The 2024 legislative session has ended. Both of them – the regular session that concluded on September 30 with Governor Newsom signing roughly 85% of the bills the legislature sent to his desk, and the special session the Governor called to secure legislation to require the state’s ten (10) oil refineries to keep a certain amount of crude in reserve to mitigate price spikes that often follow from temporary closures of one or more of them, a theory of the phenomenon that is viscerally disputed by California’s oil and gas industry.
However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t much to report.
REGULATIONS FOR CONVERTING WASTEWATER INTO DRINKING WATER WENT INTO EFFECT OCTOBER 1 – THE IMPLICATIONS FOR GOLF ARE SIGNFICANT
On October 1 the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) completed a Rule Making process to enable the conversion of wastewater into drinking water by approving new regulations in the Water Code (Title 22) that in the words of SWRCB’s October 2 press release, “clears the way for water systems to invest in innovative treatment plants and processes that will recycle and reuse millions of gallons of wastewater daily . . . giving California the most advanced standards in the nation for treating wastewater to such an extent that the finished product meets or exceeds current drinking water standards.”
What that means as the Counties of Santa Clara and San Diego and the City of Los Angeles launch direct potable reuse pilot projects is that the effluent now used to produce traditional recycled water used by golf courses, parks, and other green spaces will increasingly be dedicated to the production of drinking water, further limiting a supply already in decline due to aquifer replenishment programs, stormwater capture projects, and the high economic/political costs of laying the “purple pipe” required to connect the recycled product to sites.
What it also means is that the golf community’s one-time hope to be in position to claim that the overwhelming majority of its golf stock is irrigated with effluent instead of “drinking water,” is now a curtailed hope, as it becomes credible to argue that effluent diverted to golf/park use is really potable water to the extent to which it can now be converted to drinking water through processes now permitted by and enshrined in California’s Water Code – permissions based on reams and years of scientific study.
The sky is not falling. There are still recycled connections to be had, and there are still recycled contracts to be renewed. But unlike 20 years ago, when it was commonplace for water retailers to knock on golf’s doors with proposals to sell them recycled water, golf is going to have to aggressively search out and jump on those opportunities that do remain for as long as they remain. And they would be wise to negotiate extensions with a clear focus on term, not price. In the long run, access is going to be everything in California’s future, and as the effects of aridification accumulate, access to all forms of water will be increasingly in jeopardy.
Golf has a demonstrated record of finding another card in its conservation deck every time the fates remove one of them, and it’s not so much the fates, but new technological wonders that have curtailed the use of the recycled card. The industry will adjust by finding other cards. But to find new cards we have to become more fully aware of just how impactful the state’s new regulations are likely to prove as all planning about what to do with effluent switches from non-potable to potable reuse – from turning effluent into water to irrigate parks, green spaces, and golf courses to turning it into water for human consumption, which will always take precedence over all other uses.
CLIMATE BOND – PROPOSITION 4 ON NOVEMBER BALLOT
Given how much of the $10 billion in the measure is to go to water, green space, and parks, it behooves the golf community to have some understanding of the details contained in the bond for the purpose of drawing informed conclusions both in terms of judgments prior to November 5 as well as after that date should the measure be approved by 50% + 1 of the California electorate.
Here is how the bond proposes to divvy up the funding:
- $3.8 billion for water projects, including groundwater storage, recycled water, desalination, and reservoirs.
- $1.5 billion for wildfire resilience, mainly by thinning forests and using controlled burns.
- $1.2 billion for sea level rise projects, including restoring beaches, wetlands, and coastal bluffs.
- $1.2 billion for wildlife, from restoring salmon runs to building freeway crossings for wildlife.
- $850 million for renewable energy and clean air programs, including offshore wind and solar power.
- $700 million for new parks and outdoor access.
- $450 million for extreme heat mitigation, such as more green spaces in cities and schools.
- $300 million for farm projects such as water conservation and soil health programs.
Supporters of the bond, which include roughly 100 environmental organizations, labor unions, water agencies, and the California Democratic Party, have raised roughly $5.5 million to run a campaign in support of the measure. Opponents of the bond, which include several Republican legislators and taxpayer organizations like the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association, have not raised money in opposition. Governor Newsom has not taken a position nor has the California Chamber of Commerce.
According to reporting by the Northern California News Group (San Jose Mercury), From 1993 to March 2024, California voters approved 74% of the bonds that appeared on their statewide ballots — 34 of 46 to be exact, which funded among other things, roads, highways, bridges, schools, universities, parks, water systems, and housing. However, a water bond on California’s 2018 ballot did fail narrowly.
What is unique about this particular bond is that it bundles water, parks, green spaces, fire protection, wetlands restoration, renewable energy, and conservation into a single instrument tagged “climate.” Whether the electorate determines the conflation a reflection of wise interconnection will be known once the votes are tallied.
