard case Metromedia, Inc. v. City of San Diego , 453 U.S. 490. The fact that Los Angeles signed a contract permitting one company to sell advertising at bus and transit stops does not make the city's off-site billboard prohibition unconstitutional, because the ban still advances the goal of decreasing visual clutter and motorist distractions, the court determined. The decision is an important one for the assailed Los Angeles law and for a similar regulatory scheme in San Francisco. Still, the Los Angeles law remains unenforceable because of a 2008 federal judge's ruling in a different case that the law's exceptions for certain zoning districts make the law unconstitutional. Paul Fisher, the attorney for plaintiff Metro Lights, said the Ninth Circuit's ruling ignores the evolution in case law since Metromedia as well as the city's overall scheme of favoring commercial speech that generates municipal revenue. The fact that some signs make the city money is not a "cognizable interest" in a First Amendment case, he said. "The court has gone back to 1981. It said we're not going to look at bus shelters and news racks, and we'll go back to a case involving only billboards," Fisher said of the court's reliance on Metromedia. Attorney Laura Brill – counsel for CBS-Decaux, which has the contract for bus stop signs, and the League of California Cities – said the Ninth Circuit decision comports with U.S. Supreme Court precedent. The Ninth Circuit decision "restores the balance" after the district court judge struck down the Los Angeles ordinance, added Brill, who said she was not speaking as a CBS-Decaux representative. Since 1987, Los Angeles has had agreements that provide private companies exclusive advertising rights on bus shelters in exchange for the installation of shelters and annual payments. After an open bidding process, the city in 2001 signed an agreement with CBS-Decaux (then Viacom Decaux) that covered not only bus shelters, but also public toilets, trash bins, kiosks and news racks. Under the "street furniture agreement" (SFA), CBS installs the facilities, sells advertising on them and makes annual payments to the city, which assumes ownership of the facilities. Four months after signing the contract with CBS, the city adopted a sign ordinance that prohibits the installation of new off-site signs. The ordinance provides exceptions for signs in the public right-of-way (such as CBS's street furniture advertising), and signs permitted by variance, a specific plan, a supplement use zoning district or a development agreement. Essentially, the city sought to outlaw new billboards except in certain areas, such as around Staples Center at the southern end of downtown. Billboard companies began suing immediately. Metro Lights did not file suit until December 2003, after the city had issued the company numerous citations for installing new off-site signs. In 2006, District Court Judge Gary Feess ruled for Metro Lights. The city could not prohibit Metro Lights from displaying messages while it allowed CBS to erect off-site signs in the public right-of-way, Feess determined. The city appealed the ruling, while Metro Lights appealed Feess' refusal to award damages. For a law that regulates commercial speech to be constitutional, it must "directly advance" a legitimate government interest. In Metromedia , the Supreme Court ruled that traffic safety and esthetics are legitimate interests. Metro Lights argued the Metromedia decision was not applicable here because the city's street furniture agreement permits advertising in the public right-of-way that is at least as distracting as billboards on private property. Taken together, the sign ordinance and the street furniture agreement could not directly advance the government's interest in traffic safety and aesthetics, Metro Lights argued. Rather, the city was essentially auctioning off First Amendment rights, the company argued. But the Ninth Circuit pointed out that the San Diego ordinance in Metromedia also provided an exception for bus stops. More importantly, the Metromedia court's "deference to legislative judgment resounds quite clearly in this case," Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel. "Los Angeles, just like San Diego, ‘has obviously chosen to value one kind of commercial speech' – controlled offsite advertising on public transit facilities – ‘more than another kind of commercial speech' – uncontrolled offsite advertising spread willy-nilly about the streets." "Although the SFA permits some advertising," O'Scannlain continued, "a regime that combines the sign ordinance and the SFA still arrests the uncontrolled proliferation of signage and thereby goes a long way toward cleaning up the clutter, which the city believed to be a worthy legislative goal. O'Scannlain called the auctioning First Amendment rights argument "little more than a canard." He continued, " ven if there were no SFA but only the sign ordinance, the city would still exercise proprietary control over who gets to advertise on its transit facilities." Metro Lights attorney Fisher said he will ask a full panel of Ninth Circuit judges to re-hear the case. Meanwhile, at least half a dozen lawsuits over the sign ordinance are pending somewhere in the legal system. One of those cases is World Wide Rush, LLC v. City of Los Angeles , No. 08-56062, in which the city has asked the Ninth Circuit to overturn a district court judge's order blocking enforcement of the sign ordinance. The city has settled other lawsuits. For instance, the city settled one suit by permitting CBS Outdoor and Clear Channel Outdoor to convert 840 billboards from standard signs to digital format. Although the agreement ended litigation, it has been sharply criticized by some neighborhood groups and residents who live near converted signs, which flash brightly lit messages 24 hours a day. The Case: Metro Lights, LLC, v. City of Los Angeles , No. 07-55179, 09 C.D.O.S. 113, 2009 DJDAR 205. Filed January 6, 2009. The Lawyers: For Metro Lights: Paul Fisher, (949) 675-5619. For the city: Kenneth Fong, cit attorney's office, (213) 978-8064. For CBS-Decaux: Laura Brill, Irell & Manella, (310) 277-1010.

