A recent article in the Sacramento Bee examines the coming election in San Francisco about restoring Hetch Hetchy .

An excerpt.

“Suddenly, the fight to restore Hetch Hetchy is getting interesting.

“U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren, a Republican, reopened the public discussion about draining the reservoir that supplies water for San Francisco by writing a letter to the Interior Department in December.

“Lungren has never much been associated with the environment, but he faces a well-funded Democratic challenger, Ami Bera, in a swing seat this year.

“On the question of Hetch Hetchy, he finds himself in cahoots with a lawyer who represents California Democrats, a former California Democratic Party executive director, and a longtime Democratic insider. They’re all determined to drain and restore Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.

“Trying to remedy one of the worst environmental travesties in California knows no partisan bounds,” Lungren’s campaign aide, Rob Stutzman told me with a straight face, more or less.

“Lance Olson, the Democratic attorney, is a director of Restore Hetch Hetchy, as is Kathy Bowler, the party’s former executive director. Olson, Bowler and Democratic operative Dan Eaton are organizing a reception next Wednesday evening in downtown Sacramento to discuss “our considerable legal and political efforts – including a 2012 ballot initiative in San Francisco” to retore the valley.

“A Hetch Hetchy initiative headed for the local San Francisco ballot this November could be a donneybrook. Statewide fights over taxes and capital punishment could pale by comparison. If Lungren wants to join the effort, he no doubt could help sway the dozen or so Republicans who still live in San Francisco.

“We could use them all,” said Eaton, who was chief of staff to Fabian Núñez when Núñez was Assembly speaker, and is offering strategic advice to the coming campaign.”

This article from the Los Angeles Times addresses the funding of high speed rail.

An excerpt.

“The Obama administration, which has been urging California to push through growing opposition to its high-speed rail project, asked Congress on Monday for nearly $35 billion in passenger rail funding over the next five years.

“The request in its fiscal 2013 budget includes $1 billion for next year and nearly $8 billion in 2018, a massive funding plan that faces difficult odds of getting through Congress. Last year, the Republican-controlled House and even the Democratic-led Senate slashed a similar request and left no new money for any high-speed rail project.

“The California project has about $3.3 billion in federal grants from prior years that it plans to use to start construction this year and another $9 billion in bond money approved by voters in 2008. But the project is short $86 billion, and Republicans are attempting to freeze any additional federal funding for it.

“Nonetheless, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood came to California last week and urged state legislators to not back down from the ambitious $98.5-billion project, which would connect Southern California and the Bay Area with electric-powered trains running at up to 220 mph.

“In a closed-door session in Sacramento last week, LaHood told legislators that they could expect the administration to fight for significant additional funding in future years. And LaHood has talked to Gov. Jerry Brown six times in the last year, urging him to reject criticism of the project. Brown has strengthened his support for the bullet train and is planning to make his own state budget request this spring to start construction.

“The budget request unveiled Monday would not designate or set aside money specifically for the California project, but the state has managed to win a huge share of passenger rail project funding in prior years.

“We have made the largest investment in California of any state,” LaHood said at a news conference last week in downtownLos Angeles.”

It is the strategy our organization—American River Parkway Preservation Society—has been advocating for the American River Parkway since our inception in 2003, and with the slowly decreasing ability of Sacramento County to provide even the basic services associated with public safety and facility maintenance, it is even more urgent that it become a reality sooner rather than later.

An excerpt from the Sacramento Bee article.

“If Sacramento youngsters have pools to splash in this summer, they likely will have a grocery store chain to thank rather than their city government.

“Save Mart Supermarket officials are scheduled to announce today a fund-raising campaign to generate $1 million – enough to open half the city’s 12 swimming pools and all of its wading pools this summer.

“It’s the latest and largest example of businesses and neighborhood groups bailing out a cash-starved city unable to keep pools open, parks maintained and community centers operating.

“With Sacramento entering its sixth straight year of large budget deficits, officials are asking those groups to fund – and in some cases operate – amenities once taken for granted.

