REGION: Water dispute could cost Inland residents millions

A feud between Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and one of its largest customers could end up costing Inland residents more than $500 million in the next six decades, local agency officials said.

The dispute is over how much Metropolitan is charging the San Diego County Water Authority to move supplies from the Colorado River to the city of San Diego. The city buys the water from Imperial Valley farmers and Metropolitan delivers it through its canals, pipelines and pumping stations.

Metropolitan says the price of moving the water is fair. But San Diego officials say that in addition to the transportation — or “wheeling” — fee, Metropolitan is charging them for the cost of its water supply, which, under California law, the city shouldn’t have to pay for.

The fight has turned particularly nasty in a state notorious for water wars and in a region where growth outpaces supply. The two sides have been battling the issue in various lawsuits for 15 years, and in the latest round San Diego has alleged a conspiracy among other Metropolitan member agencies.

If the court sides with San Diego, the disputed charges would be spread out among Metropolitan’s 25 other member agencies, which contract with the wholesaler to buy supplies from the State Water Project and the Colorado River. That includes three districts serving more than 2½ million people in Riverside and San Bernardino counties: Western Municipal Water District in Riverside, Eastern Municipal Water District in Perris and Inland Empire Utilities Agency in Chino.

Local water executives say the cost would be passed along on water bills, though they have yet to calculate the increases for individual customers. The hikes would follow nine consecutive annual increases by Metropolitan that resulted in higher rates for customers in the districts the agency supplies.

“They want to reduce that wheeling charge … so we pay more and they pay less,” said John Rossi, Western’s general manager. “This is a zero sum game for Metropolitan. It affects the agencies underneath Met.”

In all, Metropolitan member agencies could pay almost $3 billion, including the $502 million it would cost Inland districts, by 2078, they say. That is the end date of an agreement between the San Diego agency and the Imperial Irrigation District to buy Colorado River water saved through farm conservation and fallowing cropland. It is the nation’s largest farm-to-city water transfer.

San Diego says the rate includes charges for Metropolitan’s water supply and therefore violates a California law that prohibits water agencies from charging more than the actual cost of operating and maintaining the facilities used for transfers. It has cost San Diego customers $40 million this year, agency officials said.

Metropolitan says San Diego is trying to avoid paying its share for maintaining the transportation system at the expense of other users.

The alleged overcharges have been set aside in an escrow account, which by 2014 will total about $200 million without interest. If San Diego wins the lawsuit, it gets the money back; if it loses, Metropolitan keeps the money, said Dennis Cushman, assistant general manager for the water authority.

Need For Reliability

The agreement between San Diego and the Imperial farms is called the Colorado River Quantification Settlement Agreement. The initial term is 45 years, with an option to extend it to 75 years. By then, the city will be receiving 200,000 acre-feet of water per year. One acre-foot of water is enough to supply two families of four in California for a year.

In another agreement, San Diego gets 80,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water per year for helping line the All-American and Coachella canals. That amount of water also is transferred to the city using the Colorado River Aqueduct, which was constructed and is operated by Metropolitan.

The 2003 deals were part of the water authority’s effort to gain independence from Metropolitan and increase reliability, Cushman said. At the time, San Diego relied almost entirely on Metropolitan for its water.

Since then, the district has conserved, developed sources of recycled water and groundwater and increased storm-water capture, reducing Metropolitan deliveries to 44 percent of its total supply.

By 2020, with the addition of ocean desalination, San Diego will get only 30 percent of its water from Metropolitan, Cushman said. The San Diego County Water Authority supplies 24 districts and cities.

San Diego officials say Metropolitan inflated its transportation rates to make up the money lost from water sales as San Diego developed other sources, and that lost revenue should be shared among all member agencies.

“Everyone else is benefiting by the artificially subsidized costs that they’re paying,” Cushman said.

The wheeling rates were approved in 2003 by Metropolitan’s board of directors, which includes representatives from San Diego. The fee covers the expense of maintaining the pumps, tunnels and aqueducts needed to move the water, Metropolitan officials said. Pumping alone on the Colorado River will cost more than $33 million this year.

