HONOLULU — The last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor has died. Lou Conter was 102.

Conter passed away at his home Monday in Grass Valley following congestive heart failure, his daughter, Louann Daley said.

The Arizona lost 1,177 sailors and Marines in the 1941 attack that launched the United States into World War II. The battleship’s dead account for nearly half of those killed in the surprise attack.

Conter was a quartermaster, standing on the main deck of the Arizona as Japanese planes flew overhead at 7:55 a.m. on Dec. 7 that year. Sailors were just beginning to hoist colors or raise the flag when the assault began.

Conter recalled how one bomb penetrated steel decks 13 minutes into the battle and set off more than 1 million pounds (450,000 kilograms) of gunpowder stored below.

The explosion lifted the battleship 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 metes) out of the water, he said during a 2008 oral history interview stored at the Library of Congress. Everything was on fire from the mainmast forward, he said.

“Guys were running out of the fire and trying to jump over the sides,” Conter said. “Oil all over the sea was burning.”

His autobiography “The Lou Conter Story” recounts how he joined other survivors in tending to the injured, many of them blinded and badly burned. The sailors only abandoned ship when their senior surviving officer was sure they had rescued all those still alive.

The rusting wreckage of the Arizona still lies in waters where it sank. More than 900 sailors and Marines remain entombed inside.

Conter went to flight school after Pearl Harbor, earning his wings to fly PBY patrol bombers, which the Navy used to look for submarines and bomb enemy targets. He flew 200 combat missions in the Pacific with a “Black Cats” squadron, which conducted dive bombing at night in planes painted black.

In 1943, he and his crew where shot down in waters near New Guinea and had to avoid a dozen sharks. A sailor expressed doubt they would survive, to which Conter replied, “baloney.”

“Don’t ever panic in any situation. Survive is the first thing you tell them. Don’t panic or you’re dead,” he said. They were quiet and treaded water until another plane came hours later and dropped them a lifeboat.

In the late 1950s, he was made the Navy’s first SERE officer — an acronym for survival, evasion, resistance and escape. He spent the next decade training Navy pilots and crew on how to survive if they’re shot down in the jungle and captured as a prisoner of war. Some of his pupils used his lessons as POWs in Vietnam.

Conter retired in 1967 after 28 years in the Navy.

Conter was born in Ojibwa, Wisconsin, on Sept. 13, 1921. His family later moved to Colorado where he walked five miles (eight kilometers) one way to school outside Denver. His house didn’t have running water so he tried out for the football team — less for a love of the sport and more because the players could take showers at school after practice.

He enlisted in the Navy after he turned 18, getting $17 a month and a hammock for his bunk at boot camp.

In his later years, Conter became a fixture at annual remembrance ceremonies in Pearl Harbor that the Navy and the National Park Service jointly hosted on the anniversaries of the 1941 attack. When he lacked the strength to attend in person, he recorded video messages for those who gathered and watched remotely from his home in California.

In 2019, when he was 98, he said he liked going to remember those who lost their lives.

“It’s always good to come back and pay respect to them and give them the top honors that they deserve,” he said.

Though many treated the shrinking group of Pearl Harbor survivors as heroes, Conter refused the label.

“The 2,403 men that died are the heroes. And we’ve got to honor them ahead of everybody else. And I’ve said that every time, and I think it should be stressed,” Conter told The Associated Press in a 2022 interview at his California home.

This year, something unusual happened. After years of extreme drought and several very wet flood years, the Sierra snowpack, the source of one-third of the state’s water supply, is shockingly average this year: 104% of normal on Friday.

And more is on the way. The National Weather Service on Friday declared a winter storm warning for the Sierra, predicting 1 to 2 feet of new snow through Sunday. Chain controls went into effect on Interstate 80 Friday afternoon.

For a state where 11 of the past 17 years have been in severe drought, where massive, punishing storms last year brought the biggest snowpack since 1983 and waves of destruction along the coast, and storms in 2017 caused $100 million in flood damage to downtown San Jose and nearly collapsed Oroville Dam, an ordinary winter is a godsend, experts said Friday.

“It’s about as normal as you can get,” said Jeffrey Wood, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “It’s what we hoped for. In recent years we’ve had extremes. This year is definitely an outlier, but in a good way. Enjoy the normal.”

The last time California had a winter this close to the historical average was more than a decade ago, in 2010, when the Sierra snowpack on April 1 was at 104%. By comparison, last year on April 1 it was 232%. The year before, just 35%.

Two years of ample snow and rain have wiped away drought conditions. Most of California’s big reservoirs are brimming.

They were already full from last year’s bounty and have been topped with storms this year. The largest reservoirs in California on Friday were a combined 116% of their average capacity for the end of March, with the two largest, Shasta, near Redding, and Oroville, in Butte County, at 91% and 87% full.

The conditions mean that cities will not impose water restrictions this summer.

“This is a usefully boring year,” said Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis. “It will be useful if people use the lack of urgency to work on long-term preparations for both floods and droughts. That would be time well spent.”

