Category: Environment

In my first post of this series on San Diego County government, I gave an overview of the County itself and then a brief look at the governmental machine. Because of the sheer size and magnitude of its operations and reach, it can be very overwhelming any time one looks at our County political apparatus. Because our county is huge, the government shell over it has to be huge too. And we’ve got to understand this shell.

You old hippies from the sixties and seventies remember the Furry Freak Brothers, right? And the crazy things they used to do with their cat, Freddy. Well, one of the brothers is alive and well in the body of a 20-year old dude, Acea Schomaker of Lincoln, Nebraska. Schomaker – in order to calm down an abused cat that he and his girlfriend took in – placed the 6-month old feline into a large, make-shift bong.

Schomaker said that when he smoked marijuana through it, it calmed the cat down.

The Capitol Power Plant’s days of coal are over. It’s been the waiting game here: Since 2 pm, over 2,000 activists have blockaded the three main gates to the Capitol Power Plant. The rather larger police turnout is impressive; clad in their best stocking caps, they dot the chain fence like lamp-posts, taking in the gregarious march with a bit of interest and fascination. No attempt at any arrests have been made. The crowd is controlled and peaceful; there is a festive atmosphere, young and old, all bundled up and dancing to keep warm on this crystal clear but chilly afternoon.

A higher-than-normal rate of cancer diagnoses in the building that houses UCSD’s literature department has been the subject of near-constant discussion in recent months, but it’s an issue that’s been on the department’s radar for years.

“We’ve been talking about this in the hallways for almost as long as I’ve been here,” said Anna Joy Springer, a creative-writing professor who’s been teaching at UCSD for six years.

Between 2000 and 2006, faculty and staff who work in the building reported at least eight individual cases of breast cancer. Of these people, two have died.

BORDER AGENTS BLOCK MARCHERS
In the end, immigration activists never made it to the site of yesterday’s planned demonstration, a plaza dubbed Friendship Park that sits on a bluff overlooking the ocean at Border Field State Park. For the first time, Border Patrol agents formally sealed off access on the U.S. side to the plaza, for years a popular meeting place on the U.S.-Mexico border for families to visit through the fence.
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POWERLINK CAUSES OUTRAGE
Jody Morgan cherishes his 100-acre property in El Monte Valley, where El Cajon Mountain rises above the rural community that’s home to a dairy and horse farms. At a Lakeside planning group meeting Wednesday night, Morgan held up a photo he created of what the valley would look like if the proposed Sunrise Powerlink transmission line were built there.

by Frank Gormlie

Residents in this County, when asked what San Diego County government does, are often hard-pressed I have found, to list more than a couple of things. Uh, collect taxes they’ll respond, … uh, run the sheriffs office, uh, … and then there will be a long, thoughtful pause. And maybe they’ll add one or two other services.

Well, the County does collect property and other taxes, and it does finance the Sheriff’s Office – although the Sheriff is elected separately. But the County does so much more.

by Patty Jones

So, like Frank said earlier, a lot of rain fell in a short time here today. And checking OB Joe’s math got me sidetracked (I’m supposed to be figuring my taxes) and I left a response to his comment and that set the wheels in my head spinning.

Okay Joe, here’s my take on the whole acre foot deal….. The OB Planning Board says OB is 742 acres, if it rained 12″ (1 foot), that would be 742 acre feet (a volume measurement), so 1″ of rain is 1/12 of 742 acre feet, or 61.83 acre feet of water. Almost 62 acres would be covered by a foot of water. 62 acres is about the same amount of land that would be encompassed by starting at the corner of Newport and Abbott, walking up Newport, left on Cable, then left on Muir, left on Abbott and back to Newport.

Using my trusty rain gauge, attached to my backyard fence, I just measured .95 inches of rain since 9 am this morning.

That’s an inch in just a four hours. Ocean Beach is one mile square. If this rainwater had been captured, how much would that be? None of it was captured, sadly, except for what fell into the few buckets and plastic containers in my yard. Did you have your buckets and barrels ready for today’s predicted rain?

by Michael Steinberg

Though a meltdown at a nuclear plant may be its worst case scenario, the dangers and risks by no means end there. In fact they go on every day.
Radioactive releases into the air and water are routine at nukes. As is the transportation of radioactive wastes offsite by road, rail and water. These activities are the seldom discussed everyday threats to people, other living beings, and the environment as a whole.

This report delves into what goes on at the San Onofre Generating Station in these respects.

Think of San Diego, and your mind probably conjures images of lounging on long sandy beaches and swimming, surfing, or boating in the warm ocean water. You probably don’t think of the 180 million gallons of minimally-treated sewage that are being pumped into the Pacific Ocean, 4 1/2 miles off the coast of Point Loma, every day. That’s more than 65 billion gallons a year. You might also think, isn’t that illegal?

More than 30 years ago, Congress mandated that publicly-owned wastewater treatment plants, like the one in Point Loma, treat its wastewater to a higher standard-“secondary” standards-before discharging their treated wastewater.

Crews started cutting down more than a dozen trees surrounding the Jolly Roger restaurant at the Oceanside Harbor this week, displacing some birds that had nearly taken over the property and prompting a debate over whether the action was an outrage or a relief.

Twelve eucalyptus and two Torrey pine trees are being removed this week due to what restaurant officials said was a health and safety issue involving excessive amounts of bird feces accumulating in the area.

by Frank Gormlie and Patty Jones

When we heard what the Encinitas tree-sitter was doing, Patty and I wanted to meet him. So we drove up the coast on a beautiful day to do just that. We found Orpheus Park – about halfway between the freeway and the coast – denuded of most of its trees.

And there was Andrew Watkins hanging upside down from a large branch, along with a few other friends who had climbed up to the platform that Watkins had assembled.