Focus
THE SACRAMENTO BEE - Aug 23 In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau) served notice to California officials on August 17 that it wants to renegotiate a 1986 agreement governing major federal and state water projects and how they pump water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to their member agencies in the southern half of the state. The Bureau's efforts could significantly alter the balance of power between the state and federal governments as they share control of the water that flows through the Delta, the hub of California’s complex north-to-south water delivery system. The 1986 agreement requires both sides to surrender water at times from their reservoirs to serve Delta environmental needs and other purposes. The Bureau seeks to deliver more water to Central Valley farm-irrigation districts and other customers of the federal government’s Central Valley Project, leaving less water for the State Water Project and its most important customer, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 19 million residents of Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Aug 21 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday released its long-awaited proposal, dubbed the "Affordable Clean Energy Rule," for replacing former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan regulations with a power plant program that gives states more leeway in controlling emissions. EPA's newly-proposed plan will have little direct effect on California because the state’s regulations are tougher than the federal standards that the Trump administration now wants to ease. California relies on coal for just 4 percent of its electricity, almost all of it supplied by coal-burning plants in other states. In addition, the state’s regulations effectively bar utility companies from signing new long-term power purchase contracts with coal-fired plants. The EPA’s move on Tuesday, however, could play into the debate over whether California should share control over its electricity grid with other states, including states that rely on coal-burning power plants or coal mining.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Aug 17 In letters sent to the U.S. Navy, the U.S. EPA has excoriated the Navy’s approach to retesting part of the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco for radioactivity as inadequate and unscientific, threatening to pursue a rare dispute process if changes are not made. The Navy owns the 500-acre shipyard, which is a Superfund site heavily contaminated with toxic materials that include heavy metals, asbestos, and radioactivity. The EPA oversees the cleanup, which has been ongoing for more than two decades. The dispute over retesting the property comes after a year in which state and federal agencies accused the Navy's cleanup contractor of falsifying thousands of soil samples across multiple parcels to speed up the cleanup. The retesting is expected to delay redevelopment of the shipyard by at least a year.
SAN FRANCISCO BUSINESS TIMES - Aug 21 A group of developers and property owners filed a lawsuit to challenge the U.S. Navy’s environmental clearance to transfer nearly 5,000 acres of land at the former Concord Naval Weapons Station. Developer Five Point Holdings plans to transform the mostly vacant land and dilapidated military buildings at the station into a new transit village with 12,200 homes and 6.1 million square feet of commercial space. The group challenging the project claims that the Navy’s environmental study of the site does not comply with the National Environmental Protection Act and failed to adequately address issues such as traffic impacts, air quality, and environmental remediation of the land.
