LNG Plant in Vallejo supported by VPOA

 "Missed Opportunities", 2011-01 by VPOA Vice-President Kevin Hamrick, for “In Your City (A crime and public safety magazine)” issue #4, pgs. 4 and 5, courtesy of the Vallejo Police Officer’s Association (VPOA):

From the introduction to issue #4 by VPOA President Mat Mustard - “More than 15,000 Vallejoans receive In Your City, and we have heard from hundreds of community members that the magazine brings a welcomed message.”

Peppino Messina is a VPOA boardmember, and advertises his business in the magazine. More info about him here [link].

2010-08 "Benicia’s Community Garden Considers Expansion" by Samuel J. Adams from Benicia Magazine
[http://www.beniciamagazine.com/Benicia-Magazine/August-2010/Benicia-rsquos-Community-Garden-Considers-Expansion/]
A Little Old-fashioned Step Back into the Future -
Even though you can see Nations and Baskin Robbins and the Police Station over its vine-shrouded white fence, the Benicia Community Garden is easy to miss. It’s on a small hill tucked back from the road, and walking there feels not unlike trespassing through a churchyard. But the garden’s secrecy has nothing to do with exclusion; one would be hard pressed to find an arena in town more welcoming toward strangers.
Soon after I entered the garden gates, Judy Sullivan, a Benicia Community Garden member, pulls me a few sprigs of lemon verbena, and instructs me on its uses. “I just hang it upside down in a north-facing window. I dry it but I also use it fresh for tea. You just shuck it like you would a thing of corn.” The plant has a soft papery feel and smells mysteriously of lemonheads.
Mrs. Sullivan is soft-voiced, silver-haired and considerate enough of my amateurism to spell out V-E-R-B-E-N-A. She came here with her husband Sam, a well-tanned man watering the tomatoes, arugula and Swiss chard in their lot. Both garden here regularly, and in doing so they belong to a motley but select club whose membership includes a trained biologist, four homeschooled children, and a retiree in her eighties. And their ranks are growing: two recent members have been learning how to garden with upside-down tomato bags.
“We call it an oasis,” says Community Garden Board member Marilyn Bardet. “We’re in the busiest intersection in Benicia, full of car traffic and fumes, and we have a picnic on the first of every month, religiously, rain or shine…it’s a little old-fashioned step back into the future.”
As we crunch our way over a woodchip path that runs past rosemary bushes, squashes and serpentine tomato plants, the paradoxical phrase rings true: a healthy and palpable sense of atavism pervades the place. Here old knowledge is being unearthed for explicitly modern purposes.
“We’re trying to recover lost arts,” says Bardet. To her the art seems to have been lost in the late fifties and early sixties, when the national reverence for things grown was buried under a giant tomb of meatloaf and Wonder Bread, when highways and cheap fuel eliminated the meddling of the seasons, and when the delicacies or horticulture gave way to readymade meals and preserved foods that seemed never to go bad, even if they never tasted good to begin with.
Bardet recalls those days with a smile that winces. “My mother actually has a cookbook by Peg Bracken called The I Hate to Cook Book.”
But the work members do amounts to more than a personal hobby and culinary advantage; gardening is serious business, and with the looming ecological and economic troubles facing humanity, it wouldn’t take too great a shaking of the world’s foundation to make one’s relaxing hobby turn into a vital means of sustenance, much like the victory gardens were for citizens in WWII.
“Five years ago I felt like I was hit by the cosmic meatball when I really began reading seriously about the energy crisis and what the future holds. I don’t believe that the future’s going to resemble the past. There’s going to be a need for people to know basic things.”
Such statements suggest something Bardet readily acknowledges. Seclusion and intimacy notwithstanding, she sometimes wishes this private oasis were a little more like a public plaza, a low-pressure environment people regularly visit to garden, talk shop or just enjoy the company of the vegetative world. Lucky for her, and for Benicia, her group might soon come into a second property capable of fostering such an atmosphere.

