U.S.
senators aim to unveil immigration bill Tuesday [Reuters]
After
months of negotiations, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators aims to roll out a
comprehensive immigration bill on Tuesday, giving President Barack Obama new
hope that one of his top priorities for 2013 will advance in
Congress.…Prospects for the legislation brightened in the Senate when a deal
was struck behind closed doors on wages for foreign farm laborers working in
the United States. Senator Dianne Feinstein added that the deal also would
place a limit on visas for such workers. "We have an agreement on wages
and the visa cap," Feinstein told Reuters. The deal followed a six-hour
negotiating session on Wednesday, she said. The Democratic senator is not one
of the so-called "gang of eight" writing the overall immigration
legislation. But with her home state of California being an agriculture
powerhouse, Feinstein was a lead negotiator on the farm worker provisions….The
farm worker portion of the bill was seen as the last major bit to be negotiated
before senators could introduce their legislation. Even at this late stage,
negotiations were continuing on bits of the farm worker section of the bill and
other miscellaneous matters, according to lawmakers and congressional aides.
Guest
workers' flight irks sheep ranchers [Wall Street Journal]
Denis
Kowitz has a shepherd-retention problem at his Idaho wool-growing operation,
and he hopes changes in federal immigration law will help fix it.…Mr. Kowitz
said he paid about $3,000 per shepherd to find them and fly them from Peru. He
said he assumed they quit to work in construction or at a dairy or landscaper.
In the past 16 months, he said he has lost six shepherds under similar
circumstances….Sheep ranchers now are counting on a federal answer to their
problem. Ranchers say that if other agricultural employers were able to offer
longer-term visas, too, they would be less likely to poach their foreign
shepherds. They also say that allocating more funds for immigration enforcement
of visa contracts would dissuade shepherds from abandoning their jobs.
"The bottom line is, if we have a comprehensive immigration reform we
wouldn't have one segment of agriculture siphoning labor from another segment
of agriculture," said Stan Boyd, a Boise lobbyist and director of the Idaho
Wool Growers Association. An industry group, Agriculture Coalition for
Immigration Reform, is lobbying for extending long-term guest-worker contracts
to all farmers. "We want longer visa terms for sure; two years or three
years are both in the discussion," says Craig Regelbrugge, the coalition's
co-chairman.
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Calif.
governor praises Chinese for bullet train [Associated Press]
Gov.
Jerry Brown got a firsthand look on Thursday at the world's most extensive
high-speed rail system and praised the initiative that created the Chinese
railway, saying he was anxious to start building similarly ambitious projects
in California. During a five-hour ride covering more than 800 miles, the
governor also touted the possibility of Chinese investment in the $68 billion
high-speed rail project he is pushing in California….Brown is a champion of the
bullet train plan for California, which was approved by voters in 2008 but has
been losing favor as its costs have soared. It is one of the most expensive
public works projects in the U.S. He has said the project is crucial for the
state's future, in large part to relieve pressure off the state's freeway
system. During his time aboard the Chinese train, he said he was anxious to get
large infrastructure projects off the ground in California. That would include
his $24 billion plan to build two massive water tunnels under the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and restore the region's habitat. "When
I get back, it's just going to be one building after another," Brown told
KXTV….Despite the governor's praise for the Chinese approach, it's difficult to
compare it to a major infrastructure project in the U.S. The Chinese high-speed
rail network benefits from heavy government financing and faces few of the
environmental and legal hurdles found in California. The land needed to build
the Chinese system, which stretches 5,800 miles, is often forcibly procured at below
market prices.
California
should tighten fracking regulations, report says [Los Angeles Times]
California
needs to strengthen regulation of hydraulic fracturing, according to a UC
Berkeley report that identified a number of shortcomings in state oversight of
the controversial practice….Environmental concerns center around potential
groundwater contamination from fracking fluids and disposal of saline
wastewater. The report, released Thursday by the UC Berkeley Center for Law,
Energy and the Environment, says that new technology could dramatically
increase fracking activity in California and warns that state regulators are
not equipped to handle that. “Hydraulic fracturing presents risks to our
environment and human health, and must be properly regulated and controlled.
This report identifies several areas where the state’s knowledge base and
existing regulatory scheme are deficient,” the authors wrote.
North
Coast grape growers optimistic on climate [Santa Rosa Press Democrat]
North
Coast grape growers say they take climate change seriously, but they remain
optimistic about finding ways to produce premium crops should temperatures rise
as much as a new study suggests.…But growers in Sonoma and Napa counties
maintain that the region's proximity to the Pacific Ocean, the work of
grapevine researchers and the adaptability of farmers will help prevent the
demise of Wine Country. "Do I think in the next three or four decades that
grapes will disappear in Sonoma County?" Sonoma County Wine Grape
Commission President Nick Frey asked Thursday. "No, I don't."…Growers
noted that summer heat from the Central Valley has long pulled cooler air and
morning cloud cover over Wine Country. Some suggested that even if inland
vineyards suffer from rising temperatures, the effect may be more muted in Napa
and Sonoma.
Op-Ed: ESA's 40th birthday
should be a time for reflection - and reform [Visalia Times-Delta]
This
year marks the 40th birthday of the federal Endangered Species Act, but it’s
less a time for celebration than re-examination. In fact, one of the big
problems with this law — both in its structure and in the way it is enforced —
is that its accomplishments are hard to identify. Enacted in 1973 under
President Richard Nixon, the ESA authorizes federal officials to identify
“endangered” and “threatened” species, and foster recovery through regulation.
In one respect — the economic impact — the results are easily seen. Indeed,
they can be calculated with sometimes painful specificity. Recently, for
example, farmers in the San Joaquin Valley have had to idle tens of thousands
of acres because irrigation was cut back to help the 3-inch delta smelt….But if
the law’s price in lost projects, property rights and productivity is real, its
success in its intended purpose — saving species — is too often a matter of
guesswork and inference.
Ag
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