Cities are for people. Unfortunately, they are rarely designed for people. It is usually apparent that those in power--and those designing cities and putting up signs--are not thinking like pedestrians. No wonder it is hard to get people out of their cars--people keep designing places for cars and not people. See my previous post about this.
On Tuesday, I walked from Emeryville to Oakland. As I approached a bridge that clearly had no sidewalks, I began looking for alternatives. The expected "no pedestrians on bridge" sign was very clear, and included an apparently helpful "use walkway" directive. As I got to the sign, there was no indication of what direction the "walkway" would be in, and no obvious place for pedestrians to go. So I walked across the parking lot of a private business, and reached another street that had sidewalks, although not exactly going in the direction I was hoping for. After going down that street a ways, I crossed it, and walked on the other side, eventually reaching a walkway that ramped up next to a wall and dead-ended at a locked maintenance entrance of a large building. No signs had indicated this sidewalk would dead-end at a private business with a locked door. I guess no one unfamiliar with the area ever walks there. I walked back to the intersection, went around the wall into the street, and walked down the bike lane for a block or so until a sidewalk resumed.
On Thursday, I was part of a group of young children, parents, and teachers that were walking from Redwood Glen Camp in Loma Mar to Memorial Park. We wanted to walk to the Mt. Ellen Trail through a campground that was closed for repaving, but since many in the group had walked through the campground the previous day, and since we weren't trying to camp there, we assumed it was okay as long as we stayed out of the way of the workers and off the fresh asphalt.
A short walk on a trail past the closed sign led us to a campground loop, with a San Mateo County Park Ranger vehicle parked on the freshly paved asphalt at a water treatment building. Our leader walked over to the ranger, telling him we were trying to get to the Mt. Ellen Trail. The ranger, clearly not happy that we were there, told us that closed means closed, and began to say "You need to get back in your cars and..."
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
LVVFD Calls: My first fire call
I finally let my EMT certification expire last year after 20 years. In honor of that, and my 15 years on the Lee Vining Volunteer Fire Department (1995-2011), I'm going to blog about some old fire calls. Being on a volunteer fire department was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done--I highly recommend it if you ever get the chance. I wanted to write a book, but someone already wrote an excellent book that a few of us passed around when it came out (Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time). Some names may be changed.
December 27, 1995, just after 4pm
I was sleeping. I was tired after walking in the snow down to Mono Lake with my sister, and we had just finished lunch and the woodstove had made it pretty warm inside the Mono Lake Committee intern house.
The siren had reached its peak by the time I roused myself and got moving. I grabbed my jacket and put on my shoes, and went into the garage to get my bike. By now the siren was wailing for a second time, and it was quiet when I got out the door and rode up the driveway. I rode into the fire station just as Stewart was firing up the number 3 "squad" fire truck. He was the only one there. I leaned my bike against the wall, walked over to Stewart, and yelled "what's up?" over the roar of the engine.
He asked if I saw anyone else coming, and I said no. He yelled to me to get my turnouts on. I ran over to the wall where the turnouts were hung, took off my jacket and shoes, and put on my boots and pants. I grabbed my jacket and helmet and went over to the passenger side of the truck. By now Grif had arrived, and asked Stewart if he knew how to pump water with this truck. Stewart replied no. They grabbed their turnouts, Grif drove, and I was in the middle.
Grif had our lights flashing as we headed north out of Lee Vining on Highway 395. Whenever he came up behind a car, he gave the siren a short wail. We were providing assistance to Mineral County, Nevada, on a car fire 9 miles into Nevada on Highway 167. Apparently one other firefighter had already headed out ahead of us in his own car.
Stewart solemnly said, "I hope we don't have any crispy critters. I don't need to see any more of those." It seemed slightly morbid, and at the same time slightly funny. But more morbid than funny. I later learned that Lee Vining Fire had recently lost one of its own in a car fire on Highway 120 East.
Grif used the radio to ask that we be notified if we weren't needed, since it was such a long drive. The firefighter ahead of us also said he'd let us know once he got there.