Remember way back to the days when climate change and greenhouse gas emissions didn't dominate every discussion of land use and economic development in California? You know, way back in … 2005.  Well, Dan Logue sure does. A freshman assemblyman from the Marysville area and former Yuba County supervisor, Logue has introduce a bill that would repeal AB 32, California's greenhouse gas emissions reduction law. "I've talked to businesses," the Republican lawmakers told the Chico Enterprise Record . "They cannot function under AB32." Logue's bill is AB 118. I don't have to go far out on a limb to say the legislation is DOA at the Capitol. That's not to say the world – well, at least California – would not be a simpler place if Gov. Schwarzenegger had never signed AB 32, SB 97, SB 375 or Executive Orders S-3-05 and S-13-08. But he did, and now policy-makers and professionals are figuring out how to implement all this stuff. The recent UCLA Extension Land Use Law and Planning Conference made clear there is a lot to figure out. Experts talked about the Office of Planning and Research's recently released draft CEQA guidance for addressing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and the California Air Resources Board's draft guidance for greenhouse gas emissions thresholds of significance under CEQA, which was released in December. Curtis Alling, an EDAW vice president based in Sacramento, said that under the draft CEQA guidelines , a significant impact occurs when there is a "considerable contribution" to cumulative emissions. But because the guidelines contain no quantifiable or specific thresholds, it's very difficult to figure out what is a considerable contribution. Alling's advice: • Any large project must have a robust GHG analysis with a quantified inventory/analysis. • For small projects using a negative declaration or mitigated neg dec, mention GHG and simply hope for the best. • Agencies may continue to use categorical exemptions for projects that generate GHG. Alling also reminded the practitioners in the audience that a project's GHG problems are not solved with a CEQA document, they are solved with project designs that reduce carbon emissions. David Weaver, a senior associate with Environ, addressed the CARB guidance , which concerns transportation, energy use, construction and water use. Weaver said the CARB advisory needs work, as portions are unclear and could inadvertently provide wrong incentives. On residential development, the air board says a project generating more than 14,000 vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per household annually would have a significant impact. The 14,000 annual VMT is a very difficult standard, Weaver said. Only small dwelling units within large metro areas routinely meet this standard today. According to Weaver, the CARB VMT standards are based on one of the few pieces of empirical research that attempts to quantify VMT in different metropolitan settings, John Holtzclaw's 1994 paper, "Using Residential Patterns and Transit To Decrease Auto Dependence and Costs." Holtzclaw's research focused on the Bay Area and was sponsored by Natural Resources Defense Council. This paper sought to link density and VMT, which it did; but in general it found that the more close-in a household was, the less VMT. So a San Francisco household generates less VMT than Berkeley household, which had less than a Danville household, etc. On energy, the air board calls for a target of 30% reduction from 2008 Title 24 standards. But Title 24 standards are relative. Thus, noted Weaver, a very large house that consumes less energy than other very large houses could meet the target, while a small unit that does not use much energy may not be able to hit the target because there is so much less fat to cut. Another problematic example: The guidance calls for 20% use of recycled construction material but gives no credit for simply using less material to build things, Weaver said. In other words, there is a very long ways to go in figuring out exactly how to implement the climate change mandates. Comments are due February 2 on OPR's draft CEQA guidelines. On the SB 375 front, the Air Resources Board has appointed the 21 members of the Regional Targets Advisory Committee , which is scheduled to meet for the first time on February 3. This panel is supposed to help CARB determine how much land use can contribute to meeting the AB 32 greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal . The appointees make for a very high powered group. Interestingly, the committee includes five regional transportation planning executives and only two elected officials. Certainly no shortage of big thinkers among this group. - Paul Shigley and Bill Fulton

