As drought worsens, water agencies eye desalination to quench Bay Area’s thirst

                                  The Mallard Slough site is closed off to the public. (Photo by Ted Andersen)

By Ted Andersen

Thirty miles east of Richmond, just beyond railroad tracks, sits a windswept field on the Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta alive with darting ground squirrels and swaying cattails. This is Mallard Slough, a plot of marshland near Bay Point that holds more potential than its undeveloped landscape suggests.

As California’s persisting drought intensifies, Bay Area counties have been working together to find new sources of fresh water. One idea is desalination, the process of separating salt from brackish or ocean water to create drinking water. Desalination has grown in popularity among state and local bodies throughout the past decade, with 17 plants currently in the planning stages up and down California’s coastline.

Mallard Slough is one of them.

For more than 10 years, officials in Contra Costa, Alameda, San Francisco, and Santa Clara counties have been eyeing potential locations for a $200-million facility. Officials have studied other locations as well — one along Ocean Beach in San Francisco and another near the Bay Bridge in Oakland — but the inter-district prefeasibility studies that began in 2003 and continued into 2007 found Mallard Slough to be the only realistic site. If constructed, the facility would draw from Suisun Bay and could supply supplemental drinking water to East Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD), which serves the city of Richmond as well as more than 1.2 million other water customers in the East Bay. The planning process will continue into 2015, when other details will be hashed out.

Feasibility studies carried out by Bay Area water districts between 2003-2007 determined that Mallard Slough could host a desalination plant. (Photo by Ted Andersen)

“We did not identify how much [water] would go here and how much could go there; we mainly looked at maximum output,” said Jeff Quimby, planning manager with the Contra Costa Water District. “If the project went forward we would need to look at who it would benefit.”

Bay Area water agencies have received about $3.3 million in state grants for technical studies so far, $1 million of which went to fund a small-scale pilot project operated at the slough’s pump station from 2008 to 2009. The testing was completed in June 2010, and concluded that desalination is possible at the location. The plant’s output could be as much as 50 million gallons of water per day.

Desalination is an expensive and energy intensive process, costing anywhere from $1,900 to $3,000 per acre foot to screen, but the low salt content of the water at Mallard Slough is part of what makes the area attractive. Seawater contains roughly 36 parts per million of dissolved salt compared to just 10 to 13 parts per million for the brackish water at the proposed location. The slough is a wetland area near the mouths of two of California’s most important rivers: the Sacramento and the San Joaquin.

“That obviously reduces how much we would have to desalinate it,” said Nelsy Rodriguez, an EBMUD spokeswoman.

From the slough, windmills twirl in the distance near Pittsburg. (Photo by Ted Andersen)

Oct. 1 marked the beginning of the annual water year for state agencies, a time of intense review and forecasting. Eight agencies have moved forward to form the Bay Area Regional Reliability Partnership Development to investigate various types of water reliability projects, but decisions will still be made district by district. Moreover, while desalination is currently an approved option, the actual construction of a plant could be as far off as 2020. The fate of the project lies in the hands of the general managers of each of the eight water agencies now involved, according to Rodriguez.

“We hope by the beginning of the fiscal year, there will be [a timeline] for the project,” she said. “Each of the agencies is looking internally at the need for water reliability based on the drought.”

Funding also remains a gray area. Desalination is not included in Proposition 1, the $7-billion water bond on November’s ballot. Instead, individual agencies would need to look into ways to cobble the investment together before breaking ground.

“They might all have to contribute,” CCWD’s Quimby said. “That would be something we would have to consider down the road.”

Environmental impact is also a major issue facing desalination plants, especially in the sensitive delta habitat, said Heather Cooley, Water Program director at the Pacific Institute, a research center based in Oakland.

“There were some impacts on delta smelt and that’s a particular concern in that area,” she said, referring to a plant’s intake flow, which can suck up and kill marine life. “Looking at the technology, there are also issues associated with the discharge of brine.”

Passing costs to households is another issue, Cooley said. “For those struggling to pay bills, even a small increase could be a burden.”

