tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20267842424502377092024-03-13T16:58:07.674-07:00Stories by Ted AndersenPublished news stories. For photos, visit tedandersenphotos.blogspot.comAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-61763318154957014862015-09-14T14:34:00.000-07:002015-10-24T15:08:49.851-07:00Thai Villagers Say Gas Drilling Sickens Them, Ruins Crops<a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/thai-villagers-say-gas-drilling-sickens-them-ruins-crops/">http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/thai-villagers-say-gas-drilling-sickens-them-ruins-crops/</a><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In this May 24th, 2015 image, a villager works in a field next to a gas drilling rig<br />
operated by American company APICO and its subsidiary Tatex Thailand in Na<br />
Mun, Kalasin province, Thailand. More than 200 residents in communities near<br />
well sites have complained to Thailand's National Human Rights Commission<br />
about skin and respiratory problems and some have been hospitalized.<br />
(photo by Chinarong Sretthachau via AP)</td></tr>
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By Ted Andersen and Nattasuda Anusondisai<br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">BANGKOK — More than 100 students and villagers crowded into a northeast Thailand college forum to hear about American gas companies conducting drilling operations in their region. A lieutenant colonel and dozens of soldiers and police officers followed them in.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">The armed police began photographing members of the crowd, a menacing move in a country now run by a military junta that bars protests and routinely cracks down on dissenters. Some in the audience had already viewed the military as part of the problem, since months earlier they had forced demonstrators to make way for drilling equipment.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">"With soldiers in the meeting room we were scared because we could not criticize the state officers who protect the company," said Chainarong Sretthachau, a professor who organized the May event at Mahasarakham University. "If I did not agree, they would not allow us to organize the conference."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Villagers in the northeast provinces of Udon Thani, Khon Kaen and Kalasin are trying to stop the drilling operations by American company APICO and its subsidiary Tatex Thailand.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Opponents of the operations describe them as fracking, or hydraulic fracturing. The technique requires high-pressure injection of water, chemicals and sand to crack shale rock and allow gas to seep out, but has been criticized for causing water pollution and even triggering small earthquakes. Fracking has boosted fuel production in the U.S. and elsewhere while meeting increasing opposition from affected communities.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">APICO has said it is not fracking in the Southeast Asian country, though documents relating to its work say fracking was at least attempted there and describe wastewater ponds that are consistent with fracking operations. The Thai government says fracking is going on in the country's shale-rich northeast but would not say precisely where.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">In any case, the drilling will apparently continue. Earlier this year, Thailand's Office of the Ombudsman dismissed a complaint that the country's National Human Rights Commission had filed on the villagers' behalf. The ombudsman's office, which investigates allegations of government wrongdoing and can refer cases to Thai courts, did not return phone calls or emails and provided no explanation for the dismissal.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">More than 200 residents in communities near well sites have complained to the human rights commission about skin and respiratory problems and six have been hospitalized, according to commission member Nirun Pitakwatchara. Videos of farmland posted to Facebook and other sites allege that rubber trees and other agriculture have been damaged by associated airborne chemicals such as sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide gases. Chainarong said that locals in one village near a gas operation report that their water has become brown and unusable.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Phuthon Anochadech, a villager whose rubber trees are near APICO's operation in Udon Thani, said that when drilling began two years ago, "It smelled so bad, we couldn't breathe."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">He said in a telephone interview that he lost nearly 1 million baht ($28,000) that year because his trees produced little, and his worker quit because the fracking work was making him sick.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">"Before all this, he was a healthy man, but during that time, he had to take allergy pills every day, his eyes were always watering from the haze until he couldn't do it anymore and he quit," Phuthon said. "He said he would die if he stayed."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Phuthon himself suffered from rashes and breathing problems, and he said his crops continue to suffer. He said APICO offered him compensation that does not begin to cover his losses.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Nirun said the human rights commission and the government had struck an agreement in early February to hold a forum for local stakeholders before drilling began, but the agreement was ignored. He said APICO officials "aren't announcing to the people about projects and exploration."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">APICO is a privately held company incorporated in Delaware but based in Bangkok. It referred questions to its CEO, Dwight Johnson, who did not return repeated phone calls and emails from The Associated Press seeking comment.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">The commission has been meeting with local communities for the past year and hosted a June meeting attended by 400 people. In total, petitions from eight communities in eight different provinces were filed against </span><a class="meta-classifier" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/oil-petroleum-and-gasoline/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" style="color: #326891; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;" title="More articles about oil.">oil</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;"> and gas exploration with the commission.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">"We accumulated every single case and it boiled down to just one problem, which is granting concessions for natural resources should go through the legal process of environmental impact studies," said Kraisak Choonhavan, an adviser to the commission.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">While APICO and Tatex have filed formal environmental impact assessments, Thailand's Environment Act requires that activities in the EIA be carried out only when locals are informed at least 15 days in advance. Chainarong said that according to residents, APICO obtained signatures granting consent to drill by giving away T-shirts, bags and nail cutters to villagers and making them sign for the items.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Phuthon, the rubber farmer, said that at the beginning of the drilling operation, APICO held an "educational session" telling residents the work would bring "jobs, ease of transport and civilization to the village." He said they offered souvenirs — "cheap things which cost less than 100 baht ($2.77)" — and asked people to sign their names as proof of receiving them. He said he took nothing.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">The drilling dispute is taking place around the Dong Mun gas field, which covers 31.9 square kilometers (12.3 square miles) and has expected gas reserves of 96 billion cubic feet, enough to power about 1 million homes for one year.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">In February, demonstrators from the town of Ban Na Dun in Khon Kaen blocked APICO's equipment from being transported to a drilling site, but soldiers, police and masked guards made them clear the road.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">"I understand them, the villagers, when they said educated people took advantage of them," said Lt. Col. Napasit Pongwarapisarn, the provincial military chief of staff who attended the university conference. "I sympathized with them but what can the military do? Everything was signed. Military and police have to do it. We follow orders."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">In late April, the group Stop Fracking Thailand staged a protest outside the U.S. Embassy demanding that American oil companies leave Thailand. In response, APICO representatives denied the use of fracking in northeastern Thailand.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">However, Coastal Energy Company, a Cayman Islands-based company that owns a 39 percent stake in APICO, announced hydraulic fracturing tests at the northeastern APICO-operated gas fields in 2009 and 2010. Those tests were unsuccessful, and the company did not specify whether subsequent successful drilling involved fracking. Coastal Energy is now a subsidiary of Compania Espanola de Petroleos SA, which is owned by the Abu Dhabi government.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">The EIAs for APICO and Tatex Thailand do not specify if the companies are using hydraulic fracturing but do detail onsite chemical wastewater ponds containing toxic materials such as arsenic, which are characteristic of fracking operations.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Phumee Srisuwon, director of Mineral Fuels Management Bureau for Thailand's Ministry of Energy, said fracking techniques have been used on a limited basis by state-owned energy company PTTEP, which has partnerships with APICO. He said those wells are in the northeast but would not say whether they are the same ones villagers are protesting.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">He said fracking is "still in the early stage in Thailand."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">APICO released a statement in early March saying that its obligations, including hosting meetings with locals in the affected areas, were met, and that the company's concession through the Thai government is legal.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Natural gas powers 75 percent of Thailand's electric power plants, and foreign companies account for more than half of the </span><a class="meta-classifier" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/natural-gas/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" style="color: #326891; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;" title="More articles about natural gas.">natural gas</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;"> produced within the country. All the gas is sold back to the state, said Witoon Kaoaien, chief production supervisor for PTTEP.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Foreign companies are conducting both inland and offshore fracking operations in Thailand. Coastal Energy Company began using offshore hydraulic fracturing techniques in the southern province of Songkhla in 2013, according to its annual report.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Chevron uses seawater injection techniques at wells in the Gulf of Thailand's Pattani Basin. A 2011 research paper from the International Petroleum Technology Conference, authored by a Chevron Thailand Exploration and Production team, mentions Chevron Thailand's use of "prolonged hydro-fracturing" in this area, noting that the method fractures rock by injecting water, but differs from conventional hydraulic fracturing in that the cooling of the rock causes the fracturing, rather than high water pressure.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">"Chevron does not apply hydraulic fracturing technology in Thailand," company spokeswoman Saransri Prawatpattanakul said in an emailed response to questions from the AP.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Many Thais have questioned the government's continued pursuit of fossil fuels, but it is risky to challenge military leaders who have maintained full control since a May 2014 coup.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Before the May conference, Chainarong said he was summoned to Maha Sarakham's city hall by Lt. Col. Napasit to sign an agreement forbidding criticism of Thailand's military government and allowing the officers to attend.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Napasit said in a telephone interview that the military and police had been invited to the conference. He described the document-signing as a normal procedure under the military government.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">The lieutenant colonel was the last speaker at the forum. When he took the microphone, attendees rose from their seats and walked out.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-68578128923795192372015-08-16T00:19:00.002-07:002015-08-16T00:22:09.735-07:00<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-qa-how-southeast-asian-economic-zone-could-change-region-2015-8">http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-qa-how-southeast-asian-economic-zone-could-change-region-2015-8</a><br />
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BANGKOK (AP) — The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which on Saturday marked 48 years since its establishment, aims to establish an economic community known as the AEC by the end of this year. Proponents say the ultimate goal is to allow free trade, investment and movement of workers between the 10 nations that make up the grouping. But progress toward a borderless economy in a region that brings together democracies and dictatorships along with rich and poor nations is likely to be slow.</div>
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Is the AEC the new EU?</div>
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From a distance, Southeast Asia's fledgling economic community resembles the early stages of the European Union, but at its core it's a totally different animal. There are no plans for a common currency, central bank and regional parliament or to abolish borders within the region. However, policymakers could learn lessons from the EU experience where the movement of people from Eastern Europe to countries such as the U.K. has caused tensions. "To do it successfully, countries need to know how many people are going to come," said Professor of Business Chris Wright, an expert in EU labor migration at the University of Sydney Australia. "That's one of the lessons of the EU."</div>
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What are the possible economic outcomes?</div>
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AEC aims to boost Southeast Asia's collective GDP of $2.5 trillion by 7 percent and generate 14 million jobs by 2025, analysts say, but such gains if realized are likely to be uneven. Small to medium-sized enterprises could be pushed out or taken over under liberalized cross-border investment rules. "It will create winners and losers," said Basu Das, lead researcher at the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies. "There are some groups of people who will benefit and some who may have to develop new skills." Women could be particularly affected because fewer restrictions on cross-border investment could introduce more automation to garment factories which employ mostly female workers.</div>
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Will poor migrants flood richer countries?</div>
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Countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore already have substantial migrant populations. Some migrants are legal workers, brought in to fill jobs locals don't want. There are also significant numbers of undocumented migrants across the region, a group susceptible to exploitation and human trafficking. At the initial stage of the AEC, only eight skilled professions will become mobile: doctors, nurses, dentists, engineers, surveyors, tourism professionals, accountants and architects. But shifting jobs between countries won't be straightforward. For example, in Malaysia, foreign professionals still need a minimum of 10 years of experience in their field and must be sponsored by a local company.</div>
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Will national laws be changed by AEC?</div>
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AEC is top-down in the sense that the agenda is driven by bureaucrats at the ASEAN Secretariat but it's only as good as the political will of individual countries. AEC has no binding commitments or punitive measures for non-compliance, which means it could be a long time before any country changes its national laws to conform. "You have people in Jakarta working at the ASEAN Secretariat whom I'm sure wholeheartedly believe in this, but they haven't done a good job in convincing the public and convincing national governments to go along with it. That's the reality of it," said Ambika Ahuja, Southeast Asia analyst for the Eurasia Group.</div>
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Will everyone in Southeast Asia need to learn English?</div>
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ASEAN documents are written in English and it is true that the language is being promoted as the lingua franca of AEC. But many skilled workers who travel abroad will still need to take certification tests in the language of the host country depending on local laws. For example, foreign nurses in Thailand would have to show competence in Thai. Those proficient in English will have an advantage in large international companies that use English as the common language. Many other could opt for other regional languages. Mandarin has become an attractive language to study for many Thai students because employment and business opportunities in tourism and other areas.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-33299024067351298462015-08-16T00:14:00.005-07:002015-08-16T00:14:53.145-07:00Activists applaud suspension of coal plant near Thai beaches<a href="http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/World/2015/Jul-24/308141-activists-applaud-suspension-of-coal-plant-near-thai-beaches.ashx#.VbXpVHFXi8k.twitter">http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/World/2015/Jul-24/308141-activists-applaud-suspension-of-coal-plant-near-thai-beaches.ashx#.VbXpVHFXi8k.twitter</a><br />
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<u>Via The Daily Star in Lebanon</u><br />
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Ted Andersen<br />
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BANGKOK: Activists are applauding the Thai prime minister's order that tentatively halts a planned coal-fired power plant and seaport near popular tourist beaches in southern Thailand's Andaman Sea coast.</div>
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The decision Thursday by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha to suspend the project put an end to demonstrations and a hunger strike that began on July 10. A representative of the prime minister met Friday with officials from the Energy Ministry and members of the protesting Save Andaman from Coal Network to make plans for a joint committee to explore renewable energy options.</div>
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Bidding for the 800-megawatt power plant in Krabi province will continue on Aug. 5, but the government has promised that no binding agreement will be signed and the project will be frozen pending exploration of alternatives.</div>
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"This is acceptable, and that is why everyone is going home now," Janrumapai Chaisompongpan, an organizer of the Save Andaman from Coal Network, said of the decision. "Of course we have to work very closely with this committee, so there is a lot to be done."</div>
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The joint committee is likely to be set up in the coming weeks and the government agreed that the outcome of its deliberations would be final, she said.</div>
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The Energy Generating Authority of Thailand, a state enterprise, has plans to build nine coal energy plants in the south. Its power development plan for 2015-2036 is designed to lower gas consumption for electricity production from 70 percent to 40 percent while nearly doubling coal use from 20 percent to between 35 and 40 percent, Energy Ministry Permanent Secretary Kurujit Nakornthap told the Bangkok Post newspaper. He said that rolling blackouts would soon affect tourism in the south if more power were not supplied.</div>
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Protesters say a coal-power plant could damage the environment, public health and the lucrative tourism industry. Tourism in the provinces along the Andaman coast generated more than 376 billion baht ($11 billion) in 2014, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand. Krabi is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the hugely popular resorts of Phuket.</div>
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They also criticized the power plant's bidding process for moving ahead despite a rejection in March of the project's environmental impact assessment.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-88118986667150696252015-08-01T04:54:00.000-07:002015-08-01T05:06:03.980-07:00Coal plant proposed for pristine Thai coast sparks outcryPublished in the Washington Post:<br />
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/coal-plant-proposed-for-pristine-thai-coast-sparks-outcry/2015/07/21/04b1f228-2f87-11e5-a879-213078d03dd3_story.html">https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/coal-plant-proposed-for-pristine-thai-coast-sparks-outcry/2015/07/21/04b1f228-2f87-11e5-a879-213078d03dd3_story.html</a><br />
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<span class="pb-byline" itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" style="color: #111111; display: inline-block; font-family: FranklinITCProBold, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; padding-right: 5px;">By <span itemprop="name">Ted Andersen | AP</span></span><span style="color: #111111; font-family: FranklinITCProLight, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><span class="pb-timestamp" content="2015-07-21T07:08-500" itemprop="datePublished" style="color: #aaaaaa; display: inline-block; font-family: FranklinITCProLight, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 5px; white-space: nowrap;">July 21</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXdBxgbdDoeEk6FwCe5FoJ1dK0yDugQ3VYWHn49YRd93GhOQIbQGOIGDOIUXFpf9U-WSxv6aPrQht2cLQg5d9A2KiUNmF3yNjthqVwb90IFc8_AOckDIRbGylLq9Z1IfjN_H4693I5RRw/s1600/coal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXdBxgbdDoeEk6FwCe5FoJ1dK0yDugQ3VYWHn49YRd93GhOQIbQGOIGDOIUXFpf9U-WSxv6aPrQht2cLQg5d9A2KiUNmF3yNjthqVwb90IFc8_AOckDIRbGylLq9Z1IfjN_H4693I5RRw/s400/coal.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #6e6e6e; font-family: FranklinITCProLight, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">In this Monday July 20, 2015 photo, a protester holds a placard outside </span></span><br />
<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #6e6e6e; font-family: FranklinITCProLight, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">the Prime Minister’s office in Bangkok during a demonstration opposing </span></span><br />
<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #6e6e6e; font-family: FranklinITCProLight, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">a proposed coal power plant in southern Thailand. The popular tourist beaches </span></span><br />
<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #6e6e6e; font-family: FranklinITCProLight, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">near southern Thailand’s Andaman Coast may soon play host to an unlikely new </span></span><br />
<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #6e6e6e; font-family: FranklinITCProLight, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">fixture: an 800-megawatt coal power plant. The plans have sparked an outcry in </span></span><br />
<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #6e6e6e; font-family: FranklinITCProLight, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">the typically tranquil Krabi province, famed for its white sand and picturesque </span></span><br />
<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #6e6e6e; font-family: FranklinITCProLight, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">limestone cliffs. (Ted Andersen/Associated Press)</span></span><br />
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<span style="text-align: start;">BANGKOK — Plans to build an 800-megawatt coal power plant near some of Thailand’s most popular beaches have sparked protests and a hunger strike by activists who say officials aren’t considering its impact on the pristine environment that makes the area an international tourist destination.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">More than 100 members of the Save Andaman from Coal Network this week staged a march and sit-in outside the prime minister’s office in the nation’s capital against plans to build the plant near southern Thailand’s Andaman coast about 650 kilometers (400 miles) south of Bangkok.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">The tranquil Krabi province and its islands are famed for picturesque limestone cliffs and white sand beaches, one of which was the centerpiece of the Leonardo DiCaprio film “The Beach.”</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">“If this power plant happens, southern Thailand will lose a lot,” said Krabi resident Akradej Chakjinda, who has fasted since July 10 in protest.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">Protesters say the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, or EGAT, is pushing ahead with a bidding process for the plant and a seaport that would receive overseas shipments of coal before an environmental impact assessment has been completed. Plans to launch the bidding process were delayed until next month, which EGAT says is unrelated to the ongoing protests.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">The coal plant is part of a critical energy infrastructure that will provide Thailand with energy security as natural gas reserves in the Gulf of Thailand dry up within 10 years, EGAT says.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">The state power authority has said it envisions building nine coal power plants in the south over the next two decades.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">It had planned to begin the bidding process on this one in advance of the environmental review to save time, a government official said.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">“I want to emphasize that this is totally legal and we will not sign any contract with the constructor who wins the bid process until we pass” the environmental assessment, Anuchart Palakawong Na Autthaya, head of environmental management for the project, told The Nation newspaper Monday.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2UXkyeJAxyOiFzs58MBa7dCy775wQLjTTkiQxLdPQ3hpbLp7cVEKDF2bHz7Lbi4Y-KK9mOwCnM7hPTXatf5eEXa2kZrkIWuD2GbXxC88jNzbVfyNHqHa9OYhLGHzYlN37A77HWA-OGm0/s1600/IMG_1575.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2UXkyeJAxyOiFzs58MBa7dCy775wQLjTTkiQxLdPQ3hpbLp7cVEKDF2bHz7Lbi4Y-KK9mOwCnM7hPTXatf5eEXa2kZrkIWuD2GbXxC88jNzbVfyNHqHa9OYhLGHzYlN37A77HWA-OGm0/s640/IMG_1575.JPG" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #6e6e6e; font-family: FranklinITCProLight, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">Dadodin Patavatto, a Buddhist monk, leads a silent march to the Prime Minister's office in Bangkok to demonstrate against a proposed coal power plant in southern Thailand. The popular tourist beaches near southern Thailand's Andaman Coast may soon play host to an unlikely new fixture: an 800-megawatt coal power plant. The plans have sparked an outcry in the typically tranquil Krabi province, famed for its white sand and picturesque limestone cliffs. </span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">Krabi remains Thailand’s second-largest area of sea grass beds, which provide a feeding ground for the near extinct dugongs, a manatee-like marine mammal. It is also one of Thailand’s major tourist draws. Tourism to the provinces along the Andaman coast generated more than 376 billion baht ($11 billion) in 2015, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">Krabi and some of the islands off its coast are known as Thailand’s most beautiful beaches, including Koh Phi Phi, which rose to international prominence after being featured in DiCaprio’s film.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">The Save Andaman from Coal Network, a loose collaboration of environmental, agricultural, tourist and other groups from southern provinces, began demonstrations July 10 but say their demands — which include a 3-year waiting period to see if the province can produce 100 percent renewable energy — have been ignored.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">“I’ve seen the beauty of the Andaman Sea,” said Daodin Patavatto, a Buddhist monk joining the protests. “The Andaman is not for one small group of people. It’s for everyone.”</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">Follow Ted Andersen: twitter.com/ted_d_andersen</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-65207208809091071942015-08-01T04:35:00.002-07:002015-08-01T04:35:35.303-07:00Rights workers pressured despite Myanmar's would-be reformsPublished on Yahoo News:<br />
