The Burlingame Voice

CEQA in a topsy-turvy world

Lewis Carroll would resonate with current California politics since we are in an Alice in Wonderland upside down world.  Just look at how CEQA - the California Environmental Quality Act-- has become a hindrance that needs to be dodged.  The DJ notes:

Senate Bill 71, sponsored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, would extend exemptions for agencies like Caltrain from the California Environmental Quality Act for a myriad of projects.  CEQA typically necessitates detailed, often time-consuming, environmental reviews and impact reports. The current exemption is set to sunset in 2030.

“The main interest we have in this bill is that it would remove the current sunset date ... for a host of CEQA exemptions for transit projects,” Devon Ryan, officer of government and community affairs at Caltrain, said. “That does implicate a lot of things on the Caltrain-owned corridor, and we would be supportive of the continuation of this exemption.”

They pulled this eleven years ago as covered here.  It's not like the rest of the activities and projects on the Caltrain corridor are running so smoothly regardless of CEQA requirements.  Just look here.  And it's not just Weiner poking at the heretofore revered law.  Newsom is doing the same thing in Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

Who would have thought that the "evil developers" would end up being elected politicians?

DST: Early birds attacking night hawks

I'm a night hawk.  I've always been a night hawk.  Sunlight at 6am, or 7am, or even 8am is just wasted sunlight to me except for what my solar panels catch.  Tonight is the blessed arrival of DST--a day I look forward to after the depressing four months and a week of "Standard time".  I don't know what is so "standard" about it since it is in place for only a third of the year.  Annually we get pronouncements from medical experts about how the change is bad for our health.  The Merc has one such view here noting 

an increase in car accidents, heart attacks, strokes and potential negative effects on blood pressure and, most obviously, sleep. Martin says these effects make mental health symptoms worse for those with depression and anxiety and make things harder even for those without a mood disorder.

It seems to me most of those effects are a result of the change itself, not the "spring forward".  The "fall back" probably does the same.  If we were on DST all year, a lot of that would disappear.  As for the depression and mood disorders, the late afternoon and early evening light is not accounted for by the experts.  Jon Mays at the Daily Journal has weighed in with a preference for standard time all the time, but mostly with a desire to have us just pick one

And it is now more than seven years since 60% of California voters approved a change to permanent daylight-saving time, used in the summer, versus standard time, used in the winter.  Proposition 7 was passed by 60% of California voters in what I would call a solid victory. Around 7 million people voted for the change in November 2018.

Most people think we should stick with daylight saving time year-round, however, I think we should stick with standard time. It’s the actual time and the shift of sunset from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the summer is just being greedy. We already get naturally longer days in the summer so why do we need that extra hour? However, I’d be in favor of either as long I didn’t have to go through another time change.

Greedy?  Guilty as charged.  From longer Spring ski days without flat light on the slopes to the arrival of Music in Parks on weekday evenings to the start of Spring sports for kids, they all benefit from that greedy grab of an hour.  Let's face it.  A lot of people aren't commuting to an 8am start of the workday five days a week.  And if the kids are a little groggy and it doesn't stabilize after permanent DST has been around a while, start the school day 30 or 60 minutes later.  At least they will have more time for after school sports instead of playing videogames indoors.

Wildfires, Insurance rates, Fuel management & Defensible space

A nice heavy rainy day in B'game is the perfect time to reflect on Not Forgetting about our wildfire risk.  Almost three years ago we covered the Emerald Hills fire here.  Then came Pacific Palisades and Altadena which has pushed FAIR into the red and will cost all of us a pretty penny in insurance increases.  It's one thing to write State Farm or Farmer's a bigger check, it's quite another to lose your home.

The risks are multi-dimensional.  How good is our fuel management, particularly up the hill with our neighbors?  The state is updating the high-risk maps as part of Newsom's latest revelation that the 5 foot "Zone 0" area next to dwellings needs to be clear of fuel.  One has to wonder where he's been for the last five or ten years?  You can get a sense of the Hillsborough high-risk area here.  Swapping email with the CCFD Chief, I learned

In Hillsborough, the town conducts fuel management on town owned parcels and we have an extensive Wildland Urban Interface inspection program. Inspections are conducted annually and education and enforcement is applied according to the situation.

I know from friends that there have been non-renewals and big increases in insurance rates up there.  The insurers have reportedly also used drones to find private parcels that are at high-risk from lack of fuel maintenance and some of that information may even be informing their rates for the neighbors.  "It takes a village".

Our water supply is another aspect of preparation.  Swapping email with Public Works, I learned

We tap SFPUC system near Magnolia/Trousdale and use its static head to a point near BIS on Trousdale, and from there it is pumped to the Mills Reservoir.  From there, it gets gravity fed to Sky View Reservoir, which then serves the hillside area below.  On the south side of the City, we pump the water to the Hillside Reservoir located next to the Fire Station 35, which then serves the water to the zone that is above and outside of the SFPUC aqueduct zone.  We have four other SFPUC turnouts that we tap into to serve the remaining parts of the City primarily by gravity.  Hillsborough has a separate system outside of Burlingame, much of their water supply is pumped to their hills and then served to the residents unlike Burlingame.

