Joseph Jacinto Mora knew everything the dogs in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California. He knew Bess, a friendly brown mutt who hung around the livery stables. He knew Bobby Durham, a pointy-eared rascal who, as Mora put it, “had a mission [account] and did his shopping at the butcher's himself.” He knew Captain Grizzly, an Irish terrier who went into town with a muzzle and invariably took it with him after persuading a friendly stranger to take it off.

If you look at Mora's map of the city — first printed in 1942 — you'll also recognize the city dogs of that era. They're all stacked in a column on the right-hand side, lovingly described and illustrated, and look as natural as the things you'd more likely expect to see on a map: roads, landmasses, the compass rose. On this particular map, those elements aren't so typical, either: the streets are dotted with tiny houses, and both the land and sea are dotted with busy people. The compass rose is rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise and — as befits an artist's city — is presided over by a painter, an artist, a writer and a musician.

That's the thing about Jo Mora's maps. Over the course of his life, the “Renaissance Man of the West,” as some called him, packed history, geography and personal details into a series of maps of various parts of California. Although he was well-known in his day – “Mora produced works of art that have probably told more people their story than the works of any other Californian,” wrote columnist Lee Shippey in the Los Angeles Times in 1942 – he has largely faded from public consciousness. But spending a few minutes looking at one of his maps takes you back to his era and his own worldview.

Mora at work on one of his murals of the Fable Restaurant, created for the Drake-Wiltshire Hotel in San Francisco in 1936. Used with permission from jomoratrust.com

Mora was born in Uruguay in 1876. When he was four, his father, the sculptor Domingo Mora, moved the whole family to Massachusetts. He attended art school in New York City – a place full of “steep canyons and underground caves,” he later wrote – and worked as an illustrator for the Boston Herald, drawing scenes from the day's news.

“He was really curious about the American West all the time,” says Peter Hiller, collections curator for the Jo Mora Trust and author of a forthcoming biography of Mora. Even while he was completing his degree and putting together a portfolio for the East Coast, he spent long periods on the other side of the country. He worked as a cowboy in Texas and rode horseback from Baja, Mexico, to San Jose. He lived in a Hopi and Navajo community for two and a half years, learning both languages, taking photographs and painting precise watercolors of Kachina dances. In 1907 he officially moved to California, settling in Mountain View with his wife, Grace Alma Needham.

Over the course of his career, Mora explored a number of different media, including sculpture, painting and coin design. “It's almost easier to list what he didn't do,” Hiller says. But since his first published map – of the Monteray Peninsula, which he commissioned as part of a book on local history – cartography has come particularly easily to Mora. “I felt when I spoke to Jo's son Joey that [the maps] were almost spontaneous,” says Hiller. He sketched a design in pencil and then traced it in black ink on a large, heavy board. It was then reduced in size during the printing process.

A sketch for an unfinished map of Santa Catalina, found among Mora's papers after his death. David Rumsey Map Collection

In their final form, the maps are striking and dense, giving the impression of almost limitless detail. “They're almost like books,” says Hiller. “You look at one part of it and put it aside, and then you come back the next day and look at another part.” When he has done exhibitions of Mora's work, he adds, the maps in particular are “like magnets… People are completely absorbed in looking at them.”

Mora referred to his maps as “cartes.” (“I believe that's a derivation of 'cartography,' and there may be a French component to it,” Hiller says.) Stylistically, however, they belong to a genre called “pictorial maps” – detailed geographic illustrations that emphasize compelling storytelling over strict accuracy. Historians trace this trend to the Wonderground Map, a 1914 map of London created by a graphic designer named Leslie MacDonald Gill. By the time Mora created his maps, they were already quite popular and were used to promote travel destinations or depict current events.

Mora's experience and sensibility were well suited to visual representation. Yet even when he worked within the genre, his particular values ​​and obsessions often stood out.”[The maps] “He tells stories about California's history,” says Hiller. “He pays tribute to the different eras” and the groups of people who have shaped the state: Native Americans, Spanish missionaries, Anglo-Saxon gold seekers. At the same time, they are often situational, full of inside jokes and local color. As Mora himself once put it: “I get my message across in a humorous way because I'd rather find you with an understanding smile than a searching frown.”

Jo Mora's map of Los Angeles is rich in local history. David Rumsey Map Collection

Take, for example, his 1942 map of Los Angeles, pictured above. The top strip is devoted to detailed depictions of Franciscan friars and vaqueros on horses. They seem almost somber compared to the middle strip, which is a riot of visual puns and quirky situations. A lion dances in the Griffith Park Zoo, and the Hollywood Bowl is a giant dinner bowl with two spoons. In the railroad rate war of the 1880s, two locomotives with googly eyes and boxing gloves fight.

