Many delta islands may be lost

Kelly Zito, Chronicle Staff Writer

Two decades ago, water breached a levee on Tyler Island, 8,800 acres along the northeastern edge of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, wiping out crops, damaging buildings and nearly destroying the Mello family's farming business. Steve Mello worries the same thing may happen again - with the approval of state policymakers who are considering whether to save some islands if increasingly fragile levees fail. It's a familiar scenario for Mello, who has heard proposals in the past to flood the land in the name of restoring a sensitive ecosystem that also serves as the hub of California's water supply.

"I feel like a lamb surrounded by wolves, and every time you turn to deal with one, another one is nipping at you," said Mello, who farms about 2,500 acres of alfalfa, corn, pears, potatoes and wheat.

Fewer structures have been more critical to California's development than the 1,100 miles of earthen levees that help funnel water through the 1,300-square-mile confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. That water, mostly runoff from mountain snowpack, flows through a web of channels to mammoth pumps in the southern delta, sending billions of gallons of water to 25 million Californians.

But the levees are in trouble, experts say. Rising seas, earthquakes, subsiding land and floods pose dire threats on top of the escalating repair costs to the state. Rather than allowing nature to decide when and how the levees give way, many researchers and policymakers say, California should manage the inevitable reshaping of the delta by deciding which levees to repair after a disaster.

No rules exist yet. But beginning this year, government, scientists, planners, environmentalists and water agencies will attempt to reconcile their views on the barriers that have defined the delta for so long.

"The delta is two or three different places," said Will Travis, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. "From the perspective of the environmentalists, the delta is a piece of geography like San Francisco Bay or Yosemite that is near and dear. For water users, the delta is really a broad, leaky ditch and the water has to get from one side of delta through south side of delta."

Levee failures common

Over the last 100 years, delta levees failed 166 times and all but three were restored. In the next century, according to a recent, influential report by the Public Policy Institute of California, the average island at the core of the delta has a 99 percent chance of being inundated by levee failure.

The study concluded that as many as 19 islands in the delta's central area should not be repaired, depending on whether their property value includes land, structures and equipment. Many of those islands have infrastructure that includes railroads, bridges, aqueducts and energy facilities. As many as a dozen should be repaired, according to UC Davis scientists who wrote the report, while 11 are undetermined.

Tyler Island, where land and assets are worth about $126 million, may not be worth saving, they say.

The 2004 flooding of one island - Jones Tract - provided a stark example of the analysis that should go into a decision on any island, the experts say. A levee along the western side of the island collapsed, resulting in six months of repairs and pumping that cost $90 million, including $60 million in tax funds. The island's land was valued at $42 million, while assets on the island were worth about $500 million.

The cost of buttressing all delta levees to widely used standards runs into the billions.

"The delta means a lot of things, but what it doesn't mean (is) that all levees that presently exist must continue to exist and be maintained at taxpayers' expense without regard for benefit, difficulty or rationality of doing so," said Phil Isenberg, chairman of the governor's Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force, a panel tasked with developing a sustainable delta management plan.

Sinking land biggest risk

A colossal earthquake, a 100-year rainstorm and the forecast of a 4 1/2-foot rise in the sea level by 2100: Each poses threats to the delta's levees, many of which sit below the level prescribed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

But scientists say one weakness compounds all of those calamities: land subsidence.

In the 150 years since some of the levees were first carved out using horse-drawn dredgers, the land protected by the levees has sunk dramatically - pushing some of it 25 feet below sea level. Scientists say such differences are putting huge stress on the levees, raising the possibility of breaks or seepage. Fears grew after the catastrophic collapse of New Orleans' levees after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

A drive around Tyler Island shows that some of Mello's fields sit near the island's average elevation of 9 feet below sea level. But Mello, whose family first bought land on Tyler in 1968, believes most delta islands are not as vulnerable as some experts suggest. The lowest subsidence occurs at the center of most islands, not up against the levees, Mello said, and farmers who cultivate two-thirds of the delta's 740,000 acres are using techniques to prevent erosion. Those include less-intensive farming, less burning to level land and growing fewer crops like white asparagus, which turned the topsoil "to flour," Mello said.

In addition, reclamation districts are spending millions to upgrade their levees, including about $6 million in the last eight years to raise 7 miles of levees on Tyler Island by about a foot. "I believe many of these farms, if not all of them, can be farmed indefinitely," Mello said.

He said forcing or allowing the levees to dissolve poses other major dangers, including the release of mercury accumulated in the levees during the region's strip-mining days. While environmentalists say creating tidal marshes and open water could boost important fish and plant populations, Mello and others say islands act as buffers for each other.

"There are difficulties finding one of the major islands you could flood and leave flooded without having a domino effect," said Tom Zuckerman, a retired Stockton water lawyer who now works with the Central Delta Water Agency. "You won't just lose one island; you'll lose the adjacent ones downwind."

Scenarios for the future

The debate over the delta levees will take on new urgency in the coming years as the state grapples with how to fix a water system plagued by leaky plumbing, booming demand and concerns over ecological damage.

