California Watch: Articles

Calif. cement plant has one of nation’s highest mercury emission levels

Sam Pearson — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:05:05 +0000

Sam Pearson

This story was edited by Robert Salladay and copy edited by Nikki Frick.

Sam Pearson/California WatchThe Lehigh Southwest Cement plant in Tehachapi emitted the most mercury of any cement plant in California in 2010.

TEHACHAPI – At the end of an empty road just north of Highway 58 and past the outfield wall of an abandoned high school looms the towering Lehigh Southwest Cement plant – a behemoth kiln that belches mercury and other toxics into the air, as it has for decades.

After a round of publicity and public outcry in 2006 over mercury contamination from the plant, Lehigh’s emission rates for the deadly chemical plummeted.

But now, the mercury emissions have spiked back up to some of the highest in the nation.

The Lehigh Tehachapi plant produced 872 pounds of mercury in 2010, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory data – the most of any cement plant in California and the second-highest among all cement plants in the United States. In 2007, mercury emissions had dropped to 144 pounds, and then began climbing again.

Inside the plant, workers burn coal to cook limestone mined from the nearby hillside at more than 2,600 degrees. Both materials contain mercury, which then escapes into the atmosphere. Once in the air, scientists say, the mercury settles on the ground and contaminates the soil and water – and, eventually, fish that are eaten by humans.

California, rich in natural resources and massive in size, is one of the country’s largest producers of cement, with eight production facilities on the EPA's list of mercury emitters. As such, a debate in Congress over controlling emissions from cement plants could have a major impact on the industry here.

The Obama administration and EPA have promised to impose strict limits on some of the most harmful pollutants emitted from cement plants, like mercury, hydrogen clouds, toxic organic pollution, arsenic and hexavalent chromium – the pollutant made famous in the 2000 movie “Erin Brockovich.”

Jim Pew, a lawyer with the environmental group Earthjustice, said the move by the EPA is long overdue.

“These plants were supposed to be in compliance over a decade ago,” Pew said. “They have so successfully played the system that they have avoided these standards for years.”

Under the new rules, which are scheduled to begin in September 2013, plants will be banned from emitting more than 55 pounds of mercury per million tons of cement produced. The cement industry said complying with the regulations could cost as much as $3.4 billion and force the closure of some plants, but federal regulators put the cost at less than $1 billion.

Andy O’Hare, vice president for regulatory affairs at the Portland Cement Association, which represents cement plants that use the “Portland” method of cooking limestone in kilns, said the regulations could cripple small towns across the country that rely on cement plants to provide local, well-paying jobs.

For Lehigh’s Tehachapi plant, which employs about 100 people, controlling mercury emissions “will be one of the primary challenges we have,” said Tom Chizmadia, a spokesman for the cement company based in Texas.

The limestone mined from the volcanic earth near Tehachapi is naturally high in mercury, the company notes, and transportation costs prohibit importing limestone from great distances.

“We’re looking at a number of technologies and operating systems to see how we can best meet” the new mercury emissions standards, Chizmadia said. “Our focus is to meet that, so we can have the facility operating.”

Despite this federal effort, environmental activists remain skeptical that anything substantial will get done after decades of pollution and what they said is inattentive oversight by local air pollution boards.

In Southern California, environmental activist Jane Williams has waged a fight for years against the eight cement kilns operating in Kern and San Bernardino counties. She remembers driving toward Las Vegas along the old Route 66 at night with her infant son when she passed TXI Riverside Cement’s plant in Oro Grande.

The air became so thick, she said, that she could not see well enough to drive. So she stopped the car, got out and started videotaping what she saw. She sent the tape to the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District, but never received a response.

“This kiln is just out of control,” she remembers thinking. “(The air board) did nothing. Nothing.”

Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District spokeswoman Violette Roberts said the agency investigates all complaints from residents, as long as they concern stationary pollution sources and are within the district’s boundaries. “Sometimes when we show up on the site, the same exact thing may not be occurring,” Roberts said.

In most cases, state and federal EPA authorities have done most of the policing of California’s cement plants.

In December, the CalPortland Co. agreed to pay a fine of $1.42 million for Clean Air Act violations at its plant in Mojave, about 11 miles from Lehigh’s Tehachapi plant. In a settlement with the EPA, CalPortland said it would install equipment to reduce its nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide pollution, which are linked to asthma and cardiovascular diseases.

Throughout the country and California, cement plants remain a persistent environmental problem. A recent review of EPA documents by the Center for Public Integrity found 10 cement plants on a “watch list” of plants that, according to a 2007 report from the EPA’s inspector general, “tracks facilities with serious or chronic noncompliance that have not received formal enforcement action.”

The investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and NPR found that across the country, regulators have struggled to protect hundreds of communities from harmful pollutants, and sometimes chronic, serious violators of the Clean Air Act faced no enforcement for months or years. California Watch, which partnered with the center, looked closer at some of the worst violators here.

In many cases, cement plants in other states have been given permission to pollute at high levels. One plant in Chanute, Kansas, has been allowed to burn hazardous waste like industrial solvents; aluminum-paint waste; and toxic leftovers from chemical, pharmaceutical and oil production, NPR and the Center for Public Integrity reported.

City residents worried

Residents like Neoma Recalde, who lives about a mile from the Tehachapi plant, sometimes see dust on neighborhood cars and strange clouds coming from the plant. Recalde said she is not always certain where it comes from.

Tehachapi Mayor Ed Grimes remembers growing up in the town in the 1950s, when cars left outdoors overnight would be covered in cement dust the next morning. “The pollution was just outrageous,” Grimes said, adding that he believes the plant is cleaner now than it was back then.

Grimes, who also leads the Eastern Kern Air Pollution Control District, started scrutinizing the plant when his daughter-in-law was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Grimes said he knows other women – four or five of them in the city – with the same condition and points to mercury pollution as the likely culprit.

While the Lehigh plant is the largest source in the area, there is no evidence to suggest that exposure to heavy metals like mercury causes multiple sclerosis, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Grimes admits that despite his nagging suspicions, “I don’t have any scientific evidence of that, and maybe I never will.”

Built to provide cement for the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1908, Lehigh Southwest’s Tehachapi plant has emitted startlingly high levels of mercury ever since. According to EPA records, the plant emitted the most mercury of any cement plant in California in 2010, and until 2005, it was the highest in the nation.

But over the years, the plant had faced little pressure to cut back its mercury emissions. The plant’s owner, Lehigh Cement Co., was fined $10,625 by local regulators from 2005 to 2010 for other violations, even as it emitted 3,257 pounds of mercury during that time.

When the Los Angeles Times identified Lehigh’s plant as the nation’s highest emitter of mercury pollution in 2006, based on 2004 statistics, “a lot of people were up in arms,” said Glenn Baumann, a Tehachapi resident who has been involved in monitoring the plant.

Baumann said he understands the cement companies’ need to stay in business, make money and produce a product. But, he said, “just don’t make us sick or kill us.”

Since 2004, mercury emissions had been declining – tests for 2005 and 2006 showed 697 and 586 pounds, respectively. By 2007, the plant cut its emissions to 144 pounds. Air district officials said at the time that the decline showed that Lehigh was making progress in reducing its mercury problem.

But the numbers spiked again – in 2008, emissions reached 944 pounds, and in 2010, the plant’s mercury emissions were 872 pounds.

Explaining plant’s emissions

Various explanations have been offered for why the plant’s mercury emissions have varied so widely – offering a window into the complicated nature of measuring mercury emissions as the Obama administration pursues its new regulations.

Chizmadia said the plant in 2008 switched to a newer method of calculating mercury emissions – from a more traditional “stack test,” which measures a snapshot in time, to a more accurate “mass balance” test. Now, the mercury content in their limestone is measured before production. The mercury in the plant’s “clinker” byproduct is tested after production, and the difference is assumed to be the emission levels.

Activist Williams said the emissions declined because plant officials measured the mercury content in various areas of the limestone mine and then began mining limestone from areas with lower mercury content.

Chizmadia and David Jones, air pollution control officer for the Eastern Kern Air Pollution Control District, said the plant stopped using silica from the mine that contained high levels of mercury, and this had contributed to lower levels. The silica is now imported from another source with less mercury, Chizmadia said.

Jones disputed the accuracy of past EPA data showing Lehigh emitting more than 2,500 pounds of mercury annually. Jones said those results were just “estimates.” He also said that the plant had not been producing as much cement during the economic downturn and that also accounted for decreased emissions.

Mercury, a potent neurotoxin, has an impact that is difficult to quantify, but is believed to be most dangerous for pregnant women and small children. It can contaminate bodies of water and cause fish to be unsafe for human consumption; it also causes other symptoms like reduced IQs, behavioral problems and heart conditions.

Cement officials argue that Lehigh’s Tehachapi plant, along with Ash Grove Cement Co.’s plant in Durkee, Ore., are unique among the nation’s cement plants as “mercury outliers,” because of the naturally occurring variations in the limestone at their facilities. The volcanic rock mined from nearby sources has a far higher mercury content than limestone supplied to other cement plants.

Ash Grove’s plant has emitted nearly 18,000 pounds of mercury in the past decade, while Lehigh’s plant emitted nearly 14,000 pounds.

Politics and industry

O’Hare, the Portland Cement Association official, said a cement industry study looked at each plant individually and calculated whether it would be cost-effective for the plant to purchase new equipment to reduce emissions. The study concluded that 18 cement plants could be forced to shut down because of the new regulations, with a total of 3,000 to 4,000 jobs lost.

“Once you close down an industrial facility like this,” O’Hare warned, “you’re not going to reopen them.”

O’Hare declined to release the specific plants deemed most vulnerable to closure, but Chizmadia said the Tehachapi plant was not on the list.

Earthjustice lawyer Pew said the cement makers were simply playing politics by using the threat of a shutdown as leverage to escape pollution controls. He discounted arguments by cement manufacturers that further controls would force plants to close.

“The argument is so disingenuous,” he said. “All of the control technologies have been available for decades that will let them reduce their emissions by 90 percent.”

But if there really were no way to comply, Williams said the goal of the Clean Air Act would be to force the most toxic industrial plants to stop operating.

“Chemicals that are a danger to human health should be reduced in the environment,” Williams said, arguing that if the Lehigh plant in Tehachapi shut down, its production simply would shift to other cement plants that emitted less mercury.

Many environmentalists believe that the actual levels of mercury emissions could be significantly higher than what EPA data suggests. Earthjustice has argued that continuous emissions monitoring should be required for all plants to ensure accuracy.

A bill that passed the House of Representatives in October would remove the EPA’s effort to tighten regulation of cement plants. The measure passed the House 262-161, with 25 Democrats voting to support it and two Republicans opposing it. Obama has vowed to veto any attempts to weaken the new standards.

Environmental groups said the effort to kill the regulations is misguided.

There is “no credible reason to delay that implementation, except that the Portland Cement Association is upset that this will cost their plants extra money,” said Diane Bailey, spokeswoman for the National Resources Defense Council.

“The public health and air quality benefits from these proposed regulations are tremendous,” she said. “Really, we’re talking about literally thousands of lives that would be saved by implementing these regulations.”

O’Hare said that argument might make sense in the present economic climate, in which there is little demand for cement because construction has slowed. But he said that when the economy eventually rebounds, all existing cement plants would need to be operating to meet demand.

If they could not, O’Hare argued, the production would be replaced by imported cement from places like China – where comparable pollution standards do not exist.