Once we reached Highway 167, the dispatcher told us to cancel our response. We turned around, and wondered why we were called, since we were just as far (if not slightly farther) than Hawthorne, Nevada. They must have been short-staffed too.
Grif talked about other car fires, and about how fast they happen and how if you aren't near a town, your car will probably be totaled. I resolved to buy a fire extinguisher for my car. It would suck to be trapped in a car and be burned alive, but with a fire extinguisher you could at least keep yourself and the inside of the car from burning.
We got back to the station, and Grif showed Stewart how to pump from that truck. Stewart told me about the last car fire they had--a firefighter died when his van burned up. I returned home, and was glad that I had joined the fire department, since it looked like I was needed. Only four people showed up. And this was the only day this week that I was going to be home.
December 27, 1995, just after 4pm
I was sleeping. I was tired after walking in the snow down to Mono Lake with my sister, and we had just finished lunch and the woodstove had made it pretty warm inside the Mono Lake Committee intern house.
The siren had reached its peak by the time I roused myself and got moving. I grabbed my jacket and put on my shoes, and went into the garage to get my bike. By now the siren was wailing for a second time, and it was quiet when I got out the door and rode up the driveway. I rode into the fire station just as Stewart was firing up the number 3 "squad" fire truck. He was the only one there. I leaned my bike against the wall, walked over to Stewart, and yelled "what's up?" over the roar of the engine.
He asked if I saw anyone else coming, and I said no. He yelled to me to get my turnouts on. I ran over to the wall where the turnouts were hung, took off my jacket and shoes, and put on my boots and pants. I grabbed my jacket and helmet and went over to the passenger side of the truck. By now Grif had arrived, and asked Stewart if he knew how to pump water with this truck. Stewart replied no. They grabbed their turnouts, Grif drove, and I was in the middle.
Grif had our lights flashing as we headed north out of Lee Vining on Highway 395. Whenever he came up behind a car, he gave the siren a short wail. We were providing assistance to Mineral County, Nevada, on a car fire 9 miles into Nevada on Highway 167. Apparently one other firefighter had already headed out ahead of us in his own car.
Stewart solemnly said, "I hope we don't have any crispy critters. I don't need to see any more of those." It seemed slightly morbid, and at the same time slightly funny. But more morbid than funny. I later learned that Lee Vining Fire had recently lost one of its own in a car fire on Highway 120 East.
Grif used the radio to ask that we be notified if we weren't needed, since it was such a long drive. The firefighter ahead of us also said he'd let us know once he got there.
Once we reached Highway 167, the dispatcher told us to cancel our response. We turned around, and wondered why we were called, since we were just as far (if not slightly farther) than Hawthorne, Nevada. They must have been short-staffed too.
Grif talked about other car fires, and about how fast they happen and how if you aren't near a town, your car will probably be totaled. I resolved to buy a fire extinguisher for my car. It would suck to be trapped in a car and be burned alive, but with a fire extinguisher you could at least keep yourself and the inside of the car from burning.
We got back to the station, and Grif showed Stewart how to pump from that truck. Stewart told me about the last car fire they had--a firefighter died when his van burned up. I returned home, and was glad that I had joined the fire department, since it looked like I was needed. Only four people showed up. And this was the only day this week that I was going to be home.
Update: as of 6/7/24 I'm removing the rest of the fire calls from this blog. They are sort of an overpowering tangent from what this blog is about and take a while to scroll past. And this way AI can't get them.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
The Ten Policy Solutions in the New Mark Arax Book
I just finished the big book (The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California) yesterday. And what a book it is, in size (528 pages) and in quality. I even read the first fifty pages to my son, but stopped because at the end of the school year he became a reader on his own, spending long periods devouring age-appropriate books. When I saw that, I knew I had to press on without him. He was a cheerleader all the way.
