Archive for February 28th, 2009

From Antiplaner.com - The state of California has a $41 billion budget deficit. This is even worse when you realize its total budget is $143 billion, so the deficit is is 29 percent of the budget.

The planning advocates who frequent this blog will deny it, but it is no coincidence that California has the strongest smart-growth laws in the nation and the worst deficit of any state in the nation.

Land-use restrictions that crammed 94.5 percent of the state’s residents into just 5.1 percent of the state’s land also made the state’s housing the least-affordable in the nation — and some California cities the least-affordable in the world. This led to an exodus of people and jobs. The bursting of the housing bubble devastated many recent home buyers   and took the state’s (and world’s) economy with them.

Meanwhile, the state has overspent on high-cost transportation systems in five major urban areas, while stinting on the forms of transportation that people actually use. (Californians travel more than 400 billion passenger miles by auto in urban areas and take transit only 7 billion passenger miles.) This did little to relieve the traffic that makes Los Angeles and San Francisco-Oakland the worst-congested urban areas in the nation while it added to the state’s deficits.

Tucson Choices - Recipe for disaster:

Does this post sound familiar? 86% of Pima County land is owned by a government entity. Pima County has already committed $200m to buy the remaining 14%. Will the voters approve another $500m to run up the credit card for more open space?  Less land, higher cost to develop (sewer hook up fees, impact fees, time to finish developments) and what you get is housing that becomes unaffordable to our working poor community.  Add in a dash of NIMBY from the City of Tucson neighborhood activist and what’s a community to do? Without leadership, I’m afraid we’ll have more of he same.

As if that wasn’t enough - From today’s LA Times

An article appeared in the Arizona Republic - HERE

More about the snake HERE.

The latest release from Fish and Wildlife - July 08 2008 - HERE

From Center For Biological Diversity: Southwestern Snake Slithers Closer to Safety -

Thanks to a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity, this Tuesday the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it will scrutinize the plight of the Tucson shovel-nosed snake to see if the animal deserves protection under the Endangered Species Act. The snake, a small, black-and-yellow reptile that can “swim” through the sand using its shovel-like snout, is getting increasingly rare as development and agriculture take over its southern Arizona valley-floor habitat.

Although Pima County and one Arizona town have developed “habitat conservation plans” that include the imperiled snake, neither plan has been finalized –partly because another imperiled species in the plans, the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, was removed from the endangered species list. Hopefully, both the snake and the owl will soon get the protection they need to defend themselves from the Southwest’s urban explosion.

HERE’S A RELATED PIECE, FROM HUGH HEWITT, AN EXPERT ON THESE MATTERS. From AZCentral Comments:

JUST SUBSTITUTE ‘polar bear’ WITH ‘Tucson shovel-nosed snake,’ ‘American Arctic’ WITH ‘The most developable land between Phoenix and Tucson,’ AND ‘continued oil and gas development’ WITH ‘agricultural expansion and urban sprawl.’ 

HUGH HEWITT: 

By way of background, I have practiced natural resources law since I left the Reagan Administration in early 1989. Wetlands, jurisdictional waters, and endangered species are my areas of expertise, and if you ever need a lesson on the Stephens’ kangaroo rat, the Delhi sands flower-loving fly, the California gnat catcher, the Desert tortoise or any of a couple dozen other plants and animals throughout the west that are protected under the federal or state Endangered Species Act, drop me an e-mail. 

All of those species and many more have fairly predictable aftermaths of their listing –a period of great confusion about where they live and breed, what can and cannot be done near them, and lots of meetings and negotiations with federal officials over habitat conservation plans, Section 7 consultations etc. There are lots of landowners and businesses that lose a lot because of this law, but in the past, the impact zone of a listing was at least limited to the area in which the listed species lived. 

That won’t be the case with any listing of the polar bear, which is why it is the focus of so much zeal among the groups. The reach of the listing wil be immense because of the rationale offered for its protection. 

The proposed listing states that the polar bear may be threatened because it is losing the ice it needs to live on due to climate change. If the government agrees with the models that project a dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice over the next few decades, and further agrees that this loss would imperil the polar bear’s survivability, the bear gets listed. 

Once listed, the Federal Endangered Species Act is very clear: Any federal action that might impact the polar bear must be reviewed by the U.S. Fish &Wildlife Service under Section 7 of the Act. 

What sort of federal actions? The most obvious would be any activity on or near Arctic ice, but that’s not the gold ring the environmentalists are reaching for. 

They will argue that every federal permit that allows directly or indirectly for increased emissions of hydrocarbons is a federal act that might impact the polar bear –every port expansion, every refinery opening or repair, every Army Corps of Engineers permit that allows for more homes or office buildings to rise. 

Don’t believe me. Believe the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs in the suit filed to force the listing. From the Center’s website: 

“Protection under the Endangered Species Act will provide concrete help to polar bears and could revolutionize American climate policy. Since U.S. resistance to curbing greenhouse gases has allowed other countries to shirk their responsibilities as well, major changes in American policy are likely to have a powerful domino effect, catalyzing change in climate policy worldwide. The polar bear’s protected status will require a new level of environmental review before oil and gas development continue in polar bear habitat in the American Arctic. Even more critically, because it is illegal to harm threatened species or jeopardize their survival, the polar bear listing could mean that all U.S. industries emitting large quantities of greenhouse gases — and requiring a federal permit to do so — will come under the purview of the Endangered Species Act. From polluting power plants in the Midwest to auto manufacturers, a vast array of industries may have to clean up their acts to give the polar bear a chance to survive.” 

