A photo of Hoover Dam from 2018. The white areas above the water’s surface show how far the level had dropped even back then.
The news about the Colorado River just keeps getting worse. We’ve know for years that flows have been declining. Now snowpack in the Rocky Mountains has gotten so low it appears that the Colorado River’s source is drying up.
This is really bad news for Southern California, both for urban water users and for farmers. About one fourth of the water used by urban households in Southern California comes from the Colorado River, and the River supplies pretty much all of the water used for farming in the Imperial Valley.
The outlook is especially bad for the City of LA. Much of our relatively small groundwater resources have become unusable due to industrial contamination. As for the LA Aqueduct, deliveries have been declining over the last few decades to reduce environmental damage in the Eastern Sierras, where the aqueduct originates. And even deliveries from the State Water Project have become less reliable.
There are seven states that rely on water from the Colorado River, and they’re divided into two groups:
Upper Basin States: Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico
Lower Basin States: California, Nevada, Arizona
These two groups have been arguing for years over how to reduce their consumption, and have not yet reached an agreement. It looks increasingly likely that the Federal government will intervene, imposing restrictions in order to maintain water levels at Hoover and Glen Canyon dams. If the levels continue to fall, it could mean the dams will no longer be able to generate hydropower.
As all of LA’s water resources continue to decline, we can expect to pay higher prices for water, even as mandatory restrictions reduce our water use. There’s no easy fix. Much of the LA area’s growth was made possible by importing water from hundreds of miles away. Growth advocates did not foresee a future where snowpacks in the Sierras and the Rockies would decline substantially over decades. This is a structural problem that we currently have no solution for.
This story in the LA Times has more details on the impacts of a shrinking Colorado River.
We all know that tech companies and on-line services are collecting our data. In an e-mail to a friend you mention an upcoming vacation and suddenly every site you visit has ads for airlines. You order a product from an on-line vendor, and all of a sudden you see a barrage of ads for the same product from a different company. When I talk about this issue with people I generally get one of two reactions. The response is usually either…
“They already have all my data, so there’s no point in worrying about it.”
…or the person says…
“I haven’t done anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide.”
In both cases, the response shows that the person doesn’t know the real extent of the data being collected or the real risks involved. You may be the most law-abiding citizen in the world and scrupulously honest in all your business dealings, but if a company you do business with is subject to a data breach, it could expose all sorts of sensitive data, including passwords, credit card numbers, bank account info and even Social Security numbers. Just this month a trove of data containing 24 billion records was exposed. Also, you’re probably not even aware of the extent of the data that you’re sharing through on-line services and electronic communications. Have you suffered serious health issues? Do you discuss politics on-line? Do you interact with your church, synagogue or mosque on-line? How would you feel if a prospective employer had access to this information? How would you feel if an extremist group could view your data in these areas?
And now the California Legislature is moving toward removing one of the few remaining privacy protections we have. Current California law prohibits wiretapping, eavesdropping on, or recording confidential communications. But SB 690 would grant an exemption for any “commercial business purpose.” Just think about that for a moment. Like I said at the beginning of this post, you know Google scans your e-mails and uses the info to place ads. You know that web sites will grab your mobile ID to send you special offers. But allowing companies to intercept all of our electronic communications for any “commercial business purpose” opens up a whole world of disturbing possibilities. Have you talked to your therapist about bouts of depression? A pharmaceutical company could listen in with the goal of selling you drugs. Did you send an e-mail to your boss outlining a great idea for a new product? A rival company could read that e-mail and race to patent that product before you do. Is your teen sending texts to a friend about their fears and anxieties? A tech start-up could offer to set them up with a companion chatbot that would encourage them to share their deepest secrets and promise to be their best friend forever. For a small monthly sum.
All of this would be completely legal, because all of it falls into the category of a “commercial business purpose”.
Backers of SB 690 say the goal is to stop a spate of predatory lawsuits that have targeted on-line businesses that collect user data. This is certainly a concern, but this bill is not the right fix. It would be fairly easy to write a bill that allows businesses to collect certain categories of data from people who visit their web sites. As currently written, SB 690 erases privacy protections for ALL electronic communication. Your phone calls, e-mails, chats and texts would all be fair game. A company could secretly monitor your communications and use the info they gather for any “commercial business purpose”. Supporters also say that Californians don’t have to worry because they’re still covered by the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). This is completely false. Under the CCPA, you have to do the work of monitoring personal information held by data brokers and you have to make a request for them to delete data. The CCPA does not protect your on-line communications.