Precipitation will continue to spread across the area today through Saturday, with the heaviest expected this afternoon into early Saturday. Here's a look at the latest forecast rainfall & snowfall totals. Expect mountain travel delays & chain controls. #cawx pic.twitter.com/1h0IVxPxQT

— NWS Sacramento (@NWSSacramento) March 29, 2024

The snowy February and March, along with healthy rain levels across the state, mean that California’s fire season this year could end up being another mild one.

“We might expect something similar to last year,” said Craig Clements, director of the San Jose State University Fire Weather Research Lab. “Below normal in terms of acres burned. More snow. More moisture. Higher soil moisture. And higher fuel moisture levels. Things can change if we get a big heat wave in August. But for now all the rain and snow have helped a lot.”

Last year, following the wet winter, 324,917 acres burned statewide, according to Cal Fire, well below the state average for the previous five years of 1.7 million acres and more than 90% less than the horrific fire year of 2020 when 4.2 million acres burned statewide.

The shifting risk levels don’t mean that climate change isn’t happening, experts say. The Earth continues to warm, which makes droughts more severe. And that warming can cause winter storms to carry higher levels of moisture because more water evaporates from the ocean into them during hotter conditions.

But this year and last serve as a reminder that every year isn’t a wildfire Armageddon, Clements said.

“You are going to have some normal seasons,” he said. “You are going to have wet seasons.”

Few barometers of the state’s changing water fortunes are as dramatic as the weekly reports from the U.S. Drought Monitor, put out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

At the end of March 2022, 100% of California was in a drought, according to the monitor. Water shortages were prevalent around the state. A year later, just 28% of California was in a drought — mostly near the Oregon state line and in the southeastern corner of the state. This week? None of the state is in drought.

Early on it wasn’t clear what this winter would bring. On Jan. 1, the statewide Sierra snowpack was just 21% of normal. But steady storms through February, and particularly in the first week of March, brought the turnaround as the Sierra was blasted with 8 to 10 feet of new snow in blizzards that closed ski resorts and blocked I-80 and Highway 50.

Lund, the UC Davis professor, who described this winter as “unusually normal,” said California still has significant water challenges, particularly in agriculture. State officials and farmers need to do a better job capturing water from storms and diverting it to recharge groundwater, he said.

In other areas, such as the Tulare Basin in the San Joaquin Valley, groundwater has been so heavily over pumped for decades that some acres will need to be taken out of production, he said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed hard for construction of the largest new reservoir in California in 50 years, Sites Reservoir, a $4.5 billion off-stream project proposed for Colusa County that would divert water from the Sacramento River in wet years for use in dry years. This month, the project received $205 million from the Biden administration and now has more than 90% of its funding. Whether it can break ground depends largely on if it can secure water rights later this year from the State Water Resources Control Board and overcome lawsuits from several environmental groups that say the water diversions could harm fish species in the Delta.

On Tuesday, state officials are expected to take a manual snow survey near Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort. Friday’s statewide totals are expected to increase from this weekend’s storms.

“Winter is not over,” said Wood, the meteorologist. “It’s not abnormal to have an early spring system like this, and it’s definitely not the end of potential wet weather for the area. We will get some significant snowfall out of this one.”

Weather and water

Last week saw some significant storm systems in terms of wind as well as localized rain showers locally.

Kate Forrest, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office said the first system, which occurred between Tuesday and Thursday last week, brought about a half an inch to an inch of rain to valley areas such as Chico and beyond and up to 1.5 inches in Paradise and foothill areas.

A second system that lasted Friday and Saturday brought an additional 0.27 inches of rain to Chico, just short of half an inch in Red Bluff and 1.26 inches in Paradise.

Lake Oroville’s water level continues to increase and was reported to be 878.86 at 7 p.m. Sunday. The lake had a water level of 857.28 on the same day last year and was previously at 750.14 on March 31, 2022. Outflows from the Oroville Dam’s main spillway continued on Monday.

Meanwhile, Shasta Lake’s water level was reported at 1,055.06 feet as of 1 p.m. Monday.

Enterprise-Record reporter Jake Hutchison contributed to this report.

State Assembly

James Gallagher (R-Yuba City) voted on the following bills:

AB 2024, Domestic violence: restraining orders: Yes (Passed: 66-0)

ACR 160: Women in STEM Day: Yes (Passed: 54-0)

SCR 69, Prostate Cancer Awareness Month: Absent (Passed: 54-0)

AB 1797, State crustacean: Yes (Passed: 13-0)

AB 1850, State slug: Yes (Passed: 13-0)

AB 2298, Coastal resources: voluntary vessel speed reduction and sustainable shipping program: Yes (Passed: 13-0)

AB 2504, State seashell: Yes (Passed: 13-0)

AB 610, Fast food restaurant industry: Fast Food Council: health, safety, employment, and minimum wage: No (Passed: 57-5)

SB 136, Medi-Cal: managed care organization provider tax: No (Passed: 58-11)

AB 1880, Minors: artistic employment: Yes (Passed: 74-0)

AB 1887 Student financial aid: application deadlines: extension: Yes (Passed: 37-0)

AB 1916, Self-service storage facilities: abandoned personal property: Yes (Passed: 74-0)

