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With the hope of nudging the city forward toward making good on its months-old public promise to initiate permanent investment in the Beach Flats Community Garden, and under imminent threat of legal proceedings against them, on February 16 the gardeners of Beach Flats decided to sign a city letter acquiescing to temporarily leaving the garden plots they have tended so carefully over the past two decades.
On February 18, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the reclassification of the Santa Cruz cypress from “endangered” to “threatened” status under the Endangered Species Act. The tree was protected in 1987 due to threats to its habitat, but now the habitat for all five populations is secure.
The cypress is found only in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. This compact, coniferous tree with dense, cone-producing branches thrives in coastal chaparral communities above the fog belt. Before the Santa Cruz cypress was protected under the Act, it faced intense pressure from development, logging, disease and competition from non-native species, which ultimately stifled its ability to repopulate and thrive in its historic habitat. Through the cooperative efforts of local, state and federal agencies, most of the trees now live in fully protected areas.
The recovery plan developed by federal scientists determined that the cypress, which now numbers between 33,000 to 44,000 trees, could be downlisted once all five of its populations were protected from threats that include development, non-native species and unauthorized trail-building. Though the exact number of trees at the time of listing was unknown, the Service estimated there were only around 2,300.
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Previous Coverage: California's Santa Cruz Cypress Recovering, Ready for Downlisting
Norman “Wounded Knee” DeOcampo (Miwok), a long-time resident of Vallejo, will be taking part in the Longest Walk 5 beginning February 13 at La Jolla Shores in San Diego, California. Wounded Knee is the Founding Executive Director of the Vallejo based organization Sacred Sites Protection and Rights of Indigenous Tribes. (SSPRIT). He is the only person who will have participated in all five Longest Walks.
On February 9, hundreds of people marched through downtown Santa Cruz from the Beach Flats Community Garden to the City Council meeting. Gardeners, along with a large coalition of supporters, are seeking a creative solution to preserve twenty five years of cultivating food and culture in the heart of the Beach Flats.
At about 10 am on February 3, a gardener and supporter of the Beach Flats Community Garden relayed the following information via text message, "City is clearing out gardeners stuff right now." By noon, a fence was up and the city's crew was gone. On the previous day, supporters of the garden announced the launch of a grassroots fundraising campaign to assist the City of Santa Cruz in purchasing the current garden from the Seaside Company, but the city is threatening legal action.
Monterey County has a total of 44 active or idle wastewater injection wells. There are 261 water supplying wells within 1 mile of these wastewater injection wells, likely wells for nearby ranches, farms and rural residences. Most of these wastewater injection wells are in San Ardo oil fields.
In May 2015, DOGGR sent to EPA a list of California’s class II wastewater injection wells that are injecting into protected aquifers. In Nov 2015, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board sent letters to oil and gas operators whose wastewater injection wells are injecting into protected aquifers. The wells listed will be shut down by February 2017 unless the operators get an “aquifer exemption.” The DOGGR is holding public hearings about whether to grant aquifer exemptions. A big crowd turned out for the DOGGR aquifer exemption hearing in San Luis Obispo. Monterey County’s DOGGR hearing has not yet been scheduled.
Both DOGGR and the EPA acknowledge that 80% of Monterey’s wastewater injection wells (35 out of 44) put at risk aquifers that should be protected. In July, 2014, the state found that the industry had illegally injected about 3 billion gallons of fracking wastewater, containing high levels of arsenic, thallium, and nitrates, into central California drinking-water and farm-irrigation aquifers, and DOGGR issued cease and desist orders.
Protect Monterey County (PMC) is an organization working to pass a citizens' initiative to prevent the harmful impacts of extreme oil extraction methods. Protect Monterey County is organizing county-wide working sessions to get the fracking ban initiative on the ballot for November 2016. Meetings are set for Monterey Peninsula activists 1st and 3rd Wednesdays, 6:30 pm at the Peace & Justice Center, 1364 Fremont, Seaside. For the Salinas area, Hartnell College on 2nd and 4th Wednesdays at the Admin Bldg. Room E112.