We saw Mark Arax at Book Passage in Corte Madera on Thursday night. We both loved it. For me, Arax is an inspiration for what I aspire to do--write a book about my dad, while weaving in and out of California history. Mark's storytelling strikes exactly the tone I'm going for--tell it like it is (or was), with a sense of humor and poetry, and connecting all the dots. For a book about water, he usually doesn't come off preachy. He is an observer of people and people's habits and actions, and draws logical conclusions that almost any reasonable person (who cares about good public policy and natural resources management) would agree with. He doesn't pull any punches, except when he treats Delta farmers with kid gloves, who are farming just as unsustainably as the San Joaquin Valley farmers. But he does briefly acknowledge that, and I don't want to be too critical, since in Corte Madera he said that it is hard to write a book about water because it makes everyone mad at you. Let's not make the perfect be the enemy of the good. Overall, I think he nailed it.
The end of the book is spectacular. Everyone should read the last chapter and the epilogue. He sums up the choices facing California in a nutshell.
I agree with 8 of his ten solutions, all of which I paraphrase here:
1. Thin Sierra Nevada forests to reduce wildfire intensity and improve retention of water
2. Stop building more dams and store water in the reservoirs we already have underground
3. Restrict groundwater pumping to safe yields
4. Retire 2 million acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland, move mega-dairies to cooler climates, and only irrigate the best soils
5. Build a scaled-down twin tunnels, flood the Yolo Bypass more often, and send a just amount of water to the Estuary
6. Remove obstacles to water marketing, and prohibit water transfers from farms to cities
7. Use urban limits to protect farming and let the state government limit growth
8. Build ocean desal plants with state bond funds
9. Tax users of water and farm chemicals and use the funds to build and maintain water treatment plants
10. Continue statewide conservation measures that encourage residents to cut their water use.
Can you guess which two I disagree with? Which two are the most "business as usual," using new expensive concrete and steel water projects as the silver bullet that will solve our water problems? Yes, that's right, numbers 5 & 8.
Number 5--build a scaled-down twin tunnels--is tricky. New water projects, if operated properly, often can be designed to have positive benefits and minimal impacts. And the smaller the better--a balance is harder to achieve the bigger and more expensive the project. I'd amend that one to go back to a process more like BDCP (Bay Delta Conservation Plan) in its initial stages, and look at the Delta and plan the best projects in a comprehensive, unbiased, science-driven way. That may end up looking like a scaled-down twin tunnels, but it is presumptuous to make that a foregone conclusion. There are a lot of problems and a lot of ideas out there, and we need to move quickly and invest in the right things. Massive billion-dollar projects are probably not the answer. But a prerequisite to this is getting the Water Board to finish its work updating the Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan. The lack of adequate flows is killing the native beneficial ecosystem and generating uncertainty, which is encouraging water agencies to submit completely inadequate voluntary agreements that are a distraction and time delay. The Water Board needs to do its job quickly so we all can move on. Voluntary agreements will never work in this context (what if we tried voluntary agreements to stop groundwater mining? that wouldn't have worked either)--we just need a strong regulator to do its job.
Number 8--build ocean desal plants--is more of the same approach that has already failed us: Reaching out to new expensive supplies, paid for by state taxpayers. In the book, Mark Arax even says "imagine California with an unlimited water supply". Well, I can--I grew up in L.A.--and to make a long story short, we are making more and more parts of California places people don't want to live because so many people want to live there. Turning energy into an unlimited water supply is not the answer. The entire book chronicles the pitfalls of the approach of feeding unlimited growth with more and more water. We have already destroyed too much of California using that approach. The silver bullet solutions, while enticing, are never the best answer. The best approach is usually more complex, requiring a portfolio approach that doesn't fit well into a soundbite.
