DWP plans 37% rate hike over four years to cover cost increases
The L.A. utility’s managers unveiled the plan as the council’s Energy and Environment Committee debated the mayor’s proposal to boost rates to pay for renewable energy.
By David Zahniser, LA Times, March 26, 2010 [here]
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is planning to boost the electricity bills of its customers by 37% over the next four years as part of its effort to cover steadily rising costs.
Officials with the city utility divulged their plans Thursday as the City Council’s Energy and Environment Committee debated Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan for boosting rates to help pay for renewable energy. Villaraigosa is seeking a 21% increase over the next year. That effort will be followed by other rate hikes by 2014, however. …
Thursday’s meeting took place an hour after former Vice President Al Gore appeared with Villaraigosa via satellite in support of the mayor’s plan, which would help the mayor meet his goal of ensuring that the DWP secures at least 20% of its energy from renewable sources by Dec. 31.
Villaraigosa has warned that the DWP would renege on a promise to have the utility send $73 million to the city’s troubled general fund, which pays for basic services, if the first increase is not approved by March 31. That money is enough to pay for 1,000 jobs in a year when the city is pondering layoffs.
Council members chastised the mayor for saying in a 14-page briefing paper that a rejection of the rate hike would force the city into bankruptcy since the utility would no longer be able to afford to make the general fund contribution. On Thursday, Villaraigosa disavowed use of the word “bankruptcy” yet continued to warn that unless his plan is approved, the city would run out of money by June 30. … [more]
Note: “Green” energy is a monumental swindle. The purpose of the rate hikes is to fund the insatiable bureaucracy, not to provide “renewable” energy.
55% Favor Repeal of Health Care Bill
Rasmussen Reports, March 25, 2010 [here]
Just before the House of Representatives passed sweeping health care legislation last Sunday, 41% of voters nationwide favored the legislation while 54% were opposed. Now that President Obama has signed the legislation into law, most voters want to see it repealed.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, conducted on the first two nights after the president signed the bill, shows that 55% favor repealing the legislation. Forty-two percent (42%) oppose repeal. Those figures include 46% who Strongly Favor repeal and 35% who Strongly Oppose it.
In terms of Election 2010, 52% say they’d vote for a candidate who favors repeal over one who does not. Forty-one percent (41%) would cast their vote for someone who opposes repeal. … [more]
Why the Mediterranean climate message is all wrong
We have a job to convince people of the gravity of climate change if the worst that is predicted for the UK is a future of balmy Mediterranean summers
George Monbiot, guardian.co.uk, 18 June 2009 [here]
The problem with persuading people in the UK to take climate change seriously is that, as far as we are concerned, it sounds quite attractive. The government’s new climate projections predict drier summers and a possible 5C temperature rise in the south of England by 2080. Isn’t this what we have spent our lives hoping and praying for?
I am writing this (such are the wonders of mobile broadband) on a promenade bench in a windy Welsh seaside town. I can’t sit indoors because the signal’s not strong enough. I’ve buttoned up my jacket and raised the collar, but I’m still freezing. It looks as if the great British summer has struck again. Even as I demand drastic action to forestall the events the government predicts, a small, guilty part of me hopes that they come to pass. … [more]
Note: Don’t feel guilty, George. Warmer Is Better. Go with the flow. Besides which, there is no empirical evidence that higher levels of CO2 (whether natural or manmade) will have any discernible impact on the climate.
Wyden and Merkley: No Drilling!
10 Dems warn Kerry: Don’t expand offshore drilling in climate change bill
By Ben Geman, The Hill, 03/25/10 [here]
Ten coastal state Senate Democrats say they’ll oppose a climate bill if it greatly expands offshore oil and gas drilling.
The warning was issued to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and the two other architects of upcoming energy and climate legislation. …
Wider drilling is part of the compromise bill that Kerry and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are drafting and hope to bring to the Senate floor this year.
