Happy Tuesday!

Five candidates for U.S. Senate debated last night in an event that did little to Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris’ standing as the frontrunner. She was joined by longtime Democratic member of Congress Loretta Sanchez, two former California Republican Party chairs, Tom Del Beccaro and George “Duf” Sundheim and Republican Ron Unz.

While Sanchez is the best-suited candidate to have an immediate impact in the Senate, with developed legislative skills and a seniority advantage, as CalWatchdog reported last month, Harris is likely still the frontrunner, having the support of the Democratic Party. 

As for last night, the Los Angeles Times reports that Harris is “in (the) driver’s seat.” The San Bernardino County Sun/AP reports the debate highlighted “style differences but not policy.” And The Orange County Register reports Sanchez stood “her ground on Muslims comment.”

In other news:

• Three conservation groups are suing the EPA on the grounds that “state and federal regulators have failed to protect Delta fish and the environment during the drought by repeatedly relaxing water-quality standards so as to keep water flowing to California cities and farms,” according to The San Jose Mercury News.

• Assembly Democrats are asking for $1.3 billion to fund local grants and tax credits to encourage affordable housing, reports The Sacramento Bee. 

• The Assembly also voted on Monday to ban the use of all tobacco products on all campuses in the California State University system and California Community Colleges by 2018, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Tidbits:

• Just because everyone loves a hot mic moment, courtesy of The Fresno Bee.

• “No Trump Anytime” signs emerge in Los Angeles, according to the LA Weekly. The Washington Post writes about the horrors of civil asset forfeiture laws: “How police took $53,000 from a christian band, an orphanage and a church.”

Assembly:

• A full slate of hearings. 

Senate:

• A packed Judiciary hearing, plus several more committees. 
• Senate Republicans unveil priority legislation at 11 a.m. in the Capitol.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events scheduled.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @RepDonBeyer @POLSBaltimore

Southern Californians who received cash rebates for replacing their lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping will soon get a federal tax form in the mail reporting the amount, but water officials said Thursday it is still not clear whether the reimbursement will be taxable.

 

Officials from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California — which funded a $340 million incentive program — say they are sending 1099 forms to turf rebate recipients of $600 or more and leaving reporting up to participants and their tax advisers.

 

“We’re doing what we believe is our obligation, which is sending the 1099s,” said Deven Upadhyay, an MWD manager. Recipients “would have to work with their own tax adviser in terms of the way that they might characterize it in terms of the way they file their own taxes.”

 

This would affect most of those who received rebates, Upadhyay said, though he did not give an exact number. The average residential rebate totals about $3,000, according to MWD data. In some cases, residents received rebates of more than $70,000.

 

MWD spokesman Bob Muir said the agency believes the rebates should be “tax-free.”

 

California provides a tax exemption for turf removal rebates, but the federal tax code provides an exemption only for rebates related to energy efficiency, officials said.

‘Strategic’ water conservation promoted

The peculiarity here is that the federal government has been formally committed to promoting water conservation for decades, since long before warnings about the West’s expected “mega-drought” began. This is from a 1998 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overview of federal conservation policy:

The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA, 42 U.S.C. 300j-15), as amended in 1996, requires the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to publish guidelines for use by water utilities in preparing a water conservation plan. …

 

These Water Conservation Plan Guidelines are addressed to water system planners but use of the Guidelines is not required by federal law or regulation. States decide whether or not to require water systems to file conservation plans consistent with these or any other guidelines. …

 

The infrastructure needs of the nation’s water systems are great. Strategic use of water conservation can help extend the value and life of infrastructure assets used in both water supply and wastewater treatment, while also extending the beneficial investment of public funds through the SRF and other programs.

L.A. controller calls program a ‘gimmick’

But there’s another twist to this story. The MWD program that many L.A. and water officials want to be federal tax-free doesn’t appear to be very effective, according to a Los Angeles city audit released in November:

Los Angeles’ turf rebate program saved less water per dollar spent than other Department of Water and Power conservation programs, an audit released by the city controller said Friday.

 

Auditors found that money spent for rebates on items such as high-efficiency appliances yielded a water savings almost five times higher than turf replacement. …

 

City Controller Ron Galperin called on the water provider to focus its conservation programs in order to achieve more sustained and cost-effective water savings. …

 

In fiscal year 2014-15, the DWP spent $40.2 million on customer incentive and rebate programs, Galperin’s office said. Nearly $17.8 million of that went to turf rebates. Each dollar invested in turf rebates is expected to save 350 gallons of water over the estimated 10-year “life expectancy” of residential turf replacement, the audit said.