The Secal Pittsburg Power Plant looms large to the east of the proposed desalination plant site at Mallard’s Slough. (Photo by Ted Andersen)

But as the October sun continues to beat down on Northern California, there is no rain in sight. For 100 years the utility has gotten its water from the Mokelumne River, in the Sierras. But the river has been heavily taxed during the past three years, which has contributed to EBMUD temporarily tapping the Sacramento River in May for the first time in 40 years.

Normally Shasta and Folsom reservoirs would be available for developing projects to meet growing water needs, but according to California Department of Water Resources data, Lake Shasta is currently at 25 percent of capacity with Folsom Lake at 35 percent. Every major reservoir in the state is below its historic level.

“California is perpetually in drought. It’s a drought climate,” Rodriguez said. “We are always looking for options to increase our water supply.”

Publish on Oct. 8, 2014 by Richmond Confidential

https://richmondconfidential.org/2014/10/08/as-drought-worsens-water-agencies-eye-desalination-to-quench-bay-areas-thirst/

Technology Aims To Reduce Whale Fatalities: New App Steers Ships From Whales

WhaleAlert 2.0 is a free download for iPhone/iPad. An Android
version is currently in the works.

By Ted Andersen

          The blue whale may be the king of the ocean, but in California coastal waters the endangered mammal has all too often fallen to the less regal position of traffic victim.

Every year, commercial and private vessels accidently strike whales, at times killing them. In 2010, ships struck and killed five whales (two blue, one humpback and two fin whales) along Northern California’s coastline, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Data suggest many other collisions go unrecognized.  

But a public-private collaboration has recently developed a method to allow the public to contribute to whale preservation. In early September, an app called Whale Alert 2.0 was launched on the West Coast to help mariners steer clear of large marine mammals. Originally developed in 2012 to help protect critically endangered right whales on the East Coast, the iPhone/iPad application has been updated with new features to provide ship captains in the Pacific with information regarding real-time whale movements and locations.

“Any whale strike is a problem as far as we are concerned,” said John Berge, vice president of Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, a non-profit group that focuses on issues affecting international trade, primarily with container ships.

The free app uses GPS, Automatic Identification System (a tracking system used on ships), the Internet and NOAA nautical charts. New features include maps of California Marine Protected Areas and information about tides and weather. In addition, the public can report whale sightings to databases that track migration patterns. With the data, NOAA can help the U.S. Coast Guard advise ship operators to slow down or change course as they approach areas where whales have been sighted.

The new technology is the result of a joint effort between government agencies, academic institutions, non-profit conservation groups and private sector industries led by NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. The ultimate goal is to slow ships before they pass through a sensitive habitat at full speed.

“We know in the case of these large ships, speed literally kills whales,” said Patrick Ramage, whale program director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

The series of connected projects was paid for by a $20-million amount set aside for conservation efforts from the company Excelerate Energy when it sought to build a deep-water port about 16 miles from Boston to import natural gas. Originally, the project included high-tech buoys developed at Cornell University anchored off the coast of Massachusetts to detect the calls of the right whales. No detection buoys have been anchored in the Pacific.

North Atlantic right whales, which live along the East Coast from Nova Scotia to Florida and number only about 400, are currently facing extinction. Collision with ships is a leading cause of right whale death. Since the 2012 launch of the first version of the app, Ramage said, progress has been made.

“There has not been in the designated areas a ship striking a whale,” he said. “And that’s not because of the absence of whales.”

Whale Alert 2.0 works together with westcoast.whalealert.org, which features the downloadable app Spotter Pro, designed more for professional data gathering. The software company Conserve.IO originally developed Whale Alert 1.0 for the East Coast and Spotter for the West Coast.

“We decided to fuse those efforts into one program,” said Conserve.IO founder and CEO Brad Winney. “So now for the first time we have a singular app that is able to alert mariners as to the presence of critical areas and habitats, but at the same time that app can collect data that is used to help understand where those areas should be in the first place.”

Some bugs are still being worked out such as limitations in cellular networks for real-time data, something that could be solved using satellite technology. Another obstacle NOAA is attempting to overcome is the education of captains and crews on how to use the app.