“Five years from now we may look back and say this was a temporary thing,” said Councilman Steve Cohn. “But I think we have to figure that for the foreseeable future, this is the new normal.”…

“Other partnerships have emerged in the city’s tough budget cycle.

“In east Sacramento, where the historic Clunie Community Center in McKinley Park serves 100,000 people each year, neighborhood activists raised $45,000 to keep the facility open for the next year. Neighbors are forming a nonprofit organization to run the facility after that.

“Most other community centers and clubhouses are fully or partially leased to nonprofit groups. And after the doors were nearly shut at centers during last year’s budget talks, city officials are working with other community organizations to take on the full operation of those facilities.

“If it wasn’t for volunteerism, our city would be completely untenable,” said resident Jeff Harris. He headed the River Park Neighborhood Association when it raised money in 2009 to keep the pool open in Glenn Hall Park.

“Sacramento County has entered into similar partnerships, turning over operation of several parks to nonprofit groups or other governments.

“Ceding control to the private sector isn’t always smooth. In some cases, private groups have changed the rules for public assets.

“A spat last month between the Sacramento United Soccer Club and the Sacramento Valley Rugby Foundation led to a massive rugby tournament abruptly being relocated to Rancho Cordova from Sacramento’s Granite Regional Park. Sacramento United now maintains and runs the playing fields for the city, and it said the rugby tournament left those fields a mess last year. The rugby tournament was denied access to Granite fields, leaving event organizers surprised that the city did not control its own park.

“Such hiccups aside, city officials seem convinced they have a new model for keeping their parks and pools open.

“Quite frankly, we’re going to need a lot more of this in the future because of our budget,” Cohn said. “I’d like to think it’s just temporary, but this may be something we’re looking at for the long term.”

Using either one of these Parkway adjacent sites for housing for the homeless would legalize what so far has remained illegal and somewhat manageable, and be absolutely devastating to that area of the Parkway and the adjacent communities.

An excerpt.

“Camp Pollock, the historic Sacramento campground where generations of Northern California boys have practiced their Scouting skills, is soon to be on the sales block, officials have confirmed.

“One potential buyer? SafeGround, the nonprofit group that is seeking to establish a place in Sacramento where homeless people can live in small cottages with basic services.

“The executive board has made a decision to sell the camp,” said Paul Helman, president of the Golden Empire Council of the Boy Scouts of America….

“SafeGround’s executive director, Steve Watters, said the group has made inquiries about CampPollock. “We’d be interested, but we’re also looking at other options,” he said.

“Watters said he is uncertain whether a proposal for a homeless facility near the downtown River District, whose residents have complained about a concentration of such services in the area, would fly.

“It might be better to find something a little farther out and funnel people out of the river area,” Watters said. “We might win some allies that way.”

“Mark Merin, a local civil rights attorney who supports SafeGround, said the group may have identified a “perfect” site for a pilot project on 1.4 acres of empty land on Del Paso Boulevard near Highway 160.

“We have that piece of property tied up with a letter of intent so we can go to the city planning commission with it,” Merin said.

“Camp Pollock is much bigger, and I’m sure more expensive, and that’s a big undertaking. It might work for some time in the future when we are more established. But right now, we just want to take that first step, a pilot project.”

“Merin said the group plans to erect a mockup of a potential SafeGround “and put it in a public place, where people can see it and it can be demystified” in advance of seeking permits for the project.”

This new report, Safer Parks After Dark: New Night-Lighting Methods Help Provide Answers for Dark-Sky Advocates, from the Trust for Public Land, is an excellent place to begin the discussion.

For the Parkway, the wider use of lighting, given the large scale illegal camping by the homeless in the Parkway, primarily from Discovery Park to Cal Expo, would greatly increase public safety in that area.

An excerpt.

“SAN ANDREAS – Congressman Tom McClintock, R-Granite Bay, is calling for relaxation of “1970s-era” environmental laws that he says are blocking construction of much-needed dams in California and throughout the western United States.

“McClintock represents the 4th Congressional District that was redrawn last year to include Amador, Calaveras and Tuolumne counties. He noted that most major dams in the region and in the Western U.S.were built more than 50 years ago.