<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/report-myanmar-human-rights-workers-under-threat-134921466.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc_trk=fb&fb_ref=Default">http://news.yahoo.com/report-myanmar-human-rights-workers-under-threat-134921466.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc_trk=fb&fb_ref=Default</a><br />
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<a data-rapid_p="1" data-ylk="sec:content;slk:provider;itc:0;tar:www.ap.org;ltxt:AssociatedPress;" href="http://www.ap.org/" style="color: #324fe1; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Associated Press" class="provider-img" src="https://media.zenfs.com/creatr-images/GLB/2015-04-20/94e89b90-e7b0-11e4-9ea9-23e8763fec68_Associated-Press.png" style="-webkit-transition: opacity 0.3333s ease 0ms; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; display: inline-block; margin-right: 5px; max-height: 30px; opacity: 1 !important; transition: opacity 0.3333s ease 0ms; vertical-align: middle; visibility: visible !important; width: auto;" /></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;"> </span><br />
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<cite class="byline vcard top-line" id="yui_3_18_1_1_1438428842223_1390" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 12.100000381469727px;">By <span class="fn" style="font-weight: bold; margin-right: 5px;">TED ANDERSEN</span><abbr id="yui_3_18_1_1_1438428842223_1389" style="display: block;">July 23, 2015 10:56 AM</abbr><abbr id="yui_3_18_1_1_1438428842223_1389" style="display: block;"><br /></abbr><abbr id="yui_3_18_1_1_1438428842223_1389" style="display: block;"><br /></abbr><abbr id="yui_3_18_1_1_1438428842223_1389" style="display: block;"><br /></abbr><abbr id="yui_3_18_1_1_1438428842223_1389" style="display: block;"><div id="yui_3_18_1_1_1438428842223_1132" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24.000001907348633px; margin-bottom: 1.1em;">
BANGKOK (AP) — A new report says human rights workers in Myanmar face threats to their personal security despite moves toward political reform since military rule gave way to an elected government four years ago.</div>
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The report issued Thursday in Bangkok by the independent groups Burma Partnership and the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, depicts a climate of violence, sexual assault, arrests and cyber-threats against aid workers, in some cases believed to be linked to the government.</div>
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Almost half of the women interviewed for the report said they had experienced some form of sexual or physical violence, sexual harassment or intimidation, and student groups said they suffered harassment both in person and through social media. The report drew on testimony from 75 non-governmental organization workers and data from journalists and student activists from November 2014 to March.</div>
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President's office director U Zaw Htay said the government had no immediate comment on the report. In the past, the government has said it respects human rights while managing the country's delicate democratic transition.</div>
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Human rights workers and dissidents suffered heavy repression during army rule, with many activists given long jail terms under vaguely-defined national security statutes.</div>
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"These human rights defenders are operating in an environment as dangerous as ever before," said Khin Ohmar, coordinator of Burma Partnership. "This situation needs to be exposed."</div>
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Myanmar's transition in 2011 to an elected government after almost five decades of military rule raised hopes of liberalization among human rights activists and democracy advocates when new President Thein Sein began instituting unexpected political and economic reforms, and released more than 1,300 political prisoners. The actions prompted Western nations to lift most of the political and economic sanctions they had imposed on the previous military regime.</div>
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However, the constitution adopted during army rule ensures military dominance and the reforms have slowed or retreated. Prospects for freedom of speech, which looked bright when the government lifted most censorship, dimmed when it began to prosecute journalists in court for writing critical stories.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-92119171246493072182015-08-01T04:31:00.003-07:002015-08-01T04:32:41.961-07:00Thai court jails 10 for online videos insulting the monarchyPublished in the UK Daily Mail:<br />
<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3160709/Thai-court-jails-8-posting-videos-insulting-monarchy.html">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3160709/Thai-court-jails-8-posting-videos-insulting-monarchy.html</a><br />
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By Ted Andersen<br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">BANGKOK (AP) — A Thai military court on Tuesday sentenced 10 people to prison terms for distributing online content that it said insulted the country's monarchy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">The 10 sentenced on lese majeste charges were part of what police said was a network headed by Hassadin Uraipraiwan, known online as "DJ Banpodj." Hassadin created video clips and uploaded them to sites such as YouTube, from which members of a Facebook group reposted them. Defense lawyer Yingcheep Atchanont said his clients told him they had not known each other before making contact through the social media site.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">Police described the network as a serious threat to the monarchy and the nation's stability, saying it incited "chaos and hatred in society."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">Critics of the military government that took power in a coup last year say the lese majeste law is used to intimidate political opponents. Hassadin, who began uploading the clips in 2010, was a supporter of Thailand's Red Shirt movement, which backs former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by a 2006 military coup.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">Eight of the 10 were ordered to serve 5-year jail terms and two others — found to have only abetted the others — were given three years each. The original sentences of all were cut in half because they confessed and pleaded guilty.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">Yingcheep, an attorney from Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, said of 400 clips made by Hassadin criticizing both politicians and the monarchy, prosecutors focused on just one that referred to the king in derogatory language.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">Yingcheep said the case illustrated how people who share something on Facebook receive as harsh a penalty as the person who originally produced and posted the illegal material. He said he believes people who just shared the material should receive a lesser penalty.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">Of the 14 people originally arrested in the case between January and February, two others decided to fight the case and another two are being tried separately because their offenses are considered more serious.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">Lese majeste cases have risen sharply in Thailand since the military government took power in May 2014.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">"Maybe the military government is trying to show that their duty is to protect the monarchy by arresting more and more people," Yingcheep said. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">Soon after taking power the junta declared that protecting the monarchy was a top priority.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">There is widespread concern over the future of the monarchy because revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej is 87 years old and ailing. His son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, does not command the same respect and affection as the king.</span></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-17764414599906186902015-08-01T04:26:00.003-07:002015-08-01T04:27:57.018-07:00Cambodian ruling party lawmakers approve civil society bill<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #666666; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23.040000915527344px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"></span><br />
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By Ted Andersen and Sopheng Cheang</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Protestors sit on a main street with stickers that read: "Say No!, Association and NGO Laws" leading to the National Assembly in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Monday, July 13, 2015. Lawmakers of the ruling Cambodian People's Party approved a controversial draft law Monday that critics say gives authorities sweeping powers to crack down on civil society groups that challenge the government. The Law on Associations and Non-Governmental Organizations tightly regulates all NGOs in the country and grands the government sweeping powers to clamp down on civil society activities it deems to be a threat to national security. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)<br />
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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia's National Assembly approved a controversial draft law Monday that critics say gives authorities sweeping powers to crack down on civil society groups that challenge the government.</div>
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Riot police set up a barricade around the lower house of parliament to hold back hundreds of protesters there and opposition party lawmakers boycotted the vote entirely.</div>
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The Law on Associations and Non-Governmental Organizations tightly regulates all non-governmental organizations in the country and grants the government sweeping powers to clamp down on civil society activities it deems to be a threat to national security.</div>
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A final draft of the bill has not been released to the public, another aspect that has drawn criticism. But according to a copy obtained from lawmakers, it states that local and foreign non-governmental organizations must register with the government, and that all NGOs must be politically neutral. It also gives the government unchecked power to block registrations and dissolve groups in the name of national security.</div>
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The law is the first of four in the pipeline that critics say are designed to further restrict social freedoms in Cambodia, which has been ruled since 1985 by Prime Minister Hun Sen, an autocrat with little tolerance for dissent.</div>
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The opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party issued a statement ahead of the session saying it "deeply regretted" that the bill did not include its input or any input from the non-governmental groups it aims to restrict. The opposition's 55 lawmakers boycotted Monday's debate.</div>
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All 68 lawmakers from the ruling Cambodian People's Party voted unanimously to adopt the bill, an expected outcome in the 123-seat lower house, where a simple majority was enough for the vote to pass. The bill still needs to clear the Senate before becoming law, a step considered a formality in Cambodia.</div>
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The European Parliament adopted a resolution last week calling on the Cambodian government to withdraw the vote, warning that $700 million in development aid could hang in the balance, and Amnesty International has condemned the law as repressive.</div>
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"This will create an atmosphere of intimidation and self-censorship among NGOs who will realize that the Cambodian government will be able to shut them down at any time," said Phil Robertson, the deputy Asian director of Human Rights Watch.</div>
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The U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, William Todd, also criticized the lack of transparency, urging ruling party lawmakers to publicly release a copy of the draft law to allow a full public debate. In 2014, the U.S. gave roughly $75 million in aid to Cambodia.</div>
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Other laws in the pipeline are the Trade Union Law, which would restrict labor union strikes; a cybercrime law that could criminalize online communications deemed to undermine the government; and a telecommunications law that would allow the government to monitor online communication and mandate information on its critics from Internet service providers.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-72105269192835502422015-08-01T04:16:00.000-07:002015-08-01T04:18:56.411-07:00Fears of mercury in Shasta Lake fish surfaceOriginally published in the San Francisco Chronicle<br />
Sunday, July 5 Page A1<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Fears-of-mercury-in-Shasta-Lake-fish-surface-6366668.php">http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Fears-of-mercury-in-Shasta-Lake-fish-surface-6366668.php</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px;">By Ted Andersen</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; text-align: left;">Will Epperson of Big Bend, CA, fishes on Lake Shasta on Thursday, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; text-align: left;">July 2, 2015. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; text-align: left;">Mercury levels in bass and catfish in Lake Shasta may be </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; text-align: left;">higher </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; text-align: left;">than reported in state </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; text-align: left;">fishing guidelines, posing a </span><br />
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SHASTA LAKE — Secrets are lurking hundreds of feet beneath the murky emerald surface of Shasta Lake. Legends of giant sturgeon and catfish persist, and an American Indian tribe’s ancestral village still rests at the lake’s bottom. But there is another secret that lies in sediment of the lake bed: mercury.</div>
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Dammed in 1944, Shasta provides water from Sacramento to the crop-irrigating breadbasket of the San Joaquin Valley more than 300 miles south. It is California’s largest reservoir and a treasured jewel for anglers, many unaware of the poison in the lake and in the fish they catch.</div>
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Mercury, a legacy of the Gold Rush, has worked its way into Shasta’s food chain, state tests have found, revealing levels beyond what is considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency. But no advisory to people who fish the lake has been put in place.</div>
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While sparsely populated — Shasta County has about 180,000 residents — the lake draws 1.4 million visitors a year and is one of the state’s top fishing destinations.</div>
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“To me it seems like clean, good water,” said <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Sage+Baker%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">Sage Baker</a>, who has fished the lake for more than two decades and continues to go out several times a week.</div>
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“I never got sick,” said <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Mike+Thomas%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">Mike Thomas</a>, store manager at Phil’s Propeller and Fishing Tackle in the town of Shasta Lake. “In the fish and game regulation there is information, but to be honest, I’ve never read up on Shasta.”</div>
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Even if Thomas had glanced through the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22California+Department%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">California Department</a> of Fish and Wildlife’s Sport Fishing booklet, he wouldn’t have found any mention of Shasta’s toxicity. For years scientists have known about the lake’s high levels of toxicity and the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22State+Water+Resources+Control+Board%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">State Water Resources Control Board</a>has even listed it as mercury-impaired, but still no warning has been specifically issued about the lake’s fish.</div>
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<strong>Tests to be re-evaluated </strong></div>
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Change may come this summer when officials at the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22California+Office+of+Environmental+Health+Hazard+Assessment%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment</a>, the state’s lead agency for environmental health risks, begins re-evaluating 2007 state tests to determine whether the reservoir’s game fish pose a danger to human health. Bob Brodberg, chief of the agency’s Fish and Water Quality Evaluation Unit, said the earlier data proved inconclusive. “It needed more data,” he said.</div>
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If change does come, two things could happen: an advisory would be listed in the booklet given to all anglers who obtain a California freshwater fishing license, and the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22U.S.+Bureau+of+Reclamation%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">U.S. Bureau of Reclamation</a> could then consider posting warning signs along the lake.</div>
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Runoff from sites once active with gold mining is the main cause for the presence of mercury in the lake. Gold mining requires mercury, and there are many shuttered mines around the lake. But the widespread practice of placer mining, or gold panning, is most to blame for leftover mercury in streams that feed into Shasta, said <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Jay+Thompson%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">Jay Thompson</a> of the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Shasta+Historical+Society%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">Shasta Historical Society</a>.</div>
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During the Gold Rush, while countless miners chopped down trees to make sluices and cabins, an estimated 7,600 tons of mercury were dumped into California’s once-clear waters. Thompson said that every placer miner had a bottle of mercury to separate the gold from rock, and its unregulated use also polluted the Shasta watershed with a large amount of it.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“If people knew how much mercury was in the creeks up here they would be surprised,” he said.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPaTSdj0JjnjpPP4FzV_9I26CrelBrpNNd2omaQqoXVAtk6PhRbrgdbSV06c2PNjDLIDT6Y-LuGtRv6dQRMkDhloe4eG6Al39yyfjLwJN_EADNC8-XVKfT541p_o9uIC1o6_57uulPpgY/s1600/thompson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="454" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPaTSdj0JjnjpPP4FzV_9I26CrelBrpNNd2omaQqoXVAtk6PhRbrgdbSV06c2PNjDLIDT6Y-LuGtRv6dQRMkDhloe4eG6Al39yyfjLwJN_EADNC8-XVKfT541p_o9uIC1o6_57uulPpgY/s640/thompson.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px; text-align: start;">Jay Thompson, an employee at the Shasta Historical Society, poses for a portrait in the society's archives in Redding, CA, on Thursday, July 2, 2015. Scientists have blamed historic gold mining for some of the mercury pollution in Lake Shasta.</span></td></tr>
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<strong>Recent mercury deposits</strong></div>
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The lake is also coping with more recent mercury intrusion. Upstream volcanic geothermal springs along with atmospheric industrial pollution that crosses the Pacific Ocean from Asia both deposit mercury into the lake, said Philip Woodward, an engineering hydrologist at the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Central+Valley+Regional+Water+Quality+Control+Board%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board</a> in Redding. It’s unknown how much mercury comes from each source.</div>
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“That’s an area that could bear some research, but it would be some meticulous work,” Woodward said.</div>
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Methylmercury poisoning causes central nervous system damage, and many of its symptoms are similar to those seen in cerebral palsy. In aquatic systems it moves from bacteria to plankton to fish, and at each step in the food chain it compounds, typically with older and larger predatory fish having the highest concentrations. The <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22National+Academies%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">National Academies</a>’ <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22National+Research+Council%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">National Research Council</a>estimated that about 60,000 children are born each year in the U.S. with neurological problems because of exposure to methlymercury in utero.</div>
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There are no recorded cases of methylmercury poisoning from Shasta Lake because local government does not collect data on it, said <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Vanessa+Vidovich%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">Vanessa Vidovich</a>, supervising nurse at <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Shasta+County+Public+Health%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">Shasta County Public Health</a>. However, she said she generally advises pregnant women against eating fish from any source. She said she hadn’t heard of any contamination issues with the lake.</div>
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“We’ve never been given the green light to advise against eating the fish in Shasta Lake specifically,” she said. “But they might be keeping a tight lid on that one because that’s a big political issue I’m sure. Recreation is a huge industry for us up here, and they probably don’t want to scare people away. We have throngs of fishermen coming up here.”</div>
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Shasta County Board of Supervisors Chair Leonard Moty, who said he was not aware of any of the mercury issues affecting the lake, said tourism to Shasta contributes to the roughly $2 million per year in sales tax revenue for the county, but that this is just a fraction of the $16 million generated by property tax.</div>
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“I would have no inclination to hide something like that from the public, even if it meant (losing) tourism dollars,” he said. “It is what it is, and if that is an issue we have to deal with, then we’ll just have to do it.”</div>
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<strong>No warning signs</strong></div>
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Because there are no warning signs around the lake, anyone seeking to investigate mercury in the water would have to do some sleuthing around the Environmental Protection Agency and State Water Resources Control Board websites to detect there is an environmental problem.</div>
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One could follow the “Water Quality Assessment” link to an interactive map showing all impaired water bodies across California. In 2008, the EPA listed Shasta as impaired by mercury based on a scientific calculation called “maximum total daily loads,” which means the amount of a pollutant a body of water can receive and still safely meet quality standards.</div>
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But this designation does not include mercury levels in fish and is simply not strong enough for people such as Chief <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Caleen+Sisk%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">Caleen Sisk</a> of the Winnemem Wintu American Indian tribe, whose historic lands were flooded by the building of the reservoir in the early 1940s. She said her tribe has unsuccessfully lobbied the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the reservoir, to notify the public of the risk posed by the fish.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj__YTL4V1MhYzMCG2_VQBWHbRMm7el7pden2eP3dNUDpnL3DPWSXtFn3mw38-7R9yvK3RiDOuzx1NV8Kr1__EQH16wkIx8t8xiVDhILbV3LKnUvpqXqi2ayjdjSCxFLGvyADPCQCZEB-M/s1600/fishy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj__YTL4V1MhYzMCG2_VQBWHbRMm7el7pden2eP3dNUDpnL3DPWSXtFn3mw38-7R9yvK3RiDOuzx1NV8Kr1__EQH16wkIx8t8xiVDhILbV3LKnUvpqXqi2ayjdjSCxFLGvyADPCQCZEB-M/s400/fishy.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px; text-align: start;">Will Epperson of Big Bend holds a spotted bass after hooking it from <br />Lake Shasta, CA, on Wednesday, July 1, 2015.</span></td></tr>
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<strong>Lurking problem</strong></div>
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“You have this monster festering underneath that we know is there,” she said. “You’ve got a problem here because they’ve already studied the fish, and the fish in Shasta Lake have mercury poisoning. But they are not posting that. We said, ‘In how many languages will you post that the fish in Shasta Lake have mercury poisoning?’ ... That was like eight years ago.”</div>
