The mood of the public and officials alike has tilted hard against outsized consumers. Although “water providers such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power have refused to divulge the names of California’s top residential water users,” the Los Angeles Times reported, “the DWP is now considering changes to its water conservation ordinance that would impose ‘substantial’ fines for excessive use and make the names public.”

Pressed by “public outrage, and questioning by Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz,” the Times noted, DWP would follow in the East Bay’s footsteps, where agency overusers recently confronted “an excessive-use penalty ordinance that allows it to fine and name water customers who consume more than four times the average household.”

From nagging to snitching

In the Bay Area, a culture of water shaming has developed from the ground up. In a report on “the domestic water police,” the New York Times recently identified “moms and dads, spouses and partners, children, even co-workers and neighbors” as among the residents “quick to wag a finger when they spot people squandering moisture, such as a faucet left running while they’re brushing their teeth, or using too much water to clean dinner plates in the sink. And showers? No lingering allowed.”

More nagging has gone hand in hand with more snitching. The Times reported that “state water agencies issued more than 70,000 warnings for overuse and more than 20,000 penalties” this June and July, with many issued when “someone’s neighbor ratted on them,” according to State Water Resources Control Board climate and conservation manager Max Gomberg.

Although those penalties landed on a relatively small group of die-hard squanderers, the state has now leveled substantial fines on whole cities that failed to meet conservation targets. “While most communities continue to hit mandated conservation targets, a few have consistently missed,” the Sacramento Bee noted. “All four were in Southern California: Beverly Hills, Indio, Redlands and Coachella Valley Water District. Each was fined $61,000.”

These sums could be only the beginning. “The penalties are based on the board’s authority to issue fines of $500 per day for violations of its emergency regulation,” according to the Press-Enterprise. “The board could also issue the providers a cease and desist order, which carries a fine up to $10,000 per day for non-compliance.”

A vicious circle

The crackdown has come as agencies have hiked rates for users who do conserve. “Water providers in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and other parts of the state have recently told customers that rates will go up at least temporarily, as utilities struggle to pay for building and repairing pipes, buying water and other costs, even as customers cut back,” according to Reuters. Agencies have sometimes wound up a victim of their own success. “In Los Angeles, conservation led to a $111 million drop in revenues during the fiscal year that ended July 1, a period mostly before the mandatory cutbacks kicked into high gear, Department of Water and Power budget director Neil Guglielmo said Friday.”

But for now, regulators have tried to emphasize the positive. “Californians slashed their water use 26 percent in September, meeting Gov. Jerry Brown’s goal of 25 percent for the fourth straight month,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing recently released state data. Though encouraged by the numbers, water agencies have strained to strike a messaging balance between threats and warnings on the one hand and encouragement and pride on the other, hoping to give savers a sense of reward without subtly encouraging a return to laxity. Utilities, noted the Chronicle, remained dedicated to “trying to keep the conservation message front and center after four dry years, especially as residents may be tempted to become less diligent with forecasts calling for a wetter-than-average winter.”

Come and listen to a story about a city named Beverly Hills and its bubblin’ crude.

“The Beverly Hillbillies” still plays on TV in reruns, providing laughs about the Clampetts from Tennessee who strike it rich in oil on their farm, then move to posh Beverly Hills with its “swimmin’ pools, movie stars,” as the opening song goes.

But what’s not well-known is that there’s crude in “them thar” Beverly Hills, too.

And would a “reboot” of the series today include an episode about how the City of Beverly Hills has banned oil drilling by fracking – the horizontal fracturing of rock to extract oil and gas?

On May 6, the City Council unanimously voted to ban fracking, the first city to do so in California. According to the Beverly Hills Courier, the new fracking ordinance bans “hydraulic fracturing, acidizing or any other stimulation technique” from any area of the city.

The city press release said that, back in Sept. 2011, the council also passed an ordinance to phase out the oil wells next to Beverly Hills High School by the end of 2016. But horizontal drilling from outside the city – drilling under Beverly Hills — would continue.

So to what extent the new fracking ban will be effective is unknown because companies might set up wells in adjacent cities, then drill under Beverly Hills.

Budget

According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the Domestic Crude Oil Price for California hovered around $100 per barrel for 2013. That would roughly result in about $74,574,200 in gross crude oil production revenues from the Beverly Hills oil field in 2013.  According to data from the 2014 Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation Oil and Gas Industry report, the Beverly Hills oil field would contribute about $5.839 million in local property taxes (745,742 barrels x $7.83 per barrel property taxes), not all of which would go to the city or its schools.

This does not include additional city business license taxes, franchise fees for oil pipelines within city streets, or the oil extraction royalties that its mineral rights owners derive. In fact the city, Beverly Hills High School, Los Angeles County, the state of California, and some 6,200 holders of oil leases that get royalties from oil wells under Beverly Hills are secondary parties enriched by the oil field.

