Category: Health

If Ordinance Passes, San Diego Will Become 150th Jurisdiction in California Covered by Ban

Most of Following From Surfrider Foundation

Today at 2pm – July 19th – the San Diego City Council will vote on their Single-Use Carryout Bag Reduction Ordinance, or “bag ban”.

This will happen at 2 pm in Council Chambers at City Hall, 202 C St, 12th Floor, San Diego CA 92101. Activists from Surfrider San Diego are urging caring San Diegans to attend this hearing.

If the ordinance passes, San Diego will become the 150th jurisdiction in the state of California to be covered by a ban.

In the City of San Diego, 700 million plastic carryout bags are distributed each year and less than 3% are recycled. This ordinance will remove 665 million plastic carryout bags from distribution and San Diego will take a huge step in reducing plastic pollution at its source and ultimately protecting our ocean and beaches.

By Frank Gormlie

Perhaps you’ve been too busy with summer to notice, but there’s been a ‘quiet’ debate going on recently in certain circles – including the op-ed pages of the San Diego Union-Tribune – over the future of Fiesta Island.

Fiesta Island – you know that flat and sandy piece of land that juts out into Mission Bay – it’s not really an island as it’s connected with the rest of San Diego by a narrow land bridge with an asphalt road – where people bike, do day-camps on the sand, water or jet-ski, or take their horses, have fires in the firepits, – oh, and who take their dogs to the great off-leash area on the Island.

The land of Island Fiesta itself is what’s left from all the sludge dredged up during the 1950’s development of Mission Bay Park.

There’s been for years an ongoing debate between dog owners who have formed a group Fiesta Island Dog Owners (FIDO) and others who want to see Fiesta Island developed with “improvements”. And the now the debate is ramping up ….

Some parents at Silver Gate Elementary School in Point Loma are leading an uphill battle against artificial turf that is supposed to be installed on the school’s playing field next Fall. And other beach area activists have been fighting the artificial turf wars for a few years now.

Writer Ashly McGlone, in a fairly exhaustive piece in Voice of San Diego published June 27th, captured the highlights of one of those battles in describing efforts of some parents at Silver Gate.

McGlone focused on Point Loma resident Erika Lundeen, who became concerned to hear that the school her kids attend, Silver Gate, was getting a new artificial turf field called “crumb rubber”.

By Judi Curry

This should not be construed as a “poor me” article. It isn’t meant to be seen that way; rather it should be an insightful message to those more fortunate to have people around them that care, that are concerned, and are aware of mental status.

The Fourth of July. It used to be such a fun day when my husband was alive. We did all of the things that people do on the fourth; BBQ, watch the fireworks, and, when legal, even had our own show. Frequently we would take the boat out and catch some fish for homemade ceviche or sushi.

He’s been gone almost seven years now and the Fourth of July is only another day; a day of keeping my dog calm because of the assh*les that insist on shooting off fire crackers all day by the beach. Shadow doesn’t mind the fireworks – Sea World in their infinite wisdom of continuing with their polluting noisy 9:50 pm show – has allowed him to become somewhat immune to the percussion’s he feels every evening. Oh yeah, he still tries to get away from it, but he is much better than my other dogs that tried to get under the carpet to hide.

No, this is not about Shadow, but about all of the lonely people that have no one to celebrate with.

By John Lawrence

Gross Domestic Product does not measure the well-being of human beings.

War, natural disasters, incarcerations all add to positive GDP growth. Profits from casinos, drug sales, cigarette sales, junk food all add to economic growth.

Stock buybacks contribute to GDP. GDP is based on distorted values. If I pay down my debt, that does not add to GDP. If I borrow more money and go into debt and go out and buy stuff, that increases GDP.

Wall Street insistence on short-term profits, as opposed to long-term growth, does add to GDP. GDP is f’d up, yet for every politician and government functionary it’s the sine qua non of economic indicators. Every swindler that parts someone with a buck contributes to GDP growth.

UPDATE: Several past and current members of the OB Planning Board have confirmed that this project never went before the Board.