A Plot to Make a Better World -
Members of the Benicia Community Garden have had discussions with Estey Real Estate, who manages the property, about acquiring a lease on a prime piece of land located at the apex of downtown’s pedestrian traffic. The lot is located at 1st and D Streets across from the Union Hotel and, in the twenty four years Bardet’s lived in Benicia, it’s never been sold. The owners have occasionally leased it for Christmas trees, pony rides, and even for a small nursery. Now only weeds grow, and they grow there so abundantly that it has to be mowed every month to comply with city fire code. With so many talented gardeners willing to mow it for free, pursuing the property seemed a logical step.

“If we pay them a nominal fee and eliminate their monthly mowing charge we could have a beautiful garden that could be ripped out if anybody ever wanted to buy the land,” says Bardet. The Presbyterian Church charges $1 for their current property, and to get the project off the ground, BCG may have to dip into the $20,000 they received from the 2010 settlement agreement between the Good Neighbor Steering Committee and Valero.
Though a second garden would be larger than the current one, the group’s inclusive policy wouldn’t change. BCG’s only rules are the minimal ones of common sense and neighborly conduct. Each person maintains their own bed and contributes to water costs. If people leave their beds fallow in winter, gardeners will sometimes ask them to use that bed to plant fava beans, something that gives nitrogen back to the soil. Sharing is strenuously encouraged; hassling is not. And it’s all organic. Whatever adulterants enter the soil will likely be inherited by the next gardener, so pests meet their end by soap sprays and lady bugs.
There would be one significant change though: the new garden, should it move forward, wouldn’t have costly raised garden beds. “Instead we’d build rounded mounds, and irrigate them by putting straw down to keep down the weeds and create a definition between the path part and the garden,” says Ms. Bardet. But she won’t say much beyond that, not because she doesn’t want to speculate, but because she doesn’t want to impose. “Whatever anybody wants,” she says. “We’re not saying what this garden should be. What we need is to get the word out.”
She hopes the new garden would be more than just the public face of the organization, and starts a movement that causes satellite gardens to sprout up around the city. She has been keenly following San Francisco’s innovations in urban gardening, where every nook is fair game for growing and, “even median strips are being planted.” The BCG would aim to increase membership with a second location, but more than that they want to spread their wisdom as far as they can.
“There’s an ebb and flow here. People come and learn and they stay a couple of years and then they might leave the garden and we get someone new in. It’s a training place. We’re growing gardeners. It’s kind of our motto.”
Those interested in gardening, or in donating their shoulders, tools, or supplies to BCG can contact Marilyn Bardet at mjbardet@sbcglobal.net. Novices and fans are also encouraged to visit the garden on Wednesdays from twelve to two to learn the tricks of the trade, says BCG co-founder and master gardener Meg Grumio.

2008-01-25 "Medical Marijuana Users Can be Fired, According to California Court"

from "Reuters" newswire [http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/8-1-25/64701.html]:
SAN FRANCISCO -
Companies can fire employees who use marijuana for medical reasons even if California law allows such use because federal law prohibits it, the state's Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.
 "Under California law, an employer may require preemployment drug tests and take illegal drug use into consideration in making employment decisions," Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote.
 The court's 5-2 decision is another blow to advocates of so-called medical marijuana.
 In March last year, a federal court based in San Francisco said a California woman with an inoperable brain tumor had no fundamental right to marijuana for medical purposes.
 Such rulings have confirmed that federal law governs when there are clashes with state law. California voters backed an initiative in 1996 allowing the smoking of marijuana for medical purposes -- a use barred by federal law.
 "No state law could completely legalize marijuana for medical purposes because the drug remains illegal under federal law," Werdegar wrote.
 In the latest case, Gary Ross said he began using marijuana in 1999 on a doctor's recommendation because of back pain.
 Ross said that after he was offered a job at a company in 2001, he took and failed a drug test and was fired. He sued the company, privately held RagingWire Telecommunications, because he said it failed to make reasonable accommodation for his disability.
 The Pacific Legal Foundation, which backed the employer, said the ruling would help keep drug-impaired employees from workplaces.
 Proponents of medical marijuana said they were looking for support from lawmakers in the nation's most populous state.
 "We remain hopeful that the legislature will come to the aid of patients by preventing the sort of discrimination that is likely to occur from such a decision," said Joe Elford, chief counsel of Americans for Safe Access.

