All over Santa Clara County, driving along the freeway or the expressway, you see ponds. When I was very young, I wondered why lakes and streams didn’t just drain away into the ground, since they weren’t lined with concrete, like swimming pools. (I grew up in arid Southern California, where lakes and streams were somewhat [...]
From the Chronicle: Water words: The City of San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the nonprofit Food and Water Watch are launching the restaurant-based “Take Back the Tap” campaign at noon Thursday in front of the Ferry Building. The campaign is designed to encourage restaurants to forgo serving bottled water and instead [...]
From the Merc’s website: Developers abruptly drop plan for homes in San Jose’s Coyote Valley In a surprise move, developers who had sought to build 25,000 homes on farmlands in San Jose’s Coyote Valley pulled the plug on their plan today saying economic uncertainty, market forces and expensive planning delays have made the project impossible [...]
The SCVWD Board has a number of advisory committees that consider issues relating to different aspects of the District’s activities and “assist the Board by preparing policy alternatives and implications for Board deliberation.” The Environmental Advisory Committee met tonight. District staff gave a very interesting presentation on the outlook for water supply storage and conveyance. [...]
Yesterday evening, the Committee on Political Education of the South Bay Labor Council met at SCVWD headquarters to interview Directors Santos and Kwok and me. They will announce COPE’s endorsements in a few weeks. I, personally, would have benefited from more time for intensive reading, but there are many important local races to look at [...]
At today’s Board Meeting, the Board adopted amendments to their policies relating to flood control to explicitly call for “the physical stability/dynamic equilibrium of streams,” “thriving populations of key species indicative of watershed health” and improved stormwater management. These were recommendations that the Environmental Advisory Committee had been working on for a long time, and [...]
The Associated Press has found traces of many prescription and over-the-counter drugs in the water supplies of 28 major metropolitan areas. The investigative team reviewed hundreds of scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants and interviewed more than 230 officials, academics and scientists. They also surveyed the nation’s [...]
Finally, a top-level page! I’ve got much more work to do, of course, but at least it’s there.
Whew! Today was a long day. But the end result is that my papers are finally filed. The folks at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters are just terrific, patient and cheerful and very, very helpful. I didn’t take pictures this time, but I applauded after Liz Kniss took her oath, met several prospective [...]
I attended this morning’s special board meeting, where the board went through an unsorted list of issues to establish priorities for 2008. The experience was familiar, because of having watched previous meetings on the web. Several things strike me after 8 or 9 hours’ exposure to the current board. It is very collegial. I’ve seen [...]