[NormsRevenge]

So that trade mission to China may have been more than to just a sell China on california products and services, eh?

[hedgetrimmer]

foreign funds may be arriving to help build the roads and rails of Southern California.

We poor second class American citizens can't even afford to build our own roads. /sarc

[hedgetrimmer]

California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Alan Lloyd will step down at the end of February.

Lloyd also co-chairs a task force with Sunne Wright McPeak, secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing, evaluating the governor's plan to triple goods movement across the state by 2020. Although environmentalists have been unhappy with the process and leery of possible concessions by state officials to industry, Lloyd said Schwarzenegger was making significant efforts to put more than $1 billion in bond money and permanent state funds into cleaning the air in local communities.

**

How is he planning to do this?

[hedgetrimmer]

FYI 'goods movement'

The issue came to a head in mid-December, when environmentalists on a task force set up to draft the governor's plans for speeding the movement of goods through California balked at certain port and highway expansion projects. They said those projects, which are likely to be included in the governor's proposed public works program, lacked adequate protections against increased air pollution from diesel-powered ships, trucks and trains.

"Southern California has the worst air pollution in the nation, and recent studies repeatedly have linked that pollution with illnesses and premature deaths," said Andrea Hricko, a task force member and associate professor of preventive medicine at the USC Keck School of Medicine. "Yet the main thrust of the Schwarzenegger transportation expansion plan is to build more freeways, larger ports and more rail yards. That is not how we protect public health."

...Sunne Wright McPeak, secretary of the state's Business, Transportation and Housing Agency and co-chair of the task force, defended the governor's approach. She said Schwarzenegger was committed to a 50% reduction in air pollution by 2020.

McPeak said the goods movement plan, to be finished in June, will call for "continuous and simultaneous improvement" in environmental quality and infrastructure.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-environment7jan07,0,7239169.story?coll=la-headlines-politics

[hedgetrimmer]

This appears to be part of the governor's "green freight" effort.
***
The Southern California Leadership Council believes the solution lies is what they call a “green freight” initiative — a self-reinforcing cycle of investment in trade growth and environmental improvement projects. They believe the way forward is to build support for a coordinated effort in which the public and private sectors will each pay only for those projects from which they derive tangible benefits. The state pays only for projects that make communities more livable, such as eliminating delays at rail crossings or reducing or eliminating diesel pollution along freeways. Meanwhile, the private-sector partners would focus investments on adding capacity and efficiency, and paying for any state-mandated environmental mitigation.