“Four years of warnings of the consequences of government culpability – from cancelling water projects to releasing millions of acre-feet of precious stored reservoir water in utopian efforts to restore 19th-century salmon runs in the San Joaquin River or to rebound a bait fish population in the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta – are no longer written off as shrill.”
The exact amount of the new water bond has yet to be determined but will be less than $5 billion, Jerry Meral, director of the California water program at the Natural Heritage Institute, told Reuters this week.
“Under the draft, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation would be relieved of its obligation to provide drainage to several hundred thousands of acres of Westlands cropland. The district would permanently retire 100,000 acres of ill-drained fields and agree to a cap on water deliveries that amounts to 75% of its current contract amount.
In return, the reclamation bureau would let Westlands off the hook for the roughly $350 million the irrigation district owes federal taxpayers for construction of a portion of Central Valley Project facilities. The government would also lift limits on the size of Westlands farms eligible for subsidized water deliveries and give the district an open-ended water contract that did not require periodic renewal.”
Anyone who rattled down highways replete with moon craters while traveling on Labor Day weekend knows: The government doesn’t excel at managing roads. A major improvement would be bulldozing a permitting process that delays new public-works projects for up to a decade, and a new report from the nonpartisan group Common Good offers a road map.
In return, the Fix Our Roads coalition wants California to change how it funds transportation, says Orange County Business Council CEO Lucy Dunn. For one, businesses want transportation taxes and fees to be strictly reserved for transportation projects, she says.
No deal has been reached on a plan to find billions of dollars to pay for road repairs, raising the possibility that one of Gov. Jerry Brown’s priorities could languish until next year.
In its lawsuit, the advocacy group Fix the City said Mobility Plan 2035, which calls for the addition of hundreds of miles of new bus- and bike-only lanes, will lead to increased tailpipe emissions as drivers confront fewer car lanes and greater traffic congestion.
“What they’re trying to do is make congestion so bad, you’ll have to get out of your car,” said James O’Sullivan, a founder of Fix the City, a group that is planning a lawsuit to stop the plan. “But what are you going to do, take two hours on a bus? They haven’t given us other options.”
The plan would generate $3.6 billion annually while offering the type of regulatory relief Republicans want. That total falls billions short of the $6 billion annually sought by the Fix Our Roads coalition that includes groups representing businesses, cities and counties.
Today Common Good released Two Years, Not Ten Years: Redesigning Infrastructure Approvals, our new report on the costs of delaying infrastructure permits. The report concludes that a permitting delay of six years on public projects costs the nation over $3.7 trillion, more than double the $1.7 trillion needed through the end of this decade to modernize America’s decrepit infrastructure.
Water shortages aren’t that different than food shortages that arise in some parts of the world. The weather is the proximate cause, but the real problem stems from failed public policy. Quite simply, California policy makers have not been building and permitting sufficient water projects to carry this state through dry years.
The trade group, which represents Chevron, Sempra Energy and 25 other major employers, normally opposes taxes. But earlier this month, the roundtable joined forces with the California Chamber of Commerce and organized labor to promote a plan that would raise $6 billion for infrastructure. The plan calls for a mix road-related driver fees and for funneling existing tax dollars into roads, highways and bridges.
Interests with a stake in better roads will put forward their principles this morning. The approach includes higher taxes on gas and diesel fuels and higher vehicle fees to generate an estimated $6 billion in additional money for state and local road maintenance and improving corridors that enhance trade, such as those to ports.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is seeking a rate increase of 25 to 30 percent, spread out over five years, in an effort to raise an extra $900 million for power and $230 million for water, a total of $1.13 billion, to fix aging infrastructure and comply with state mandates for renewable energy.
Overall cargo volumes at the Port of Los Angeles declined 2.5 percent on a year-over-year basis last month to more than 699,000 standard container units.