They will do more than argue that a listing has these impacts. Once listed, the polar bear will launch a thousand law suits as the groups search for judges and opportunities to assert that hydrocarbon emission reduction must be apart of every federal permit and that those reductions must be negotiated by and approved by the already understaffed and overwhelmed U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The advocates of the listing know the stakes, which is why they have filed suit in federal district court in the Northern District of California to force a decision. That’s why California Senator Barbara Boxer is demanding that the Secretary of the Interior act. 

What is amazing is that industry seems almost wholly unaware of this debate. I e-mailed a senior vice president of a major coal company asking what he thought about the controversy, and he sent me back a polite, straightforward reply that he didn’t think it would affect his industry much. 

The groups have achieved strategic surprise. 

If the industries wake up any time soon, they will have to move to intervene in the lawsuit filed to require the listing decision be made, and to demand a reopening of the record in order to make sure that this year’s temperature and ice data are included, and that the models relied on to predict ice loss through mid-century be examined against this year’s data. They will also have to begin to mount the obvious due process challenges to a scheme to radically extend the reach of a 1973 law that was never intended to work this way but which has grown steadily via a series of aggressive judicial interpretations. There are other Constitutional and Administrative Procedures Act challenges as well, which should be lodged in the District of Columbia Circuit, not in the Ninth Circuit. 

And Secretary Kempthorne should resist the pressure from the left to rush to a listing decision. Too few people knew this has happened, and too much is at stake on a too little-reviewed or understood set of facts. 

“As a result of [global] warming, Arctic sea ice is melting very rapidly,” plaintiffs argue in their suit. They continue: 

“In 2007 the Arctic sea ice hit a new record minimum, fully one million square miles below the average minimum sea ice extent between 1979-2000. There was less ice in the Arctic in September, 2007 than more than half of the world’s leading climate models project for 2050. Some scientists now say summer ice could disappear entirely as early as 2012. 

Polar bears cannot survive the loss of their sea-habitat.” 

Plaintiffs are making arguments about the approach of catastrophe and the Court does not have before it any challenge either to the assertions about the models or the appropriateness of using the ESA to impose Kyoto on an unpersuaded country

Pygmy Owl Dwindling in Mexico, Really Needs Help Here

Speaking of the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, a new University of Arizona study has shown that the owl’s population in northern Sonora, Mexico has decidedly declined over the past nine years. In fact, this year’s pygmy-owl abundance in Mexico is the lowest it’s been since the study began — not good news for the tiny owl, whose U.S. population is now nearly gone thanks to habitat destruction. Once protected under the Endangered Species Act, the pygmy owl’s endangered status was pulled out from under it in 2006 when the administration declared that its presence in Mexico meant it didn’t need protection in Arizona, where its last population is hanging by a thread.

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Defenders of Wildlife, and Public Employees for Responsibility have petitioned to renew the species’ protection, and last spring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began a new review of the owl’s situation. With luck, the new study will help ensure the U.S. population’s peril isn’t ignored.

You think the CBD aren’t serious and will stop at nothing?

Activist charged in office protest

By Eric Swedlund
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

A prominent local environmental activist was arrested Friday on assault, trespassing and disorderly conduct charges stemming from a demonstration Tuesday at a home builders association news conference, police said.

Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, is accused of pushing one Southern Arizona Home Builders Association official as he forced his way into the group’s offices and pushing another as he left, according to a Tucson Police Department report compiled from interviews with SAHBA officials.

Suckling said the accusations are false.

The incident began Tuesday afternoon at a SAHBA press conference called to discuss a federal appeals court victory for the group. The decision could reverse the pygmy owl’s status as an endangered species.

About 20 members of the Center for Biological Diversity and other environmental groups started a protest against the ruling just before the press conference, at 2840 N. Country Club Road. The demonstrators were dressed in owl costumes and went onto SAHBA property, the police report states.

SAHBA officials told police Suckling was the most vocal protester and that they told him to leave the property.

At one point, Suckling allegedly “pushed past” one official to sit down inside the building. “From S.A.H.B.A. standpoint, Suckling then created a disturbance during the press conference,” the police report states.

SAHBA officials told police that Suckling pushed another person out of his way as he left. “Neither victim had visible injuries, but each did complain of soreness” but did not ask for medical treatment, the report states.

Suckling was booked into the Pima County jail Friday on two counts of assault, one count of second-degree criminal trespass and seven counts of disorderly conduct.

In an interview with the Arizona Daily Star after his release Saturday, Suckling said the developers’ police report is a “pack of lies from the beginning to the end” and that the center plans to file a civil suit against SAHBA for filing a false report.

“They simply made it up,” he said. “This is a political assault engineered by Tucson developers against people who try to protect the desert. SAHBA is so frustrated the media actually presents two sides of the story that they try to bring bogus legal charges against environmentalists to try and shut them up.”

Suckling said he went to the press conference to “expose the outright lies of the home builders” regarding the court decision and when he went inside, he was pushed.

The police report did not include interviews with anybody but developers, Suckling said, and police officers arrested him immediately without asking questions when he met with them Friday.

Julie Miller said she went with Suckling to demonstrate Tuesday, did not go inside, and did not see any pushing.

Ed Taczanowsky, SAHBA’s executive vice president, declined to comment Saturday.

Contact reporter Eric Swedlund at 629-9412 or swedlund@azstarnet.com.