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The Bureau of Reclamation is not opposed to erecting warning signs for fishermen around the lake, said <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=science&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Michael+Mosley%22" style="color: #5d0b0b; display: inline; text-decoration: none;">Michael Mosley</a>, the agency’s regional water quality coordinator, but to do that, it would need to follow proper protocol. A mercury program led by the State Water Resources Control Board is currently collecting more data, which could then prompt an official advisory from the state’s health hazard assessment office and finally a posting of warning signs on the lake.</div>
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“We are going along with that and waiting for that process,” Mosley said. “If they came up with some things like that, we would most certainly do our best to comply.”</div>
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The decision to issue health warnings for Shasta’s fish is up to the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. To develop the advisories, the agency will use fish data, much of which has been collected or funded by the state water board. It will then make the information available online to the public and in the California Fish and Wildlife Sportfishing Regulations booklet, which displays all site-specific fishing advisories throughout the state.</div>
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The advisories include information about the fish that can be eaten without harm or should be avoided altogether. There are 77 site-specific advisories throughout the state, but none at Shasta.</div>
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The re-evaluation of state tests will likely begin in July and could take up to three years, Brodberg said. He said a lack of comprehensive fish species testing is what has held back an advisory.</div>
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<strong>High levels in bass, catfish</strong></div>
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The 2007 study of mercury contamination in Shasta Lake found that both spotted bass and catfish larger than 14 inches exceeded safe state and federal methylmercury levels, with the highest concentrations found in the catfish. But the findings were never made public in the California Fish and Wildlife Sport Fishing booklet.</div>
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“I thought they put Shasta Lake in there but I guess not,” said Monty Currier, environmental scientist in charge of reservoir sport fish at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “I thought they were going to add that in the book for sure.”</div>
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A great variability exists in mercury levels for different fish species, and based on certain norms, the state’s health hazard assessment agency emphasizes eating rainbow trout. Bass, catfish and brown trout are typically the fish most prone to high levels of mercury because of their predatory nature.</div>
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EPA methlymercury limits for safe eating are 0.3 milligram per kilogram. Data from the 2007 state tests reveal bass with levels just under 0.5 milligram per kilogram and catfish at more than double the limit. On the other hand, testing of rainbow trout from 2002 and 2006 shows safe levels between 0.1 and 0.2 milligram per kilogram. Brown trout, a commonly eaten predatory fish typically higher in mercury than rainbow trout, could prove to be the deciding species if the lake’s fish are to be listed as contaminated.</div>
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<strong>Fish tests </strong></div>
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“That’s why we need more testing,” Brodberg said.“We don’t like to issue an advisory for one fish. We like to have at least three species of fish and nine samples of each of them.”</div>
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If the data are sufficient, Shasta will be added to the advisory section of the California Fish and Wildlife Sport Fishing booklet, said Margy Gassel, a research scientist with the state’s health hazard office. But in terms of posting signs, that is out of the organization’s hands, and would be up to the Bureau of Reclamation.</div>
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For now, fishermen will be left guessing as to the safety of their catch. In his two decades of fishing Shasta Lake, Sage Baker said he has heard about the mercury issue in conversation but has never seen any proof.</div>
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“It’s kind of crazy that you don’t hear more about this mercury stuff. It seems it could damage your health,” he said. “I just assumed that if it was that bad, I would have heard more about it.”</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-64775363905915307102015-08-01T03:52:00.004-07:002015-08-01T04:37:20.461-07:00Same-sex marriage ruled legal<div class="Script-Teaser" id="u20933-7" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; border-width: 0px; color: red; font-family: dancing-script, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 36px; max-height: 1000000px; padding: 0px;">
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<b>Story and photos by Ted Andersen</b><br />
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What began in 2004 as San Francisco’s activism against a legal ban on same-sex marriage culminated in the nation’s highest court on Friday, June 26 as a resounding victory for LGBT couples across all 50 states.</div>
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While not directly related to each other, the two events are part of the same ongoing struggle to legalize same-sex marriage. The early morning news of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in case of Jim Obergefell, who challenged Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage after he was barred from putting his name on his late-husband’s death certificate, unleashed a tidal wave of rainbow reaction on the steps of City Hall.</div>
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“Today is the antidote to cynicism. It’s the antidote to any kind of despair that you may have. Your frustrations, your sense of powerlessness,” he said. “Don’t ever despair, don’t ever give up. Don’t ever believe a challenge is too big.”</div>
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Former Castro Supervisor Bevan Dufty said the struggle for marriage equality has been a long one, but that in the grander scheme of things, battle for LGBT safety is far from over.</div>
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“Today is about a step forward and it’s about remembering what happened here in 2004 when we started marriage. I officiated 120 marriages that month that Gavin gave us and I think it was a watershed moment,” he said. “And this is a movement where we need to continue fighting against repression in states like Michigan and Texas and then going in countries around the world where basically being an out gay person or lesbian or transgender person is a death sentence.”</div>
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Assemblymember David Chiu, former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, agreed that much work is still left unfinished within the city’s local LGBT community.</div>
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<span class="actAsDiv normal_text" id="u23453" style="direction: ltr; display: block; float: left; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 17px; margin-right: 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: 0px;"><span class="actAsDiv clip_frame" id="u23447" style="display: block; overflow: hidden; width: 416px; z-index: 572;"><img alt="" class="block" src="http://www.castrocourier.com/images/pride_1.jpg" height="277" id="u23447_img" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; border: 0px; display: block;" width="416" /></span></span>“Our work is not done. When we have transgender individuals who experience violence, LGBT homeless youth that are living on our streets, businesses that are still discriminating against our LGBT community, we have more to do,” he said. “This is an incredible day for San Francisco and our country and I’m so proud that San Francisco has been the epicenter of the civil rights movement that has defined our generation and so grateful to so many who fought and sacrificed for this day to come.”</div>
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Two of those figures were marriage activists John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney, who were among those married at City Hall in 2004, and were later plaintiffs in the historic case to overturn Prop 8.</div>
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“My husband Stuart and I have been together for 28 years,” Lewis said. “We got married at San Francisco City Hall 11 years ago right here on the steps and that marriage was taken away from us.”</div>
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Gaffney praised the Court’s decision, which ended the checkerboard of same-sex legality in which 14 states had previously disallowed it. <span class="actAsDiv normal_text" id="u23460" style="direction: ltr; display: block; float: right; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 17px; margin-left: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: 0px;"><span class="actAsDiv clip_frame" id="u23454" style="display: block; overflow: hidden; width: 348px; z-index: 586;"><img alt="" class="block" src="http://www.castrocourier.com/images/pride_6-crop-u23454.jpg" height="278" id="u23454_img" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; border: 0px; display: block;" width="348" /></span></span></div>
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“Marriage equality was a like twinkle in everybody’s eye just a decade ago. We thought at that point maybe in our lifetimes, but it’s real, it’s happening.,” he said. “For many years John and I had to give up our rights as a married couple, our rights as a family, in order to go celebrate the holidays with our family in other states that didn’t recognize our marriage and didn’t recognize our love. Those days are over.”</div>
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In one of the day’s greater coincidences, Georgia natives Hai Nguyen and Mark Streeter were married just as people began to gather at City Hall. As Nguyen said, “We didn’t coordinate with the Supreme Court at all.”</div>
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“We got engaged two and a half years ago and have just been waiting for the right occasion, and this was not the plan, definitely not the plan,” Streeter said. “It’s just nice that we all have recognition now and can marry who we want, and that’s what it’s all about.”</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-91626242937670436112015-06-03T15:09:00.004-07:002015-06-03T15:20:56.948-07:00Nicaragua's Big Dig<br />
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(Subscribe to <em>World Policy Journa</em>l <a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sagepub.com%2FjournalsProdDesc.nav%3Fct_p%3Dsubscribe%26prodId%3DJournal202047&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGqNBNN1qNeLIF5t6BOlarNe3uJcg" rel="nofollow" style="color: #0283aa; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;" target="_blank">here</a>)</div>
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From the Summer 2015 Issue "<a href="http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/spring2015" style="color: #0283aa; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">C</a><a href="http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/summer2015" style="color: #0283aa; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">limate's Cliff</a>"</div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: x-small; line-height: normal; text-align: start;">http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/summer2015/nicaraguas-big-dig</span></div>
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<strong>By Ted Andersen</strong></div>
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MANAGUA, Nicaragua—Towering high in the tropical clouds of Ometepe, the conical symmetry of Nicaragua’s tallest active volcano looms over the expanse of Central America’s largest lake. Across the water to the east lies an unspoiled rain forest surrounding the San Juan River, which extends to the Caribbean’s famed Mosquito Coast. These are rich UNESCO Biosphere Reserves that host creatures from toucans to jaguars. Next to Haiti, however, Nicaragua is the most destitute country in the Western Hemisphere, where more than 40 percent of the population lives in poverty. Until now, the environment has been protected, but the people have not. </div>
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There could soon be quite a dramatic transformation—at quite a high price. The wheels of economic change are in motion and choices between the climate and prosperity are approaching a crossroads. In this largely undeveloped territory, a $40-billion governmental deal struck with a privately held Chinese firm now aims to bring trade, tourism, and jobs by way of an interoceanic shipping canal—the second linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across Central America. The Nicaraguan Canal would accommodate the next generation of the world’s largest boats in competition with the Panama Canal, which is expected to conclude its own decade-long, multi-billion dollar expansion by 2016. Through commerce and tourism, the new canal could raise Nicaragua’s GDP by more than 10 percent. But not everybody is thrilled with this possibility, and few may benefit.</div>
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The environment is often depicted as the silent victim of any great industrial project, but this time its not-so-quiet defenders have taken up a loud charge against what is perceived as the opening of the floodgates to ecological ruin. Protests have flared from the capital, Managua, to the rural town of El Tule in San Miguelito. Unanimously, they are opposed to the idea of turning over the land to a foreign company. And what has particularly stoked this fire is that the private company broke ground long before the release of any environmental impact report, forcing regional and international scientists to piece together any long-term effects to the land.</div>
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Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, a Sandinista revolutionary fighter from the 1970s who today resembles more of a career politician, brokered the deal with a mysterious telecom billionaire named Wang Jing, and his company, Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Investment Development Co., Limited (HKND). In what critics have called a rewriting of the constitution, the National Assembly approved Law 840 with only two days of prior notification, putting huge swaths of the country’s jungle and autonomously controlled indigenous tribal areas at Wang’s disposal. The deal has since focused the spotlight on possibly irreparable damage to the environment. Independent scientific experts conclude that the 172-mile canal would steamroll sensitive habitats, drive a number of endangered species to the cliff of extinction, and contaminate the country’s largest supply of drinking water. The project signifies the arrival of a new era of Chinese money seeking business and resources in Latin America. But at the same time this opportunity arrives, the cost of moving ahead has never been so dramatic. </div>
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THE DAMAGE TO BE DONE</div>
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The canal would cut across one UNESCO biosphere reserve and build up a tourism center near another. It would require the dredging of Lake Nicaragua, which could threaten a number of fish species that have been evolving for thousands of years. The canal’s path cuts across the San Miguelito wetlands and its associated infrastructure, threatening to alter nearly one million acres of rainforest and sensitive habitat. Each year, 5,100 ships are projected to pass through, producing air, noise, and water pollution. More dirt will be excavated for this project than for any other in history—176 billion cubic feet or the equivalent of 4,700 Empire State Buildings. And with ground broken in advance of an environmental impact statement, it is plain to see that the cart has unequivocally been placed before the horse. </div>
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The political fast track worries scientists who see the potential for devastation. Dr. Jorge Huete-Pérez, vice president of the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences and director of the Molecular Biology Center at the University of Central America, says ship traffic would pollute the lake with industrial chemicals and introduce invasive plant and animal species. He emphasizes that the dredging of the lake required to accommodate large container ships would render it a “dead zone.” With a shallow average depth of only 40 feet, the project would require the dredged removal of more than 60 miles of lakebed sediment that contains heavy metals, pesticides, and grease. The “dead zone” could occur if high levels of suspended particles in the water lead to a lack of oxygen from eutrophication—the process by which overly nutrient-rich water causes dense plant life to grow, resulting in fish kills. </div>
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Huete-Pérez was among 21 scientists from 18 institutions who published a paper last November warning of the environmental dangers. The group met in Nicaragua and invited the government to participate and discuss the data, but the government declined. Huete-Pérez says this is because those pushing the project lack scientific credentials, so they have little basis to challenge the facts. The Nicaraguan government has tasked HKND with drawing up an environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA), which the company has outsourced to the UK-based Environmental Resources Management (ERM).</div>
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“My hope would be that they would come to their senses and request an independent study and include independent experts,” he said. “So far those studies are done by the company, and I see a serious conflict of interest in this. ERM is working for the Chinese. The Chinese have a concession for 100 years. How can you expect this to be very objective?”</div>
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A number of non-governmental organizations have voiced opposition to the project. Both the Humboldt Centre, an environmental group in Nicaragua, and Forests of the World, based in Denmark, claim the canal threatens more than a dozen endangered animals, including jaguars, spider monkeys, tapirs, green macaws, five species of sea turtles, and numerous species of frogs. Twenty-one species are under some kind of protection by Nicaraguan environmental laws, and 80 percent of the animals that would be affected by the canal’s route are mammals, according to the Humboldt Centre.</div>
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To compound the disruption caused by the initial construction, the canal will eventually be fenced off on both sides, creating a barrier for species to migrate through the Central American corridor. Two eco-bridges have been factored in to mitigate this problem, but environmentalists say it’s not enough. Indeed, such a fix is not unlike deer crossings. How can you ever be sure the deer will make their way to the crossing before they dart across the road?</div>
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Construction on the Panama Canal’s third route has raised far fewer concerns than the Nicaraguan project, though that project has already cut through trees, required the relocation of wildlife, dumped massive amounts of soil elsewhere, and added more than 7 billion cubic feet of water to Panama’s Lake Gatun. The Panama Canal Authority, which has employed 30,000 people on the new section since 2006, uses euphemistic language to characterize a situation where thousands of animals have been “rescued” and relocated to “protected zones.” The Authority holds the project is benefiting the environment, as new forests are being planted as compensation for “altering the flora.” But while the Panama project has its own critics, the two projects are not close to the same scale. </div>
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The Nicaraguan Canal would be three times as long and almost twice as deep as the Panama Canal, since the Panama Canal is built at one of the narrowest east-west points across Central America. According to the Humboldt Centre, the Nicaragua Canal zone would also cover 30 times more area. The Panama Canal, built before the era of environmental impact reports, seriously affected biodiversity and forest cover by flooding large tracts of the rainforest for the purposes of constructing an artificial lake. A similar body of water, the Atlanta Reservoir, is likewise planned for the eastern span of the Nicaraguan Canal, and a huge swath of forest would also go underwater after the building of dams. </div>
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Then there are the unimaginable risks in a country that is naturally volatile. Nicaragua is prone to earthquakes and hosts 19 volcanoes, many of them active. The largest, Concepción, located on Ometepe Island just north of the canal’s path, erupted most recently in 2010. With a built-up shipping and tourism infrastructure planned for the lake’s island, just one eruption could lead to an unmitigated disaster. But the designers of the project see quite the opposite potential. Instead, three villages on the northwestern shore will become upscale resort towns linked to the canal that would draw tourists to the volcano. More traffic would boost tourism revenues, but the impact on the UNESCO-supported biosphere of Ometepe remains foggy.</div>
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Aside from the risk of calamity, another serious risk is at play. The toxic volcanic sediment and industrial chemicals that now rest on the bottom of Lake Nicaragua would become suspended in the water column with the project’s required dredging. In addition, the locks that allow ships to enter and exit the lake will also allow some level of salt water to mingle with the fresh water. This cannot be overlooked because Lake Nicaragua represents the largest source of drinking water for the country.</div>
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WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE</div>
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Penetrating the largest source of fresh water for the country with ocean-going vessels is of paramount concern. Central America as a whole has fallen into drought conditions recently and the canal’s operations would have the potentially catastrophic impact of forcing more fresh water out to sea.</div>
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The situation in Panama provides a suggestion of what could be in store for Nicaragua. A 2000 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study found that the salinity in Panama’s Miraflores Lake increased immediately after commissioning of the canal, which led to relocating the water intakes that supplied city taps. Salt accumulations were also noticed in power station pipes. Fresh water from Miraflores and Gatun Lakes, both created artificially in the course of construction of the Panama Canal, is used for filling the navigation locks that raise and lower ships transiting through the canal’s changes in elevation. Salt water from the ocean is added to the lakes during ship transit according to the study, and fresh water from the lakes is lost when the ships move from the lakes out to sea. The net loss of fresh water is estimated to be about 52 million gallons per lockage operation. Drinking water from Gatun Lake is also supplied to local populations in two Panamanian cities, but during years of low rainfall, there is a shortage of fresh water for canal operations. </div>
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Flushing the locks with freshwater is one way to keep the salinity intrusion low, but this method is hardly viable during drought conditions. January to July is typically the dry season, but with changing weather cycles, 2014 was an exceptionally parched year for Central America. Last fall’s drought was so severe that the United Nations World Food Program was called in to help. In Nicaragua alone, the UNWFP and the government provided food to over 270,000 people affected by drought-stricken failed crops. So lock flushing may not be the best way of managing the country’s principal source of fresh water if rains again fall short and irrigation systems become stressed.</div>
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Nicaragua is also a country prone to seasonal hurricanes. A storm like Hurricane Mitch, which killed 3,800 people in 1998, would likely flood the canal and cause mudslides that could breach locks and dams and overwhelm the new infrastructure. On top of this, researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey have pointed to the likelihood of more powerful storms than ever before hitting Nicaragua in the future. </div>
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These storms could also degrade Lake Nicaragua’s water quality by mixing piles of the dredged sediment back into the water. More than 21 billion cubic feet of dredged sediment from the lakebed will be stored in three sites on the water forming the “Confined Disposal Facility” islands (CDFs), according to ERM. Indeed the company—the same one tasked with producing the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) for the canal project—has affirmed that these islands will not allow any of the fine sediment escape back into the water column, but there is a host of unknowns at play. Whether these islands could hold their structural integrity in the face of a category-5 super storm remains to be seen. </div>
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Another water concern revolves around the proposal to build the 152-square-mile Atlanta Reservoir needed to provide power for the canal’s locks and whether there would be, in reserve, sufficient water for domestic, agricultural, and industrial use. Billions of cubic feet of water from Lake Nicaragua, San Juan River, and Punta Gorda River are required for this project. Atlanta Reservoir is also designed to become a future hub for tourism, which would heighten the need for water resources in the eastern part of the country. Using fresh water to flush the salinity from the locks, all while creating a larger demand for drinking water could put an undue strain on Nicaragua’s water resources, especially if prolonged droughts like last year’s play out in the future as the norm. Moreover, if salt water does intrude into Lake Nicaragua, the country may be forced to consider building a desalination plant, an expensive and energy-intensive solution to a problem that HKND has not factored into its project proposal.</div>
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HISTORIC ERUPTIONS</div>
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Plans for a canal through Nicaragua have been long in the making. One hundred years ago, before America entered the First World War, San Francisco played host to the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition of 1915, which ushered in an era of global trade via the new Panama Canal. The canal had opened the year before, and the rising tide of industrialization was set to profit from the Central American route that more than halved the nautical distance from New York to San Francisco. But the choice to build in Panama was far from clear-cut, and the seeds of competition had already been sown a few hundred miles north. </div>