Water agencies that buy from Metropolitan pay the same transportation rate whether they are at the beginning of the delivery system or the end.

The going rate is $396 per acre-foot of water. San Diego says it should pay $159.

San Diego and Metropolitan have battled over this issue before. In 2000, a state appeals court ruled in favor of Metropolitan, saying the agency could include capital investment and systemwide costs in calculating its wheeling rate.

Customers Pay

Metropolitan’s general manager, Jeffrey Kightlinger, said the fees were established after extensive public input. And most of the member agencies believe any agency that uses the Metropolitan system should pay for a share of conservation programs, he said.

“Metropolitan’s rates are set through an open and transparent process that ensures equity and fairness to all our member agencies and the 19 million residents they serve,” Kightlinger said. “If successful, this lawsuit would shift the cost of delivering San Diego’s (Imperial) water to customers throughout Southern California, including the Inland Empire, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars annually.”

So far, San Diego has paid more than three times more for the Imperial water than it would have for Metropolitan water, said Paul Jones II, general manager at Eastern Municipal Water District. Jones said he thinks the water authority underestimated the cost of the agreement with Imperial Irrigation District and is now trying to recoup from an expensive miscalculation.

“This is just an expensive transfer and San Diego’s goal is to lower the cost of the transfer to make it more affordable by changing Met’s rate structure,” he said. “Over time those costs would be reflected in the cost for our imported water we purchase from Met and ultimately would have to be passed through to our customers.”

Eastern’s customers span a 555-square-mile area from Moreno Valley south along the Interstate 215 corridor to Temecula and east to Hemet and San Jacinto. Western serves retail and wholesale customers in Jurupa, Corona, Norco and Riverside south to Temecula.

Cushman, of the water authority, said rates from the Imperial transfer are expected to become less expensive than Metropolitan’s anticipated rates over time.

Disputed Water Charges

Metropolitan Water District is charging San Diego County Water Authority $396 per acre-foot of water to transport water purchased from Imperial County farmers. That includes $217 per acre-foot for system access, $136 per acre-foot for pumping costs and $43 per acre-foot for conservation and water recycling efforts.

The San Diego County agency contends the pumping charge includes costs for Northern California water that should not be included, because the Imperial County water comes from the Colorado River. The agency says it should pay $116 per acre-foot for system access, $43 per acre-foot for power and not be responsible for conservation and water recycling programs.

BY JANET ZIMMERMAN

STAFF WRITER

Source: www.pe.com

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300 marijuana plants found in Placentia building

PLACENTIA – Police serving a search warrant on an industrial suite Friday night found exactly what they were looking for: a few hundred marijuana plants grown in a hydroponic garden, authorities reported.

It was the second bust of what appears to be a pot growing operation in Placentia in less than a week.

According to department reports, officers served the warrant at South Jefferson Street near East Orangethorpe Avenue.

When they entered the building, they found around 300 marijuana plants in various stages of development, as well as 10 pounds of dried product ready for sale, police said.

Investigators arrested one man, believed to be a caretaker at the site. His name was not released.

Police said the find was not related to a discovery earlier in the week, where faulty electrical wiring that appeared to be part of a growing operation caused a fire at South Melrose Street and East La Jolla Street.

There, authorities found more than 1,500 plants.

Source: www.ocregister.com

By MICHAEL MELLO / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Arizona Immigration Law Ruling: Supreme Court Delivers Split Decision

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday delivered a split decision in the Obama administration’s challenge to Arizona’s aggressive immigration law, striking multiple provisions but upholding the “papers please” provision. Civil rights groups argue the latter measure, a centerpiece of S.B. 1070, invites racial profiling.

Monday’s decision on “papers please” — Section 2(B) in S.B. 1070 — rested on the more technical issue of whether the law unconstitutionally invaded the federal government’s exclusive prerogative to set immigration policy. The justices found that it was not clear whether Arizona was supplanting or supporting federal policy by requiring state law enforcement to demand immigration papers from anyone stopped, detained or arrested in the state who officers reasonably suspect is in the country without authorization. The provision that was upheld — at least for now — also commands police to check all arrestees’ immigration status with the federal government before they are released.

