When I first came to Davis for my job interview (the one that would result in my addition to the Philosophy Department at UCD), one of my future colleagues said, with a bit of a sarcastic snort, “Too bad Paul couldn’t be here. He’s been telling all of the candidates about Davis’s masters swimming group.” My head whipped around: “Davis has a masters swimming group??”
A good masters swimming group is hard to find.
According to a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity, this past week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it is considering a proposal to strip Endangered Species Act protection from nearly all wolves in the lower 48 states.
The FWS tried to do the same thing back in 2013. The proposal was (as I described in a blog post for a different blog) arbitrary, capricious, and inconsistent. It received a huge pushback from the scientific community as well as many environmentally-minded individuals. But then the proposal was never acted on. I have been wondering what had happened to it – was it shelved because it was so poorly crafted, or was there some other reason?
Everyone knows that newspapers are under severe threats to their survival and have been for some time. The Davis Enterprise is no different. Yet newspapers play an essential role in informing the community, fostering community dialogue, and forging community. That makes me loathe to criticize the Enterprise. But when the new Editor, Sebastian Oñate, engages in practices that undermine those very goals, I feel as though I must speak out. I do so not to hurt the Enterprise further but rather in the hopes of changing his ways, or if that is not possible, to encourage the paper to find a different Editor.
The problem with Oñate’s practice is this: he has engaged in practices that demean and disparage readers. This serves to reduce participation and harm one’s sense of community, not foster it. An Editor should always take the high road and be seen as open and fair to all. Unfortunately, Oñate has not done that, as the following examples illustrate. (If images are too small to read, you can click to enlarge, or just follow the links).
Having taken a day off to reflect, here are some of my thoughts about the election just completed.
First and foremost, let me assure everyone that the Davisite will continue! Some have speculated that this blog was created just to promote Nishi. That was never the case and time will show that to be true. If there have been a lot of articles about Nishi, that was because many of our current authors (myself included) were very engaged in that issue. The Davisite was always intended to be a blog by and for Davisites, which means that our content will always reflect our authors.
So, now is a good time to reissue a call for authors: send us your thoughts, be they political or not, artistic or not, funny or not. You can be a regular author, or send us something from time to time, or maybe just once – long or short, it doesn't matter. (But remember that on the Internet, most people don't want to read things that are very long!). The sidebar contains our contact info and comment policy, the latter of which serves as guidelines for authors as well.
The Aggie has a great new article on the air quality issue at Nishi, including interviews with Dr. Tom Cahill and myself. I have just a few things to add.
One is that since the article was published, the amount contributed by the developer to sell Measure J to voters has gone from over $170,000 to over $250,000 (a quarter of a million dollars). This is eight times the cost of what one air quality test would have cost.
Second, according to the article "Whitcome says there were some issues found at the site, but 'nothing of any real consequence.'" That's not an accurate statement because the site has not actually been studied, just an adjacent site. And here is what they found at the adjacent site (from Barnes 2015, the study used in the EIR):
Proponents of Nishi have made much of the promised mitigation features: the tree screen and the air filters. One has to ask, of course, why mitigation is even necessary, and the EIR for the project makes that clear: the location between I-80 and the train tracks brings with it poor air quality and "significant and unavoidable" health impacts. There is no controversy on that point, although some "merchants of doubt" have tried to turn it into one.
Questions have also been raised about whether the promised mitigation will do what it is supposed to do; for example, Dr. Thomas Cahill has pointed out that the tree screen will be much less effective because the freeway is elevated adjacent to Nishi, and the supposed 95% efficiency of the air filters has never actually been demonstrated in a real-life situation (with filters operating at a much lower efficiency in real-life situations).
But the situation is even worse than that. The promised mitigation measures might not even be implemented.
In a recent letter to the editor in the Enterprise, Bill Wagman asks, "What is the difference [between Nishi and Olive Drive] and why do there seem to be no concerns voiced about Olive Drive. Or are there concerns which have not been made public?"
The answer is: It is possible that there are health concerns at other near–freeway sites such as Olive Drive. Peer-reviewed studies have found elevated health risks at many near-freeway sites. But the Nishi is of particular concern because it is adjacent to where the freeway goes from six lanes to three lanes, and so there are often backups on that portion of I-80, especially during weekend Tahoe traffic. More backups mean more car and truck braking. Braking releases ultrafine particulate matter into the air, and that causes health risks such as an increased risk of ischemic heart disease, an increased risk of lung damage, an increased risk of cancer, and an increased risk of developmental problems.
Also, Nishi is of particular concern because the freeway is elevated next to Nishi, so the pollutants travel further, as peer-reviewed studies of similar sites have shown.
In a recent post, Jon Li decried the process used by "Downtown Davis Plan Team Participatory Design Workshop." In addition to those concerns about process, in his view the right solution to Davis's economic problems is to turn the Downtown into 10,000 residences by building six stories, and higher, and having jobs and housing downtown."
In reply, one commenter thought that "the charrette consultants went straight to tall, dense downtown buildings as a first solution" and that that "would probably gentrify downtown to the point where all the small independent businesses would be forced out because rents would go too high."
Interestingly, then, we have agreement that there were problems with the process, but disagreement with the desired outcome: a tall, dense downtown.
Would a tall downtown in fact improve Davis's economy?
Expensive and glossy mailers from the Nishi developer (paid for by "Davis Gateway Student Housing LLC & Affiliated Entities") have begun arriving at Davis addresses. The back of the mailer touts support from "local leaders we trust." These leaders are said to include the five current members of the Davis City Council.
But how strong is the support of those Councilmembers? Let's review some excerpts from their comments from the meeting where the Council voted to put Nishi on the ballot on 2/6/2018. The video is located here. Numbers in parentheses refer to the approximate time that the Councilmembers' words appear in the video.
Edit 4/30/2018 to add an edited version of the full video, containing just the clips where City Council members disparage Nishi 2.0.
Yesterday, Dan Cornford wrote about how the Nishi project would contribute to traffic and the deterioration of air quality downtown. People who don't travel these roads frequently might have trouble seeing why that would be the case. Well, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
If the Nishi project goes through, an underpass would be built under the railroad from the Nishi property to Old Davis Road. As the graphic shows, there is already significant traffic from Old Davis Rd to First Street and downtown, and onto Richards Blvd. Cars from the Nishi development – with its 700 parking spaces – would contribute to that traffic as residents drive to and through downtown.
This is just one of a number of concerns about Nishi. As I said in an earlier post, the unhealthy air quality experienced by residents because of its location is my primary concern. But the concerns about traffic and air quality downtown are serious ones and should not be overlooked.
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