And the project is still growing. Whale Alert 3.0 is currently in the works internationally, said IFAW’s Ramage. Countries ranging from Spain and New Zealand to Sri Lanka and Uruguay have approached IFAW about collecting data to populate an app, he said, but a lot of work still needs to be done.

“We are excited because we are an international organization and this is what we envisioned from the beginning of the project,” he said.

SF Pride President Axes Bradley Manning’s Name from Parade; Vets Call for Resignation

                                                                                        Photo: Ted Andersen
Daniel Ellsberg, the U.S. intelligence analyst who blew the whistle on Nixon's
administration by releasing thousands of classified government documents now
known as "The Pentagon Papers," speaks at a rally in front of the SF Pride
offices on Market Street on April 29, 2013 to condemn the actions of Pride
President Lisa Williams, who revoked jailed army whistleblower Pfc. Bradley
Manning's name as a Grand Marshal in June 30's parade.

By Ted Andersen

“I was Bradley Manning,” the dignified octogenarian tells a large sidewalk crowd gathered with bated breath.

It’s Monday, April 29 at 5 p.m. and cars are whizzing by, honking occasionally, on the 1800 block of Market Street.

Famed “Pentagon Papers” whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg is speaking in front of the offices of SF Pride to protest the removal of the Army Private First Class as an honorary Grand Marshal in the parade. The position would have been largely symbolic as to include a proxy for the currently incarcerated Manning.

The 25-year-old Manning was a military analyst who has admitted to leaking hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents to the website WikiLeaks, in fact the biggest leak in U.S. government history, and is in solitary confinement awaiting his June trial.

In late April, Pride’s Electoral College, which is made up of former Grand Marshals, selected Manning as one of its 10 choices.

This drew the ire of both the American Military Partners Association, which advocates for same-sex military families, and the Log Cabin Republicans, who both threatened to pull out of the event.

On April 26, Pride President Lisa Williams issued a statement revoking Manning’s name from the parade, claiming that his nomination “was a mistake and should have never been allowed to happen.” She added, “Even the hint of support for actions which placed in harms [sic] way the lives of our men and women in uniform — and countless others, military and civilian alike — will not be tolerated by the leadership of San Francisco Pride. It is, and would be, an insult to every one, gay and straight, who has ever served in the military.”

Williams’ decision is what unleashed the quick call to action by local LGBT activists and veterans alike and is what brought Ellsberg to speak in front of a Manning banner as 5 p.m. traffic whizzed by on upper Market.

“He showed us that there were crimes that our government had denied,” said Ellsberg, who was also a military analyst when he revealed that the U.S. government had been misleading the public about the Vietnam War. “The Gay Pride Board made a big mistake by undoing one of the most honorable things they have ever done.”

The crowd was stirred when Michael Petrelis, a co-organizer of the event led them in a chant of: “They say court marshal; we say Grand Marshal!”

The local veterans also got involved. Commander John Caldera called an emergency meeting on April 28 among the officers of the Bob Basker Post 315 of the American Legion where they unanimously voted to call for Williams to step down.

“The call for resignation is not a personal attack against Ms. Williams but rather a swift and appropriate response to the disappointing and discrediting actions of the President of San Francisco Pride against the LGBT community,” Caldera said.

Veterans for Peace member Paul Cox said Manning should be lauded. “He’s really a hero in the civil rights movement not only because he is gay, but because he did what any hero would do by giving the American people the right to know what our government was secretly doing in our name and with our taxes.”

Rainey Reitman, co-founder of Bradley Manning Support Network, said that he had campaigned against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell before he leaked the documents.

“Most people don’t know that Bradley was a gay rights activist,” she said. She added that his presence would be represented at the parade in the form of a flash mob.

Speaking at the rally, Joey Cain, a past president and a member of the Pride Electoral College who chose Manning, emphasized Manning’s connection to the LGBT community.

“I want to address the comment from some people that Bradley Manning has not done anything for the gay community. Well I have news for you: The gay community is part of the larger community,” he said. “And if Pride is going to say that you have to do this narrow thing that is specifically gay-focused, we’re going to end up with nobody to be grand marshal.”

