During this whole budget crisis, a lot of friends have told me that Calitics is a big downer.  So, in an effort to highlight some of the good stuff going around California, I’ve decided to introduce something I hope to do regularly with this Dept. of Good News.  If you have some good news that will fit this space, shoot me an email.

First, the Long Beach Port has installed the worlds’ first shore-side power system for oil tankers that will drastically decrease pollution in the area.  It will allow tankers in one of the busiest ports on the West Coast to connect to the power grid rather than sit in the port idling, burning dirty fuel.

At a ceremony formally unveiling the port’s dockside power system, port Executive Director Dick Steinke described it as “another giant step” toward cleaning up the air. The project cost $23.7 million and took three years to complete, port officials said. The port contributed about $17.5 million to the project and BP paid the rest.

Roger Brown, regional vice president of BP, said the emissions reductions amounted to 50% even when factoring in pollution created by power plants in generating the electricity. (LAT 6/4/09)

Speaking of reducing emissions, you know what else would do that? Why, high speed rail, of course.  After passing our high speed rail bond package (2008’s Prop 1A), we are now sitting pretty for the federal government’s $8 B of stimulus money tagged for high speed rail.

“The reason why California is looked at so closely — it’s been a priority of your governor, it’s been a priority of your Legislature, they’ve talked about it, a lot of planning has been done,” Biden said in a conference call with reporters.

The vice president said the administration wants “to get shovel-ready projects out the door as quickly as we can. . . . So California is in the game.” (LAT 6/4/09)

HSR has been in the works for a loooong time, and had we just put this on the ballot 6 years ago or whenever it was originally scheduled we would now be in full construction mode.  Despite that, after all the land is purchased and a bit more planning is done, we should be digging for what could be our next great infrastructure project sooner rather than later.

So, are you cheered up yet?