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The Spanish conquistadors of the 1500s were the first to envision a canal through Nicaragua, and the idea later took root in the United States. American railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt successfully ferried passengers in search of California gold up the San Juan River and across Lake Nicaragua to a 12-mile carriage road, which linked the lake to a steamship on the Pacific coast. In 1901, the Nicaraguan government granted the United States exclusive rights to build a canal, and the battle with Panama erupted. Early on, plans for Panama seemed dead after a French company went bankrupt, following nine years of excavation. Meanwhile, Nicaragua, closer to the United States than Panama, was favored by American political leaders and popular opinion, though the Panamanian route was shorter, straighter, faster, and in the end, cheaper to build. Congress had a decision on its hands.</div>
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This was a turning point in history when seemingly small actions had explosive impacts. Philippe Bunau-Varilla, head of the pro-Panamanian Canal lobby who owned shares in the bankrupted venture, paid William Nelson Cromwell to lobby the U.S. Congress in favor of Panama. Cromwell <i>planted a false story in </i>The New York Sun about volcanic eruptions in Nicaragua, with a clear subtext: build in Nicaragua, and you’ll get burned. The smokescreen worked. On June 19, 1902, the Senate approved the Panama Canal by a margin of eight votes. Ironically, three years later, the volcano of Momotombo did erupt.</div>
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The United States bought exclusive rights to build a canal in Nicaragua in 1914 for just $3 million, a move that ultimately prevented the Central American country from competing with Panama for the next century. Augusto César Sandino, Nicaragua’s greatest hero who would later give his name to the Sandinista party, wrote in a 1927 manifesto, “Civilization requires that a Nicaraguan canal be built, but that it be done with capital from the whole world, not exclusively from the United States…And Nicaragua, my Fatherland, will then receive the taxes that by right and by law belong to it, and we will then have income enough to crisscross our whole territory with railroads and to educate our people in a true environment of effective democracy.” Members of Nicaragua’s National Guard assassinated Sandino in 1934, leading to 40 years of conservative rule by the right-wing Somoza family that was largely supported by successive U.S. administrations.</div>
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A political shift again occurred in 1979 when the Marxist Sandinistas toppled the Somoza regime. The head of this revolutionary spark was Daniel Ortega, who is the country’s president today. Throughout the 1980s, Ortega fought pro-Somoza Contra fighters who sought to swing Nicaragua’s political pendulum away from the Soviet Union and back toward Washington. The war with the Contras did not heighten Ortega’s popularity, even within his own party, and he lost the election of 1990. Instead of going quietly, though, Ortega set about redistributing huge swaths of the national reserves, some to peasants, millions to himself and his friends.</div>
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Dogged by corruption charges, Ortega lost the next two elections, but courting the Catholic vote, he returned to power in 2006 and was then re-elected in 2011. Ortega knew the century-old Panamanian canal was in the midst of a decade-long, $5-billion facelift to build a third lane for larger container ships. He also knew the canal generates close to $2.5 billion in revenue each year, so Panama, with almost half as many people as Nicaragua, has close to four times his country’s GDP. The answer was simple: a canal equals business, and he wanted a piece of the pie, no matter what the cost to the environment or society.</div>
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ENTER CHINESE BILLIONAIRE</div>
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Ortega announced his plans to build the canal at a ceremony in Managua in June 2013. Holding up the hand of the Chinese billionaire, Wang Jing, chairman and CEO of HKND, Ortega told the crowd this was the man with the money and capability to make the country’s long-standing vision a reality. But what most of the crowd didn’t know was that the National Assembly, dominated by Ortega’s party, had just voted 61-28 to grant HKND carte blanche to bisect the country, end-to-end, to develop the canal any way it saw fit. Lawmakers had just two days to review the deal and largely voted along party lines.</div>
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The canal would begin at the Pacific town of Brito, cross 66 miles of Lake Nicaragua, and exit at the Punta Gorda River on the southern end of the Caribbean’s Mosquito Coast. The 50-year concession includes rights to build and operate a rail system, an oil pipeline, steel and cement factories, an airport, a free trade zone, several tourism sub-projects, and the option to extend the concession for 50 more years if HKND desires. This means HKND could own and operate the canal for up to 100 years. The company also has the rights to any mineral resources it might find in the construction path. </div>
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In addition to ERM, HKND has contracted MEC Mining from Australia and engineering experts Studiebureau voor Bouwkunde en Expertises (SBE) from Belgium to consult and prepare studies in the pre-construction phase. A number of Chinese companies, including China Railway Construction Corp., have been tapped to design and build the canal, its roads, ports, factories, pipeline, and the holiday resorts. HKND is even looking into an IPO to help raise money for the expensive array of projects, which raises questions regarding future leadership changes and the potential of a hostile takeover.</div>
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Ground was broken on the project on December 22, 2014 at an access road near Brito that was largely symbolic. But the symbolism wasn’t lost on Nicaraguans, who took to the streets in Managua, Rivas, El Tule, and San Miguelito to voice their opposition. Fears of a <i>vendepatria </i>(sale of the Fatherland) and a Chinese invasion gripped many who openly rallied against the project. </div>
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The story becomes more complicated in rural areas. Indigenous tribes, including the Rama and Sumo Indians, along with Creoles of African descent who have lived on the Mosquito Coast for generations, control autonomous territories granted by the Nicaraguan Constitution of 1987. But this has now been rewritten in favor of a privately held Chinese company, and the Nicaraguan government has put the police and the army at the service of this company. Chinese surveyors, who are gathering property information to put together a census of future land expropriations, will go to properties that are in the project’s path. The owner will be notified by armed troops that the land is going to be seized for the project. Although property has yet to be taken, people have complained of intimidation. It is estimated that tens of thousands of people could be displaced from their land. So when the land is actually seized, the situation might become quite volatile.</div>
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In the countryside, the government met with a number of communities last year regarding land seizures and their compensation packages. Although many will no doubt choose to take the money and go elsewhere, a number of farmers remain defiant in the face of relocation. Many protestors have been beaten and jailed. In the universities, these discussions are discouraged, while professors can be punished if they speak too openly against the canal.</div>
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NO TRACK RECORD</div>
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HKND has no track record in this area of business—even less in the conflict of development and environment in such potentially fragile surroundings. And the company and its principals remain tight-lipped about contentious details. HKND, created in 2012, has home offices in Hong Kong, Managua, and is internationally registered in the Cayman Islands. Wang serves as board chairman of more than 20 international businesses, including Xinwei Telecom Enterprise Group in China. Speculation has swirled over his links to the Beijing government, but he has denied any. The Nicaraguan government lacks formal diplomatic relations with China, but with money now flowing from Beijing to Latin American governments, the type of business relationship being played out in Nicaragua may well represent a future norm in Sino-Latino relations. </div>
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At a January 8 summit in Beijing with a number of Latin American nations, Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed strengthening ties with the region and pledged to use the Chinese economy to support billions of dollars in projects in order to double trade to a level of half a trillion dollars by 2025. Xi underscored the potential for future growth between China and the group of more than 30 nations, known as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. The community accounts for one-eighth of the global economy, and late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had pushed the bloc as an alternative to U.S.-led regional organizations. Trade between the community and China soared from $10 billion in 2000 to $257 billion in 2013, the same year U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared “dead” the Monroe Doctrine, which has long positioned the United States as the Western Hemisphere’s overload. Clearly this had been the enduring reality throughout the hemisphere.</div>
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And China was certainly anxious to hustle the doctrine into an early grave, along with any gesture toward environmental conservation. Indeed, trading money for the environment was the theme in Ecuador last year when the government began negotiating a secret $1-billion deal with the Chinese Development Bank to drill for oil under the Amazon’s Yasuni National Park, one of the most bio-diverse regions on earth, all while soliciting international donations to keep the oil in the ground. The objective was simple. PetroChina was to secure drilling access to a hefty supply of crude oil. The Ecuadorian government would get a substantial line of credit at an attractive interest rate.</div>
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In the case of Nicaragua, HKND gets the rights to operate the canal and keep all revenue from operating it. In exchange, the Nicaraguan government receives $10 million per year for the first decade and an increasing share thereafter, along with a 1 percent stake in the canal each year, meaning that beyond half a century, the government would be a majority stakeholder. The Nicaraguan government and HKND both seek to gain from the deal, but what has been omitted from the contract’s provisions is the long-term price tag charged to the land.</div>
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NICARAGUA'S CHOICE</div>
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Development on the Pacific side of the country has been eerily quiet since the high-profile ground breaking in December, and nothing has yet to move on the Caribbean coast. But this could just be the calm before the storm. The canal is technically feasible, and plans are likely to resume after the environmental impact report is released. HKND is beyond ambitious in its desire to build it in a mere five years at $40 billion, but large engineering projects routinely go over time and over budget. In this case, though, some estimates of the total ballooning costs have risen as high as $100 billion. In such a case, if HKND went bankrupt during a protracted construction, the company could simply pull out and leave Nicaragua with a stack of feasibility plans and a huge hole in the ground. This would put the onus on the government to find a new project to sponsor.</div>
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But the question is not whether the canal can be built. The chief issue is whether it should be. There are good reasons for the canal. One is that it would allow passage for the largest modern supertankers from Asia that even the new, expanded third route in the Panama Canal will be too small to accommodate. Ortega also sounds convincing when he proclaims that with poverty and economic dependence, there is no sovereignty. As the biggest civil engineering project in the world, in all likelihood thousands of jobs would be created inside the country. The national government doesn’t have the money to undertake the project, so fate has led an opportunistic billionaire to Nicaragua’s doorstep.</div>
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Of course, a fundamental and unresolved problem exists with this canal. Beyond its questionable impact on the Central American environment, it hasn’t really been proven that this is going to lead to positive economic development. There is no business plan at hand that economists or laypeople can discuss. The business side would be turned over to the Chinese. The Nicaraguan economy could grow as much as 14 percent per year, according to canal spokesperson Francisco Telémaco Talavera—more than either Panama or China. But there is a need to look at numbers and scenarios. It may all just be a wish in place of a plan. And there are no assurances in place that money will be fairly distributed. </div>
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In terms of the environment, representatives of Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, usually active participants in such high-profile projects, both said they have no official position on the project due to their lack of presence inside the country. And as for those environmental workers and scientists who have criticized the canal, inevitably it is likely to be said they are stifling the potential of others seeking work.</div>
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But research has already demonstrated some overwhelming risks to UNESCO biosphere reserves, endangered species, and clean drinking water. Moreover, the developers, particularly HKND, enjoy limited liability if they are ever found negligent in the deaths of Nicaraguan citizens and sued in international courts. With the Chinese controlling the entire process, courtesy of the Nicaraguan government, it doesn’t seem to matter very much what the environmental impact statement concludes. Plans are moving forward.</div>
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So who would the canal really benefit? A one-time Nicaraguan revolutionary-turned-career-politician who seeks to create a grand legacy and a 42-year-old Chinese telecom baron and the companies he pays to do the actual work. Or, perhaps, it would be the Chinese government, which may be the secret force behind the entire operation, all in an effort to win a century-long trade route with enormous strategic significance. With the Nicaraguan government receiving a barely-modest sum each year from HKND, it could happen that only a small clique in power gets their hands on any real money, while everyone else gets left out—or suffers the consequences. </div>
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There are no guarantees, of course, that any policy positions would prevent environmental damage, but moving ahead without analyzing all of its potential would be beyond ill advised. It would be plainly irresponsible. With a project so large and impactful, measured judgments must be taken. If the Ortega government and HKND do not heed advice for inclusive input—economically, environmentally, and socially—the whole project could be considered at best an unanswered question, and at worst, an epoch catastrophe. </div>
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<a href="http://www.worldpolicy.org/sites/default/files/uploaded/image/Screen%20Shot%202015-05-26%20at%204.37.53%20PM.png" style="color: #0283aa; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.worldpolicy.org/sites/default/files/uploaded/image/Screen%20Shot%202015-05-26%20at%204.37.53%20PM.png" style="border: 0px; height: 300px; width: 425px;" /></a></div>
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<i>Ted Andersen is a San Francisco-based journalist who is the winner of the 2014 Overseas Press Club Foundation Walter and Betsy Cronkite Award.</i></div>
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[Photo courtesy of ENK]</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-42550859912921668992015-05-16T10:02:00.002-07:002015-06-03T15:07:18.140-07:00Local Tenants Unite Against Landlord: City investigates, landlord sues city<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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By Ted Andersen</div>
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Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and in the case of one landlord in the Castro, clouds of controversy now point to legal heat being brought against the City of San Francisco in the form of a federal lawsuit.</div>
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More than 30 tenants across several apartment complexes in District 8 have created a working group to compare stories and organize legal defenses against their landlord. Anne Kihagi, the principal of several limited liability corporations that control six buildings in the neighborhood, has become a lightning rod for complaints by her rent-control tenants. They feel they have been unfairly singled out and harassed by her over the past year in an effort to push them out and capitalize on the city’s skyrocketing rental market.</div>
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Tenants have cited instances of Kihagi installing indoor surveillance cameras, not cashing rent checks, illegally entering units without proper notification, restricting mail access, performing unpermitted construction, serving excessive 3-day notices, removing laundry facilities, illegal towing, face-to-face harassment, sending harassing text messages, and failing to set up water and electricity accounts for buildings in a timely fashion. One particular eviction case by Kihagi alleges that a 70-year-old woman, Sylvia Smith, who has lived in her Guerrero Street unit for four decades, uses and sells drugs to other people in her building.</div>
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“She did so much to me, you have no idea,” she said. “I pay $1,000 and she wants $5,000 for this unit. She offered me money and I said no. Then she got so mean.”</div>
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Following multiple complaints at different properties filed with the SF Department of Building Inspection, a City Task Force Investigation Unit was deployed on March 4. Thus far building Inspector Anthony Lepe has only confirmed minor violations and a investigation is ongoing through the City Attorney’s office, which could not comment further on the matter.</div>
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In response to the investigation, Kihagi, an African-American who was raised in London according to her lawyer, filed a federal lawsuit against the City for discrimination. According to the suit, “The City and its employees have a visceral opposition to an African American, immigrant and homeowner and as a result have targeted Kihagi.”<span class="actAsDiv normal_text" id="u17243" style="direction: ltr; display: block; float: right; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 17px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: -4px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: 0px;"><span class="actAsDiv clip_frame" id="u17240" style="display: block; overflow: hidden; width: 495px; z-index: 425;"><img alt="" class="block" src="http://castrocourier.com/images/anne_kigahi_swain_protest.jpg" height="457" id="u17240_img" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; border: 0px; display: block;" width="640" /></span></span></div>
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The lawsuit claims a vendetta against Kihagi motivated by discrimination based on race and bureaucratic hostility towards landlords’ right to evict tenants who are breaking their leasing contracts. The suit seeks legal fees and damages based on loss of income from not fairly receiving city permits to renovate her buildings, which could have rented for market rates.</div>
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Critics of Kihagi allege that her business model consists of buying rent-controlled buildings, singling out longtime tenants as lease violators until they leave and profiting from the rent differential. In the last two years, Kihagi has initiated a series of evictions based on lease violations as well as owner move-ins involving her and her two sisters.</div>
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“They want to make it seem like she is this renegade landlord, but she hasn’t done anything wrong,” said Karen Uchiyama, Kihagi’s lawyer. “It all comes down to the fact that if you (as a tenant) are not doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to be afraid of.”</div>
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Uchiyama insists that a small group of her client’s tenants have singled her out because they dislike Kihagi’s enforcement of “House Rules,” a several-page document that among other restrictions calls on tenants to notify Kihagi if they leave the apartment on vacation.</div>
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“She has many low-rent tenants whom she has never evicted or wanted to evict. She also has high paying tenants whom she has never evicted or wanted or had reason to evict,” she said. “Yes we have a housing shortage. But it doesn’t mean she is an evil person. She has a right to do this as a landlord.”</div>
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District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener disagrees. He recently met with a large group of the tenants who told him one-by-one what their interactions with the landlord have been.</div>
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“I was absolutely horrified. It’s completely sociopathic behavior and it needs to stop,” he said. “This is the absolute worst kind of speculation—someone who comes into a city, buys up a bunch of apartment buildings and then tries to terrorize the tenants out of the building. It’s just beyond unacceptable.”</div>
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Wiener said he intends to help tenants find legal counsel so they can assert any claims that they may have. He said that she owns buildings in West Hollywood, another LGBT-friendly community, and also sued the city there.</div>
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“That fact that West Hollywood and the Castro are two of the areas is troubling to me as well,” Wiener said.</div>
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On January 31, about 200 people held a protest outside of her Castro residence, which included support from the SF Teachers Union. Paul Revere Elementary School teacher Allison Leshefsky, a resident of Kihagi’s 195 Eureka St. building, has become the point person for the group. Leshefsy said market rate rents are too high for teachers to live in the communities they serve.</div>
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“I’m the working poor. Rent control is the only thing that keeps me in San Francisco,” she said. “My home is no longer a place where I feel secure. I’ve started seeing a therapist for anxiety.”</div>
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Non-profit marketing manager Ryan Andersen, another founding member of the tenant group, pays $1625 for an apartment at Kihagi’s 19th Street building and said he couldn’t stay in the city without it. He said that since Kihagi bought the building in 2013, all the previous rent-controlled tenants are gone.</div>
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“She is single-handedly gentrifying the Castro,” he said.</div>
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Recently, there has been a huge spike in breach and nuisance evictions and an uptake in owner-move-in evictions even though Ellis Act evictions had gone down until last month when they started rising again, according to Sarah “Fred” Sherburn-Zimmer, lead housing organizer for the San Francisco Housing Rights Committee.</div>
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“I’m really glad the city attorney got involved with this one,” she said. “We are really excited the city is actually stepping up and investigating this.”</div>
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Late last year, Kelly Kimball was ousted from his unit at 3947 18th St. where he had lived for 11 years through an owner move-in eviction of Kihagi herself, which requires her to live in the unit for three years.</div>
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“I go by every weekend and I always glance up and never see anyone in there,” Kimball said.</div>
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Sixty-seven-year-old Rob Dominguez, who has lived in that building for almost three decades also attests to this.</div>
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“There are no lights up there. There’s no traffic up there,” he said. “I’ve seen her workers but not her.”</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-79724838726081510002015-03-26T12:05:00.001-07:002015-03-26T12:11:15.837-07:00Tales from the Evicted: Local Group Brings Stories of Jilted Renters to Life<div class="H1" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; border-width: 0px; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 23px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 30px; max-height: 1000000px; padding: 2px 0px 0px;">
<span class="actAsDiv normal_text" id="u13540" style="direction: ltr; display: block; float: right; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 17px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: 0px;"><span class="actAsDiv clearfix" id="u13533" style="border-color: transparent; border-style: none; display: block; width: 470px; z-index: 366;"><span class="actAsDiv underPix clearfix grpelem" id="u13534-4" style="display: block; float: left; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; left: 5px; line-height: 14px; margin-right: -10000px; margin-top: 358px; min-height: 53px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 465px; z-index: 367;"><span class="actAsPara" style="display: block; max-height: 1000000px;"><br /></span><span class="actAsPara" style="display: block; max-height: 1000000px;">Francisco Romano pays $750 to live near Dolores Park, but it might not be for long. He is being evicted. A data-driven advocacy group, the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, is releasing his story and dozens of others in mid-March as part of an oral history of those evicted in the city.</span></span><span class="actAsDiv clip_frame grpelem" id="u13535" style="display: block; float: left; margin-right: -10000px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; width: 470px; z-index: 371;"><img alt="" class="block" src="http://www.castrocourier.com/images/evictions.jpg" id="u13535_img" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; border: 0px; display: block;" /></span></span></span></div>
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By Ted Andersen</div>
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A middle-aged gay man with AIDS who survives off of disability payments is now counting the days until his eviction court date. He fears it’s only a matter of time.</div>