“The nature and timing of this case counsel caution in evaluating the validity of [Section] 2(B),” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy on behalf of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, noting that the law has not yet gone into effect. Because “[t]here is a basic uncertainty about what the law means and how it will be enforced,” the majority chose to allow the law to go forward, but made clear that “[t]his opinion does not foreclose other preemption and constitutional challenges to the law as interpreted and applied after it goes into effect.”

Indeed, such constitutional suits are already proceeding against Arizona’s “papers please” policy. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton heard argumentson whether to certify a class of what could be hundreds of thousands of individuals now trying to bring equal protection, free speech and due process challenges to S.B. 1070.

While Arizona succeeded on Section 2(B), the Supreme Court gave the Obama administration a victory by striking three other challenged provisions as stepping on federal prerogatives. Two of the provisions made it a crime for undocumented immigrants to be present and to seek employment in Arizona, while a third authorized police officers to make warrantless arrests of anyone they had probable cause to believe had committed a deportable offense.

“The history of the United States is in part made of the stories, talents and lasting contributions of those who crossed oceans and deserts to come here,” Kennedy wrote. “The National Government has significant power to regulate immigration. With power comes responsibility, and the sound exercise of national power over immigration depends on the Nation’s meeting its responsibility to base its laws on a political will informed by searching, thoughtful, rational civic discourse. Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues, but the State may not pursue policies that undermine federal law.”

Justice Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito each wrote separately to say they would have upheld all four of S.B. 1070’s challenged provisions.

Delivering a fiery oral summary of his dissent before a full courtroom, Scalia said that Arizona’s own sovereignty as a state makes it “entitled to impose additional penalties and consequences for violations of the federal immigration laws, because it is entitled to have its own immigration laws.”

In addition, Scalia cited the Obama administration’s recent decision to stop deporting certain undocumented immigrants under 30 years old as a policy change that defies the administration’s argument that S.B. 1070 eats up the federal government’s scarce resources. “The husbanding of scarce enforcement resources can hardly be the justification for this [policy change], since those resources will be eaten up by the considerable administrative cost of conducting the nonenforcement program, which will require as many as 1.4 million background checks and biennial rulings on requests for dispensation,” said Scalia, referring to the number of undocumented immigrants estimated to benefit from the secretary of homeland security’s announcement on June 15.

“The President has said that the new program is ‘the right thing to do’ in light of Congress’s failure to pass the Administration’s proposed revision of the immigration laws. Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so,” said Scalia. “But to say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of federal immigration law that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind.”

Beyond the Grand Canyon State, lawmakers in Utah, Indiana, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina will be parsing the Supreme Court’s decision to see how their Arizona-style immigration statutes will be affected.

Justice Elena Kagan did not participate in Arizona v. United States, presumably because she worked on the case during her tenure as President Barack Obama’s first solicitor general.

Erin Mershon contributed to this report.

Source: www.huffingtonpost

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RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Bullying, racism alleged

At least two supervisors in Riverside County’s Waste Management Department used racial slurs against black workers, and employees in another county department were regularly bullied by superiors, according to two grand jury reports that found a pattern of hostile work conditions.

The reports released Monday, June 18, detail workplace problems in waste management and a Human Resources program responsible for temp workers. A former waste management worker who is black told the grand jury that he was called the N-word and ordered to eat in a trailer infested with rats and insects.

The report does not specify the race of the person who allegedly made those statements.

WARNING: This document contains language that may offend some readers.Grand Jury Report on Riverside County Waste Management Department

County spokesman Ray Smith declined to comment on the reports pending written responses by county officials. Human Resources Director Barbara Olivier said she was “looking into some of the points” raised by the grand jury. She declined further comment.

The grand jury investigated waste management and the Temporary Assignment Program/Medical Assignment Program, which is part of the county Human Resources Department. Human Resources has 337 employees while waste management employs about 200 staff members.

Waste management operates seven landfills countywide. The jury’s report included testimony from current and former employees who alleged less-qualified workers are hired and promoted “because they are in the right ‘clique.’”

Twenty-one complaints of harassment and discrimination have been filed against the department since 2006, resulting in 13 human resources investigations for misconduct, the jury found. Employees considered senior management to be unapproachable, the report read.