 

In comparison, the department spent $14.9 million on rebates for high-efficiency appliances and fixtures. Those rebates yield a per-dollar savings of more than 1,700 gallons of water over their estimated lifetimes of up to 19 years, Galperin’s office said.

 

The turf rebate program “had value as a gimmick that … probably spurred a heightened awareness,” Galperin said at a news conference, adding: “It’s the job of my office to look at return on investment.”

That’s from a Nov. 20 Times story.

Photo courtesy of mashable.com

Thanks to California regulators, Volkswagen hasn’t yet found a way out of worldwide trouble. Federal agencies have flexed their muscles in tandem. “U.S. regulators rejected Volkswagen AG’s plan for recalling nearly 500,000 diesel-powered cars,” as the Wall Street Journal noted.

“The Environmental Protection Agency, which is working with California regulators on the VW fraud, had already said it was not satisfied with the recall plan and requested more information from the company,” the New York Times noted. And the Justice Department, “which had opened its own investigation, filed a civil complaint against the company, accusing it of exceeding EPA air quality standards and violating the Clean Air Act.”

The California Air Resources Board, meanwhile, warned that “Volkswagen’s proposals failed to address how the fix would affect the engine’s performance, emissions and vehicle safety,” according to the Journal. “Some experts are concerned that a fix that strengthens the vehicle’s emissions control could reduce fuel economy and overall performance.”

The Board continued its extraordinarily stern treatment of Volkswagen, stemming from a protracted investigation of the company’s secret effort to skirt the rules on emissions tests for diesel vehicles. The Board “said that a recall plan presented in November and December was ‘incomplete, substantially deficient and falls far short of meeting the legal requirements’ to be approved,” as the New York Times reported. And it slammed the company, which was sent reeling this fall and winter by collapsing car sales, for dragging its feet. “The state agency added that VW was taking too long to devise a fix.”

Faulty plans

In its criticisms, the Board singled out problems with the vagueness of the company’s projections based on its own proposed fix. “The Air Resources Board lists a number of reasons why Volkswagen’s proposal was rejected, but it specified that among the most important reasons for the rejection was the fact that ‘the proposed plans do not sufficiently address impacts on the engine, the vehicle’s overall operation, and all related emissions control technologies, including the OBD [On Board Diagnostics] system,'” according to Ars Technica. “In other words, Volkswagen failed to specify whether the fix to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions would impact the car’s gas mileage or its projected lifespan.”

That meant the Board felt as if VW had prevented it from doing its job. “As a result, the Board lacked enough information to tell whether the proposed fixes ‘are even technically feasible,’ according to a letter from Annette Hebert, the board’s chief of auto emissions compliance,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Deep trouble

Although the Board’s ruling affects under 76,000 cars, Ars noted, the EPA’s concurrence meant VW continued to face a comprehensive challenge to its business. “VW reiterated that it is working on a solution and is meeting with EPA officials this week in Washington to submit a reworked proposal,” the Washington Post noted. “But the statements from the California board and the EPA demonstrate the lengths VW will have to go to fix its cars and regain the trust of regulators.”

Harm to VW for its malfeasance has been direct and substantial. Sales have fallen 5 percent, as the Post added. “The worldwide scandal has hammered Volkswagen’s sales, prompted hundreds of lawsuits and forced the German automaker’s former CEO to resign, although he insisted he knew nothing about the defeat devices,” according to the Chronicle.

As CalWatchdog reported previously, California’s Air Resources Board was instrumental in blowing the lid off of Volkswagen’s lengthy emissions scam, which quickly drew the attention of national and foreign regulators reaching from Washington, D.C., to Germany. The Board threw down a gauntlet in November, demanding the recall and repair of affected cars and a formal plan from the company as to how it intended to achieve compliance.

Photo courtesy of mashable.com

California’s powerful environmental regulator has ordered the recall of all Volkswagens, Audis and Porsches equipped with software secretly installed to defeat emissions tests.

“On November 25, the California Air Resources Board sent an In Use Compliance letter notifying Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche to start the process necessary to recall and repair illegal emissions software in all 3-liter diesel vehicles, model years 2009–2015, sold in California,” NACS reported. “According to a press release, the automakers have 45 business days to assemble their plan and deliver it to CARB.”

