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Gov. Schwarzenegger highlighted job creation at the groundbreaking of the new, state-of-the-art SKECHERS North American Operations Headquarters. The SKECHERS facility will create 1,100 construction jobs and 3,000 permanent jobs in the local area.
Tags: ca, California, Governor, Humboldt, job, Local, Sacramento, schwartzenegger
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Even the worst case scenario for North Coast ocean sport fishermen this year appears to be substantially better than last year’s token fishery. At the same time, commercial salmon fishermen — having struggled with several recent years of
Tags: ca, coast, fishing, Humboldt, Humboldt County, Humboldt County News, Local, Sacramento, Salmon
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Governor Schwarzenegger announced that California will join forces with Microsoft to provide free technology training to thousands of Californians through Elevate America, Microsoft’s innovative program to enhance the technical job skills of individuals across the country.
Tags: ca, California, Governor, Humboldt, job, Sacramento, schwartzenegger
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California’s counties are losing guarantees of state funding for transportation and conservation but remain on the hook to pay for road projects and land tax agreements, a Humboldt County legislative advocate told the Board of Supervisors
Tags: ca, California, Humboldt, Humboldt County, Humboldt County News, Local, Sacramento
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Linda Holm, park ranger for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, squirts dye to simulate an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay. More than 150,000 people a year visit the 145,000-square-foot Bay Model in Sausalito, a hydrologically precise scaled working replica of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the San Francisco Bay. mcrisostomo@sacbee.com
A scaled representation of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta waterways leading to Suisun Bay can be seen at the Bay Model – a three-dimensional mock-up that can simulate tides, currents and river inflows.
SAUSALITO – It stands as a monument to the days before supercomputing when engineers wearing pocket protectors had to be able to do math – serious math – in their heads and on the fly.
Tucked into a sprawling World War II-era shipbuilding warehouse in a corner of this North Bay town is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Bay Model.
The hydrologically precise scaled working replica of the entire San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Delta takes a first-time visitor’s breath away – just as it has since it first opened in 1957.
Corps Ranger Linda Holm said the site was used as a research facility from 1958 through 2000 to measure and evaluate the freshwater and saltwater circulation characteristics of the bay, the Delta and its tributaries. While the hard science officially ended there in 2000, the corps decided to keep the site open.
Now more than 150,000 students of all ages annually tour the model for a chance to see the entire bay and Delta with one sweep of their eyes.
“It really never gets old,” Holm said. “We have our visitors first sit and watch a short movie and then they walk out and look down over the model. Watching their reactions can just be priceless.”
The model was approved and paid for by Congress in the early 1950s following a series of massive private-sector proposals on how best to dam up and manipulate the greater Bay-Delta Watershed. The model was designed to help officials better understand how the watershed worked and what would happen if some of the dams were built.
The 145,000-square-foot model is made up of 286 individually supported concrete slabs with adjustable screws.
All of the bay and Delta’s most important features can be found – every river, creek, slough, ship channel and canal. Every major pier, slip, wharf, dike, bridge and breakwater is also represented.
Holm said the deepest part of the model is about 3 feet in the narrow undersea canyon that runs under the Golden Gate Bridge. Elsewhere, in some of the upstream sloughs and tributaries, only a trickle of water is present. All told, about 150,000 gallons circulate through the model at any one time, she said.
Although advanced computer software modeling has long replaced the slide rule-era facility, Holm said the site is still a favorite of TV reporters when oil spills on the real waterway occur. To help them – and their viewers – better visualize how a spill would spread, Holm sprays a bright pink nontoxic dye into the water.
“There, see how it’s eddying?” Holm asks a visitor after spraying two or three squirts into the water out in front of a mini-Golden Gate Bridge. “You can see that we have an ebb tide, and if that was oil, it’d be headed out to sea.”
Following the 2007 Cosco Busan fuel oil spill, Holm said, she was mobbed by TV crews looking for ways to better quantify the size and scale of the real spill.
The model is also designed to simulate the tide cycle as it occurs on the bay – only instead of taking 24 hours to complete, the model’s system replicates the tidal patterns every 15 minutes or so, Holm said.
Although rangers like Holm lament that scientific or engineering work is no longer conducted at the site, they take comfort that the model remains an educational resource for the greater Bay Area.
“When I’m out showing schoolkids the model I sometimes feel like I’m Godzilla because of the scale,” Holm said, mimicking the movements of the beloved Japanese movie monster. “We try to keep it fun. The object is for them to understand that the bay and the Delta are real living ecosystems and that only through understanding will come the need to preserve and protect.”
The model’s future appears bright. The Corps of Engineers was recently given $13.2 million in federal stimulus funds to install solar panels on the roof, make seismic structural improvements, remove asbestos and make general improvements to the model, the adjacent visitor’s center and the exhibits.
To accommodate the renovation, the model will close today through May 31.
The Bay Model includes an exhibit of the San Francisco watershed. The blue LED lights represent water flow from the snow-covered Sierra to the bay. Elements are drawn on a scale of 1 to 1,000.