Grand Jury Report on Riverside County Temporary Workers Program

“The jury also found employees feared that old corrective and disciplinary reports could used against them. Those reports are only supposed to be kept for one year,” the report read.

Annual employee evaluations are not being done in a timely manner, according to the jury.

The Waste Management Department has a history of racial discrimination, the jury found. A supervisor at the Lamb Canyon landfill refused to sign a 2004 reprimand of an employee found guilty of making racial comments about blacks to an African American, the report read.

Two operations and maintenance supervisors are known to use racial slurs to describe blacks, and a black former equipment operator said he was called the N-word during his eight-year tenure and told to eat in the filthy trailer, according to testimony cited in the report.

‘Wild West’

The Temporary Assignment Program is the county’s temp agency while the medical program hires temporary medical workers.

“Bullying by supervisors and managers has become pervasive” in both programs and has lead to “fear and intimidation among employees,” the report read.

A group of program recruiters is derogatively referred to as “the wild, Wild West” and targeted for harsh treatment, the report found.

As punishment, seven of those recruiters were put on performance improvement plans or asked to provide doctors’ notes for sick leave, the jury found, adding that documents examined by the jury had language showing “disrespect to employees beyond what would be considered reasonable.”

Performance evaluations were not timely and training was inadequate for supervisors, the report read.

The report recommended a series of steps to improve the departments, including an anti-bullying policy and enforcement of an existing zero tolerance policy on harassment.

County officials will provide formal, written responses to the reports by September. The jury’s recommendations are not binding.

Follow Jeff Horseman on Twitter: @JeffHorseman

Source: www.pe.com

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HEMET: Foundation leader files report claiming embezzlement

Valley View Foundation CEO Sharon Deuber, who has been asked to resign from the nonprofit group trying to purchase the Hemet Theatre by many who say she has withheld financial information, has filed a police report alleging embezzlement.

Hemet police Sgt. Eddie Pust said Deuber filed the report Monday, June 18, but he had little other information as paperwork had not yet been completed. He did confirm that it was in regards to the Valley View Foundation.

An officer spent more than an hour at Deuber’s house in the Four Seasons neighborhood Monday afternoon and left with a folder filled with paperwork.

Deuber did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

The allegation came as a shock to others on the foundation’s executive board, who have demanded Deuber’s resignation. A meeting is scheduled for June 25 to expand the board from its current four members — Deuber, her mother, Laura Roach, Jason Strain and Nick Reed — and remove Deuber from office.

Since the foundation was formed last year, Strain said, Deuber and Roach have not provided anyone else access to its financial records, and no one else has had any control of funds. State law requires nonprofits to provide financial records to all board members.

“There was never any sort of embezzlement in any way, shape or form,” Strain said. “We are at a loss of words for what she could be filing. At this point, nothing surprises me. I think she feels backed into a corner. It’s unbelievable.”

By most supporters’ estimates, the foundation has raised more than $100,000 in its efforts to purchase and restore the theater.

The Bank of Hemet froze the foundation’s account last week and is in the process of providing financial statements to Strain and Reed, Strain said.

Since coming under fire by a number of foundation supporters, Deuber has cut ties with others involved with the project and in late May removed tens of thousands of dollars in lighting and sound equipment from the theater. Others in the foundation say they don’t know where she took it.

If the board succeeds in expanding and voting out Deuber, Strain said the foundation would give her 24 hours to return all equipment, property and financial documents before filing a police report against her.

“We aren’t worried because we haven’t done anything wrong,” Strain said. “The whole time, we’ve been trying to get her to play ball, fess up and be transparent. She hasn’t done that.”

Follow Kevin Pearson on Twitter: @pe_kevinpearson or online at blog.pe.com/hemet

BY KEVIN PEARSON

STAFF WRITER

kpearson@pe.com

Source: www.pe.com

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Mad Science: Giovanni Aldini, Corpse Reanimator

Giovanni Aldini may not be a household name, but his contributions to science cannot be ignored. Neither can his macabre demonstrations of the power of electricity on the human body. Aldini was a real-life “mad scientist,” and it’s rumored that Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” was based on his life.