AB 1982, Firearm safety certificate: exemptions: Yes (Passed: 74-0)

AB 2248, Contracts: sales of dogs and cats: Yes (Passed: 73-0)

State Senate

Brian Dahle (R-Bieber) voted on the following bills:

AB 1887, Student financial aid: application deadlines: extension: Yes (Passed: 37-0)

ACR 139, American Red Cross Month: Yes (Passed: 37-0)

ACR 143, School Breakfast Week: Yes (Passed: 37-0)

ACR 145, Coexist with Wildlife, California: Yes (Passed: 37-0)

SB 136, Medi-Cal: managed care organization provider tax: No (Passed: 29-3)

SCR 126, Nowroz: Yes (Passed: 37-0)

SR 69, Relative to César Chávez Day: Yes (Passed: 37-0)

SB 1036, Voluntary carbon offsets: business regulation: Absent (Passed: 5-0)

SB 1046, Organic waste reduction: program environmental impact report: green material composting operations: Absent (Passed: 6-0)

SB 1087, Oil imports: air quality emissions data: Absent (Passed: 6-0)

SB 1113, Beverage container recycling: pilot projects: extension: Absent (Passed: 6-0)

SB 1136, California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006: report: Absent (Passed: 6-0)

SB 1140, Enhanced infrastructure financing district: Absent (Passed: 6-0)

SB 1158, Carl Moyer Memorial Air Quality Standards Attainment Program: Absent (Passed: 5-0)

SB 1209, Local agency formation commission: indemnification: Absent (Passed: 6-0)

AB 136, Medi-Cal: managed care organization provider tax: No (Passed: 13-3)

SB 983, Energy: gasoline stations and alternative fuel infrastructure: Absent (Passed: 13-0)

SB 1003, Electrical corporations: wildfire mitigation plans: Yes (Passed: 17-0)

SB 1130, Electricity: Family Electric Rate Assistance: reports: Yes (Passed: 15-0)

SB 1177, Public utilities: women, minority, disabled veteran, and LGBT business enterprises: Absent (Passed: 14-0)

SB 1182, Master Plan for Healthy, Sustainable, and Climate-Resilient Schools: Yes (Passed: 17-0)

SB 1309, Lithium Battery Production Council: Absent (Passed: 15-1)

ACR 86, Animals: overpopulation: spay and neutering services: Yes (Passed: 40-0)

SCR 116, Frontotemporal Degeneration Awareness Week: Yes (Passed: 40-0)

SCR 121, International Women’s Day: Yes (Passed: 40-0)

SCR 123, Arts Education Month: Yes (Passed: 40-0)

SR 67, Relative to National Gambling Awareness Month: Yes (Passed: 40-0)

U.S. House of Representatives

Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) voted on the following bills:

HR 1023, Cutting Green Corruption and Taxes Act: Yes (Passed: 209-204)

HRes 1102, Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 Department of Education Appropriations Act, 2024 Department of Health and Human Services Appropriations Act, 2024 Department of Labor Appropriations Act, 2024 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2024 Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024: Yes (Passed: 286-134)

HCRes 86, Expressing the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy: Yes (Passed: 222-196)

HR 1836, Ocean Shipping Reform Implementation Act of 2023: Yes (Passed: 393-24)

HR 7023, Creating Confidence in Clean Water Permitting Act: Yes (Failed: 99-323)

HRes 987, Denouncing the harmful, anti-American energy policies of the Biden administration, and for other purposes: Yes (Passed: 217-200)

HR 1121, Protecting American Energy Production Act: Yes (Passed: 229-188)

HR 7520, Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024: Yes (Passed: 414-0)

HRes 1085, Providing for consideration of the bill HR 1023 to repeal section 134 of the Clean Air Act, relating to the greenhouse gas reduction fund; providing for consideration of the bill HR 1121 to prohibit a moratorium on the use of hydraulic fracturing; providing for consideration of the bill HR 6009 to require the Director of the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw the proposed rule relating to fluid mineral leases and leasing process, and for other purposes; providing for consideration: Yes (Passed: 214-200)

HR 4723, Upholding the Dayton Peace Agreement Through Sanctions Act: Yes (Passed: 365-30)

HRes 149, Condemning the illegal abduction and forcible transfer of children from Ukraine to the Russian Federation: Yes (Passed: 390-9)

“The Homeless, Drug Addiction, Retail Theft Reduction Act would take out the bad efforts of Prop. 47 that made all drug possessions misdemeanors,” said Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey. “It decriminalized drugs which drives addition which impacts mental health issues and homelessness. Particularly since 2015, we’ve seen homelessness increase 51% in California while homelessness in the nation has gone down 11%. Does this tie in to Prop. 47? I believe so. This is not a red or blue issue, it’s a California issue.”

Under Prop. 47, passed by voters on Nov. 5, 2014, some non-violent property crimes including commercial burglary, possession of stolen property and grand theft crimes, where the value does not exceed $950, were reduced from felonies to misdemeanors. It also made some drug possession offenses, including possession of a controlled substance, into misdemeanors. Prop. 47 also provides that past convictions for these charges may be reduced to a misdemeanor by a court.