The figures were added atop the 482,000 cars Volkswagen had previously admitted to rigging, as Bloomberg noted. “That revelation, concerning 2-liter diesel engines from the 2009 through 2015 model years, sparked criminal probes in Europe and the U.S. and led to the resignation of the company’s chief executive officer.”

Flexing its muscle

The new letter marked just the latest twisting of the screws from the Board, which has aggressively pursued action against the auto maker. “The notice from the California Air Resources Board came less than a week after state and federal regulators disclosed that Volkswagen Group automakers installed software to cheat emissions tests on more diesels than initially thought,” AP reported. “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board said last week the software was on about 85,000 Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche vehicles with 3-liter, six-cylinder engines going back to the 2009 model year.” Cars were programmed, according to the New York Times, to trigger a “special eco-friendly mode with lower emissions of nitrogen oxides” when they detected that a lab test had begun.

The Board was instrumental in flushing out Volkswagen’s malfeasance, helping blindside the company by making the revelations public. In a remarkable twist, the Board recently confirmed comments made by director Mary Nichols, published in a German business magazine, “suggesting that the German government may have had information as early as 2010 about Volkswagen AG’s difficulties meeting restrictions on nitrogen oxide emissions in the U.S.,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Ms. Nichols said she was surprised that Ms. Merkel had such specific knowledge of the problems with nitrogen oxide emissions that German manufacturers faced.”

Just last month, it slapped the company with the second of two notices of violation. “On September 25, the California Air Resources Board sent letters to all manufacturers letting them know we would be screening vehicles for potential defeat devices,” Richard Corey, the Board’s Executive Officer said. “Since then ARB, EPA and Environment Canada have continued test programs on additional diesel-powered passenger cars and SUVs. These tests have raised serious concerns about the presence of defeat devices on additional VW, Audi and Porsche vehicles.”

An unending scandal

The damage to Volkswagen has been substantial: “Dealers labored for most of the month with inadequate saleable inventory on their lots,” as the Orange County Register reported, with the auto maker saying “sales of its namesake brand declined 25 percent from a year earlier, largely because the company couldn’t sell any diesel-powered cars.” The company, which confessed it had cheated emissions tests on its diesel cars, halted their sale, falling back on only its gasoline-powered vehicles.

Trouble has spread overseas as well. Although Volkswagen had previously said it was unsure whether the cheating software violated European regulations in addition to U.S. and Californian ones, German regulators recently announced that it did. “The determination by German regulators that VW had cheated could affect a flurry of European consumer litigation, though it is unclear what fines the company might face in Europe,” the Times observed. “While European Union member states were supposed to enact penalties for cheating on automotive tests several years ago, few have done so.”

Manipulating tests

Board chairwoman Mary Nichols, a close longtime ally of Gov. Jerry Brown, revealed that the board was organizing itself for what she called a “major enforcement action,” according to Reuters. “The state is also preparing to oversee a recall of vehicles in California equipped with the device that allowed it to pass laboratory tests measuring their output of the air pollutant NOx, which contributes to smog, Nichols said.”

Initially, VW cars tested in the board’s lab passed inspection. But when the International Council on Clean Transportation discovered huge discrepancies in VW’s emissions during real-world tests, state and federal regulators closed in. “The California watchdog and the U.S. Environment Protection Agency opened an investigation into Volkswagen in May 2014,” Bloomberg reported. “The company said it had identified the reasons for the higher emissions and proposed a fix. That resulted in a recall of nearly 500,000 U.S. vehicles in December to implement a software patch.”

But those changes weren’t enough. The board suggested road tests didn’t vindicate the patch. “Sure enough, nitrogen oxide emissions were still in violation of California and U.S. laws. The agency shared those findings with Volkswagen and the EPA on July 8,” Bloomberg noted.

The board’s assertiveness reflected an intention to make up for its failure to detect the emissions using more frequent road tests. But spokesman Dave Clegern told the Sacramento Bee that the board had been hobbled by the pace of technology, insisting “the agency didn’t have access until three years ago to the portable emissions testing devices needed to road-test diesel cars for emissions.” Now, along with the EPA, the board has moved to put automakers on notice that scrutiny has been heightened. Although there’s no evidence another automaker has evaded standards, Clegern said, “it’s better to be safe.”

