Cool Movie Showing the Construction of a Wind Turbine

Just a little something different. I ran across this cool time lapsed video on YouTube of a wind turbine being constructed.

According to the video, it only took five days to build the One Megawatt Turbine.
PYCO 1 megawatt wind turbine. Construction from March 31, 2008 to April 4, 2008 in Lubbock Texas.

This video is copyright in whole or in part by PCCA.

Water Crisis Starting to Boil

In the last few days there have been some major developments with regards to water. The first article reports the Schwarzenegger Administration's position, the second is the "push back" by environmentalists and Democrats in the California Legislatures and the last one is a "grassroots" protest by farm workers negatively impacted by the drought.

• The first was that Lester Snow, California's water chief announced that he is worried that 2009 will be worse than this year. He said that two of the state's largest reservoirs are at less than forty percent capacity.
• The second is an article goes over the skepticism of the Governor's $9 billion water bond in the Legislature. Legislators first want to know why the new bond is needed, when voters approved billions of funds for water projects in 2006. Darrell Steinberg the incoming Senate President Pro Tem is quoted as saying:

  “But first we must address our immediate needs – fixing the Delta’s fragile eco-system, our deteriorating levees and our stressed water supply. Californians approved billions of dollars in 2006 to fix these and other problems. We owe it to voters to put these funds to work now.

In order for the ballot measure to make it to the voters it must pass a both houses by a two thirds majority. This will be difficult to get to the voters, if the Democrats, do not want this to pass.

• The final article is reports about a rally that was held at the Capitol Wednesday. About 300 farm workers came to tell the governor that they need water.
  
  Wednesday's rally was designed to give a human face to the state's water woes. At least 300 farm workers, most from the Valley's parched west side, marched and carried homemade signs declaring "agua es vida," or water is life, and "agua = trabajo," water equals work.

It is going to be interesting how this all plays it self out. There are around 150 days until election day. The major deadline will be August 16th when the approved measure must be sent to the Secretary of State, Deborah Bowen.

The Legislative Analyst's Office Released Analyses of November Ballot Propositions

The State of California's Legislative Analyst's Office released their analysis of the first twelve measures that are on November's Ballot. The analyses can be found here.

The measures that are of interest are only public works related measures:

Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century. SB 1856 (Ch. 697, 2002) Costa.
November 4, 2008 Proposition 1
HTML PDF Summary

Children’s Hospital Bond Act. Grant Program. Statute.
November 4, 2008 Proposition 3
HTML PDF Summary

Renewable Energy. Statute.
November 4, 2008 Proposition 7
HTML PDF Summary


More information about the LAO.

The Legislative Analyst's Office has been providing fiscal and policy advice to the Legislature for more than 65 years. It is known for its fiscal and programmatic expertise and nonpartisan analyses of the state budget. The office serves as the "eyes and ears" for the Legislature to ensure that the executive branch is implementing legislative policy in a cost efficient and effective manner.

The LAO is overseen by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC), a 16-member bipartisan committee. The office currently has a staff of 43 analysts and approximately 13 support staff. The analytical staff is divided into ten subject areas: Criminal Justice, Economics, Revenues, and Taxation, K-12 Education, Higher Education, Health, Local Government, Resources and Environmental Protection, Social Services, State Administration, and Transportation, Business, and Housing.

Restore the Delta Challenges Public Policy Institute's Report Supporting Peripheral Canal

OK, so more on the fight on the canal. The PPIC released a study which supported building a peripheral canal. But for every action there is an equal reaction. In the spirit of fairness I want to post the opponents answer to the report. The opponents of the Peripheral Canal came out swinging. This issue from their perspective is that the canal will damage the environment and will only send water south. The full report can be found here.

Dan Bancher penned the following reply:

Restore the Delta, a Delta-based coalition including Delta farmers, environmentalists, fishermen, business leaders, the faith community, recreation enthusiasts, and everyday folks today issued a statement calling into question many of the findings in the Public Policy Institute’s "Comparing Futures for the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta", a report calling for a peripheral canal.

Building a peripheral canal like the one that Senator Dianne Feinstein and Governor Arnold "Fish Terminator," the worst ever Governor for fish and the environment in California history, are pushing for, will only make the dramatic declines of Central Valley chinook salmon, steelhead, delta smelt, longfin smelt, striped bass and other fish species even worse. There are no examples in U.S. history that I know of where the construction of a canal resulted in increased flows for fish and wildlife.

Make no mistake about it: the Delta's problem is not that it lacks a canal. The problem is that its water is over allocated, much of it to toxic land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley that should have never been put into agricultural production. To restore Central Valley chinook salmon and California Delta fish species, more water must be allowed to flow NATURALLY through the Delta, not less.

This November is going to be a lively one.

Building Trades Initiate Massive Safety Training in Las Vegas

A few weeks ago, I posted a few stories about accidents that plagued the MGM's City Walk construction site and it looks like the Building and Construction Trades are keeping their promise to make the job site safer.

According to the BCTD website, the Trades and the the Center for Construction Research and Training are starting to roll out the safety program.

The training program involves a rotation schedule for both sites, and all workers on each site are required to go through the 10-hour OSHA safety program over two days, 5 hours per day. Thus far, over 500 workers have received the OSHA-10 training, and now that new training facilities have been provided at City Center, we will be training approximately 350 workers per week until all workers at both sites have been trained. We estimate that over 5,000 workers will go through the training.

This seems pretty comprehensive. I hope that these steps protect workers on the job.

Another Article about the Peripheral Canal

I found this article yesterday by Daniel Weintrab of the Sacramento Bee. It jokes that discussions of the are going to stop being the topics of experts and "wonks" and become more common. I hope so, but I'd bet a dollar to doughnuts against that ever happening. Back to the article. So the article does a good job of breaking down the how important the delta is to nature and to millions of Californians.

Below are some of the key points in the article.

The Delta is in crisis, and that crisis could undermine the water supply for Southern California and the Silicon Valley, and curtail agriculture in the southern San Joaquin Valley, doing damage to the state's economy and potentially making ghost towns out of many farming communities. The end of the Delta as we know it might come slowly, or it could come overnight, from a major natural disaster. But it is coming.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is part of the largest estuary on the West Coast. More than 50 species of fish and 300 species of birds, mammals and wildlife have tried to make it their home.

The Delta also serves as a transfer point for the state's water supply. Snowmelt from the Cascades and the Sierra drains into the Sacramento River and flows into the Delta at its northern edge. Pumps at the southern end of the Delta then suck water out and send it to the Bay Area and Southern California, serving two-thirds of the state's residents and millions of acres of farmland.

Although this will not be a "water cooler" conversation, this will be a big fight on the ballot and the proponents need to be sure that history does not repeat itself. In 1982 there was an initiative that asked voters for a "Peripheral Canal" similar to this year. It went down in flames and every county north of Kern County opposing it by more than 70 percent. A link to the map can be found here.