A recent offshore discovery in the Santa Barbara Channel might help salvage the failed drive to tighten California’s laws on hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. Fracking involves the pumping of large amounts of water, sand, and chemicals into oil wells to loosen deposits segregated by walls of rock. The legislative session began with a […]
PATRICK M. KLEMZ
Posted inNews
Grover mayor narrowly holds onto air pollution board seat
The problem of harmful fugitive dust blowing onto the Nipomo Mesa from the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area continues to divide San Luis Obispo’s South County. Grover Beach Mayor Debbie Peterson stepped into the divisive issue, and it nearly blew her off the San Luis Obispo County air pollution control board. Following a heated […]
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Achadjian says bill authorship dispute kept rape loophole open
California still can’t prosecute as rapists people who trick an unwilling partner into sex by impersonation, unless the perpetrator is posing as the victim’s spouse. Assembly Bill 65 seemed poised to close the rape-by-fraud loophole on July 11 when the California Senate scheduled a third and final reading of the bill. Instead, legislators delayed a […]
Posted inNews
Nipomo pipeline survives injunction attempt
A $17.5 million project to connect the Nipomo Mesa to an outside water supply withstood a recent legal challenge by a citizens’ group. On June 5, Judge Martin Tangeman denied a preliminary injunction request and allowed the project to go forward during litigation. Given the scope of the pipeline plans and the court docket, that […]
Posted inOpinion
The main thing
Remembering the bottom line in political issues
A slab of concrete near my house in San Luis Obispo contains the following nugget of Stengelese wisdom: The main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing. This message echoes in politics, a realm where something starts about one thing and often ends about something else. The emphasis usually shifts in ways harmful […]
Posted inNews
What fracking moratorium?
On May 24, SLO Clean Water Action announced plans to deliver a petition asking state Assemblyman Katcho Achadjian (R-SLO) to support efforts to stop fracking in California. At that time, three bills in legislative committees threatened to put the kibosh on the controversial oil extraction practice until the state could study its effect on water […]
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Troublesome numbers
With reform legislation stalling, a state nurses union releases local hospitals’ billing figures
Templeton’s Twin Cities Community Hospital landed in the Sacramento spotlight May 14 with the release of a report by a nurses union pushing health-care reform. The California Nurses Association (CNA) published the report just as Assembly Bill 975—a proposed law to ratchet up state regulation of nonprofit hospitals—seemed to stall in committee. According to the […]
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Down the tube
Local water activists tinker with an anti-fracking ordinance imported from Pennsylvania
The Monterey Shale deposit below our feet contains an oil reserve worth untold trillions of dollars. Yet imagining the Monterey Shale as a single underground reservoir of oil misses the mark as badly as visualizing an aquifer as a subterranean lagoon canopied by limestone. Oil deposits certainly exist, but in pockets of varying size separated […]
Posted inOpinion
Auf wiedersehen
Top 10 things I’ll miss about the recession
Americans continue to feel economic hunger pangs even though the recession, as a cold statistical anomaly, ended a while ago. Indisputable evidence in key sectors tells us that the economy is expanding at accelerating rates. Even the single-family housing market—the industry that seemed as still as a stuffed bobcat just a year ago—started showing signs […]
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Oil and water
Central Coast officials ask the State Legislature to leave counties some discretion on fracking
You’ve heard the old Western proverb before, especially if you live in California: “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” Santa Barbara County Supervisor Doreen Farr’s third district covers a lot of water—nearly the county’s entire coastline. On Feb. 12, Farr traveled inland to testify in Sacramento before a joint committee hearing on […]
Posted inOpinion
Last ditch
The EPA’s stormwater gaff shows disregard for local government budgets
The original Ghostbusters film featured a scene wherein an overzealous Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agent named Walter Peck stormed into Ghostbusters headquarters brandishing a court order. Citing violations to the Environmental Protection Act, a law that never existed, Peck shut down the spectral laser containment unit. Paranormal bedlam ensued, and everyone knew whom to call. […]