Private action

In addition to spreading outrage among environmentalists, VW’s deception raised immediate questions about its direct impact on people’s health. “The engines that VW tweaked to run quickly and efficiently also spewed out a form of pollutant that, over time and in big numbers, can be lethal,” the Orange County Register observed. “Based on academic research about the health effects of nitrogen oxides, numbers of vehicles on the road and the miles driven, the affected cars may have killed dozens of people in California and more than 100 nationally.”

As was to be expected, Volkswagen has been hit with a barrage of lawsuits. Two suits “have been filed in San Diego and Los Angeles over Volkswagen tampering with emissions testing on VW and Audi models to deceive regulators,” reported NBC San Diego. In Sacramento federal court, plaintiffs sought certification for a class action suit “on behalf of ‘tens of thousands’ of Californians who purchased or leased one or more of the diesel VWs secretly equipped by the manufacturer with a device that defeated emissions tests by federal and state regulators,” according to the Sacramento Bee. “Model years 2009 to 2015 are targeted in the complaint.”

Meanwhile, irate VW dealers found themselves “paralyzed” by the crisis, according to the Los Angeles Times. Because they’re not employed by Volkswagen, they have escaped liability for its wrongdoing but wound up unable to sell product or reassure customers. “The Environmental Protection Agency has refused to certify the 2016 line of Volkswagen diesels, and the company has issued a stop-sell order to its dealers, preventing them from selling new diesel cars and certified used ones,” the Times noted.

On Monday

The premise of Michigan v. EPA was whether the agency could refuse to consider costs to business in its decision to regulate, based on the appropriateness and necessity after studying public health hazards as a result of power-plant emissions.

According to the EPA website, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards – “the first ever national limits on mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants” – would have required power plants to use “widely available, proven pollution control technologies to protect families from pollutants.” The EPA estimated MATS would prevent up to 14 premature deaths in California, “while creating up to $120 million in health benefits in 2016.”

Roughly 70 percent of California’s total electricity production comes from power plants located within the state, as well as outside the state but owned by California utilities. Most of our electricity is generated by natural gas and hydroelectric power stations, both of which produce negligible amounts of mercury compounds.

As written in the majority opinion delivered by Justice Antonin Scalia, the actual quantifiable benefits of the new mercury standards, as initially estimated by the EPA, would only be $4 to $6 million per year throughout the U.S. Compared to the $9.6 billion per year costs that power plants would be forced to carry under the EPA’s regulations, the benefits of imposing such standards were questionable, and petitioners, including 32 states, brought the case to the court. “It is not rational, never mind ‘appropriate,’” Scalia wrote, “to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits.”

“When agencies come up with these costly and fickle regulations, they need to consider who will inevitably pay the bill,” Karen Harned said in a prepared statement; she’s the executive director at the Small Business Legal Center for the National Federation of Independent Business. “The EPA does not have the authority to implement hugely expensive new rules without performing the mandatory economic analyses.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., also criticized the EPA’s actions in a press release:

“The mere fact that the EPA wished to ignore the costs of its rules demonstrates how little the agency is concerned about the effects it has on the American people. From its ozone to greenhouse gas to navigable waters rules, the EPA continues to burden the public with more and more costs even as so many are still struggling to get by and improve their lives in this economy.”

The EPA later argued that the range Scalia cited was a low-ball estimate strictly for the mercury-related benefits, not the other ancillary benefits that would have come from reductions in other pollutants, such as particulate matter.

Despite these accusations that the EPA did not consider costs at all during the process of creating the regulation, Justice Kagan argues otherwise in her dissent.

Kagan wrote that the EPA did, in fact, take “costs into account at multiple stages and through multiple means as it set emissions limits for power plants.” Though the EPA declined to analyze costs at the onset of the regulatory process, since the agency “could not have measured costs at the process’s initial stage with any accuracy,” the EPA eventually conducted a cost-benefit study which found quantifiable benefits exceeding the costs up to nine times over – “as much as $80 billion each year.”

The Michigan ruling might also have greater implications on the Obama administration’s overall environmental agenda, which would have included the EPA’s first-ever regulations on greenhouse gases emitted by power plants – expected to roll out later this summer. Politico notes, “Monday’s decision indicates a court skeptical of EPA’s aggressive regulatory agenda, throwing into question how the court will react to the virtually unprecedented climate plan.”