“We have got to stop the madness,” said Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea. “I and other public safety officials warned of the damaging effects of Prop. 47. And, now we’re seeing those effects with increased theft and skyrocketing overdoses. This reform act is a chance to change that and I hope people will get behind it.”

The Homeless, Drug Addiction, Retail Theft Reduction Act seeks to reverse significant parts of Prop 47 by allowing felony charges to be brought against those with two or more drug or theft convictions for possessing certain drugs, including fentanyl and for thefts under $950. It would also provide addiction and mental health services for treatment-mandated felony charges but also increase sentences for some other drug and theft crimes.

Oroville Police Chief Bill LaGrone said the reform act would “benefit the community by allowing us, law enforcement, to better do our job.”

“It would reduce retail theft and hold those who choose not to follow the law accountable,” he said.

Oroville City Councilors Tracy Johnstone and Shawn Webber as well as Assistant Police Chief Jess Darnell were among those staffing the table at the 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
signature collection pop-up event. About 140 signatures had been collected during the first hour and half, according to Webber.

“It’s been busy,” said Webber. “I think Prop. 47 was written with the best intentions but the criminal element will do what they do and find loop holes in the law so they think ‘we can do anything we want’ because the drug offenses and thefts under $950 are just misdemeanors.”

Smith and Johnstone concurred with Webber. Smith said Prop. 47 had “unintended negative consequences that have caused suffering for individuals, families and businesses. Reforming Prop. 47 is long overdue.” Johnstone echoed the sentiments saying it was “time to make a change and hold people accountable.”

Among those who signed the petition Friday was Mayor Dave Pittman who said conditions under Prop. 47 are “not sustainable. Things have to change, period.”

State organizations that support the Homeless, Drug Addiction, Retail Theft Reduction Act include the California District Attorneys Association, the California Police Chiefs Association, Crime Victims United and the California Sheriffs Association among others.

In the Bay Area, where dozens of large cargo ships, oil tankers, cruise ships and other vessels sail in and out of San Francisco Bay every week, the calamity raised the question: Could it happen here?

Ships have occasionally hit several of the eight major bridges that cross San Francisco Bay over the decades. But for a variety of reasons, the chances of a bridge collapsing are very low, experts said Tuesday.

“It would be ridiculous to say it could never happen here,” said Scott Humphrey, chairman of the San Francisco Bay Harbor Safety Committee, a state organization of industry, government, and nonprofit maritime organizations that meets monthly to improve shipping safety. “But it’s extremely unlikely that anything of that magnitude could happen here.”

All of the major bridges that cross San Francisco Bay, including the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, have concrete buffers, called fenders, that surround the columns supporting the bridge near the water line.

If a large ship loses power or steering and hits one, it glances off, said Bart Ney, a spokesman for Caltrans, which owns most of the bridges spanning the bay.

“The bridges are designed for it,” he said. “The strategy is that if you get a vessel that is going to collide with the bridge, you want to keep it from touching the bridge. All of our bridges have a robust fender system that are designed to absorb energy. The bridge does more damage to the ship than the ship does to the bridge.”

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore did not have the same fender system, he said.

Further, the Bay Area is known for earthquakes. All of the major bridges across San Francisco Bay have undergone an extensive earthquake retrofits in the past 20 years, Ney said. They have been fitted with seismic dampening systems — joints that allow bridges to flex and move in earthquakes, along with huge hinges, and other features that not only help them survive earthquakes but avoid collapse in ship collisions, he said.

Khalid Mosalam, a professor of civil engineering at UC Berkeley, watched the video Tuesday of the Baltimore bridge collapse frame-by-frame.

“It’s a very classical mode of failure. It was breathtaking,” he said. “You study these things and learn about them and teach them to students, but you rarely see it happen, which is good thing.”

Many of California’s bridges are more resilient than bridges in other parts of the world, he added.

“Because of earthquake designs, the columns in West Coast bridges tend to be a lot stronger, a lot bigger,” he said. “If an accident like this happened here, I doubt it would lead to destruction like we saw in the video.”

But accidents do happen.

Last year, 2,874 large ships arrived and departed San Francisco Bay, sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge carrying everything from oil from Alaska to steel shipping containers full of electronics and clothes, according to the Marine Exchange of the San Francisco Bay Region, an organization that tracks ship movements. Expert harbor pilots board the ships and help them navigate when they are entering and leaving the Bay.

On Nov. 7, 2007, the 901-foot Cosco Busan, a cargo ship headed from Oakland to South Korea, sideswiped a Bay Bridge support column protected by a fender in dense morning fog.

The incident ripped a 211-foot-long gash in the ship and dumped 53,000 gallons of bunker fuel into the bay. No people were injured or killed, but the spill oiled 69 miles of shore. Roughly 6,800 birds were killed.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that the ship’s pilot, John Cota, of Petaluma, had a “degraded cognitive performance from his use of impairing prescription medications.” Cota, the investigation concluded, had a history of alcohol abuse and prescriptions for at least nine medications for pain, depression and sleep disorders.