Learn more about cement plant emissions

Ashley Alvarado — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:05:04 +0000

Ashley Alvarado

In “Calif. cement plant has one of nation’s highest mercury emissions levels,” reporter Sam Pearson describes how the mercury contamination from a Tehachapi plant has reached high levels. To help readers understand why this matters, we break down the issue of emissions at cement plants with a glossary of terms that includes pollutants and their suspected effects, an FAQ with insights on how you can get involved, and a map of cement plants throughout California.

But first, do you live near a cement emissions plant? Click here to share your insights with California Watch and inform our reporting.

Glossary of terms

Arsenic: A solid poisonous element, arsenic is said to be four times as poisonous as mercury. Arsenic is suspected of contributing to various cardiovascular, pulmonary, immunological, neurological, peripheral vascular and endocrine diseases.

Coal: The combustible rock is composed primarily of carbon with varying quantities of other elements that include but are not limited to hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen and oxygen. Coal has been linked to lung cancer and the emission of arsenic, mercury and selenium, among other toxins. To learn more about coal, watch “Dirty Business: ‘Clean Coal’ and the Battle for Our Energy Future,”produced by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

EPA MACT: The new rules, which are scheduled to begin in 2013, are known as the EPA Maximum Available Control Technology. More information can be found here.

Hexavalent chromium: Also known as chromium VI, this type of chromium compound has been recognized as a carcinogen when inhaled. Lungs are the most vulnerable, followed by kidneys and the intestines. This pollutant was made famous in the 2000 movie “Erin Brockovich.”

House Bill HR 2681: The Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act of 2011 can be read here.

Limestone: This rock consists primarily of calcium carbonate and is generally formed by the accumulation of organic remains like shells or coral.

Mercury: Elemental, or metallic, mercury affects people when inhaled as a vapor. Effects may include tremors, emotional changes, insomnia, headaches and more. Additional information can be found here.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, people in the United States are most often exposed to the organic compound methylmercury when they eat seafood. “For fetuses, infants, and children, the primary health effect of methylmercury is impaired neurological development,” its website states.“Methylmercury exposure in the womb, which can result from a mother's consumption of fish and shellfish that contain methylmercury, can adversely affect a baby's growing brain and nervous system. Impacts on cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language, and fine motor and visual spatial skills have been seen in children exposed to methylmercury in the womb.”

Nitrogen oxide: This term applies to any of several types of oxides that are produced in combustion and considered atmospheric pollutants, which have been linked to damaged lung tissue (possibly resulting in death), as well as exacerbated emphysema, bronchitis and heart disease.

“Portland” method: The Portland Cement Association describes its eponymous manufacturing method here.

Silica: Silicasometimes known as silicon dioxide (SiO2), is the primary raw material used in Portland cement, as well as earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. Health effects linked to the inhalation of silica dust include bronchitis and cancer.

Sulfur dioxide: A pungent toxic gas, sulfur dioxide is a major air pollutant. The EPA lists respiratory conditions like exacerbated asthma symptoms and bronchoconstriction among the health effects linked to sulfur dioxide. Read the EPA listing here.

Toxic organic pollution: This term applies to any molecule that contains carbon.

Frequently asked questions

· Why do high mercury emission levels matter? Scientists say that when mercury escapes into the air, it can then settle on the ground and contaminate soil and water – and, eventually, fish that are eaten by humans.

· If I’m opposed to House Bill HR 2681, what can I do? Contact your representatives (listed below). The bill does not appear to have enough support to pass the Senate, and President Barack Obama said he would veto it.

· Are there manufacturing alternatives that don’t create such high emission levels? There are technologies that reduce emissions at plants. But certain regions, like where the Tehachapi and Durkee, Ore., plants produce cement from areas with a volcanic history that causes the rocks to naturally contain a higher level of mercury.

Scan this Google map to see whether there are mercury-emitting cement plants in your area. Plant contact info and the corresponding air quality control district contact info are listed.

View California cement plants with mercury emissions in a larger map

Key players

There are many players involved in the mercury emissions issue – and many ways to get involved. You can find and contact your state legislative representative by clicking here. Plants with noteworthy mercury emission levels and their local air quality district are listed in the Google map above.

Government agencies and officials

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Phone: 800-232-4636
Write: 4770 Buford Highway NE
Atlanta, GA 30341
E-mail: cdcinfo@cdc.gov
Website: www.atsdr.cdc.gov

Note: Go here for individual ToxFAQs sheets about specific substances, including those in the article. The agency doesn’t answer questions about individual medical cases.

Environmental Protection Agency
Phone: 415-947-8000
Write: U.S. EPA Region 9
75 Hawthorne St.
San Francisco, CA 94105
E-mail: www.epa.gov/epahome/hotline.htm
Website: www.epa.gov
Facebook: www.facebook.com/EPA
Twitter: www.twitter.com/epagov
Report possible environmental violation: www.epa.gov/compliance/complaints/index.html
En español: www.epa.gov/espanol

House representatives

For a list of California’s House representatives , click here.

Tehachapi Mayor Ed Grimes

Phone: 661-822-2200
Write: 115 S. Robinson St.
Tehachapi, CA 93561
Website: www.tehachapicityhall.com

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer
Phone: 213-894-5000
Write: 312 N. Spring St., Suite 1748
Los Angeles, CA 90012
E-mail: http://boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/policycomments.cfm
Website: http://boxer.senate.gov/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/senatorboxer
Twitter: http://twitter.com/senatorboxer

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein
Phone: 310-914-7300
Write: 11111 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 915
Los Angeles, CA 90025
E-mail: www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me
Website: www.feinstein.senate.gov
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SenatorFeinstein
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/senfeinstein

White House
Phone: 202-456-1111
Write: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500
E-mail: www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
Website: www.whitehouse.gov
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/whitehouse

Environmentalists

California Air Pollution Control Officers Association
Phone: 916-441-5700
Write: 1107 9th St., Suite 210
Sacramento, CA 95814
E-mail: http://www.capcoa.org/2009/05/contact/

Website: http://www.capcoa.org/
Coalition for Clean Air
Phone: 213-223-6860
Write: 800 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1010
Los Angeles, CA 90017
E-mail: air@ccair.org
Website: www.ccair.org

Earthjustice
Phone: 800-584-6460
Write: 50 California St., Suite 500
San Francisco, CA 94111
E-mail: info@earthjustice.org
Website: www.earthjustice.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Earthjustice
Twitter: www.twitter.com/earthjustice

Jane Williams, California Communities Against Toxics
Phone: 661-510-3412
Write: P.O. Box 845
Rosamond, CA 93560
E-mail: info@stoptoxics.org
Website: http://stoptoxics.org

Natural Resources Defense Council
Phone: 212-727-2700
Write: 40 W. 20th St.
New York, NY 10011
Website: www.nrdc.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/nrdc.org
Twitter: www.twitter.com/nrdc

Cement industry

Portland Cement Association
Phone: 847-966-6200
Write: 5420 Old Orchard Road
Skokie, IL 60077
E-mail: info@cement.org
Website: www.cement.org

Minimal impact on cities, farms helped Spain avoid high-speed rail opposition

Tim Sheehan — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 08:05:03 +0000

Tim Sheehan

Tim Sheehan is a business reporter for The Fresno Bee and covers high-speed rail issues. The reporter can be reached at tsheehan@fresnobee.com or 559-441-6319. This special project is the result of a partnership among California news organizations following the state's high-speed rail program, including The Fresno Bee, The Bakersfield Californian, California Watch, The Sacramento Bee, The Orange County Register, the San Francisco Chronicle, The (Riverside) Press-Enterprise, U-T San Diego, KQED, The Merced Sun-Star, The Tribune of San Luis Obispo and The Modesto Bee.

Tim Sheehan/The Fresno BeeFarmer Luis Valciente talks about the train tracks that run behind his fence. Valciente says AVE trains pass by his farm several times an hour but says he's not bothered by the noise. His operations have also been unaffected.

LA ESTACIÓN, SPAIN – On a crisp fall Saturday morning, Luis Valciente and Mercedes Martin enjoy the quiet of their farm about 20 miles northeast of Seville.

The retired husband and wife bought their patch of land in 1987, several years before Spain’s first high-speed trains started running between Madrid and Seville.

“It’s very tranquil, which is what we like after all these years,” Martin says through an interpreter.

Without warning, a loud “swoosh” briefly interrupts the couple’s conversation with a reporter. Within seconds, the noise subsides, and the couple picks up the chat, unruffled, right where they left off.

It’s one of Spain’s AVE high-speed trains rushing from Madrid to Seville on tracks about 100 feet from the rear of the couple’s modest home. The high-speed tracks – a portion of the nation’s first high-speed rail line that opened in 1992 – are n ext to older conventional rail tracks just over the back fence.

To passengers aboard the train, the Valciente farm is little more than a blur at the side of the tracks about 10 minutes before they get to Seville, the southern terminus for AVE trains that come and go from the Santa Justa Station. Each train sends a fresh buzz of activity through the station and a small surge of cabs, cars and pedestrians onto the busy streets near the historic city’s commercial center. Nearby restaurants, shops and rental-car agencies vie for attention from the new arrivals.

As Spain’s system connects major urban centers and smaller provincial capitals, it also runs across fertile agricultural regions, including Castile-La Mancha and Andalusia, known for fine olive oils; Valencia, where citrus is prominent; and Catalonia, where vineyards produce most of the grapes fermented for cava, the region’s sparkling wine.

But despite crossing both cityscapes and farmland, Spain’s high-speed rail program stirred no major opposition in either urban or rural environs. When work began in the late 1980s, the nation’s economy was in good shape, and Spain was readying itself to host both a world exposition and the Olympics.

In the countryside, Barcelona transportation engineer Andreu Ulied said, the Spanish government went to great lengths – and great expense – to minimize effects on farms. They skirted farmland where they could, built frequent overpasses and underpasses, and generously compensated owners who lost property to the project.

In larger Spanish cities such as Madrid, Seville, Valencia, Cordova and Barcelona, stations for high-speed trains are in already-developed central-city commercial districts, often near existing train stations to minimize disruptions. In Barcelona, preservationists’ fears about a train tunnel under the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia forced extensive and expensive engineering measures to avoid damaging the iconic church.

Merchants doing business near the stations generally say high-speed rail is good for commerce, even when they are unsure if it has directly helped their own stores and restaurants.

Ulied, economist Germà Bel and others, however, say the prospects for economic gains by high-speed rail cities are murky at best, and at worst might actually bleed commerce from smaller cities along the routes between larger destinations.

Bridges, underpasses help in farmland

Valciente and Martin, both in their 70s, tend to orange trees, fruit trees and corn on their 6 ½-acre farm. Chickens roam uncaged, pecking at the dirt around the pomegranate trees, pepper plants and cacti in the yard.

The AVE trains speed by the small farmstead several times an hour, “and it hasn’t affected us at all,” Valciente said.

“We don’t even feel them,” added Martin. Even though their house is so near the tracks, she said, the high-speed trains create no wind turbulence and are less bothersome than the slower-moving regional commuter trains because noise from the AVE trains passes so quickly.

Because conventional trains were already there when Valciente bought the farm, he doesn’t think the AVE trains affected his property value, and if the neighbors have any complaints, he says he hasn’t heard them. In fact, high-speed rail raised little, if any, opposition from Spain’s agriculture industry, said Ulied, a critic of the nation’s rampant expansion of high-speed rail lines. Ulied runs MCRIT, a prominent civil engineering, economic and urban planning firm in Barcelona that does transportation analysis for major clients, including the European Union.

“In Catalonia, one line from Tarragona to Barcelona crosses an area where there are a lot of vineyards that make a Champagne called cava,” Ulied said. “It’s a rich area, and the landscape has to be well managed because it is linked to this industry. But the infrastructure was well designed, and the integration with the landscape is as best as possible.”