The Environmental Protection Agency has been conducting dangerous experiments on humans over the past few years in order to justify more onerous clean air regulations.

The agency conducted tests on people with health issues and the elderly, exposing them to high levels of potentially lethal pollutants, without disclosing the risks of cancer and death, according to a newly released government report.”

It’s not the first time. Let’s not forget the CIA’s MK-ULTRA experiments with LSD on humans. From the SF Weekly:

It’s been over 50 years, but Wayne Ritchie says he can still remember how it felt to be dosed with acid.

He was drinking bourbon and soda with other federal officers at a holiday party in 1957 at the U.S. Post Office Building on Seventh and Mission streets. They were cracking jokes and swapping stories when, suddenly, the room began to spin. The red and green lights on the Christmas tree in the corner spiraled wildly. Ritchie’s body temperature rose. His gaze fixed on the dizzying colors around him….

Now in his mid-eighties and living in San Jose, Ritchie may be among the last of the living victims of MK-ULTRA, a Central Intelligence Agency operation that covertly tested lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on unwitting Americans in San Francisco and New York City from 1953 to 1964.

“I remember that night very clearly, yes I do,” he said in a recent interview. “I was paranoid. I got down to where I thought everyone was against me. The whole world was against me.”

Then there was the Tuskegee Study. This is from the National Archives:

In the 1930s the U. S. Public Health Service began studying the effects of syphilis on African-American men. Most of the work took place in Macon County, Alabama, in and around the county seat of Tuskegee. The men were given periodic medical examinations but were not treated. Medical and professional journals published findings periodically throughout the study. It was not kept secret.

The costs of the study in the lives, and deaths, of participants, and the effects on their families and communities are incalculable. And the study left a legacy among African Americans of mistrust for the government.

Should we trust the government? Yes — we should trust it to poison us and hurt us, while taking most of our money.

It wasn’t the intention of the Los Angeles Times, but the newspaper has provided historical drought data with implications for a U.S. Supreme Court case that was heard Monday, Feb. 24  — “U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. U.S. EPA.”

The case challenges whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can expand its mission from reducing air pollution to fighting global warming without going back to Congress for authorization to do so.  This has relevance for the California Air Resources Board and its similar shift from reducing carbon dioxide emissions to the vaguer task of fighting “climate change.”  Assembly Bill 32, the state’s far-reaching environmental law, was known as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. But CARB changed the focus of AB32 with the release of its “Climate Change Scoping Plan” in 2008.

The Times’ story (“Severe Drought? California Has Been There Before,” Feb. 23) reconstructed 1,000 years of climate records from tree ring data.  Dendrochronology is the study of tree rings as an indicator of changes in climate; “dendro” means relating to trees.  Thick rings indicate wet climate and tree growth and narrow rings dryness and less growth.

Driest years in CA mostly predated Industrial Revolution

A chart showing the 1,000-year record of “wetter than average” and “drier than average” years indicates that 1580 was the driest year on record.  California had a severe dry spell from 1976 to 1977.  But the only years that were drier were prior to 1580.  This data can be read as refuting the assumption that industrialization has resulted in either significant global warming or vaguely defined climate change.

The Times’ climate chronology echoes a recent study of California climate conducted by biologist Jim Steele, formerly a supervisory biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game.  In his 2013 book, “Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism,” Steele studied 100 years of climate data from Lake Tahoe.

What he found was that California wasn’t “getting hotter, just less cold.”  Steele says that studying average temperatures to find climate change is not as useful as studying maximum and minimum temperatures.

The California Air Resources Board has won two court challenges to the legality of the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32).  However, former EPA attorney Jacob Hollinger of the McDermott, Will and Emery law firm in New York stated a ruling against the EPA in the U.S. Supreme Court case could be utilized to challenge every future step of its effort to manage climate change. Since the current case before the Supreme Court consolidated challenges to the EPA from the states of California, Virginia and Texas, and from industrial organizations, there would be implications for California if the case were decided broadly.

