California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

On Tuesday, June 12, 2012, the WHO/IARC announced that it had determined that there was sufficient evidence that exposure with diesel exhaust is associated with an increased risk for lung cancer in humans.

The Diesel Technology Forum issued a statement upon the announcement by IARC, in part noting that "Air pollution is a critically important health issue and the diesel industry takes clean air concerns very seriously. Diesel engine and equipment makers, fuel refiners and emissions control technology manufacturers have invested billions of dollars in research in an ongoing effort to develop and deploy technologies and strategies that reduce emissions to meet the increasingly diverse and stringent clean air standards in all nations throughout the world."

Posted by robert_carlsen at 5/18/2012 4:42 PM CDT

Now that Gov. Jerry Brown has revised the state’s budget deficit from $9 billion to around $16 billion for fiscal 2012-2013, ideas for where to make cuts – or not – are flooding in. In his latest proposal, the governor is even suggesting making cuts at Caltrans, which is facing the end of Prop 1B bond money and federal stimulus and Highway Trust funds.

As the California Construction Trucking Association of Upland says, that’s the end of the good ole days of $13-billion-a-year highway funding that has occurred for the last six years. In fact, the CCTA says Caltrans’ spending in the next fiscal year will drop 50%.

Sac Bee

California's depressed construction industry generated just 32,000 new housing units between 2010 and 2011, a new Census Bureau report says, a fraction of the 200,000-plus units that California once produced each year.

The 32,000-unit increase, from slightly under 13.7 million units to slightly over 13.7 million, was less than a quarter of one-percent, even though the state's population was growing at least twice as fast. Or to put it another way, with about 12 percent of the nation's population, California had just 6 percent of the nation's year-to-year housing growth.

By Lana Spivak

EDITOR'S NOTE: We often address light-hearted themes in Friday Dispatch. Today, however, we have the unpleasant task and mission of exposing a very serious issue. In fact, we’ve decided to devote today’s Dispatch to a single story, that of the unjust termination of Dr. James Enstrom from his research position of 34 years at UCLA, based on independent research that didn’t accord with the University’s ideological agenda. We think the story’s that important.

Last August, we at ACSH were troubled to learn that esteemed scientist and ACSH trustee Dr. James Enstrom had been terminated from his research position in UCLA’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences following a secret faculty vote. After Enstrom’s 34 years of service to the university, what could have led the faculty to such a radical decision?

BY MICHAEL P. TREMOGLIE

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) -- The U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has approved proposed legislation to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers from what it termed "dramatically and illegally" increasing their regulatory power of water and land using the Clean Water Act.

The bill -- H.R. 4965 -- will prohibit the EPA and the ACE from attempting to avoid proper federal rulemaking procedures "by finalizing or implementing EPA and Corps Clean Water Act "guidance" in order to significantly broaden the scope of federal jurisdiction under the Act." The bill was approved by the committee with a bipartisan vote of 33 to 18.

LOS ANGELES, June 14, 2012—After 35 years at the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. James E. Enstrom is suing UCLA to keep his job. Following many years of disagreement over research on air pollution and its implications for environmental regulations, UCLA finally refused to reappoint Enstrom after he engaged in successful whistleblowing against a member of the department. When UCLA told Enstrom he was being let go because his research failed to accord with the department's "mission," Enstrom turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

"FIRE has been helping Dr. Enstrom to keep his job for two years now, but enough is enough," said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff. "While a lawsuit should never have been necessary, we're grateful that the American Center for Law and Justice and former FIRE President David French have filed suit on Dr. Enstrom's behalf, and we hope that justice will finally be served."

California's environmental laws have made industrial development increasingly difficult—to the extent that they are now interfering with other green priorities. Witness the request by the state's High-Speed Rail Authority to seek a legislative waiver against green lawsuits, of all things.

"I'd like to be in a world where, if we're before a judge somewhere, the remedies available for the judge go to mitigation as opposed to injunctive relief," Authority Chairman Dan Richard told the state legislature last month.

San Jose Mercury News

State regulators with the California Energy Commission are expected to approve stringent energy efficiency standards for new residential and commercial buildings Thursday.

The new standards, which would take effect Jan. 1, 2014, include a host of common-sense standards designed to save energy, from insulating hot-water pipes to making sure that air conditioner installations are inspected for sufficient air flow.

But the proposed standards also require new homes and commercial buildings to have "solar ready roofs" -- a mandatory requirement that will be a boon for the state's growing rooftop solar industry.