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An elderly woman — a lifelong nurse who has served in nearly every San Francisco hospital — now faces a similar fate inside her decades-long apartment with her husband, a veteran of the Korean War.</div>
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These two are among a mass whose stories have fallen through the cracks. In an urban scene powered by tech money, venture capital and exorbitant real estate, speculation-based evictions are driving a wedge between the old images of free love and the new reality of pay-to-play where a one-bedroom apartment can go for $3,500 per month. Evictions are the new norm, and while some tenants under rent control opt for a mandated buyout or even an under-the-table negotiated settlement to relocate, others have elected to fight the legal battle to keep their rent-controlled units.</div>
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On the edge of Dolores Park, 51-year-old Francisco Romano and 74-year-old Lotta Garrity represent those fighting to hang on.</div>
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“San Francisco has changed but I feel it’s my home. I have my friends and my medical support here. It’s the only place where I can live and talk about everything that’s going on with my life,” says Romano, who points out that people living with HIV/AIDS without stable housing are five times more likely to have their life expectancy drop. “If you are homeless, you can’t shower or go to the bathroom when you want. It’s very stressful.”</div>
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For Garrity, who pays $829 per month for a four-room flat on Guerrero Street that she says could go for $5,000, the clock is ticking. She and her husband have already been served an Ellis Act eviction and will be presented with an unlawful detainer notice by the end of March. She said there is still a chance to have the eviction thrown out of court, but after three decades in the neighborhood, she and her husband are now coming to terms with painful exit strategies.</div>
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“We are not poor — we have some money — but it’s not going to go very far. Our costs are going to jump. We are going to have to pay $25,000 more a year just to stay in town,” she said. “I signed up for the lottery for that low-cost housing. But chances are pretty slim.”</div>
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Romano and Garrity are not the same. He’s a lodger renting a room in his landlord’s unit and she is a longtime tenant under rent control. But they are both being removed. And they are not alone. Many others are currently being displaced and each has a story to tell. But instead of fading away into obscurity, the stories of those displaced by gentrification will become public in March thanks to a new project by the volunteer advocacy group, the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. By collecting the audio histories of roughly 40 people evicted from all parts of San Francisco and plotting them on a map, the group has created a living archive that documents the granular level of neighborhood-by-neighborhood evictions.</div>
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<span class="actAsDiv normal_text" id="u13715" style="direction: ltr; display: block; float: left; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 17px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: 0px;"><span class="actAsDiv clearfix" id="u13707" style="border-color: transparent; border-style: none; display: block; width: 564px; z-index: 407;"><span class="actAsDiv underPix clearfix grpelem" id="u13710-4" style="display: block; float: left; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; margin-right: -10000px; margin-top: 397px; min-height: 62px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 564px; z-index: 408;"><span class="actAsPara" style="display: block; max-height: 1000000px;">This map shows the eviction of seniors and disabled tenants over the last three years. Red bubbles show evictions enacted by serial evictors — landlords or speculators that have Ellis Acted more than one property. Of Ellis Act evictions filed in 2012, 71 percent were against a senior or person with disabilities.</span></span><span class="actAsDiv clip_frame grpelem" id="u13708" style="display: block; float: left; margin-right: -10000px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; width: 564px; z-index: 412;"><img alt="" class="block" src="http://www.castrocourier.com/images/elders_disabled_evictions.jpg" height="390" id="u13708_img" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; border: 0px; display: block;" width="564" /></span></span></span>The Narratives of Displacement Oral History (NDOH) project consists of roughly 40 audio recordings of first-person eviction experiences in San Francisco. Many of the stories, which are up to an hour long, come from the Mission and Castro neighborhoods. The idea behind documenting the voices is to create discussion around the evictions in the city to shed light on the wider political economy, according to Erin McElroy, founder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.</div>
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“We’re always working against the clock. We are in the midst of what people call hyper-gentrification, whereby evictions are happening too quickly to combat in their entirety,” she said. “Small businesses are going under left and right as rents go up and as new gentrifiers don’t frequent local shops, so we’re losing people that way too. Once people lose their homes or sources of employment in the city, they often lose the city as a home altogether since rents are too high.”</div>
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A dozen volunteers have worked for a year to put together the oral history project, enlisting the help of university students. McElroy, a current doctoral student at UC Santa Cruz and trained cultural anthropologist who has documented forced evictions of Roma communities in both Romania and Northern Ireland, said 16 students in a University of San Francisco urban politics class paired up to interview tenants, edit and transcribe the interviews and take photographs.</div>
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She said the NDOH project will be online by mid-March for public viewing at www.antievictionmappingproject.net, which features a host of other data-driven graphics on its site ranging from a “Dirty Dozen” list of the biggest evictors in the city to the loss of the Bay Area’s black population from 1970-2013.</div>
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Volunteer Karyn Smoot, who joined the project last year, said producing the NDOH took an untold number of emotionally involved hours. More people are becoming familiar with the issue of no-fault evictions, she said, but in order to understand extent to which people are affected by gentrification, it’s important to hear personal accounts directly.</div>
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“Something that people in the project have asked me to think about is the disappearance of stories once someone is evicted and displaced to another city, county, state,” Smoot said. “I think the idea for the oral history project came from wanting to bring humanity to the little dots on the eviction map and to share the experience of talking to actual residents to remember and learn from the stories that are actively being lost through this process.”</div>
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San Francisco is losing 650 units of rent-controlled units every year on average, according to Jennifer Fieber, one of the organization’s principal contributors who worked on a report commissioned by Tenants Together regarding Ellis Act reform. This state law allows owners to trade a payout of more than $5,000 to relocate a tenant in order to go out of the rental business. Ellis Act evictions require a one-year notice for senior or disabled tenants (120 days for all others) and are often used by landlords to convert rental space to condos, TICs or luxury homes. She said it surprised her how 51 percent of new owners used the Ellis Act within the first year and 78 percent within the first five years.</div>
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“It had always been a theory that the Ellis Act was being used for speculative flipping rather than its stated purpose of getting out of the landlord business,” she said. “But when we calculated the period from purchase to Ellis, it became really apparent that the Ellis Act is overwhelmingly a tool of speculation and not an escape hatch.”</div>
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Fieber also said she was shocked to find that 71 percent of tenants removed by the Ellis Act in 2012 were seniors or people with disabilities.</div>
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“That is really tragic, and heartlessly cruel of the new owners,” she said. “What kind of society chooses to protect ill-gotten profits over our elders? It’s not like the city has set up other options for our elders who contributed so much to the city.”</div>
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State senator Mark Leno, who represents San Francisco, has recently proposed a bill to the California Legislature to make Ellis Act evictions illegal in buildings that have been owned for fewer than five years. The idea is to cut down speculative buying and flipping at the expense of ousting renters. Leno introduced a similar bill last year that passed the Senate only to get killed in an Assembly committee by one vote.</div>
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Meanwhile, Lotta Garrity and her husband, Lucky, pore over their options. Having already sought the help of a number of pro-tenant organizations, they saw the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project’s oral histories as something of greater importance for the community at large.</div>
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“I wanted the story to get out,” she said. “All kinds of people are getting it and that needs to get out there.”</div>
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As for Francisco Romano, who fears a possible reality of sleeping on a friend’s couch, or worse, in a shelter, he participated as something of a last-ditch effort.</div>
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“I’m really hoping for a miracle,” he said.</div>
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Photo: Ted Andersen / Graphic courtesy of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-73138637862006409942015-02-02T09:41:00.002-08:002015-02-27T00:10:03.622-08:00Local Homebrewers Drop Anchor in San Francisco<span style="font-weight: normal;">By Ted Andersen</span><br />
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<a href="http://hoodline.com/2015/02/local-homebrewers-drop-anchor-in-san-francisco">http://hoodline.com/2015/02/local-homebrewers-drop-anchor-in-san-francisco</a></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">Chris Cohen at a recent guild meeting. Photo and video by Ted Andersen</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 28.799999237060547px;">What do a corporate lawyer, an elementary school teacher and a lieutenant colonel all have in common? Quitting their jobs to professionally brew beer.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 28.799999237060547px;">They took the leap through a growing local group called the </span><a href="http://www.sfhomebrewersguild.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #40dfc2; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 28.799999237060547px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">San Francisco Homebrewers Guild</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 28.799999237060547px;">, which will be celebrating its third year this coming </span><a href="http://www.sfbeerweek.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #40dfc2; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 28.799999237060547px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Beer Week</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 28.799999237060547px;">(February 6-15).From its origins as a rag-tag club of amateur hobbyists, the SFHG has grown into a hub of area movers and shakers. Today it provides members with classes and advice from top industry professionals and a community of fellow enthusiasts.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 28.799999237060547px;">When patent lawyer Chris Cohen moved to San Francisco from New York several years ago, he came with no expectation of founding a beer organization. A lifelong beer lover, his introduction to the Bay Area scene was quite circumstantial. One of the first people he met was Brian Yaeger, author of </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Red-White-Brew-American-Odyssey/dp/0312383142" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #40dfc2; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; line-height: 28.799999237060547px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Red, White and Brew</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 28.799999237060547px;">, who was on tour with his brewing book and hunting for a sub-leaser. “He and I just hit it off and when he returned to town we just kept hanging out,” he said. “And it was really through him that I met all these amazing people in the beer scene.”</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 28.799999237060547px; text-align: right;">Cohen, who had been brewing beer at home for two years, searched for an organization to help him professionalize his hobby, but couldn’t find one. “So I decided that if I wanted to meet a bunch of people who brew then I’d have to start this thing by myself,” he said.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 28.799999237060547px;">Former Army Lt. Kevin Inglin has a similar story. When he moved to the city in 2011, he couldn’t find any brewing organizations. The only thing around was a casual Meetup group called San Francisco Homebrew Club, of which he soon became the leader. Later, he searched online to find that Cohen had established the SFHG. Inglin reached out and the two then got together, merged memberships in 2012 to cook up the modern club.</span></div>
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SFHG now boasts close to 150 paid members and is currently waiting to hear back on non-profit status to become a 501(c)4 organization. Dues are $45 per year and anyone can join. Members get access to events, such as bus tours to breweries, discounts at homebrew supply shops and monthly meetings at the historic <a href="http://www.anchorbrewing.com/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #40dfc2; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Anchor Brewery</a> in Potrero Hill. Anchor donates the space once a month for the meetings and pours beer for SFHG members on the house. The guild has been able to draw beer luminaries such as Pete Slosberg, creator of <a href="http://www.peteswicked.com/site_nonflash.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #40dfc2; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Pete’s Wicked Ale</a>. </div>
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The buzz surrounding the guild and homebrewing has been infectious for its members, steering many toward their true love.“One of the cool things about San Francisco Homebrewers Guild, and I think a lot of homebrew clubs, is that by bringing all these people together it creates a lot of synergy around getting people interested in pursuing beer and beer industry work as a profession,” Cohen said.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">Kevin Inglin at a recent guild meeting. Photo by Ted Andersen </span></div>
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This was especially true for Cohen himself. Born in Philadelphia, he went to law school in New York and got a job as a corporate and patent attorney who worked mostly for tech companies in San Francisco. That all changed after starting the SFHG. He's now followed his former roommate Yaeger's example and wrote a book about beer — a study guide for the certified beer cicerone program, which is comparable to a wine sommelier program. </div>
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Cohen, who lives in the Mission, has plans to open a beer bar this year at Mission and Cortland streets near Bernal Heights called <a href="https://www.facebook.com/olddevilmoonSF" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #40dfc2; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Old Devil Moon</a>, which he intends to turn into one of the best beer bars in the city.“You just realize, oh, this is my passion,” he said. “Now I’m really sitting here talking to people about it and I realize that this is what I want to be spending more of my time doing.”</div>
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<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-jSO6uAjR1bw/VM5fZ0xhnqI/AAAAAAAAcxI/slnudLXtzuk/brewkit.jpg?imgmax=1600" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.42857143; vertical-align: middle; width: 100% !important;" /><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.42857143;">Photo by Chris Cohen</span></div>
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Inglin has a similar story. A graduate of West Point with a degree in aerospace engineering, he entered the Army as an aviation officer and flew UH Hueys and CH-47D Chinooks. Most recently, he was the chair of the military science department at the University of San Francisco. Beer changed all that.“I always had in the back of my mind that brewing might be our second career,” Inglin said, referring to himself and his wife and business partner, Shae. “This probably gave me the confidence to do that because getting into leading the club here and meeting people in the brewing industry and having a lot of contacts just gave us that push that this is something that we can make our livelihood in.”</div>
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He's now working on opening his own brewery, to be called <a href="https://www.facebook.com/fermentdrinkrepeat" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #40dfc2; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Ferment, Drink, Repeat</a>. It will be a small-scale brewery located in the West Portal neighborhood with a homebrew supply shop connected to it. He said the plan is to feature a number of home brewers in the shop and select award-winners to have their beers on tap.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.42857143;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">Jen Jordan at Anchor Steam. Photo by Ted Andersen.</span></span></div>
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Homebrewing also explains how the guild’s secretary, Jen Jordan, made her move from schoolteacher to Anchor Brewery’s first female brewer. In 1999 she started teaching 2nd and 3rd grade at West Portal Elementary School. She enjoyed the classroom but began to pursue the hobby of homebrewing outside of it.</div>
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Eight years ago, she took her first class after buying a kit at <a href="http://www.sanfranciscobrewcraft.com/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #40dfc2; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">San Francisco Brewcraft</a> in the Richmond District and then got hooked up with the SFHG. A natural from the get-go, she received good feedback from the brewers, who encouraged her to enter into competitions. Eventually the passion overtook her and she made the leap of faith, reducing her teaching hours with the SF Unified School District and started work on the packaging line at Anchor Brewery. </div>
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But there were no guarantees Jen's aspirations would pan out. Although her co-workers at SF Unified School District had encouraged her to pursue her dream, she admitted that leaving the classroom for the brewery left her with many doubts. “It was scary because I did actually resign from my teaching position before I even had a full-time job here.”</div>
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<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-75gSp3y-n_M/VM5wORaSW6I/AAAAAAAAcxo/qvmYNDPsuQo/s944/unnamed%2520%25282%2529.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.42857143; vertical-align: middle; width: 100% !important;" /><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.42857143;">Photo by Chris Cohen</span></div>
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Last March, Jen was promoted and became Anchor Brewery’s first female brewer ever. In 2014, she was also named SFHG Homebrewer of the Year. “Brewing and beer became a teacher for me,” she said. “When I saw myself switching I felt like I’m not a teacher anymore, I feel like I’m a student and I want to learn about this. I had to start following that.”</div>
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Innovations in beer don’t just happen in a vacuum. People are the impetus behind the dreaming that becomes trial and error and eventually success in beer making, and it is the do-it-yourself spirit that has altered beer and led to the rise of several trends.“Homebrewing and home brewers have absolutely changed the American craft brew industry,” Cohen said. “A lot of the guys who own the top craft breweries that you’ve heard of — almost all of them have come out of homebrewing.”</div>
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An example of trend changes in San Francisco is the up-and-coming brewery Almanac, which specializes in Belgian-style sour beers. Cohen said the partners of that brewery met at a homebrew club where they perfected their recipes and methods before launching the brand. The <a href="http://www.almanacbeer.com/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #40dfc2; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Almanac Beer Company</a>, located in the Dogpatch neighborhood, makes beers in small batches using fruit, grains and herbs that come from local family farms.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">Backyard hops, grown by and photographed by Jen Jordan.</span></div>
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Backyard hop growing is another method that has allowed new libation creations to take root. In the spring, homebrew shops sell a variety of hop rhizomes — essentially root cuttings of hop plants — which can be buried in the dirt. Cohen said he and a number of others in the club grow just enough hops in their backyards to make one or two batches of beer. </div>
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“We’ll make what are called ‘wet hop beers,’ where you take the hops fresh off the vine, and instead of drying them and storing them for use later, you throw them right in the beer while they are still moist. You get a very fresh, grassy hop character in your beer,” he said. <span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.42857143;">Cohen said that during harvest season in the fall, breweries such as Sierra Nevada now put out fresh hop or wet hop beers.“This is one of the kinds of genres of beer that home brewers have helped bring to commercial beer,” he said. “So, it’s kind of cool.”</span></div>
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The passion for beer making — of experimentation and rolling up your sleeves — fuels the club, not the economics of frugality. “There is definitely a deep DIY spirit in the homebrewing world and it extends not just to the hop growing but the people who’ll smoke their own malt. They’ll go out and get fresh fruit and use that in their beer. They’ll build their own equipment,” Cohen said. “The idea that you can brew beer at home for less money is not true. It’s really cheaper to just go out and buy beer and it’s a lot less time-consuming.”</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">Photo by Chris Cohen</span></div>
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The SFHG will round out SF Beer Week with its annual homebrew share on Sunday, February 15th at <a href="http://www.pibarsf.com/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #40dfc2; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Pi Bar</a> (1432 Valencia St.) from noon to 3pm. The cost is $15 per person and pizza and beer will be provided. The event will mark the third year of the guild’s existence. </div>
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“If you're interested in making beer, or if you are a home brewer who hasn’t come to a meeting and met other home brewers, you’re kind of missing out on one of the best parts of being a home brewer, which is the community,” Cohen said. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve been brewing for a decade or more or just starting out. There are experts brewers here who help you dial in your recipes or techniques and even if you are a very good brewer already you’ll learn something new ... If you haven’t been out here for a meeting yet, get out here.”<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-64153518076085586862014-12-26T16:03:00.002-08:002015-01-22T13:22:38.695-08:00Video: Shasta Dam Increase Threatens To Flood Native American Burial Grounds<a href="https://vimeo.com/115447062">https://vimeo.com/115447062</a><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://vimeo.com/115447062" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt=" Caleen Sisk is the leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe." border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiZM36iopsn7iYhQuyWkuAyao-sRKeSrVPpY2WhjSWJpj4FHgKpcu0-OtYIeIGSrQC2lCV-FhGL1hL7RQCRqMQsuOwt8zju1B9gmBr5v0xQBpwSedyzIy5-uKr2fI-D3qdrlluq3ilpNA/s1600/caleen_screenshot.jpg" height="221" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caleen Sisk is the leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe.</td></tr>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-33660409189662517492014-12-23T10:03:00.000-08:002015-01-14T11:49:25.772-08:00Water Hyacinth Thrives in Drought Stricken Delta<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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by Ted Andersen on December 22, 2014<br />
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Visit www.baynature.org to view the story<br />
<a href="http://baynature.org/articles/water-hyacinth-thrives-drought-stricken-delta/">http://baynature.org/articles/water-hyacinth-thrives-drought-stricken-delta/</a><br />
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<img src="http://3vswoj22h2l7nt08f1ye9o4r.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/themes/bay-nature/timthumb.php?src=/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/IMG_1454-1024x768.jpg&w=633&zc=1" height="400" style="display: block; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px;" width="400" /><span style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">A mechanical harvester starts from east end of Stockton Yacht Club mowing down the hyacinth. Photo: Roger Kelly</span></div>
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Forty-nine-year-old Roger Kelly is a Stockton lifer, born and raised in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. River culture is in his blood, and whether alone or taking the helm as a boat club commodore, he is a fixture on the water.</div>
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But for Kelly, a growing menace this year has pushed him off the water and left his boat in the weeds. The scourge is an invasive plant known commonly as the water hyacinth. Having no natural controls, it has proliferated, choking boat navigation and marinas in much of the Delta’s 1,000 miles of waterways.</div>
