Focus
Attorney General Bonta announces settlement with City of Fontana over controversial warehouse project
Fontana Herald News – April 18
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a settlement on Tuesday with the City of Fontana in regard to a controversial warehouse project located next to Jurupa Hills High School. Bonta filed a lawsuit in 2021 against Fontana challenging its approval of this project. Bonta said the settlement requires the City of Fontana to adopt the most stringent warehouse ordinance in the state, with dozens of new requirements for warehouse projects in its jurisdiction. These include site designs to keep trucks away from sensitive sites such as schools, hospitals, and day cares, promotion of zero-emission vehicles for on-site operations, landscaped buffers, installation of solar panels to meet 100% of energy needs for larger warehouse projects, and use of environmentally friendly building materials.
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News
Yorba Linda is Orange County’s first city to adopt state-mandated housing plan
The Orange County Register – April 14
Yorba Linda is the first of Orange County’s 34 cities to win state approval of its new housing plan, providing a blueprint for the construction of 2,415 new homes needed for the remainder of the decade. In an April 8 letter to the city, the state Housing and Community Development Department said its finding is based on “a robust rezone (plan) to facilitate housing, the commitment to remove certain constraints (to homebuilding), and programs to affirmatively further fair housing.”
California leads effort to let rivers roam, lower flood risk
Associated Press – April 19
A 2,100 acre-property at the confluence of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers is being redesigned to look like it did 150 years ago, before levees restricted the flow of rivers that weave across the landscape. The Dos Rios Ranch Preserve is California’s largest single floodplain restoration project. The state wants to fund and prioritize similar projects that lower risks to homes and property while providing other benefits, like boosting habitats, improving water quality, and potentially recharging depleted groundwater supplies.
Kaiser Permanente doubles affordable housing investment to $400M
Fierce Healthcare – April 15
Kaiser Permanente has doubled its social impact investment fund to $400 million, unlocking more money to build affordable housing and other value-based investments. Kaiser’s Thriving Communities Fund, launched in 2018, has invested heavily in affordable housing opportunities and is on track to create or preserve 15,000 units of housing by 2025.
‘Living sea wall’ may help protect S.F. from rising waters
San Francisco Examiner – April 18
A team of welders and engineers with the Port of San Francisco is assembling an experimental sea wall in a Mission Bay warehouse, using a series of steel platforms festooned with textured tiles in order to test whether grooves, curves, and divots will attract native marine species or promote biodiversity. For now, this project is purely experimental. However this summer, the Port in partnership with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center will submerge this “living sea wall” at three different locations along the Embarcadero and monitor the tiles for a minimum of two years.
San Mateo exploring ban on natural gas
The Daily Journal – April 15
San Mateo’s Infrastructure and Sustainability Commission has expressed interest in further restrictions on gas appliances in future reach codes, calling for more electric options in new and existing buildings, as discussed at a recent April 13 commission meeting. In San Mateo, it is currently required that specific building types be all-electric, including new residential construction and new office buildings. San Mateo is embarking on a new reach code process before the current one expires Dec. 31.
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