Other causes of the Cosco Busan incident included a lack of communication between Cota and the ship’s Chinese captain; inadequate crew training; and a failure by the Coast Guard to warn Cota by radio that he was heading for the bridge.

The bridge fender suffered only minor damage. The Bay Bridge itself was not damaged.

The Cosco Busan’s owner, Regal Stone Ltd., and its operator, Fleet Management Ltd., both of Hong Kong, paid $44 million to settle the civil case with state prosecutors.

Not long afterward, in 2013, another ship, the Overseas Reymar, a 748-foot-long oil tanker, struck the Bay Bridge in heavy fog. A state investigation found that the pilot, Capt. Guy Kleess of San Francisco, made a risky last-minute change in course and “lost awareness of what was happening around him.”

The oil tanker was empty, having offloaded its cargo at a refinery in Martinez the night before. No oil was spilled.

The accident caused $1.4 million in damage to the fender but did not structurally damage the bridge, Caltrans reported. The ship sustained $220,000 in damage.

After the incident, the harbor safety committee passed guidelines recommending large ships not sail under the Bay Bridge in heavy fog.

There are still some areas of concern. State law requires oil tankers to have tug boat escorts so they can be pushed away from danger if they lose power or steering. But tug boat escorts are not required for cargo ships moving in and out of San Francisco Bay. In 2004, following a series of Mercury News stories exposing the risk, state lawmakers passed a bill to require tug escorts for chemical tanker ships in San Francisco Bay, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill after the shipping industry raised cost concerns.

Early reports indicate that the ship in Baltimore reported it had lost power before colliding with the bridge. In April 2022, the Wan Hai 176, a 564-foot container ship, lost engine power and drifted seven miles off the coast of Point Reyes with 21 people aboard. It was intercepted by tug boats and towed into San Francisco Bay without incident. The Singapore-flagged vessel had more than 700 containers on board and 39,000 gallons of fuel.

“We have seen accidents in the Bay Area involving large ships in the past,” said Ben Eichenberg, an attorney with Baykeeper, an environmental group. “If a ship loses power, taking out a bridge isn’t the only disaster that can happen. It can run aground. It can leak oil. This Maryland accident should get us to review all of our safety procedures. There is going to be some soul searching here.”

Speculation had swirled in recent weeks about who’d get the nod to join Kennedy, the son of the late New York U.S. senator and attorney general who was assassinated in Los Angeles while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968.

Many political oddsmakers believed it would be Shanahan, a lawyer and mega-donor with Silicon Valley connections as the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The 38-year-old has no political experience but helped fund an RFK Jr. Super Bowl ad that riffed on a famous 1960 ad for his uncle John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. But Shanahan may best be known for a relationship with Elon Musk that led to her divorce from Brin and severed his friendship with the Tesla founder.

Kennedy praised Shanahan as an ally for voters who are disappointed with today’s political leaders and welcomed her to a campaign that polls show could have a major impact on stripping crucial votes from President Biden and former President Trump. A Real Clear Politics average of recent polls in five battleground states showed Kennedy polling with 12.3% of the vote behind Trump’s 40.7% and Biden’s 35.3%.

“Like many of us, Nicole assumed the U.S. government was working for the people, that the Democratic Party was on the side of the middle class and the working poor,” Kennedy said. “I too used to believe those things. Do you remember those days?”

Kennedy used the build up to his vice presidential pick to spark attention around a campaign largely built around his opposition to vaccines. Top contenders included NFL star quarterback Aaron Rodgers, known to share Kennedy’s vaccine criticisms, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

Kennedy campaign spokesperson Stefanie Spear said the vice presidential announcement allows Kennedy to begin collecting signatures in 20 states that require a vice presidential candidate to qualify the ticket for the ballot. They have been gathering signatures in 16 states.

Inside the Kaiser Center auditorium, a pair of musicians with a Fender guitar and electric keyboard played rock music while vintage black-and-white photos of Robert F. Kennedy and color nature shots flashed on two large screens flanking the stage. Kennedy’s wife, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress Cheryl Hines, introduced him to the crowd.

“Our campaign is a spoiler, I agree, a spoiler for President Biden and President Trump,” Kennedy said, arguing that voters are hungry for an alternative to choosing between “two tired heads of the uni-party.”

“Nicole and I are going to give those millions another choice,” Kennedy told the crowd. “Now I have a governing partner who will fight for you and your family”

Shanahan talked about growing up in Oakland, the daughter of a Chinese immigrant mother and an Irish-German father who struggled with substance abuse and joblessness, in a family that often was forced to rely on public assistance.

“This city will always have a special place in my heart,” Shanahan said. Though she’d been a longtime Democrat and party donor, she said she became disillusioned with a party she said has “lost its way” and become beholden to corporate interests. A friend persuaded her to listen to Kennedy, and she said he won her over. As the mother of a child with autism, she shares his concerns that exposure to poorly regulated drugs, chemicals, electro-magnetic fields are contributing to a chronic illness epidemic.

“I saw a person with intelligence and compassion and reason,” Shanahan said. “For the first time, I felt hope.”

“It’s time, as Bobby Kennedy says, to focus on our unifying values,” Shanahan said.