The story went international when Glenn Greenwald from the U.K.’s The Guardian posted an op-ed entitled, “Bradley Manning is off limits at SF Gay Pride but corporate sleaze is embraced,” in which he argued the trivial controversy actually shows a lot about pervasive political values in the LGBT community.

Ellsberg criticized the corporate sponsorship of Pride in so far as the event had further distanced itself from its original values of social justice. “I’m here to blow the whistle on the corporatization of SF Pride.”

SF Pride is now sponsored by Bank of America (now being sued by the U.S. government for $1 billion for allegedly perpetrating a scheme of mortgage fraud), Wells Fargo (being sued for hundreds of millions over reckless mortgage claims that cost the FDIC), Clear Channel (Rush Limbaugh’s network) and AT&T and Verizon (telecom giants that enabled the Bush Administration’s policy of illegal eavesdropping and wiretapping).

Originally invited to represent Manning in absentia, the 82-year-old Ellsberg will now voluntarily walk in his first Pride parade despite a recent hip replacement. “With zero tolerance, everybody should come out and support him.”

Manning has been in solitary confinement for more than 1000 days, reportedly in conditions of sensor deprivation, often stripped naked, sleep deprived, and put in an animal cage while in detention in Kuwait, amounting to what his supporters call government-sponsored torture. His leaks exposed savage murders by U.S. soldiers on innocent Iraqi civilians, the Afghanistan war logs, and embarrassing State Department cables.

New York’s Pride committee now has a petition for Manning to be a Grand Marshal.

Williams did not return calls for comment by press time.

Disabled Senior with AIDS Ellis Act Evicted

Jeremy Mykaels has been living in the
Castro since the mid-1970s, just shy of 40
years, and in the same apartment for 17
of them. Now he is being served an eviction
but not without fighting back.

By Ted Andersen

For people like Jeremy Mykaels, the neighborhood isn’t what it used to be.

Leaving his native Ohio behind, he pursued a dream out West, finding himself in Colorado. It was Denver where he came out as gay.

He continued his journey and arrived in the Castro in the mid 1970s in time to experience some of the area’s most iconic moments such as voting for Supervisor Harvey Milk and witnessing the scene surrounding his and Mayor George Moscone’s assassinations and the White Night riots that later ensued. 

A graphic designer by trade, he is a musician and artist at heart, and always a member of the Castro neighborhood, his home and community. He saw the scourge of AIDS through the 80s and 90s and in 2001, was tragically diagnosed with the disease himself. 

Since his diagnosis, he went on disability and soon after became housebound. He found his apartment, 460 Noe St. #2, in 1995 and has lived there ever since. 

Then the three-story building was sold in early 2012 to an LLC formed by three men, Cuong Mai, William H. Young and John H. Du, for $860,000. The outfit, 460Noe Group LLC, informed Mykaels and the occupants of the other two units in the building that they wanted them to vacate. The other two went. Then, after refusing a buyout package offered by the landlords, they served Mykaels with an Ellis Act eviction. Under California law, owners can use the Ellis Act to leave the rental business, and by consequence, legally evict the tenants.

When he went online and started looking at rents, it then hit him: this isn’t 1995 anymore.

“Only when this all started did I realize what was going on. I started checking Craigslist and other places about what the rents were in the area. And then I was blown away, like, these can’t be the rents … I can’t afford to live here anymore.”

Jeremy Mykael’s case is an example of a growing trend in the Castro and San Francisco at large: Ellis Act evictions, namely seniors. In fact, Ellis Act evictions have spiked by more than 80 percent from 2012-2013, according to the Rent Board’s Annual Eviction Reports.

“They wanted me to move out right away and I already knew I had a year, so why should I do that? It makes absolutely no sense. If I was to try and stay in the city, it would cost me $2,000 more a month on top of what I’ve been paying.”

As a disabled senior, Mykaels had one year to vacate the premises. That one-year period expired on September 10. Now he remains in limbo, expecting an “Unlawful Detainer” notice to come to his door. 

