The information in this newsletter is being distributed among allied associations that form the California Alliance for Golf (CAG), the organization that speaks with one voice in the Capitol regarding legislative and regulatory issues of statewide scope.
"HYDROCLIMATE WHIPLASH"
That’s what Daniel Swain and his climate team from UCLA have decided to call the phenomenon that was responsible for the devastating and widespread nature of the wildfires that literally burnt down wide swaths of Los Angeles and the Pasadena foothills – the most destructive fire in the history of America’s 2nd largest city. There was no 6th degree of separation for those living in and around it. It’s hard to find anyone not personally acquainted with someone who either lost a home, lost a place of business, or was evacuated. The financial loss is now $100 billion and climbing; the emotional loss incalculable and irretrievable.
As for a succinct definition of “hydroclimate whiplash,” it’s this: Abrupt swings of wet to dry conditions that all but guarantee not only abrupt swings of wildfires and floods, but wildfires and floods that are more frequent and more severe – all caused by a worldwide climate that is warming at an accelerating clip.
Under the much more benign and stable conditions of the 19th and 20th centuries, California was home to weather oscillations of wet and dry by virtue of its geography and other factors, including the prevalence of micro-climates. Under today’s conditions those factors are exacerbated. When the region gets the alignment of high and low pressure systems in very close proximity as occurred during these fires, the result can be exactly what Los Angeles County suffered. And things that were once thought unthinkable, like whole urban neighborhoods burning down or a golf course burning completely down as Los Angeles County’s 9-hole Altadena Golf Course just did, become very thinkable.
How exactly this changes all of our conclusions about 50-year and 100-year floods and fires for the purposes of planning, construction, and insurability are not yet fully knowable, but we do know that it is not a question of whether the costs associated with all three are going to go up; it’s a question only of how much. Insurance cost and access were big problems in California before these fires, as were construction costs, exacerbated by labor shortages.
In the same vein, how exactly this experience plays out in the forms of legislation and regulation is not fully knowable either, but it is sure to stimulate much of both. How exactly this affects the state budget and the spending priorities buried therein is similarly unknowable, but it’s hard to discern a scenario in which a financial hit the Governor estimated Friday as $135 billion does not materially affect both. And that makes it imperative for the California golf community to get fully engaged in those conversations as they unfold – as participants, not bystanders.
Los Angeles County’s fires represent one of those moments we’ll likely look back upon as the moment when everything changed. It would be a big mistake to shrink from participating in it.
WATER SUPPLY – WHERE THINGS STAND AS WE ENTER THE NEW YEAR
The wildfires that opened the new year in Southern California came as no surprise – to Southern Californians, that is. The severity maybe, but not the fact that they happened. They may have been surprising to those living in Northern California. While the Southern part of the state saw its second driest fall and early winter in 150 years, the Northern half saw almost two months of steady storms. According to UCLA climatologist Daniel Swain, “it is likely that the current north-south disparity is record-breaking in magnitude by at least some metrics.” [CalMatters].
The same pattern held for snowfall, with the Northern Sierra and Northwest receiving well above snowfall for the last 3 months of 2024 and the Southern Sierra suffering the same deprivation in snowpack accumulation as the rest of the Southern part of the state received in rainfall.
The good news is that had the reverse been the case – with the Southland receiving well above precipitation and the Northland in severe drought – the state’s water supply situation would be taking a big hit, notwithstanding the fact that the last two years saw well above average snow and rain.
The even better news is that even had that “reverse been the case,” the water captured and stored the last two years has left us with a record 3.8 million acre-feet of water in storage, enough to accommodate the needs of 40 million persons for a year – otherwise known as enough to provide the 19 million customers of the Southern California Metropolitan Water District (MWD) enough for two years.
But if the past 25 years have taught us anything, it’s this. What is seemingly solid can disappear with just a few consecutive dry years. California was flush with water just a couple of years before we hit the panic button in June 2022 – a panic that only subsided when the next precipitation year turned out to be among the wettest on record. Had that year been merely average, or worse, well below average, we were looking at something akin to water triage. Most certainly, the golf sector would have been among the sectors left waiting on the gurney in the emergency room. And let’s not forget that while one year of great Sierra snowpack is capable of replenishing the state water project’s needs, it takes multiple years of excess rainfall to replenish aquifers absent the aid of the conscious human effort involved in using captured stormwater and recycled water to recharge them.
So, while there is no reason to panic, there is every reason to keep pumping the accelerator on all those things that add to supply – capturing stormwater, completing long-planned reservoirs, moving forward with the Delta Conveyance Plan, establishing water supply targets, and continuing to pursue conservation strategies in all their different forms.
Yes, conservation is a supply tool, and it will continue to be a key tool in California’s water resiliency toolbox, as well as the golf community’s mix of resiliency strategies. And cooperative collaboration with the agencies charged with requiring those strategies will continue to be golf’s wiser course, a course that will be on display next month at the GCSAA’s Golf Industry Show, where the Southern California Metropolitan Water District and its San Diego County Water Authority partner will partake in the Show’s “Sustainability Showcase” and formally present to the winter meeting attendees of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA) about how they and the golf community have successfully worked together to reduce golf’s water footprint. While the Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) won’t directly present, it will be on hand to be recognized along with the SCGA and the Hi-Lo Chapter of the GCSA as recipients of the GCSAA’s 2024 “Excellence in Government Affairs Award” for successfully collaborating with the more than 100 golf courses in their desert service area to achieve parallel results.