Not since Lyndon Johnson more than 40 years ago has any president come into office with anything like the sky-high expectations about reforming urban policy that Barack Obama brings. But the various federal policies related to growth and development have many constituencies – urban, suburban, and rural – and it is not yet clear that Obama can meld them in a meaningful way. Whether and how he does meld all these policies is of the utmost importance to California. Unlike the Northeastern and Midwestern states – such as Illinois, where the new president is from – California is not generally a state dominated by urban constituencies. Yes, there are some poor urban areas. But overall California is a state filled with overgrown suburban development that is struggling with how to become more urban in a good way without falling into the trap of urban decay that befell so many other states. The Obama approach to transportation is especially important to California because of the state's own fiscal crisis. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has halted virtually all capital projects, including transportation projects (though he is simultaneously seeking to streamline environmental review on several big projects). In the short term, the state's politicians are lobbying hard for some of Obama's federal stimulus money to pay for these transportation projects. But in the long run, Obama will have to decide how he wants to reshape federal transportation policy, especially in light of the climate change issue. And California will have to decide whether to simply go for the pork or try to use the transportation money to leverage a lot of change in the state's growth patterns. Congress will be reauthorizing the transportation bill this year, and Obama will face tough decisions about where future funding will come from and whether to cave in to the pavement crowd. Obama is a deft big-tent politician who knows how to appeal to vastly different constituencies. He's from the South Side of Chicago, but he's vastly popular in California among environmentalists, social liberals, and other typical Blue State types. His ambition appears to be to bridge traditional divides among housing and urban policy, transportation, and environmental protection – all of which play an important role in shaping California's growth patterns. Urban policy, focused around the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD), has traditionally had a largely African-American constituency. Indeed, up until the 1990s, HUD was usually the Cabinet slot occupied by an African-American. Obama is clearly comfortable in this world. Both affordable housing and market-rate development – whether created by nonprofits or for-profit developers – has been a stable of political power on the South Side for decades. By contrast, the Department of Transportation has traditionally served a largely suburban and rural constituency, driven by pork-barrel politics and the need to spread around vast transportation dollars. And environmental protection – split between the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and a few other agencies – catered to a largely suburban, white, middle-class constituency interested in clean air, clean water, and open spaces. Obama does not connect as easily to such constituencies, but his appeal among liberal suburbanites is very strong. In the election, he polled surprisingly well among moderate Democratic voters in Western states such as Montana. Obama has made several moves that would suggest he is serious about integrating all these areas of policy – but it's not clear whether he can really do it. Perhaps the most significant move was creating a White House Office of Urban Policy, designed to coordinate all federal policy associated with cities. The question is whether the White House will view urban policy only in terms of central cities – the traditional "HUD cities model" so deeply embedded on the South Side – or whether Obama's administration will take a more expansive view and include cities, suburbs, and large-scale metropolitan issues in this mix. At HUD, Obama – who has a unique luxury in this regard – has followed recent practice and appointed somebody who is not African-American, Shaun Donovan, as secretary. Donovan has an impressive pedigree (he completed the Kennedy School/Graduate School of Design master's combo at Harvard) as well as a stellar record as housing director in New York City. He's also eloquent and even moving on big-picture urban issues, such as equal opportunity for all segments of society. The question is whether Donovan can marry HUD's traditional agenda – housing for the poor and some aspects of housing finance – with