Aldini is most (in)famous for his contributions to electrophysiology, or the study of electrical properties of body cells and tissues. He learned about what he called “animal electricity” or galvanism by jolting the dead bodies of humans and animals in an attempt to excite their remaining “life forces.” In his own words, Aldini’s goal was to “convey an energetic fluid to the seat of all sensations; distribute its force throughout the different parts of the nervous and muscular systems; produce, reanimate and, so to speak, control the vital forces: this is the object of my research, this is the advantage that I intend to collect from the theory of galvanism.”

Although Aldini’s public displays of corpse reanimation earned him a seat at the mad scientists’ table, without his contributions, we may not have medical treatments likeelectroconvulsive therapy or deep brain stimulation today.

 

Mitchell Guist Dead: ‘Swamp People’ Star Dies In Louisiana

“Swamp People” star Mitchell Guist died Monday morning after suffering an apparent seizure, according to TMZ.

Louisiana’s Assumption Parish officials confirmed to WBRZ.com that the alligator-hunter died along the Belle River at roughly 9:00 AM.

Those with Guist reportedly attempted to perform CPR on The History Channel star who fell on his boat before suffering what appeared to be a seizure. An onlooker phoned 911 and Guist was transported to a nearby hospital. Guist’s official cause of death has yet to be reported.

Click over to TMZ for updates.

 

Jack The Ripper, Was Murderer Really A Woman? Asks Author John Morris

They’re among the most famous unsolved murders in history, and the mystery continues to deepen.

Suspects for the shadowy figure who came to be known as Jack The Ripper have ranged from an itinerant Polish labourer to the eminent Victorian doctor Sir William Gull, and even the painter Walter Sickert.

But another theory has emerged – that is the chilling suspicion the person who carried out the 1888 murders was actually a woman.

Author John Morris puts forward his suspicions in the book Jack The Ripper: The Hand Of A Woman.

As a result of extensive research by Morris (and his late father, who was equally fascinated by the riddle) he believes the only satisfactory conclusion is that Jack was, in reality, a woman.

Lizzie Williams is put forward as a suspect in John Morris’s book Jack The Ripper: The Hand Of A Woman 

In a well-argued case, Morris names the key suspect as Lizzie Williams, wife of Royal gynaecologist Sir John Williams – later considered a suspect himself. Trapped in an unhappy and childless marriage, Lizzie’s only route of escape was cut off when her family fortune was lost.

Dependent on her husband for wealth, reputation and security, Morris argues that Lizzie would have done anything to defend her marriage.

The story of Morris’s research includes many twists and turns as he examines the principle players, the killer’s motivation, and modern day cases that bear some similarity to the Ripper murders.

The Ripper victims were all prostitutes, murdered and mutilated in the foggy alleyways of Whitechapel. By the surgical nature of the wounds, the killer was assumed to have some surgical knowledge.

Morris’s theory is supported by the findings of an Australian scientist who in 2006 used swabs from letters supposedly sent to police by the Ripper to build a partial DNA profile of the killer.

The results suggested that the person who murdered and mutilated at least five women from 1888 onwards may have been a woman.

A composite of three Scotland Yard issued photographs of serial killer Jack The Ripper’s female victims, all killed between August and September 1888 L-R: Annie Chapman, Mary Ann Nicholls and Elizabeth Stride 

Ian Findlay, a professor of molecular and forensic diagnostics, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he had developed a profiling technique that could extract DNA from a single cell or strand of hair up to 160 years old. Conventional DNA sampling methods require at least 200 cells.

Dr Findlay, who is based in Brisbane, travelled to London, where the evidence from the still-unsolved murders is stored at the National Archive.

The material, which was kept by Scotland Yard until 1961, includes letters sent to police at the time, some of them signed “Jack the Ripper”. Most are believed to be fakes, but a handful are thought to have been written by the killer.

Dr Findlay took swabs from the back of stamps and from the gum used to seal envelopes, and possible bloodstains. He took his haul back to Brisbane, where – concentrating on swabs from the so-called “Openshaw letter”, the one believed most likely to be genuine – he extracted the DNA and then amplified the information to create a profile.

