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Davisite Banner. Left side the bicycle obelisk at 3rd and University. Right side the trellis at the entrance to the Arboretum.

Category: Environment

  • Valley Clean Energy announces net energy metering and dividend program

    VCE(From press release) The Valley Clean Energy (VCE) board of directors took big strides last month to fulfill two major promises to its customers.

    The board voted unanimously to begin including Net Energy Metered (NEM) solar customers into VCE service starting in January 2020, and additionally voted to launch a Dividend Program this fall, designed to share revenues with customers when VCE meets its financial goals.

    Valley Clean Energy is a not-for-profit public agency that provides electricity service to customers in Davis, Woodland and the unincorporated areas of Yolo County.

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  • Destruction of mature trees at WDAAC

    Tree-stump

    California black walnut stump after removal. Tree was north of Covell Blvd. and along the west side of the West Davis Active Adult Community development site.

    By Greg McPherson and Larry Guenther

    On a global scale, planting billion of trees to combat climate change will be for naught if we don’t stop clearcutting the Amazon and other forests. The same idea applies on a local scale. Tree Davis’s upcoming planting of 1,000 trees will matter very little if healthy, mature trees are removed from development sites. Large amounts of carbon dioxide stored in these big, old trees is rapidly released after removal, whereas it takes many years for young trees to acquire biomass and accumulate carbon.

    In November Davis voters approved Measure L, which established Baseline Project Features to guide development of the West Davis Active Adult Community (WDAAC) property, which is located west of the Sutter-Davis Hospital and north of Covell Blvd. In early June we noticed that 14 large, old California black walnut trees were among a host of trees removed from the site. We wondered why these veteran trees were not protected in a greenspace buffer along Covell Blvd.

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  • Valley Clean Energy Community Advisory Committee meeting

    VCEThe public is invited to the next meeting of the Valley Clean Energy Community Advisory Committee. The meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 25, in the Woodland City Council Chambers at 300 First St. in Woodland.

    Advisory committee members will review and discuss PG&E's residential time-of-use proposal, hear an informational presentation on potential local energy efficiency programs and discuss coordination of VCE's 2020 Integrated Resource Plan and Strategic Plan.

    VCE, the local electricity provider, launched a year ago and provides cleaner energy at competitive rates to 55,000 local customers in Davis, Woodland and unincorporated Yolo County. For more information, visit https://valleycleanenergy.org. To receive agendas by email, sign up at https://valleycleanenergy.org/get-in-touch/.

  • There should be a public buyout of PG&E

    By Dov Salkoff

    I am in a strange stage of my life. I am unemployed with a Ph.D. in neuroscience, living in my mother’s house. Since moving to Davis, I became more involved with political activism, most of all climate change. I am now driven, every day, by the conviction that there is something fundamentally wrong with this world, and people like me are in a good position to be part of the movement to fix it.

    I’ve heard a lot of ideas from Davisites on how to combat climate change, and there is a clear pattern. Electric cars, solar panels, “going vegan” and biking to work peak enthusiasm as ways to reduce emissions, but there is a fatal flaw in these solutions. They leave out the poor and working class. In a survey of eight counties in the Sacramento region, 37% of respondents said they couldn’t afford making personal changes to reduce their environmental impact.

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  • Valley Clean Energy board meeting, Thursday, July 11

    VCEThe Valley Clean Energy board of directors will meet at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 11, in the Council Chambers at Woodland City Hall, 300 First St. in Woodland. The meeting is open to the public.

    The board — which includes members of the Davis and Woodland city councils and the Yolo County Board of Supervisors — is expected to hear a presentation from a representative of PG&E on the utility’s residential time-of-use rates.

    VCE, the local electricity provider, launched a year ago and provides cleaner energy at competitive rates to 55,000 local customers. For more information, visit https://valleycleanenergy.org. To receive agendas by email, sign up at https://valleycleanenergy.org/get-in-touch/.

  • A Tour of The Sustainable Living and Learning Communities

    A IMG_8406A future focused interdisciplinary institution grows from the deep roots of UC Davis’s alternative communities.

