( – promoted by SFBrianCL)

It’s getting to be that time of the year I guess.  Yup, it’s fire season.

A wildfire, fanned by the first Santa Ana winds of the season, has charred 17,000 acres along the Los Angeles-Ventura county border, forcing hundreds from their homes and closing schools today.

The fire, which more than doubled in size from this morning’s estimates, remains “far from being over,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yarovslavsky at a morning press conference. But diminishing winds made officials cautiously optimistic.

Looks like it’ll be another big season.  Hopefully the rains will come earlier this year.

Thy are fawning over cash at Join Arnold:

Thank you donors.  A story: I was with a rich guy the other day who offered to give a million dollars to Arnold’s reform campaign.  I was a little too lost in the moment… thinking about Dr. Evil and the One Milllllllion Dollars phrase and all to really reflect on it at the time but I did have a quiet minute to think afterwards, and got all sappy and well, I  just want to thank our donors.

Wow, I get sappy as well when somebody tries to buy an election.  It’s really so sweet.  It couldn’t possibly be that he has an ulterior motives; he just has nothing better to do with his million dollars.  It’s all quite sickening.

The LA Sherriff’s Department has been repeatedly accused of dropping mentally ill and other homeless on to the streets of downtown LA.  This behavior has now been reported by a LAPD officer, Capt. Andrew Smith, in the LA Times:

The [LA County Sheriff] cruiser, he said, turned south on San Pedro, then west on 7th Street to San Julian Street. There, Smith watched in disbelief as two deputies “pulled over, took a guy in handcuffs out of the car. They took off the cuffs and handed him a bag,” Smith said.

The captain and his partner immediately got out of their car and questioned the man and the deputies. Smith said the deputies told him that the man had been released from the Men’s Central Jail and was standing outside on the street when a supervisor ordered them to take the man to a downtown mission.

“But there was no mission nearby,” Smith said. “Only a line of guys sitting on milk crates.”

***

Smith said the man had a long history of arrests in the Lakewood area as well as Long Beach, where he lived. He said Harris told him he had not asked to be dropped off and had no connection to downtown Los Angeles. Smith also said the man told him he suffered from bipolar disorder.

To the captain, the incident reaffirmed what he believes has been going on downtown for years. Other police agencies, Smith said, and even some hospitals, “are dumping homeless, drunks, narcotic addicts and the criminal population into the downtown area…. We’re fed up with it,” he said.

So, instead of treating these people, who have a history of mental illness and criminality, with respect and caution, they are dumping them with a sandwich and a milk crate.  Not only is this dangerous (dumping potential criminals onto the street), this treats these people like human garbage to be left at the dump.  The cuts in state and local budgets to homeless and mental health programs are coming home to roost.

(Darnit…forgot to promote! – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Cross-posted at MLW.
No, Mr. President, not the Levy family from LA.  California has its own set of levees that could come tumbling down in a earthquake or flood.  The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Delta has an intricate network of levees that began in the 19th Century:

Developers first thought levees 4 feet high and 12 feet at the base would protect Delta lands from tides and river overflow, but that proved inadequate fro Delta peat soils. By 1869, substantial levees had been constructed on Sherman Island and Twitchell Island by Chinese laborers, and in 1870 and 1871 the owners reaped bountiful harvests of grain and row crops. Small-scale reclamationprojects were started on Rough and Ready Island and Roberts Island in the 1870s, but the peat soils showed their weakness as levees. The peat soils would sink, blow away when dry, and develop deep cracks and fissures throughout the levee system. Sherman and Twitchell Islands flooded annually in the early 1870s.

However, we now face the more serious consequences of the failing of the levees.  Today, of course, they have a touch of modern engineering and use cement and other modern materials, but they are dangerously vulnerable to earthquakes.  According to the LA Times:

“To make them basically earthquake-proof, you would probably have to start over with a brand-new levee system,” said Les Harder, acting deputy director of the department and an engineer who helped put together a 2000 state analysis of the delta’s seismic risk. “I think it’s going to be unlikely we would ever make the whole delta today earthquake-proof.”

Now, if they were to breakdown, we are talking about much less human toll, but a substantial financial burden.

The threat is well known. A big quake rumbles across the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, knocking out dozens of the primitive levees that guard the state’s main water crossroads. A key source of water for nearly two out of three Californians and the nation’s biggest fruit and vegetable garden is shut down for months, maybe even a year or two.

