Environmental and Policy Focus
Western Farm Press - Mar 17 This year’s “miracle March” boosted water supply conditions well enough in California for officials to increase the State Water Project (SWP) allocation from 30 percent to 45 percent of requested levels. The SWP allocation means that the 29 SWP contractors will receive almost 1.9 million acre feet of the 4.17 million acre feet of water they requested. Collectively, the SWP contractors serve approximately 25 million Californians and just under a million acres of irrigated farmland. As of March 17, storage in the SWP’s principal reservoir at Lake Oroville was over 2.7 million acre feet, or 77 percent of its 3.5 million acre-foot capacity and 105 percent of its historical average for the date. Officials started the year predicting a 10 percent allocation to SWP contractors. Federal water allocations from the Central Valley Project are expected to be released later this month.
Sacramento Bee - Mar 11 With prolonged and steady rain falling on Northern California for the first time in weeks, tensions are rising over how to manage the increased flows now streaming through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. On one side are the major agricultural interests who say they have borne the brunt of water cutbacks in the drought. On the other are the fisheries advocates who say fish have taken the biggest hit in California’s four-year drought. Now that El Niño is providing some measure of relief, both sides are hoping to benefit. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein last week called on the California Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operate the federal and state water projects, to pump more water south through the Delta to drought-stricken farms and cities in Central and Southern California. Federal regulators painted a starkly different scenario, saying they are shipping as much water south as legally allowed under the environmental restrictions imposed by the Endangered Species Act.
San Francisco Examiner - Mar 15 San Francisco is looking to incorporate the threat of sea level rise into the dozens of major projects planned along the waterfront in the coming years. To that end, Mayor Ed Lee last year convened a Sea Level Rise Coordinating Committee to unite various city departments that have a stake in the city’s waterfront and infrastructure. The committee last week took its first step in addressing that challenge by releasing the Sea Level Rise Action Plan, which serves as a call to action but doesn’t offer a particular solution. Fuad Sweiss, San Francisco’s City Engineer and Deputy Director of Public Works, said the report is a “framework” for how and why the City will confront sea level rise. The waterfront already grapples with coastal flooding and shoreline erosion, but such conditions will likely worsen as California coastal waters are expected to rise another 36 inches in the next century, according to projections from the National Research Council.
Los Angeles Times - Mar 17 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says an emissions-trading program administered by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) has been ineffective in reducing smog-forming pollutants and has allowed some of the region’s largest-emitting facilities to avoid installing pollution control equipment. According to the EPA's Air Division Director, an excess of pollution credits trading at “artificially depressed” prices has resulted in a cap-and-trade program for smog-forming emissions that does not satisfy emissions control requirements under the federal Clean Air Act. In its decision, the EPA faults part of a 2012 air district plan called the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market, or RECLAIM program. SCAQMD counsel said changes to the RECLAIM program approved in December 2015 by the governing board will address the EPA’s criticisms. Those changes, however, have themselves been controversial. The December RECLAIM program revisions as approved would require a 12 ton/day reduction in the cap on nitrogen oxide emissions from refineries, power plants and other facilities under the RECLAIM program. The California Air Resources Board, along with certain state legislators and environmental groups, contend that the changes are insufficient and that they would violate the law and harm public health. The Western States Petroleum Association, on the other hand, has asserted the 12 ton/day reduction will require new emissions controls at refineries and other manufacturing facilities, costing billions of dollars.
Bloomberg - Mar 15 The Obama administration is reversing course on opening Atlantic waters to a new generation of oil and gas drilling, after a revolt by environmentalists and coastal communities that said the activity threatened marine life, fishing and tourism along the U.S. East Coast. The proposed offshore leasing program released on Tuesday eliminates the administration’s initial plan to auction off drilling rights in as many as 104 million acres of the mid- and south-Atlantic in 2021, according to an Interior Department statement. The proposal also sets the stage for selling oil and gas leases in the Arctic waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, Alaska’s Cook Inlet and the Gulf of Mexico, where 10 auctions were tentatively scheduled from 2017 to 2022. The elimination of drilling rights in the Atlantic Ocean is a major blow to offshore oil producers who will continue to be largely confined to the long-tapped Gulf of Mexico. The proposed program—which is still subject to public comment before being finalized—is only the latest step in a long, multiyear process of developing the U.S. government’s five-year offshore leasing program. This program will not affect oil and gas companies’ existing drilling rights in U.S. waters.