    By Colin Walsh

    In an earlier article we discussed the new SLLC that binds together the Student Farm, The Experimental Community Gardens, the Domes, Design Lab workspace, and Project Compost and the Tri Co-ops (Pierce, The Agrarian Effort, and Davis Student Co-op). What had been distinct learning communities with similar values and commitment to student agency, are now a unified grassroots educational initiative that explores a broad range of principles and practices related to agricultural, environmental, and social sustainability. Together, they aspire to promote 4 values, according to the SLLC website: experiential learning, sustainability, community, and place.

    We also looked at the Green Fellowship program, a new effort to “fund projects exploring student-led advancement of social justice, sustainable technology, and environmental sustainability at UC Davis” according to the website.

    A_IMG_4047The Tour

    On Saturday 5/11, as a very nice wine and cheese reception featuring food from the Student Farm and wine from the award winning Matthiasson and Farella wineries wound down (Steve Matthiasson and Tom Farella where in attendance), our tour guides gathered us together in the Eco Garden by the historic farm house at the student farm. We were welcomed warmly by our guides Carol Hillhouse and Nick Tamayo. Nick described his several years of experience with the student farm as he became ever more involved.

    First, we walked through the Eco Garden, literally taking time to smell the flowers. Our guides took the time to point out plants and told us about the history and visions for the areas as we went.

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  • Great Tree Search Update

    Scarlett-oak

    This scarlet oak on Antioch is a car magnet because of the cooling shade it produces all summer.

    By Greg McPherson

    Nineteen trees were awarded Great Tree status in Tree Davis’s Great Tree Search. Great Trees were designated because of their unusual size, species, form, or history. Awardees ranged from 12 to 380 years old, 11 to 129 feet tall and 1 to 20 feet girth. Fascinating stories on what made each tree special were captured in a series of Davis Enterprise articles this spring and can be found online at the Tree Davis website http://www.treedavis.org/programs/great-tree-search/.

    Great-tree-necklace

    Each Great Tree has a Necklace with species name, fun fact, and a QR code that points one to more information on the website.

    Also on the website is a map with locations and fun facts on each Great Tree. A graphic design class at Sacramento City College produced unique Tree Necklaces that adorn each tree with species name, fun fact, and a QR code that points one to more information on the website.

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  • Open Space and Habitat Commission visits new City open space area

    IMG_5897On Saturday, the Open Space and Habitat Commission had an officially noticed "meeting" – really, a stroll through the woods – on City-owned land to the west of the Putah Creek South Fork Preserve.  This land, approximately 10 acres in total, was purchased with Open Space funds in 2017 with the goal of providing more open space access for Davisites.  Most of the trail is already there (recently cleared by volunteers); the City plans to make small improvements like signage, removal of invasive plants, etc.

    This post is my unofficial impression of our morning as a commission member, as documented through my phone camera.  It was a lovely hike and I hope you enjoy these pictures from the City's "backyard," which you can visit yourself if you care to.

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  • Making Biking Convenient

    Is making driving worse our Bike-rack-1 only alternative?

    By Roberta Millstein

    When I read the Davis Enterprise op-ed on roads, driving, and biking last month (“Infrastructure, what is it good for?”), I was sympathetic.  After all, it does seem to make sense to call out the “operative principle” that “if only we make driving (or parking) inconvenient enough, then people will drive less, or slower, or somewhere else.”  Indeed, as the op-ed says, we surely don’t want to rejigger our roads and our parking spaces only to increase car traffic and cars idling if the goal is to reduce carbon emissions.

    But now I am not so sure.

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  • UC Temporarily Suspends Glyphosate-based Herbicides

    IMG-4152

    By Nancy Price

    On May 14th, 2019 Janet Napolitano, President of the University of California, sent a remarkable letter to the Chancellors of all UC campuses, the Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and the CEOs of all  the UC Medical centers announcing the “temporary suspension of the use of glyphosate-based herbicides.”

    Napolitano cited “concerns about possible human health and ecological hazards, as well as potential legal and reputational risks associated with this category of herbicides.”

    This may be a response to the mounting scientific research linking glyphosate to cancer, or it could just be that the UC system is worried about being named as a defendant in a glyphosate lawsuit like the three Monsanto/Bayer have lost over the last two years. The most recent lawsuit found Bayer responsible for damages of 2 billion dollars.

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