The coastal Democrats, in a letter to the three this week, laud the effort to write a climate bill, noting their states are at risk from sea level rise, but say a major expansion of offshore drilling will cause them to drop their support.
The letter is signed by Democratic Sens. Bill Nelson (Fla.), Robert Menendez (N.J.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Barbara Mikulski (Md.), Ben Cardin (Md.), Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Ted Kaufman (Del.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Jack Reed (R.I.). … [more]
Las Vegas to Lead the World in Turning Off Non-Essential Lighting
City of Las Vegas, LasVegasNevada.gov, March 25, 2010 [here]
The city of Las Vegas along with other local government agencies and businesses including many major hotel / casinos have signed on to flick the switch and celebrate Earth Hour 2010, a global effort organized by the World Wildlife Fund.
On Saturday, March 27, at 8:30 p.m. Las Vegas will lead cities and countries throughout the world as individuals, businesses, government buildings, schools and major landmarks turn off non-essential lighting in what will be the largest climate event in history.
Las Vegas was selected by the World Wildlife Fund as a showcase city for 2010. Last year, Las Vegas served as a flagship city.
SUV’s Kill Baby Seals
Climate Change Catastrophe: Worst Ice Year on Record Leads to Harp Seals’ Demise
International Fund for Animal Welfare, PRNewswire-USNewswire, March 25 2010 [here]
CHARLOTTETOWN, Canada — Thousands of harp seal pups are presumed dead in Canada’s Gulf of St. Lawrence and starving pups are being found abandoned on the beaches of Prince Edward Island, tragic victims of the worst ice conditions recorded in eastern Canada.
IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare – www.ifaw.org) reports that the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which is the annual birthing ground of hundreds of thousands of harp seals, is essentially devoid of both ice and seals.
“The conditions this year are disastrous for seal pups. I’ve surveyed this region for nine years and have never seen anything like this,” said Sheryl Fink, a senior researcher with IFAW. “There is wide open water instead of the usual ice floes, and rather than the hundreds of thousands of seal pups that we normally encounter, only a handful of baby harp and hooded seals – animals that are normally found on ice – remain on the beaches.”
Extremely high pup mortality is expected this year, making this one of several such occurrences in the past decade. In 2007, 99% of harp seal pups born in the Southern Gulf of St Lawrence are thought to have died due to lack of ice. In 2002, 75% of pups are thought to have suffered the same fate. Scientists with IFAW are concerned that the cumulative effects of high pup mortality due to the poor ice conditions, and high numbers of pups killed during Canada’s commercial seal hunt could be devastating. … [more]
Note: Arctic ice extent it at its greatest since 2003 [here], just in case you want some facts to go along with the mindless hysteria.
Biomass subsidies threaten Oregon wood plants’ supplies
By Amy Hsuan, The Oregonian, March 21, 2010, [here]
At Flakeboard’s Albany and Eugene plants, 188 workers make particleboard from the same sawdust and scrap that could one day be a major part of the nation’s energy supply.
Over the coming years, billions of dollars in federal subsidies aim to turn the leftovers of forests, including those in Oregon, into rich sources of renewable power.
But they could also put companies such as Flakeboard, the nation’s largest particleboard manufacturer based in South Carolina, out of business if their suppliers opt to sell into more lucrative energy markets.
“There’s already a lot of competition,” said David Leding, a Flakeboard plant manager in Albany. “And now all of a sudden, we have to compete with our federal government.”
As Congress moves to kickstart the biomass market — the burning of waste wood to generate electricity — its incentives and subsidies stand to make winners and losers out of players within the same industry. So far, its attempts have not been entirely successful, leading to unintended consequences.
A now-expired tax credit for paper mills to use black liquor, a waste product of the pulping process, helped to send at least one Oregon manufacturer that didn’t qualify for the tax break into bankruptcy, claiming it could no longer compete on price. Another tax credit, reinstated last week, to boost the production of biodiesel caused an uproar among soap and cosmetic makers because it threatened their supply of animal fat.
