Sep 14
The primary power generation source envisioned by the plan would be solar, but the potential for utility-scale wind energy projects would also be enhanced through the revision of ordinances, specifically in the Coastal Zone. 4-1 vote in favor (Peter Adam, 4th District, dissenting) by Santa Barbara County Supervisors in September 2019.
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2019/09/14/santa-barbara-county-moves-towards-solar-wind-power/
Aug 20 2019
Oil spills and leakages happen. To report a suspected oil spill, immediately call the State Warning Center 1-800-424-8802, then notify Channelkeeper at 805-563-3377. In an emergency, call 911.
A Denver, Colorado company has purchased ERG in August 2019. ERG is the company that has had enormous and continued resistance by local residents in their quest to get approval from Santa Barbara County to drill dozens of new oil wells in Cat Canyon over the Santa Maria water basin.
Scheduled hearings will be rescheduled after TerraCore has prepared their plans to use more solar to extract oil, but no plans revealed to abandon the project altogether to drill over the aquifer.
Santa Maria Times:
“A memo from the Planning & Development Department said a new notice of the project hearing will be announced once a date is established.
The memo also said a report addressing any proposed modifications to the project and revisions to the environmental impact report, as well as responses to commissioners’ requests for information, will be provided and available to the public before the date of the continued hearing.
ERG — now TerraCore — is proposing to add 187 new steam-injected oil and gas wells and two new steam generators on about 75 acres of the company’s 8,054-acre property in West Cat Canyon south of Santa Maria.”
This project would double the county’s current onshore oil production and is starkly at odds with our county’s Climate Action Plan goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the county by 50% by 2030.
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION:
Deputy Director: John Zorovich/Energy, Minerals & Compliance
Supervising Planner: Errin Briggs 805-568—2047
Staff Contact: Nancy Minick 805-884-8050
Staff Emails: dvillalo@co.santa-barbara.ca.us
Link: https://santamariademocrats.info/your-reps-and-maps/north-santa-barbara-county-supervisors/
Steam Injection to extract oil is what is happening at Orcutt Hill and several other Orcutt sites on the east side of 101 Freeway mixed in with agriculture land. And now big oil company ERG wants to develop even further in Cat Canyon, OVER THE SANTA MARIA WATER AQUIFER. Let the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission know we expect them to do their jobs for the community and deny ERG’s request and prevent them from steam injecting through our water table!!
INJECTION:
Pressurized steam is injected into the oil-bearing zone over several days, creating fissures for the hot steam to reach the thick crude oil and soften it.
EXTRACTION;
Steaming ends and as the heated oil becomes more mobile, it is drawn up through the same well system. As more and more oil is taken out of the ground, support for the surface substrate weakens, causing land around the well to sink.
Copy and paste Letter:
Mailto:comments@conservation.ca.gov
OR write to the Orcutt Office, or make an appointment:
5075 S Bradley Rd # 221, Santa Maria, CA 93455 Phone (805) 937-7246.
(Name and address)
On Wednesday, March 13 at 9:00AM, the Santa Barbara Planning Commission held a public hearing on ERG’s Project. Although the Planning Commission shamefully chose to hold the hearing during working hours, 100 residents attended the hearing and expressed, once again, all of the multiple reasons why this project SHOULD NOT BE APPROVED. WE MUST KEEP TELLING THEM. Oil Companies have 100 year plans, and will never stop pushing their destructive agenda… AND WE MUST NOT STOP EITHER! Tell the Planning Commission to deny the Project and protect our climate, air quality, water resources, and public health. ERG is proposing to drill dozens of new thermally enhanced, steam injection oil wells, producing thousands of barrels of oil per day.
This project is only 1900 feet from an elementary school and residences. It would increase air pollution, damage residents’ health, degrade water quality and ecosystems, generate traffic and 24/7 light and noise pollution, and lock in dirty fossil fuel production for decades to come – at a time when climate reports warn we need to accelerate a transition to cleaner sources of energy.
https://secure.foodandwaterwatch.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2949
CONTACT YOUR SANTA BARBARA COUNTY SUPERVISOR:
https://santamariademocrats.info/your-reps-and-maps/north-santa-barbara-county-supervisors/
OTHER ARTICLES OF INTEREST:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/earthquakes-triggered-by-fracking/
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2019/08/20/stop-750-new-oil-wells-save-our-water/
Aug 07 2019
If you missed it, there are media coverage links at the bottom of this post.
