OB Rag

From East County Magazine

In a letter sent to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on February 8, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner urged denial of Southern California Edison’s request to restart Unit 2 at the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station for five months at 70% as a test to see if similar problems that caused failure of a steam generator at Unit 3 would occur.

Editor: Ocean Beach’s councilmember, Kevin Faulconer, has just come out and made a call for public hearings on the tax on tourism, setting up a potential show-down with newly-elected Mayor Bob Filner.

Here, below, Doug Porter over at San Diego Free Press questions Faulconer’s call in today’s column, The Starting Line:

City Councilman Kevin Falconer called for public hearings yesterday to placate the City’s hotel industry, which is growing increasingly panicky over Mayor Bob Filner’s refusal to release funding generated by a hotel room surcharge of 2 percent to finance the Tourism Authority.

Editor: Here is a recent report:

Mike Parsons, who once held the world record for the biggest wave surfed, was wheeled off Ocean Beach in a gurney after breaking his neck in a bad wipeout Sunday.

While the waves at Ocean Beach that day were nowhere near as big as Parsons’ record-winning 77-foot wave, they were approximately triple-overhead in size, and powerful. When Parsons tried to catch one, he told surfing website Surfline, he fell and “then my head hit the water really hard.”

Parsons had broken his C7 vertebra, the largest and lowest vertebra in the neck. His limbs were tingling and he couldn’t swim.

Editor: A celebration of Rose Creek was held just recently, organized by Friends of Rose Creek and San Diego Earthworks. Rose Creek is one of the actual, live creeks that pours into east Mission Bay. Rose Creek runs down Rose Canyon, the canyon that I-5 travels, and enters the bay in its northeast quadrant, flowing right by Mission Bay High School.

The celebration was called “Love Your Wetlands Day and Rose Creek Festival: It’s Our Nature”, and was hosted by Campland by the Bay on Saturday, February 9, 2013. It was :

a celebration get-together of dedicated environmental groups in a children and family oriented festival of fun and nature discovery in honor of Rose Creek Watershed and Mission Bay Park, one of the largest sea water aquatic parks in the world.

Townhouse, Commercial Condos Planned for Former Kettenburg Marine & Boatworks

By Linda Oftedahl /Co-Star Group

Colrich, a multifamily developer based in San Diego, has purchased 1.65 acres of redevelopment land on Scott Street between Carlton and Dickens, directly on the San Diego bayfront in the Point Loma neighborhood for $6.6 million.

The land is the former site of the Kettenburg Marine & Boatworks, which reportedly had occupied the property for 65 years.

By John Lawrence/ San Diego Free Press

As of January 1, 2013, the cap-and-trade portion of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, went into effect. Over 300 major polluters in California will face emissions reductions obligations, and in 2015, the program’s size will double to include transportation fuels and natural gas. These companies were given an allowance as to how much carbon pollution they can dump into the atmosphere. They can buy additional “allowances” from the state which held its first sale November 2012. There are more auctions scheduled.

Eventually companies will be able to trade allowances among themselves. So a company that emits less CO2 than they are allowed to can sell the remaining portion of its allowance to a company that exceeds its allowance. As years go by, the allowances will be reduced thus reaching California’s goal to cut its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020.

During a period of time when the nuclear power station at San Onofre has been disabled for a year now, there are renewed calls, according to the U-T, to allow SDG&E to proceed with their plans to build two fossil-fuel power plants. Yet, when the California Public Utilities Commission sat down to vote on the utility’s proposals yesterday, Feb. 13th, they refused to take a vote and instead delayed their decision – again – and this time for the fourth time

The San Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club – who has opposed these plants – is pissed off, and they’re demanding answers – and rightfully so. The Chapter head, Lori Saldana, called it “unacceptable.”

My first introduction to Rugby was when my grandson-in-law, Ben, sent me a picture of him with the blackest eye I had ever seen after winning a Championship Rugby match in Australia. Having all daughters I was almost sickened by seeing this handsome man’s face marred by a “shiner” so large that it almost obliterated his face.

When, five years later, my 17 year old granddaughter informed me that she was going out for the rugby team with the San Diego Young Aztecs (SDYA) my first thought was of Ben and all the cuts, scrapes and bruises he had during the rugby season. (I shouldn’t have been surprised at Molly’s choice. Her Aunt Lynn, my middle daughter, was the first female on the Water Polo team out of Pt. Loma High many years ago.) Still, the remembrance of Ben’s pictures was at the forefront of my mind.

There were all kinds of rumors and media reports swirling yesterday about Papa Doug Manchester – the owner of the U-T San Diego – wanting to buy the LA Times and its mother company, the Tribune Company.

Doug Porter – over at San Diego Free Press – was on top of the story yesterday, and today I asked him for an update, and here’s what he sent me via email:

I’m shocked to discover that Doug Manchester can’t afford a heading aid. His minions over at the UT are now saying that Papa Doug ‘misunderstood’ a question asked of him as he spoke to a room full of Republican ladies. So this deal isn’t gonna happen. Or,more likely,he got laughed out the room.

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship / February 12, 2013

Last week, The New York Times published a chilling account of how indiscriminate killing in war remains bad policy even today. This time, it’s done not by young GIs in the field, but by anonymous puppeteers guiding drones that hover and attack by remote control against targets thousands of miles away, often killing the innocent and driving their enraged and grieving families and friends straight into the arms of the very terrorists we’re trying to eradicate.

Charlie Rose of CBS This Morning (on Tuesday 2/12/13) dragged former VP Dick Cheney out of mothballs to provide a pulpit for his opinions on National Defense and Obama’s ‘plans’ for the military. I know Cheney’s credibility in this area is non-existent so I was left to speculate why CBS would give this fossil a stage? Shared interests?

Cheney talked about Obama intentions to do “serious damage to the military”. He would like us to think John Brennan for CIA and Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense are the issues. I think not.

Sierra Club – for first time – to participate in civil disobedience that includes RFK Jr

From EcoWatch / February 13, 2013

Fifty American leaders—including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Waterkeeper Alliance), Michael Brune (Sierra Club), Bill McKibben (350.org), Reverend Lennox Yearwood Jr. (Hip Hop Caucus), civil rights legend Julian Bond, actress Daryl Hannah, and others —will risk arrest today in front of the White House to demonstrate the depth of their support for decisive action against climate change. For the first time in its 120-year history, the Sierra Club will participate in this civil disobedience action to convey the severity and urgency of action on climate.