Here’s why: come inside …

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If you drive in and out of OB on Ebers Street, like many locals, you can’t but notice a large, wood-framed, 3 story building under construction at the corner with Greene Street.

It’s been going up for months now – and it was constructed from scratch – whatever used to be there was totally demolished and removed and the building began at grade level. The building looks like a single-family residence.

It does looks tall. Is it 30 feet or under? Hard to say, really. You just hope it is.

Didn’t the OB Planning Board approve this?

On July 5th activists and community leaders in Southeast San Diego will begin a hunger strike to protest the private prison Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)

By Mark Bartlett

Community Leaders and Local Activists will execute a hunger strike on July 5th at 6pm next to the Oceanview Facility located at 551 S. 35th St. San Diego, CA 92113. The hunger strike will continue until all action items requested by the protest organizers have been satisfied.

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is the largest for­-profit prison industry in America and they currently operate three Correctional Facilities across San Diego County.

Two out of the three facilities are located in the heart of Southeast San Diego and Barrio Logan. Both centers are located in residential neighborhoods within close proximity of homes, churches, schools and businesses.

By Jim Miller

There is something deeply and tragically resonant about extinction in paradise. After returning from a hike on Haleakala where I was lucky enough to have spotted a number of rare birds, I sat on the lanai of my room on the edge of the Maui rainforest and read this from Errol Fuller’s haunting book, Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record:

There are two groups of birds on the Hawaiian Islands that are notorious for the number of extinct species they contain. Although these birds are not particularly closely related, they have names that are similar and this sometimes causes confusion.

The Ocean Beach Town Council will have a presentation and discussion on short term vacation rentals tonight at its monthly meeting, Wednesday, June 22.

Representatives of the group that has been lobbying city government to “do something” about the disruption to residential neighborhoods, Save San Diego Neighborhoods, will be making at least one of the presentations.

They will be discussing how the hundreds of short term rentals in OB and other coastal communities are cutting into San Diego’s housing stock – and making rents higher and even more restrictive. They will demonstrate how neighborhoods are negatively impacted and disrupted. And even how the character of a neighborhood is altered.

This is all well and good – and necessary.

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry at home and abroad, and highlights the efforts of those who are fighting to create a nuclear free future,

California Announces Last Nuclear Plant in State – Diablo Canyon – to Close by 2025

The really big news is that on June 21, PG&E, the utility that owns Diablo Canyon, announced that it had agreed to a proposal endorsed by environmental groups and labor unions to shutter California’s last operating nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, by 2025.

This is a major victory for environmentalists – California is going nuclear-free, ending atomic energy’s more than half-century history in the state. For years, anti-nuclear activists had called for the plant’s closure because of safety concerns over its precarious location near several major earthquake fault lines. Friends of the Earth, for example, has been fighting for the plant’s closure since the 1960s.

By Terrie Best / San Diego Americans for Safe Access

The thin-as-air manufacturing case against medical cannabis patient and collective operator, Shaun Smith swept so quickly through trial that, before we knew it, Attorney Michael Cindrich had queued up his third cannabis-related not guilty verdict in four months.

The Cindrich winning streak started with defendant John Mazula in El Cajon, moved north to LA and then touched down in San Diego County’s Vista yesterday – surely making waves in District Attorney’s office and changing the landscape for medical cannabis patients.

Shaun’s arrest occurred May 13, 2015, near his Oceanside home. He had been running a small legal cannabis collective out of his residence, providing flower, bubble hash, cannabis butter, tinctures and ointments to his members.

Everyone is invited to the OB Town Council meeting on Wednesday, June 22nd, to discuss Short Term Vacation Rentals in Ocean Beach, a very hot topic these days at the coast.

From the OBTC website:

Tourism to our quaint beach town helps our economy thrive, but many residents have been feeling the affect of short-term vacation rentals as fewer homes are available for affordable long-term rental.

Representatives from Save San Diego Neighborhoods will provide an overview on short-term vacation rentals, community impacts, and enforcement of current municipal code. The Town Council wants you to come and share your experience, concerns, and feedback on STVRs during the community discussion.

The meeting begins at 7:00pm at the Masonic Center (1711 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.)