Ann Ratsep, 56, of San Francisco, said she trusted Kennedy to pick a good running mate.

“I’m excited about her,” said Ratsep, who voted for Marianne Williamson in the 2020 Democratic primaries and said Shanahan struck her as “very honest.” “I think her youth will be a good thing.”

Scott Rewick and Laura Taylor, who came to Oakland from Sonoma for the veep reveal, agreed. Rewick said he’s a Republican and Taylor a Democrat, but both are disillusioned by their party’s choices. Rewick said he hasn’t voted in years. Taylor said she voted for Biden in 2020, but she agreed with Kennedy that people shouldn’t vote for the major-party candidates “out of fear.”

“This is the kind of guy that can get me back into voting,” Rewick, 55, said. “We need someone who can really heal this country. I walk away with hope.”

Among the gathering wearing a Kennedy 2024 button and ballcap was Joanie Jones. The 70-year-old Richmond woman said she didn’t vote for either Biden or Trump in the 2020 election “because I was so disgusted” by the choices. But Kennedy won her over with his commitment to “medical freedom,” including not forcing people to get vaccinated.

“That’s all he had to do to get my vote,” said Jones, who said she remembers Kennedy’s father and uncle from her childhood and suspects the government had something to do with their deaths but that Kennedy is carrying on their tradition. “He’s the freedom candidate.”

The results, released Tuesday, were contained in the latest energy utilities study produced by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index. The survey reported results for 27 U.S. utilities listed by name.

Oakland-based PG&E was ranked in a multi-way tie for 20th place out of 27 U.S. utilities in the 2024 survey.

“If PG&E cared about customer rankings, it would spend less money on public relations and slick television commercials, and more on live persons to answer the phone when customers call,” Mark Toney, executive director with The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, said in comments emailed to this news organization. “If PG&E wanted a better reputation, it would stop overspending on excessive tree removal, and more on connecting new electrical service to affordable housing developments, schools and hospitals that have been on a waiting list for months.”

While the ranking in 2024 was low, PG&E’s placement on the latest list topped its ranking as No. 27 in the 2023 survey.

“The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) shows a 14% gain for PG&E, as well as improvements in service reliability and power restoration, where we exceed the industry,” PG&E stated in comments a company spokesperson emailed to this news organization.

The survey measured customer satisfaction using 10 benchmarks.

The categories include the ability to provide reliable electricity service, quality of the mobile app, the reliability of the mobile app, ease of understanding the monthly bill, website satisfaction, ability to restore electric service after an outage, courtesy and helpfulness of company staffers, information about energy saving ideas, efforts to support green programs and efforts to support the local community.

“We are committed to improving our customers’ service and have a variety of energy and money-saving tools in place to help them find the best rate plan for their household or business, utilize free and low-cost resources to help manage monthly bills, and offer expanded financial assistance programs to support income-eligible customers,” PG&E stated in its emailed comments.

PG&E ranked poorly, however, compared to some of the other major utility providers in California.

Sempra, owner of San Diego Gas & Electric, was ranked 12th; the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was ranked 18th; PG&E was ranked 20th; Edison International, owner of Southern California Edison, was ranked No. 25.

PG&E has come under criticism in the wake of a decade of disasters that included a fatal gas explosion in 2010 that destroyed a San Bruno neighborhood, a string of fatal infernos that torched vast swaths of land in Northern California and intentional power outages to reduce the chances of wildfires.

More recently, PG&E’s skyrocketing electricity costs have shoved monthly utility bills higher, a financial jolt that has infuriated a growing number of the company’s customers.

Starting in early January, PG&E monthly bills averaged roughly $294.50 a month for the typical residential customer who receives combined electricity and gas services, according to estimates provided by the company to this news organization.

That combined bill was 22.3% higher than the average monthly charges that went into effect the year before, at the start of January 2023.

A recent decision by the state Public Utilities Commission, which oversees PG&E, also set the stage for PG&E to raise monthly bills yet again on an interim basis, a decision that will begin to have an impact on bills in April or May.

Those increases come as PG&E profits zoomed higher in 2023, buoyed by surging electricity and natural gas revenues.

In February, PG&E reported 2023 profits totaling $2.24 billion, an increase of 24.6% from 2022. PG&E further delighted its shareholders by predicting investors can anticipate even better earnings in 2024.

“If PG&E wanted to boost customer confidence, it would prioritize delivering the cleanest, safest and most reliable service at the most cost-efficient manner, instead of prioritizing shareholder profits,” Toney said.

A few readers thought I was a tad harsh in a recent column that noted California had the nation’s slowest job growth in 2023.

Yes, adding any number of jobs isn’t bad – but 154,000 new workers equals only 0.9% growth in a hot US job market that grew 2%. That hiring pace – as measured on a percentage-point basis – ranked No. 51 among the states and the District of Columbia.

We often forget that California is by far the nation’s largest job market with 17.8 million workers. My trusty spreadsheet tells me the Golden State has ranked No. 1 since 1972. The second-biggest job market in the US is Texas at 13.9 million workers. Florida is No. 3 at 9.7 million.