To illustrate the city's increasing popularity, he draws a series of women, all dressed in the style of their era, inflating giant balloons with population numbers. “Oh, crap!” is written on the balloon of the 1950s woman, who is in her underwear or perhaps a bikini. “There's not enough room in this damn drawing to show the future. And how am I supposed to know how women will dress!”

As one such joke shows, if you read the maps as closely as is required, you will find that they are entirely of their time in other ways as well. The Carmel-By-The-Sea map has a drawing of a Native American alongside a racist caricature of the Native American language. There are few black people on his maps, and when they do, they are usually in service positions. Hiller says, “Of course he meant no disrespect, but a few times he did get lost in what you would call cliches. Social cliches.”

Jo Mora invites you to “keep your mouth straight” as you look through his map of the state. David Rumsey Map Collection

Some maps were commissioned, usually by businessmen who had an interest in attracting people to a particular area.”[Mora] was something like Gumby,” says Hiller. “He was so flexible that when he got a project and didn't know how to do it or how to implement it for the client, he always found a solution.” In 1928, for example, Marston's Department Store commissioned Mora to draw a map of San Diego, which eventually became a seamless collection of facts about the store and the city as a whole.

Others were dreamed up by Jo's son and business partner, Joey. “Joey suggested many motifs over the years, and Jo just sat down and made the maps,” says Hiller. Joey then sold them to trading posts and gift shops. One of them – a 1931 map of Yosemite National Park, full of miniature wildlife and tourists getting into mishaps – was particularly popular. “Yosemite is so sublime and reverently solemn that perhaps a little humor can help us come to terms with the triviality of man,” Mora wrote in the map's caption.

Sometimes that humor came from shrinking himself down. By studying the journals Mora kept during his own trip to Yosemite, Hiller was able to spot two tiny Jos on the map – one taking photos at Nevada Falls and one drinking from a canteen under Sentinel Dome. “The sale of those maps helped the family through the Great Depression,” Hiller says. “People were willing to spend 50 cents on them, and that was at a time when money was tight for everyone.”

Mora died in 1947, having made about a dozen cards. One of his last was of Carmel-By-The-Sea, where his family eventually lived. Perhaps better than any other, his life is evident in this card. Hiller is convinced that the two small figures on horses in the upper left are his children, Patty and Joey. And then there is the series of city dogs – one of which Jo must have known particularly well. “Mike Mora could climb a ladder like a chimney sweep,” he wrote of the drawing of a smiling, shod dog. It's his card – he gets to immortalize his dog.

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Five years ago, a federal appeals court in San Francisco upended homelessness policies in California and across the West. In a 2018 ruling against the city of Boise, Idaho, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said cities could not enforce local laws against outdoor camping if they did not provide enough shelter beds for people living on the streets .

Since then, the ruling in that case, Martin v. Boise, makes it extremely difficult for cities to clear encampments in the nine states under the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit. The decision has prompted state and local governments to address homelessness in new ways.

But billions of dollars in government spending have not solved the problem. And as tent cities have grown, political opposition has intensified even in cities with liberal voters. And that brings us back to San Francisco.

In recent weeks, a related legal battle – the latest in a series – has sparked an uproar that went so far that San Francisco Mayor London Breed was at a rally outside the federal courthouse last month as homeless advocates demonstrated , of corpses called near.

Even some San Franciscans are confused by the excitement. Here are some frequently asked questions about the situation.

What's this about?

The Coalition on Homelessness, an advocacy group, filed a federal lawsuit a year ago claiming that enforcement of San Francisco's public camping laws was unconstitutional because the number of people sleeping rough – nearly 4,400 each night at the most recent count – is widening The number of available animal shelter beds has been exceeded. In December, a federal judge issued an emergency order temporarily banning enforcement of city laws against encampments, raising the stakes as winter approached.

What do the two sides say?

San Francisco officials say the city's homeless situation is fundamentally different than that in Boise. The city has spent billions of dollars on housing and services for the homeless and created thousands of emergency shelters and housing units. But many campers refuse to sleep in available beds, the city says. Local laws prohibiting sleeping outside only apply for about four hours a day, not around the clock.

Advocates for homeless San Franciscans say the city has made little real effort to provide adequate housing and has instead criminalized homelessness. The fight comes as the cost of living in California continues to rise and affordable housing remains scarce.

Why has the rhetoric increased now?

The city this summer asked the Ninth Circuit to change the federal judge's interim order. One day in late August in San Francisco, as a three-judge panel heard the arguments, city officials and housing advocates staged dueling protests outside.

