State rail board to get environmental report preview [Fresno Bee]
An environmental report that will firmly establish the proposed route for high-speed trains between Merced and Fresno is due to be issued Friday by the California High-Speed Rail Authority. The authority's board will get a preview of the final environmental impact report when it meets Thursday in Sacramento. A draft version was published last summer for two months of public comment. The document -- several thousand pages of information -- outlined the anticipated effects of 220-mph trains on cities, homes, businesses, farmland and the environment.
http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/04/18/2805115/state-rail-board-to-get-environmental.html
Hundreds of millions spent to protect Delta levees. Is it enough? [Contra Costa Times]
…No expert considers California completely safe from the failure of century-old levees that protect a statewide water system, highways, a major railroad line and energy transmission routes, not to mention an aqueduct that serves the East Bay's largest water district. Cosio, an engineer who has worked on Delta levees for decades, is among those who contend the threat is more or less manageable and that much of the pessimism is based on outdated information….Others, however, shudder at the vulnerabilities that remain. They note that even though investments have helped bring levees up to a minimum standard established after the 1980 breach, it's a weak standard meant to address high water while the threat of earthquake damage is increasing. And it was always meant to be an interim step on the way to a more permanent level of safety….Many of the engineering experts and scientists who have looked at the Delta's levees have come away alarmed about the possibility that a large earthquake could lead to multiple levee failures. Depending on which levees fail and when, such an event could have serious ripple effects throughout California that could be very difficult to recover from.
State immigration bill passes committee [Palm Springs Desert Sun]
A locally authored plan to allow undocumented agricultural and service-sector workers to legally stay in California cleared its first legislative hurdle Wednesday. The Assembly's Committee on Labor and Employment endorsed the Agricultural Jobs and Industry Stabilization Act with a 4-1 vote. The committee's vote fell along party lines, with Republican Assemblyman Mike Morrell opposing it. Two lawmakers abstained.
http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012204190316
Agriculture association won't file ethics complaint against assemblyman [Ventura County Star]
The Ventura County Agricultural Association said it will not file an ethics complaint against Assemblyman Das Williams and that it plans to shift venues instead. Rob Roy, president of the Camarillo-based trade organization for growers, shippers and packers, said its client Montalvo Farms will not file a formal complaint with the state Assembly's ethics committee alleging Williams, D-Santa Barbara, entered a strawberry farm near Ventura posing as a union representative. Instead, the association and Montalvo intend to file a civil lawsuit in Ventura County Superior Court alleging slander against Williams, Roy said Tuesday.
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/apr/18/agriculture-association-wont-file-ethics-against/
Tyson, Cargill Hurt by ‘pink slime’ ahead grilling season [Bloomberg News]
The consumer backlash against a meat product made from leftovers and treated with chemicals is making a bad situation worse for Cargill Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN) ahead of the beef industry’s peak sales period….Lower demand for the product -- dubbed “pink slime” by critics -- has prompted Cargill, the biggest U.S. beef processor, to scale back output of the lean meat at four plants. Tyson says beef supply will decline. The companies, already dealing with higher cattle costs, may start labeling ground beef with the product as the industry tries to win back shoppers’s confidence ahead of the U.S. summer grilling season….Ground-beef sales, including trimmings, fell 11 percent to 37.7 million pounds in March, the smallest amount sold for that month in 10 years, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture wholesale data compiled by Bloomberg. Packers saw prices for wholesale choice beef fall 7.8 percent in March, the most since October 2008, USDA data shows.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-17/tyson-cargill-hurt-by-pink-slime-ahead-grilling-season.html
The new corn-belt boondoggle [San Francisco Chronicle – blog]
Despite scary deficits, Congress does not seem inclined to do much reforming in this year’s five-year farm bill. The GOP-led House Agriculture Committee voted Wednesday to meet all their $33 billion in ten-year budget savings by cutting food stamps, rather than corn subsidies. Democrats objected, but they are just as keen as Republicans to protect the biggest pot of taxpayer subsidies now going to Midwest grain farmers, who are right now riding one of the biggest commodity booms in memory. It’s called “crop insurance,” and it is an invidious, relatively recent, and entirely sacrosanct form of handout. Crop insurance sounds sensible — like insuring against flood, drought, pestilence, and other things that make farming risky. But that’s not its purpose. Its purpose is to insure corn, soybean and other grain farmers against small dips in their record-high revenues. (Farm bill lingo for this is “shallow losses.”). It has cost taxpayers $50 billion since 2001, and grew by 17 percent last year. The subsidies average $2500 per policy.
http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/04/18/the-new-corn-belt-boondoggle/
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