“He is also chairman of the House Resources Subcommittee on Water and Power that held an oversight hearing Tuesday in Washington at which representatives of western farmers and some water agencies said they agree that easing environmental rules could get dams built.

“Others at the hearing, however, said coming up with money is a bigger hurdle than environmental rules, and appropriate and cost-effective water supply and storage projects still are being built in California.

“Jerry D. Brown, general manager of Contra Costa Water District, said his agency was able to comply with environmental regulations to build Los Vaqueros Reservoir in the late 1990s and do an expansion of Los Vaqueros, which is now in construction.

“And he noted that Contra Costa Water District is cooperating with East Bay Municipal Utility District to use Los Vaqueros as an alternative to a controversial expansion of Pardee Reservoir on the Mokelumne River.

“Fellow Water and Power Subcommittee members John Garamendi, D-Elk Grove, and Grace Napolitano, D-Norwalk, both said it is high cost that is the barrier to building dams in California.

“Four billion dollars and you can build some nice dams in California,” Garamendi said. “Do you have four billion dollars lying around?”

That prompted McClintock to respond just before he closed the hearing. “Regulatory excesses are actively blocking projects even when they are funded.”

This article looks at the oft repeated argument that low income people use public transit more, but that is wrong, as New Geography notes.

An excerpt, with graphs and charts at the jump.

“One of the most frequently recurring justifications for densification policies (smart growth, growth management, livability, etc.) lies with the assumption that the automobile-based mobility system (Note 1) disadvantages lower income citizens. Much of the solution, according to advocates of densification is to discourage driving and orient both urbanization and the urban transportation system toward transit as well as walking and cycling.

“Of course, there is no question but that lower income citizens are disadvantaged with respect to just about everything economic. However, there are few ways in which lower income citizens are more disadvantaged than in their practical access to work and to amenities by means of transit, walking and cycling. Indeed, the impression that lower income citizens rely on transit to a significantly greater degree than everyone else is just that – an impression.

“The Data: This is illustrated by a compilation of work trip data from the five-year American Community Survey for 2006 to 2010. In the nation’s 51 major metropolitan areas (more than 1,000,000 population), 76.3% of lower income employees use cars to get to work, three times that of all other modes combined (Figure 1).

“Admittedly, this is less than the 83.3% of all employees who use cars for the work trip, but a lot more than would be expected, especially among those who believe that transit is the principal means of mobility for low income citizens. Overall, 8 times as many lower income citizens commuted by car as by transit. In this analysis, lower income citizens are defined as employees who earn less than $15,000 per year, which is approximately one-half of the median earnings per employee of $29,701. .

“Perhaps most surprising is the fact that only 9.6% of lower income citizens used transit to get to work. This is not very much higher than the 7.9% of all workers in the metropolitan areas who use transit. (Table 1). “

An excerpt.

“Sacramento’s only official ethnic neighborhood is thriving along an unmistakable stretch of Stockton Boulevard, where the markets sell live frogs and old men gossip over games of checkers.

“Today, Little Saigon introduces itself to the rest of the region.

“Neighborhood businesses and residents are beaming over a parade aimed at both celebrating the Lunar New Year and marketing their collection of cafes, shops and food markets.

“Growth in the neighborhood has been significant in recent years, driven by a generation of Vietnamese business owners who were children when their families fled their homeland after the fall of Saigon in 1975. More than 60 businesses, ranging from new restaurants to insurance agencies, belong to a burgeoning chamber of commerce.

“Despite its economic growth, Little Saigon continues to battle a stigma that has been attached to Stockton Boulevard for years. Long stretches of the boulevard – which runs from midtown Sacramento to Elk Grove – are barren and crime-ridden.

“Crime in Little Saigon has dropped sharply in the past few years, though store owners still contend with burglaries and robberies. An eight-hour standoff between sheriff’s deputies and an alleged gunman in an apartment complex on the boulevard earlier this week rattled some business owners and residents.

“Truly, behind all of this (the parade), is to bring the mainstream in,” said Mai Nguyen, the president of the Greater Sacramento Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce.”

An excerpt from the Sacramento Press article.

