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The Swamp Cedars and the Nevada Water Grab

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The Swamp Cedars in Spring Valley, Nevada have grown long memories. They stand on the valley floor under the bright Great Basin stars where the skies are still unspoiled by the encroaching glow of electricity. Beneath the trees’ branches, the blue petals of wild irises flutter in the breeze. All of them – the trees, the flowers, the stars – sway to the soft melodies played by the valley’s bubbling springs.

The Swamp Cedars are under attack. Close to 300 miles south of Spring Valley, the City of Las Vegas sprang up in the desert. Las Vegas’ population continues to grow in an arid landscape and the city is running out of water. Instead of restricting development, Sin City encourages residents and businesses to move to the city promising them access to the water they’ll need.   [Read more…]

Protecting the Grand Canyon During an Era of Anti-Government Extremism

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By Raul Grijalva / Daily Kos

This week marks the 110th anniversary of the Antiquities Act, a landmark law allowing presidents to designate national monuments on land owned by the federal government. Its signing by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 began the modern era of conservation, allowing Roosevelt to designate nearly twenty national monuments and protect natural and cultural resources that have come to define our country.

Many of the monuments he established, including the Grand Canyon in 1908, are now among our most popular national parks. The Antiquities Act, by any measure, has been a tremendous and popular success.

Despite that, the law is under constant attack by Congressional Republicans who mischaracterize the authority granted by the Act as a “land grab.” House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) was recently recorded at a public event saying that anyone who likes the Antiquities Act should “die” so as to get “stupidity out of the gene pool.” The Chairman went on to describe the law as “the most evil Act ever invented.”   [Read more…]

The Tijuana River Valley Community Garden

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By Barbara Zaragosa / South Bay Compass

The Tijuana River Valley (TRV) was once filled with vegetable farms, dairies and ranches. As a matter of fact, the famous horses Trigger and Seabiscuit were boarded here. Today, many ranches still pepper the TRV. You can take horse rides out to the beach or buy vegetables at Suzie’s farm stand on weekends. Along the road in this sleepy area the TRV Community Garden also rents plots to local residents.

The Tijuana River Valley Community Garden has a simple goal: to promote healthy and fresh grown produce in a diverse community environment.   [Read more…]

Citizen Activists Spawn Carlsbad’s Political Revolution

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While outsiders Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump attack insider politics at the national level, a rapidly growing number of local citizen activists, who Carlsbad Mayor Matt Hall once claimed were controlled by outside agitators, have launched a political revolution of their own. It began on August 25, 2015, when the City Council ignored the objections of an overflow crowd of residents calling for a special election to decide whether a billionaire L.A. developer would be entrusted with the future of the city’s pristine Agua Hedionda Lagoon for the next 30 years.

The Council had three choices that evening. They could put off their decision for thirty days to seek citizen input, they could call a special election, or they could approve the project. They voted unanimously to approve it. Outraged opponents gathered enough signatures to overrule the council’s decision and put the matter up for a vote. Measure A, supporting the council’s decision to allow the developer to build a shopping mall at the lagoon, was easily defeated, thanks to an army of volunteer political activists.   [Read more…]

McMansion Coming to Ocean Beach: The Froude Project

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The Saga of the Controversial Froude Project at the San Diego Planning Commission

By Tom and Judy Parry / OB Rag

The decision by the San Diego Planning Commission was pretty clear: Five votes to allow a McMansion to go forward on our quiet Ocean Beach block of Froude Street, one vote to stop it.

Amid our disappointment, we’re allowing the lessons we learned to sink in. The one most frightening is that it can happen on any O.B. street with similar zoning, even if no McMansions are present, even if the entire block is dead set against it.   [Read more…]

Obama Administration Approves Resumption of CA Offshore Fracking

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By Dan Bacher

Claiming that fracking poses “no significant impact” to the environment, Obama administration officials on May 27 finalized their plans to allow oil companies to resume offshore fracking and acidizing in California’s Santa Barbara Channel.