Air board facing legal challenges over change in goals

CARB’s shift from dealing with global warming to managing climate change could have implications in another case filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation alleging that its cap-and-trade air pollution permit auctions are a tax.  PLF’s case (“The Morning Star Packing Co. v. CARB,” filed in April 2013) resulted in a trial decision backing the air board in November, but it has been appealed.  The PLF complaint states:

“The California Air Resources Board (CARB) devised the auction plan as a means of raising billions of dollars in revenue, without any instruction or direction from the Legislature. CARB hatched the auction program purportedly to implement AB 32, the 2006 legislation that requires reductions in the emission of carbon dioxide in California by the year 2020. But nothing in AB 32 authorizes creation of an auction process to sell carbon dioxide emission allowances for billions of dollars. Nor does AB 32 authorize the creation of any kind of new tax.”

On Feb. 10, 2014, CARB released its first update to its Climate Change Scoping Plan of 2008, which stated:

“Climate change presents an unprecedented set of challenges for California.  We are already experiencing its impacts and know they will only increase. But it can also be a great unifier.”

Use of cap-and-trade auction proceeds targeted

However, what California’s Global Warming Solutions Act and the cap-and-trade program have yielded is a series of divisive court cases.  Gov. Brown’s recent transfer of $20 million of cap-and-trade revenues to water conservation projects to alleviate drought indicates that California doesn’t even have to invoke the need to reduce air pollution or carbon dioxide to find a justification to spend the money as it pleases.

Brown even wants to use $1 billion per year of cap-and-trade revenues to pay off bonds to build California’s high-speed rail project authorized under Proposition 1A in 2008.  That plan may depend not only on challenges to the legality of issuing bonds, but also on the lawsuit against the EPA now being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Beyond the governor’s fiscal maneuvering, the L.A. Times’ drought chronology story raises more basic questions about the broad claims used to justify both AB32 and federal regulations. If historical evidence doesn’t back up the assertions made about either global warming or climate change, that strengthens the arguments of skeptics who argue such laws and regulations are more power grabs than wise public policy. This in turn may strengthen the cases of those challenging the implementation and interpretations of these laws and regulations.

“In beautiful La Jolla Cove, art galleries and coffee shops meet a stretch of unspoiled cliffs and Pacific Ocean. Home to former presidential candidates (Mitt Romney has been spotted pumping his own gas here in recent days) and seal colonies alike, the neighborhood provides one of this city’s primary tourist draws.

“But the smell, a pungent stench that emanates from the accumulation of bird feces on the rocks, has become a growing problem. And strict environmental regulations in the cove have stymied the city’s efforts to address the problem before it drives tourists and businesses away, effectively roping the rocks off with red tape.

“’I’ve lived here my whole life, and the smell from the birds has never, ever been as bad as it is now,’ said Megan Heine, the owner of Brockton Villa Restaurant, which overlooks the cove from a historic building that has been on the cliffs for more than 100 years. She said guests asked about the stench so frequently that her wait staff had become adept at explaining its cause.

“’If nothing is done and the smell becomes unbearable, I’m fearful of what that will really do to the business and the appeal of being in La Jolla,’ she said.”

An indictment of the stupidity of our government

Guess what? The problem is still horrible. I wrote about it in today’s U-T San Diego.

“Of all the advances achieved by the Roman Empire before its collapse in the fifth century, one of the most unprecedented was the infrastructure to ensure the efficient removal of animal and human waste from urban areas.

“Incredibly enough, some 1,600 years later, a city that is home to some of the most advanced scientific research on Earth finds itself unable to deal with disgusting conditions triggered by waste from seals, sea lions, pelicans, seagulls and other birds.

“That is the proper context with which to see the maddening saga of the stench emanating from the rocky areas and cliffs at La Jolla Cove. It has been 13 months since a New York Times story laid bare for the nation not just our local shame but the collapse of common sense in the Golden State — the idiocy of environmental rules so rigid and so far-reaching that removal of animal feces is somehow classified as a threat to nature.

“The odor problem ebbed for a time, but now it is back — a nauseating pall on an otherwise beautiful part of San Diego. And this time, it has prompted a lawsuit by the owners of the nearby La Valencia Hotel and George’s at the Cove, who argue — correctly — that city officials haven’t done enough to fix this stomach-turning problem.

“But that’s also true of state and federal regulators who pronounce themselves unable to act with any sort of urgency. If state and federal law governing nature is so all-powerful that it prevents the removal of animal waste from areas densely populated by humans, then, as a Charles Dickens’ character said, the law is an ass.”

Does anyone defend the bureaucratic sclerosis here? Can anyone with a straight face argue that it makes sense?

I didn’t think so.

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