We saw Mark Arax at Book Passage in Corte Madera on Thursday night. We both loved it. For me, Arax is an inspiration for what I aspire to do--write a book about my dad, while weaving in and out of California history. Mark's storytelling strikes exactly the tone I'm going for--tell it like it is (or was), with a sense of humor and poetry, and connecting all the dots. For a book about water, he usually doesn't come off preachy. He is an observer of people and people's habits and actions, and draws logical conclusions that almost any reasonable person (who cares about good public policy and natural resources management) would agree with. He doesn't pull any punches, except when he treats Delta farmers with kid gloves, who are farming just as unsustainably as the San Joaquin Valley farmers. But he does briefly acknowledge that, and I don't want to be too critical, since in Corte Madera he said that it is hard to write a book about water because it makes everyone mad at you. Let's not make the perfect be the enemy of the good. Overall, I think he nailed it.
The end of the book is spectacular. Everyone should read the last chapter and the epilogue. He sums up the choices facing California in a nutshell.
I agree with 8 of his ten solutions, all of which I paraphrase here:
1. Thin Sierra Nevada forests to reduce wildfire intensity and improve retention of water
2. Stop building more dams and store water in the reservoirs we already have underground
3. Restrict groundwater pumping to safe yields
4. Retire 2 million acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland, move mega-dairies to cooler climates, and only irrigate the best soils
5. Build a scaled-down twin tunnels, flood the Yolo Bypass more often, and send a just amount of water to the Estuary
6. Remove obstacles to water marketing, and prohibit water transfers from farms to cities
7. Use urban limits to protect farming and let the state government limit growth
8. Build ocean desal plants with state bond funds
9. Tax users of water and farm chemicals and use the funds to build and maintain water treatment plants
10. Continue statewide conservation measures that encourage residents to cut their water use.
Can you guess which two I disagree with? Which two are the most "business as usual," using new expensive concrete and steel water projects as the silver bullet that will solve our water problems? Yes, that's right, numbers 5 & 8.
Number 5--build a scaled-down twin tunnels--is tricky. New water projects, if operated properly, often can be designed to have positive benefits and minimal impacts. And the smaller the better--a balance is harder to achieve the bigger and more expensive the project. I'd amend that one to go back to a process more like BDCP (Bay Delta Conservation Plan) in its initial stages, and look at the Delta and plan the best projects in a comprehensive, unbiased, science-driven way. That may end up looking like a scaled-down twin tunnels, but it is presumptuous to make that a foregone conclusion. There are a lot of problems and a lot of ideas out there, and we need to move quickly and invest in the right things. Massive billion-dollar projects are probably not the answer. But a prerequisite to this is getting the Water Board to finish its work updating the Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan. The lack of adequate flows is killing the native beneficial ecosystem and generating uncertainty, which is encouraging water agencies to submit completely inadequate voluntary agreements that are a distraction and time delay. The Water Board needs to do its job quickly so we all can move on. Voluntary agreements will never work in this context (what if we tried voluntary agreements to stop groundwater mining? that wouldn't have worked either)--we just need a strong regulator to do its job.
Number 8--build ocean desal plants--is more of the same approach that has already failed us: Reaching out to new expensive supplies, paid for by state taxpayers. In the book, Mark Arax even says "imagine California with an unlimited water supply". Well, I can--I grew up in L.A.--and to make a long story short, we are making more and more parts of California places people don't want to live because so many people want to live there. Turning energy into an unlimited water supply is not the answer. The entire book chronicles the pitfalls of the approach of feeding unlimited growth with more and more water. We have already destroyed too much of California using that approach. The silver bullet solutions, while enticing, are never the best answer. The best approach is usually more complex, requiring a portfolio approach that doesn't fit well into a soundbite.
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Governor Newsom: Time to enforce the law
It's the wild west out there. It feels like no one is protecting the health, safety, and welfare of Californians.
Governor Newsom's administration is holding "listening sessions" about how to improve California water management. How about starting by simply enforcing our laws?
If the governor suddenly started enforcing the speed limit, you can imagine the outcry from speeders. But there would be a cultural shift. Not to mention a safer, more organized transportation system. People would get used to it. Obeying the law would get easier, especially when people see the decline in accidents and deaths. Take away driver's licenses from dangerous drivers and beef up public transit.