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The plant is hardly new, and usually cold winter temperatures and heavy rain are the answer to seasonally killing it off in the winter months. But this year an unwieldy combination of drought conditions and nutrient-loaded water has created a perfect storm for its growth. State and local agencies have dumped millions into control efforts, but the species has grown so dense in areas that it has become a threat not only to boat safety but also to the ecological balance of the Delta.</div>
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In November, the California Division of Boating and Waterways moved to address the problem with a program of spraying herbicide and in December through mechanical harvesting, but has had limited results. The state senator who represents the Stockton area recently met with a number of local stakeholder organizations, state agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) and NASA (which creates aerial survey maps of the water hyacinth) to discuss solutions to the weed’s infestation.</div>
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“Every year I can remember seeing a little bit of hyacinth, but it seems like in the last four or five years it’s gotten much worse,” said Kelly, whose home sits on the bank of the Calaveras River. “This year by far is the worst that anybody has seen it.”</div>
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<a href="http://baynature.org/articles/water-hyacinth-thrives-drought-stricken-delta/img_1580/" rel="attachment wp-att-97449" style="color: #e69113; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="San Joaquin River at Connections Slough. Photo: Roger Kelly. " class="wp-image-97449" src="http://3vswoj22h2l7nt08f1ye9o4r.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/IMG_1580-1024x768.jpg" height="480" style="border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="640" /></a><br />
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San Joaquin River at Connections Slough. Photo: Roger Kelly.</div>
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Water hyacinth (<i style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Eichhornia crassipes</i>) floats on top of fresh water and is characterized by thick, shiny green leaves and lavender flowers. Native to the Amazon basin, it was originally introduced from South America to the U.S. at the 1884 World’s Fair in New Orleans. From there it invaded the Mississippi River, flourished in Floridian waters and eventually made its way into the warm flows of California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta about a century ago.</div>
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The sub-tropical species is extremely prolific and can double in size in fewer than two weeks of hot weather, creating a dense mat of floating vegetation of up to six feet thick. The plant reproduces both sexually and asexually, cloning itself and also dropping seeds into the soil that can linger for years.</div>
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Ecologically, blankets of hyacinth can limit the amount of sunlight that reaches other plants below the surface, interrupting photosynthesis and killing plants and microorganisms important to wildlife. Dead fish have also been seen on the hyacinth, victims of suffocation after jumping on top of the green thickets and being unable to return to the water.</div>
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The ecological imbalance caused by the plant has also led to new pest control problems. A new federally funded Area-Wide Pest Management Project grant headed by the USDA-ARS, which includes cooperation from the San Joaquin and Contra Costa Mosquito Vector Control Districts, is examining how the hyacinth acts as a breeding ground for mosquitos.</div>
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“They’ve seen an association between dense populations of water hyacinth and mosquitos nearby,” said Patrick Moran, research entomologist with the USDA’s Western Regional Research Center in Albany, CA. “One of the things we are studying is whether or not the water hyacinth makes it difficult for predators to get to the mosquito larvae.”</div>
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<a href="http://baynature.org/articles/water-hyacinth-thrives-drought-stricken-delta/9887064833_d75b80fcf3_k/" rel="attachment wp-att-97450" style="color: #e69113; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Like many invasive plant species, Eichhornia crassipes is notably attractive. Photo: confierconifer/Flickr" class="wp-image-97450" src="http://3vswoj22h2l7nt08f1ye9o4r.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/9887064833_d75b80fcf3_k-1024x577.jpg" height="361" style="border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="640" /></a><br />
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Like many invasive plant species, Eichhornia crassipes is notably attractive. Photo: confierconifer/Flickr</div>
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This year was particularly bad for water hyacinth control because of the severe drought and more nutrient-rich water. The high temperatures and low water flows accelerated the plant’s growth, and more stagnant water has led to a higher concentration of farming fertilizers and treated municipal sewage that isn’t being flushed out of the system, according to the Delta Stewardship Council’s Rainer Hoenicke, deputy executive director of the organization’s science program. The Sacramento wastewater treatment plant, which serves 1.4 million customers, has become a contributing factor to the water hyacinths growth rates.</div>
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“It’s the cascading effects of a drought that results in higher temperatures and less nutrient dilution and they are going hog wild,” Hoenicke said.</div>
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Over the decades, authorities have conjured up a host of far-fetched and ineffective control measures ranging from dousing the plant with oil to introducing African <a href="http://www.wired.com/2013/12/hippopotamus-ranching/" style="color: #e69113; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">hippopotami</a> to eat it. The congressional hippo bill failed to pass in the early 1900s and the animals never made their way to America, but the idea of importing a non-native species to combat another one did.</div>
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Forty years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used helicopters to drop two types of water hyacinth weevils — small crop pests known as <i style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Neochetina eichhorniae</i> and <i style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Neochetina bruchi</i> — to remote areas of Louisiana to destroy the plant by eating it, and the <i style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">N. bruchi</i> weevil was later imported to Northern California for the same purpose. The program ceased in the 1980s, and while the weevil still exists in the Delta today, so do larger concentrations of water hyacinth.</div>
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<a href="http://baynature.org/articles/water-hyacinth-thrives-drought-stricken-delta/img_1822/" rel="attachment wp-att-97448" style="color: #e69113; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="San Joaquin River. Photo: Roger Kelly. " class="wp-image-97448" src="http://3vswoj22h2l7nt08f1ye9o4r.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/IMG_1822-1024x768.jpg" height="480" style="border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="640" /></a><br />
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San Joaquin River. Photo: Roger Kelly.</div>
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Now a similar project is taking shape at the USDA-ARS’ center in Albany. With respect to the weevil, researchers are looking into the possibility of importing an Argentinian version, according to Moran, an entomology specialist, from regions where the insect thrives in a climate similar to that of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, as opposed to the more tropical version imported in the past.</div>
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“The hypothesis that we are pursuing is that there could be the same species but a different collection of the weevil that might be better adapted to the conditions here in the Delta,” Moran said. “We are also planning to release a new insect, the water hyacinth planthopper <i style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Megamelus scutellaris</i>, which was previously released at a couple of sites by the [California Department of Food and Agriculture].”</div>
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The Division of Boating and Waterways is also part of the multi-agency project and is spearheading the control effort, which has included herbicidal spraying of more than 2,400 acres of water hyacinth in 2014 and mechanical removal of the weed near Stockton. But herbicides are limited in their effectiveness because rain can dilute their potency and year-round spraying could harm migratory fish. During the spray season between March and November there are also restrictions on chemicals that can be used in certain areas.</div>
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The control program is an ongoing battle with no end in sight. Seeds from water hyacinth have established themselves in the sediment and will continue to germinate even if all surface plants are removed from the water. These seeds have been reported to survive up to two decades in dried mud, according to Vicky Waters, deputy public information officer at California State Parks, which oversees the Division of Boating and Waterways.</div>
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“There is no known eradication method for the water hyacinth in the world,” she said.</div>
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<a href="http://baynature.org/articles/water-hyacinth-thrives-drought-stricken-delta/img_1851-sjr-29/" rel="attachment wp-att-97446" style="color: #e69113; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="The stem of the San Joaquin River as it meanders through the Delta. Photo: Roger Kelly" class="wp-image-97446" src="http://3vswoj22h2l7nt08f1ye9o4r.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/IMG_1851-SJR-29-1024x768.jpg" height="480" style="border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="640" /></a><br />
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The stem of the San Joaquin River as it meanders through the Delta. Photo: Roger Kelly</div>
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Meanwhile, Mother Nature is most effective at destroying the plant. Cold temperatures mixed with heavy winter rains usually push water hyacinth into the saltwater portions of the Delta, where it dies, but changes in climate this year have not made this possible. This has resulted in economic losses and political turmoil over public safety.</div>
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Recreational boating generates about half a billion dollars worth of business in Northern California, said Bill Wells, California Delta Chambers and Visitor’s Bureau executive director, and boating clubs and guide fishing have been particularly hit hard. In late fall, water hyacinth had inundated downtown Stockton and strangled the port to such an extent that it also forced the city to cancel the 35<sup style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">th</sup> annual Delta Reflections Lighted Boat Parade, previously scheduled for December 6.</div>
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Wells said the situation has created a “national security” risk, especially for fog or nighttime navigation. For boats using radar, dense areas of the weed in the rivers show up as solid landmasses.</div>
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“There are a million facets to the problem and it’s very serious,” Wells said.</div>
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In times of great fiscal pressure on the state government, budgeting for water hyacinth control has also been an issue. The Division of Boating and Waterways Aquatic Weed Control Program spent more than $7 million last fiscal year and allocated more than $9 million for 2014-2015.</div>
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On December 15, State Senator Cathleen Galgiani hosted a town hall meeting with a panel of experts from the Division of Boating and Waterways, California Delta Chambers and Visitor’s Bureau, the Port of Stockton, USDA-ARS and NASA-Ames Research Center to discuss both the water hyacinth and another invasive weed, <i style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Egeria densa</i>, which, like a freshwater seaweed, has spread beneath the surface of the water. The tag team combination of these two South American infestations — the water hyacinth on top and <i style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Egeria densa</i> below — has created what has been called a “green menace” in the Delta.</div>
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On a December afternoon, as Roger Kelly sat inside his home on the bank of the Calaveras River, he could hear the machines removing the plant. He went down to the river to film a vessel slicing and dicing up the green weeds.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-8922454822215899172014-12-02T14:24:00.002-08:002014-12-02T14:25:24.051-08:00Flood program aims to keep shorelines above water<h1 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.5em; list-style: none; margin: 10px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<img alt="Homes along the San Francisco Bay Trail in Richmond are among those most at risk to flooding due to sea level rise and marshland erosion. (photo by Ted Andersen)" height="266" src="https://richmondconfidential.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Flood2.0_Andersen1-620x413.jpg" style="border: 0px; float: none; font-family: Georgia, Palatino, 'Palatino Linotype', Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; height: auto; line-height: 22px; list-style: none; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; max-width: 620px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="400" /></h1>
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Homes along the San Francisco Bay Trail in Richmond are among those most at risk<br />
to flooding due to sea level rise and marshland erosion. (photo by Ted Andersen)</div>
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<span class="vcard author" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="fn" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By <a class="url fn" href="https://richmondconfidential.org/author/theodore_andersen/" rel="author" style="color: #505050;" title="Posts by Theodore Andersen">Theodore Andersen</a></span></span><span class="time" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-size: 0.8em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted <time class="date updated" datetime="2014-12-02T07:56:15-08:00" pubdate="" style="border: 0px; display: inline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">December 2, 2014 7:56 am</time></span></div>
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When the rains come and the tides rise, they take a toll on the Bay Area’s more than half-a-century-old storm channels, and one day, places like Richmond may be in peril.</div>
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The combination of heavy storms and inadequate runoff channels have at times covered blocks in up to five feet of water, drowning streets, yards and cars. Even worse, because sea levels are rising, homes on the bay waterfront are at risk of being overtaken due to a lack of marshland barrier in tidal areas.</div>
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But a possible remedy is now in the works: a joint federal and local program called Flood Control 2.0. More than two years in the making, the multi-partner $2.5-million effort is EPA funded and focused on restoring stream and wetland habitats and improving shoreline resilience. Led by the San Francisco Estuary Partnership, a 20-year-old coalition of public agencies and non-profits, Flood Control 2.0 also aims to redesign and fortify the flood channels that carry storm water from creeks and streams into the bay for better water flow and ecological use.</div>
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“There is a way to provide flood control to keep people’s houses safe <em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and</em> to provide habitat,” said Brenda Goeden, sediment program manager at the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, one of the project partners.</div>
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<a href="http://richmondconfidential.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Flood2.0_Andersen3.jpg" style="color: #505050; display: inline;"><img alt="The San Francisco Estuary Partnership's Flood 2.0 project aims not only to protect coastline development but also to rebuild sensitive wildlife habitat. (photo by Ted Andersen)" class="wp-image-64102" height="400" src="https://richmondconfidential.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Flood2.0_Andersen3-300x200.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; float: left; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 5px; vertical-align: middle;" width="600" /></a><br />
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The San Francisco Estuary Partnership’s Flood 2.0 project aims not only to protect coastline development but also to rebuild sensitive wildlife habitat. (photo by Ted Andersen)</div>
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Most of the flood control channels around the Bay Area were built between 1930 and 1950 and no longer work well. The culprit is sediment buildup that has forced the Army Corps of Engineers and its partners to raise the banks of the levees, resulting in a greater gap between the flowing water and the adjacent low-lying bay lands. And higher levees and lower flood plains can be a dangerous combination, the flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina being a tragic example.</div>
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One aspect of improving storm channels involves removing accumulated sand and mud and using it to bolster marshes. The points where creeks enter the bay are ecologically important for delivering this sediment from local watersheds into marshes to sustain the tidal flats as sea level rises. These areas that once provided habitat for birds and fish have largely been converted to narrow concrete flood control channels that do not distribute mud and sand the way they once did.</div>
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At present, Flood Control 2.0 is limited to three pilot locations: San Francisquito Creek, which flows by Menlo Park and Palo Alto, and lower Novato and Walnut creeks. Efforts are expected to eventually include comprehensive data and recommendations for all the storm channels in the Bay Area, according to Scott Dusterhoff, lead geomorphologist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, one of the project partners based in Richmond.</div>
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Since dredging is an expensive and continual process for flood control managers, the project includes developing a regional sediment management plan, Goeden said. But more work this year is focused solely on planning and assessing the needs of flood channels rather than rebuilding them.</div>
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“It’s an examination of how we work things,” Goeden said, referring to what will happen in the coming months and years. “It’s not going to do anything for this year’s flood control issues.”</div>
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Bay marshes not only act as important buffers to rising sea levels, but they also can store carbon from the air and filter pollution before it gets to the bay, according to the estuary institute’s Dusterhoff. Using dredged sediment from storm channels to build these areas up will be crucial to protecting both shoreline property and wildlife habitat.</div>
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“We have to find ways to get back bayland area any way we can,” he said. “As sea level rises, if we don’t do anything, baylands will continue disappearing.”</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-23637797340732459812014-11-17T20:02:00.002-08:002014-11-17T20:04:09.930-08:00<div class="H1" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; border-width: 0px; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 23px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 30px; padding: 2px 0px 0px;">
Wiener Amasses Huge War Chest</div>
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Incumbent leads challengers by 250K<br />
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By Ted Andersen</div>
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With just days remaining before the November 4 elections, the race for the Castro’s top politician has become a financial runaway.</div>
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Four candidates for District 8 supervisor are currently vying to unseat incumbent Scott Wiener, but the story of campaign contributions remains very one-sided. Wiener has raised $258,545, while Michael Petrelis, currently in second place, has only $2,931, according to data from the San Francisco Ethics Commission. In third place, John Nulty has $2,114, while both George Davis and Tom Basso show zero balances on the commission’s website.</div>
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Wiener, who employs a campaign manager and an accountant but does not have a paid fundraiser, attributes his campaign’s financial success to a broad support base from inside the district, something he says he has cultivated through years working within the community.</div>
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“I started raising money a year ago. At that time I had no idea if I was going to have one opponent or ten, if they would be strong opponents or weak opponents,” he said. “Since I began my campaign, I’ve had dozens of house parties, largely hosted by residents of the district. People have donated at those house parties after hearing what I had to say.”</div>
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Nulty, a native of District 8, said raising cash has been an onerous process involving complicated workshops with the SF Ethics Commission.</div>
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“We didn’t know it would be this hard to get money,” Nulty said. “Literally, you have to pay for an accountant because you need somebody who knows and will stand beside you if you get audited.”</div>
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Davis attributed Wiener’s lopsided advantage to simply being in a position of power.</div>
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“He lined up the money,” Davis said. “He went through his list of contributors. They want influence and he has stacked up all the money.”</div>
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State law requires name, address, occupation and employer information for each campaign contributor. This has opened Wiener up to criticism by political opponents who charge that the bulk of his money comes from employees of the real estate, law and architectural sectors.</div>
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The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, an online collective documenting dispossession in the Bay Area, is one of the detractors. Earlier in the campaign, the organization put out a data-visualization graphic showing 50 percent of Wiener’s contributions coming from individuals working in real estate, law, technology, architecture and interior design.</div>
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Of Wiener’s 850 individual contributors listed on the Ethics Commission website, many do actually work in these sectors. Wiener said that the Mapping Project’s allegation against him is still biased and misleading.</div>
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“Someone who does landscaping architecture would be included in all of that,” he said. “The anti-eviction mapping project is an organization with a very specific agenda as far as going after certain politicians and not scrutinizing other politicians.” He cited the absence on its website of District 9 Supervisor David Campos, who is currently running for state assembly, as an example of a candidate who has also received significant money from individuals working in the real estate industry.</div>
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“It’s not the case that my contributions are primarily from realtors and lawyers,” Wiener stated. “That’s false.”</div>
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There is a $500 limit on direct contributions to political candidates, according to the SF Campaign and Governmental Conduct Code. There is also a ban on direct corporate contributions, said San Francisco Ethics Commission Director John St. Croix, though this does not include sole proprietorships or LLCs.</div>
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However, an independent expenditure committee — for example, a political action committee that pools money together outside of the control of any candidate — has no financial contribution limit, St. Croix said. This is often referred to as “soft money.”</div>
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An example of soft money is when, in the 2010 election, San Francisco landlord Tom Coates gave $200,000 to an independent expenditure campaign dedicated to influencing leaders of numerous city districts, including Wiener’s District 8, to vote for killing rent control. Wiener insisted that accusations of him directly taking this money for his campaign were untrue. “I was a vocal opponent of Prop 98, which would have repealed rent control,” he stated.</div>
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Wiener currently has an $83,980 surplus in his campaign account. He said he expects the amount to shrink in the days leading up to the election, but with his sizeable lead over the competition, it’s likely most of it will still remain unspent. If reelected, Wiener said, he could still use that money for officer-holder duties, such as sponsoring a table at a non-profit event or funding a contingent at the SF Pride parade. Leftover campaign money, however, cannot be spent on personal items that do not relate to the office.</div>
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There are eleven members of the Board of Supervisors. Supervisors are currently paid $108,049 per year and serve four-year terms. The boundary of District 8 runs along Valencia Street, separating it from District 9.</div>
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Michael Petrelis did not respond to phone calls or emails for comment.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-82770645282806367642014-11-03T15:26:00.002-08:002014-11-03T15:27:29.039-08:00Local Effects of Proposition 1 Water Bond Measure Remain Murky<br />
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<img alt="Mokelumne Aqueduct 1 carries 40 million gallons of raw water daily from the Mokelumne River watershed to the East Bay area for treatment. If Proposition 1 passes, money from the bond could go toward aqueduct upgrades. Photo courtesy of East Bay Municipal Utility District." height="266" src="https://oaklandnorth.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/20141103_PROP1_Andersen_01-620x413.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; float: none; font-size: 16px; height: auto; list-style: none; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; max-width: 620px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="400" /><br />