Wednesday, February 3:  Protect Monterey County meeting in Seaside
Read More | Protect Monterey County website
On January 11, contractors with the UC administration began construction work on the southern portion of the Gill Tract, a historical farm sold to the University of California in 1928 under the condition it would be used for agricultural research and education. The UC is privatizing this section of the Gill Tract for the construction of a high-end senior assisted living facility by the Belmont Village corporation, alongside construction of a Sprouts supermarket and a parking lot.
The next day after working hours, about fifteen individuals entered the Gill Tract to remove surveying stakes marking the paths for the heavy machinery brought to pave over the last large-scale plot of high-quality urban farmland still available on the East Bay. The mobilization by the group Occupy the Farm was led by senior citizens from the community.
On January 28, farm defenders chained themselves to an excavator that was removing valuable topsoil. This halted a day of construction over the contested farmland. “We have tried every formal and institutional route for a more democratic decision on the fate of this land,” explains Gustavo Oliveira, a PhD student of geography at UC Berkeley and member of Occupy the Farm.
  Farm defenders halt construction over farmland in the East Bay |
Farm defenders disrupt destruction of farmland and inauguration of supermarket in the East Bay
Previous Related Indybay Feature:
Indigenous Land Access Committee Holds Ongoing Ceremony on Gill Tract to Reclaim Land
Despite objections from environmental groups such as The Campaign for Sensible Transportation, there is a new push to widen Highway One in Santa Cruz County. The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC), in cooperation with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), has prepared a draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Assessment for the new highway widening proposals.
The project is divided into two components: a long-term analysis of widening Highway One between Santa Cruz and Aptos, and an analysis for highway widening between 41st Avenue and Soquel Drive. The public may submit comments about the draft EIR by Monday, January 18, 2016.
The Campaign for Sensible Transportation writes: "In 2004, we led the County-wide opposition that decisively defeated a sales tax increase to widen Highway One. Since then we have actively supported numerous transportation improvements around the County, including the long push to get local public ownership of the 32-mile rail corridor stretching across the County. And we have continued to resist wasteful investment in the outdated thinking behind widening highways. Now it’s back. A new 30 year transportation sales tax measure proposed for 2016 could fund useful and environmentally sound improvements. Unfortunately, the current proposal would waste more than $100 million dollars on widening Highway One. But widening Highway One STILL won’t work. Repeated scientific studies have shown that expanding busy freeways just encourages more traffic, so they soon become congested again."
Read More | The Campaign for Sensible Transportation | See Also: Draft EIR for Highway 1 Widening Proposals Released
On October 27 the Santa Cruz City Council voted unanimously to support the creation of a permanent garden owned by the City, on the site of the current Beach Flats Community Garden. Community members have applauded this as a great start, but the Seaside Company, owner of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, has plans to take part of the garden for other uses unless the City intervenes by November 13.
A state-convened working group is recommending a series of initial steps toward reducing whale entanglements in crab gear in California, including more monitoring and retrieval of lost fishing gear. The Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group was convened in September after the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups found that whale entanglements in 2014 and 2015 had reached historic highs.
Commercial Dungeness crab season in California opens Nov. 15, so remedies requiring legislative or regulatory changes couldn’t be implemented before this season. The new short-term recommendations focus on training commercial crabbers to respond to whale entanglements, expanding the lost-gear recovery program, improving data collection, testing gear modifications (such as breakaway lines), and developing a best-practices guide.
“It’s been heartbreaking to see so many humpback and gray whales tangled up in fishing lines along California’s coast,” said Kristen Monsell, a Center attorney who serves on the working group. “We’re glad to see the crab industry involved with finding solutions and these recommendations are a good first step.”
Read More | See Also: New Data Shows West Coast Whale Entanglements Now at Record High Levels
Governor Jerry Brown this October signed two bills that will require more frequent oil pipeline inspections and improve oil spill response, but the questionable "marine protected areas" created under the privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative still fail to protect the ocean from pollution, fracking, oil drilling, military testing, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts other than sustainable fishing and Tribal gathering.
