Suzanne – Enviro Updates

SuzanneMay 5, 2023May 15, 2023Climate Change & Energy, Forestsbiomass-burning, coal plant conversion

Rural counties wood pellet export scheme raises concerns

Gary Graham Hughes, THE NORTHCOAST ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER

Over the first months of 2023 Humboldt County has taken on a leadership role in a massive scheme that aims to export wood pellets from California to global bioenergy markets.

In January, Humboldt County Supervisor Rex Bohn, who is the official delegate of Humboldt County to the Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC), an organization of some 40 rural counties from around the state, was appointed to the Board of Directors of Golden State Natural Resources. The five-person board also includes supervisors from Inyo, Modoc, Siskiyou and Butte Counties.

Golden State Natural Resources (GSNR), an “affiliated entity” of RCRC, is a wood pellet manufacturing and export scheme that proposes to construct two new facilities, one each in Tuolumne and Lassen Counties, to manufacture 1,000,000 tons a year of wood pellets. GSNR would then move those wood pellets by rail to ports in Stockton and Richmond for export by ship to markets in Asia, Latin America and Europe.

Increasingly, because of political convenience and carbon accounting loopholes, coal powered electricity generating facilities are converting to burning biomass. This global trend has continued despite the growing body of evidence that shows that wood pellets are a highly carbon-intensive, polluting, expensive, and inefficient energy source.

Even as the imperative to stop burning coal is becoming clearer by the day, the switch to biomass is climate suicide. Per unit of electricity produced, burning wood coughs up more carbon emissions at the smokestack than burning coal.

In fact, greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution would be emitted at every step of the GSNR project, exposing this wood pellet export scheme as a losing proposition for the climate.

Cutting forests, trucking trees long distances, chipping the wood, manufacturing pellets, transporting the pellets by rail hundreds of miles to ports, and shipping the pellets to be burned overseas — every single one of these steps would be a significant source of climate pollution.

SuzanneMay 1, 2023May 1, 2023Transportationequity, Highway 37, sea level rise, wetlands

Op-Ed: A right way and a wrong way to fix Highway 37

Victoria Brandon, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Everyone agrees that Highway 37 needs fixing.

For nearly a decade, the environmental community has debated plans to restructure Highway 37 between Vallejo and Marin County. Usually, environmental engagement on highway projects focuses on ways to reduce negative impacts, but in this case there is an opportunity for a genuinely positive outcome.

Replacement of the current road with a built-for-resilience elevated causeway would not only protect the highway from flooding, it would reconnect the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge and other tidal wetlands to San Francisco Bay waters.

Wetlands sequester carbon dioxide, encourage biodiversity by increasing ecologically vital habitat and play a crucial role in meeting the state’s 30 by 30 goals — preserving 30% of land and coastal waters by 2030.

Elevating the highway would also increase the climate resilience of North Bay communities by buffering high-tide events and reducing nearby flooding and by allowing more sediment to flow into San Pablo Bay, which will help protect marshes and communities against sea level rise.

Everyone agrees that Highway 37 needs fixing. Not only does heavy commute traffic and the absence of a transit alternative create daily gridlock, portions of the road become impassable when bay waters are high, and climate change is only going to make that situation worse.

Sierra Club Redwood Chapter activists were therefore disappointed when instead of moving forward with an elevated causeway that its own studies have identified as the preferred alternative, Caltrans proposed an interim fix — an outdated conventional highway-widening project that will reduce traffic congestion and flood risk at best temporarily.

SuzanneFebruary 24, 2023February 25, 2023Climate Change & Energygeothermal, renewable energy, The Geysers

3 new-tech geothermal plans to be considered for boosting power at The Geysers

Jeff Quackenbush, NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL

Three cutting-edge technologies that could give California a big boost in always-generating emission-free electricity are being eyed for pilot projects in and around massive geothermal field straddling Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino counties.

The Sonoma Clean Power board, made up of public officials from city and county governments the utility serves in Sonoma and Mendocino counties, on March 2 is set to consider cooperation agreements with Canada-based Eavor Technologies, Chevron New Energies and Salt Lake City-based Cyrq Energy. Each agreement calls for building a demonstration power project, each capable of generating up to 20 megawatts If successful, each plan would scale up to production of 200 megawatts.