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Mokelumne Aqueduct 1 carries 40 million gallons of raw water daily from the Mokelumne River watershed to the East Bay area for treatment. If Proposition 1 passes, money from the bond could go toward aqueduct upgrades. Photo courtesy of East Bay Municipal Utility District.</div>
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The bond measure known on Tuesday’s ballot as Proposition 1 may look to many like a clear way to address California’s water problems, but its potential local effects remain murky.</div>
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While the measure would authorize $7.12 billion in general state bonds for a range of water supply projects—including everything from raising the heights of many reservoir dams to organizing drought relief and emergency water supplies to recycling urban runoff—hidden costs and other barriers may stand in the way of the East Bay drawing from the well of money.</div>
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The East Bay Municipal Utility District, or EBMUD, has four major project areas that could receive money if Proposition 1 passes: recycling water, conservation, surface storage and groundwater storage, said Alexander Coates, the district’s general manager. But the state isn’t going to rain money; every local district must pay 50 percent of the costs. And this could pose a challenge for cash-strapped districts with ambitious plans.</div>
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Funding exclusions are also a problem. The measure sets aside $520 million in “beneficial use” funds that could go to improve water quality for low-income communities. Although Oakland and Richmond both have economically depressed neighborhoods, it is possible that neither city would see any of the money.</div>
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“Disadvantaged” and “severely disadvantaged” communities are defined as areas with a median household income less than 80 percent and 60 percent, respectively, of the statewide median. U.S. Census data lists Richmond’s median income at 89 percent of the statewide level and Oakland’s at 84 percent, suggesting that neither city could qualify for low-income community money for water projects the way the bond is written. By contrast, cities such as Stockton or Fresno could qualify for disadvantaged status but not for the higher priority of severely disadvantaged.</div>
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In September, EBMUD voted to support the measure, but even so, some of the district’s projects may run into funding obstacles. According to Abby Figueroa, senior public information representative at EBMUD, the district is unlikely to be eligible for funding for water quality or flood management projects unless other districts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta area qualify for it.</div>
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An example is EBMUD’s aqueducts, which are in need of upgrades. The aqueducts, which carry drinking water from the Mokelumne River watershed in the Sierra Nevada foothills to Oakland and across several districts, are structurally vulnerable at connection points from Stockton to Walnut Creek. If EBMUD collaborated with the districts whose projects were awarded money, a portion of their budgets could go to pay for upgrades. But getting all of the districts to agree on a plan may not be easy.</div>
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Other requirements for securing grant money may be hurdles for the Bay Area at large. One section of the bond provides $200 million for stormwater management projects, funding that municipalities throughout the state would compete for. But to qualify, projects must be part of a so-called “Integrated Regional Water Management Plan,” according to Matthew Fabry, coordinator for the San Mateo Countywide Water Pollution Prevention Program. Joining the Bay Area’s version of this management plan could become an onerous process.</div>
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“The IRWMP has typically required project proponents to pony up a chunk of change to pay costs of a consultant preparing documents, so many agencies, especially stormwater, have had limited participation,” Fabry wrote in an email.</div>
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Water experts seem to vacillate between optimism and ambivalence over the ballot measure. At an October 23 forum at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, Peter Gleick, president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, said <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Proposition</span> 1 is no immediate cure for California’s water problems because the money won’t be spent any time soon. He said setting funding aside to increase dam heights for nearly empty reservoirs doesn’t address the current drought problems.</div>
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Still, $725 million of the bond goes for water recycling and advanced water treatment technology projects, something Gleick said he supported, along with more funding for groundwater storage and stormwater capture, a method for taking urban runoff and using it, for example, to recharge ground water.</div>
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“We have a lot to do, and at best, this is a piece of the puzzle,” he said.</div>
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During the audience comment period that followed, Gleick was asked whether he thought the language of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Proposition </span>1 was left vague in part to coerce voters into entrusting state officials with the leeway to spend at their own discretion. “I think that is an astute observation,” Gleick said.</div>
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San Mateo pollution coordinator Fabry suggested that basic political reasoning accounts for the lack of detail. In an email he wrote, “I believe they intentionally left this bond measure somewhat vague in terms of how money would be distributed, leaving it to future competitive processes, as opposed to specifically calling out projects that get labeled as ‘pork.’”</div>
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Backed by Governor Jerry Brown and a number of large institutions like the <span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-size: 14px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">California Farm Bureau Federation</span>, the California Alliance for Jobs and Western Growers Service Corporation, the measure’s support base has raised significantly more campaign cash than the opposition, which includes a number of small-scale farms. Proposition 1 is consistently polling at over 50 percent in election surveys throughout the state and is expected to pass on November 4.</div>
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<a href="http://oaklandnorth.net/2014/11/03/beehive/" style="color: #505050; display: inline;"><em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Read our additional coverage of Proposition 1 here.</em></a></div>
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</article>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-35785565955242521932014-10-08T12:15:00.002-07:002014-10-08T12:20:05.536-07:00As drought worsens, water agencies eye desalination to quench Bay Area’s thirst<br />
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<a href="https://richmondconfidential.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20141006_andersen_notresspassing11-620x413.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Mallard Slough site is closed off to the public. (Photo by Ted Andersen)" border="0" height="266" src="https://richmondconfidential.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20141006_andersen_notresspassing11-620x413.jpg" style="border: 0px; height: auto; list-style: none; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 620px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><span style="color: #8a8a8a; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Mallard Slough site is closed off to the public. (Photo by Ted Andersen)</span></div>
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<span class="vcard author" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="fn" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="vcard author" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="fn" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By Ted Andersen</span></span></div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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Mallard Slough is one of them.</div>
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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.</div>
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<a href="http://richmondconfidential.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20141006_andersen_sloughwasteland1.jpg" style="color: #505050; display: inline;"><img alt="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)" class="wp-image-62756" height="400" src="https://richmondconfidential.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20141006_andersen_sloughwasteland1-1024x682.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; float: left; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 5px; vertical-align: middle;" width="600" /></a><br />
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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)</div>
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“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.”</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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“That obviously reduces how much we would have to desalinate it,” said Nelsy Rodriguez, an EBMUD spokeswoman.</div>
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<a href="http://richmondconfidential.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20141006_andersen_windmills1.jpg" style="color: #505050; display: inline;"><img alt="From the slough, windmills twirl in the distance near Pittsburg. (Photo by Ted Andersen)" class="wp-image-62758" height="400" src="https://richmondconfidential.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20141006_andersen_windmills1-1024x682.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; float: left; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 5px; vertical-align: middle;" width="600" /></a><br />
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From the slough, windmills twirl in the distance near Pittsburg. (Photo by Ted Andersen)</div>
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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.</div>
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“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.”</div>
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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.</div>
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“They might all have to contribute,” CCWD’s Quimby said. “That would be something we would have to consider down the road.”</div>
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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.</div>
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“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.”</div>
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Passing costs to households is another issue, Cooley said. “For those struggling to pay bills, even a small increase could be a burden.”</div>
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<a href="http://richmondconfidential.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20141006_andersen_powerplant1.jpg" style="color: black; display: inline; outline: 0px;"><img alt="The Secal Pittsburg Power Plant looms large to the east of the proposed desalination plant site at Mallard’s Slough. (Photo by Ted Andersen)" class="wp-image-62757" height="400" src="https://richmondconfidential.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20141006_andersen_powerplant1-1024x682.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; float: left; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 5px; vertical-align: middle;" width="600" /></a><br />
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The Secal Pittsburg Power Plant looms large to the east of the proposed desalination plant site at Mallard’s Slough. (Photo by Ted Andersen)</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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“California is perpetually in drought. It’s a drought climate,” Rodriguez said. “We are always looking for options to increase our water supply.”</div>
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Publish on Oct. 8, 2014 by<i> Richmond Confidential</i></div>
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https://richmondconfidential.org/2014/10/08/as-drought-worsens-water-agencies-eye-desalination-to-quench-bay-areas-thirst/</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-19499170402879063152014-10-06T10:50:00.001-07:002014-10-06T10:52:31.232-07:00 Technology Aims To Reduce Whale Fatalities: New App Steers Ships From Whales<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxIvq3WEwm0Ek5NVqHddHlnKsOSvdyg1LxRyRhze0Njr_YlVR7hojqACvT_h-m0shL8_DS11-Cd3lZPi1avhYkrMSqopxWkOIKGZTj-lCqqk-8BdHUxEpVaH6OkOJuPB6E5pkhBQSmsxE/s1600/IMG_0743.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxIvq3WEwm0Ek5NVqHddHlnKsOSvdyg1LxRyRhze0Njr_YlVR7hojqACvT_h-m0shL8_DS11-Cd3lZPi1avhYkrMSqopxWkOIKGZTj-lCqqk-8BdHUxEpVaH6OkOJuPB6E5pkhBQSmsxE/s1600/IMG_0743.PNG" height="400" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">WhaleAlert 2.0 is a free download for iPhone/iPad. An Android<br />
version is currently in the works.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="line-height: 200%;">By
Ted Andersen</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> 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.</span><br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“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. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“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). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“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.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“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.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“We are excited because we are an international
organization and this is what we envisioned from the beginning of the project,”
he said.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-20988386350267303702014-10-04T13:00:00.003-07:002014-10-04T13:00:48.017-07:00SF Pride President Axes Bradley Manning’s Name from Parade; Vets Call for Resignation<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY2e1NFnRd6pckRRPuAD7TrVxnvp_OSYDn0yqgdBBERN3rdEEjN9YBpz6FSQzvIaeo6qVsDE9hnFp1jGp0xGmU61V9b3umaKRMu7j3OmhekiW7r6rpVVqFJPdKmH4FzuOAm6KbK4mgIAM/s1600/Ellsberg_top+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY2e1NFnRd6pckRRPuAD7TrVxnvp_OSYDn0yqgdBBERN3rdEEjN9YBpz6FSQzvIaeo6qVsDE9hnFp1jGp0xGmU61V9b3umaKRMu7j3OmhekiW7r6rpVVqFJPdKmH4FzuOAm6KbK4mgIAM/s1600/Ellsberg_top+photo.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Photo: Ted Andersen<br />Daniel Ellsberg, the U.S. intelligence analyst who blew the whistle on Nixon's<br />administration by releasing thousands of classified government documents now<br />known as "The Pentagon Papers," speaks at a rally in front of the SF Pride<br />offices on Market Street on April 29, 2013 to condemn the actions of Pride<br />President Lisa Williams, who revoked jailed army whistleblower Pfc. Bradley<br />Manning's name as a Grand Marshal in June 30's parade.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">By Ted Andersen</span></b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">“</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">I <i>was</i> Bradley Manning,” the dignified
octogenarian tells a large sidewalk crowd gathered with bated breath.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">It’s Monday, April 29 at 5 p.m. and cars are
whizzing by, honking occasionally, on the 1800 block of Market Street.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">In late April, Pride’s Electoral College, which is
made up of former Grand Marshals, selected Manning as one of its 10 choices.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.”</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">“</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.”</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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!”</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">“</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.”</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">“</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">“</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.”</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">The story went international when Glenn Greenwald
from the U.K.’s <i>The Guardian</i> 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.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.”</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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).</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.”</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 12.45pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">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.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">New York’s Pride committee now has a petition for
Manning to be a Grand Marshal.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Williams did not return calls for
comment by press time.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-10161675417896507262014-10-04T12:46:00.002-07:002014-10-04T12:46:24.211-07:00Disabled Senior with AIDS Ellis Act Evicted<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV9Ku_LKfqz1lrgLEU-3GPzRVRdvkL-ju8kjiZ-YzbEKv2dS7dU5xMCyeQdQ6x5-soZv_CVMrEh6bbypecTNtC7-A9gYwPLFxsYN6nbOJXImZGensUJG-ixlw6uZauSvJkfqDD5vkFFVg/s1600/jeremy-mykaels.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV9Ku_LKfqz1lrgLEU-3GPzRVRdvkL-ju8kjiZ-YzbEKv2dS7dU5xMCyeQdQ6x5-soZv_CVMrEh6bbypecTNtC7-A9gYwPLFxsYN6nbOJXImZGensUJG-ixlw6uZauSvJkfqDD5vkFFVg/s1600/jeremy-mykaels.jpg" height="320" width="204" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jeremy Mykaels has been living in the<br />Castro since the mid-1970s, just shy of 40<br />years, and in the same apartment for 17<br />of them. Now he is being served an eviction<br />but not without fighting back.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="line-height: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>By Ted Andersen</b></span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="line-height: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.13in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="line-height: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.13in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">For people like Jeremy Mykaels, the neighborhood isn’t what it used to be.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="line-height: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.13in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Leaving his native Ohio behind, he pursued a dream out West, finding himself in Colorado. It was Denver where he came out as gay.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="line-height: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.13in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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. </span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="line-height: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.13in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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. </span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="line-height: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.13in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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. </span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="line-height: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.13in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">When he went online and started looking at rents, it then hit him: this isn’t 1995 anymore.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Moreover, according to Collier, Mykaels’ circumstances are not unique.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">God bless Mark for trying,” Wiener said.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.” </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">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. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, Times;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">460Noe Group LLC Managing Partner Cuong Mai failed to return numerous calls for comment.</span></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-67827777726703559752014-09-23T14:55:00.002-07:002014-10-04T13:04:06.834-07:00Egg Crisis: High Temperatures Threaten Sacramento River’s Fall-Run King Salmon<h2 class="page-title" style="font-family: minion-pro-subhead, serif; font-size: 40px; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: ff-dagny-web-pro, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; line-height: 30px;">by </span><a href="http://baynature.org/author/ted-andersen/" rel="author" style="background-color: white; color: #e69113; cursor: pointer; font-family: ff-dagny-web-pro, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; line-height: 30px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="Posts by Ted Andersen">Ted Andersen</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: ff-dagny-web-pro, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; line-height: 30px;"> on September 23, 2014</span></h2>
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<img src="http://3vswoj22h2l7nt08f1ye9o4r.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/themes/bay-nature/timthumb.php?src=/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Adult-Chinook-Salmon-PNNL-Pacific-Northwest-National-Laboratory.jpg&w=633&zc=1" style="display: block; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Chinook salmon in the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy PNNL)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Salmon eggs need river temperatures of 56 degrees or less to survive; at 62 degrees there is a 100 percent mortality rate. So when areas of the Sacramento River hit the low 60s in late August, it made a big splash.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The early fall Chinook (also known as king) spawning run is now taking place between Red Bluff and Redding, but prolonged drought has led to reduced flows from Lake Shasta and high water temperatures down river, a situation that could deal many egg nests a death blow. The dangerously warm water recently prompted the Golden Gate Salmon Association — a Petaluma-based coalition of salmon advocates — to call on federal and state agencies to act.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“In a good year, salmon will spawn in the last 60 miles of the river, but this year we don’t have 60 miles,” said John McManus, executive director of the GGSA. “Right now they are crowding into the upper 8 miles trying desperately to find a spot.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">In a recent open letter addressed to eight federal and state agencies, the GGSA proposed the collection and incubation of eggs from wild fish along with the injection of those eggs into spawning ground gravel when river temperatures begin to cool to favorable levels. The technique has been used successfully in Oregon and Alaska but not California. The decision on whether or not to move forward would be a joint one between California Department of Fish and Wildlife, National Marine Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. October’s weather will largely influence on the outcome.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“Nobody thinks it’s going to be a good year for egg survival,” said Robert Clarke, a Regional Fisheries Program supervisor at USFWS. But it’s difficult to predict precisely how many eggs will die, he said.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">If the drought continues into the heart of the fall spawning season, Clarke said, it is likely that Coleman National Fish Hatchery, located about 20 miles southeast of Redding and managed by USFWS, would be the location for egg incubation. He said the staff there is currently analyzing its capacity to support egg incubation.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The theory behind the egg injection process is that it offers good hatch rates while only minimally altering natural traits, resulting in stronger fish with a better chance of returning to their natural streams than those raised in a hatchery. Only about 10 percent of salmon eggs survive in nature, but up to 90 percent could hatch if inserted correctly in gravel with a hydraulic egg-planting device, McManus said.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">However, according to Jim Smith from USFWS’s Red Bluff office, if state and federal agencies do decide to take action, they are more likely to release into the river hatchery salmon fry — very young salmon minnows that live in fresh water —as opposed to injecting the eggs into the gravel. This process is easier than capturing wild and transporting them to the hatchery, Smith said, but this plan poses challenges as well. He said that between 85 to 90 percent of the salmon that return to the Coleman National Fish Hatchery have never spawned in the wild and instead swim back to the hatchery as adults to lay eggs in captivity.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“Because you are artificially selecting, your natural population loses its fitness,” Smith said. “It doesn’t produce as well as natural fish.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><img alt="With Sacramento River water running low, state and federal agencies stepped in earlier this year to truck juvenile salmon from hatcheries to San Pablo Bay. (Photo by Steve Martarano, USFWS)" class="size-full wp-image-96032" src="http://3vswoj22h2l7nt08f1ye9o4r.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/salmon-trucking-March-May-2014-102.jpg" height="420" style="border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="630" /></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">With Sacramento River water running low, state and federal agencies stepped in earlier this year to truck juvenile salmon from hatcheries to San Pablo Bay. (Photo by Steve Martarano, USFWS)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The warm water that poses a threat to this year’s eggs also carries with it consequences that could reverberate for a long time to come.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“That can cascade down through the years,” Clarke said. “Salmon return in cycles, so if you have super low abundance one year, the loss of that year’s class carries through for a while.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Even though a potential exists this year for a high mortality rate, high juvenile survival rates coupled with good ocean survivability in the first two years are still possible. “Those things might mitigate the low survivability of the eggs,” Clarke said.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Conversations between the agencies and the GGSA continue into September with all attention focused on this fall season’s weather. Meanwhile, trophy fish are being landed just outside the protected 12-mile stretch of spawning grounds.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“The river is teeming with salmon,” said professional fishing guide Dave Jacobs, whose said his group landed several 15-25 pound Chinook salmon while he talked on the phone from his boat. “I saw 50 on the surface today.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Jacobs, who frequently measures water temperatures while fishing, said the 54-degree water near the Keswick dam is perfect for spawning. However, 50 miles down river he recorded it as high as 64 degrees, two degrees higher than the GGSA had announced. The result: cautious optimism for the fall and late-fall runs.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“I do believe there is going to be cold water when the fall salmon come,” he said. “But it could be a lot warmer a month from now. That’s still to be seen in October.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The Keswick Dam is the northernmost boundary of the salmon spawning area. Fishing is banned all year round at the dam. The stretch of the Sacramento River from the dam to the Deschutes Bridge, a landmark river crossing about 12 miles south of Redding, constitutes what is left of the Chinook’s historic spawning grounds. Two of the Sacramento’s four distinct salmon runs — the winter and spring Chinook —are protected and listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">California’s salmon industry is a $1.4 billion enterprise that employs over 20,000 workers annually. The historic spawning grounds for the fish in the Sacramento River have continually diminished since the 1940s due to the construction of the Shasta and Keswick dams.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">In March, another inter-agency government effort transported 30 million Sacramento River salmon smolts to the ocean by truck to help the fish avoid harmful river conditions caused by the drought. It is unclear if such a plan will be repeated in spring.</span></div>