The Spanish experience contrasts sharply with the loud and growing objections to California’s plans by some farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, where faith in both the state rail authority and the economy are in short supply.

Growers and ranchers say they fear losing farmland and even their homes to the tracks, they worry that tracks across their land will keep them from moving easily across their fields, and they doubt they’ll be fairly compensated for their property or troubles.

In Spain, the government worked with farmers from the outset to head off such concerns, said Pedro Pérez del Campo, environmental policy director for ADIF, the government-owned company that runs the track system.

“It’s in our interest to make it easier for the farmers,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. Pérez del Campo said the first priority is to make sure that farmers whose properties are divided by the tracks can still reach the other side of their land.

“About every 500 meters, there is the ability to pass from one side of the rail to the other,” he said. “We are obligated that if the rails were to cross your property, we have to give you the ability to cross.”

That access doesn’t come cheap. To prevent collisions, bridges and tunnels carry roads over or under the line. There are no at-grade crossings. Likewise, California proposes to build its high-speed line without at-grade crossings but with bridges and underpasses for selected roads and streets. It’s not clear yet how many crossings would be provided for farms in the Central Valley.

If building a bridge or tunnel for a farmer is too complicated, Pérez del Campo said, it can be cheaper for ADIF to pay more than the land is worth to simply buy the remnant parcel from the owner. That eliminates the need for the farmer to cross.

Pérez del Campo was adamant that the train system hasn’t hurt farming: “Especially in the wine industry, which is very important to Spain’s economy, if there were an issue, we would know by now.

“They have a lot of money and very good lawyers.”

To build Spain’s first high-speed line, 300 miles of track between Madrid and Seville, the Ministry of Public Works had to acquire 8,154 acres of private land for about $120 million, according to a ministry official.

For the more recent line from Madrid to Barcelona and on to the French border, land costs were much higher – about $1.5 billion for 15,694 acres in the 495-mile corridor and temporary access to another 7,194 acres.

The coastal part of the Barcelona route crosses some of Spain’s densest areas, said Juan Ignacio Lema, a technical adviser for the ministry. Also, Spain had experienced a real estate boom that drove prices up, he said.

Trains bring tourists, business travelers

In the cities, high-speed trains are good for business because they drive tourism – the nation’s biggest industry – and business travel, the government says.

Spain’s Ministry of Public Works reports that Madrid, Ciudad Real, Cordova and Seville, all along the oldest high-speed line, saw greater growth in the number of hotel beds than the nation as a whole after the line connecting them was launched in 1992. Collectively, the four cities grew from about 70,000 hotel beds in 1990 to more than 130,000 in 2007.

In Ciudad Real, a city of 75,000 people about 100 miles south of Madrid, hotel beds and hotel stays more than doubled between 1990 and 2007. The city’s population also grew at a much faster rate than the rest of Spain during the same period.

Renfe, the government-owned company that operates the AVE trains, said high-speed trains have made it easier for students and professors to commute to Ciudad Real’s University of Castilla-La Mancha and for people in the town to commute daily to Madrid for work.

The public works ministry also boasts of job creation related to high-speed rail: about 115,000 jobs building it and an additional 35,000 running it. And in cities along the lines, the government said, more than a dozen companies involved in high-speed rail engineering, manufacturing, operations and maintenance are investing about $17 billion to develop 1,700 acres for offices, plants and yards near stations.

But academic researchers, including Chris Nash of England’s University of Leeds, say it’s difficult to measure the effects of high-speed rail on commerce, employment, and the economies of cities and regions. Most of Spain’s high-speed lines are too new to have made a significant mark. And experts are still looking for ways to distinguish the influence of high-speed trains from other economic factors – especially when stations are built in already-established city centers.

“The issue of wider economic benefits remains one of the hardest to tackle,” Nash wrote in a 2009 International Transport Forum article. “Such benefits could be significant, but vary significantly from case to case, so an in-depth study of each case is required.”

City merchants see benefits

Merchants near the train stations mostly spoke favorably when asked about the high-speed network.

Bar Carlos Alberto is a typical Spanish bar/restaurant, perched on the corner of a busy intersection in Seville for more than 20 years. During a weekday lunch hour in November, the bar was bustling with customers nibbling on deep-fried prawns and anchovies or paper-thin slices of Iberian ham. More cured hams hung above the bar, and diners washed down their snacks with bracing-cold beer.

Manager Isabel del Morel gazed across a traffic circle at the large Santa Justa Station, where Spain’s high-speed AVE trains come and go 18 times a day. Each arriving train from Madrid represents another load of potential customers looking for something to eat after their trip, before heading off for business or sightseeing.

The bar was already going strong when the train station opened in 1992 to serve the new AVE trains, del Morel said. But the trains, she added, “helped a lot because people come off the train and when they’re hungry; they bring in more business.”

Candy shop owner Vicente Garcia, in Valencia, has a different perspective, tempered by Europe’s economic struggles.

Spain’s newest high-speed service, between Madrid and Valencia, started in December 2010. There are 13 round-trips on AVE trains each day, and each train can carry up to 365 passengers.

“I think it brings more tourism to Valencia, but it’s come at a time when there is an economic crisis, so that has an effect,” said Garcia, who owns Casa de los Caramelos.

Through an interpreter, Garcia said he believes things would be worse without the visitors the trains bring. “I think in the long term, there will be big benefits,” he said.

In 2008, high-speed trains from Madrid finally began running to Barcelona, the nation’s second-largest city. Many merchants there also said anecdotallythe trains have been good for business.

But construction on a tunnel to link AVE service between Barcelona’s two rail stations has virtually shut down a street lined with small stores and restaurants for about two years.

On Carrer de Provença, about 250 yards from Barcelona’s Sants station, Maria Radu’s two businesses – Unirea, a Romanian grocery and deli, and Crama Dracula, a Romanian restaurant – are suffering, she said.

“This happened at the same time as the economic crisis,” she said through an interpreter. “There was a 30-meter hole out there that was almost to our door. It had quite an effect.”

Still, she said, “I suppose it’s a good investment if we ever get out of this economic crisis.”

“It will be worth it because someone will be grateful that someone made the sacrifice. They’ll say, ‘What a beautiful train system,’ and how convenient and wonderful it is that we have this.”

Lines may drain smaller cities

Experts say there is potential, but no guarantee, that cities with high-speed rail stops will realize significant, lasting economic benefit.

“I don’t think there’s a clear relation between the high-speed rail investments and the economic performance of cities,” said Ulied, the engineer. “But it largely depends on the strategies in place. If there is a strategic plan and everything is well prepared, there are chances for positive economic effects.”

Bel, a professor of political economics at the University of Barcelona, said it’s much more likely that smaller cities along the line between Madrid and the larger destinations suffer economically because most of the travel and commerce by residents flows to the big cities.

“High-speed rail encourages the centralization of activities in the large hubs, especially in the services sector,” Bel wrote in a new book on infrastructure economics to be published this year. “The primary hubs of the network – more dynamic – can benefit at the expense of intermediary cities, which are usually the big losers of high-speed rail. For this reason, the efforts by many smaller-sized cities to get high-speed rail stations can be unfruitful and even counterproductive.”

Bel simplified his ideas in an interview at his university office. “If you are the small guy, you get sucked. Most of the trips go to the big hubs, not to the small cities,” he said.

In California’s recession-racked San Joaquin Valley, economic development officials have high hopes for more and faster high-speed rail connections from Fresno, Bakersfield and Merced to the Bay Area and the Southland.

“There are examples in the Valley now,” said Steve Geil, CEO of the Fresno County Economic Development Corporation. “You have the ACE (Altamont Commuter Express) trains that run from Stockton to Santa Clara, a two-hour train ride that people commute on every morning and afternoon. Can you imagine when we can go in an hour to the heart of San Jose from Fresno?”

“What that does is it allows you to connect with jobs that pay much better up in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, and you bring that money back home and spend it here,” Geil said.

Valley residents also would gain easier access to entertainment and recreational opportunities and see increased tourism here, too, said Al Smith, president of the Greater Fresno Area Chamber of Commerce.

“If you want to go to San Francisco for a theater performance or a concert, you could jump on the train and be back that night,” he said. “And more people will start coming here. The Save Mart Center (at CSU Fresno) is one of the most-used concert venues on the West Coast these days. People will be coming to Fresno to do stuff.”

But Bel has his doubts. “In California, nobody in San Francisco is going to travel to Fresno to buy things,” he said. “From time to time, somebody from Los Angeles will travel to Bakersfield. But they will not be going every weekend to Bakersfield.”

Spain’s high-speed rail system offers lessons for California

Tim Sheehan — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:05:04 +0000

Tim Sheehan

Tim Sheehan is a business reporter for The Fresno Bee and covers high-speed rail issues. The reporter can be reached at tsheehan@fresnobee.com or 559-441-6319. This special project is the result of a partnership among California news organizations following the state’s high-speed rail program, including The Fresno Bee, The Bakersfield Californian, California Watch, The Sacramento Bee, The Orange County Register, the San Francisco Chronicle, The (Riverside) Press-Enterprise, U-T San Diego, KQED, the Merced Sun-Star, The Tribune of San Luis Obispo and The Modesto Bee.

Tim Sheehan/The Fresno BeeTrain operator Jose Jimenez pushes the AVE train to its top operating speed, 186 mph, on a trip between Valencia and Madrid.

MADRID – It’s 8 a.m. at the Puerto de Atocha train station in central Madrid. Business travelers armed with cellphones and laptops, and pleasure travelers toting cameras and carry-on bags, make their way through security to board the high-speed trains that connect Spain’s capital to cities across the nation.

The sprawling station, which dates to the 1890s, serves not only the AVE, or Alta Velocidad Española high-speed trains, but also the city’s metro subway and commuter trains. It sits amid a bustling district of offices, hotels, restaurants, museums and other businesses.

This is the vision shared by backers of California’s proposed, but controversial, high-speed rail system. And there are lessons – from both successes and mistakes – that California can learn from Spain’s 20-year history with high-speed trains.

Top among them is just how hard it is to be self-sufficient, even when conditions seem ideal, as they have in Spain.

Despite popular and political support from the very beginning, the AVE rail system faces a tougher future in the midst of Europe’s financial crisis.

Already, service between some smaller cities has been cut because too few people ride the trains. Some wonder if it is anything more than a luxury commuter service.

Among the growing fraternity of nations with high-speed trains, Spain is considered the best geographic and cultural analogy to California and its train plans. The long-distance AVE trains and their regional cousins Avant and Alvia, which share the high-speed tracks, connect major urban centers but pass through smaller cities and stretches of rural farmland, just like what is planned for California.

They’ve gotten people out of their cars and off airplanes, sliced travel times, and attracted millions of riders a year – just what California rail boosters hope will happen here.

Since the late 1980s, Spain has spent about $60 billion to build and equip its high-speed network.

President Barack Obama touted Spain’s system as a model for American high-speed rail plans when he announced billions of dollars in federal investments in April 2009.

And Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood voiced admiration for the Spanish network when he visited Spain last summer.

“We know that you are the experts. We know that you have developed a state-of-the-art system here,” he said. “It’s not lost on anyone that when President Obama proposed this high-speed rail plan, he specifically called out Spain as an example for America to emulate.”

Spain’s system, however, was launched in conditions much different from what California is experiencing today. Political unity, a thriving economy and the spotlight of international events – a world exposition in Seville and the Olympic Games in Barcelona – all provided an impetus for Spain to embark on its high-speed journey.

About the only major point of contention was where the first line from Madrid should go (Seville won over Barcelona), not whether it should happen at all.