larger issues associated with growth and development. On many garden-variety environmental issues, such as air, water, and open space, Obama can probably be relied upon to follow a traditional Democratic line. It is not clear whether his interior secretary, Ken Salazar of Colorado, or his agriculture secretary, Tom Vlasick of Iowa, grasp the significance of federal landholdings in shaping metropolitan growth, especially in the West. But the Department of Transportation likely holds the key to the Obama metropolitan growth strategy. Nothing the federal government does affects overall growth patterns more than how and where transportation money is spent. Highway funds can be used for greenfield projects or vital urban connectors; overall, money can be spent on highways or transit or other things. Obama surprised everybody by appointing Ray LaHood, a Republican congressman from downstate Illinois, as Transportation Secretary. The conventional wisdom is that LaHood is not good news for smart growth, especially when compared with candidates such as U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Portland and Steve Heminger, head of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the Bay Area, whose names were being bandied about until the last minute. On the stimulus package, smart growth advocates are arguing that the money will generate more prosperity if it is targeted to support compact urban development patterns (see Smart Growth America's "Transportation for America" campaign.) They're likely to lose that battle, because Obama has already promised money for "shovel-ready" projects – and any attempt to deny or slow down those funds based on smart growth criteria is likely to be met with a lot of opposition, given the state of the economy. In the long run, however, Obama's probably going to have to come up with federal transportation formulas that jibe more than ever with environmental, as well as economic, policy. Current policies requiring conformity with the Clean Air Act have not been of great significance – but if Obama pushes for a climate change bill that restricts greenhouse gas emissions, then he'll have to move past pork and use at least some smart growth criteria to dole out federal funds. That is, of course, if any federal funds are available. The Highway Trust Fund is virtually broke, and one of the tasks of the new administration is to figure out a way to fund it in the future – an increased gas tax, a vehicle miles traveled tax, a tax related to carbon emissions, or something. The betting here is that Obama will be bold: He'll go for a whole new kind of tax that will drive more transportation dollars into smart growth and infill projects. At that point, California will have a choice: keep pushing for pork, or lead the way on growth in the same way that the state is leading the way on climate change.

Senate Bill 375 dominated this year's UCLA Land Use Law and Planning Conference. While there were few comments about the merits of the new law, there was extensive discussion regarding the law's impact and implementation. If there was a common theme, it was this: SB 375 has the potential to change dramatically both California's land use planning system and growth patterns, and the law is very much a work in progress. Although it was largely unsaid, the implication is that the era of the large-scale, low-density, single-family housing tracts has passed. The author of SB 375, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, was scheduled provide the lunchtime keynote address, but he got stuck in Sacramento dealing with the state budget. Instead, Steinberg sent along a 15-minute video in which he told the approximately 300 conference attendees that SB 375 will change growth patterns and serve as a national model. Steinberg reflected back to 2001, when, as an assemblyman, he attempted to decrease the fiscalization of land use by creating a tax-sharing system across metropolitan regions. Like many academics had already concluded, Steinberg argued that the system provided fiscal incentives for bad planning . His bill failed amid intense opposition from the League of California Cities and suburbs with large sales tax bases, but Steinberg never gave up on the issue . When Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2006 signed AB 32, the state's greenhouse gas emissions reductions law, Steinberg saw a new way to get at the issue. SB 375, he said, attempts to incorporate land use and transportation into AB 32 implementation. Signed by Schwarzenegger last September, the new law provides something for every member of the "Coalition of the Impossible" that coalesced around the bill. • Builders receive incentives in the form of relaxed