2007-11-05 "Marin desalination plant would cost $115 million; board invites comment"

 by Mark Prado [http://www.marinij.com/marin/ci_7381128]:
A MARIN Municipal Water District desalination plant could process 5 million gallons of water a day, cost $115 million to build and supply a large part of the county with a drought-proof source of water, according to a draft environmental analysis.
 Now water district officials want to hear from the public. A final decision from the board on the project won't come until 2008.
 When the board meets Wednesday night it will determine the length of a public comment period on its draft environmental impact statement. The standard is 45 days, but because of the importance of the project, it's possible the period could last almost four months.
 At least two public hearings and possibly a third will be held.
 "Circulating the draft EIR for public comment does not mean MMWD has made a commitment to desalination," said Cynthia Koehler, board president. "It means we are committed to fully examining this alternative and to doing so in an open and inclusive public process. Regardless of the board's final decision on this issue, we will continue to aggressively pursue conservation, which is the most cost-effective measure we can take right now to ensure the reliability of our long-term water supply."
 While most cost-effective, conservation probably won't be enough to supply 190,000 people in a 147-square-mile area of southern and central Marin County with enough water in case of a severe drought and as water use grows.
 The district began to seriously examine desalination in 2003. The process takes water from the bay, removes salt and impurities and sends it to homes for drinking and other uses.
 The desalination plant being proposed would be constructed in phases. The first phase would be construction of a 5-million-gallons-per-day facility, with the ability to expand to 15 million gallons per day, according to the report.
 The desalination plant would take San Rafael Bay water and subject it to various forms of treatment to produce drinkable water through reverse osmosis technology.
 The plant would be situated on MMWD-owned land near Pelican Way in San Rafael. Bay water would be piped from an intake at the end of a newly refurbished Marin Rod and Gun Club pier near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
 The desalination process would convert about half the volume of water taken from the bay into drinking water. The remaining water, or brine, would have a dissolved solids concentration about twice that of raw water. Brine would be blended and discharged back to the bay through an outfall operated by the Central Marin Sanitation Agency, which treats municipal and industrial wastewater generated in central Marin. Pretreatment of raw water to remove solids would generate sludge. This sludge would be hauled for disposal to the Redwood Landfill, according to the report.
 The report said there were two issues that could not be avoided if the plant is built. One of the issues is temporary: the work would bring noise to the areas of construction.
 A more permanent issue would be the visual character of San Quentin Ridge, where a large tank would have to be placed to hold water.
 Cost estimates range from $111 million to $173 million, depending on what type of facility is finally built, according to the report.
 Desalinated water would cost $2,023 to $2,996 per acre-foot. Presently, it costs the district about $1,000 per acre-foot for water. An acre-foot can supply about three single-family homes for a year.
 "The options are to raise rates, or borrow money, which may be the better option," said Paul Helliker, MMWD general manager. "But all of that is subject to further deliberation by the board."
 Marin faces a "dire" water situation, and a drought could bring conditions worse than those in 1976 and 1977, officials have warned.
 If a drought hits and Mount Tamalpais reservoirs run dry, the district would have to impose rationing. In the second year of a drought, consumers would have to cut 65 percent of their water use, meaning they could only use 35 percent of what they use now, officials said.
 Within 10 years, Marin's annual "water deficit" is expected to increase from the present 3,200 acre-feet to 7,060 acre-feet, as demand grows.
 The district receives 75 percent of its water from seven Mt. Tam reservoirs, with the balance coming from the Russian River through a pipeline owned by the North Marin Water District.
 The Marin Municipal Water District can't raise dams at its reservoirs due to state regulations, and water from the Russian River is diminishing because of needs to the north in Novato and Sonoma County. Conservation has been pushed hard.
 Despite the cost, an engineering report done earlier in the year said "seawater desalination can be a viable, reliable and drought-proof drinking water source for Marin."

 AT A GLANCE
 A proposed desalination plant would:
 - Cost $115 million, producing 5 million gallons of water a day with the ability to expand to 15 million gallons per day.
 - Raise the cost of treated water to $2,023 to $2,996 per acre-foot. Presently, it costs the district about $1,000 per acre-foot for water. An acre-foot can supply about three single-family homes for a year.
 - Be built on water district land at Pelican Way in San Rafael, with water from San Rafael Bay being pulled in at the end of a rebuilt Marin Rod and Gun Club pier.