While Spain continues to build and expand its system through both good and bad economic times, cost is a key concern in cash-strapped California. Planners are wrestling with a price tag that has doubled over the past two years and grappling with the thorny issue of where to get the money to build it when both state and federal budgets are under strain.

Unlike in California, Spain’s high-speed rail effort has not been a public or political punching bag. It’s rapidly expanded to become Europe’s most extensive high-speed network – and third only to China and Japan’s worldwide – while facing remarkably little of the NIMBYism, farm opposition or politics fermenting throughout California.

View Spain's high-speed lines in a larger map

The people who ride the AVE trains love them. Merchants who do business near the stations in rail-connected cities such as Barcelona, Seville and Cordova say they generally believe the trains are good for their cities, good for business and good for the country. The project has been supported by both conservative- and Socialist-led governments.

But with Spain and the rest of Europe mired in a lingering economic crisis, those attitudes may slowly be changing.

Economists and engineers acknowledge that the system is well engineered, well built and state of the art and that the service is top notch, comfortable, safe and punctual.

Despite assurances from the Spanish government that the long-distance AVE trains operate without a public subsidy, academics and analysts don’t believe that even the busiest high-speed route – between Madrid and Barcelona – musters enough riders to cover its operating costs, much less the billions of euros invested to build the infrastructure over the past 20 years.

Speed and comfort

On an overcast November morning, rain clouds hang low in the sky over the olive orchards of Castile-La Mancha, the territory of central Spain. As the 10 a.m. AVE train from Madrid to Seville races gracefully on its steel tracks, trees and structures flash past the window – the only tangible indication to passengers that they are moving at more than 180 mph.

In a car, the roughly 300-mile drive to Seville, in the southwestern region of Andalusia, would take about five to six hours. This eight-car, French-built Alstom Class 100 train can hold up to 332 passengers and cross the distance in less than 2½ hours.

Inside the passenger cars, the ride is smooth and quiet. The seats have plenty of legroom, and a power outlet for electronics. Attendants give earbuds to passengers so they can listen to music or watch movies. About the only convenience lacking is Wi-Fi Internet access.

Fewer than half of the seats on this train – one of 21 daily high-speed AVE or Alvia trains to Seville – are occupied, so there is plenty of room to spread out, even in tourist class.

Tourist-class tickets on the Madrid-Seville train run between $56 and $112, depending on the departure time.

At one of four small tables in the car, a young woman from Madrid taps away at her laptop keyboard, occasionally pausing to answer her cellphone to field a call from work.

Esther San Felipe, a pharmaceutical representative, says she enjoys taking the AVE train, riding it to Seville about once a month for business.

“It’s a luxury; it’s so comfortable,” she says.

She breaks off to answer her insistent phone. “And you can work when you’re on the train,” she continues after hanging up.

There are certainly cheaper ways to get around the country. A bus ticket from Madrid to Seville costs about $27, but takes between 6½ and eight hours. Airline flights are faster to cover the distance and can be about the same price or less.

“But you have to get to the airport one or two hours early, find a place to park, go through security and then wait at the airport at the other end,” San Felipe added. “For just a little bit more money, you can have something much better.”

The ridership challenge

San Felipe is hardly alone in her enthusiasm for the high-speed trains.

The Madrid-to-Seville line became Spain’s first high-speed train route when it opened in early 1992, coinciding with Seville hosting Expo 1992.

Renfe, the Spanish government-owned company that operates all passenger trains in the country – including the AVE, Avant and Alvia high-speed trains – under the umbrella of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, reports that by the end of 1993, the first full year of high-speed service, AVE trains accounted for more than half of all passenger travel between Madrid and Seville. Automobile traffic, in the meantime, fell from 60 percent of the volume to about 34 percent.

For more than a decade, Madrid-Seville was Spain’s only operating high-speed line, and ridership grew modestly, reaching about 4.8 million by 2002. New lines to Lleida, Zaragoza and Huesca opened in 2003 and to Tarragona, Valladolid and Malaga in 2006 and 2007, but didn’t drive much growth.

It wasn’t until high-speed tracks opened to Barcelona, Spain’s second-largest city, four years ago that ridership experienced a real growth spurt.

Total high-speed ridership on the long-distance and regional trains peaked at nearly 17 million in 2009.

Ridership has since tapered off as Spain, like the rest of Europe and much of the world, copes with economic troubles.

Spain now has nearly 1,740 miles of high-speed tracks, lines that serve as spokes with Madrid as the hub. By 2015, the nation plans to nearly double the miles of track.

Over the next decade, the Spanish government plans to spend up to $77 billion more to expand and improve its high-speed lines, said Juan Ignacio Campo Jori, director of international projects for ADIF, another government-owned company that manages and operates Spain’s railway infrastructure.

But with no sign of Europe’s financial crisis letting up, some say the government needs to slow its spending.

In the early years of developing high-speed trains, Spain was “in kind of a booming situation,” said Andreu Ulied, director of a noted engineering and consulting firm in Barcelona. “Now the situation is completely different.”

In recent years, the European Union funneled about $17 billion in grants and billions more in low-interest loans to Spain to improve its high-speed rail.

But Ulied said that will end in a couple of years, leaving Spain to bear the entire cost of its ambitious expansion plans.

Ulied and Germà Bel, a professor of political economics at the University of Barcelona, agree that none of the Spanish high-speed rail routes has enough riders to make the system financially sustainable.

“There is no question whether (Spain’s system) can cover its costs. It cannot,” Bel said. “It actually has not recovered one single euro from the infrastructure investment. The government claims they are recovering the operating costs, but the numbers are not clear.”

The busiest high-speed lines in the world are capable of making money, Bel said, including between Paris and Lyon, where about 25 million people ride the French TGV trains each year, and the Japanese Shinkansen trains between Tokyo and Osaka, which draw about 130 million riders a year.

“But this is not the case with any single line in Spain,” Bel said. “The most crowded operation is Madrid-Barcelona, and it has not even had 6 million people in a year.”

Ulied said Spain’s efforts have been based not on serious economic analysis, but on political desires to connect the rest of the nation to Madrid. “We had the money, we had the ability to do so, so we did it,” he said. “The engineering was very good. The quality of the service is excellent. And everything is nice, very nice. The problem is that it is luxurious. Maybe it is too good for us.”

“The question is maybe the whole thing was partially a mistake,” Ulied said of lines to smaller cities with fewer riders. “We didn’t need all these lines, actually.”

The newest route

The latest high-speed line to open in Spain is the 243-mile route between Madrid and Valencia, on the Mediterranean coast. The AVE trains have sliced the travel time between the two cities from about 3½ hours by car to just more than 1½ hours by train.

Valencia’s new Joaquin Sorolla train station sits near the old Estació del Nord that serves regional commuter trains and the city’s subway. Just a few blocks away is the Carrer de Cristóbal Colón, the main street of a bustling shopping district of department stores, boutiques and restaurants.

Maria Jose Martin, who manages the nearby C&A clothing store, said the company typically sends people on the train for business trips because it’s cheaper than flying.

“I think it’s good,” she said through an interpreter. “It brings Madrid and Valencia closer together and allows for more flow of people between the two cities.”

And, she added, the trains are good for Valencia’s business community because they bring more tourists on day trips.

But Martin acknowledged that “the ticket price is still pretty high” for families on holiday.

On a rainy morning, Jacinto Calvillo is among the passengers waiting at the station to board the train for a business trip. “I have a car for work, but I like to take the train,” Calvillo said through an interpreter.

Calvillo said he believes high-speed rail has been a good investment for the nation “to bring together or connect the big cities in Spain, but not necessarily covering the smaller distances.”

“The main disadvantage is that they haven’t prioritized which lines are most important, so a lot of money has been spent on lines that aren’t as important,” he said. “But it has created greater movement of business, more connections and more commerce.”

The train station in Valencia, like stations in other cities, plays host to various retail stores and restaurants that serve travelers – including the ubiquitous golden arches of McDonald’s. It looks and smells like any other McDonald’s – kids tugging on their parents’ sleeves asking for a Happy Meal and people munching on burgers and fries.

A few hours later, aboard an afternoon train back to Madrid, a visit to the operator’s cab offers a rare driver’s-eye view of the high-speed ride. It’s quiet in the passenger cars, but on the way to the cockpit, there is a deafening roar in the locomotive that houses the powerful electric motors.

Jose Jimenez, a 30-year train operator for Renfe, sits at the driver’s console of the Spanish-built Talgo AVE Class 112 train, which can carry up to 365 passengers. Jimenez occasionally flips on the windshield wipers to clear the raindrops, giving a clear view of just how fast the train is moving.

The train’s speed increases steadily as Jimenez nudges a small joystick throttle with his left thumb and forefinger: 155 mph, then 160, 165, 175. The power lines flash overhead, and the concrete ties of the railroad tracks fly under the train at a dizzying clip if you stare too long.

Now the speed is 180, 183, 184, 185. Finally, Jimenez looks over his shoulder, smiling broadly, and nods with pride as his electronic display flashes 302 kilometers per hour – 187 mph.

Where to begin?

The Talgo trains – nicknamed Pato (“Duck” in English) because of their streamlined, elongated noses – are capable of doing 205 mph, but the maximum operating speed is supposed to be 186 mph.

No doubt that technicians for both Renfe and ADIF, sitting in front of computer consoles in Madrid, knew exactly when and where Jimenez bent the speed limit. Sensors embedded along the rail line and GPS sensors aboard the trains feed a constant stream of real-time information back to the control centers.

Large screens on the walls of Renfe’s control center at the Puerto de Atocha station show operators the exact location and speed of each train in the system, duplicating the information on the smaller computer monitors. Video screens also show trains as they enter and leave stations.

The Atocha center monitors more than 90 train trips daily to cities in eastern and southern Spain, said José Espada Rodelgo, manager of Renfe’s operations coordination center. With that many trains coming and going, the real-time data is crucial to managing schedules and making sure the trains are running on time, he said.

Renfe managers prize customer satisfaction and on-time performance for their trains. On the Madrid-Seville route, for instance, the company promises to refund passengers their full fare if the train arrives at its destination more than five minutes late.

But at least one scheduled train could not be saved. Earlier this year, Renfe shut down its direct once-daily AVE train between Cuenca, Albacete and Toledo, bypassing Madrid. That lone train attracted only a handful of passengers a day – not nearly enough to justify keeping the service alive.

“These are small cities, so it is not possible to run a train for only seven or 10 passengers,” said Jose Domingo Carreño López, Renfe’s manager of technical standards.

While they acknowledge that high-speed rail is an expensive undertaking, officials with Renfe, the train operating company, and ADIF, which manages the infrastructure and tracks, say the system has helped Spain boost its technological capacity, improve its manufacturing efficiency and export its expertise to other countries.

“Our Spanish technology has increased because of the high-speed,” said Campo Jori, ADIF’s international projects manager. “We started by learning from the French, the Germans and the Japanese, but now we have our own technology. Our companies are benefiting from 1992 to now because of high-speed.”

Led by Renfe and ADIF, a consortium of more than a dozen Spanish technology and construction companies recently won the contract to build and operate Saudi Arabia’s first high-speed train line from Medina to Mecca. “We have companies that do extensive engineering, telecom, signaling, rolling stock, construction and management,” Campo Jori said.

And Spain is among the high-speed nations that hope to participate in construction of California’s proposed 520-mile line between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

California officials, armed with about $3 billion in federal stimulus and transportation funds from the Obama administration and $3 billion in money from Proposition 1A – a 2008 bond measure – want to start construction this year on a 120-mile stretch from north of Fresno to Bakersfield.