Breed, who had just returned from a ceremony to open an Ikea store in a commercially fragile part of the city, called it “inhumane” not to move people out of the tent camps. “We found bodies,” she shouted. “We found a dead baby in these tents.”

The same day, Gov. Gavin Newsom — a former mayor of San Francisco — announced that the state would send cities and counties an additional $38 million to “clean up encampments,” accusing the courts of “causing costly delays.” .

How did tech executives get involved?

Two days later, Elon Musk and other tech personalities on homeless plaintiffs represent Bono. Newsom, who is not normally a friend of Musk, later said on X that Musk “raised a key issue” and that the federal courts were the problem.

The governor, a liberal Democrat who is widely considered a 2028 presidential candidate, told The San Francisco Chronicle that he was once so frustrated with legal decisions protecting camps that he considered approaching the judiciary directly to deal with complaints from the to be dealt with by the public. “I literally talked about putting up a big sign with the judge's phone number saying, 'Call the judge,'” he said.

Anthony York, a Newsom spokesman, compared the governor's current stance to his previous criticism of conservative federal judges who have sought to overturn gun controls in California – another group of “ideologues” whose decisions threatened public safety.

What's new?

It is unclear when the Ninth Circuit will rule on the city's full appeal of the injunction. But late Tuesday, the court denied the city's request for modification, clarifying that homeless campers who are offered housing can be asked to move.

The next written arguments in the lawsuit are scheduled to be filed later this month, and it is unlikely there will be a hearing before then. Still, the outcry, even from Democrats like Breed and Newsom, is a sign that political pressure is increasing to reconsider the jurisprudence that emerged from the Boise decision.

Breed is fighting for re-election in 2024 and her poll numbers are declining; Political rivals see a great chance of defeating them. Critics on both ends of the political spectrum accused Breed and Newsom of trying to shift responsibility for the homeless problem to the courts.

For more:

Locke Historic District.Credit…Sarah Stierch/Wikimedia

Where we travel

Today's tip comes from Joe Macpherson:

“One of the places we like to visit during a fishing trip to the Delta is Locke, also known as the Locke Historic District, an unincorporated community in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta on River Road. The 14-acre town was first founded as a Chinese community between 1893 and 1915. There are a few restaurants, gardens, shops, museums and Strange Cargo, a funky old bookshop which, if open, is worth a visit.”

Tell us about your favorite places in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We will report more about this in future editions of the newsletter.

And before you go, some good news

While the Strokes have become something of a shorthand for New York's downtown rock scene of the early 2000s, on the opposite coast, in Southern California, the group is enjoying a new fan base that is distinctly Californian.

Juicebox, Southern California's premier Strokes tribute band that draws enthusiastic multi-generational audiences, is leading something of a Strokes resurgence on the West Coast. The group's fans, as well as most of its members, are predominantly Latino.

As Eric Ducker wrote in the New York Times last week, the Strokes themselves have a large presence in Latin America, and it follows that Los Angeles, where more than 4.9 million people identify as Hispanic or Latino, has many Latino Strokes should have fans. But the band's particular appeal among first-generation Americans, Ducker writes, is also tied to their story of self-invention, an appealing message for those who have complicated feelings about their identity and the culture to which they belong.

“As people have moved away or outgrown certain subcultures or music scenes, it seems like in Los Angeles, Latinos have moved in to take the reins,” says José G. Anguiano, professor of Latina/o studies. said about the resurgence. “What's really cool is that they're taking the reins, not just in terms of being a fan, but fronting these tribute bands and producing their own music. They participate fully in these subcultures in every way.”

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In the 20th century, water project developers relied on engineering infrastructure to meet the economic aspirations and lifestyles of Californians in a region where rainfall is not regular. Main examples:

• The Los Angeles Aqueduct transports water from the eastern side of the Sierras to Southern California, initially for agriculture and later for urban development.
• The Colorado River Aqueduct and All American Canal serve urban Southern California and agriculture in the Imperial and Coachella valleys.
• The federal Central Valley Project (CVP) system of dams, reservoirs and canals primarily serves agriculture in the Central Valley, but also the Central Coast and urban users in Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties.
• The Hetch Hetchy Project, originating in Yosemite, delivers water from the Tuolumne River through the San Joaquin Valley to the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
• The Mokelumne Aqueduct provides water to urban users in the East Bay Area.
• The State Water Project (SWP) system of dams, reservoirs and canals transports water originally classified as “surplus” in the North to meet varying needs in coastal areas, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.