The two bills, authored by Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), arose in response to this year’s Refugio Oil Spill in Santa Barbara County. They represent a first step forward in preventing future oil spills from devastating sea mammal, bird and fish populations and the ocean ecosystem along the California coast. Unfortunately, authentic ocean protection along the California coast won't become a reality until the Marine Life Protection Act of 1999 is enforced fully and not selectively and unjustly as it is now.
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The Raging Grannies called out the high-tech industry at a rally held next to the Googleplex on October 14th. They said any talk of Silicon Valley corporations being green is suspect, especially since both Google and Facebook joined with climate change deniers when they became members of the lobbying group ALEC. Both firms declined to renew membership in the right wing group after public pressure in 2014.
Student leader Kian Martin from Lincoln High School in San Jose spoke from the stage saying that corporate entities must hold themselves accountable by ensuring affordable housing and seeing that local Bay Area residents are not displaced from their own communities. Braulia Flores Delgado from the Service Employees International Union said that unionization is essential and that high-tech companies must respect the unions. Corporate speakers included Mike Mielke of Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Bill Weihl of Facebook who gave their views.
The Google bus is a symbol of Bay Area rent prices and escalating number of evictions triggered by the high pay and perks enjoyed by Silicon Valley tech employees. Busses swarmed the streets pulling in and out of the Google campus as the rally, organized by the Sierra Club, came to an end.
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As advocates of Senate Bill 350 were celebrating the signing of the amended renewable energy bill by Governor Jerry Brown, a major appointment to a regulatory post in the Brown administration went largely unnoticed.
In a classic example of how Big Oil has captured the regulatory apparatus in California, Governor Jerry Brown announced the appointment of Bill Bartling, 61, of Bakersfield, who has worked as an oil industry executive and consultant, as district deputy in the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources at the embattled California Department of Conservation.
The Center for Biological Diversity’s Hollin Kretzmann criticized the appointment, stating, “Governor Brown’s administration has shown a blatant disregard for the law, and time after time it has sacrificed California’s water and public health in favor of oil industry profits. Hiring an oil executive to run one of the state’s most captured agencies is completely inappropriate and only adds insult to injury.”
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As Jerry Brown continues to support the expansion of environmentally destructive fracking in California, the Governor on October 7 joined government, climate, business, environmental justice and community leaders in Los Angeles as he signed renewable energy legislation, SB 350, by Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles).
The bill was amended under heavy political pressure by the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), the most powerful corporate lobbying group in Sacramento. Before being amended, Senate Bill 350 called for a 50 percent reduction in petroleum use in cars and trucks by 2030.
Californians Against Fracking warned that the bill "does nothing to address oil and gas drilling in California, which remains the third largest oil producer in the country."
While Jerry Brown grandstands about "green energy" and "climate change" in conferences and photo opportunities, he has promoted the expansion of fracking in the state. And fracking is just one of the many environmentally devastating policies of the Brown administration. Governor Brown has relentlessly pushed the salmon-killing Delta Tunnels under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan/California Water Fix; has promoted water policies that have driven salmon, steelhead, Delta smelt and other fish to the edge of extinction; presided over record water exports out of the Delta in 2011; backs the clearcutting of forests in the Sierra Nevada; and is a strong supporter of neo-liberal carbon trading policies that routinely promote environmentally ineffective and socially unjust projects across the globe.
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Small cascades of cold, pristine water rush out of the hillside at Big Springs, the headwaters of the Sacramento River, as they converge in a clear and shallow pool located in the Mount Shasta City Park.
On September 26, as people hiked to and relaxed besides Big Springs, Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, and hundreds of environmentalists and activists from all over California and Oregon held a rally, the “Water Every Drop Sacred” event, in the scenic park at the Sacramento River headwaters. After the rally ended, Sisk and tribal members led a march and protest of 160 people to the water bottling plant.
The Tribe is opposed to the planned opening of the plant, closed after it was operated by the Coca-Cola Bottling Company and other corporations for years, in accordance with its commitment to protect and preserve the Headwaters of the river, the Mount Shasta watershed and sacred tribal lands.
Read More and View Photos
See Also: Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center || Environmental Justice Coalition for Water
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