Newsom’s new green budget has something for everyone – even bees – the NBC Bay Area

Amid a drought that followed a year of historic wildfires exacerbated by global warming, California’s governor on Friday proposed spending $ 11 billion on programs to combat climate change, promote clean air, support water supplies and prevent wildfires.

Spending on environment-related programs will be a $ 9 billion increase over Governor Gavin Newsom proposed in January and is the result of a combined $ 76 billion in government tax revenue and federal stimulus money.

The windfall gains will fund everything from charging stations for electric cars to preparing communities for disasters that range from fires, floods and earthquakes to creating habitats for the threatened bumblebees that are essential for pollinating crops on the country’s most productive farmland.

Many programs will receive one-off funding that can limit their impact, though advertised by management officials as if they were catered to a long wish list.

“I’ve been in and around state government for nearly 20 years and have never tested a budget like this where we can invest in the environmental priorities that we take forward,” said Wade Crawfoot, the state’s Minister of Natural Resources. .

Some of the key items included the $ 5 billion announced earlier in the week to help the state cope with water shortages during droughts such as the drought emergency declared across much of California on Monday. It would also save $ 1 billion in federal aid for people who were unable to pay their water bills during the coronavirus pandemic.

An investment of $ 1.3 billion will help prepare for floods from rising sea levels and fund environmental justice priorities to reduce some 3,000 abandoned oil wells and clean up toxic waste like lead from Exide’s former battery plant outside Los Angeles.

Half a billion dollars will be spent on restoring state parks, including repairs from forest fires and deferred maintenance.

In a bigger push to promote electric cars, $ 3.2 billion will be allocated to buy thousands of buses and trucks and build charging stations.

“Our goal is to completely eliminate conventional fuel vehicles in the state, so we never have to suffer from the images we see on the East Coast,” said Newsom, referring to long queues at gas stations after a cyberattack that led to the shutdown of a major company. Pipeline.

With millions of dollars going into such a large number of different programs, there was a lot to please interest groups with criticism also coming from those who deem the spending was wrong.

“The need for state investment to accelerate the adoption of zero-emissions vehicles has never been more urgent, and the state has not had the means to use today to make a difference,” said Paul Court of Earthjustice. He described the $ 3.2 billion as a down payment, adding that the state must “ensure that at least half of the proposed money goes to frontline communities that have suffered for decades from California’s worst air pollution.”

Char Miller, professor of environmental analysis at Pomona College, said Newsom’s plan contains some laudable elements but mismatched priorities.

Instead of building sea walls to protect the coast from flooding, Miller said, money should be spent to help people retreat from inland to higher ground. He would like to see more incentives to reduce water consumption, put solar panels on rooftops, and prevent people from moving to fire-prone areas.

“I see a lot of missed opportunities,” Miller said. “He actually came up with a plan, and it contains huge sums of money. I just think the money is going in the wrong direction.”

As higher temperatures and a lower mass of snow limit the water, more farmland will have to be rested. State Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross said the proposal includes $ 500 million to help retire some of that farmland and use it to create habitat corridors, recharge the water table and store carbon that warms Earth’s climate.

It also includes $ 30 million to create a habitat for honey bees that are trucked into the state to pollinate valuable crops like almonds. The number of bees has collapsed in recent years.

About $ 2 billion – nearly twice the January proposal – would go to forest fire preparedness, including the purchase of firefighting aircraft and helicopters, as well as the creation of a center to forecast forest fire threats.

“It is remarkable that the Governor of Newsom is giving out just over 3% of the total budget for massive fires to fairly harden homes, which is the most effective way to protect today’s high fire risk communities,” said Brian Novicki of the Center for Biological Diversity. “The governor needs to abandon logging as usual which only exacerbates the climate crisis, harms wildlife and fails to protect people and their homes.”

Crawfoot said another $ 70 million from the federal government will help make homes more fireproof. He said that the revised proposed budget includes $ 250 million for the so-called community strengthening to protect infrastructure from disasters such as fires, floods and earthquakes.

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