“The long-awaited renovations at the McKinley Park Rose Garden are nearing completion, and the garden is expected to be open by April – just in time for spring weddings in the park.

“The process feels like it’s taken forever,” University of California Master Gardner Ellie Longanecker said Wednesday.

“The rose garden was scheduled to be closed from September to mid-February for renovations, including a new irrigation system, accessible walkways, planter curbs, new signs and handicap-accessible parking spaces near the garden entrance.

“The work has been extended until the end of March or early April, Longanecker said, because of problems with the new irrigation system that created delays in completing other work, including more plantings.

“Longanecker, a rose specialist and one of the many volunteer coordinators responsible for much of the recent work on the garden, said the project has been on the neighborhood’s radar for a long time.

“We initially brought a proposal to the city for this work to get stared in 2009,” Longanecker said. “For three years it’s been one step forward, two steps back.”

“Once the work got under way in September, however, it’s been full steam ahead for city workers and volunteers, she said.

“Since 2009, more than 400 new rose bushes have been planted in the garden on the southeast side of McKinley Park.

“Thanks to a generous donor, Longanecker said, an additional 465 new rose bushes were recently given to add to the garden….

“It’ll be like brand new – irrigation, beds, plants, everything,” City Councilman Steve Cohn said Wednesday.

“The garden’s new irrigation system will use water more efficiently, Cohn said, and the planter curbs will make the beds easier to maintain.

“The beautiful thing is, we’ve kept the original design (of the garden),” Cohn said. “It’ll really ‘pop’ once spring hits.”

“Cohn said that the city didn’t put in the investment it should have in the rose garden over the years.

“Over time, the roses started to lose their vibrancy,” Cohn said. “They were looking sad, really.”

An excerpt from the Press Release.

“WASHINGTON, D.C., February 7, 2012 – The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water and Power held an oversight hearing today on “Water for Our Future and Job Creation: Examining Regulatory and Bureaucratic Barriers to New Surface Storage Infrastructure.” The hearing highlighted the regulatory burdens that hinder vital water storage improvement projects that help create jobs, increase agriculture production, generate hydropower and grow the economy and common sense ways to overcome those hurdles.

“Cumbersome environmental regulations have delayed critical water storage projects for years while urban growth, environmental litigation and age strain current water storage infrastructure. Rural communities, ranches and family farms across the country are dependent on a dependable water supply, which is directly linked to storage capacity. Current and new dams and reservoirs provides affordable emission-free electricity to millions of Americans, supports the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands hard-working families and protects America’s food security.

“The Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) has built more than 600 dams over the last century, however over 66% of their facilities were constructed over 50 years ago. A recent BOR study found nearly one hundred potential sites for new surface storage, yet due to environmental regulations and other factors it has been over a generation since BOR built multiple large scale water storage facilities.

“Regulations and associated litigation have hijacked these projects, to the point where their very purposes have been compromised and the construction of new water storage to continue to meet the needs of these regions is nearly impossible to achieve,” said Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings. “Water users throughout the West have been forced to stand by and watch powerlessly as increasingly burdensome federal rules based on questionable science and never-ending litigation makes it more and more difficult to continue to receive the water they need.”

“The legendary multi-purpose dams and reservoirs of the last generation turned deserts into farmlands, created vast new recreational areas, tamed the environmentally devastating cycle of floods and droughts, and produced clean and abundant hydropower that provided a foundation for unprecedented prosperity throughout the western United States,” said Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock (CA-04). “This hearing will explore the bureaucratic obstacles that federal agencies have placed in the way of water development. Congress must make a concerted effort to identify and remove these obstacles that lead to increasingly expensive water and power and affect our prosperity as a nation.”

“Prudent water storage can help aid agriculture, residential use, recreation, hydropower production and environmental protection. Water storage is a precursor for multiple use water management in arid regions such as Colorado’s third Congressional district,” said Rep. Scott Tipton (CO-03). “I am hopeful that this hearing will be a productive step in highlighting some of the shortcomings of the existing water storage regulatory framework, and how it can be streamlined to better support jobs and communities that depend on the availability of water.”