environmental review of projects favored by environmentalists and planning advocates, namely, compact, mixed-use development. • Cities get a longer period (every eight years instead of every five) in which to update their housing elements. • Housing advocates have greater ability to challenge housing element, especially if cities and counties do no complete rezoning to accommodate affordable units. As the replacement lunchtime speaker, League lobbyist and Coalition of the Impossible member Bill Higgins said that SB 375 is both less and more than it appears. He contended that the "strategic growth strategies" that metropolitan planning agencies must adopt under SB 375 are not significantly different than the growth forecasts that regional transportation planning agencies already prepare and which are reviewed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency for compliance with the Clean Air Act. Higgins speculated that most MPOs will not be able to hit their state-mandated greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals with a sustainable communities strategy and, therefore, will have to prepare the required alternative planning strategy that does provide a path to greenhouse gas emissions compliance. The alternative strategy does not have to be incorporated into the regional transportation plan, but Higgins predicted that local elected officials will want to implement the alternative plan. Plus, the climate change hawks in the state attorney general's office and CEQA enforcers will insist on the alternative plan's implementation, he said. Which gets to the Higgins point about SB 375 being more than advertised. The CEQA incentives for high-density, mixed-use projects near transit will change the type of projects that developers propose, he said. Thus, we'll see a bottom-up change to growth patterns. Higgins said the law needs cleanup legislation to address housing elements that come due during the transition to SB 375, which will not kick in until late 2011. Later in the day, Housing and Community Development Director Lynn Jacobs agreed such legislation is necessary. Higgins also predicted that transportation agencies and commercial developers would seek CEQA incentives similar to those SB 375 provides to residential developers. Peter Detwiler, staff director for the state Senate Local Government Committee, said he too expects to see follow-up legislation because SB 375 des not provide implementation details.   Taking a step back, Martin Wachs, a former transportation and urban planning academic at UC Berkeley and UCLA who now is with the RAND Corporation, said that SB 375 and other recent legislation is an attempt to undo the automobile's dominance of land use planning. Jeff Stevens, director of consulting company Danielian Associates, said that SB 375 and the urge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions comes down to transportation choice and proximity. Many cities, he noted, lack the infrastructure for such basic transportation choice as walking and bicycling. – Paul Shigley

When Barack Obama took the oath of office Tuesday, he tried to strike a delicate balance between the soaring rhetoric he is famous for and an almost dour message about how much work and sacrifice will be required to put America back on its feet. Nowhere will that balance be more difficult to strike – or more important – than in the vast combination of federal policies that help to drive growth and development patterns around the country. Even the weather itself seemed to suggest the dichotomy in Obama's approach. His inauguration took place on a cold and somewhat cloudy day in Washington, D.C., but the clouds lifted to reveal warm sunshine while he was giving his inaugural address. Later, as the crowds dispersed from the mall, the clouds set in again, accompanied by a cold wind, as if Obama's brief sunny moment had already passed. Obama has laid out an enormous domestic policy agenda, most of which will have a significant impact on growth issues. The economic stimulus package will push lots of money into infrastructure. He will have to attack global warming with a new climate change bill. The federal transportation funding system is both broken and broke, and Obama will have to create a new one almost from scratch. And he has promised to revamp urban and metropolitan policy, partly from the new White House Office of Urban Policy and partly at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Whether Obama can marry bold action with both change and restraint remains to be seen. – Bill Fulton