The final four of these projects impact the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary. In 2008, the State Water Resources Control Board reported that the water rights it managed in the Bay/Delta Watershed exceeded the average annual natural flow: for every acre-foot of water in the Delta Watershed, 8.4 acre-feet of water was promised on paper .

Ongoing water battles between regions and between urban and agricultural users reflect “paper water” or other unrealistic expectations that actual supplies cannot reliably meet. When supplies fell short of expectations, the water agency was pressured to deliver water anyway, even at the expense of endangered species and the health of people and the delta and estuary ecosystem. When surface water is not available, users resort to groundwater and overdraft it to compensate.

Each of the major water projects faces supply, environmental and climate challenges that planners did not anticipate. It is no longer clear that more infrastructure is the answer.

Jane Wagner-Tyack, LWVC Water Committee Co-Chair

_____________________________________________

The next part of our series of articles on California water can be posted to your local League Voter at this link.

Next comes: The water-energy nexus – Water movement, heating and treatment, and wastewater treatment collectively represent one of the largest end-uses of electricity and natural gas in California.

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WALNUT CREEK – As Cheryl Dumesnil and Tracie Vickers prepared for their wedding a decade ago, they thought about living in San Francisco, where other gay and lesbian families would surround them, or retreating to the suburbs where they grew up were.

Their choice of central Contra Costa County made them pioneers, the first two-mother family in their leafy Walnut Creek neighborhood.

“This is Tracie's suburban dream,” Dumesnil said Tuesday at their ranch house, as the couple's 6-year-old son, Brennan, quietly read a book and 4-year-old Kian marched around the kitchen, a singing troubadour playing a white guitar Guitar. Neighbors welcomed this family with cookies and open arms.

“After saying I would never move to the suburbs again, here I am,” Dumesnil said.

The family of four is among nearly 1 percent of California households – about 126,000 households – headed by same-sex couples, according to 2010 Census statistics released Thursday. If the numbers are accurate, they show that nearly a quarter of same-sex couples in California are raising children.

While San Francisco remains a gay hub – the city has more than 10,000 gay and lesbian couples, compared to fewer than 300 in Walnut Creek – the census found same-sex couples in every corner of the state, making it clear that Same-sex couples in many parts of the state, suburban and rural areas have far higher chances of having children.

“We are not just a special interest group concentrated in large urban centers,” Dumesnil said. “We’re basically everywhere, just trying to live a legally protected and fulfilling life.”

Fifteen years after the federal Defense of Marriage Act banned gay marriage and seven years after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom defiantly ordered licenses to be granted to same-sex couples, gay and lesbian families remain at odds political crosshairs, but also say that society is increasingly at risk. I'm getting used to having them – and their children – with us. In turn, whether they have been previously counted or not, more same-sex couples are aware of identifying themselves on census forms.

Demographers warn that the numbers may overcount same-sex couples because opposite-sex couples miscoded each other in a confusing way. The errors are compounded because there are far more opposite-sex couples than same-sex couples.

Gay and lesbian couples are identified in the census when the head of the household reports living with a “husband” or “unmarried partner” of the same sex. Changes in the way the Census Bureau counts same-sex couples make it difficult to accurately compare with the 2000 census, when the count found more than 92,000 same-sex couples in California.
However, it is clear that the number of open same-sex couples nationwide has increased significantly over the last decade.

“We have evidence that over time, more and more people are willing to report (same-sex unions),” said demographer Gary Gates of UCLA's Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law. “We saw that these increases were the largest outside of well-known gay neighborhoods. I expect these increases would be larger in the Central Valley than in San Francisco.”

Same-sex couples in suburban and rural areas are far more likely to be raising children than their urban counterparts. National studies show that about 19 percent of children of same-sex couples are adopted, Gates said. Many more are children from previous heterosexual relationships.

“This type of pattern is much more common in conservative areas where people come out later in life,” Gates said. “The further you get from San Francisco, the greater the proportion of same-sex couples raising children.”

For some same-sex couples, life in the outskirts of the Bay Area still seems like living on a cultural frontier.

The census counted 138 gay male couples in Antioch last year and found that 30 percent of them have children. However, partners Joe Horacek and Jonathan Lee only know one other family like them, who lives on the other side of town.

The family moved from South San Francisco to Antioch in 2004 because they wanted a larger, cheaper home to raise their three adopted children. Horacek and Lee were among about 18,000 same-sex couples who married for six months in 2008, when gay marriage was legal in the state, before voters passed Proposition 8. Life in Antioch was simpler when the children were small; Her oldest children, 14 and 13, now struggle to fit in in a community where two fathers are a rarity.