Future sections would extend toward San Francisco or Los Angeles if more money becomes available. But no high-speed trains would operate on the line until it extends to the Bay Area or the Los Angeles basin.

Backers in California tout the potential environmental benefits – reduced air pollution and less freeway congestion – of getting people out of gasoline- and diesel-fueled automobiles and onto electric-powered trains.

Even the enthusiastic Spanish officials, however, are curious about the logic of starting in the sparsely populated middle of California. The environmental benefits won’t be realized, they said, if the cities along the first line don’t have enough people to generate ridership.

“You need to have either Los Angeles or San Francisco,” said Pedro Pérez del Campo, environmental policy director for ADIF. “They should build it where it will have an impact so that people will support it.”

Building the system in the first place has significant disruptive effects before any benefits can be realized, Pérez del Campo said.

“It can be a failure or a fiasco if it starts in two cities that aren’t as well populated or if there isn’t as much attraction,” he said. “The lesson is to do it right the first time, or extending it will not be possible because the public won’t be in agreement. The people here have been in agreement.”

Politics, not funding, drove growth of Spain’s high-speed rail

Tim Sheehan — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:05:03 +0000

Tim Sheehan

Tim Sheehan is a business reporter for The Fresno Bee and covers high-speed rail issues. The reporter can be reached at tsheehan@fresnobee.com or 559-441-6319. This special project is the result of a partnership among California news organizations following the state’s high-speed rail program, including The Fresno Bee, The Bakersfield Californian, California Watch, The Sacramento Bee, The Orange County Register, the San Francisco Chronicle, The (Riverside) Press-Enterprise, U-T San Diego, KQED, the Merced Sun-Star, The Tribune of San Luis Obispo and The Modesto Bee.

Tim Sheehan/The Fresno BeeManagers at the ADIF control center in Madrid can monitor high-speed trains across the country. They are responsible for the safety and maintenance of the track system.

BARCELONA, SPAIN – Money wasn’t a big obstacle when leaders in Spain decided in 1986 to build a high-speed train system.

The nation was in an era of relative prosperity and preparing for a global limelight. In 1992, when Spain launched its first high-speed rail line, Barcelona hosted the Summer Olympics, and World Expo ’92 in Seville marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas.

While control of Spain’s government has wobbled between conservative and Socialist parties over the past two decades, the continued expansion of high-speed lines has enjoyed support from both parties and the Spanish public – and hefty contributions from the European Union.

California, by contrast, is attempting to launch its high-speed train project as the state slogs through the aftermath of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, and money is all-important.

The Obama administration has committed about $3 billion in federal transportation and stimulus money to California’s project, but a political and budgetary chasm between Republicans and Democrats in Washington casts doubt on prospects for future federal support.

And a growing price tag – estimated in November at $98.5 billion to build the 520-mile stretch between Los Angeles and San Francisco – is eroding support among legislators in Sacramento and fanning public opposition in California.

In Spain, it all happened with no serious economic study to determine whether high-speed trains could attract enough riders to justify the expense, analysts say.

The desire for high-speed rail wasn’t to relieve clogged highways or congested airports, or even to operate a profitable system.

Instead, the goal was to provide a modern transportation system, with Madrid at its hub, to connect the far-flung provincial capitals with the national seat of government.

But as Europe faces a deep financial crisis, the climate is changing.

Through 2010, the nation had invested about $60 billion to build and equip its network of high-speed rail lines, according to data from Spain’s Ministry of Public Works and Transport. The government’s infrastructure plan calls for spending up to $77 billion more to expand and improve the high-speed network by 2020. Now, concern is growing about how much Spain is spending on expansion.

The nation has wasted money building ill-conceived routes to smaller cities that offer too few riders, said Andreu Ulied, whose Barcelona engineering and planning firm MCRIT works with the European Union to assess transportation plans, including high-speed rail.

“So many of the corridors that were developed, the demand was not there,” Ulied said. “So now the number of trains that run on the corridors are very few, and almost empty, which means there is no reason to keep these trains running.”

Officials from Renfe, the government-owned company that runs all of Spain’s passenger train services, say their hallmark AVE (which stands for Alta Velocidad Española) long-distance high-speed trains do sell enough tickets and have enough riders to cover the operating and maintenance costs of the system without a government subsidy.

Critics, however, are doubtful, and service has been cut back on lines with fewer passengers.

Experts say expansion has been driven by politics.

Germà Bel, a professor of political economics at the University of Barcelona – and a former member of Spain’s parliament from the PSOE, or Socialist party, from 2000 to 2004 – said expansion has been a sustained policy of both the Socialist and conservative parties since 2000, but not one with which he agreed as a politician.

In 2000, then-Prime Minister José María Aznar López, leader of the conservative People’s Party, set the goal of bringing every provincial capital to within four hours of Madrid with high-speed rail lines, Bel said.

“There was cheap money, a booming economy,” he said. “No financial restrictions, nice tax revenues because of all the housing being built. … Great times. Who cares?

“So here comes the prime minister, who says every province capital will have this connection with the capital,” Bel added. “No matter the need, we have the money.”

But that was before the economy turned sour.

Re-examining expansion plans

“There has been political agreement among the main parties to go on with the high-speed lines,” said Juan Ignacio Campo Jori, director of international projects for ADIF, a government-owned company that owns the high-speed train tracks and manages the rest of the nation’s rails. “But maybe we have to go slow on the level of investments because of the economic situation in the country, in Europe and the world.”

The PSOE party lost in Spain’s November elections, with the People’s Party regaining control of the government.

“Maybe the change of the government will change priorities to say, ‘OK, better than to finish one section, we are going to finish another instead,’ ” Campo Jori said, waving at a map of future extensions. “Rather than finish in 2015, maybe it’s 2017 or 2020 instead.”

A go-slow mood may be taking hold among the Spanish public, too. Several AVE passengers at stations in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Seville questioned the cost of rapid expansion.

“At this moment, the economy is very weak,” said Manuel Diaz, a Madrid retiree traveling to the Mediterranean coastal city of Malaga for a vacation. “Probably, it’s time to slow down the construction.”

Arriving in Valencia from Madrid for work, franchise businessman Arturo Holguin said he enjoys riding the AVE trains but worries about the cost.

“We have built a lot of kilometers of railway, but none have been very successful,” Holguin said. “It’s very important to have a very good study before you build the stuff because it’s very, very expensive. If you don’t have a minimum number of passengers, you’re going to lose money.”

Other passengers acknowledged the high cost but said high-speed trains have been a good investment for the nation.

“It is a wonderful feeling of becoming modernized so soon,” Ulied said of the public sentiment. “The experience of using the high-speed train when you used to use the bus or a poor railway, the difference is amazing. So the people are very happy, still very happy.”

Ulied tried to describe the public sentiment: “The general public, they don’t have the feeling that the money spent is coming from us. We don’t have this American point of view that the money the government has spent is ‘our’ money. … They have this feeling that if these crazy investments are not happening in my region, they will happen in another region.”

Work on state’s high-speed rail could start this year

Tim Sheehan — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:05:03 +0000

Tim Sheehan

Tim Sheehan is a business reporter for The Fresno Bee and covers high-speed rail issues. The reporter can be reached at tsheehan@fresnobee.com or 559-441-6319. This special project is the result of a partnership among California news organizations following the state’s high-speed rail program, including The Fresno Bee, The Bakersfield Californian, California Watch, The Sacramento Bee, The Orange County Register, the San Francisco Chronicle, The (Riverside) Press-Enterprise, U-T San Diego, KQED, the Merced Sun-Star, The Tribune of San Luis Obispo and The Modesto Bee.

Tim Sheehan/The Fresno BeeThe seating inside the tourist class of the Spanish-built AVE trains gives passengers a smooth ride with room to work. Each seat has a power outlet and a headphone, jack and many riders do business as they travel the country.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority proposes to build 520 miles of tracks between San Francisco and Los Angeles, via the central San Joaquin Valley, for electric trains traveling up to 220 mph. The cost is estimated at about $98 billion.

Supporters say high-speed trains will ease freeway congestion, improve air quality and cut travel time. Opponents say the plan is unproven, extravagant and disruptive to farms, homes and businesses.

Work could begin late this year in Fresno on the first section between Merced and Bakersfield, described by planners as the backbone of the statewide system and scorned by others as a route unlikely to see many passengers.

No high-speed trains would run on the system until it reaches either the Bay Area or the Los Angeles Basin, and those sections can be built only as money becomes available. Ultimately, plans call for service to Sacramento in the north, and through the Inland Empire to San Diego in the south.

For the first leg, the authority has more than $3 billion in federal stimulus and transportation money in hand and hopes to match that with nearly $3 billion from Proposition 1A, which California voters approved in 2008. But first, the state Legislature must decide whether to authorize the sale of Prop. 1A bonds.

It’s unclear who will lead the agency after a recent shakeup. Roelof van Ark, rail authority CEO, announced his resignation last week. Board member Manuel Toledo resigned Dec. 31, when his term expired, and Thomas Umberg will step down as board chairman in February but remain on the board. Two key staffers, deputy director Dan Leavitt and press secretary Rachel Wall, have resigned.

Video: High-speed rail lessons from Spain

Tim Sheehan — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:05:02 +0000

Tim Sheehan and Carrie Ching

Reporter Tim Sheehan traveled to Spain to talk to passengers and experts about the high-speed rail system that opened there in 1992. What can California learn from Spain?

React & Act: Why should I be concerned about lead in jewelry?

Ashley Alvarado — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 22:00:14 +0000

Ashley Alvarado

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the laws for lead in jewelry?
It's against the law in California to make, ship or sell jewelry that contains dangerous levels of lead. Children’s jewelry – defined as items designed or intended primarily for children age 12 or younger – is regulated under the federal Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which limits lead to 300 parts per million, or 0.03 percent lead by weight. In California, though, there are restrictions for lead in all jewelry, not just items meant for children. Lead limits vary by material but are all less than 60,000 ppm, or 6 percent lead by weight. You can download a fact sheet [PDF] about California’s jewelry law from the Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Why should I be concerned about lead in jewelry?
Long-term lead exposure can damage the nervous system and is especially hazardous for children. At high levels, the metal can severely damage the brain and kidneys, and cause reproductive problems and even death. The Environmental Protection Agency says lead is a probable human carcinogen. Although jewelry is not a leading source of lead exposure, dangerous amounts of the heavy metal can spread through the bloodstream if jewelry is swallowed or chewed on. You can be exposed to lead if, after handling jewelry with lead on its surface, you put your hands to your mouth or touch food that you eat. Health and safety advocates recommend keeping jewelry away from young children.

How can I tell whether my jewelry contains high levels of lead?
You cannot tell whether jewelry contains lead by its appearance, brand, retailer or price. The only way to determine whether your jewelry contains lead is to test it.

The Center for Environmental Health, an Oakland nonprofit that routinely tests jewelry, says high lead levels are often found among the following kinds of jewelry:

dull-looking metal
fake pearls with pearlescent coating
plastic or vinyl cords or bracelets
lobster-claw clasps

You can see samples of jewelry with high levels of lead online at the Center for Environmental Health and the Department of Toxic Substances Control. You can search the Consumer Product Safety Commission website for recalls of children’s jewelry. Searching for lead under hazard type yields the most comprehensive list.