A controversial proposal to construct a so-called peripheral canal - which would route water from the Sacramento River around the delta to pumps in the south - dovetails with the idea to let some delta islands return to marsh or open water. In such a scenario, any increase in salty water from the broader bay-delta estuary wouldn't affect the fresh Sacramento water streaming through the separate canal.

But many of the 6,000 people who live in the delta's interior say that option doesn't recognize important transportation lines, historic communities, schools, Victorian hotels, sought-after recreational activities and family farms.

Today's delta is a far cry from the tidal marsh that pre-dated modern development or the early operations of the Gold Rush. Many experts agree the delta's mix of islands and waterways has harmed native fish and plants that depended on the ebb and flow between river and bay.

Radical change is coming, they argue, whether forced by man or nature.

"With the delta, the natural systems are very dynamic and changing rapidly now," Travis said. "It's hard to have a political, legal, regulatory system that embraces that kind of change. It's hard, but we need to make some decisions."

After working for two years away from the ranch, Mello's son Gary, 22, came back to drive combines, work on irrigation systems and learn the intricacies of accounting. Mello, 53, hopes the island survives long enough for the next generation to take over.

"I'm trying to make sure it evolves and passes to them as a viable business," Mello said. "I think they're pulling the plug way too early."

Which levees should be saved?

Researchers at UC Davis say it may not make financial sense to save all of the at-risk Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta levees. Map, Page A6

E-mail Kelly Zito at kzito@sfchronicle.com.

Original here

Offsets in the Air in San Francisco

By Kate Galbraith

Purchasing offsets for the carbon emissions associated with this will soon be easy at San Francisco International Airport, but how to know what’s really being accomplished? (Photo: Associated Press)

This spring, travelers entering San Francisco International Airport will see a new type of kiosk at check-in — one offering carbon offsets for those who wish to counter the greenhouse-gas emissions from their trip. It will be the first time that an airport will be peddling offsets, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Details — such as how exactly the offsets will reduce carbon emissions — are as yet vague. According to The Chronicle, the airport has partnered with 3Degrees, an offsets firm based in San Francisco that invests in clean-energy and carbon-reduction projects. The airport is supplying the kiosks and putting $163,000 into the program — and while the prices from are yet to be determined, a 3Degrees official told The Chronicle that offsetting a trip to Europe now costs around $36.

Many airlines, most recently Virgin America, have already begun selling offsets of their own. Virgin recently promised that it would soon give customers the opportunity to buy offsets while in flight, via the seat-back system.

With all these air offsets in the works and many questions raised about their effectiveness (not least by the Federal Trade Commission), I contacted Michael Wara, an expert in this area and an assistant professor at Stanford Law School. He said travelers should be asking plenty of questions about the offsets.

“Joe or Jane Q. Public wants to be as sure as possible that (1) said gas would have been emitted without their purchase (2) that said gas was in fact not emitted, and (3) that this certified non-event has not been sold to more than once,” Mr. Wara said in an e-mail message.

How to do that? Mr. Wara recommended making sure that the seller uses an approved voluntary offset methodology, and that a reputable third party verifier is used to certify the project and its accompanying emissions reduction. He also said the offsets ought to be registered after they have been sold, with guarantees that they will not be used again.

“If it were me,” Mr. Wara said, “I’d take a look at my frequent flier account once a year, add up the miles, do the math with an online calculator to go from miles flown to carbon emitted.” Mr. Ware said he would then seek out a reputable offset provider from whom he could obtain detailed information on how his purchase was actually generating a climate benefit.

“That way I could be sure of what I was getting,” he said.