Even new Los Angeles City Mayor Eric Garcetti co-owns a personal trust with an oil-drilling lease with Venoco Oil with a drilling island located on the campus of Beverly Hills High School.  This does not include all the sales taxes paid by oil company employees buying goods and services in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles County.

So, despite the new law, it’s difficult to tell if Beverly Hills’ fracking ban is real or mostly symbolic. Especially because the city of 34,622 already is saturated in oil.

A portion of the city sits atop a 1,200-acre subterranean oil field that produced 874,000 barrels of oil in 2008, with no discernible negative effect on property values, human health or the environment.  No groundwater from the Hollywood Basin, which underlies Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and Los Angeles, has been contaminated.

In fact, the city itself, Beverly Hills High School, Los Angeles County, the state of California, and some 6,200 holders of oil leases that get royalties from oil wells under Beverly Hills are secondary parties enriched by the oil fields.

The wealthy people of Beverly Hills were not deterred in 1900 from locating their homes near a productive oil field.  A map of the Beverly Hills oil field shown nearby indicates drilling islands. The fields are four miles long, a half-mile wide and 10,000 feet deep.  Even new Los Angeles City Mayor Eric Garcetti co-owns a personal trust with an oil-drilling lease with Venoco Oil with a drilling island located on the campus of Beverly Hills High School.

Fracking allowed

State law would not impede fracking in the Clampetts’ back yard. Fracking in California was green-lighted in 2013 when Gov. Jerry Brown signed State Senate Bill 4. It strictly monitors fracking and regulates any fracturing of rock by acidizing techniques, but does not ban it.

Several bills are still pending in the Legislature that would ban or place a statewide moratorium on fracking. But given that Brown already gave his approval for fracking, he is unlikely to sign them.

Hedge fund manager Tom Steyer has called for a law mandating a vote of two-thirds of the people before local fracking is allowed.

Steyer also is interested in funding fracking bans in other states. Banning fracking could protect his green-power investment returns from competition from conventional oil and gas drilling.

Steyer has recently funded his own opinion poll that shows that Californians want an oil-extraction tax, and county control over fracking.

Steyer should be taken seriously because in the 2012 election he sponsored Proposition 39, a $1 billion tax on businesses that passed and has harmed California’s business climate. For five years, $550 million of the tax increase is dedicated to environmental projects.

“Matt Damon fervently supports American public schools and increased funding for American public schools. Strangely, however, he has chosen not to send any of his four children to the schools he loves so much.

“The mega-wealthy, left-wing actor divulged his decision in a weekend interview with a British newspaper, reports the Daily Mail. He was promoting a new science-fiction movie, ‘Elysium.’

“Perhaps the most delicious part of the story is Damon’s wacky rationale: he says public schools just aren’t sufficiently ‘progressive’ to suit his politics.

“Damon, 42, is moving to Los Angeles from New York. Just like millions of Americans, except in the completely opposite way, he claimed he doesn’t ‘have a choice’ when it comes to private schooling.”

That’s from the Daily Caller.

What makes it even more hypocritical is that this isn’t a situation like a president deciding to send his kids to Sidwell Friends in Washington D.C. both because D.C. schools stink and for security reasons. Damon has moved to Beverly Hills, according to reports. Beverly Hills High School is considered a very good public school. The elementary schools in Beverly Hills also get good marks. But they’re not good enough for Damon, the massive hypocrite.

By Tori Richards

Los Angeles stands to receive federal transportation dollars for the first time in nearly a decade, yet local infighting could derail the project, officials say.

Allegations of influence peddling with a campaign donor tied to President Obama and lawsuits charging corruption at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority have put the brakes on the final leg of a $5 billion subway project through L.A.’s Westside.

With a new freeway lane costing more than $1 billion, the project was seen as a godsend to an area that has some of the nation’s worst traffic congestion.

The disputed route runs underneath Beverly Hills High School, with a subway stop at Constellation and Avenue of the Stars in Century City. That’s where Obama donor JMB Realty owns a slice of land.

The city of Beverly Hills and its school district sued the MTA when a presentation of their scientific study showing the route to be hazardous fell on deaf ears.

“It needs to be ready to go on our end and these lawsuits complicate things,” said Dan Rosenfeld, senior deputy to L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas. “We could lose out on this funding if it drags through the courts. Not to mention the huge legal cost. Who pays for that? It’s not fair to stick it to the taxpayers.”

Added Michael Cano, transportation deputy for LA County Supervisor Michael Antonovich:

“Federal funding matching on the subway requires you to be aggressive on the timeline. You have to demonstrate a good financial plan and operating system. Problems associated with the lawsuit and delay and it loses out on a round of federal funding. The public as a whole loses out.” 

A bill making its way through the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee appropriates funds for seven transportation projects throughout the state. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., sits on the committee.

For nearly a decade, federal transportation dollars have been awarded to New York, Dallas, Denver and other cities, largely ignoring California and its pressing need for a better rail system.