The agency’s Community Advisory Committee on Feb. 16 recommended board approval of the agreements.

If the three pilot projects are successful, the full-scale projects producing a combined 600 megawatts would move California toward its goal of 1,160 megawatts of new geothermal power generation over the next five years. It would also increase by 85% the current roughly 700 megawatts of power output from existing plants in The Geysers.

SuzanneFebruary 15, 2023February 25, 2023Climate Change & Energydevelopment, fire, wildfire evacuation, wildland urban interface

Op-Ed: California’s problems won’t be solved by building in wild areas

THE WASHINGTON POST

The Feb. 10 news article “Gentrification by fire” raised valid points but did not address some important issues on building housing in California’s wildland-urban interface.

California’s policies concerning development in the wildland-urban interface are incoherent. The Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, whose members are appointed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), has issued minimum fire-safe regulations. For more than 30 years, the rules have required roads accessing new development to be wide enough so that incoming firefighting apparatus and fleeing civilians can pass each other concurrently. New development on dead-end roads more than a mile long is forbidden. In the past two years, the board was heavily lobbied by counties (including Sonoma County) and developers opposing road limitations for building in the wildland-urban interface, and the board proposed to eviscerate the regulations to allow commercial and residential development in fire-prone areas without safe evacuation routes. This approach failed when a group of retired firefighters lambasted the board’s willingness to jeopardize the safety of firefighters and the public.

Sound regulations remain in place, but the state does not enforce them, letting local jurisdictions ignore many of their protections. California’s housing crisis will not be solved by building in fire-prone rural areas; rather housing needs should be addressed by building as infill near transit hubs and safe evacuation routes.

Deborah A. Eppstein, Santa Rosa, Calif.

The writer is founding director of the State Alliance for Firesafe Road Regulations.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/15/california-building-wild-areas-fire-danger/

SuzanneFebruary 10, 2023February 25, 2023Climate Change & Energyfire, income inequality, rebuilding after fire

Gentrification by fire

Scott Wilson, THE WASTHINGTON POST

The West’s new climate is exacerbating housing inequality in the quintessentially blue state of California.

Many of the victims have been left without adequate insurance or financial means to rebuild. Those who remained are in large part the well-off and the well-insured, a trend helping remake and re-sort communities across the state by rich and poor.

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — Climate change and its most extreme consequences are pushing up the price of homes throughout much of the American West, as fires and flooding carve into existing housing stock and restrict the amount of land suitable for future building.

Over several harrowing weeks in October 2017, the Tubbs Fire swept over this city’s eastern hills to destroy about 5,600 homes, an estimated 5 percent of the region’s already threadbare housing stock. Twenty-two people died in the flames.

It was the first mega-fire of California’s new mega-fire era, a flashing red light along the West’s path into a new climate. The Tubbs Fire was also the start of a new kind of economic gentrification, one caused by the increasingly harmful effects of climate change, the higher costs of rebuilding and insuring homes in fire-prone areas, and a housing stock diminished by fire and flooding.

The results have undermined California’s push to build more affordable housing, a goal set by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the rest of a state Democratic leadership, whose political ethic has made a priority of narrowing the gap between rich and poor, an imbalance particularly pronounced in the nation’s most populous state.

SuzanneJanuary 4, 2023May 23, 2023Forests, Land Useconversion to vineyard, Napa County, oak woodland

Land Trust of Napa County agrees to buy controversial Walt Ranch property from Hall Wines

Phil Barber, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Attempts by owners Craig and Kathryn Hall to transform the wooded ranch into a vineyard were at the epicenter of a wider battle between open space and grape growing in Napa County.

For more than a decade, the owners of Hall Wines have waged an effort to develop several hundred acres of oak woodland in eastern Napa County into vineyard, a plan that has sparked anger in Wine Country residents and embroiled county Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza in an ongoing public controversy.