California's water and environmental laws are enforced just about as effectively as the speed limit. So which laws should we start enforcing?
Governor Newsom's administration is holding "listening sessions" about how to improve California water management. How about starting by simply enforcing our laws?
If the governor suddenly started enforcing the speed limit, you can imagine the outcry from speeders. But there would be a cultural shift. Not to mention a safer, more organized transportation system. People would get used to it. Obeying the law would get easier, especially when people see the decline in accidents and deaths. Take away driver's licenses from dangerous drivers and beef up public transit.
California's water and environmental laws are enforced just about as effectively as the speed limit. So which laws should we start enforcing?
Saturday, May 11, 2019
Rime Ice Rivers: How many ways can water flow down a mountain?
Two years ago, I joined a couple of friends on a climbing trip to Mount Shasta. We failed to summit due to high early morning winds, and turned around at sunrise when we noticed no climbers above us were advancing to the windblown ridge. On the way down, we encountered incredibly beautiful rime ice rivers, coursing down the steepest part of the route, pushed by the incessant downslope wind.
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| Rime ice coating the rocks the day before. |
Friday, March 8, 2019
125 years ago L.A.'s first outfall sewer system was completed
125 years ago, on March 9, 1894, the City of Los Angeles opened its "great drain," according to the March 10, 1894 Los Angeles Herald. This historical event is interesting to look back upon due to the current news that L.A. is on track to recycle 100 percent of its wastewater by 2035--141 years after the outfall sewer came online. The required improvements at Hyperion will cost $2 billion over the next 16 years.
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| Los Angeles Herald, March 10, 1894 |
Sunday, February 24, 2019
We don't need a Green New Deal. What we need is World War III on carbon.
The term "Green New Deal" invokes images of a U.S.-only social welfare and jobs program. Entitlements to those who didn't get a fair shake. That isn't going to engender bipartisan support, and it isn't exactly what we need right now.
What we need is World War III.
World War II transformed our nation and the world, and united everyone against a common global enemy. We mobilized, fought, and won World War II in far less than ten years.
I know, "The War on..." (fill-in-the-blank: drugs, poverty, crime, etc.) is cliche. That overused term--implying a U.S.-only national mobilization--is not what we need. But the imagery and momentum of a war is useful. Look at all the Senators who couldn't keep themselves from voting for the War in Iraq. Spineless sheep who care only about money and power--many of whom are currently holding up humanity's efforts to stop Global Warming and save our only home--will go along with a just war that has popular support. And if those in power continue to thwart the will of the people, then our federal government would continue to be the global bad actor that an allied world along with a local resistance would continue to mobilize against to save humanity from a horrible future. Californias of the world vs. the Trumps of the world. Kids of the world vs. the Feinsteins of the world.
What tactics will win this war? We need to focus on shutting off the supply of carbon-based fuels, not just the demand or the pollution they cause. As we know in California, you can't force water conservation in a wet year--you need a drought to motivate the masses. Steadily shutting down the world's carbon mining on a well-publicized schedule (i.e. cap and trade with a slowly decreasing cap), starting with the largest and dirtiest operations, would give businesses certainty and let market prices do the work of shifting demand to alternative fuels and sparking innovation. Carbon taxes would work in tandem to decrease demand and could be used to ameliorate the pain of transition. Then focus enforcement efforts on the black market, as well as maintaining a well-respected accounting system for the small amount of carbon mining, use, and sequestration that is sustainable and permissible.
This war can be won and ended quickly, unlike the war in Afghanistan. Maybe we would need joint strike teams to continue to shut down rogue oil and gas drilling and coal mining operations. But the "war" would happen quickly and be over in less than a decade.
What we need is World War III.
World War II transformed our nation and the world, and united everyone against a common global enemy. We mobilized, fought, and won World War II in far less than ten years.