The Golden Gate Bridge exhibit includes an underwater canyon – at 3 feet, it’s the deepest part of the Bay Model. About 150,000 gallons of water flow through the model at any given time.
A scaled representation of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta waterways leading to Suisun Bay can be seen at the Bay Model – a three-dimensional mock-up that can simulate tides, currents and river inflows.
Tags: ca, California, Delta, Freshwater, Humboldt, Northern California, Sacramento, San Francisco
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Governor Schwarzenegger joined First Lady Maria Shriver and delivered remarks at the Honoring Our Women in the Military event during the Women’s Conference’s Day at The Museum in honor of Women’s History Month.
Tags: ca, California, Governor, Humboldt, Sacramento, schwartzenegger
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State wildlife officials Wednesday ruled that the California tiger salamander deserves protection as a threatened species, subjecting landowners to more scrutiny if they want to build or farm in the amphibian’s habitat.
Tags: California, Humboldt, Northern California, Sacramento
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Governor Schwarzenegger delivered remarks at the 17th Annual California Charter Schools Conference highlighting the need to provide funding for charter schools and options for students and parents.
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First District Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro (D-North Coast) has introduced a bill to create “The Plastic Ocean Pollution Reduction, Recycling and Composting Act.” AB 2138 would require the fast food industry to reduce and recycle packaging waste and litter by requiring the use of packaging that is recyclable or compostable in the communities where it is used.
“Plastic ocean pollution is a persistent and growing problem,” Chesbro said. “Despite international treaties prohibiting dumping plastics at sea and other international, national, state and local action, trash in the ocean is increasing. Trash that washes into our waterways and bays poses a real and pressing threat to marine life. California must take on a leadership role in protecting our oceans.”
Chesbro, who chairs the Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee, recently held an investigative hearing on ocean pollution and the accumulation of toxic materials in California Coastal waters. The testimony given at the hearing is the foundation of the “The Plastic Ocean Pollution Reduction, Recycling and Composting Act.”
Single-use food packaging litter kills wildlife such as birds and endangered sea turtles, which become entangled in it or mistake it for food and try to ingest it. More than a million sea birds, 100,000 marine mammals and countless fish have died from marine debris.
Single-use food packaging that isn’t recycled costs California families hundreds of dollars annually in hidden litter clean-up costs. Local governments are especially hard hit by these costs. The City of Los Angeles estimates that compliance with Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) for its impaired waterways, including those for litter pollution, will cost more than $1 billion. Plastic pollution severely threatens California’s $43 billion ocean economy.
“The volume of unrecyclable single-use food packaging distributed annually in California is staggering,” Chesbro said. “The fast-food industry alone generates four million tons of waste annually in California and retailers are currently distributing almost fourteen billion plastic bags annually. AB 2138 would prohibit restaurants and other food providers from distributing single-use food packaging and bags unless they are accepted for either recycling or composting from at least seventy five percent of households in a jurisdiction and are recovered at rate of at least twenty five percent.”
This policy will make the fast-food industry financially responsible for:
“This legislation would reduce the cost to local governments for cleaning up the tons of plastic waste that is entering our waterways and polluting our beaches and the ocean,” Chesbro said. “This bill will build a recycling infrastructure that will both protect the environment and create new green jobs in California. We can lead the nation and leave a cleaner and safer ocean for the next generation.”
Source: Press Release
Tags: California, coast, Democrats, hearing, Humboldt, Humboldt County, job, Local, Sacramento, Wesley Chesbro
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Gov. Schwarzenegger held a press conference to highlight a proposal to exempt the purchase of green tech manufacturing equipment from the sales tax in his California Jobs Initiative, a legislative package that will create or retain at least 100,000 jobs.
Tags: California, Governor, Humboldt, job, Sacramento, sales tax, schwartzenegger
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There is hope for a decent salmon season after several years of crushing closures driven by troubling returns of spawning chinook salmon to the Sacramento and Klamath rivers.
Tags: Humboldt, Humboldt County, Humboldt County News, Klamath, Klamath River, Local, Sacramento, Salmon
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Gov. Schwarzenegger will hold a press conference to sign AB 510 by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner that will raise the requirement on net metering in California, ensuring home and business owners continue to invest in solar power.
Tags: California, Governor, Humboldt, Sacramento, schwartzenegger
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Gov. Schwarzenegger, joined by President Bill Clinton, convened the 2010 Governor’s Summit on Health, Nutrition and Obesity: Actions for Healthy Living.
Tags: California, Clinton, Governor, Humboldt, Sacramento, schwartzenegger
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Gov. Schwarzenegger delivered remarks at an event hosted by Bloom Energy where he highlighted California’s leadership in the clean-tech industry and the importance of creating green jobs to rebuild our economy.
Tags: California, Governor, Humboldt, job, Sacramento, schwartzenegger
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The Westlands Water District, the powerful farm irrigation agency in the San Joaquin Valley, has quit its membership in a leading statewide water association.
Tags: California, court, Delta, homeless, Humboldt, law, lawsuit, Northern California, Sacramento, San Francisco
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