Senate Bill 375 needs to be fixed, and it needs to be fixed this year. So says Rick Bishop, executive director of the Western Riverside Council of Governments. Bishop is not an advocate of sprawl-and-pavement über alles, which is the way many SB 375 opponents have been painted. In fact, Bishop has no gripe with the intent of SB 375, which is to reign in low-density, segregated use sprawl and to encourage public transportation spending that best serves higher-density, mixed-use areas (that's my description, not his). Rather, Bishop is concerned about the details of the new law. He wonders how the law will ensure a reduction in vehicle miles traveled, who will pay for preparation of the mandatory sustainable communities strategy or an alternative plan, and how emissions targets will be assigned to subregions such as Western Riverside County (which is part of the 6-county Southern California Association of Governments region). Bishop wrote about what he calls SB 375's "unfinished business" in the January edition of WRCOG's newsletter . I called Bishop and said I sensed a high level of frustration. "The idea is great. It has been floating around for a long time," he told me. But cleanup legislation is needed, and it's needed this year he insisted. "If that doesn't occur, SB 375 sort of sits out there as a very well-intentioned piece of legislation, but no one knows what it means." As Bishop tries to explain SB 375 to city councilmembers, city managers and planning directors in his region, he has trouble answering some their questions. How will the California Air Resources Board's regional emissions targets influence a subregional sustainability communities strategy? How exactly will CARB recognize a subregional strategy? What are the consequences of a city or COG not complying with SB 375? And, naturally, who is going to pay for all of this? Rick Bishop is not the only one asking such questions, but he is willing to ask them in a more straightforward fashion than other people. No SB 375 cleanup legislation has been introduced yet in Sacramento, where the state budget crisis remains priority numbers one, two and three. I would not, however, be surprised to see at least a few SB 375 tweaks considered this year. A side note: The Air Resources Board is scheduled this Friday morning to appoint a Regional Targets Advisory Committee, a potentially very influential panel in the evolution of SB 375. – Paul Shigley

Planning and Conservation League & PCL Foundation Annual Environmental Legislative Symposium Steps to a Sustainable California      Saturday, February 7, 2009 – 9:00A – 4:15P   Downtown Sacramento 4.75 MCLE Credits Available 3.75 AICP CM Credits Available BACKGROUND To ensure a sustainable future; we need to make real changes in how we live our lives, and how we organize our society. And we need to start making those changes right now – right here in California! Real change means a willingness to transform our transportation systems, our land use patterns, and water use. With the momentum building for real change, it seems natural to focus PCL's 2009 Legislative Environmental Symposium around that same topic. In 2009, we will offer 15 sessions, including cutting edge policy discussions, MCLE courses, and "How To…" workshops that educate and empower groups and individuals to improve their effectiveness in the environmental movement.   Our MCLE courses will include some of the most relevant and up-to-date information about the laws that govern wildfires, land preservation, and water privatization.  This year we are offering Certification Maintenance credit for planners also. Help us to build the momentum that California needs to achieve a sustainable future! THE PROGRAM Session 1 (10:00 - 11:15) • California Wildfire and CEQA (MCLE/AICP) • Low Impact and Water Neutral Developments (AICP) • The Conservation Challenge of the 21st Century: Protecting Wildlife from Global Warming (AICP) Session 2 (11:30 - 12:45) • The Brave New Water Economy: Privatization and Public Accountability (MCLE/AICP) • Improving California's Land Use Policy to Enhance Public Health (AICP) • Improving California's Land Use Policy to Fight Global Warming (AICP) Session 3 (2:10 - 3:25) • Conservation & Land Use Agreements: Tejon Ranch Case Study (MCLE/AICP) • Meeting California's Water Needs (AICP) • A Political and Socio-Economic Challenge: a Just Green Economy (AICP Download the agenda . DETAILS: Date: Saturday, February 7, 2009 Time: Symposium 9:00 AM - 4:15 PM Networking 4:15 - 5:00 PM Awards Banquet 5:00 - 7:00 PM Venue: Sheraton Grand in Downtown Sacramento 1230 J Street (between 12th and 13th) Fees:  Vary by selection (see fee schedule below) Register: Online or by phone by calling: 916-313-4517   For more information about the PCL & PCLF Symposium please call Melanie Schlotterbeck at 714-779-7561 or email her at MSchlotterbeck@pcl.org .