“My son encountered some negative reactions from kids on Facebook,” said Horacek, a local teacher. “We don’t want to be the ones putting the targets on their backs. All children get teased about something, but usually it has to do with themselves. We add that additional liability for customization.”

Hosts who greet the family of five at local restaurants sometimes mistake them for two separate parties. Because her 9-year-old daughter doesn't have a mother, a school principal recently asked if she could play the role for a Mother's Day tea. Usually polite conversation smooths over an adult's confusion, but the couple sometimes wonders if life would be easier for their children on the other side of the East Bay hills.

“For the most part, no one has questioned us or given us any problems, but there is more assumption here that the children have both a mother and a father,” Horacek said. “I know that, particularly in places like Berkeley and Alameda County, conversations about different types of families and same-sex relationships are part of the curriculum. That’s not necessarily the case out here.”

Three percent of households in San Francisco and just over two percent of households in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville are headed by same-sex couples, making these Bay Area cities with the highest concentrations of gay and lesbian partners. Other East Bay cities are close behind, and most of the neighborhoods outside of San Francisco with the census-highest number of same-sex couples are along the East Oakland foothills.

Same-sex couples from the East Bay are also more likely to have children than couples from San Francisco, although the same is true for heterosexual couples as well. Just over 4 percent of gay male couples in San Francisco and 19 percent of lesbian couples have children, compared to 11 percent of gay male couples and 22 percent of lesbian couples in Oakland.

Maya Scott-Chung and her multi-ethnic family also chose the East Bay because she found it more diverse.

“It wasn't just because we could afford to buy a house here, although that was part of it,” said Scott-Chung, who lives with her transgender partner and daughter in Oakland's San Antonio neighborhood . “It is important to us to live in Oakland because it is one of the most culturally, linguistically and economically diverse places in the Bay Area and probably the world. There are a large number of lesbian and two-mother families here.”

Nationally, lesbian partners are more likely to raise children than gay men – 32 percent of lesbian households have children, compared to 17.8 percent of gay male couples. Horacek said being a minority among minorities in a place like Antioch can be exciting and a little scary.

“Obviously gays have been in relationships for centuries, but this appears to be the first generation where this is happening in large numbers, particularly through the addition of children into the family,” he said. “We sometimes feel like we are soldiers at the front. Change is happening, but it’s still not mainstream here.”

Dumesnil said she and her wife have seen perceptions in Walnut Creek slowly change as they interacted with straight families at school events and in their neighborhood.

“Someone has to be out here,” she said. “In a way, the presence of the children was the great equalizer.”

Cities in the Bay Area with
the highest percentage
of same-sex couples

Guerneville: 7.6 percent of all households are headed by same-sex couples (176 same-sex couples)
San Francisco: 3 percent (10,384)
Oakland: 2.2 percent (3,442)
Emeryville: 2.1 percent (119)
Berkeley: 2.1 percent (961)
El Cerrito: 1.9 percent (189)
Pacifica: 1.7 percent (237)
Albany: 1.7 percent (123)
Alameda: 1.5 percent (459)
San Rafael: 1.3 percent (301)
Vallejo: 1.2 percent (497)
Santa Rosa: 1.2 percent (757)
Richmond: 1.2 percent (427)
Concord: 1.2 percent (512)
Pleasant Hill: 1.1 percent (152)
San Leandro: 1.1 percent (326)

nationwide household figures

49%
Households headed by
Man-woman couples

6.2%
Households headed by unmarried partners of different genders
1 %
Households headed by
same-sex partners

43.4%
Resident does not live with us
a spouse or unmarried partner

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The United States is currently suffering from a skills shortage. Overall, there are not enough qualified electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians and carpenters in the country to meet demand. A recent study found that many of the most in-demand positions remain unfilled for at least a month. This comes as millions of Americans laid off in the early days of the coronavirus are looking for work.

However, not all labor markets are the same. While it should be relatively easy to find work in all 50 states, wage levels vary by state. To find out which states pay homeworkers the most, ServiceTitan analyzed Payscale's June 2020 data. The average salary of a homeworker was calculated by averaging the salary of entry-level, mid-level, and senior-level workers in each States were identified. HVAC technicians, plumbers and electricians were all included in the data set, which can be viewed nationwide here.