Like so much legislation that CAG tracks but does not respond to with formal opinions/positions, CAG is agnostic on Proposition 4 – interested for a multiplicity of reasons but not sufficiently interested to weigh in. For those who are wondering whether CAG is able to weigh in on something appearing on a ballot, please be informed that 501 (c)(6) nonprofit corporations, which is the tax status of CAG and the allied golf associations in California, while prohibited from taking positions or weighing in on ballot contests that are partisan or otherwise between persons, are permitted to engage in issues that appear on ballots – e.g., initiatives.
U.S. SUPREME COURT’S 1ST ENVIRONMENTAL CASE OF THE TERM PITS SAN FRANCISCO AGAINST THE EPA
In a case that some might suggest should be placed in the “you can’t make this stuff up” file, the City of San Francisco is challenging the EPA’s authority to condition National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits (NPDES) on discharges that don’t negatively impact the quality of the receiving waters. That is, the city is challenging the EPA, the Biden Administration, and the State of California, all of which are arguing for maintenance of the wide discretion the EPA has to manage the nation’s navigable waters – arguing as it were for the broad interpretive discretion that the Supreme Court seemingly obviated in last session’s “Loper” decision that expressly overturned 40 years of the broad interpretive discretion established under the “Chevron Doctrine.”
Specifically, San Francisco argues that to give wastewater plants certainty of their compliance, the EPA must delineate specific pollutant limits; the city should not be held liable for the quality of “receiving” waters near its treatment plants, only for specific discharges from the plants.
Amicus briefs in support of San Francisco’s challenge have been filed by oil and gas interests, mining interests, agricultural interests, and public utilities from every corner of the nation. In addition to the Biden Administration, the EPA, and the State of California, opposition briefs have been filed by environmental organizations from every corner of the nation. Dare we suggest that both politics and huge sums of money make for strange bedfellows.
The upshot for the golf community as a holder of multiple NPDES permits is a case whose outcome may affect those permits to the degree to which golf courses continue to be held liable for everything that flows from their properties or are held only to what their properties added to the mix as it traveled through.
The much larger upshot involves the degree to which the EPA and by implication every federal administrative agency is restricted in applying technical expertise in the exercise of regulatory authority per what are almost always the most general and vague of legislative delegations. A lot more than NPDES permits are at stake in how the Supreme Court decides this case.
Not unexpectedly, when the case was orally argued Wednesday (10/16) before the Court, the justices were divided. We’ll know the result of their division sometime next year.
OCTOBER IS THE BEGINNING OF A NEW PRECIPITATION YEAR
We operate by calendar years, fiscal years, and when it comes to precipitation, a year that runs from October 1 to September 30.
The year before last was a record rain/snow year. The just concluded year was above normal, which coming on the heels of a record year, was exactly what the doctor ordered for a state that some have taken to calling the land of permanent drought.
Courtesy of Sacramento’s ABC affiliate Channel 10 are three (3) charts/maps that quantify that above normality.
What will this year bring? A couple of months ago, the prognosticators were telling us that a strong La Niña was shaping up, which generally means drier conditions for the American Southwest – generally, but occasionally the opposite; such are the vagaries of weather prognostication. Now, the meteorologists are telling us that the La Niña is falling apart, but they are not telling us what may be replacing it. In other words, with respect to the short run we’ll just have to wait and see. As for the long run, we know that even after a record year followed by an above average year, many of California’s aquifers are still suffering, Lake Mead and Lake Powell are only at 33% and 39% capacity, respectively, and the precipitation totals we do get in the new season will break down more as rain than snow.
ECONOMIC SNAPSHOT OF CALIFORNIA
Much is written and even more said about California’s economic performance, and we won’t add to the commentary, so much of which is contradictory.
But we will close today with a couple of snapshots from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California that describe what many feel in their bones but are unable to quantify. The 5th largest economy is a rapidly rising tide that lifts some boats faster than others, lifts some boats not at all, and drowns some that while they too have risen on that tide, have risen much too slowly to keep up with the rest.
California’s GDP per capita has grown faster than the rest of the country Growth in GDP per capita since 1998
SOURCE: Bureau of Economic Analysis / Public Policy Institute of California
NOTES: GDP is the monetary value of goods and services produced in a place in a given year. This calculation uses population estimates in the middle of each year and GDP in inflation-adjusted dollars.
California’s regions have grown apart economically
SOURCES: Bureau of Economic Analysis / Public Policy Institute of California
NOTES: Total personal income by region is adjusted to 2022 dollars using CPI-U and then divided by population. Regions are defined by counties; starting with the three largest counties, then Northern (Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Mendocino, Modoc, Nevada, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Tehama, Trinity, Sutter, Yuba), Sacramento (El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Yolo), Bay Area (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma), Central Valley and Sierras (Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, Fresno, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Mono, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare, Tuolumne), Central Coast (Monterey/San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura), and Inland Empire (Imperial, Riverside, San Bernardino).
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.