It’s not surprising that business groups are lining up to support SB 690. What’s interesting is that, at first glance, the analysis done last year for the State Senate seems to include very few tech companies in the list of supporters. This is surprising because the biggest beneficiaries would be the Big Tech firms. Companies like Amazon, Google and Meta already have millions of customers who use their services regularly, if not every day. Technically, California law currently prevents them from reading, monitoring, collecting your communications with family, friends, doctors, religious counselors, business associates and others. But if SB 690 is approved, they can read anything you write, listen in on any conversation, and monitor any video conference you participate in. As long as they claim it’s for a “commercial business purpose”, all of those things are fair game.
But if you look closely, you’ll see two entities included on the list of supporters: TechNet and Silicon Valley Leadership Group. The first is a national organization that claims to “educate” government leaders about the tech industry at the federal and state levels. The second is a business association that says it represents the “innovation economy”. And guess what. Not only do Amazon, Google and Meta belong to both organizations, but so do Airbnb, Apple, Cisco and Tesla. Beyond that, each organization lists many more tech companies among their members.
So yes, the Big Tech companies are solidly behind SB 690, even though they seem to be shy about directly adding their company names to the list of supporters. Why wouldn’t they want to be up front about showing their support? Could it be they’re afraid that directly connecting their companies to this bill would make it seem like a huge power grab? Could it be they’re worried that putting their names on the list would make it clear that their goal is to erase privacy protections in California? It’s no secret that many leaders of Big Tech firms don’t like any kind of regulation. Tech lobbyists are working hard in Sacramento and Washington to stop legislation that could impact tech companies. And now the tech industry is pouring tens of millions of dollars info Super PACs to influence the upcoming elections. They want to support politicians who will push their deregulation agenda.
SB 690 is completely in line with this push to get rid of regulation. It seems to me that Big Tech wants to take away your right to privacy so they can make even greater profits.
SB 690 has already been approved by the State Senate. It’s now moving through the State Assembly. If you’d like to share your views on this bill, you can find the contact info for your Assembly representative by clicking on the link below.
Partial map of Metro’s proposed North Hollywood to Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit line.
The years-long struggle over a proposed bus lane on Olive Avenue in Burbank has escalated even further. In May the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) filed a lawsuit against the City of Burbank. Metro claims that the city is illegally withholding permits for the project. The city says that the permits may need further environmental review due to potential upzoning that could occur as a result of implementing the bus lane.
The dedicated bus lane would become a part of Metro’s North Hollywood to Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project that will run between North Hollywood and Pasadena. When the project was first proposed, many Burbank residents objected on the grounds that removing a lane currently used by cars could further exacerbate congestion. There are also new concerns since the passage of SB 79, a State law that allows for significant upzoning of parcels in close proximity to some transit lines.
A statement posted on the City of Burbank’s web site says….
The City supports the BRT and is participating in its planning, environmental review, and design stages. During the Project’s environmental review, the City Council requested mixed-flow on one BRT segment along Olive Avenue between Buena Vista and Lake Streets due to concerns about intersection congestion and related spillover traffic impacts into adjoining residential neighborhoods. Since 2022, the City has continued to collaborate with Metro to deliver the BRT Project, while continuing to assert the Council’s Olive Avenue mixed-flow position.
You can learn more about the city’s position by going to their web site.
Marathon Oil Refinery in Wilmington where a fire broke out in 2020. While no one was injured, it took over a day to put out the fire.
Over the past decade, it’s become popular to bash the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). First it was claimed that CEQA was a major reason for the lack of affordable housing in California, but a study by the Rose Foundation found that only 2% of approved projects faced CEQA lawsuits. Then lawmakers in Sacramento began claiming that CEQA was holding back all kinds of projects, not just housing. The result was State Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 131, which made a vaguely defined category of “advanced manufacturing projects” exempt from environmental review. As I wrote earlier, this category could include a number of projects that produce toxic waste, including the production of organic fertilizer, semiconductors and lithium ion batteries. There was heavy opposition to this bill from environmental groups, but Gov. Gavin Newsom strongarmed the legislature into approving it.
