Air rules target Valley sprawl

Fresno Bee ^ | 12-12-2005 | Mark Grossi

[Amerigomag]

The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District is scheduled Thursday to possibly approve nationally unprecedented air fees on city sprawl — new houses, shopping centers and office space. The rules would force builders of new homes, businesses and commercial buildings to make air-quality-friendly developments or ante up fees for pollution coming from the additional traffic. This time, it is not just environmentalists versus an industry, namely builders. Farmers, who are also on the hook for the new air cleanup rules, say it's time for builders to do their part.

But the point is that all homeowners — not just new ones — should be paying, says Robert J. Keenan, executive vice president of the Building Industry Association of Tulare/Kings Counties Inc. "It's not fair to make new home buyers responsible for cleaning up the air," he says. "Why not divide the cost among all homeowners? Then it's not a hardship."

In other parts of the state and the country, agencies have talked about regulating pollution from sprawl, but no one has passed such far-reaching rules with fees. National and state building industry lobbies are watching the rule proposals closely because other air districts will be obliged to look at similar strategies if the regulations are adopted in the Valley.

Though builders two years ago said they would cooperate in the rule process, they now campaign intensely against the idea. Representatives say the district's proposal could amass $225 million in fees from homes by 2010, also apply to shopping centers and many other business places generating fees that could amount to $450 million in the next five years from commercial and industrial development and might inhibit job creation by driving companies away from the Valley .

[Amerigomag]

The San Joaquin Valley is a structural trough with only one, barrier-free entrance for clean northwesterly wind; the San Francisco Bay. Winds exiting the San Joaquin Valley are funnelled to its southern terminus and then forced over the low lying Tehachapi Mountains by the substantial geographic barrier of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Pollution from the San Francisco Bay area and upper San Joaquin Valley is concentrated in Kern County before being diluted by upper level winds and dumped in the high deserts of California. The San Joaquin Valley holds the poltential to be one of the dirtiest air basins in the world as the population of California is forced from the coast by gentrification into the southern half of California's great central valley.

[Carry_Okie]

The San Joaquin Valley holds the poltential to be one of the dirtiest air basins in the world as the population of California is forced from the coast by gentrification into the southern half of California's great central valley.

Let's see:

1. LA is full, and an armpit.
2. San Diego is full.
3. The Coast Ranges are geologically unstable and subject to earthquakes.
4. The Bay Area is full.
5. The Central Valley is flat, but it's a critical air basin (but of course, who cares about the value of farmland when we can import tainted food from Mexico).
6. Siskiyou, Modoc, and Yuba are mountainous and Federal as are the Sierra Nevada. Resorts and retirement for rich folks.
7. The desert doesn't have water.

Looks like it's either Sustained Development in the Central Valley with their "betters" in the foothills, which Arnold just tied up with the Conservancy, OR the desert (which DiFi tied up with the Desert Protection Act). My guess it's both, with the water coming from former valley farmers.

[stboz]

I got an idea! Let's just move Alaska south!

See? It's simple! < /moonbat>

[taxesareforever]

We the people are just rolling over and allowing these unelected bureaucrats to force their agenda on us. We can't even vote them out of office. It is despicable and unconstitutional. Some day, yes, some day the people will finally have had their fill and then it will turn ugly.

[sheana]

I have already been pi**ed about the San Joaquin Valley Air Board. I live in Kern County. What they fail to mention in this article is that last year the SJVAB added a $1 "fee" to every vehicles registration in the valley. The bast*rds are looking for revenue again!
Thank God we are leaving in '06, I can't stand it anymore!
The county is turning into a Mexican barrio anyway.

[SierraWasp]

That about sums it up, there Carry_Okie!!!

I had to laugh at "their betters in the Foothills."

[dk/coro]

Okie -- another option, kind sir: Haul ass from Kalifornia and relocate on the Parkway in Bullhead City -- just 12 minutes in very light traffic from my poker-playing buddies at the Flamingo Laughlin. Worked for us. *S*

Sorry to ruin your Christmas. Just a thought. *S*

[SierraWasp]

Oh! Oh! Oh! WAIT!!! You forgot "Infill Development!" And what about anthill development and affordable housing for all the newly mortgaged "undocumented workers?" (BARF!)

[Carry_Okie]

Okie -- another option, kind sir:

Thank you, but a fifth generation Californian here.

No, sir. I'm not conceding the good real estate to the left.

[Amerigomag]

As many on this board have surmised these regulations are simply another revenue stream/scheme, fronted by the myth of environmental friendliness, required to share in the spoils of federal taxation and having nothing whatsoever to do with pollution, the environment or the San Joaquin Valley.

These regulations are being drummed up by a woefully mismanaged state to meet the needs of far flung, General Fund spending. They are being offered in the finest, regulatory tradition and logic that demanded the installation of water meters in Sacramento and Fresno to obtain Colorado River water for metropolitan San Diego.

[SierraWasp]

Oh Ho!!! I always love it when I find someone else who understands the nuances of CA water politics!!! CA water politics is a whole different ballgame from regular CA politics and the two weave in and out and around each other from time to time.

Many times regular politics and politicians can be virtually 'swept away' by water politics before they even know what hit 'em!!! The "GovernMental EnvironMental Comyoonutty" have totally infested this multi-level CA chess game to the max!!!

Sacramento's SMUD has so badly screwed their sierran neighbors to the east that we would normally be ashamed of ourselves, but with the "Cows Don't Vote" decision and a lot of crooked dealings, they've gotten so much of our water that they have written into their city charter that they will NEVER have water meters!!!

Now they are finally having to bend rather than break!!!

[Porterville]

Give me the centeral coast...... Long Live SLO County and all the wealth inbetween.

[dk/coro]

I hear you...and I have a deep love for Coronado...the real-life birthplace of Naval Air.

But, we are in our late 70's...and had to get to a dryer clime. **S**

As an aside, BHC really does work for us; and the lack of automobile traffic is a welcome change.

Merry Christmas to all my fellow freepers.

[Amerigomag]

In my neck of the woods an early California explorer happened upon the Kings River during the springs floods and reported back to his superior, John Fremont, that the river was navigable from San Francisco to the foot of the Sierras.

Little did this now American legend realize that his snap judgment would save many future generations of California land owners along that river, including my great grandfather in 1897, the burden of state intervention bringing consequent, confiscatory taxation and overreaching regulation.

Bless Kit Carson.

[Amerigomag]

Long Live SLO County

Indeed it will.

God blessed SLO County with relative isolation and little water. The Spanish help by issuing huge land grants freely in a seemingly agriculturally worthless, isolated area. Those original grants translated into large, single owner parcels that survived into the mid 20th century. What God, the Spanish and early land barons started the greens finished by locking up most of that county to development.