How can I test my jewelry for lead?
You can screen jewelry for lead and other heavy metals by using an X-ray fluorescence analyzer. The screening is not as precise as a laboratory test but can accurately tell you whether your jewelry has high lead levels. The equipment costs thousands of dollars to buy or rent. But there are a few ways you can get your jewelry screened using the equipment for free:

California Watch is holding three free screenings that are open to the public:

Wednesday, Oct. 3
8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
De Colores Head Start at Fruitvale Village
1155 35th Ave., Oakland [MAP]
* Located next to the Fruitvale BART station

Sunday, Oct. 10
9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Richmond Flea Market
716 W. Gertrude Ave., Richmond [MAP]

Thursday, Oct. 14
Noon to 6 p.m.
Nahui Ohlin
1511 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles [MAP]

The Center for Environmental Health offers screenings at its office from noon to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday. It also accepts jewelry by mail. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope if you want your jewelry returned to you. The center asks that you include information about where and when you purchased the jewelry and a copy of the receipt, if available. The center is at 2201 Broadway, Ste. 302, Oakland, CA, 94612. Questions may be directed to Ryan Nestle at ryan@ceh.org or 510.655-3900, ext. 310.

The Department of Toxic Substances Control sometimes hosts public screening events, but none are currently scheduled.

Home testing kits that use swabs to check for lead are generally not recommended for jewelry analysis. Lead in jewelry is often beneath the surface and difficult to swab, making it more likely that tests will produce false negatives.

To determine the exact quantity of lead in jewelry, an item must be analyzed in a lab. California law uses testing methods 3050B, 3051A, and 3052, as set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The tests destroy jewelry so it cannot be recovered. The California Department of Public Health lists accredited labs here.

Where do I report jewelry with high levels of lead?

The Center for Environmental Health works with the state attorney general and other government agencies to report jewelry with high levels of lead. You can contact Ryan Nestle at the center at ryan@ceh.org or 510.655-3900, ext. 310.

Complaints about possible jewelry violations can be directed to the Department of Toxic Substances Control at leadinjewelry@dtsc.ca.gov or by calling 800.698-6942. You can also file a complaint online. Under “Complaint Related To” on the form, check “Toxic Substances” to make sure it reaches the department.

You can report jewelry with high levels of lead to the California attorney general’s Public Inquiry Unit at 916.322-3360.

You can report unsafe children’s jewelry at the Consumer Product Safety Commission website.

What are the symptoms of lead poisoning?
Lead poisoning symptoms are often absent or develop over time with chronic exposure. Common symptoms include stomachaches, headaches, fatigue, vomiting and loss of appetite. Children may also have learning difficulties or behavioral problems, such as hyperactivity. The only way to know whether you or your child has lead poisoning is to get a blood test.

Where can I get tested for lead exposure?
Your health care provider can tell you more about lead tests. The state requires health care providers to screen children ages 1 and 2 who are in public programs such as Medi-Cal and Healthy Families. Children should also get tested if they live in or spend a lot of time in homes built before 1978 where lead paint may be present. You can also contact your local public health department or lead poisoning prevention program for more information.

I bought jewelry from Rainbow Apparel that has high levels of lead. What should I do?
Health and safety advocates recommend keeping jewelry away from young children. Rainbow will accept returns of any jewelry identified in a violation notice for a full refund if you have the receipt. If you do not have the receipt, Rainbow will refund your jewelry at the current or last selling price.

Helpful resources:
The Department of Toxic Substances Control has information about lead in jewelry on its website.

The Department of Public Health has information about the dangers of lead to children and lead poisoning prevention.

You can find data and information about lead exposure and prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Center for Environmental Health has information about lead in jewelry and a list of companies and brands that have agreed to California’s lead standards.

Key contacts
California Office of the Attorney General
Website: www.ag.ca.gov
Phone: 800.952-5225
Mail: Attorney General’s Office
California Department of Justice
Attn: Public Inquiry Unit
P.O. Box 944255
Sacramento, CA 94244-2550

Center for Environmental Health
Website: www.ceh.org
E-mail: www.ceh.org/index.php?option=com_contact&task=view&contact_id=2&Itemid=10
Phone: 510.655-3900
Mail: 2201 Broadway, Ste. 302
Oakland, CA 94612
Facebook: www.facebook.com/centerforenvironmentalhealth
Twitter: @4EnviroHealth

California Department of Toxic Substances Control
Website: www.dtsc.ca.gov
Phone: 800.728-6942
Mail: P.O. Box 806
Sacramento, CA 95812-0806
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Sacramento-CA/DTSC-The-Department-of-Toxic-Substances-Control/109412255835
Twitter: @enviro_squawk

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
Website: www.cpsc.gov
E-mail: www.cpsc.gov/cgibin/info.aspx
Phone: 800.638-2772
Mail: 4330 East West Highway
Bethesda, MD 20814
En español: www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/spanish/spanish.html
Twitter: @OnSafety

California Department of Public Health
Website: www.cdph.ca.gov
E-mail: www.cdph.ca.gov/_layouts/dhs/sitecomments/default.aspx
Phone: 916.558-1784
Twitter: @CAPublicHealth

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Website: www.cdc.gov
E-mail: cdcinfo@cdc.gov
Phone: 800.232-4636
Mail: 1600 Clifton Road
Atlanta, GA 30333
En español: www.cdc.gov/spanish
Facebook: www.facebook.com/CDC
Twitter: @CDCgov

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Website: www.epa.gov
E-mail/Phone: List of contacts available at www.epa.gov/epahome/hotline.htm
En español: www.epa.gov/espanol
Facebook: www.facebook.com/EPA
Twitter: @epagov

In weak state economy, business lobby wields strong influence

Laurel Rosenhall — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 08:05:03 +0000

Laurel Rosenhall and Chase Davis

Rosenhall is a reporter for the Sacramento Bee. Davis is a reporter for California Watch. This story was produced as a collaboration between the Sacramento Bee and California Watch. It was edited by the Sacramento Bee's Dan Smith. It was copy edited by Nikki Frick.

Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento BeeLobbyists wait to testify before the state Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce.

Business interests were the top bill-killers inside California’s Capitol during Gov. Jerry Brown’s first year back in office, as concerns about the state’s weak economy cut into labor’s newfound clout.

Legislative data shows business interests wielded strong influence despite a Capitol dominated by Democrats in the Legislature and governor’s office. Business lobbyists defeated bills that would have cut back various tax breaks, required employers to give workers unpaid bereavement leave and prolonged the foreclosure process.

In the current economy, "all legislators are more sensitive to the argument that something would be a job killer or harmful for investment or expansion," said Dorothy Rothrock, a lobbyist for the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, which represents major businesses around the state. "That’s made it easier for us to stop or amend bills to make them less hostile or burdensome."

Brown’s current term has been good for labor unions, too. They successfully pushed bills that limit the state’s ability to use private contractors, allow local governments to require union construction crews on public works projects and reduce the use of electronic self-checkout lanes in grocery stores.

But in the tug-of-war between the Capitol’s two power players, industry more than held its own. Business-related groups dominated the list of organizations with the most influence, according to a review of hundreds of bills.

The Sacramento Bee and California Watch examined the final analyses written by legislative staff for all 906 bills introduced this year that listed supporters and opponents. For each group whose stand was registered on at least 10 bills, the news organizations tallied the number of cases in which supporters’ bills were signed by the governor and opponents’ bills stalled or were vetoed. Either scenario counted as a "win" for that group.

While such a tally is imperfect – it does not assess all influence exerted under the dome – it captures the outcome of the legislative year for many who carry clout at the Capitol.

Interviews with dozens of key players confirmed a trend suggested by the numbers: The weak economy was a major factor as groups decided which bills to push and lawmakers made up their minds.

Angie Wei, a lobbyist for the California Labor Federation, said 2011 was better for workers "than under any year under Arnold Schwarzenegger." Even so, Wei said the state’s financial reality made her union less aggressive.

The labor group sponsored AB 400, which would have required employers to provide paid sick days for their workers. But Wei said the union asked lawmakers to hold the bill in committee because "we didn’t think it was the right time to do it."

Among other findings:

Labor and business wielded their power differently. Labor groups generally won by passing new laws, while business groups mostly fought battles to maintain the status quo.
The two groups that prevailed on the largest number of bills this year were the California Chamber of Commerce, which won on 62 of 87 bills, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which triumphed on 61 of 106 bills.
Associations representing Realtors, bankers and insurance companies took positions on far fewer bills, but won at least 85 percent of the time.

Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento BeeFormer GOP Assemblywoman Bev Hansen, now a lobbyist, huddles with with Sen. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, at the state Capitol.

Interest groups exerted their influence with money – combined, they spent a total of $216.1 million on lobbying in the first nine months of the year, a 6 percent increase from the year before.

But the spending didn’t always guarantee victory in 2011. The California Manufacturers and Technology Association spent $1.9 million while winning half its legislative battles.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Sierra Club, meanwhile, each spent less than $350,000 on lobbyists during the first nine months of the year, yet did well in a Legislature in which majority Democrats are sympathetic to their causes.

Spending doesn’t always bring lobbying success

Campaign spending on legislative races likewise didn’t necessarily result in a high success rate in the Legislature. The 15 groups that spent the most on winning legislative candidates and took positions on at least 10 bills had an average win rate in the Capitol of 63 percent.

Still, special interests and other donors spent $229 million in political contributions on state candidates in 2010, $105.8 million of it on candidates for the Legislature, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. They contributed $36.3 million more to state candidates through independent expenditure committees, which cannot legally coordinate with candidates’ campaigns but can spend an unlimited amount to support or oppose a candidate.

The business lobby wielded much of its influence through JobsPAC, a political action committee that collects millions from insurance, oil, tobacco, pharmaceutical and other companies to make independent expenditures in key races. Last year, the committee spent $9.2 million statewide, a portion of it supporting candidates thought to be business-friendly in four key Senate districts: Republicans Sam Blakeslee of Santa Maria and Anthony Cannella of Ceres and Democrats Juan Vargas of San Diego and Lou Correa of Santa Ana.

By session’s end, Blakeslee and Cannella voted the California Chamber of Commerce’s way on each of the 13 important business bills listed in the chamber’s scorecard. Correa went the chamber’s way 69 percent of the time, tops among Democrats.

Some groups that spend a lot on lobbying and political contributions show up on few bill analyses, making it hard to measure how much they win. Interest groups typically wind up named as supporters or opponents on a bill analysis because they sent lawmakers letters stating their position. But nothing compels a group to write such letters. Some entities prefer to lobby by meeting privately with legislators, and legislative committees have different approaches to determine whom to list in their bill analyses.

But the findings broadly illustrate that business did better than might have been expected at the Capitol, where Democrats control both houses of the Legislature and, after several years under Schwarzenegger, now occupy the governor’s office as well.

Business lobby plays defense

The political domination of Democrats means many Republican bills carrying ideas generated by business interests did not proceed very far in the lawmaking process. Bills sponsored by labor groups were more likely to pass through the Democratic-controlled houses and make it to the governor’s desk.

Yet even with a Democratic governor who received much of his campaign backing from labor unions, business interests still held sway – albeit mostly by playing defense. Labor lobbyists, meanwhile, said they were more selective than usual in advancing bills that would cost money and put lawmakers in an unpleasant political situation.

"The arguments business has made, that companies and job creators have made for years, are resonating more with Democratic legislators given the (state’s financial) situation," said Robert Callahan, a lobbyist for TechAmerica, a trade group that represents roughly 1,000 technology companies.

TechAmerica succeeded on 11 of the 12 bills on which its position was listed in an analysis.

Two key victories, Callahan said, were defeating legislation that would have rolled back some tax credits. One, SB 508, proposed including "sunset" dates in all new tax break programs so they would be phased out after a period of time. Another, SB 364, sought to allow the state to charge a fine and take back the money from a tax incentive if a company laid off at least 10 percent of its employees in a year.

Labor unions supported both bills, arguing that the state should be more careful about handing out tax breaks, given the ongoing budget crisis. TechAmerica and other business groups opposed them, saying the first bill painted all tax breaks with the same brush and the second created too much uncertainty for employers. Brown vetoed both bills with short messages saying they were too broad.