Particleboard and wood products manufacturers fear the same, as the federal government seeks to open new fiber supplies to feed boilers with woody waste, considered carbon-neutral because the carbon emitted in burning the fiber will be offset by the carbon pulled from the atmosphere by growing trees. But it raises a fundamental question asked by many in the wood products industry.
“What is the future of wood?’” said Tom Julia, president of the Composite Panel Association, which represent 40 makers of particleboard, medium-density fiberboard and hardboard. “Do we use it to build things or burn it? We are on the cusp of a major public policy direction on the future use of wood, and we’ve got to get it right.” … [more]
Lawsuit challenges bison transfer to Ted Turner
Billings Gazette, March 23, 2010 [here]
A coalition of wildlife advocates Tuesday asked a Montana judge to overturn an agreement that allowed dozens of Yellowstone National Park bison to be transferred onto billionaire Ted Turner’s private ranch.
Four wildlife groups that opposed last month’s transfer filed a lawsuit in Gallatin County claiming that the animals are a public resource that should be shielded from privatization.
Turner has agreed to take care of the animals for five years. In exchange, he gets 75 percent of their offspring, or an estimated 150 animals.
The suit’s plaintiffs said the state should either move the animals onto public land or pay Turner to take care of them rather than give up their young as compensation.
“They need to remain in public hands,” said plaintiff Glenn Hockett with the Gallatin Wildlife Association. “Paying him by bartering the public’s wildlife is a violation of the public trust.” …
Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the Western Watersheds Project, Buffalo Field Campaign and Yellowstone Buffalo Foundation. … [more]
Idaho, Chicago try to woo Oregon business away over taxes
By Jeff Manning, The Oregonian, March 23, 2010, [here]
The young CEO runs a successful technology company southwest of Portland employing hundreds and boasting a bright future. But if the executive has his way, he’ll be moving the company out of Oregon this year or next.
The passage of tax Measures 66 and 67 has convinced him a better, more profitable future lies elsewhere.
“I’m happy to pay taxes,” said the executive, who asked that neither he nor his business be identified. “But the Oregon system is broken, and I know there are a lot of other businesspeople who feel like I do, that it doesn’t make sense to stay.”
Oregonians voted in January to extract an additional $733 million a year in new taxes from business and high-earning individuals. The election results, and the bruising campaign that preceded them, have some influential voices in Oregon’s business class simmering with discontent.
In response, states including Idaho, Montana and Ohio are on the recruiting offensive, taking dead aim at Oregon businesses. They could well find a receptive audience. Conservatives and moderates alike bemoan the message sent by the tax hikes.
“Oregon’s economy is already on the wrong side of the tracks,” said Roy Tucker, managing partner of the Perkins Coie law firm in Portland. “The last thing we need is one more reason for entrepreneurs to decide not to do business here.”
Measures 66 and 67 “established battle lines that did not need to be drawn,” added Portland venture investor David Chen. “The damage is not monetary in terms of the increased taxes. The far greater damage is in how it disenfranchised business.” … [more]
Stimulus Funding for Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge
Companies Awarded $613,000 in Stimulus Funding for Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, and Fence Removal Projects at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge
USFWS News Release, March 25, 2010 [here]
Cheney, Washington State - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior, has awarded two contracts totaling $612,648 under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to Northern Management Services and Jenks, Inc., for improvements at the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge.
Jenks, Inc. used the funding to provide materials to replace a 3-mile stretch of boundary fence to prevent the unintentional trespass of grazing animals from neighboring landowners. Northern Management Services (NMS) will engineer geothermal and solar systems to take advantage of existing renewable energy resources for the refuge. In addition, NMS will help the refuge decrease its energy use through the installation of insulation, light fixtures, solar tubes and the replacement of outdated windows and cooling units. These projects are expected to employ approximately 21 workers.
“We have been forced to use staff time to round up these cattle in the past, and this takes away from our stated mission at Turnbull,” Refuge Manager Dan Matiatos said. “The renewable energy and energy efficiency projects will definitely help us use less energy, improve the work we do and save the American public money.”