“It’s shocking how little we get,” Rosenfeld said. “California is 10 percent of the U.S.and L.A. is 40 percent of California and we get peanuts in the federal transit cafeteria compared to other cities. We should get our fair share, but zero isn’t a fair share.”

For example, New York — which already has the nation’s biggest subway system — has received $612 million for various rail projects. Other projects have included Dallas at $236 million, Salt Lake City at $180 million and Seattle at $113, according to MTA records.

“They are tunneling through rock on the east side of Manhattan, it’s not an easy project,” Rosenfeld said.

He added that their success in grabbing dollars could be because “they have very effective senators and one of them is now secretary of state.”

The last big money was in 2004, when Los Angeles received $66 million for its Goldline subway.

David vs. Goliath

The project started out innocently enough: build an extension of the subway system to the Westside, where the only current transportation options are taking the bus or driving along the gridlocked 405 Freeway.

The project would continue on from the Wilshire Center area through Beverly Hills, Century City and Westwood.

The entire project was expected to take 30 years to complete at a cost of $5 billion and the MTA was counting on the federal government to pick up half the tab.

At first, the city of Beverly Hills was highly supportive of the project and Measure R, a 2008 ballot measure that raised the Los Angeles County sales tax half a cent to support transportation projects. That money would largely be used to fund rail projects.

And initially, the final leg of the subway was supposed to have a station near a golf course, with little impact on anyone. But then the site inexplicably changed to a busy street corner where the project developer JMB Realty owns the parcel of land, charged Brian Goldberg, president of the Beverly Hills Unified School District Board of Education.

The first route would have been faster and up to $100 million cheaper, so none of this made sense to Goldberg.

Tunneling 70 feet under the high school could expose thousands of students to myriad potential disasters, such as the escape of methane gas, former oil well sites and shifting ground, Goldberg said.

“We’ve confirmed with the Department of the State Architect that there’s been no tunneling under instructional buildings anywhere in the state of California,” Goldberg said. “We don’t know if the state architect would even approve construction.”

The school district wanted to give the state that opportunity, asking the MTA board to postpone its decision on the route until further studies could be done. But the board had hired a geologist who claimed that the first proposed station site was on an earthquake fault and the new route was approved.

A second geologist hired by the school district had come up with an opposite conclusion, saying the school has had underground erosion problems. Furthermore, if the first site was home to an active earthquake fault, the city of Los Angeless houldn’t have approved plans for construction of a 39-story office building there, the Beverly Hills geologist noted.

But the MTA board of directors is comprised of elected officials, including L.A.’s mayor and the members of the Board of Supervisors. Chicago-based JMB Realty’s executives have donated at least $5,000 to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign coffers dating back to 2005, MapLight Research shows.

Media reports show that JMB’s billionaire owner, Neil Bluhm, is a big Obama supporter and even threw him a 49th birthday party. Public records reveal that he has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to the Democratic Party and its candidates.

Villaraigosa has made no secret of his ties to the Obama administration and his quest to seek higher office.

“They are heavily connected to Obama and Rahm Emanuel,” Goldberg said. “Coincidences in politics and money are few and far between. These developers are smart people and the reason why they make a lot of money is they know how to work the system.”

Goldberg said JMB Realty’s and the MTA’s insistence on that piece of property for the station “doesn’t smell right.”

Anotonovich, whose district doesn’t include the rail project, has been the only direct supporter of Beverly Hills’ position. Ridley Thomas was not present the day of the vote.

“It’s very frustrating, the city just wanted a fair chance to represent their information to the MTA board,” Cano said. “[Antonovich] felt compelled to stick up for the city of Beverly Hills because they needed a voice on the board.”

In addition, Antonovich is troubled by the appearance of impropriety with the campaign contributions.

“That should’ve been explored, the relationship between the developer and MTA,” Cano added. “It’s definitely something you worry about. We have no first-hand knowledge [of impropriety], but it’s a legitimate question to ask to make sure the public feels a decision based by the MTA board is fact and science and not political considerations.”

The Result

Following a lengthy hearing, in which Antonovich was the only vote on their side, the city of Beverly Hills and the school district each filed lawsuits, asking a judge to reverse the board’s approval of the subway extension.

The city’s lawsuit accused the MTA of holding a sham hearing purporting to seek facts from Beverly Hills’ geologists, when in actuality a decision had already been made.

But the decision of a Superior Court judge won’t resolve the matter. The losing side will certainly file an appeal and the matter could be litigated for years. The MTA and its deep pockets could bury Beverly Hills in legal motions and paperwork. Although it’s a wealthy community, the city’s municipal assets pale in comparison to the billions MTA has at its disposal.

“Unfortunately, because we’re Beverly Hills, there is a stigma that it’s a rich, entitled community,” Goldberg said. “If it was any other route in the state, the response would be very different and more allies would be coming to our side.”