The vetoes also stack up as wins for the California Taxpayers Association and California Chamber of Commerce, which joined TechAmerica in opposing both bills. The chamber had a good year, despite supporting Brown’s Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, in last year’s gubernatorial race. In the Legislature this year, chamber lobbyists fended off 25 of the 30 bills the group labeled "job killers." They successfully persuaded Brown to veto four of the five that made it to his desk.

"From a political standpoint, when the economy goes down and business is what can bring you back, then people listen to business," said Marc Burgat, vice president of government relations for the California Chamber of Commerce.

One of the so-called "job killer" bills Brown vetoed was AB 325, which would have required employers to offer up to three days of unpaid bereavement leave to workers who lose a loved one. The chamber made the case that California already requires several types of leave and adding another would be a burden on employers who may be juggling requests from several workers. It also argued that the bill would have established broad rights for workers to sue, a view that was repeated in Brown’s veto message.

After Brown finished considering the bills on his desk in mid-October, the chamber produced a two-and-a-half-minute video praising the governor and touting the success of its "job killer" lobbying campaign.

"As business grows, we employ more people, we pay more taxes and the general fund grows," Burgat said. "I think that message has resonated."

Labor union registers many positions

AFSCME – the labor union that represents 1.6 million public-sector workers – produced a full-color 44-page report to wrap up its year of legislative influence.

"Much of AFSCME’s hard work during last year’s election season has come to fruition for us this year," the report says. "With the election of Jerry Brown, AFSCME has been able to enjoy a greatly improved relationship with the Governor’s office."

The union sponsored 20 bills in 2011. Twelve of them made it to Brown, who signed nine. Among them: AB 366 benefits mental hospital employees by streamlining court procedures for giving anti-psychotic medication to certain patients, SB 857 strengthens public employees’ right to strike, and SB 930 removes the fingerprinting requirement for recipients of In-Home Supportive Services.

But AFSCME took positions on dozens more bills, sending a letter to lawmakers on almost every one. That broad approach is typical of the union’s lobbying strategy, said AFSCME lobbyist Willie Pelote.

"We take positions on a large number of bills because we care about the communities in which our members live," he said. "We care about how our streets look, how our schools are."

The union also makes its case by getting lawmakers to see firsthand the work its members perform. AFSCME takes legislators on field trips to accompany laundry workers in hospitals, custodians in mental health centers and caretakers who go house to house feeding and bathing the infirm.

"That is a very good tool for them to see it and smell it and taste it, instead of them going to Hawaii to do it," Pelote said, making a reference to the annual trip some interest groups sponsor for lawmakers to attend.

Yet even with the all of the positions AFSCME took this year, the state deficit caused the union to hold back on pushing for many new laws it would have liked to introduce, Pelote said. Other unions echoed that sentiment.

"During this fiscal crisis, we've pulled back half our bills we want to run because they’re just not a reality. Either they have a dollar amount or we don’t want to put members in that position of having to go after something that’s tough right now," said Randy Perry, a lobbyist for several law enforcement unions.

"The times have changed the last couple years, even on what we’re introducing. It’s a stalemate right now because of the economy."

Thousands of students attending schools with unresolved safety issues

Kendall Taggart — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 08:04:14 +0000

Kendall Taggart and Corey G. Johnson

Intern Sam Pearson contributed to this report. This story was edited by Denise Zapata and Mark Katches. It was copy edited by Nikki Frick.

Mark Avery/California WatchHelen Bernstein High School in Los Angeles is on the state’s list of school projects with serious safety problems.

Helen Bernstein was supposed to be a new kind of high school – a project that would serve 2,100 students on a footprint of only 12.4 acres, with views of the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Observatory.

Work on the campus started in 2004 – part of a $20 billion building program launched by the Los Angeles Unified School District. But construction was troubled almost from the start.

Four years in, the state supervising structural engineer learned that more than 1,320 changes were made without the state’s approval. Engineers say some of those changes could weaken structures and put students at risk in an earthquake.

In several cases, subcontractors for the general contractor, Tutor-Saliba Corp., had built over construction flaws – despite objections from school inspectors, records obtained by California Watch and interviews show. Before the work was hidden by plaster and cement, inspectors photographed missing anchors, damaged bolts, lopsided walls and crooked floor frames.

Yet neither the Los Angeles Unified School District nor the state stepped in to stop Tutor-Saliba or its subcontractors. Despite receiving thousands of non-compliance notices, including a list of uncorrected structural problems, school officials moved children, teachers and staff into the buildings three years ago.

The conditions at Helen Bernstein High School illustrate a festering problem in scores of California schools. Bernstein and 85 other projects – including seven projects at one Santa Barbara County school district – were flagged by state structural engineers for serious safety issues.

And yet, local school districts have allowed more than 42,000 students to attend these schools without resolving many of the safety concerns, records and interviews show.

Tim Buresh, former chief operating officer for the school district and a former vice president of Tutor Perini Corp., Tutor-Saliba’s parent company, said the district and contractor agreed to keep the project moving despite the notices.

“If you stopped the work every time you found a problem, when it was taking many months for (the architect) to resolve any one issue, you would simply not be able to get it done,” said Buresh, who was interviewed this month about his role. He went to work on California’s high-speed rail initiative in June.

Construction defects include ceiling braces inside the library and student dining area that a state field engineer said could be too weak to withstand shaking in an earthquake and large lighting fixtures in the practice gym that the inspector was unable to thoroughly review. These problems still have not been fixed.

“These are serious issues,” said Dan Shapiro, a structural engineer and former Seismic Safety Commission member who reviewed building plans, construction photos and inspection reports regarding Helen Bernstein for California Watch.

Kelly Schmader, Los Angeles Unified’s chief facilities executive, acknowledged mistakes were made.

“This definitely is not one of our proudest moments at Helen Bernstein High School,” he said. “This project has been a struggle for us.”

In April, California Watch identified thousands of schools across the state that had failed to meet the state’s rigorous seismic safety standards. A report by the state auditor released this month confirmed those findings, noting that weak oversight has potentially put children at risk. This group of 86 projects has been designated by the state as posing the greatest potential risk to students and teachers.

At these sites, which cost more than $300 million to build, regulators from the Division of the State Architect and local school district administrators were told of illegal work or dangerous shortcuts in time to intervene, records and interviews show. Instead, supervisors ignored the warnings and charged ahead.

State regulators have pledged to keep problems at these 86 projects on the radar until they are resolved, although they insist that none of the projects pose an imminent threat to children.

The Division of the State Architect, which oversees public school construction, is now supposed to send periodic notifications to these districts about any remaining building issues, according to Eric Lamoureux, a spokesman for the Department of General Services, the parent agency of the state architect's office. In most cases, repeated notifications had not been sent to school districts in the past.

More than a third of the 86 projects are in seismically active Los Angeles County, where problems include walls that were not properly connected to the foundations. Nearly half of the building projects have remained on the state’s uncertified school list for 10 years or longer, according to state records.

In one case, the state architect’s office sent a letter to the Newman-Crows Landing Unified School District in Stanislaus County saying the concrete columns supporting the press box at Orestimba High School appeared to be overstressed. The letter, sent in 1994, requested documentation showing the press box was safe. The state architect’s office has no record that the district ever responded.

After the California Watch series in April, the state architect’s office sent another letter reminding Newman-Crows Landing of its safety issues. As a result, the district’s superintendent, Ed Felt, closed the press box until the district could verify that it meets safety standards.

Inexperienced contractor accused of fraud

In early 2000, the Santa Maria-Bonita School District in Santa Barbara County embarked on a $120 million construction program. School officials planned about 20 projects, including more than 50 new buildings, to relieve their crowded campuses. The area is seismically active, with several faults nearby.

In contrast to a large district like Los Angeles Unified, Santa Maria-Bonita had not built a new school in more than a decade when it started its massive building program. The district tapped TurnKey Schools of America, a startup contractor with little experience building schools. The responsibility for day-to-day oversight of TurnKey’s work was delegated to two district employees who also had limited construction expertise.

A decade later, documents and grand jury testimony show how allegations of fraud, secrecy and a disregard for safety requirements landed the district at the top of the state’s list of most problematic projects.

The district now has seven schools the state has designated as among those with the most serious defects, more than any other district in California. State and district documents show school officials, including the current assistant superintendent for business services and current coordinator of maintenance and operations, knew about numerous structural safety problems, yet thousands of children have occupied the dangerous buildings since 2004.

In 2005, TurnKey was forced into bankruptcy after subcontractors complained about not getting paid.

Shortly afterward, the California attorney general’s office launched an investigation of TurnKey. In April 2008, a grand jury indicted three construction company executives and Cynthia Lynn Clark, the district’s former assistant superintendent of business services, who was in charge of the project, on 74 felony counts alleging they misappropriated $3.6 million in school construction money.

According to grand jury testimony, TurnKey executives diverted the district’s money to lease expensive cars, throw parties, buy artwork and pay themselves exorbitant cash bonuses. When the company began to run short of cash, it submitted false invoices to the district. Prosecutors have accused Clark of paying invoices she knew were fraudulent because she had plans to work for TurnKey after she left the district.

The trial for Clark and the three TurnKey executives is scheduled to start in January. The defendants have pleaded not guilty. Clark's attorney said she followed directives from her supervisor and the school board.

Construction issues escaped public scrutiny

The fraud allegations were reported by local media. But the extent of the construction shortcomings had not been reported until California Watch began examining them. When TurnKey went out of business, it left Santa Maria-Bonita with hundreds of construction problems.

Poorly welded steel and undersized reinforcements weakened every gymnasium roof, records show. Testing at those same gyms found shear walls unable to absorb and transfer earthquake forces because they were improperly nailed to studs. Anchor bolts that secure walls to the foundation were loose and difficult to fix because they were buried beneath the gymnasium, according to inspection reports.

John A. Martin & Associates, a structural engineering firm hired by the district to investigate problems, warned in 2009 that structural frames in every TurnKey building were too weak to resist an earthquake, a defect affecting buildings at more than a dozen schools. Those buildings included two-story classroom buildings at Arellanes Junior High, El Camino Junior High, Tommie Kunst Junior High and Fesler Junior High schools.

“We believe these conditions to be substandard, and may pose a potential life-safety risk to students and staff in or around these structures,” wrote Melissa Hazlett, a structural engineer with John A. Martin & Associates.

In the rush to complete construction, TurnKey executives ignored inspectors’ warnings about shoddy work. Jessica Needham, who was TurnKey’s architect and part owner of the building firm, told grand jurors that TurnKey employees faked her signature and submitted plans for state approval that she never saw.

Needham said she knew shoddy construction was rampant at the district, but company founder and CEO Harry Clark ordered her to ignore it. In one meeting, an angry Clark forbade Morley from documenting any problems, she told grand jurors.

“He didn’t want to hear about any more mistakes in the construction at all,” Needham testified. “Harry said that it was ‘taking too much money, too much time.’ ”

Inspector marked absent

TurnKey also took advantage of regulatory blind spots. The firm supplied pre-fabricated buildings to the school district. There are no state quality-control standards for plants that manufacture those buildings.

Fred Reyes, an inspector hired by the district to oversee work at the plant, was frequently absent, according to interviews and documents filed with the state.

A state regulator who went to the plant noticed workers installing older wiring in the buildings, according to his report. The regulator noted that 42 of 86 building sections were completed and Reyes was absent the entire time, the report says.

John Coyle, an inspector who worked at Arellanes Junior High, said he initially became suspicious of Reyes’ inspections after noticing a number of poor welds he thought should have been caught at the plant.