If you attend only one conference all year, it should be the UCLA Extension Land Use Law and Planning Conference, scheduled for January 23 in downtown Los Angeles. For years, I have been telling people that the UCLA Extension event – now in its 23rd year – is the best of its kind. I realize that the registration fee ($400 or $450, depending on when you sign up) is not spare change in this economy. But if you need to know the fine details from the world of land use law, public policy and planning practice, this conference is worth the price of admission. (Of course, if you want to save money, you could simply subscribe to CP&DR . A one-year online subscription is about half the price of the conference!) If you're like me, you've been to dozens of conferences and you long ago recognized that socializing, schmoozing and sightseeing are the priorities. Admit it: You sit through the ballroom speechifying for the free meals and coffee. You hit the breakout sessions just long enough to grab the handouts. You wander through the exhibitors' hall solely so that you can fill a bag with candy for your kids. Well before the end of the PowerPoint presentations, you're already engrossed in email, working up a sweat in your hotel's exercise room, or parked at the bar, depending on your priorities. The UCLA Extension conference is different. It's more like an eight-hour brain dump with barely enough breaks for saying hello to friends and peers. Sure, some people arrive the night before or linger afterward for a cocktail and socializing. For the most part, though, this is a one-day event that's all business. There's a reason that so many of the state's most high-powered land use lawyers and planners are in the audience. I attended my first Land Use Law and Planning Conference in 1999. Afterward, I felt as if I'd been run over by a truck. The depth of useful information and analysis – and the speed at which it was delivered – overwhelmed me. I've been to every conference since, and I always leave with a full notebook and a spinning head. This is not a conference for beginners. The presenters assume you already know a lot, so they typically charge full speed into detailed policy and legal discussions. If you don't know a SUSMP from a THP, if you can't recite the fair argument standard, this may not be your event. This year's keynote speaker is scheduled to be State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), the author of SB 375. Steinberg is one of California's more skilled politicians, but he also is wonky enough to fit right in with this crowd.   - Paul Shigley

I use an admittedly imprecise technique to monitor the health of the Sacramento River's salmon. Several times during November and December, I walk onto the Diestelhorst Bridge in Redding and peer down at the river. Back in the 1990s, I often spotted half a dozen or more salmon within a couple minutes. This year, I saw very few salmon. Same story last year. On my two most recent trips to the Diestelhorst Bridge, I saw not a single swimming salmon or post-spawning carcass. A buddy of mine whose passion is fishing says that back in the 1970s, the Sacramento River through the Redding and Red Bluff areas was thick with salmon and steelhead. These days, he doesn't even bother angling for anadromous fish (species that live in the ocean but spawn in freshwater) because there are so few. I don't pretend to be a biologist, and I'm extremely wary of drawing broad conclusions based on personal anecdotes. What I know is that I used to see fish in the river every fall and early winter, and now I don't. All of this comes to mind because of a story in Friday's Sacramento Bee that says the National Marine Fisheries Service will soon release a report that concludes California's water system is driving salmon, steelhead and sturgeon to extinction. Essentially, we've mucked up the natural system so much that the fish can't survive. The most immediate upshot of the NMFS findings could be new federal mandates on the operation of the State Water Project and Central Valley Project to ensure that fish have enough water at the right times. In other words, less water for cities and farms. We'll be writing a lot about water, especially the Bay Delta, in coming months. I'm not confident we're going to get to report much good news for fish or people. - Paul Shigley

The Governor's Office of Planning & Research (OPR) has released a draft of the new CEQA Guidelines for assessing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming impacts of and on projects as mandated by SB 97 (Public Resources Code § 21083.05). The proposed revisions are one more reminder that the shortest path through the CEQA thicket on greenhouse gas emissions will be for local agencies to adopt climate action plans and to be fully engaged in regional planning to assure that greenhouse gas effects are adequately addressed in a plan for which an environmental impact report was certified. As the introduction to OPR's draft frankly acknowledged, "The most difficult part of any greenhouse gas emissions analysis will inevitably be the determination of significance." OPR tracked existing law in stating that lead agencies have discretion to establish thresholds of significance "based on individual circumstances."  