IN THEIR OWN WORDS
ON THE ENVIRONMENT: STATE'S SOARING POPULATION CREATES CHALLENGES:
By Paul Rogers
Mercury News
When it comes to the environment, California is a mixed message: White sand beaches. Redwood forests. Yosemite. On the other hand, there's traffic. Smog. Sprawl.
The Golden State boasts some of the world's most spectacular scenery, coastline and wildlife. It has made significant progress reducing smog, water pollution and toxic waste over the past generation. But it also is growing at a relentless rate, adding about 600,000 new people a year -- the equivalent of adding a new San Jose every 18 months.
Driven largely by historically high levels of immigration during the past 20 years, California's population of 35 million is now twice what it was in the 1960s and larger than Canada's.
Whoever is governor after the recall will have to tackle the challenges of that growth, which include urban sprawl, loss of farmland, endangered species, clogged freeways, strained energy supplies and looming water shortages.
``There are inherent impacts with more people,'' said Rico Mastrodonato, executive director of the California League of Conservation Voters. ``More cars, more consumption and more waste. But the state's budget is in a crisis; the challenge for any governor will be finding the funding to deal with growth and pollution.''
Since he took office in 1999, Gov. Gray Davis has generally been cheered by environmentalists. He appointed dozens of environmental leaders to head state agencies. He pushed through more than $9 billion in new parks and water bonds to preserve open space.
He signed laws last year requiring that 20 percent of California's electricity come from renewable energy by 2017, and that automakers reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from vehicles. This year, Davis signed laws setting up programs to recycle old computers and to end agriculture's exemption in the Central Valley from clean-air laws.
Yet at the same time, Davis has not been embraced by environmentalists as one of their own. He has been described as aloof and distant. He won accolades in 1999 for signing the Headwaters Forest deal to purchase 7,500 acres of old-growth redwoods and other trees from Pacific Lumber in Humboldt County, but then was criticized for allowing increases in clear-cutting in the Sierra and for taking campaign contributions from big timber, oil and development interests.
After Oct. 7, California's governor will have three leading eco-issues to address:
• George W. Bush. Davis opposed Bush administration changes to double logging rates on national forests in the Sierra Nevada. He sued President Bush to block new offshore oil drilling, winning rulings that give the California Coastal Commission a say. How will the new governor, if there is one, deal with Bush?
• Growth. What will the governor do to limit it, or to address its relentless impacts?
• Water. California hasn't had a drought since 1991. But with population growing and farmers using 80 percent of the state's developed water, the new governor will have to decide whether he wants new dams, more conservation, tougher or looser protections for endangered salmon, and other multibillion-dollar choices.
And then there's transportation.
California voters will be asked to approve one of the biggest public-works projects in state history next year, a $10 billion bond measure on the November 2004 ballot to run high-speed trains from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Another transportation measure could also be on the same ballot: lowering the threshold for countywide sales taxes from two-thirds to 55 percent. Counties throughout the Bay Area and state want to renew current measures that will soon expire or pass new ones, but only a handful of 40 such proposals have succeeded by a 67 percent majority.
Last year, the state shifted gasoline sales tax money away from transportation to the general fund. State officials promise it will be returned to transit and highway projects beginning in 2009. The BART extension to San Jose is due more than $600 million -- if that promise is kept. |