“If I can’t stay in this apartment with my rent control that I have, there’s no way I can afford anywhere in the city. I’ll end up moving out of the city totally. This has been my home for most of my life now.”

He is fighting the eviction with the help of his pro bono attorney Steve Collier, who works at Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which represents tenants in Ellis Act evictions and receives some funding from the city. Collier said that Mykaels is entitled to $8,500 as a disabled senior.

“It’s the same amount whether you’ve lived in the building one year or 50 years if you are a senior and one tenant,” Collier said.

Moreover, according to Collier, Mykaels’ circumstances are not unique.

“It’s unfortunately becoming a common occurrence that real estate speculators are buying properties in order to flip them and get rid of low-rent paying tenants or tenants who have been there a long time under rent control. And the values of the buildings tend to be lower because the income is lower because they have rent-controlled tenants in them. So, it is basically trying to profit off the displacement of tenants,” he said. “The city and the state need to do something about this rampant real estate speculation.”

District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener called the Ellis Act “draconian” and “sweeping.” He said that he and like-minded politicians have continually passed legislation to abate the impacts of the Ellis Act but that fundamentally, the law needs to be reformed in the Sacramento legislature. 

According to Wiener, State Senator Mark Leno brought an Ellis-Act-amending bill to the state legislature to require a new owner to possess the building for five years before selling it, thus preventing the type of eviction Mykaels has been faced with. The bill did not gain support. 

“God bless Mark for trying,” Wiener said.

Wiener said the city has a real supply-demand imbalance that has developed over many years where it had a growing population and did not produce very much housing, contributing to an explosion in rent.

“We’re going to have a lot of housing in the coming years and I do believe that will take some pressure off. But regardless, we need to keep advocating for a reform in Sacramento, we need to keep building affording housing locally, especially for seniors,” he said. “It’s absolutely awful what’s happening and we all have a responsibility to fight it.”

One organization that took up Mykaels’ battle was Eviction Free Summer, which later became known as Eviction Free San Francisco. The group concerns itself with evictions caused by speculation that ultimately lead to properties being sold instead of rented, thereby reducing the available rent-controlled housing stock of the city. 

The organization has done three action on his behalf: a demonstration at the residence of William H. Young, a follow-up phone action, both in August, and then a protest in front of 460Noe Group LLC’s address in Union City, a dentist’s office building on September 14. 

“Our hope is that they will withdraw this eviction. They can still do that,” said Tommi Avicolli Mecca, a co-founder of Eviction Free San Francisco. “Saving Jeremy is trying to save the neighborhood. That’s part of what we are doing. We’re trying to keep the neighborhood from being further gentrified.” 

Eviction Free San Francisco has also advocated for the Lee family in Chinatown, a high-profile Ellis Act eviction of a husband, wife and their adult disabled child who have lived in a 2-bedroom unit for 34 years. On September 25, a crowd of more than 200 housing-rights activists and community leaders spent the morning and early afternoon chanting and waving signs. After the effort, Mayor Ed Lee stepped in and extended the family’s eviction date by another 10 days. The owner, Matthew Miller, allegedly planned to turn the building into high-end tenancy-in-common (TIC) units.

According to Jennifer Rosdail, a local real estate agent, tenants’ rights advocates attempts to restrict condo conversion through Ellis evictions have backfired by creating more permanent TIC housing as opposed to more rental units. She said that the larger pool of TICs has given the banks more confidence in them, which has increased their value.

“The TICs have then become more valuable, which, in turn, has led to more evictions, not fewer, and to an increase in profits to developers despite the penalties that have been legislated for properties with Ellis Act evictions,” she said.

Jeremy Mykaels’ situation may drag on for several more months, maybe even over a year, during which time he is entitled to stay put. In the meantime, he has created a website, www.ellishurtsseniors.org, where he has a link on his homepage to a petition through change.org by Eviction Free San Francisco to John H. Du to rescind the eviction of Jeremy Mykaels. He is hoping to gain more support and continue living in his home for good. 

460Noe Group LLC Managing Partner Cuong Mai failed to return numerous calls for comment.