“This project is exciting for us here at NMS, not only in that it keeps our employees busy and gives them a job, but that it [also] focuses on alternative energy sources,” NMS project manager Larry Smith said. “Renewable and alternative energy seems to be the way things are going, and we want to be at the forefront of that modernization effort.”
more »
Did Obama Bribe California Reps with Water for Health Care Votes?
By Lonely Conservative, March 17, 2010 [here]
It sure sounds that way. What a vile human being.
Water in California’s San Joaquin Valley was essentially turned off because the Obama administration values smelt over people. It’s been devastating to the economy. But now it looks like they value destroying freedom more than they value the smelt. …
Who’s to say the Obama folks won’t shut the water off again once ObamaCare passes?
Comment: bear bait says:
March 25, 2010 at 12:19 pm
What really happened is the Oregon farmers are getting their water from Klamath river tributaries cut and the largest tributary, the Trinity River, will continue to provide at least 2,500,000 acre feet to the souther SJ Valley, and more if they can steal it. In Oregon, cutting water got Democrat votes, and in California, allowing diversion of water that sorely impacts ESA listed species is increased. The loser is Chinook salmon, more so than Delta smelt, and that loss extends clear to the Columbia River because both Sac-SJ salmon are caught in the ocean off Oregon as are Klamath River and Trinity River stocks, both included in the Klamath River restoration plans. Egregious misuse of water for political purposes to buy votes is just what we expect from the slime bag of spent calamari named Pelosi… She who has denied wage protections for Marshall Islanders who man her husband’s tuna canneries, is hard at the extinction of salmon and all the species dependent upon a healthy SF Bay, and the estuarial plume from runoff to the ocean. Just another San Francisco madame, pimping for the President. And the ESA be damned!!!
Madam Pelosi’s House Of Ill Repute
Investors Business Daily, 03/22/2010 [here]
The Vote: Conned by the promise of an ephemeral executive order, the last holdouts cave and ObamaCare advances. It doesn’t add a single doctor or hospital room, but needs 17,000 new IRS agents to enforce it.
Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Mich., spent months spelling out in minute detail how the Senate version of the health care overhaul permitted federal funding of abortion through its failure to expressly prohibit it.
In the end, he cashed in his principles for an unenforceable executive order that is trumped by the Senate bill he voted to pass.
An executive order is not the law of the land. Neither can you amend a law via executive order. The Senate version of socialized medicine will be the law of the land. It trumps any executive order, a ruling every court will make every time. As Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., reminded Stupak before the vote, this executive order can also be erased by another executive order at any time. It has the strength of gelatin and the life expectancy of a fruit fly.
Stupak was had. So was a bare party-line majority of the House of Representatives, in the face of bipartisan opposition, which proved the adage about everyone having a price, whether it be increased water rations for California’s San Joaquin Valley or a bank in Rep. Earl Pomeroy’s North Dakota that’s now the only one in the country that can still issue student loans.
Such bribes were necessary because the Democrats’ “reform” doesn’t improve care, expand coverage or reduce costs. As GOP Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin recently stated, “If you take all the double counting out of the bill, which the (Congressional Budget Office) can’t do because that’s the way it’s put in front of them, this thing has a $460 billion deficit in the first 10 years, a $1.4 trillion deficit in the second 10 years.”
With accounting tricks that would make Bernie Madoff blush, revenue and savings from the feds taking over student loans is counted as medical savings. A $250 billion dollar “doctor fix” to compensate for $500 billion in Medicare cuts is not counted as an increased cost.
This legislation will cause doctors to flee in droves. The New England Journal of Medicine just released a survey, confirming our own polling, finding that 46% of primary care physicians would consider quitting medicine under this bill.