The announcement from the two agencies responsible for oil drilling, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Management (BOEM) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), ended a court-ordered settlement placing a moratorium on offshore fracking and acidizing for oil in the fish and wildlife-rich federal waters off California.

The two agencies reported they have completed a comprehensive environmental analysis evaluating the potential impacts from the use of “well stimulation treatments” – acidizing and fracking operations — on the 23 oil and gas platforms currently in operation on the Outer Continental Shelf offshore California.   [Read more…]

One Death is Too Many – It’s Time for Immediate Safety Improvements to 54th Street

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Will these improvements be included in San Diego’s FY’17 budget?

By Anastasia Brewster / City Heights Community Development Corporation
[Originally posted November 7, 2015]

In October of 2015, fifteen-year-old Crawford student Jonathan Cortez was tragically killed in a hit and run crash on 54th Street just south of Lea Street, where I live with my young family. The news that a teenager died along the same route where I regularly bike with my 7- and 9-year olds to their school hit too close to home, eliciting a parent’s worst fear. My heartfelt condolences go out to the family and friends who survive Jonathan.

Local residents have long been concerned with the safety of this section of 54th Street. Vehicle crashes regularly occur at the intersection of 54th Street and University Ave, and the free right turns at this intersection expose pedestrians to unnecessary risk when crossing the street. The bike lanes along 54th Street are not continuous, and in fact none exist where Jonathan was hit, nor do sidewalks. These deficits create an unsafe environment – they limit our viable choices on how we move through our community.   [Read more…]

City Attorney Candidate Forum and San Diego’s Fault Line

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Land use, wealth and the smart city

The League of Women Voters and community radio station KNSJ hosted a city attorney candidate forum at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in downtown San Diego on Saturday May 14. I had been asked to participate as a media representative on the panel asking questions of the candidates.

The 94 freeway exit that my husband and I took downtown to the event dumps cars on a surface street on the fringe of East Village. We drove through a convulsed urban landscape created by CalTrans engineering, deteriorating Victorian era houses, new apartments and temporarily re-purposed vacant lots. This entry point reflects how San Diego’s decision makers have approached land use and development in the area over many decades and to wildly different effect.

  [Read more…]

Is Affordable Housing In the City of San Diego an Oxymoron? Part 4

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Section 8 Rental Assistance is a Cruel Joke

By Katheryn Rhodes and John Lawrence

Approximately 46,000 households in San Diego are on a waiting list to obtain a federal Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8). The average wait time to obtain a housing voucher is 8 to 10 years.

Nobody’s housing needs remain constant over a period of time that long. Many people on the waiting list will have died before they are called for their Section 8 rental assistance voucher. Cruel irony.   [Read more…]

The Great Eastern Expansion: Where Is The Plaza?

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By Barbara Zaragoza

City staff and developers envision a city that will include professors, engineers, highly trained athletes and international tourists. There will be new boutique shops, gourmet restaurants and a transit system to bring even more people to visit this bustling downtown. An explosion of binational trade is anticipated, since the border is only 2 miles away and executives will be able to go across the Tijuana bridge directly in and out of the Tijuana International Airport.

While talking to city officials and developers, I have found their excitement to be authentic. The hotels are certainly something community members in eastern Chula Vista have been waiting for, along with abundant local jobs and public transportation. But I’m a writer, not a marketer, and I have to ask myself: is there something wrong with this picture?   [Read more…]

The Millenia Project: San Diego County’s New Downtown

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By Barbara Zaragoza

Last week, I spent a lot of time explaining the vast expansion taking place in eastern Chula Vista. Eleven villages total mean about 60,000 new residents will move into the area within the next twenty years. So far, villages 1, 5 and 7 are built out. Village 2 is underway. That leaves villages 3, 4, 8, 9 and 10 still under development.

According to the Otay Ranch General Development Plan, the idea of the village was to “provide a sense of community and social cohesion in a “small town” way, and reduce dependence on the automobile for local trips.” (pg. 10)

Today, I want to go over the heart of the development called “Millenia.” This will become the center piece of Otay Ranch plan, a new downtown with an office & retail district.   [Read more…]

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