The results were “inconclusive” and not forensically reliable, but he did construct a partial profile and based on this analysis, he said, “it’s possible the Ripper could be female”.

Author John Morris explores the theory the murderer was female 

Last year a retired British murder squad detective put together what he claims is an image of Jack The Ripper.

Trevor Marriott created an e-fit of the man he believes was the responsible for the Ripper murders, a German merchant named Carl Feigenbaum, for a BBC television program.

Feigenbaum was a suspect at the time of the murders, and reportedly told his lawyer that he had a “desire to kill and mutilate every woman who falls in my way.” He was later convicted of killing his landlady in Manhattan, and died in the electric chair in New York’s Sing Sing prison.

No photographs of Feigenbaum exist, so the e-fit (an electronic artist’s impression) was based on eyewitness descriptions.

There are hundreds of suspects who have been investigated by sleuths through the years, but no-one has ever been able to conclusively prove the killer’s identity.

This is not the first time that experts have attempted to use modern policing techniques to identify the Ripper. In 2006, Scotland Yard experts created this e-fit of what they thought the Ripper would look like.

 

Road Deaths A Global ‘Epidemic’ On Par With Diseases, Says New Report

Michael Loke, Flickr

Every six seconds, someone is killed or seriously injured in a traffic accident. Every day, 3,500 people are killed in car crashes.

That means traffic fatalities are a global epidemic on par with malaria and tuberculosis, according to a new report issued by the Campaign for Global Road Safety.

“The epidemic has reached crisis proportions,” wrote Kevin Watkins, a Brookings Institute researcher whoauthored the report, and the problem is “set to worse over the years ahead.”

There are 1.3 million annual global road deaths, and they are the No. 1 global cause of deaths of young people ages 10 to 24. Approximately 260,000 children die in car accidents annually, according to the World Health Organization.

Air pollution also kills an estimated 1.3 million people each year, according to the report, and 70 to 90 percent of fatal pollutants, such as carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide, originate from automotive traffic, the report says.

“There are no surprises or hidden magic bullets for tackling the road traffic injury crisis,” Watkins writes. “Vehicles need to be separated from vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists.”

 

Kelly Thomas death investigator delivers findings

FULLERTON – An independent consultant hired by the city to probe into the death of Kelly Thomas has delivered his findings to the acting police chief on the internal-affairs phase of his investigation.

The second of three reports conducted by Michael Gennaco, chief attorney for the Los Angeles Office of Independent Review, focuses on the actions of the officers involved in the fatal confrontation with the unarmed mentally ill homeless man on July 5.

But because the report deals with personnel issues, only Capt. Dan Hughes, the acting police chief, has been privy to its findings. Thomas died from his injuries five days after the confrontation.

Hughes would not comment on specifics of the report, including what actions might be taken by the department against the officers and even when he received the report. It is unclear whether the report will ever become public.

“I don’t know that I will be able to (comment),” Hughes said.

Said City Attorney Richard Jones in a statement: “In accordance with applicable personnel procedures, Acting Chief Hughes will be preparing any appropriate notices to affected members of the department.”

Meanwhile, the criminal case against two officers charged in Thomas’ death moved forward with the preliminary hearing scheduled for Monday at Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana.

The District Attorney’s Office has charged Officer Manuel Ramos with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter and Cpl. Jay Cicinelli with involuntary manslaughter and excessive force. Both officers, on unpaid leave, have pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors say Thomas, 37, was beaten and suffocated when confronted by officers in the Fullerton Transportation Center. Thomas had been suspected of burglarizing cars when approached by the officers.

In his initial report to the City Council in February, Gennaco offered suggestions on how to handle information releases with future major incidents. He pointed out that at one point Fullerton police said some of their officers may have fractured some bones during the incident. That turned out to be untrue.

“Do your best to make sure that information is accurate,” Gennaco said in February.

A third report – an examination of the department’s overall policies and procedures – is still pending and will likely be presented at an upcoming council meeting similar to the first report, according to city officials.

“He has a very strong reputation of being thorough and direct and providing straight forward recommendations,” Hughes said of Gennaco. “And I expect him to do the same in this case.”