A contentious project to divert water supplied to Southern California past an ecologically sensitive river delta moved a step closer to fruition Monday, as state and federal officials unveiled a draft final environmental analysis.
In its annual water allocation estimate, usually issued around Dec. 1, the department projects that it will be able to fill only 5 percent of the water requests it has received from the 29 water agencies it contracts with – agencies that serve about two-thirds of California’s population. Only once before – in 2010 – did the department issue a similarly low estimate of available water.
A $1.47-billion proposal to add toll lanes to a traffic-clogged 14-mile stretch of the 405 Freeway from Long Beach to Costa Mesa has met with wide opposition from officials and residents in the six cities along the route. Civic leaders said they fear the plan could be a harbinger of more toll roads to come.
California’s 11 ports, from Humboldt Bay in the north to San Diego in the south, generate more than $40 billion in annual economic activity. They create hundreds of thousands of jobs dockside as well as inland where cargo is loaded onto trucks or trains for delivery across North America, mainly to Mid-West hubs like Chicago and St. Louis.
More than one-quarter (27 percent) of the nation’s major urban roads– Interstates, freeways and other arterial routes – have pavements that are in substandard condition and provide an unacceptably rough ride to motorists, costing the average urban driver $377 annually, a total of $80 billion nationwide. In some areas, driving on deteriorated roadways costs the average driver more than $800 each year. Driving on roads in disrepair increases consumer costs by accelerating vehicle deterioration and depreciation and increasing needed maintenance, fuel consumption and tire wear.
The roads in greater Los Angeles are the most deteriorated in the United States, which costs Southern California drivers more than $800 a year, according to a national transportation analysis released Thursday.
California’s State Auditor last week released its updated assessment of high-risk issues that loom over the state, and the failure to keep up with the state’s infrastructure needs made the cut.
California uses more of it than any other state: Nearly 20% of all groundwater withdrawals in the United States occur in California. The importance of this underground water source to the socioeconomic and environmental health of our state cannot be overemphasized.
Those in the California transportation infrastructure game are becoming even more worried. The head of the transit advocacy group Transportation California told the Sacramento Business Journal (paywall) that funding the capital region’s transportation needs will be increasingly challenging with federal funds drying up and state infrastructure bonds running out soon.
Those in the California transportation infrastructure game are becoming even more worried. The head of the transit advocacy group Transportation California told the Sacramento Business Journal (paywall) that funding the capital region’s transportation needs will be increasingly challenging with federal funds drying up and state infrastructure bonds running out soon.
The Foothill-Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency, which operates 39 miles (63 kilometers) of toll highways in Orange County, risks default on $2.4 billion in debt, a consultant to California Treasurer Bill Lockyer’s Debt and Investment Advisory Commission said in July. The county itself filed for protection in 1994, the biggest U.S. municipal bankruptcy at the time, after losing about $1.7 billion on derivatives.
New Report Shows Shale Development Supporting Millions of Jobs and Boosting Income and Trade
Washington, D.C., September 4, 2013 – According to a report released today, the United States will continue to reap enormous economic and job-creation benefits from domestic oil and shale gas production.
There’s a lot of talk about increasing infrastructure spending, but with local, state and federal agencies involved, it’s difficult to determine which projects would bring the biggest bang for the buck. Enter CG/LA Infrastructure. The Washington-based consulting firm in August ranked 100 projects that it says would most help the U.S. regain its competitiveness.
That’s the opinion of David Crane, chief executive officer of NRG Energy, a wholesale power company based in Princeton, N.J. What’s afoot is a confluence of green energy and computer technology, deregulation, cheap natural gas, and political pressure that, as Crane starkly frames it, poses “a mortal threat to the existing utility system.” He says that in about the time it has taken cell phones to supplant land lines in most U.S. homes, the grid will become increasingly irrelevant as customers move toward decentralized homegrown green energy.
Los Angeles lawmakers Wednesday agreed to pursue further analysis of an ambitious $3-billion proposal to fix thousands of miles of the city’s most deteriorated streets.