A bit more research is in order for the layperson to follow the plumbing described above.  It's also a fair question to wonder how up to date the various parts are right now.  I asked about how we go about flushing the hydrants?  It was a pretty common thing to see when I was a kid, but I can't recall seeing it in B'game.  I've must have missed it since Public Works states

Burlingame has proactively invested in a robust capital improvement program to modernize its aging water infrastructure over the past few decades. This includes replacing several miles of water mains and upgrading older fire hydrants with newer models and adding new fire hydrants if needed. These efforts have not only enhanced the City’s water capacity but have also significantly improved fire protection. The hydrant flushing program is active and we rotate the program throughout the City based on water quality parameters.  The public may see more at some times than others as needed based on our water quality requirements.

The bottom line is B'game is not one of the eight cities in San Mateo County at the highest risk as shown here.  We have a lot of infrastructure.  We have maintenance plans.  My discussions with a concerned H'borough resident lead me to continue to believe our biggest risk stems from big private parcels up there that may not be on top of fuel management.  With all of the eucs up there, the effort described in the Merc about the work at East Bay Parks is something to aspire to here.

East Bay Parks has nearly quadrupled its fuel reduction staff in the past five years to take on the Herculean task of bringing the forest back into order, including the addition of Fuels Reduction Coordinator Givonne Law.

“Eucalyptus is notorious for being a very difficult-to-handle tree. Not only is it very heavy, but there’s generally huge accumulations,” Law said. “A lot of machinery operators out there will see a project like this and will just walk away.”

Law’s task was to thin the forest from more than 750 eucalyptus stems per acre to 150 stems per acre. Her aim, she said, was not to eliminate eucalyptus — despite their oily, flammable properties — but to reconstitute the balance of the forest to allow less dangerous trees such as bay and oak to reestablish themselves.

That works out to about one stem per 300 square feet--a 17 x 17 foot area.  A drive through H'borough will easily show areas with more density than that.

Moss Landing battery fire: don't waste a good crisis?

With all of the focus on CO2 it's easy to forget there are a lot of other, way more dangerous pollutants being released during emergencies.  The Moss Landing lithium-ion fire adds hydrogen fluoride to the list.  Where's my college chemistry book when I need it?  The various wildfires over the last four years have spewed mega tons of particulate matter ("smoke") and who knows what else from burning cars, houses and businesses.  But all the Sacramento and local government focus has been on our cars, stove tops, BBQs and water heaters.

Only now is our camera hound governor is calling for an investigation into the massive Moss Landing battery plant fire even though it is either the fourth or fifth fire there in the last four years.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A fire at the world’s largest battery storage plant in Northern California smoldered Friday after sending plumes of toxic smoke into the atmosphere, leading to the evacuation of up to 1,500 people. The blaze also shook up the young battery storage industry.

The fire at the Vistra Energy lithium battery plant in Moss Landing generated huge flames and significant amounts of smoke Thursday but had diminished significantly by Friday, Fire Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire Protection District of Monterey County said.

Brad Watson, Vistra’s senior director of community affairs, said two “overheating events” happened at the battery plant in 2021 and 2022 because the batteries got wet. A third incident happened in 2022 in the neighboring Elkhorn battery plant that is owned by PG&E, he said.

I'm all for huge, grid-based battery storage.  We need it if we have any hope for stability

California was an early adopter of battery storage and leads the nation with more than 11 gigawatts of utility-scale storage online, which can meet nearly half of the demand on the state’s main grid for four hours per day.

But like first-generation EV chargers that fail regularly, the devil is in the details.  As Rahm Emanuel said "you never want a good crisis go to waste".  That's the order of the day.

 

  

EV Charging: Fixing the Lot Y chargers

The Lot Y parking lot on Chula Vista near B'way has had a shaky history of EV charging reliability.  We reported on the initial low usage four years ago here.  It may have gotten more usage in the intervening four years, but back then one and a half charging sessions per day per unit was not a good use of city parking slots.  Part of the problem has been that the chargers themselves are wonky.  Sometimes it's the credit card readers.  Sometimes other things, but the owners, EVGo, have thrown in the towel on their first-generation units and torn all of them out.

Replacements are on their way and reportedly will be re-installed by the end of the month.  Let's hope at least some parts of the dead units are recyclable.  In the meantime, the gas guzzler meters that are behind the construction fencing are offering free parking in those spaces (since you can't get to the meter).  Park on!  Let's hope the new chargers last more than five years and we get the upgraded ones at the Walgreen's installation.