But my readers’ argument that California’s size would make it hard to be among the fastest growing on a percentage-point basis is a stretch. Texas (3.3% more jobs in 2023) and Florida (up 3.4%) ranked in 2023’s top three for percentage growth along with Nevada (up 3.4%).

Look, there are various ways to measure economic progress.

Remember, percentage-point growth shows us the relative scale of hiring trends on the overall California job market as well as against other states. Still, let’s look at California ranked by the number of new jobs created – not the 2023 percentage gain.

My trusty spreadsheet tells me that those 154,000 California hires last year were topped by only three states – Texas (449,600), Florida (316,600), and New York (195,000).

However, California having lofty spots on this kind of job-creation scorecard is nothing newsy. California ranked No. 1 or No. 2 for total new jobs in 11 of the past 12 years (let’s forget coronavirus-chilled 2020’s last-place finish).

And historically speaking, over the past 52 years as the largest job market, California’s count of new workers led the nation 27 times and ranked second 10 times.

Or look how modest last year’s hiring was this way: 154,000 new jobs was 27% below California’s average year since 1972.

High rankings often equal high expectations. And in 2023, California’s job market missed its high bar.

Locally speaking

Where were those 154,000 California jobs created last year? Largely to the south, when looking at state data tracking 29 employment hubs …

1. San Diego: 21,000 new jobs bringing its total to 1.56 million (California’s No. 4 employment center).

2. Inland Empire: 19,800 jobs added to 1.69 million (No. 3).

3. Sacramento: 18,200 jobs added to 1.09 million (No. 8).

4. Orange County: 17,000 jobs added to 1.7 million (No. 2).

5. Los Angeles: 13,400 jobs added to 4.59 million (No. 1).

6. Oakland: 10,300 jobs added to 1.2 million (No. 5).

7. Fresno: 8,500 jobs added to 392,900 (No. 9).

8. San Jose: 4,200 jobs added to 1.16 million (No. 7).

9. Bakersfield: 4,200 jobs added to 294,000 (No. 11).

10. Modesto: 3,500 jobs added to 194,600 (No. 14).

And there was a clear last place – San Francisco. It lost 11,400 jobs last year, shrinking to 1.17 million, the state’s No. 6 job market. It was the only job losers among 29 markets tracked.

By the way, if you’re looking for top job growth on a percentage basis, tiny El Centro led California in 2023 with 3.2% more workers. But that’s only 1,800 new jobs, bringing the agriculture-rich border town’s employment to 59,000.

But the windswept county in the Sacramento Valley — whose entire population of 22,000 people is just one-third of Palo Alto’s — may soon be known for something else: the largest new reservoir anywhere in California in the past 50 years.

Last weekend, President Biden signed a package of bills that included $205 million in construction funding for Sites Reservoir, a proposed $4.5 billion project planned for the rolling ranchlands  west of the town of Maxwell, about 70 miles north of Sacramento.

The funding is the latest boost for the project, which has been discussed on and off since the 1950s. Plans call for Sites to be a vast off-stream reservoir 13 miles long, 4 miles wide and 260 feet deep that would store water diverted from the Sacramento River in wet years, for use by cities and farms around the state in dry years.

“We have a definite tailwind at our back,” said Jerry Brown, a civil engineer unrelated to the former governor, and who is executive director of the Sites Project Authority. The authority is a group of government agencies in the Sacramento Valley planning the massive reservoir.

Brown was also the former general manager of the Contra Costa Water District, where he oversaw expansion of Los Vaqueros Reservoir 15 years ago.

“The funding is a vote of confidence and a sign that the federal government sees a significant benefit to this project and it being a sound investment,” he said.

If the project overcomes opposition and a lawsuit by environmental groups, the 1.5 million-acre-foot Sites Reservoir would be California’s eighth largest. It would be four times the size of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park, which is the main water supply for San Francisco and the Peninsula. It would provide water to 500,000 acres of Central Valley farmlands, and 24 million people, including parts of Silicon Valley, the East Bay and Los Angeles.

Plans call for groundbreaking in 2026, with construction finished by 2032. If completed, Sites would be the largest new reservoir in California since 1979, when the federal government opened New Melones Lake in the Sierra Foothills between Sonora and Angels Camp.

With the newest funding approved by Congress, the project now has more than 90% of its financing lined up, Brown said, a major hurdle that has killed dozens of other large water storage projects around the state in recent decades.

The sources include:

• A $2.2 billion loan that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency invited the project to apply for;
• $875 million from Proposition 1, a water bond approved by voters in 2014;
• $389 million from Congress, which includes this month’s award;
• A $250 million loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture;
• $250 million in local cash and bonds from other California water agencies;
• $60 million from Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

The project is supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom, farm organizations, labor unions and water agencies, including the Santa Clara Valley Water District in San Jose, Zone 7 Water Agency in Livermore, and the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles, all of which are partners.

Supporters say that as California’s climate continues to warm, more severe droughts are likely. Storing water in wet years to reduce shortages in dry years is more important than ever, they contend.

“We are going to need more storage projects with climate change,” said Matt Keller, a spokesman for the Santa Clara Valley Water District. “Our board is evaluating several different water supply projects from around Northern California and locally, and has been following this one for a while.”