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<em style="background-color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="il" style="color: #222222; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ted</span></strong><span style="color: #222222; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"> Andersen</strong> is a reporter at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. This story was produced as part of a J-school class focusing of environmental issues in the Bay Area.</span></em></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-66951480621347201242014-09-19T08:42:00.001-07:002014-10-04T13:06:14.598-07:00On the Big Stage: Bay Area Talent Showcased in Golden Gate Park<div class="Script-Teaser" id="u9575-2" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; background-color: white; border-width: 0px; color: red; font-family: dancing-script, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 26px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-size: 23px; line-height: 32px;">By Ted Andersen</span></div>
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<span class="actAsDiv normal_text" id="u9601" style="color: black; direction: ltr; display: block; float: right; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: 0px;"><span class="actAsDiv clearfix" id="u9596" style="background-color: transparent; border-color: transparent; border-style: none; display: block; width: 352px; z-index: 356;"><span class="actAsDiv underPix clearfix grpelem" id="u9599-4" style="background-color: transparent; display: block; float: left; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; margin-right: -10000px; margin-top: 395px; min-height: 75px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 352px; z-index: 357;"><span class="actAsPara" style="display: block;"><span style="background-color: transparent; letter-spacing: 0px;">Local musician Nicki Bluhm sings with her band, the Gramblers, at August’s Outside Lands concert in Golden Gate Park. The concert drew close to 50,000 attendees each of its three days and hosted over a dozen Bay Area acts—this year’s musical and gastronomic extravaganza.</span></span></span><span class="actAsDiv clip_frame grpelem" id="u9597" style="background-color: transparent; display: block; float: left; margin-right: -10000px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; width: 352px; z-index: 361;"><img alt="" class="block" src="http://castrocourier.com/images/nicki_bluhm-crop-u9597.jpg" height="387" id="u9597_img" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; border: 0px; display: block;" width="353" /></span></span></span></div>
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The impact felt by Bay Area artists during August’s Outside Lands festival in Golden Gate Park, brought a local feel to the mega-concert, which drew close to 50,000 spectators each of its three days. Between vaudeville, Americana, hard rock, spoken word and DJ spinning, there was an eclectic mix that offered something for every taste. Keep the following acts on your list of area names to watch for in the coming year.</div>
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Mike Shine/ Dr. Flotsam and the Carny Bastards</div>
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Mike Shine is a Bolinas artist who creates paintings and performances. This year’s show also hosted a special stage in the woods of McLaren Pass called Dr. Flotsam’s Hell Brew Review, a live installation by Shine that has grown in popularity throughout its years at Outside Lands, especially after Jack White made a surprise appearance on the ragtag stage in 2012. At the center of the show is Pyotr Flotsam, the dark, Mephistophelean ringleader who controls the other costumed throw-back mime-like vaudeville actors.</div>
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Slim Jenkins</div>
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Playing the Flotsam stage at the same time as the headlining act of Kanye West was San Francisco-based Slim Jenkins, a group of tall, skinny guys in striped suits who play a fusion of American rock, jazz and blues. They have strong presence and sound and have played at venues from Slims in the SOMA to the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.</div>
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Bassist Timothy Vickers said he enjoyed the opportunity of giving a more indie crowd what they wanted. “I think there were a lot of people that wanted something alternative to Kanye West, so it worked out really well for us.”</div>
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Drummer Felix Macnee, who lives in the Western Addition, said the band, who closed out Café Du Nord on New Year’s Eve, often takes trips to the Castro for munchies. “You can get good pizza down in the Castro,” Macnee said. “When we play late gigs we love to go to Orphan Andy’s and have the best milkshake.”</div>
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Tycho</div>
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By contrast, San Francisco-based Tycho has no vocalist. Bandleader Scott Hansen started out as a more insular laptop DJ/producer and then added his other band members a few years ago. He said bringing guitarist/bassist Zac Brown and drummer Rory O’Connor into Tycho’s creative fold expanded his songwriting and propelled the project forward. “It took the music and recontextualized it, made it a little bit more driven, more visceral,” he said.</div>
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“All of us have been here several times before so this is definitely kind of a dream to play this,” he said. “And that was actually, no joke, the biggest and best show we’ve ever played. That’s as good as it gets.”</div>
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The music is instrumental but the live sound, when coupled with Hansen’s trippy videos of occult symbols overlaying other images of pyramids and natural settings on large TV monitors throughout the Twin Peaks stage, did manage to lift the wordless musical experience above the mere ambient.</div>
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Hansen said he was enjoying the food at the venue, but as a local, he was no stranger to good eats, name-dropping Gracias Madre as one of his favorites.</div>
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“I live in the Mission, so there are a number of great restaurants around, to my financial detriment.”</div>
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Niki Bluhm and the Gramblers</div>
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Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers played a dynamic afternoon set on the first day at the Sutro Stage that hit a fever pitch at its crescendo with the swath of revelers bouncing and screaming. The folk-rock band relies heavily on Bluhm’s soulful vocals and big stage presence, along with the strong musicianship of the Gramblers, namely the talented lead guitarist Deren Ney. Just when they do go a bit country-western sounding at times, they bring it back to a folk, soul or rock sound. Nicki lives in San Francisco with her husband Tim Bluhm of the SF indie band The Mother Hips. As a Grambler, Tim plays guitar, keys and sings backup.</div>
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Mikal Cronin<span class="actAsDiv normal_text" id="u9635" style="direction: ltr; display: block; float: right; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: 0px;"><span class="actAsDiv clearfix" id="u9627" style="background-color: transparent; border-color: transparent; border-style: none; display: block; width: 432px; z-index: 398;"><span class="actAsDiv clip_frame grpelem" id="u9629" style="background-color: transparent; display: block; float: left; margin-right: -10000px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; width: 432px; z-index: 399;"><img alt="" class="block" src="http://castrocourier.com/images/mikal_chroninsm.jpg" height="324" id="u9629_img" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; border: 0px; display: block;" width="432" /></span><span class="actAsDiv underPix clearfix grpelem" id="u9628-4" style="background-color: transparent; display: block; float: left; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; margin-right: -10000px; margin-top: 327px; min-height: 13px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 167px; z-index: 401;"><span class="actAsPara" style="display: block;">Mikal Cronin</span></span></span></span></div>
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If you like head-banging heavy rock bands with hair and a grunge feel, these guys are for you. A mosh pit broke out during their Friday afternoon performance on the Panhandle stage, hair whipping, distortion guitar resonated. Cronin used to live in Los Angeles but now calls San Francisco home, now associating with fellow SF rocker, Ty Segall, who played the same stage at Outside Lands in 2011.</div>
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Trails and Ways</div>
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Trails and Ways make bossanova dream pop in Oakland. Lead singers Emma Oppen and Keith Brower Brown, both UC Berkeley grads, went abroad to Brazil and the other to Spain. When they came back they fused the music of Brazilian jazz, Latin pop and basement dream pop. The two female and two male members of Trails and Ways all sing, sometimes in foreign languages. Through 2012, they rode a swell of singles and covers, and are currently working on their debut album.</div>
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Finish Ticket</div>
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This five-piece indie rock band from Alameda played on the Panhandle stage on Saturday afternoon.</div>
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The Tumbleweed Wanderers</div>
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Returning to the music festival was Oakland’s Tumbleweed Wanderers, who combine folk and rock while weaving smooth transitions from banjo-rock to soul. Since forming in April of 2011, the band has found a wider audience, from their early performances at small venues to selling out shows around the Bay Area.</div>
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Christopher Owens</div>
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Singer/songwriter Christopher Owens, former front man for the indie rock band Girls, played a daytime set the second day on the Sutro Stage. Owens was born in Florida but moved to San Francisco after spending nine years in Texas. Last year he released his debut solo album, Lysandre.</div>
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Watsky</div>
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Hitting the large Twin Peaks stage on Sunday was Hip Hop artist Watsky (George Virden Watsky), who grew up at 5th Avenue and Fulton Street, just steps from Golden Gate Park. Watsky combines humor and storytelling with poetic lyricism on top of a full band experience. He returned to the city in April 2013 and sold out the Fillmore after being featured on the TV show Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry on HBO in 2007. His most recent album Cardboard Castles peaked at #1 in iTunes hip-hop.</div>
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The Brothers Comatose</div>
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The San Francisco quintet blends Americana, folk and bluegrass. A number of stringed instruments grace the stage in their performances, including fiddle, mandolin and banjo. They played the Panhandle stage on Sunday afternoon.</div>
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Local DJs</div>
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Shawn Reynaldo<span class="actAsDiv normal_text" id="u9618" style="direction: ltr; display: block; float: right; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: 0px;"><span class="actAsDiv clearfix" id="u9610" style="background-color: transparent; border-color: transparent; border-style: none; display: block; width: 335px; z-index: 438;"><span class="actAsDiv clip_frame grpelem" id="u9612" style="background-color: transparent; display: block; float: left; margin-right: -10000px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; width: 335px; z-index: 439;"><img alt="" class="block" src="http://castrocourier.com/images/shawn_reynaldo.jpg" height="333" id="u9612_img" style="-webkit-transform-origin: 0% 0%; border: 0px; display: block; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-right: 1px;" width="334" /></span><span class="actAsDiv underPix clearfix grpelem" id="u9611-4" style="background-color: transparent; display: block; float: left; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; margin-right: -10000px; margin-top: 340px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 143px; z-index: 441;"><span class="actAsPara" style="display: block;">Shawn Reynaldo</span></span></span></span></div>
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Shawn Reynaldo spun in the DJ tent on Saturday afternoon. Originally from San Jose, DJ Shawn Reynaldo now lives in the Mission. He said one of his musical partners lives in the Castro on Douglas Street in a crazy old mansion that was once a hospital, a place he often visits. “He literally lives in the spire. It looks like a castle. So I go there a lot — it has an amazing view of the city.”</div>
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He’s a co-founder of the renowned Icee Hot parties, a monthly house and techno party that moves locations. “We try to keep it small, like 200 or 300 people. Occasionally we have a bigger one.”</div>
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Deejay Theory</div>
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Repping Faction Sound Crew and leading online Caribbean lifestyle magazine LargeUp.com, Deejay Theory continues to push the DJ / producer role forward in his home base of San Francisco, CA and throughout the world. Creating music all his life and now a key player in the explosive tropical bass movement, Theory has a natural strength for producing and flipping a broad range of formats, putting his signature touch on everything from Demi Lovato to Mavado. Think dancehall meets club music, bass meets soul, turntablism meets rave, tropical disco meets the pool, and we’re literally just getting warm.</div>
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Motion Potion</div>
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Motion Potion is a DJ/producer based in the city with almost two decades of experience. After spending the last several years working on his production companies Silent Frisco and SunsetSF, “MoPo” seems poised to reemerge onto the scene in 2014.</div>
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Shouts!</div>
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Shouts! is a project by San Francisco music producer Jason Apple. After many years of producing as Ground Control, Shouts! became a way out for more experimental, felling-driven music while still working a dance floor. Shouts! aims to mix music and mood.</div>
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Lights Down Low</div>
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LDL is a DJ project initiated by Corey Sleazemore and Richie Panic. Now rotating parties between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It has been a primary fixture in the city nightlife over the last five years. LDL had the privilege of being the last Bay Area-based act to rock the DJ tent.</div>
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photos by Ted Andersen </div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10991133971603405200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2026784242450237709.post-12287252887042813372014-09-12T14:25:00.002-07:002014-10-04T13:04:26.185-07:00Bay Area Seal Researchers Travel the Pacific to Save a Species<h2 class="page-title" style="font-family: minion-pro-subhead, serif; font-size: 40px; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: ff-dagny-web-pro, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; line-height: 30px;">by </span><a href="http://baynature.org/author/ted-andersen/" rel="author" style="background-color: white; color: #e69113; cursor: pointer; font-family: ff-dagny-web-pro, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; line-height: 30px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="Posts by Ted Andersen">Ted Andersen</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: ff-dagny-web-pro, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; line-height: 30px;"> on September 10, 2014</span></h2>
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<img src="http://baynature.org/wp-content/themes/bay-nature/timthumb.php?src=/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Ikaika_male_web.jpg&w=633&zc=1" style="display: block; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ikaika, a male Hawaiian monk seal pup found at Pearl and Hermes Reef in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, was one of the first four patients at The Marine Mammal Center’s Ke Kai Ola Hawaiian Monk Seal Hospital. His Hawaiian name means “strong.” (Photo by Koa Matsuoka, National Marine Fisheries Service)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">I</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">t’s early July, and aboard the battleship-like research vessel Hi’ialakai, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists are returning from a 26-day search near Midway Island for distressed Hawaiian monk seals. The mission was a success as the ship now transports four underweight juvenile Hawaiian monk seals 1,500 miles to the Big Island for care. The two yearlings, nicknamed Hāla‘I (calm) and Maka‘ala (alert), along with two weaned pups Kūlia (to strive) and Ikaika (strong), would not have survived without help. Fewer than one in five monk seal pups will make it through their first year, according to NOAA.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Waiting to greet the young survivors were researchers from The <a href="http://www.marinemammalcenter.org/" style="color: #e69113; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Marine Mammal Center</a> (TMMC), whose pioneering work on California seals and sea lions during the past four decades has given rise to a collaboration with NOAA in Hawaii. The partnership culminated at the beginning of the month with the grand opening of TMMC’s new $3.2 million Ke Kai Ola Hawaiian Monk Seal Hospital located near Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island, the only facility in the world dedicated to treating and protecting the Hawaiian monk seal.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“We are proud of what we’ve accomplished,” says Jeff Boehm, the center’s executive director. “We are doing nothing short of trying to save a species.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The young seals became the first patients at Ke Kai Ola, which means, “The Healing Scene.” In addition to its strategic location near a marina and airfield, the 10-seal-capacity facility features well-ventilated pools for both mature animals and juveniles while offering shade, life support systems, water filtration pumps, a laboratory, a food-preparation area and a medical procedure room. It was fully funded by a combination of gifts from individuals and foundations, including donations from the Walnut Creek-based Firedoll Foundation. The lead donor wishes to remain anonymous.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The rescue and rehabilitation partnership comprises the most dedicated monk seal researchers in the world. The hospital will serve as a hub for visiting experts from Europe who likewise seek to protect the Mediterranean monk seal, the only other living species of monk seal, with only 600 individuals remaining. A third member of the family, the Caribbean monk seal, was last spotted in the 1950s and was officially declared extinct by NOAA in 2008 after an extensive five-year search.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“This is a real game-changer,” says Trevor Spradlin, a marine mammal biologist at NOAA’s Office of Protected Resources. “This is why the opening of the hospital is so important. We’ve already lost the Caribbean monk seal species. We’ve only got two left.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><img alt="monk seals in pool" class="size-full wp-image-95850" src="http://baynature.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Kulia-and-Ikaika.jpg" height="420" style="border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="630" /></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Hawaiian monk seal pups Ikaika and Kūlia rehabilitate at The Marine Mammal Center’s Ke Kai Ola Hawaiian Monk Seal Hospital. (Photo courtesy of the Marine Mammal Center)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">he Hawaiian monk seal gets its name from the short hairs on its head — its skullcap coif — that is said to resemble the do of a religious ascetic. Hawaii’s official state mammal since 2008, the seal is one of the rarest ocean mammals in the world and the only one native to the Hawaiian Islands. The monk seal is also the world’s only tropical pinniped. The population of monk seals, especially juveniles, has diminished over the last several decades due to hunting, overfishing, entanglement in ocean debris, and the rise of predators such as the Galapagos shark. They are now dwindling at a rate of three to four percent each year.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Another Northern Californian ally of the Hawaiian monk seal is UC Santa Cruz biologist Terrie Williams. Williams has studied a pup, nicknamed KP2, in her UCSC lab for over five years and wrote a book about the experience entitled <em style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Odyssey of KP2: An Orphan Seal, a Marine Biologist, and the Fight to Save a Species.</em> Williams, who is currently conducting field research in the Amazon, responded to the news of the opening in an email from the field.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“The new hospital is a wonderful step in the right direction by helping to rescue animals that would otherwise die (every individual monk seal counts at this point), allowing us access to animals to learn about their biology, and providing outreach opportunities for involving local people,” she wrote. “That said, this is a proactive approach to help a species BEFORE it becomes impossible to bring it back from the brink of extinction. The more we all know in terms of the need of wild animals and how humans are impacting them, the more effective our conservation plans and management directions will be.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">This highlights another aspect of the conservation effort: education. According to NOAA’s Spradlin, there are two distinct populations of Hawaiian monk seals, those in the Northwestern Islands and those in the inhabited islands. While the population of roughly 900 seals in the remote archipelago is declining, the approximately 200 that reside on the main chain seem to be holding steady and even growing in numbers thanks to conservation efforts. This, however, has led to more direct run-ins between the mammal and humans.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“Sadly,” Spradlin says, “We’ve had people hurting the seal.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/magazine/who-would-kill-a-monk-seal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" style="color: #e69113; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">A <em style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">New York Times</em> article last May</a> detailed a string of mysterious murders of the animal perpetrated by humans. Thousands of dollars in rewards were offered for tips that could lead to an arrest, but the beatings and shootings continued.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">On the flip side, when a monk seal pulls up to a beach populated with humans, an emergency response team will cordon off the animal with tape, a site that ironically draws tourists near the basking animal, though not close enough to touch it. But with the new hospital, volunteer partners on the ground can contact NOAA seal teams for quick-response air or sea transportation to Ke Kai Ola’s world-class facilities. In the battle to save the species, these small victories could signal a turning of the tide.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Long-term rescue numbers also show promise. According to NOAA statistics, up to 30 percent of Hawaiian monk seals are alive because of recovery projects over the years.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“That tells us our efforts have been working,” Spradlin said. “Hopefully, [Ke Kai Ola] will make that 30 percent even greater. We are looking at this as a long-term goal.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">As for the hospital’s first patients—Hāla‘I, Maka‘ala , Kūlia, and Ikaika—their stay at Ke Kai Ola came to an end in late August. Their rehabilitation complete, they were transferred to a NOAA ship, which transported them 1,500 miles back to their homes for a second chance at life. On August 31, with their bellies full and bodies nourished back to health, they were released back into a world of no guarantees.</span></div>
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<em style="background-color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="il" style="color: #222222; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ted</span></strong><span style="color: #222222; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"> Andersen</strong> is a reporter at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. This story was produced as part of a J-school class focusing of environmental issues in the Bay Area.</span></em><br />
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<em style="background-color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #222222; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Published on www.baynature.org on Sept. 10</span></em><br />
<em style="background-color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #222222; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">http://baynature.org/articles/bay-area-seal-researchers-travel-pacific-save-species/</span></em></div>
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