Total Cost of Homeownership: Not just the cost of the house

For all the talk about our "housing crisis", there is little media or politician discussion about what makes housing expensive here or many, many other places.  The build-our-way-out of it people, like the YIMBYs, just focus on the four walls.  As the letter writer below noted, it's tiresome.  It's also myopic.  The WSJ chimes in today with a piece titled "Insurance and Taxes Now Cost More Than Mortgages for Many Homeowners: Ballooning expenses rewrite the math of homeownership".  The piece zeroes in on home insurance, flood/fire insurance, property taxes and home repair costs and shows

These ballooning expenses are rewriting the math of homeownership. In September, 32% of the average single-family mortgage payment went to property taxes and home insurance, the highest rate ever for data going back to 2014, according to Intercontinental Exchange.  For a small but increasing share of households, the burden is far more significant. In five major metro areas—Rochester and Syracuse, N.Y.; Omaha, Neb.; New Orleans and Miami—at least a quarter of borrowers spend more than half their monthly mortgage payment on taxes and insurance, according to ICE. 

These metro areas have high property taxes or pricey home insurance relative to typical home costs, or both.  Nationwide, taxes and insurance make up more than half of the monthly mortgage payment for 9% of single-family mortgages. That is up from less than 4% at the end of 2014. 

Left out of the equation because of how the study gathered data are the other costs--electricity, natural gas, garbage, sewer/water and bond measures for schools and anything else the politicians can dream up (looking at you Caltrain and sea level rise).  A major variable will always be interest rates, but all of these other factors just pile on and increases get waved through regularly.

One could even argue the YIMBY mentality will make it all worse.  More grid, more water, more sewage treatment, more classrooms, more, more, more.  Decarbonize your house in the next 10 years?  That won't be easy or cheap as we noted here.  Looking at all of the costs in total reveals the real story--not the faddish one.

The Tsunami that wasn't: Lessons learned

It was an exciting morning.  I just happened to be outside talking to a buddy whose tsunami knowledge was unknown to me when his phone went off about 10:45 am.  I got nothing on my phone, but he started making a plan since he knew a "warning" is the highest level of four notices that are issued.  Listening to him, I was concerned for the coastal areas covered in the warning; from the area of the 7.0 undersea earthquake off Ferndale down to Davenport on the PCH.  I was skeptical that it would be an issue here on the west side of B'game.  Nonetheless it was time to turn on the local TV news station that was in Breaking News mode.  There was a second quake north of Sacramento that registered a 6.0, the BART tube was shut down and SFO was landing flights as normal while noting the runways are only 13 feet above sea level.

The warning was in effect until 11:49 am-- an hour after the quake hit.  My knowledgeable buddy took off--I didn't ask where, but he mumbled something about "uphill".  The TV experts from SFFD, National Weather Service and some quake center were talking Go-Bag and getting up to 100 feet of elevation.  Traffic on eastbound 92 was bumper to bumper.  I was still skeptical of any tsunami squeezing through the Golden Gate, wrapping around the Bay and pushing water past maybe our Bayfront.  There's a reason Laguna Ave. is named Laguna Ave.  After watching the YouTube documentary on the Japan tsunami of 2011 my friend recommended, a second thought or two has crept in.

I have to wonder why the SMC Alert didn't hit my phone until 11:49 am, an hour after the quake and then was deemed not a danger at 12:10 pm?  It turns out that a 7.0 quake, while big in town, isn't considered to be big enough to cause a major tsunami.  Is there such a thing as a minor tsunami?  Let's hope SMC alert and the quake shake apps are working as designed.  

Gasoline prices: Get ready for more pain

After reading about our Air Resources Board move this month to tighten gasoline "standards" even more I was reminded of this post from 2015.  The California average was $3.22 back then and in February 2017, I noted the price of regular at the Peninsula Ave. Shell was $3.05.  With apologies to composer Mary Hopkin

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and drive forever and a day
We'd buy the fuel we choose
We'd fight and always cruise
For we were young and sure to have our way

Today regular at that Shell station is $4.99, 64% higher than 2017.  And we need to get ready for more pain at the pump as Calmatters writes about the November 8th CARB vote

The new rule’s potential effects on California fuel prices are largely unknown. The air board said today that oil companies typically already pass 8 to 10 cents per gallon of costs on to consumers because of the state’s fuel standard.  Environmentalists and consumer advocates opposed the new rules, warning the changes will boost alternative fuels — such as biofuels made from cow manure or soy beans — that may have limited environmental upsides, and will allow oil companies to stay in business because they can buy credits or switch to producing those fuels.

In an initial assessment released last year, the air board projected that the proposed new standard could potentially raise the per-gallon price of diesel by 59 cents and for gasoline, 47 cents, in 2025. Air board officials have since disavowed that estimate, writing last month that the analysis “should not be misconstrued as a prediction of the future credit price nor as a direct impact on prices at the pump.”