Now the California Chamber of Commerce has proposed a ballot measure that would substantially rewrite CEQA, making major changes to accelerate the approval of “essential” projects. The measure is called the Building an Affordable California Act (BACA), and they’ve already gathered enough signatures to put it on the November 2026 ballot. As you may have guessed by the title, the Chamber is arguing that CEQA makes the approval of projects too time-consuming and costly, and that Californians are paying more for housing, water and electricity as a result. While the Chamber’s web site features commentary by CEO Jennifer Barrera citing six projects that have been delayed by CEQA, I couldn’t find any actual research or data on their site to support their assertion that CEQA has played a significant role in raising the cost of living for Californians. The Chamber makes a point of saying that BACA would still leave Federal environmental laws in place, but they don’t mention that the Trump administration has been aggressively pushing to roll back enforcement of those laws and to rewrite environmental regulations. And while the Chamber makes unsubstantiated claims about higher costs for housing and utilities, they don’t talk about the huge cost of cleaning up toxic sites. Some readers may remember the Stringfellow Acid Pits, a toxic waste dump that leaked contaminants into the surrounding communities. Tens of millions of your tax dollars have already gone into cleaning up this site, and the job isn’t over.
An analysis on Legal Planet says that BACA would create a new CEQA process for “essential” projects, laying out shorter timeframes for environmental review. It could also limit the kind of environmental impacts that the project applicant would be required to analyze. Legal Planet’s post gives a list of projects that would likely qualify for streamlined review under BACA, including freeways, dams, and possibly data centers. And since the Chamber talks about speeding up energy projects, my guess is that nuclear reactors would also probably qualify for the shorter review process.
But all these people who keep telling us how bad CEQA is don’t often talk about the good things CEQA does. A community in Fontana filed a CEQA lawsuit over the approval of a logistics center that would have brought a huge increase in diesel truck traffic and made the area’s poor air quality even worse. They achieved a settlement requiring the project proponent to take concrete steps to reduce air pollution. In 2018 the City of Arvin approved a permit allowing an oil company to drill four wells in a residential community. Residents filed a CEQA lawsuit and stopped the drilling. Think for a moment about how you’d react if a company wanted to build a large logistics center or start drilling oil wells in your neighborhood. Would you consider filing a lawsuit to protect the environment you live in?
Residents have been fighting to stop a proposed 56,000 sq. ft. distribution center which would sit within 300 feet of Hillside Elementary in Lincoln Heights.
Now the crisis at the GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove has brought new attention to how environmental hazards can impact nearby communities. When the temperature of a chemical storage tank began to rise unexpectedly, fears that the tank might explode led to the evacuation of an estimated 50,000 people in the area. While a catastrophe was averted, it was a stark reminder of the dangers that can arise from planning decisions that put residential buildings near industrial uses. In a story related to the GKN Aerospace situation, the Daily News reported that nearly two million Californians live within a three-mile radius of a facility that uses the same chemical that caused the crisis in Garden Grove. The LA Times also followed up with a story examining the risks involved in rolling back environmental regulations. In that story, the authors reminded readers of other recent events: the damage done to surrounding communities by lead contaminants from the Exide battery plant in Vernon; the risks to students at Jordan High School due to toxic waste from S&W Atlas Iron & Metal in Watts; the rupture of an oil line in East LA that sent over 2,000 gallons of crude into the LA River; the recent fire at tire recycling center in South Gate. The Times story also points out that the push to build more housing quickly has led to the approval of projects in areas at high risk of fire.
The point here is that while Gavin Newsom and Scott Wiener and the folks at the California Chamber go around bashing CEQA, they don’t talk about the risks we face when we cut corners on environmental review. And, as the situation in Garden Grove showed, there are very real risks to public health and safety when we don’t properly examine a project’s impacts on communities. Aside from a frightening crisis like a chemical tank overheating to the point where it could explode, there are less dramatic but still very real threats to the air we breathe and the water we drink. If we don’t examine potential problems when we build chemical plants, or data centers, or logistics hubs, we will end up creating more risks to our health and safety.
Fortunately, people are pushing back against the California Chamber’s efforts to undermine CEQA. Led by the Planning & Conservation League, scores of public health and environmental groups have come together to fight BACA. They’ve created a web site where you can learn about their efforts and find out how to join if you want to get involved.
Bottom line, CEQA is about giving people a voice about what gets built in their community. It gives you a chance to inform yourself about a project’s impacts, and to speak about your concerns. Elected officials like Scott Wiener and Gavin Newsom have been working hard to take power away from communities and to give it to corporations. The California Chamber’s measure is another aggressive attempt to silence Californians who care about their communities.
The Horizon and the Skyline 