The town hall ran from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Veterans Memorial Center, 313 W. Tunnell St. It is open to the public and free to attend. Noelle Rosellini, press secretary for the congressman, said the majority of the meeting would be devoted to questions from the public.
In response to mass shootings in Gilroy, El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that killed 34 people and injured dozens more, Carbajal called for the passage of a federal assault weapons banand a “extreme risk” protection order bill that he introduced in February.
The Extreme Risk Protection Order Act of 2019 would provide incentives for states to pass laws that allow concerned friends, family members or law enforcement to petition courts to temporarily remove guns from someone’s possession if they are determined to be at risk of harming themselves or others.
On Friday, the Central Coast’s congressman became the latest House representative to call for an impeachment inquiry into the president.
According to CNN, 118 Democratic representatives as of Friday have called for starting impeachment proceedings.
In a statement issued by his office last week, Carbajal said Trump needed to be held accountable for the conduct that was laid out in the report prepared by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
In the 448-page report summarizing the Special Counsel’s investigation, Mueller stated there was no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.
Additionally, Mueller detailed 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by the president but did not determine whether those acts were criminal.
– To visit Congressman Carbajal’s website, click here: https://carbajal.house.gov/
– Read media coverage about the Town Hall Meeting on August 8, 2019 in Santa Maria:
https://www.noozhawk.com/article/carbajal_town_hall_turns_lively_santa_maria
https://www.ksby.com/news/local-news/rep-salud-carbajal-host-town-hall-in-santa-maria
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2019/08/07/santa-maria-town-hall-meeting-thursday-august-8-2019-with-congressman-carbajal/
Jul 19 2019
Obama’s guidelines prioritized the deportation of gang members, those who posed a national security risk and those who had committed felonies.
Trump’s January 2017 executive order does not include a priority list for deportations and refers only to “criminal offenses,” which is broad enough to encompass serious felonies as well as misdemeanors.
Because of Trump’s executive order, DHS can deport people for misdemeanors more easily, because the government no longer prioritizes the removal of dangerous criminals, gang members or national-security threats. (A DHS fact sheet says, “Any individual processed for removal, including those who are criminally prosecuted for illegal entry, may seek asylum or other protection available under law.”)
2) Guatemala’s capital is plagued with gang violence.
3) Rival gangs are responsible for most of the murders in El Salvador’s capital.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/15/us/questions-about-the-border-kids.html
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2019/07/19/the-facts-about-trumps-policy-of-separating-families-at-the-border/
Jul 17
Speaker session open to the public 7:00 -7:40 pm followed by DCSMV business meeting (registered Democrats only) until 8:30 pm. Call for more information 1-805-349-2708, Office open M-F, 11a-2pm.
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2019/07/17/thursday-november-15-2018-dcsmv-general-meeting/
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2019/07/06/2019-santa-barbara-county-fair-july-10-july-14-2019/
Jul 01 2019
We celebrate American Independence Day on the Fourth of July every year. We think of July 4, 1776, as a day that represents the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States of America as an independent nation.
But July 4, 1776 wasn’t the day that the Continental Congress decided to declare independence (they did that on July 2, 1776).
It wasn’t the day we started the American Revolution either (that had happened back in April 1775).
And it wasn’t the day Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence (that was in June 1776). Or the date on which the Declaration was delivered to Great Britain (that didn’t happen until November 1776). Or the date it was signed (that was August 2, 1776).
The Continental Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. They’d been working on it for a couple of days after the draft was submitted on July 2nd and finally agreed on all of the edits and changes.
July 4, 1776, became the date that was included on the Declaration of Independence, and the fancy handwritten copy that was signed in August (the copy now displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.) It’s also the date that was printed on the Dunlap Broadsides, the original printed copies of the Declaration that were circulated throughout the new nation. So when people thought of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 was the date they remembered.
In contrast, we celebrate Constitution Day on September 17th of each year, the anniversary of the date the Constitution was signed, not the anniversary of the date it was approved. If we’d followed this same approach for the Declaration of Independence we’d being celebrating Independence Day on August 2nd of each year, the day the Declaration of Independence was signed!
