May 8, 2015
CapitalPress.com
11
California
Bills to speed up Calif. water
bond projects fail in committees
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By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — An As-
sembly committee voted down
a bill that would have given
surface storage projects fund-
ed under the $7.5 billion water
bond the same expedited envi-
ronmental reviews that were
granted two years ago for the
Sacramento Kings’ new arena.
The bill by Assemblyman
James Gallagher, R-Nicolaus,
would have set special admin-
istrative and judicial review
procedures under the California
Environmental Quality Act for
such proposed water storage
projects as Sites Reservoir near
Maxwell, Calif., or Temperance
Flat Reservoir near Fresno.
Similar language was ap-
proved in a bill in 2013 to fast-
track construction of the Kings’
pro basketball arena as well as
legislation in 2011 to expedite
review of a proposed downtown
Los Angeles football stadium
and convention center project.
However, the Assembly
Natural Resources Commit-
tee defeated the water project
bill, 6-3, on April 27 despite
Gallagher’s plea that the Dem-
ocrat-controlled Legislature
get projects going quickly to
avoid devastation from future
droughts.
“When the voters passed the
water bond, they expected their
representatives to implement a
speedy solution to the drought,
Quicker
water fund
approval
needed
By FENIT NIRAPPIL
Associated Press
SACRAMENTO,
Calif.
(AP) — California’s Democrat-
ic senators have called out Gov.
Jerry Brown over water spend-
ing, saying that in the face of
the relentless drought the state
should more quickly approve
funds to recycle and save water.
In a joint letter released last
week, the senators urged their
fellow Democrat’s administra-
tion to get projects started in
months instead of years.
California is in its fourth year
of drought, and the Sierra Ne-
vada snowpack that supplies a
third of the state’s water is near-
ly depleted.
Climate change means such
droughts “are likely to become
much more the norm rather than
the extreme,” the letter stated.
“We must respond by aggres-
sively developing and imple-
menting policies that will make
California more drought and cli-
mate resilient in the future.”
The problem isn’t a lack of
money, it’s a matter of using
existing funds wisely, the sen-
ators wrote.
Voters in November ap-
proved a $7.5 billion bond mea-
sure for water infrastructure,
habitat restoration and storage
projects. Lawmakers also have
authorized more than $1.7 bil-
lion in emergency water spend-
ing over the last two years.
Brown’s administration de-
cides how to spend that money,
and the senators are urging his
deputies to act more quickly.
The governor acknowledged
that projects can be slow to ma-
terialize. “Getting things done is
different than talking about get-
ting things done,” Brown said.
The senators also called for a
water czar to coordinate drought
relief efforts among multiple
agencies.
They also said the agricul-
ture industry should do more
to conserve, though Brown has
defended shielding farmers
from additional cuts. The sena-
tors recommend incentives for
planting fewer water-guzzling
crops and installing more effi-
cient irrigation systems.
The letter comes after Brown
this week called for legislation
beefing up enforcement of water
restrictions, including $10,000
fines for the worst water wasters.
Senate President Pro Tem
Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles,
has not commented on that leg-
islation, and the letter does not
address that proposal.
and they expect these storage
projects to get off the ground
as soon as possible,” Gallagher
said during a water rally April
27 at the state Capitol.
Gallagher, the Assembly
Agriculture Committee’s vice
chairman, proposed setting
deadlines for legal disputes
over planned water projects
and prohibiting courts from
stopping the construction or
operation of projects. His bill
would also have set a more
speedy construction timeline
for projects.
The bill’s opponents —
which included the Califor-
nia League of Conservation
Voters, the Natural Resources
Defense Council and Sierra
Club California — argued the
merits for such fast-tracking
are dubious for any project and
that the Kings’ legislation was
different.
For instance, the 2013 leg-
islation required the arena in
downtown Sacramento to be
certified as environmentally
efficient and that the project
have minimal traffic and air
quality impacts, while the Gal-
lagher bill doesn’t include any
mitigation measures, Lawrence
Lingbloom of the Natural Re-
sources Committee wrote in a
bill analysis.
“If people want to do bills
… like the Sacramento Kings
bill, what they would want to
do is identify a specific project,
go to the supporters and oppo-
sition, have them meet together
and come up with the mitiga-
tion measures,” Assemblyman
Das Williams, D-Carpenteria,
the committee’s chairman, told
the Sacramento Bee. “This has
not been done in either case.”