The dispute came to rest at the epicenter of a wider battle over the future of open space in the North Bay, and the expanding footprint of the region’s famed wine industry.

A potential solution appeared unexpectedly Wednesday, when the Land Trust of Napa County and Hall Wines issued a joint statement announcing the land trust’s intent to buy Walt Ranch, the 2,300-acre property at the heart of the debate.

SuzanneDecember 25, 2022February 25, 2023Climate Change & Energyairport, electricity grid, EV charging stations, PG&E

Sonoma County airport electric-car-rental plan faces power-supply bottleneck

Jeff Quackenbush, NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL

A plan for electric-vehicle fast chargers at an envisioned new car-rental facility at the Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport has hit a speed bump: A power provider says it could take several years to provide the large amount of electricity those chargers require.

The facility proposal is being updated for EV rentals to fit with California’s recently accelerated push to electrify transportation to cut emissions.

But a local bottleneck in the electrical grid has the project team exploring ways to lessen the anticipated multi-megawatt power demand from chargers needed to quickly get returned EVs ready for the next renter.

Plans for the consolidated rent-a-car facility have been in motion since late 2019, according to documents presented to the Board of Supervisors early this year. The five rental companies operating at the county-run airport want to increase the number of vehicles available and add joint services such as fueling stations for the fleets, automated car wash and a shop for light maintenance.

SuzanneDecember 1, 2022May 23, 2023Climate Change & Energy, Forestscarbon credits, trees

Satellites detect no real climate benefit from 10 years of forest carbon offsets in California

Shane Coffield and James Randerson, THE CONVERSATION

Many of the companies promising “net-zero” emissions to protect the climate are relying on vast swaths of forests and what are known as carbon offsets to meet that goal.

On paper, carbon offsets appear to balance out a company’s carbon emissions: The company pays to protect trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the air. The company can then claim the absorbed carbon dioxide as an offset that reduces its net impact on the climate.

However, our new satellite analysis reveals what researchers have suspected for years: Forest offsets might not actually be doing much for the climate.

When we looked at satellite tracking of carbon levels and logging activity in California forests, we found that carbon isn’t increasing in the state’s 37 offset project sites any more than in other areas, and timber companies aren’t logging less than they did before.

SuzanneNovember 21, 2022November 23, 2022Agriculture/Food System, Sonoma Coast, Wildlifecrab season, Dungeness crab, Endangered Species Act, fisheries, whales

California commercial Dungeness crab harvest again delayed

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

The commercial harvest of Dungeness crab off the North Coast and Central California has once again been delayed due to large groups of federally protected humpback whales still foraging in the fishing grounds.

They’re fewer in number than in late October, when state Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham first hit pause on the season’s start. But the whales still remain at concentrations high enough to raise the risk of ensnaring them in fishing gear if the fleet were to deploy the thousands of traps used each season.

The whales also exceed thresholds established three years ago to more closely manage the commercial fishery in a way that reduces entanglement of marine mammals protected under the Endangered Species Act — notably blue and humpback whales and leatherback sea turtles.

SuzanneNovember 21, 2022November 23, 2022ForestsCalfire, Guerneville, Guerneville Forest Coalition, logging

Opponents likely headed to court to block newly approved timber operation between Guerneville and Monte Rio

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Cal Fire has approved plans for selective logging of redwood and Douglas fir trees on 224 acres above the lower Russian River between Guerneville and Monte Rio, raising the prospect of legal action by opponents who hope they still might prevent the Silver Estates harvest from going forward.

The state agency granted approval late last week after months of public scrutiny, plan revisions and state delays that critics say reflect the proposal’s fundamentally flawed nature.

But in a Nov. 17 letter, Eric Huff, staff chief of Cal Fire’s Forest Practice Program, said the final version — some 500 pages of reports, descriptions, maps and other information — conforms with state Forest Practice Rules. The decision authorizes landowner Roger Burch and his family to carry out its provisions any time over the next five years.

What happens next appears to depend in large part on whether Burch and his representatives decide to begin operations this winter, within the restrictions permitted for the traditional wet weather season.

Environmental Center of Sonoma County

Author: Suzanne