House Subcommittee on Oversight ranking member Charles Boustany, R-La., said the Internal Revenue Service provision in the bill “dangerously expands, in an ominous way the tentacles of the IRS and its reach into every American family.” … [more]
Killer icicles terrorise Russians
by Marina Koreneva, AFP, Yahoo News, March 24, 2010 [here]
SAINT PETERSBURG (AFP) – Walking along a Saint Petersburg Street immersed in music, Milana Kashtanova, became the latest victim of falling icicles and ice blocks that have killed five people and injured 147 in the city following Russia’s coldest winter in 30 years.
Kashtanova, 21, has been in a coma since February when she was hit by the ice which was being cleared from a rooftop.
“Milana was just walking past a building in the city centre… There was no warning tape, nothing to alert people that people were working on the roof,” Kashtanova’s boyfriend, Irinei Kalachev, told AFP.
The toll has prompted residents and relatives of victims to demand action against those responsible for what they believe to be careless clearing of ice from rooftops.
“Every day, I go out into the street as if I was entering a war zone,” complained resident Boris Ilinsky, 28. … [more]
North Rim wolf revival?
by ERIC BETZ, AZ Daily Sun, March 6, 2010 [here]
The last, best place to release wolves in the United States might be right in our own back yards.
The Flagstaff-based Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project wants to allow the beleaguered Mexican gray wolf to migrate northward and establish packs on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
Wilderness advocates contend the wolves are struggling, in part, because they are bottled up in the Blue Range Recovery Area on the Arizona-New Mexico border.
“We are expecting the Mexican wolves to recognize an invisible line on a map and live by our rules, rather than be the wild animals that they are, just struggling to survive,” said the group’s education and outreach coordinator, Emily Nelson.
The move has the backing of the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity.
Scientists [sic] have identified a vast area that stretches from the Mogollon Rim to the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park as the last, best place for wolves in the United States due its low human and livestock density and abundance of elk and mule deer. Nelson said the area could support a long-term population of as many as 200 wolves. … [more]
City won’t join suit on watershed - U.S. Forest Service had sought council’s support
By Vickie Aldous, The Ashland Daily Tidings, March 18, 2010 [here]
The Ashland City Council … decided on Tuesday not to join the U.S. Forest Service as a defendant in a lawsuit over thinning in the Ashland Watershed.
In January, Ashland City Councilor Eric Navickas and Arizona ecologist Jay Lininger, a former local resident, sued the Forest Service over plans to conduct thinning and prescribed burning on 7,600 acres to reduce wildfire risk. …
Note: Jay Lininger [here, here] works for the Center for Biological Diversity. He was formerly the executive director of Cascadia Wildlands Project in Eugene
An Ashland City Council majority had previously endorsed the Forest Service’s plan, which was developed after years of community input from city officials and others.
The City Council has also agreed to help the Forest Service carry out the plan, with further help from The Nature Conservancy and the Lomakatsi Restoration Project ecological repair company.
Because Navickas is a party in the lawsuit against the Forest Service, he was excluded Tuesday from the City Council’s discussion over whether to join the federal agency in the case.
Councilor Kate Jackson said the thinning project is essential to the health of the Ashland Watershed, but the city’s legal department doesn’t have expertise in the environmental laws that are at issue in the lawsuit.
“I’m not convinced our intervening will have much effect on the case,” she said.
Like Jackson, Councilor Russ Silbiger said he was conflicted about whether to join with the Forest Service on the case.
He said the City Council needs to take a strong stand in support of the thinning project. But taking part in the case would eat up the city legal department’s time and could prove costly if the Forest Service and city lost the case.
Navickas and Lininger are seeking payment of their attorneys’ fees if the Forest Service loses, as well as payment for any other damages the court deems appropriate. …
Instead of joining the Forest Service in the watershed thinning case, councilors Jackson, Silbiger and David Chapman voted to send a letter in support of the thinning project. The Forest Service could use the letter in the case. … [more]
See also:
USFS cuts $2 million from Ashland project [here]
City leaders urge thinning of watershed despite lawsuit threats [here]