The district, based in San Jose, provides water to 2 million people. It has contributed $2 million so far to Sites for planning and is considering offering up to $130 million more, which would provide it about 37,400 acre-feet of storage — nearly twice the volume of Lexington Reservoir near Los Gatos.

Politically, the project has a big advantage over many traditional dams. It would be an “off-stream” reservoir, which means that instead of damming a river, a remote valley of cattle ranches would be submerged, the water held in by two large dams and up to nine smaller “saddle dams” on ridges, somewhat similar to San Luis Reservoir, between Gilroy and Los Banos.

Had the reservoir already been built, Brown noted, it would have filled entirely in two years from big storms this winter and last winter.

But the Sierra Club and some of the state’s other environmental groups are opposed.

They argue that filling Sites would divert too much water away from the Sacramento River, the state’s largest, hurting endangered salmon, steelhead and Delta smelt, and depriving the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta of fresh water.

“It’s a costly project,” said Ron Stork, senior policy analyst for Friends of the River, a group that opposes Sites. “There’s political support for this idea — happy magical thinking that this project is going to solve our water woes in California. But it’s not the be-all and end-all for water in California.”

Stork and other opponents say cities and farms need to take less water from the Delta. Instead of new reservoirs, they argue, cities should fund water recycling projects and more conservation, and farms should embrace more drip irrigation, groundwater recharge and other techniques, and remove some unsustainable land from production.

The make-or-break moment for Sites is a series of hearings scheduled to run from June to November in which the State Water Resources Control Board will analyze fisheries studies and other documents and decide whether to award it the water rights to move forward.

In December, Friends of the River, the Center for Biological Diversity, and three other environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the project. They argued that Sites’ environmental studies, finalized in November, didn’t adequately study the reservoir’s impact on fish, or properly evaluate alternatives.

A month earlier, Newsom announced he had included Sites among the projects affected by a new state law passed last year to streamline large projects. That law, SB 149, requires that when opponents of large renewable energy, water or transportation projects sue to stop them under the California Environmental Quality Act, courts must decide the challenge within 270 days to reduce years-long delays.

“We’re cutting red tape to build more, faster,” Newsom said in November. “These are projects that will address our state’s biggest challenges.”

If Sites secures the permits, the 22 water agencies who are partners will spend 2025 negotiating how much each will pay for construction costs and how much water each will receive.

The chance of success?

“It’s 50-50,” Stork said. “There’s a lot of political faith in this project and momentum for it. I think it’s magical thinking, but it has momentum.”

State Assembly

This week, James Gallagher (R-Yuba City) voted on the following bills:

ACR 155, Special Olympics Day: Yes (Passed 70-0)

AR 71, Relative to Multiple System Atrophy Awareness Month: Yes (Passed 70-0)

AR 76, Relative to the Persian New Year: Yes (Passed 70-0)

AR 77, Relative to National Surveyors Week: Yes (Passed 70-0)

SB477, Accessory dwelling units: Absent (Passed 66-0)

State Senate

This week, Brian Dahle (R-Bieber) voted on the following bills:

ACR 127, Engineers Week: Yes (Passed 38-0)

ACR 130, Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day: Yes (Passed 38-0)

ACR 136, Black History Month: Yes (Passed 38-0)

ACR 138, World Cholangiocarcinoma Day: Yes (Passed 38-0)

SB 477, Accessory dwelling units: Yes (Passed 40-0)

SB 479, Termination of tenancy: no-fault just cause: natural person: Yes (Passed 40-0)

SCR 118, Bleeding Disorders Awareness Month: Yes (Passed 40-0)

SCR 122, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Day: Absent (Passed 36-0)

SR 73, Relative to California Agriculture Day: Yes (Passed 40-0)

SR 77, Relative to Irish American Heritage Month: Yes (Passed 39-0)

SB 911, Income taxation: exclusion: military survivor benefits: Yes (Passed 6-0)

SB 927, Income taxes: gross income exclusions: state of emergency: natural disaster settlements: Yes (Passed 6-0)

SB 1004, Income taxes: exclusions: wildfires: Yes (Passed 7-0)

SCR 120, Special Olympics Day: Yes (Passed 38-0)

SR 56, Relative to Women’s History Month: Yes (Passed 38-0)

U.S. House of Representatives

This week, Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) voted on the following bills:

HR 7521, Protecting Americans from Foriegn Adversary Controlled Applications Act: Yes (Passed 352-65)

HRes 1071, Providing for consideration of the bill HR 6276 to direct the Administrator of General Services and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to identify the utilization rate of certain public buildings and federally-leased space, and for other purposes, and providing for consideration of the resolution HRes 1065) denouncing the Biden administration’s immigration policies: Yes (Passed 209-206)

HR 6276, Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies Act of 2023 USE IT Act of 2023: No (Passed 217-203)

HR 1752, Eliminating Barriers to Rural Internet Development Grant Eligibility Act E-BRIDGE Act: Yes (Passed 375-20)

HR 886, Save Our Seas 2.0 Amendments Act: Yes (Passed 326-73)