Well, at least for another year. The Sac Bee reports that the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, chaired by Yolo County's own Lois Wolk (D- Davis), just killed SB 27 until next year. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) would have established a committee to build a peripheral canal diverting water around the Sacramento Delta for export south, although it called it a "conveyance" in a modest feat of bureaucratic obscurantism.
As the LA Times reports today, we may be looking at blackouts in So Cal this summer as energy demand outstrips the power capacity of the grid. And as anyone who was around for the great west coast blackout in the summer of '96, what starts cascading in So Cal doesn't necessarily stay there, especially on those hot July/August scorchers that cook us all the way up the Valley. The state's grid manager put it in terms of lacking adequate production:
The state will have 489 megawatts of new generation in time for peak demand in July or August, some of that replacing a 122-megawatt plant that's being retired. Southern California will need to rely on imports from Arizona, Nevada and Mexico, as well as conservation, to avoid blackouts.
Demand probably will increase by 1,000 megawatts this year over last year, Cal-ISO Chief Executive Yakout Mansour said during a conference call. Power demand peaked at 48,615 megawatts in 2007.
Ca. Fire Documents Conflict With Reports
By AARON C. DAVIS - 1 day ago
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Several aircraft were able to fly in strong winds on the first full day of last month's Southern California firestorms, contradicting officials' earlier claims that the weather had grounded virtually all aircraft, according to documents released Saturday.
Twenty-eight of 52 aircraft the state was tracking for firefighting efforts remained grounded that day, and high winds were not listed in the documents as the reason.