Gallagher’s Assembly Bill
311 was one of several GOP
water storage-related bills that
died in committee. Bills by
Assemblyman Devon Mathis,
R-Porterville, that would have
diverted high-speed rail funds
to surface water projects and
granted CEQA exemptions for
water recycling projects during
a drought were voted down in
Assembly committees.
AB 397, the rail bill, lost,
11-5, in the Transportation
Committee while AB 956, the
recycling bill, was rejected,
6-3, in the Natural Resources
Committee.
The defeats came as hun-
dreds of growers, farmworkers
and community leaders joined
lawmakers at the Capitol rally
to urge speedy approval of wa-
ter projects under Proposition
1, the water bond that passed
in November. State Sen. Jim
Nielsen, a rancher who co-
sponsored Gallagher’s bill,
complained during the rally
that legislators often don’t
consider the future.
“The water that we’re trying
to secure is for the generations,”
Nielsen, R-Gerber, said. “Most
things done in this building are
about me and now. They are not
looking to the generations, and
in this area — water — we have
neglected our generations since
Lake Oroville in the early ‘60s.
No major state-funded project
has gone into effect since then
and we have been doing noth-
ing but sharing the scarcities.”
In other legislative devel-
opments, an antibiotics bill by
Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo,
is advancing despite concerns
from groups including the
California Cattlemen’s As-
sociation. Senate Bill 27 was
awaiting action in the Senate
Appropriations Committee af-
ter passing, 3-0, recently in the
Agriculture Committee.
However, Sen. Cathleen
Galgiani, D-Stockton, the ag
committee’s chairman, indicat-
ed she would call the bill back
to the panel once amendments
are added, the CCA told mem-
bers in a legislative bulletin.
The bill would effectively
bar the over-the-counter sales
of antibiotics for livestock with-
out a veterinarian’s prescription
and set up a system to track the
use of the drugs in the field.
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
John Livingston, an instructor at Shasta College in Redding, Calif., encourages seventh-graders to
touch and handle sawdust during a presentation at an education day April 30 at a logging site near
Viola, Calif.
Logging education stresses technology
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
VIOLA, Calif. — The ex-
citement among a gaggle of
fifth-graders was palpable as
logger Loren German guided
his hot saw toward a tall pine
tree and ran the circular blade
through it at the bottom.
“Timber!” yelled the stu-
dents from West Cottonwood
School in Cottonwood, Calif.,
as the tree fell.
German, a tree feller for
Creekside Logging Co. in Red-
ding, Calif., had just told the
youngsters how a full array of
hand and foot controls make
the machine easier to operate,
including controls that keep the
cab level as he’s climbing a hill.
“There isn’t one thing out
here that you’ll see today that
isn’t run by computers,” he
told the students. “So learn
computers. My machine, be-
lieve it or not, has two com-
puters.”
Advancements in technolo-
gy in the timber industry was
a key theme at the Sierra Cas-
cade Logging Conference’s
annual education day in the
woods, to which some 600
Northern California elemen-
tary through high school stu-
dents came on April 29 and 30.
Youngsters each year are
given a tour of an active log-
ging site to engage them about
what really goes on in the in-
dustry, with some 15 stations
teaching them about such
aspects as water quality con-
trol, fire prevention and forest
replanting. This year, pre-
senters stressed the industry’s
technological advancements
as a way to entice tech-savvy
youngsters seeking careers in
computers, event spokesman
Mike Quinn said.
“It’s all hand-eye coordi-
nation, just like with a video
game,” field trip organizer
Larry Strawn said of operating
machinery.
Advancements have been
made in the working environ-
ment, too. Jessica MacDon-
ald, a student in the heavy
equipment program at Shasta
College in Redding, sat on the
edge of a fire bulldozer as she
told youngsters that the pro-
gram is female-friendly.
Nearby, Shasta College in-
structor John Livingston held a
1950s-era hand saw as he told
middle-schoolers about chang-
es in equipment over the past
few decades. He said research-
ers may soon develop the abili-
ty to use lasers to cut logs.
“Technology is huge,”
Livingston said, noting that
the fire dozer uses a $120,000
satellite system. “Everything’s
going to technology because
we don’t have the labor. We’ve
got to have the technology for
one person to do the jobs of
two or three people.”
Jesse Kavanagh, a sev-
enth-grader at Evergreen
Elementary School in Cot-
tonwood, found the idea of
working in logging appealing.
“It looks like a good place,
out in the forest, and you get
paid pretty good,” he said.
“Sounds fun.”
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