After basking in the media spotlight for his support of legislation to reduce global warming pollution, Governor Schwarzenegger has slipped back into an old role - forwarding an anti-environmental agenda under the guise of fixing California's troubled economy.

This time he's suggesting that the state reverse its position on offshore oil drilling in the hopes of bringing in new revenue. Specifically, the Governor has proposed taking the power to administer offshore oil leasing from the State Lands Commission and grant it to Schwarzenegger's Department of Finances to allow a project in Santa Barbara known as Tranquillion Ridge to move forward.

The State Lands Commission is composed of a three-member board made up of the Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, State Controller John Chiang, and Director of the Department of Finance, Michael Genest.

When the Commission voted to reject the Tranquillion Ridge proposal earlier this year, Genest was the only member to support the project.

The State Lands Commission has overseen the administration of offshore land leases since 1938. They've been a reliable environmental protector by effectively banning state oil drilling leases for 40 years, since the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969.

If the state is truly interested in finding new revenue from oil in California to relieve the state budget, we'd suggest the Governor and Legislature take at look at an oil severance charge. California is the only state in the union that allows oil companies to pump oil without paying this extraction charge. It's about time we get in line with the rest of the nation and help ourselves at out of this financial crisis - while protecting our irreplaceable environment and advancing public health.

For more, read Assemblymember Pedro Nava's statement condemning the Governor's decision and today's editorial by the San Francisco Chronicle.

ON A ROAD TO NO MORE: FEDS SAY DELTA WATER OPERATIONS JEOPARDIZING EXISTENCE OF SPECIES

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) concluded last week that the State Water Project (SWP) and Central Valley Project (CVP) must adjust their operations in order to avoid jeopardizing the existence of five threatened or endangered species:

*        Sacramento winter-run Chinook salmon

*        Central Valley spring-run Chinook salmon

*        Central Valley steelhead

*        Southern population of North American green sturgeon

*        Southern resident killer whales (affected by adverse impacts of water project operations on the killer whale's primary food sources)

NMFS's Biological Opinion provides a set of "reasonable and prudent alternatives" (RPAs) that water project operators must implement so that the SWP and CVP are operated in a way that is not expected to jeopardize species or damage their critical habitat. The RPAs require actions such as changing reservoir management to provide enough cold, moving water for salmon spawning and rearing; changing gate operations at Red Bluff Diversion Dam and the Delta Cross Channel to improve migration of salmon and green sturgeon; establishing flow requirements in Delta waterways to increase the survival rate of  the migrating young salmon; improving the screening facilities at the pumping plants to reduce fish mortality; and changing hatchery practices for steelhead. 

"The actions required by NMFS in this new opinion are a sort of 'minimum payment' necessary to forestall further species declines," notes PCL's Barb Byrne, "yet we all know that making just the minimum payments on a debt is an extremely slow road to financial stability. To truly emerge from our ecosystem debt, all users of Delta water supplies must aggressively seek opportunities to reduce their reliance on the Delta."

The Biological Opinion also addressed the ongoing Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) process:

"Finally, we note that the project agencies are currently developing and evaluating a plan to construct a diversion on the Sacramento River and a canal around the Delta, in the BDCP planning effort. Such a reconfiguration of the water conveyance system would take careful planning to avoid jeopardizing Sacramento River and north Delta species, as well as several years of environmental review and permitting, and would trigger a re-initiation of this Opinion. We expect that the collaborative research that is part of this RPA will inform this planning effort as it proceeds."

This suggests that the BDCP will not be completed by the end of 2010 as currently scheduled. It also highlights the need for the BDCP to expand its scope to include conservation measures in areas upstream of the Delta - a conclusion that's reinforced by the inclusion of several upstream actions in the Biological Opinion.

BUILDING CLIMATE-FRIENDLY COMMUNITIES: JOIN US IN PALO ALTO FOR ACTIVIST WORKSHOP

As part of our Local Climate Action Initiative, the Planning and Conservation League Foundation is partnering with the Sierra Club's Loma Prieta Chapter and Greenbelt Alliance to offer a workshop series on how to fight global warming through better land use and development decisions in your community.

Join us on Saturday, July 18th for a workshop on effective campaign planning and member recruitment, including in-depth consultation with campaign experts. We will be focusing on campaigns to incorporate climate-friendly development policies into local general plans and carbon-cutting green building ordinances in the Silicon Valley.

"Building, Organizing, and Planning for Cool Cities"

Saturday July 18th, 9:00am-12:00pm (registration begins at 8:30am)

Cubberley Community Center

4000 Middlefield Rd, Palo Alto

Free, RSVP Requested.

Want to host a Local Climate Action Initiative event in your community? Contact PCL's global warming program manager, Matt Vander Sluis.