In over 40 years working at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Mike Martin, now Alameda County battalion chief, has never seen anything like October 20, 1991 in the hills east of Oakland and Berkeley. “Extreme fire conditions, high-velocity wind,” Martin recalls. The 20 to 30 miles per hour winds, with gusts of up to 40, blew west through narrow East Bay canyons stricken by drought and a heavy frost the previous winter that killed thousands of non-native…
In an abbreviated meeting on Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) unanimously passed a proposal to change their short-term financing in order to reduce long-term risk. EBMUD will be moving from “extended” back to “traditional” commercial paper, according to Dari Barzel, EBMUD’s principal management analyst. What does that mean? “Commercial paper is by far our lowest-cost financing,” Barzel told the directors, citing a 30-day interest rate of about 0.09 percent. “You can’t beat it.” Commercial paper…
Golfers teeing it up on Thursday morning at Lake Chabot Golf Course must count themselves among the luckiest people in Oakland. Or perhaps not. “Golf is like a love affair,” the sportswriter Arthur Daley once wrote. “If you don’t take it seriously, it’s no fun; if you do take it seriously, it breaks your heart.” Golf has come a long way from its modern origins as a diversion for Scottish sheepherders in the 15th century to a $70 billion per…
The “water fix” is an evolving $15.5 billion Bay Delta conservation plan to stabilize water diversions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The most expensive and controversial part involves building two huge tunnels, thirty miles long, from Courtland to Tracy.
Underground Runway presented “Blaq Beauty,” a grassroots fashion show, at Parliament bar and night space in Old Oakland on Friday night.
East Bay team includes the city of Livermore, Pacific Gas & Electric and SolarCity. Together, they must install at least ten megawatts of solar panels within 18 months.
The East Bay Municipal Water District provided updates on drought measures, difficult labor negotiations, and watershed restoration after the Butte wildfire.
While the East Bay Municipal Utility District is suffering the worst drought since its founding in 1923, its 1.3 million users face no danger of going dry anytime soon. That was the message from EBMUD board members and operations staff at their Tuesday public meeting. Infrastructure investments, conservation, and transfers–buying water from the Sacramento River–together mean the East Bay is weathering this Stage 4 drought better than most of California. According to the state’s own data, the EBMUD staff are…