California in numbers

– Average annual salary: $59,511 ($28.61 per hour)
— Plumber: $58,400 ($28.08 per hour)
—Salary increase for entry-level to senior plumbers: $15,100 ($7.26 per hour)
— HVAC Technician: $59,433 ($28.57 per hour)
— HVAC Technician Salary Increase from Entry Level to Manager Level: $17,800 ($8.56 per hour)
— Electrician: $60,700 ($29.18 per hour)
—Salary increase for entry-level to managerial electricians: $17,900 ($8.61 per hour)

There is a gap between knowing that an industry needs workers and actually absorbing workers into the industry. California is investing $200 million to improve job training – training that can add tens of thousands of dollars to the average trade worker's salary. However, the sheer size of California means that not all metropolitan areas are equally suitable for home workers. THe The San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metropolitan area is the highest paid in the country for both electricians and plumbers and the fourth highest for HVAC technicians.

Meanwhile, the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara and Merced areas are also among the top 10 metros in the country for electricians, while San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara ranks top for plumbers and HVAC technicians do well in Napa, Santa Cruz-Watsonville, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara and Santa Maria-Santa Barbara metros. Additionally, the total employment for plumbers in the state is expected growth of 12.4% until 2028. But it's not all rosy: the premium for paying home workers is partly explained by this California has the third highest cost of living in the country.

Check out the statistics below to find out where your talents are most and least valued and to better assess whether or not a move is worth it for your career.

States that pay home workers the most

#1. Alaska: $61,156 average annual salary ($29.40 per hour)
#2. Massachusetts: $59,700 average annual salary ($28.70 per hour)
#3. California: $59,511 average annual salary ($28.61 per hour)

States That Pay Home Workers the Least

#1. Arkansas: $47,944 average annual salary ($23.05 per hour)
#2. West Virginia: $48,178 average annual salary ($23.16 per hour)
#3. Idaho: $49,433 average annual salary ($23.77 per hour)

This story originally appeared on ServiceTitan and was produced and distributed in collaboration with Stacker Studio.

The post California is the #3 Highest Paying State for Plumbers, HVAC Technicians, and Electricians appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

In summary

A series of storms have left California with enormous amounts of water, but the state needs new pipelines to capitalize on such events and counteract the effects of drought.

The rain and snow storms that have hit California for weeks have claimed nearly two dozen lives and caused billions of dollars in damage to public and private property.

The downside, however, is that they have dumped huge amounts of water on a state that has been suffering from severe drought for several years. At one point this month, a staggering 160,000 cubic feet — 1.2 million gallons — flowed through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta every second. That's enough water to fill a reservoir the size of Folsom Lake (about 1 million acre-feet) in three days, not counting the water falling on other regions such as Southern California.

But whether the storms have ended the drought depends on California's ability to capture enough water to fill its severely depleted reservoirs and at least begin to replenish underground aquifers that have been terribly overdrawn by desperate farmers.

So far, only a comparatively small part of the huge storm water has been stored. For example, only a small portion of the Delta's powerful water flows have been pumped into state and federal aqueducts for transport to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, largely due to regulations limiting diversions to protect endangered species such as the two-inch Delta smelt .

San Joaquin Valley lawmakers have asked President Joe Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom to relax rules to allow more wastewater to either be delivered to farmers or stored in storage facilities, such as the San Luis Reservoir, which is now less than half full.

“This is not the time to turn back the pumps,” Sen. Melissa Hurtado and Rep. Jasmeet Bains, both Democrats from Bakersfield, said in a letter to Newsom last week. “After several years of drought and low reservoir levels, it only makes sense to capitalize on the wet conditions.”

“We have a moral obligation to provide Californians with every relief we can,” five Republican congressmen told Biden and Newsom. “Government regulations should not and must not deprive our constituents of vital water from these storms.”

But state water officials say their hands are tied by environmental regulations that require the first winter flows to be allowed to wash out the Delta and San Francisco Bay.

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What did or didn't happen during the weeks of flooding suggests that California needs new pipelines to take advantage of the periodic “atmospheric rivers” that bring immense amounts of rainfall.

Meteorologists expect the state to experience more erratic weather due to global climate change – longer periods of drought punctuated by occasional storm events like those experienced by California.

That means we need more storage, such as Sites Reservoir on the west side of the Sacramento Valley, which has been in the planning stages for several decades, and sinks to recharge aquifers. The long-dormant, $4 billion Sites project now enjoys strong support from state and federal officials as well as significant funding.

Meanwhile, the relatively small diversions from the Delta now permitted by law bolster the case for “Delta funding,” which would allow more water to be diverted to state and federal aqueducts and thus to lower reservoirs, without harming the environment to jeopardize restrictions. The project has existed for six decades, first as a “peripheral canal,” later as a double tunnel called “Water Fix,” and now as a single tunnel.

Get the facts before you vote in this year's primary election.

California water managers will have another chance to fill reservoirs in a few months as the Sierra's vast snowpack, twice the historical average and still growing, melts. We can only hope that Mother Nature releases the water from the snowpack slowly enough to avoid destructive flooding.

