[Originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, May 10, 2006]
The Regional Water Quality Control Board is scheduled to vote today on whether to accept the recommendation of its staff and approve a permit that would allow Mirant Corp. to continue operating its Potrero power plant in San Francisco out of compliance with environmental standards until June 30, 2011. The board should reject the permit.
[Originally published in the Aug. 17-23, 2005 edition of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.]
IN A RECENT guest editorial for the San Francisco Chronicle, John Garamendi, a potential candidate for lieutenant governor, endorsed a plan to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir for the purpose of restoring the granite valley to what it was nearly a century ago. Garamendi’s endorsement aims to add heft to what had been a lightly regarded proposal and to elevate the profile of a seemingly appealing, frightfully bad idea to one worthy of consideration by California voters and policy makers.
By Dennis Herrera
[Originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle, January 3, 2005]
When Ronald Reagan used his 1983 State of the Union Address to foreshadow a sweeping proposal to devolve vast powers from the federal government back to states and localities, he described his New Federalism initiative as an effort “to restore to states and local governments their roles as dynamic laboratories of change in a creative society.”
[Originally published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal and San Francisco Daily Journal, November 22, 2004]
FOR THE 48 percent of American voters justifiably concerned about Bush administration claims to an electoral “mandate” as a result of the Nov. 2 election, last week presented still another example of political arrogance, this one far more troubling.