I know, "The War on..." (fill-in-the-blank: drugs, poverty, crime, etc.) is cliche. That overused term--implying a U.S.-only national mobilization--is not what we need. But the imagery and momentum of a war is useful. Look at all the Senators who couldn't keep themselves from voting for the War in Iraq. Spineless sheep who care only about money and power--many of whom are currently holding up humanity's efforts to stop Global Warming and save our only home--will go along with a just war that has popular support. And if those in power continue to thwart the will of the people, then our federal government would continue to be the global bad actor that an allied world along with a local resistance would continue to mobilize against to save humanity from a horrible future. Californias of the world vs. the Trumps of the world. Kids of the world vs. the Feinsteins of the world.
What tactics will win this war? We need to focus on shutting off the supply of carbon-based fuels, not just the demand or the pollution they cause. As we know in California, you can't force water conservation in a wet year--you need a drought to motivate the masses. Steadily shutting down the world's carbon mining on a well-publicized schedule (i.e. cap and trade with a slowly decreasing cap), starting with the largest and dirtiest operations, would give businesses certainty and let market prices do the work of shifting demand to alternative fuels and sparking innovation. Carbon taxes would work in tandem to decrease demand and could be used to ameliorate the pain of transition. Then focus enforcement efforts on the black market, as well as maintaining a well-respected accounting system for the small amount of carbon mining, use, and sequestration that is sustainable and permissible.
This war can be won and ended quickly, unlike the war in Afghanistan. Maybe we would need joint strike teams to continue to shut down rogue oil and gas drilling and coal mining operations. But the "war" would happen quickly and be over in less than a decade.
Thursday, January 17, 2019
January 6th and 16th storms compared
The weekend of January 5-6, 2019 was a very wet one, and San Geronimo Creek reached 1,000 cfs for the first time since February 2017. 2018's peak flow was 753 cfs in March.
About a week and a half later, on January 16, 2019, there was another big storm--more well-advertised than the first, and windier, but not necessarily wetter. The storms were similar in many ways, but San Geronimo Creek peaked higher during the second storm, at 1,304 cfs.
The graphs show the different patterns of rainfall and creek flow. The January 6th peak was broader, with a longer duration at high flows (over 400 cfs), however the January 16th peak had a longer duration at about 200 cfs. The antecedent conditions were wetter on the 16th--36 cfs 16 hours before the peak, vs. only 7 cfs 16 hours before the Jan 6th peak.
How do the total volumes compare? The typical pattern in San Geronimo Valley is for the Woodacre precipitation station (to the east) to be wetter than Mt. Barnabe (to the west), and that pattern held on the 6th. It was reversed on the 16th--Barnabe was wetter than Woodacre. Although the volume of runoff during the 16 hours prior to the peak was only 3% higher on the 16th, the magnitude of the peak flow on the 16th was 23% higher than on the 6th. The table below shows well how similar the storms were. Note the 6th was wetter in Woodacre, and the 16th was wetter on Mt. Barnabe.
About a week and a half later, on January 16, 2019, there was another big storm--more well-advertised than the first, and windier, but not necessarily wetter. The storms were similar in many ways, but San Geronimo Creek peaked higher during the second storm, at 1,304 cfs.
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| Jan 6th storm, with day.hour on the x-axis. |
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| Jan 16th storm, using the same day.hour as the Jan 6th storm, lining up both peak flows between hours 17 and 18 on day 2. The Jan 6th peak was at 5:30 pm and the Jan 16th peak was at 9:15 pm. |
How do the total volumes compare? The typical pattern in San Geronimo Valley is for the Woodacre precipitation station (to the east) to be wetter than Mt. Barnabe (to the west), and that pattern held on the 6th. It was reversed on the 16th--Barnabe was wetter than Woodacre. Although the volume of runoff during the 16 hours prior to the peak was only 3% higher on the 16th, the magnitude of the peak flow on the 16th was 23% higher than on the 6th. The table below shows well how similar the storms were. Note the 6th was wetter in Woodacre, and the 16th was wetter on Mt. Barnabe.
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