Presumably by "individual" OPR means the agency's individualized local circumstances. To be considered valid, local thresholds of significance must be adopted for general use by the jurisdiction for review of all projects, after undergoing a public review process (which for local agencies would include a public hearing) and be based on substantial evidence (CEQA Guidelines § 15064.7). Local thresholds should not be based on the individual circumstances of specific projects. Project-level assessments of significance if potentially above adopted threshold levels as determined in the initial study are made in an EIR. OPR pointed out that it had requested CARB technical staff to recommend methods for setting thresholds of significance. OPR did not refer to CARB's "Preliminary Draft Staff Proposal Recommended Approaches for Setting Interim Significance Thresholds for Greenhouse Gases" released in October, which received a chilly response at a public workshop last fall. OPR noted only, "If CARB makes recommendations supported by substantial evidence, lead agencies may take them into consideration as part of their independent processes, consistent with adopted CEQA regulations, to adopt thresholds of significance for greenhouse gas emissions." You might say OPR handed CARB back its watch, unwound. The draft revisions are presented in a red-line strike-out format to show the context in which they appear in the existing CEQA Guidelines. Of particular note are the provisions broadening the documents which may be used for tiering purposes. In addition to general plans and previously specified regional plans, agencies would be allowed to tier off specific plans, regional blueprint plans, sustainable community strategies (a nod to SB 375) and climate action plans. Again, this reinforces the idea that local agencies should take a systematic approach, rather than addressing projects' greenhouse gas impacts on an ad hoc basis. – Joel Ellinwood, AICP

The notion of using redevelopment to help solve the state's budget deficit continues to percolate in Sacramento. Meanwhile, analyses of the governor's proposed 18-month budget that was released on New Year's Eve are trickling out. In today's column , the Sacramento Bee' s Dan Walters lays out the redevelopment scheme, which we first described two weeks ago . Essentially, in exchange for a portion of proceeds from the sale of tax increment bonds, the state would permit redevelopment agencies to extend their activities for decades. Most of the discussion so far has concerned the legality and fiscal ramifications of such an approach. But what of the implications for redevelopment itself? State lawmakers have been "reforming" redevelopment since the early 1990s to limit the opportunities for abuse. Among the most important reforms is a mandatory end date for redevelopment activities, which is forcing a number of the oldest redevelopment project areas to shut down by the end of this year. Permitting redevelopment agencies to extend their activities for as much as 40 years without having to make new legal determinations that blight still exists could cancel out many of the reforms. You won't find the redevelopment extension scheme in the governor's budget proposal . But you will find a truly remarkable array of revenue increases and spending reductions for the remainder of the 2008-09 fiscal year and for 2009-10. Some of the proposals are tried-and-true and typically DOA, such as eliminating Williamson Act subventions. More interesting is the administration's attempt at what would appear to be the impossible – cutting billions from the state budget while using state spending to juice the economy.  Among the measures that get our attention, in no particular order: • Elimination of $459 million in funding for transit operations, with the money shifted to education. • Spending an additional $1.15 billion in Proposition 1B funding for building local transit projects. • Speeding up engineering, design and environmental work for the high-speed rail project by $123 million. This would be funded by the $9.95 billion Proposition 1A bond approved in November. • Redirection of $100 million in tribal gaming revenues from transportation projects to the state general fund. • A $2.2 billion push for highway building framed as an "economic stimulus package." This includes "exemptions for a limited number of projects from the California Environmental Quality Act." • Spending $487 million from the Proposition 1C housing bond for affordable housing, infill development, transit-oriented development and parks. • A $248 million reduction in the Cal Fire (nee CDF) budget for fire suppression. This is a cut of more than 50%. • Spending $648 million from Proposition 84 and 1E bond funds for flood control projects in the Central Valley and Bay Delta. • $5.6 million for environmental work related to renewable energy projects in the Southern California deserts. Included is $3 million for development of a Natural Communities Conservation Plan. • Elimination of Williamson Act subventions. This saves the state about $35 million a year and makes counties fully liable for reduced property taxes paid by agricultural landowners. • A $7.2 million increase in a revolving fund to pay for retrofits that reduce energy consumption in state buildings. • A 9.9% tax on oil production that could generate about $1.2 billion.   • And, of course, the increase in the state sales tax from 5% to 6.5%. We'll be following all of these proposals and more as the budget evolves in coming days (and weeks and months). You may find the California State Association of Counties' budget analysis here . The League of California Cities' brief budget analysis is here. The California Budget Project analysis is here . – Paul Shigley