GOP state senator from Valley will chair ag committee in Democrat-controlled Capitol [Modesto Bee]
Republican Andreas Borgeas will chair the State Senate Agriculture Committee, a rare distinction in the Democrat-controlled Legislature. Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins made the appointment for the session that starts Jan. 11. Borgeas’ vast 8th District includes part of Stanislaus County as well as the Fresno area and much of the Sierra Nevada. “The Central Valley is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, and we need strong, effective advocates in Sacramento on behalf of our agricultural community,” Borgeas said in a news release from his office.
https://www.modbee.com/news/business/agriculture/article247965335.html
Billions of dollars spent on fighting California wildfires, but little on prevention [Los Angeles Times]
When COVID-19 blew a hole in California’s spending plans last spring, one of the things state budget-cutters took an axe to was wildfire prevention. A $100-million pilot project to outfit older homes with fire-resistant materials was dropped. Another $165 million earmarked for community protection and wildland fuel-reduction fell to less than $10 million. A few months later, the August siege of dry lightning turned 2020 into a record-shattering wildfire year. The state’s emergency firefighting costs are expected to hit $1.3 billion, pushing the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s total spending this fiscal year to more than $3 billion….Climate change is exacerbating California’s wildfire problem. But it didn’t create it. There are a variety of reasons why wildfires have grown larger, more intense and more destructive in recent decades. A big one, experts say, is that 40 million people live in a fire-prone landscape that has been largely deprived of flame for more than a century. In a widely cited 2007 research paper, UC Berkeley scientists estimated that prior to 1800, about 4.5 million acres of California burned every year in fires ignited by lightning and Native Americans. The elimination of Indigenous burning and the government’s 20th century fire-suppression policies put an end to that, producing a long-term fire deficit and fuel buildup across much of the state that Californians are now paying the price for.
Federal spending bill includes $70 million for Kern projects [Bakersfield Californian]
The roughly $900 billion pandemic relief bill passed by Congress Monday night would set aside at least $70 million for projects in Kern County, with most of the local money earmarked for construction work at Edwards Air Force Base. Assuming President Donald Trump signs the bill, which passed by a 92-6 vote of the U.S. Senate, $40 million would be apportioned to build a flight-test engineering complex at Edwards, plus $16.7 million for a new vehicle and aerospace ground equipment maintenance facility at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center at the military installation in eastern Kern….As it stood late Tuesday, the bill would devote $125 million for repair and modernization work at prisons such as the Taft Correctional Institution and $206 million toward repairing subsidence damage along the Friant-Kern Canal. That canal money would be a long-term loan by the federal government that covers less than half the estimated cost of fixing a conveyance system serving farmers and residents in Kern and other Central Valley counties.
Federal spending bill includes $70 million for Kern projects | News | bakersfield.com
Sites water storage project benefit report identifies Delta ecosystem [Fairfield Daily Republic]
The final feasibility report for the long-awaited Sites Reservoir water storage project was sent Tuesday to Congress by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The Sites Reservoir Project is a joint investigation between the Bureau of Reclamation and Sites Project Authority, authorized by Congress in 2003. The $3.5 billion, 1.5 million-acre-foot reservoir and infrastructure, if completed, would provide water to agriculture, municipal and industrial uses, as well as to the Central Valley Project and environmental interests such as fish and refuges, according to information provided by the bureau.
Sites water storage project benefit report identifies Delta ecosystem (dailyrepublic.com)
Commentary: The bittersweet victory of Alex Padilla, California’s first Latino U.S. senator [Los Angeles Times]
The Pacoima native is the first Latino to ever represent California as a U.S. senator. And it’s truly a historic, wonderful moment, because Padilla exemplifies everything good that this state needs right now. He’s the first-ever California U.S. senator born in Los Angeles. The son of Mexican immigrants. Grew up working-class in the suburbs. Graduated from MIT, which already makes him smarter than nearly all of his new colleagues combined. The 47-year-old is from the generation of Californians who became radicalized as teens and young adults due to Proposition 187, the 1994 anti-immigrant ballot initiative that nearly two-thirds of voters passed but which instead turned California into a national Democratic hammer.
An endangered wolf was shot to death in California. Then the armed agents showed up [Sacramento Bee]
At least seven California game wardens wearing bulletproof vests and sidearms drove into Big Valley, past alfalfa fields and cattle pastures….Before they left that day in August 2019, the wardens interrogated a young man, a sixth-generation rancher with close ties to other farming families in this part of Lassen and Modoc counties….A year and a half later, the case remains under investigation, and Gagnon remains a free man. Despite rewards of $7,500, the wolf’s shooter remains at large. The wardens’ show of force ratcheted up tensions between local ranchers and California’s wildlife agency. To the ranchers, the raid was a sign that the state was willing to go to any length to send a message that wolves are more important than the local families trying to make a living on the soil that sticks in their boot cleats. “They desperately want to make an example out of someone, in my opinion,” said local rancher Aaron Albaugh, a Lassen County supervisor who is friends with Gagnon’s family.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article247380032.html
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