LOIS HENRY: So many government foibles, so little time
| Wednesday, Nov 17 2010 09:00 AM
Last Updated Wednesday, Nov 17 2010 09:00 AM
There just aren't enough hours in the day (or space in this column) to keep up with all the interesting bits of news popping up. Here's a grab bag of just some of the stuff that makes me go "hmmm."
First, major kudos to the Kern County Planning staff and Board of Supervisors for recognizing there was no lemonade to be had from the bitter lemon of decades of bad land use decisions that resulted in a patch of land zoned as "heavy industrial" being engulfed by neighborhoods.
This particular piece of land, next to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad tracks at Santa Fe Way and Hageman Road, had been left heavy industrial for 30 years as the city and county blithely approved housing developments all around.
When the owner of one plot in the area, Mark Polhamus, wanted to put in a concrete crushing plant, suddenly, 30 years of "we'll think about that tomorrow" came due.
After more than a year of hemming and hawing, Supes voted Oct. 12 to downzone 78 acres in the area, including Polhamus' property to "light industrial."
I feel bad for Polhamus whose only mistake was trusting his zoning. But it was the right thing to do.
Speaking of silly government hijinks...weren't we?
A conundrum surfaced at the Supes' meeting September 14 that is becoming ever more typical as agencies layer us with ever more regulations in the name of health and safety. This latest involved the Hydrogen Energy California plant proposed west of Tupman
The HECA plant, partially funded by the largest federal stimulus grant in the country, is to be an alternative energy source that also recycles.
It would take coal and petroleum coke left over from oil refineries and gasify it to extract hydrogen, used to produce electricity. The leftover carbon dioxide would be injected deep underground where it is expected to increase oil production and be kept out of the atmosphere so as not to hurt any polar bears by contributing to global warming.
Recycling, alternative energy AND global warming? Wow, a trifecta of environmental coolness.
Except for those 400 tons per day of fly ash produced by the plant during its first two years when it will be required per that federal grant to burn mostly coal to try and find a "greener" way to use coal.
Recycling mandates in California only allow 7.6 pounds of waste per person, per day going to landfills.
We're at 6.2 pounds now. An extra 400 tons per day would increase our average to 8.9 pounds per person, per day, taking us out of compliance with state regulations.
No new businesses that might add to the waste stream can be approved by the county as long we're over that line.
So, Supervisors were stuck.
Their solution was to write to the California Department of Energy, which is doing the environmental studies on HECA, explain the situation and ask for an exemption.
Unless that happens, or the ash can be recycled in road base, we the taxpayers have spent $300 million on a federal grant that could potentially cost Kern County taxpayers who knows how much in lost business opportunities. Classic!
In another classic government move, a Modesto dairy spent $4 million on a "digester" to use methane from manure to run a generator and produce electricity for the farm, according to an NPR story the other day.
Methane is another of those greenhouse gases we're told kills polar bears, so the California Air Resources board is pushing for reductions.
Good for dairy owner John Fiscalini, right?
Wrong.
The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District turned around and made him spend another $200,000 on a pollution control device for his generator.
"It's a case of two agencies with conflicting mandates," Seyed Sadredin, executive director of the air district told me. "They are trying to reduce greenhouse gases and we're focusing on public health."
The problem is nitrogen oxide (NOx) a component of ozone which the air district is under federal mandate to reduce.
Could someone please introduce the left hand to the right?
And finally, Bakersfield City Manager Alan Tandy put a recent water sale into perspective in his weekly memo, or "Tandy gram."
Two Kings County farmers are proposing to sell 1,998 acre feet of water they receive by contract from the State Water Project to Tejon Ranch Co. for its proposed 23,000-home Centennial development just south of the Kern County border.
The price: $5,850 per acre foot.
Tandy mentions the sale in his memo and notes that the city's contracts with several ag districts for 70,000 acre feet of Kern River water are up in 2012.
The city is now looking at that water to run down the river bed, among other uses.
A Tejon-size price for that water would bring over $400 million, Tandy notes.
"That is, of course, an out-of-basin sale, which, under Bakersfield's policies, we would never allow," Tandy writes.
Better not!
Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at http://www.bakersfield.com, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com