Oh, let's not "misconstrue" anything.  We just won't make any forecast.  Other estimates put the gas increase at 65 cents per gallon or higher.  Meanwhile over in EV world, where CARB would like to push all of us, the WSJ has a piece titled "The Withering Dream of a Cheap American Electric Car".  Tesla has backed-off building a $25,000 car and all the other, non-profitable car companies see no way to succeed making a cost-competitive version either.  The Lucid CEO notes

“That market is notorious because you get into mass manufacture—terrible, low margins,” he said of the low-price EVs. “To install the manufacturing base for millions of these units makes little sense to me.”

Abandoning the idea of a $25,000 car comes as a blow to those who were betting that the electrification of the automobile was on track to happen seemingly overnight—with EVs for every pocketbook replacing the tens of millions of vehicles on the roadways.

Get ready to pay more--probably a lot more--because 12 unelected, activist bureaucrats say so.  By the way, it pays well too for a part-time gig.  CARB Chair Liane Randolph is pulling down $278,876 in pay and benefits.  She's probably buying premium.

"Stove grabbers" get singed in Washington and Berkeley

The natural gas "stove grabbers" had a bad day on Election Day as Washington State passed Initiative 2066 by 3% and Berkeley gave a gas tax a big thumbs down.  Californian politicians like to say we lead the nation in implementing change, but perhaps Washington is leading this time around.  About the initiative, the WSJ noted before the election

Anthony Anton, CEO of the (Washington state) hospitality association, says 84% of the restaurateurs he represents rely on natural gas. Remodeling to go electric is a “massive cost at a time where operators just can’t afford it,” he says. Some say the quality of their product would suffer, as some cooking methods, such as stir-frying, are difficult to perform on lower-heat electrical stoves. Most of the association’s members are very small businesses with substantial debt from Covid lockdowns.

The building association worries the new energy code will raise the state’s already high housing costs, locking out potential buyers. The code requires that new buildings meet a certain environmental “score.” Without the points from an electric heat pump, a builder will have to make up the difference with other green measures that run between $15,000 and $20,000 in a single-family home. “Every time they raise the price $1,000, it prices out another 500 Washington families,” says Greg Lane, the association’s executive vice president.

The Washington State Tree Fruit Association is concerned about rising costs of refrigeration to keep produce fresh. A sudden power outage could be catastrophic for the state’s apple industry. Trade regulations for its top two export markets require that fruit be constantly refrigerated at a specific temperature for as long as 90 days.

The state’s cheapest energy plan would almost double electricity demand in Washington by 2050, putting an unprecedented strain on the grid.

The Seattle Times writes "Initiative 2066 adds provisions to state law that explicitly protect access to natural gas and ensure that local governments and the state’s energy code cannot “prohibit, penalize or discourage the use of gas.”"

And over in Berkeley, they had their own Measure GG which the Comicle notes is going down bigly at 70/30 opposed.  Per the Comicle:

Measure GG would assess a special tax on buildings of 15,000 square feet or more that use gas for heating or other purposes, with exceptions for single-family homes, residential buildings with at least 50% affordable units and government buildings.  The measure required a simple majority to pass, but as of Friday the opposition was winning 68% of votes, with 32% in favor.  The tax would amount to nearly $3 per therm, which is more than double typical natural gas retail prices from Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

There are so many Unintended Consequences and unseen-by-politicians costs to these poorly thought-out initiatives, but voters appear to be figuring some of them out and sending them down in flames.  Hopefully the new B'game city council will leave this issue in the off position.

Sleepless in B'game: The numbers are only part of the story

As we again reenter the ridiculousness of Standard Time tonight, the Merc has an article on sleep deprivation by county and towns in the Bay Area.  The headline has an Oakland ZIP code as the most sleep deprived, and the chart shows San Mateo County is the least sleep deprived county (i.e. averaging less than seven hours per night).  Solano County is the most sleep deprived at 38.1% and San Mateo County the least at 28.7%.

Pulling the covers back a bit, the San Mateo County figure is lulled by Portola Valley at 23.2%.  The other rural towns are also quieter and sleep more.  Dear old B'game is a little better than the county average at 26%, but that may include our shared ZIP code sister, H'borough.  I am skeptical about the metric because the duration of sleep is only part of the story.  When weather conditions are just right--meaning just wrong for sleep--the jet backblast from SFO take-offs may not fully wake you up, but you're not in REM either.  It might also be making us...a bit heavier than need be.

The "Fall back" is not as bad as the "Spring forward", but be careful out there as either change is associated with distracted driving, etc.  We all voted to stay on Daylight Savings time, but the Sacramento gang and Gavin haven't moved on making the change.  Add this to the "Sacramento Stupidity" category.