Environmental and Policy Focus
Los Angeles Times - Aug 11 Over the last two weeks, a bipartisan group of assembly members have pushed to audit spending by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and held an oversight hearing to see if the agency’s greenhouse gas reduction programs are meeting emission targets. Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella) has also proposed a bill that would create a formal legislative committee to vet climate policies and force greater transparency in CARB’s decision-making. Garcia’s bill is tied to other legislation that would extend the state’s climate reduction targets past 2020 and extend the cap-and-trade program, which caps how much greenhouse gas can be emitted into the atmosphere and requires emissions permits.
KPCC - Aug 5 Southern California Gas Company (SoCal Gas) has promised to capture the same amount of methane or carbon equivalents of methane that was released during the four-month Porter Ranch natural gas leak. Local environmentalists and some politicians are nevertheless unhappy with the company’s plan to implement that mitigation outside of the Los Angeles Basin. According to SoCal Gas CEO Dennis Arriola, the company has signed letters of intent with dairy farms in Central California to pay to install systems to capture methane. This approach follows recommendations from the California Air Resources Control Board (CARB) that any mitigation occur within the state and concentrate on the cattle ranches, dairies, and landfills that are the state's largest sources of methane.
San Diego Union-Tribune - Aug 8 The San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club has sent a letter to San Diego County officials threatening litigation if proposed major housing and commercial development in the last big stretch of undeveloped land in rural San Diego County is not halted, at least until the county has a viable framework for measuring and offsetting the newly generated greenhouse gas emissions. The Sierra Club says the county has been dragging its feet on drafting a new climate plan, which the county is required to prepare pursuant to a court order, and has tried to push through new development projects in the meantime. The group argues that the proposed developments would undermine the region’s and state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of its fight against climate change. The Building Industry Association of San Diego County’s president and CEO Borre Winckel called the Sierra Club’s demand letter “legal extortion.”
Los Angeles Times - Aug 8 Property owners in Hollister Ranch, west of Santa Barbara, are back in court seeking to stop the latest move by the California Coastal Commission (CCC) and State Coastal Conservancy to let non-residents onto beaches that are public by law as well as sections of privately owned shoreline. The agencies seek to provide access to the shoreline by accepting easements the YMCA offered the state in 1982 as a condition of the CCC’s approval of a $2.7-million recreational center on land that eventually became part of Hollister Ranch. Last week, both sides went before Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Colleen Sterne, who, in a tentative ruling, rejected their arguments to decide the case, which could clear the way for trial. Judge Sterne’s final decision is pending. The agencies have been trying for more than 35 years to give the public a way to use the coast along Hollister Ranch.
Los Angeles Daily News - Aug 6 Environmental groups and residents are demanding that Los Angeles County close the Chiquita Canyon Landfill, located on Highway 126 three miles west of Castaic near the village of Val Verde. In an August 4 letter to county Supervisor Michael Antonovich, the groups allege that the landfill’s 1997 conditional use permit requires the closure of the landfill when it reaches its 23-ton capacity, or by November 2019, whichever comes first. They say the 257-acre landfill exceeded the limit last June, citing landfill reports. Waste Connections, which owns the 40-year-old site, has filed an expansion application that proposes to nearly double the landfill size to 400 acres. The application is now in the environmental impact study phase, county officials say, and Waste Connections is operating the landfill under a “clean hands waiver” until a decision is issued on the application. A hearing before the County Planning Commission is expected early next year.