“I went out to the plant,” Coyle said. “Work was being done, but Reyes wasn’t there.”

After receiving complaints from another inspector, a state regulator rejected Reyes’ final reports attesting that all the work had been done correctly.

Reyes, in an interview with California Watch, said he could not recall his work at TurnKey. He said the district raised only one structural concern – a crucial connection at the gymnasium – which he claims was not his responsibility.

In 2006, the school district sued the inspection firm that employed Reyes, All American Inspection, after discovering numerous pieces of substandard steel welding and poorly built wood frames that Reyes had vouched for.

The firm settled the case by paying the district $325,000 without admitting wrongdoing. Reyes is still working as a school construction inspector in San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The state architect’s office said it has not been able to determine whether Reyes has been disciplined. All American is also still an active inspection firm eligible to do business with school districts.

District officials don’t halt construction

At several key moments during construction, Santa Maria-Bonita district officials were warned that its building contractor was making mistakes but did not require fixes.

Cynthia Clark, the former assistant superintendent who was later indicted, and Ed Fassiotto, coordinator of maintenance and operations, ignored roughly 200 inspector citations. Inspectors flagged dangerous contractor shortcuts, improper structural changes, poor steel welding and unapproved foundations, according to state construction files and interviews with project inspectors.

Roger Smith, an inspector who worked at multiple projects for Santa Maria-Bonita, said he urged Clark to shut down construction.

“I begged her not to let them pour the first set of foundations at Liberty (Elementary) … because there were no approved drawings,” Smith said in an interview. “She goes, ‘I want these projects finished. I want the kids in the schools.’ ”

Through her attorney, Clark said she does not recall the conversation with Smith. She said she was diligent in getting deviations resolved and believed Needham was taking steps to correct them.

During an interview in 2005 conducted as part of an internal district investigation, Clark admitted that she knew many of the project's problems stemmed from “poor to non-existent drawings.” Clark said she knew that TurnKey’s construction managers were “winging it and directing changes without … approval” and that the company was substituting “cheaper material” than what was called for in the contract.

The district investigation report stated: “Despite all of TurnKey’s problems, however, she never demanded corrective action or took independent action to monitor or audit TurnKey: nor did she tell anyone who might have directed such actions.”

Fassiotto, who still works as the district’s maintenance and operations coordinator, told the grand jury that TurnKey often delivered buildings from its plant that required repairs. He said he also signed documents that allowed TurnKey to get paid for work it had not done – in some cases, over the protest of inspectors.

“I knew it was not right, and – but the overriding issue at the time was to get the schools open,” Fassiotto testified. “And I really can’t say that I was going to lie down in front of a truck to stop this, but I do know that it was wrong.”

State refuses to step in

Frustrated over the inability to get district officials to stop TurnKey’s work, project inspectors met with Shaf Ullah, the Division of the State Architect’s former regional director in Los Angeles, urging him to stop TurnKey’s construction.

Ullah said no. Although the state architect’s office was given the authority to halt faulty work several years earlier, an internal employee survey conducted in 2006 noted unspecified “political pressure” for the lack of stop work orders.

“At that point, all of us realized we were out in the cold,” Smith said, “that nobody was going to help us.”

The audit of the state architect’s office released this month found that regulators were failing to use their stop work authority even when they knew about unsafe conditions.

The district canceled a face-to-face interview with California Watch and did not respond to multiple attempts to reschedule. However, in an e-mailed statement, Superintendent Phil Alvarado maintains that district buildings are safe. He also provided a letter from John A. Martin saying poorly constructed frames in some buildings needed repair but do not pose “an immediate life safety risk.”

Shapiro, the engineer who reviewed documents for California Watch, said Martin’s conclusions seemed like a gamble.

“When they say ‘immediate risk,’ I never know exactly what they mean,” Shapiro said. “I guess the next earthquake might be smaller and nothing terrible would happen. But if it isn’t up to code and would perhaps collapse in a large earthquake, it’s not safe.”

Bill Korn, a state-certified inspector who worked on the Santa Maria-Bonita projects, doubts the district will ever be able to certify the school buildings are safe because many of the building defects are now encased in concrete.

“We’ve got to tear these buildings down and start over or pretty damn close to it,” he said. “To find some of these deviation notices we’re talking about, you’re talking about tearing the building apart.”

Parents left in the dark

Santa Maria-Bonita’s construction problems were kept quiet. District officials did not tell parents or discuss problems at public meetings.

David Riloquio, a former district school board member who was elected shortly after TurnKey went bankrupt, said he could not recall ever being told about structural problems with the buildings. Riloquio was president of the board from 2008 to 2009, when John A. Martin & Associates, the structural engineering firm, identified several structural concerns at TurnKey buildings.

Several other board members did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to its position as lead contractor on Santa Maria-Bonita’s $120 million construction program, TurnKey, which was founded in 1998, received almost $93 million in contracts for school construction projects at more than a dozen school districts through 2005.

The district has not addressed at least four major structural problems uncovered by John A. Martin & Associates. These include the structural frames at every TurnKey building, the anchors at the gymnasiums, the connections between the first and second floor of the two-story classrooms and the elevators. The district contends it has repaired unsafe stairwells and the walls and roof at the gymnasiums. The state architect’s office approved the gym remedial plan for one site, but rejected the proposed fixes at four others.

“Who loses here?” said Smith, the project inspector. “The people who lose are between 6 and 12 years old.”

Chaotic oversight, unapproved changes

About 160 miles south of Santa Maria, Los Angeles Unified School District touted Helen Bernstein High School as a new landmark for Hollywood. When it opened in 2008, it was one of 74 new schools completed as part of the district's multibillion-dollar construction program.

By the time it was built, the project was $60 million over budget and two years behind schedule. Days after the school opened, 18,500 construction tasks had not been completed, according to a final inspection report submitted to the state and the district.

The tasks ranged from minor items, such as exit signs that had not been installed, to serious structural issues, including ceilings above the library and student dining area that were not properly braced to withstand shaking in an earthquake.

In both the library and dining areas, places that are often teeming with schoolchildren, the contractor connected braces in the wrong spots, records show. That created potential structural weaknesses, according to the state field engineer.

At one point, the inspector’s log included 3,800 deviations from state building plans. Half of those deviations were structural. The district acknowledged it is still grappling with about 1,000 changes that have not been vetted by the state. In at least six cases, the deviations were buried behind plaster and concrete and would be difficult, if not impossible, to correct.

District oversight of the project was chaotic. Before buildings were occupied, five different project managers were brought in. Each one had to deal with hundreds of deviations that were not resolved by his predecessor.

The district relied on outside contractors to manage construction. Most had little experience with the unique requirements of California’s school building code, and some later sought jobs with the contractors they were expected to manage. There also was tremendous pressure to keep construction moving to avoid increased costs.

Inspectors say system broke down

Former inspectors and project managers said the district’s oversight system broke down. Walter Jones, who recently retired from Los Angeles Unified after working as a supervising inspector for more than two decades, said: “They saw any inspector writing up a deviation notice as getting in the way. It’s not asking too much to get the job that you’re paying for.”

State regulators also expressed concern about the contractor’s work. During construction, a state field engineer wrote that the contractor was closing up the structural framing with architectural finishes despite unresolved problems.

“If any accident occurs in the future (that happens in those areas which were not constructed per DSA approved documents), who will be liable for that?” James Lin, the field engineer, wrote.

Interviews and district documents reviewed by California Watch describe a battle between the general contractor, Tutor-Saliba, and district construction inspectors who were repeatedly documenting instances in which the firm and its subcontractors illegally built over unapproved work.

Steve Sharr, the district’s former regional director of new construction, wrote in a December 2005 survey of senior project executives: “We’ve lost sight of the strategic goals as a consequence of trying to put out fires on a day-to-day basis. … (The contractor) continues to be adversarial and lacks a QC (quality control) focus and implementation.”

Mark Avery/California WatchDuring construction of Helen Bernstein High School, inspectors flagged structural problems at the continuation school on campus.

The lead inspector, Mike Rosenberg, cited Tutor-Saliba and its subcontractor more than 15 times for building over work despite deficiencies.

Jack Frost, executive vice president at Tutor-Saliba, said in an interview that every deviation was resolved to Los Angeles Unified’s satisfaction or the company would not have been paid.

Curtis Olsen, a former Los Angeles Unified project manager who worked on the Helen Bernstein project, said the district paid Tutor-Saliba to fix mistakes the firm made to keep the project on schedule. Olsen said senior project managers Rick Hijazi and Sharr agreed Tutor was at fault but told him to sign the invoices anyway.

“I think there are a lot of areas that they (Tutor-Saliba) didn’t comply with the building code or the contract and it wasn’t their intent to comply,” he said.

Sharr acknowledged that the district paid Tutor-Saliba to fix mistakes the company may have caused. If the district had not done that, "we would still be arguing about it to this day," he said. "That was a conscious series of discussions at the highest management level about what it was going to take to get the school done.”

Mike Kerchner, a vice president for Tutor-Saliba, was constantly interfering with construction and trying to get additional funds for the company, Olsen said.

Kerchner did not respond to multiple requests for comment. When asked about the criticisms of Kerchner, former Tutor Perini executive Buresh attributed the “huge numbers of errors” on the project to the design professionals, saying their plans were unclear.

While the deviation notices began to number in the hundreds and construction fell behind schedule, Kerchner complained to Los Angeles Unified that the project inspector was causing delays.

“Contrary to our many discussions the LAUSD has not been able to demonstrate any reasonable control or influence with the IOR (inspector of record) on this project,” Kerchner wrote.

According to state law, the inspector of record is an independent agent of the Division of the State Architect and cannot be directed by a contractor or the district.

Inspectors contend that the district’s project managers pressured them to sign off on unsafe work.

“A lot of the people there have let code violations go in order to keep them (project management) happy and allowed contractors to close up work that’s a clear code violation,” said Jones, the former inspection supervisor. “They’ve been certified by people who didn’t want to make waves.”

Despite the construction problems, the school officials paid Tutor-Saliba $15 million in 2010 to settle the firm’s claim that the district had caused delays.

The district says it is confident the buildings are safe. However, the district did not provide requested documentation showing the remaining issues had been resolved.

Although Kelly Schmader, Los Angeles Unified’s chief facilities executive, conceded the district struggled with the project, he said in a letter to the school board and district Superintendent John Deasy, “The Helen Bernstein High School is a perfect example of the district's commitment to school building and student safety.”

Board members plead ignorance

The school board is ultimately responsible for unsafe conditions. At Los Angeles Unified, board members ignored warnings from the district’s inspection department about deficient work and ballooning costs, Jones said.

Two former board members – Julie Korenstein and David Tokofsky – said they were not made aware of construction problems at Helen Bernstein before buildings were occupied, despite letters from the inspection department that were copied to the entire board during the time they were members.

“I’m shocked,” Korenstein said. “The whole thing is really horrible.”

Tokofsky, who left the board in 2007, said he was used to hearing about projects with a list of 20 to 50 tasks to be completed. A list of 18,500 is unheard of, he said. “That seems galactic,” he said. “I mean that is massive.”

In an April 24, 2007, letter to Mónica García, the current Los Angeles Unified board president, and the rest of the board, Jones said the district’s project managers were routinely accepting low-quality work and overpaying the contractor. There is no record that the board responded.

García did not return a phone call and e-mail requesting comment.

“The schools are being built in a watered-down system that does not hold the safety of the kids as the most important thing,” said Jones, the former supervising inspector.

Correction: An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect date for when David Tokofsky left the Los Angeles Unified School Board. He served on the board through 2007.