The occasions that golf tackles some piece of legislation or regulation that if left un-tackled would cause great harm to the game and those occasions that golf reverses a decision to close a golf course in favor of another use, may get a lot of attention. And deservedly so. Existential challenges are, well, existential. However, such challenges are much fewer and farther between than the collaborative efforts that will be celebrated at next month’s Golf Industry Show. Such cooperative collaborations represent the bulk of the work of the game’s advocacy efforts, and if truth be known, the more valuable component thereof. Certainly, the more prevalent and ongoing. Those who see these matters in black and white terms of perpetual acrimony will find this counterintuitive. But those versed in the day-to-day work of effective advocacy will find it axiomatic if not passe.
2025’s FIRST LEGISLATIVE CHALLENGE – YEAR-ROUND STANDARD TIME
On December 13 President Elect Trump tweeted the following:
“The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”
There has been sufficient support in California for eliminating the biannual changing of the clocks to have generated bills in recent years from both Democrats and Republicans to do just that – one that in the 2024 legislative session (SB 1413) managed to pass its Senate House of origin and move to the Assembly, where it only died because the Chair of the Committee that considered it so watered it down with amendments that its Senate author withdrew it.
The California Alliance for Golf (CAG) formally opposed SB 1413 and met with the Chair of the Assembly Committee of reference to make clear the reasons for golf’s opposition. The primary reason: The financial losses that would have ensued from the reduction of the early evening hours of sunlight when so many tee it up after their workdays.
Previous bills failed much earlier in the process because they involved permanent Daylight Savings Time as a way to avoid a biannual changing process that medical and other professionals have deemed deleterious to human and economic health – failed due to the fact that while states are accorded the discretion to remain on permanent Standard Time, as does California’s immediate neighbor Arizona, they cannot go to permanent Daylight Time without a specific enabling bill from Congress.
When the President Elect dropped that tweet, we feared it might breathe sufficient life back into the matter to embolden the author of SB 1413 (Niello; R-Roseville) to run a 2025 version of it. That fear was realized when Senator Niello filed SB 51 just days after Trump’s tweet. We have a strong suspicion that Senator Niello is unaware of the economic distress that year-round Standard Time would cause the state’s golf community, and we will be meeting with him to explain our reasons, which we believe to be compelling – from the perspective of the golf community, that is.
We look forward to hearing his reasons for running the bill. There are always arguments for those bills that though we find them unconvincing and not sufficient to withdraw our opposition, are nonetheless possessive of some measure of merit. And it is as important to know, understand, and respect them as it is to know and understand our own, so that “our own” can be made stronger as a result – stronger and if all goes well, persuasive.
If Congress were to follow the President Elect’s lead and “eliminate Daylight Saving Time,” it won’t matter what the California Legislature does. We will have been pre-empted and have to follow year-round Standard Time no matter what. For that reason, we and others around the nation have alerted our national organizations that they need to get engaged, with any luck by adding the issue to the short list of issues that are shared on National Golf Day when the game floods Congressional Offices with constituents from back home.
This “challenge” dropped before the Holidays. More are sure to drop before the mid-February deadline for the filing of 2025 bills, some of which are equally sure to come in the form of placeholders whose contents won’t be fully understood until later.
GOVERNOR NEWSOM RELEASES 2025-2026 BUDGET PROPOSAL
The process that results in a state budget begins in early January when the Governor releases the proposal that for the next 6 months is the starting point for negotiations between that Office and the legislature that results in a budget for the next fiscal year (July 1) that by California law must be adopted no later than June 30. Sort of – but that’s a complicated subject for another day.
Governor Newsom’s “budget summary” is 245 pages in length. And a scintillating read it is not. For our purposes here are a few relevant highlights of an overarching nature:
Here are some specific funding proposals of interest to the golf community:
The state budget is always subject to changes over the long course of its adoption, a feature that is likely to be exaggerated this year to the degree to which both the Governor and the Legislature come to terms with the costs associated with recovery from Los Angeles County’s epochal wildfires, not just in terms of remediation, but in terms also of girding the state’s infrastructure to cope with what most now understand as an increasing fusillade of catastrophic fire and flood events driven by “hydroclimate whiplash.”
Again, much more to come.
[Note: Thanks owed and credit due to CAG legislative consultant Nicole Quiñonez for highlighting spending proposals of specific interest to golf out of a 245-page “summary.”]
The SCGA and SCGA Junior Golf Foundation join the Southern California community in extending its deepest support and compassion to those impacted by the ongoing wildfires across Los Angeles County.
The Association and Foundation aim to be a resource during these times wherever possible. We understand the desire to help during this time of immense need, so we've gathered resources below to help guide your efforts and support those who have been displaced.
For further information please go to the SCGA's Los Angeles Wildfire Resources page.