Original here

Trying to Turn San Diego into the Green Houston

A bag of algae is hung between a row of lights at General Atomics facilities. Photo: Sam Hodgson By DAVID WASHBURN In the early 1990s, San Diego's moribund economy was revived by a bunch of scientists who figured out how to do things like turn a mobile phone into a multi-media entertainment center and develop a diabetes therapy out of lizard spit. Now, with the economy tanking again, another bunch of scientists is telling anyone who will listen that the region's next economic boom might be borne out of pond scum. Algae that is -- green gold, San Diego soda. San Diego, already home to dozens of companies involved in solar or wind energy, would be a major player in the nation's multi-trillion-dollar energy economy if a group of local researchers succeed in turning algae into a commercially viable transportation fuel, something they think they can do within a decade. "[It] is the scientific challenge of our generation," said Stephen Mayfield, a cell biologist and associate dean at the Scripps Research Institute, referring to the need to cure America of its 200-billion-gallon-a-year oil addiction. "And algae is the answer." And a top-notch research infrastructure, a thriving biotech sector and proximity to cheap land in Imperial County, where the plant could be grown on a large scale with plenty of sun, combine to give San Diego a strong foundation for building on algae's future. Mayfield is one of several scientists at both Scripps institutions and the University of California, San Diego who are considered among the word's foremost algae researchers. Other prominent names are Steve Kay, dean of the division of Biological Sciences at UCSD, and B. Gregory Mitchell, a biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The consensus is that the technology exists to make algae-based fuels commercially viable within five to 10 years. Others say it could be less than four years. But there are daunting economic and political obstacles, including the stubbornly high cost of extracting oil from algae, and a strong lobby that wants corn to be the primary source of biofuel production in this country. A growing number of venture capitalists are acknowledging these obstacles, yet banking on them being overcome. San Diego is home to several algae start-ups, the largest being Sapphire Energy, which was founded with Mayfield's help and has 80 employees and more than $100 million in venture capital funding. Kay is a founder of Biolight, which has received funding from Bay Area-based CMEA Ventures. "Long term, I see great potential," said Michael Melnick, a partner in CMEA Ventures. "(But) it will take longer than people think, and take a lot of government support." In recent years some of the area's biggest players have decided they want a piece of the green spongy stuff. And, after abandoning algae as a viable biofuel in the 1990s, the federal government is again funding research. General Atomics and SAIC, two of the region's largest defense contractors, have algae programs, and last month each received a multi-million dollar grant from the U.S. Defense Department to develop jet fuel from the plant. General Atomics has about 40 people dedicated to its algae program, and expects to receive $40 million from the Pentagon over the next three years. "If we are successful at this it will not only solve the fuel problem, it will solve the economy problem," said David Hazlebeck, the biofuels program manager for General Atomics. "It could translate into several trillion (dollars) in economic activity." Kay estimates that research and development activities in San Diego County and large-scale growing operations in Imperial County could combine to create jobs in the tens of thousands. "Our vision is that San Diego will become the green Houston of the world," he said, referring to the tens of billions of dollars annually that oil and gas exploration contributes to Houston's economy. However, a lot has to happen before these visions can become real. Algae companies are a long way from having the same local impact as Qualcomm, the wireless communications giant, or even that of San Diego-based Amylin, the biotech that developed a diabetes drug based on the saliva of a Gila monster. "It is important not to overhype algae," said Lisa Bicker, president of CleanTECH San Diego, a green industry association. "We are excited about it, but it is early." Biofuels in general have yet to live up to the hype. There is a broad consensus that the industrialized world's addiction to petroleum is leading us down a path toward both environmental and economic destruction. But finding a cheap and efficient way to produce mass quantities of fuel out something other than oil has proven difficult. Corn-based ethanol, the oil alternative that has garnered the most attention -- not to mention billions of dollars in government subsidies -- is now considered by many to be a bad idea. For one thing, every acre of corn used for ethanol is an acre that can't be used for food. The result has been years of steep inflation in the price of corn-based staples, which has disproportionally hurt the poorest on the planet. Corn ethanol has been a bust environmentally as well. Though the final product burns cleaner than petroleum, its carbon footprint isn't greatly different from oil when all of the greenhouse gases emitted while it is being fertilized and harvested are taken into account. "When it is all said and done you only get a 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gases with corn," Kay said. Cellulosic ethanol, which is produced from wood, grasses and the non-edible parts of plants, is better environmentally than corn ethanol, but it requires lots of fertile land and lots of irrigation. And ethanol, no matter where it comes from, is far more corrosive than petroleum and would require a significant investment to either retrofit or replace pipelines, experts say. Algae, on the other hand, can be grown almost anywhere there is water, sunlight and carbon dioxide, including stagnant ponds, wastewater treatment plants or any number of other godforsaken places. "The Salton Sea is 378-square miles of crap, that is a good place for algae," Mayfield said. It also wins on several other levels. It is a carbon-neutral energy source because the carbon dioxide it consumes while growing counterbalances the emissions from the burning of algae-based fuel. And the process by which the oil is extracted from algae (similar to the process of separating the liquid from a grape) is also carbon-neutral, unlike the harvesting of corn. Finally, the oil produced by algae can be shipped via the existing pipeline structure. The rub with algae is the cost. Right now, extracting the oil from algae is an expensive process -- producing a gallon of algae-based gasoline, diesel or jet fuel can cost $30. It has to get down to under $2 per gallon before it will be a viable alternative to petroleum. More than a decade ago, the U.S. government concluded that it couldn't be done. The Department of Energy had an algae program from 1978 to 1996, and in the end found that "even with aggressive assumptions about biological productivity, we project costs for biodiesel which are two times higher than current petroleum diesel fuel costs." The academics and the folks at General Atomics think they can prove the government wrong within a few years. Hazlebeck, the General Atomics biofuels chief, said the company has developed a plan to build a 40-acre demonstration plant that would produce algae fuel for $1 per gallon within three years. That does not, however, mean that motorists will be pumping algae into their tanks by 2011. That will take government help. And the most difficult obstacle may be political -- specifically the nine corn-growing states, whose 18 U.S. Senators (including President-elect Obama) have consistently voted as a block in favor of subsidies for corn ethanol. The algae industry lacks such a coalition, and will not be able to move from the prototype to mass production phases without subsidies, said Kay and others. "Algae should have the same subsidies as corn," Kay said. "The good news is momentum is building for us, but it is still David v. Goliath." Please contact David Washburn directly at david.washburn@voiceofsandiego.org with your thoughts, ideas, personal stories or tips. Or set the tone of the debate with a letter to the editor. Original here