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In October 2022, San Francisco Raised eyebrows when the city budgeted $1.7 million for a single public restroom in the city's Noe Valley neighborhood. According to city officials, the high price was due to high construction prices in San Francisco as well as remaining supply chain issues.

But shortly afterwards the state intervened, which scrapped the planned bathroom after outrage spread over the high cost to taxpayers. Fifteen months later, there is still no place to pee in the public square where the toilet was originally planned – and it doesn't look like there will be one any time soon.

“Why isn’t there a toilet here? I just don't understand her. Nobody has them,” said a resident told The New York Times last week. “It’s another example of the city not being able to do it.”

San Francisco has the most expensive Construction costs worldwide – and that is hardly surprising. To build a public toilet in Noe Valley, a place that already had the plumbing necessary to install a toilet, developers had to overcome a dizzying number of regulatory requirements. This includes obtaining approval from the Arts Commission's Civic Design Review Committee, passing review under the California Environmental Quality Act, and approval from the city's Rec and Park Commission and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. As if that wasn't enough, the project would also be subject to a “community feedback” phase.

Even after receiving approval, the city would not be free to simply find the cheapest acceptable bathroom — likely a prefabricated option — and connect it to city plumbing. According to a year 2022 San Francisco Chronicle Article, Prefab bathrooms violate the city's public works agreement. In addition to the cost, the city would also have to use union labor to build the bathroom.

While the $1.7 million price tag was rightly criticized, if the project had been allowed to move forward, the budget might not have been set too high. The regulatory burden in San Francisco for new construction—even something as simple as a single-stall bathroom—is just so high.

Even the San Francisco government has acknowledged that the Noe Valley bathroom fiasco was a sign that the city is over-regulated. “It is worth changing the current laws around construction projects such as toilets that slow things down,” said a spokesman for Mayor London Breed Just.

However, this is far from the first time that local governments have allocated absurdly large sums of money to fund public toilets. In 2017 New York City spent 2 million dollars in a public park toilet. And last year, Philadelphia caused controversy when it announced it would spend $1.8 million on six modular buildings Portland loo bathrooms over the next five years — a model that cities across the country have spent millions on in recent years.

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LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–President and Chief Executive Officer of Cathay General Bancorp and Cathay Bank, Chang M. Liu, has been appointed by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco to serve as a member on its Los Angeles Branch Board of Directors. Moreover, Mr. Liu has been elected as a California member director by the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco to serve a four-year term between January 1, 2023, and December 31, 2026.

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco represents the Twelfth District of the Federal Reserve System—the central bank of the United States. The Twelfth District comprises nine western states—Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington—plus the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Guam.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco is a cooperatively owned wholesale bank helping local lenders in Arizona, California, and Nevada build strong communities, create opportunities, and improve lives.

“I am incredibly honored and excited to take on both of these new roles. I look forward to working with the San Francisco Fed and FHLBank San Francisco to help create new opportunities in the region and build strong communities,” said Mr. Liu

In addition to serving as a board member on the Board of Directors of Cathay Bank and its holding company Cathay General Bancorp, Mr. Liu’s directorship extends to serving on the board of directors of the Western Bankers Association, the Board of Advisors for the UCLA Anderson Forecast, the American Cancer Society’s CEOs Against Cancer group, and the Foothill Family Service.

About Cathay Bank

Cathay Bank, a subsidiary of Cathay General Bancorp (Nasdaq: CATY), opened its doors in 1962 in Los Angeles to serve the growing immigrant community. Today, we operate over 60 branches across the US, with a branch in Hong Kong, and representative offices in Beijing, Shanghai, and Taipei. While much has changed over six decades, our pursuit and dedication has only grown stronger. Then, now, and always, we go above and beyond, so you can, too. Learn more at cathaybank.com. FDIC insurance coverage is limited to deposit accounts at Cathay Bank’s US domestic branch locations.

The post Chang M. Liu Appointed to the Los Angeles Department Board of Federal Reserve Financial institution of San Francisco and Elected as California Member Director of the Federal Dwelling Mortgage Financial institution of San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

It is with great pride that Chancellor & Dean David Faigman formally announces that as of January 1, 2023, the former UC Hastings College of the Law has a new name—University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.

“Our new name accurately reflects our law school through its geographic location and recognizes it as an anchor institution in the City of San Francisco, where we’ve proudly made our home since its founding in 1878,” Faigman said.

Starting Jan. 1, the law school will be called UC College of the Law, San Franciscoor UC Law SF. Its signs, official seal, and other branded materials will begin to reflect the new name at the start of the new year. A full transition for all building signs and additional renaming needs is expected to be completed within six months.