The California heartland produces vast amounts of produce for the nation.  Additionally, it supplies much of the water for Southern California and much of the West.  But even fixing the current 1,100 miles of levees will be very expensive…

Schwarzenegger last week asked the federal government for $90 million to improve some of the most critical levees in the delta and the Central Valley. But that is a fraction of the $1.3 billion in repairs officials say it will take just to bring the delta levee system up to basic standards. And that would do little to protect it from earthquake damage. The state Department of Water Resources can’t even say how many billions more it would cost to do the seismic work.

Several solutions have been suggested.  Most controversial is the idea of building a canal to bring water down to Southern California.  This would provide additional water for SoCal, but there is concern that the Delta will be completely dried out by the insatiable thirst of Southern Californians.  It will also be costly, likely several times the cost of simply repairing the levees.  The federal and state government need to make the levees a priority, especially after we have seen what water has done to New Orleans.

Photo from LA Times of a Sacramento area flood.

With the coming opening of the new deYoung museum, and its magnificent facade, the news of the new California Academy is very positive.  This is from Christopher Caen (of the Examiner):

However, the place to be reckoned with was the new Academy of Sciences. It is a remarkable and truly beautiful building, and Renzo Piano and his crew have done a magnificent job on behalf of our city. In fact, I think the organic, undulating Academy and the rusty-colored de Young offer a great contrast in style and execution, and as such are the perfect bookends to each other.

I quickly corralled Jon McNeal from the architectural team and starting quizzing him on the pros and cons of the new building. First off, to make sure everyone is happy, the alligators are indeed going to be inside the front exit as they have since time immemorial. In addition, the planetarium is once again taking a prominent position, but here I have to admit one shortcoming. Although they have been able to keep track of all the original alligators from the old Academy…

Golden Gate Park is experiencing quite the revitalization under Newsom (although most of this is due to work of the Brown mayoral administration).  The Park is key to the continuing vitality of the City as a major tourist destination, a valuable part of our economy.  

More SF news in the extended…
(see the extended)

In other news, the new Octavia street freeway access route opened up:

Sixteen years after the Loma Prieta earthquake tore through the Bay Area, politicians and officials from San Francisco’s past and present joined city residents Friday to celebrate the long-awaited opening of Octavia Boulevard and a new freeway ramp.

The tree-lined boulevard begins at Market Street across from the freeway ramp and ends four blocks away at the Hayes Green, a pleasing stretch of grass and plants complemented by a large wooden sculpture. Meant as an oasis for pedestrians, bicyclists and cars — and with 50 percent of its new housing set as affordable — many speakers at the grand opening expressed hope that the Octavia Boulevard would serve as a blueprint for future projects in San Francisco.

“Let this not be a boulevard of new dreams, but a template to a new way San Francisco builds,” said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, whose district includes the area.

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Hi!  Thanks for visiting Calitics, and I guess, wanting to know a little bit more about me. I used to be an attorney at a firm in San Francisco, specializing in patent prosecution of semiconductor products, but left before I went totally insane.  I recently completed a masters in public policy at UC-Berkeley (the Goldman School of Public Policy).

I started Calitics back in September of 2005 because of a lack of transparency in the statehouse. While federal politics gets a lot of attention from national media, and local politics from local media, state level politics often misses out.  That is unfortunate, especially in California. We have a massive budget, massive problems, and tremendous opportunities. I love local and state politics as it offers far more interaction than the distant DC politics.  Plus, after somewhat abandoning local politics for so long, Democrats need to focus on building a solid network in every state.  Hopefully, Calitics can contribute to the continued vitality of California's progressive movement.

Personally, I live in San Francisco with my husband (screw  you Prop 8), who is also named Brian. In addition to my blogging, I also help campaigns reach out to the netroots, and have worked with campaigns like No 98/Yes 99, Mark Leno for Senate, Lois Wolk for Senate, and No on 1A.

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Apparently, California has just decided it worthwhile to enter into the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.

California became the last of the contiguous states to join a nationwide emergency compact Tuesday, after legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger were spurred to act by the hurricane devastation along the Gulf Coast.

The 1996 Emergency Management Assistance Compact helps states share emergency aid during times of disaster.

It will help California send aid more efficiently to states devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and it will let other states help in the event of a large earthquake or other disaster in California without waiting for bureaucratic paperwork, Schwarzenegger said in signing the legislation.

It certainly is a curious statement about California that we are only doing this now.  We are a state that is particularly prone to natural disasters with several very large population centers.  Yet we were the last state to enter into this pact?  Bizarre.

( – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Agreed…He Won’t be Back.