On September 23, 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law to change the state Education Code to adopt the College’s new name.

On December 30, 2022, State Superior Court Judge Richard Ulmer ruled that a lawsuit filed by a small group of alumni and descendants of the law school’s founder could not enjoin the law school from using its new name.

Since 2017, the College has studied the actions of its founder, Serranus Hastings, and the harms he committed against the Round Valley Tribes and Yuki People. As a result of the findings and several hearings with affected Indigenous People, alumni, students, staff, and faculty, in the fall of 2021, the College’s Board of Directors voted to rename the school. In July 2022, the Board unanimously chose UC College of the Law, San Francisco as its new name. This was followed by a vote by the state Legislature that overwhelmingly approved Assembly Bill 1936 that changed the state Education Code to adopt the College’s new name.

Chancellor & Dean David Faigman has told the law school community that the renaming of the law school is an integral part of restorative justice efforts that have included opening an Indigenous Law Center and providing legal assistance to California tribes through law school fellowships. He said, “Renaming our school is an important component of the College’s efforts towards addressing the impact of our founder and first dean, especially the harms committed against the Yuki People.”

UC College of the Law, San Francisco, remains a law school dedicated to academic excellence, experiential learning, social justice, and its students continue to succeed as attorneys and are found in all areas of public service, private law firms, government, leadership, and education. We are proud of our many notable graduates, including Vice President Kamala Harris and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

For any questions about the new name, or photographs of our new seal or wordmark, please contact Chief Communications Officer Elizabeth Moore at: mooreelizabeth@uchastings.edu or 415-703-8266.

The post Welcome to College of California Faculty of the Legislation, San Francisco | UC Legislation appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

The rain and snow storms that have pummeled California for weeks have taken nearly two dozen lives and caused billions of dollars in damages to public and private property.

The flip side, however, is that they dropped immense amounts of water on a state that has suffered through severe drought for several years. At one point this month, an astonishing 160,000 cubic feet of water—1.2 million gallons—was flowing through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta every second. That’s enough water to fill a reservoir the size of Folsom Lake, about 1 million acre-feet, in three days and doesn’t count water falling on other regions, such as Southern California.

Whether the storms have ended the drought, however, depends on California’s ability to capture enough water to fill its badly depleted reservoirs and at least begin to recharge underground aquifers that have been terribly overdrafted by desperate farmers.

So far, only a relatively tiny amount of the immense storm runoff has found its way into storage. For instance, just a trickle of the Delta’s heavy flows has been pumped into state and federal aqueducts for delivery to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, largely because of rules that limit diversions to protect endangered species such as the two-inch-long Delta melts

San Joaquin Valley legislators have seen President Joe Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom to relax the rules so that more runoff can be either delivered to farmers or placed in storage, such as the San Luis Reservoir, which is now less than half-full.

“This is no time to be dialing back the pumps,” state Sen. Melissa Hurtado and Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains, both Democrats from Bakersfield, told Newsom in a letter last week. “After several years of drought and low reservoir levels, it only makes sense to capitalize on wet conditions.”

“We have a moral obligation to provide Californians any relief that is within our control,” five Republican congressional members told Biden and Newsom. “Government regulations should not and must not deny our constituents critical water from these storms.”

State water officials, however, say their hands are tied by environmental protection rules requiring that initial winter flows be allowed to flush out the Delta and San Francisco Bay.

What’s been happening, or not happening, during the weeks-long deluge indicates that California needs some new plumbing to take advantage of the periodic “atmospheric rivers” that bring immense amounts of precipitation.

Meteorologists believe that due to global climate change, the state will experience more erratic weather – prolonged periods of drought interrupted by occasional storm events such as the ones California has been experiencing.

That means we need more storage, such as the Sites Reservoir on the west side of the Sacramento Valley that’s been in the planning stage for several decades and sinking basins to recharge aquifers. The long-dormant, $4 billion Sites project now has the ardent support of state and federal officials, as well as some serious money.

The relatively large diversions from the Delta now allowed by law, meanwhile, bolster the case for the “Delta Conveyance,” which would allow more water to be diverted into the state and federal aqueducts, and thus into downstate reservoirs, without running afoul of environmental restrictions. The project has kicked around for six decades, first as a “peripheral canal,” later as twin tunnels dubbed “Water Fix,” and now a single tunnel.

California water managers will have another chance to fill reservoirs in a few months, when the immense Sierra snowpack that’s twice the historic average and still growing melts. We can only hope that Mother Nature releases the snowpack’s water slowly enough to avoid destructive floods.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to Commentary.

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