For the first 15 or 20 years after the Declaration was written, people didn’t celebrate it much on any date. It was too new and too much else was happening in the young nation. By the 1790s, a time of bitter partisan conflicts, the Declaration had become controversial. One party, the Democratic-Republicans, admired Jefferson and the Declaration. But the other party, the Federalists, thought the Declaration was too French and too anti-British, which went against their current policies.
By 1817, John Adams complained in a letter that America seemed uninterested in its past. But that would soon change.
After the War of 1812, the Federalist party began to come apart and the new parties of the 1820s and 1830s all considered themselves inheritors of Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans. Printed copies of the Declaration began to circulate again, all with the date July 4, 1776, listed at the top. The deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4, 1826, may even have helped to promote the idea of July 4 as an important date to be celebrated.
Celebrations of the Fourth of July became more common as the years went on and in 1870, almost a hundred years after the Declaration was written, Congress first declared July 4 to be a national holiday as part of a bill to officially recognize several holidays, including Christmas. Further legislation about national holidays, including July 4, was passed in 1939 and 1941.
Website: https://www.constitutionfacts.com/us-declaration-of-independence/fourth-of-july/
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2019/07/01/america-celebrates-the-fourth-of-july-click-image-for-holiday-history/
May 27 2019
Remembering and honoring all of our Veterans, and those who are serving today.
Here are ways we can all do every day to give support, honor, and show respect for all of our service men and women:
15 Monuments that honor Veterans
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2019/05/27/may-27-2019-honoring-the-men-and-women-of-our-armed-forces/
May 06 2019
Organized by Women’s March in front of SLO Superior Court to advocate for reproductive justice. The anti-abortion movement, built over nearly five decades, is closer than it has ever been to its long-held dream of dismantling Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.”
#stopthebans #hearourvoice #hearourvote#truthtopower
Women’s March Organization:
The Women’s March SLO joined thousands in a nationwide day of action on May 21. In partnership with groups and organizations across the US, we are calling to #StopTheBans and fight for our reproductive rights and access to quality reproductive healthcare services, which includes safe, legal and affordable abortion and birth control for all people, regardless of income, location or education. Together, we will show up to speak out and fight back against this unconstitutional attempt to gut Roe and punish women. Together we say: Stop the bans.
PPSLO will provide a #YouKnowMe board where you can share your stories (if you wish to do so), words of encouragement and your advocacy for reproductive rights.
Speakers:
Ruzena Brar
Michelle Call, GALA
Gina Welisch and Natalie Smith, Cal Poly Planned Parenthood Generation Action
Tina Ballantyne, Planned Parenthood CA Central Coast
…more coming.
Bring signs in support of women’s rights and reproductive justice.
Voter registration table will be set up by Indivisible: Rapid Response Team SLO.
This is a peaceful event. Women’s March San Luis Obispo follows Kingian Principles of non-violence. We attack ideas and change policy. We work towards a better future. We do not attack specific people. All who advocate for reproductive rights are welcome.
#StopTheBans San Luis Obispo Supporters:
Planned Parenthood CA Central Coast
Cal Poly Planned Parenthood Generation Action
Planned Parenthood Central Coast Action Fund
SLO County Progressives
Students for Social Justice MBHS
Indivisible: Rapid Response Team SLO
Together We Will San Luis Obispo
Bend the Arc San Luis Obispo
SLO County Democratic Party
Please consider supporting WMSLO’s ongoing advocacy by making a donation – https://www.flipcause.com/secure/cause_pdetails/NTE0NjY=
Find event close to you at www.stopabortionbans.org
___
#StopTheBans is a partnership of ACLU, ACLU of Georgia, Advocates for Youth, All* Above All Action Fund, Center for American Progress, Daily Kos, EMILYs List, Gender Justice, Hope Clinic for Women, In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, Indivisible, International Women’s Health Coalition, Jane’s Due Process, MoveOn, NARAL Pro-Choice America, NARAL Pro-Choice Arizona, National Abortion Federation, National Center for Lesbian Rights, National Council of Jewish Women, National Council of Jewish Women St. Louis, National Institute for Reproductive Health Action Fund, National Organization for Women, National Partnership for Women & Families, National Women’s Law Center, Planned Parenthood, People’s Defense, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, State Innovation Exchange, UltraViolet, #VOTEPROCHOICE, Whole Woman’s Health, Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, Women’s March, Women’s March California, Women’s March Minnesota, and Women Winning. Additional partners to be added.
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2019/05/06/stop-the-bans-rally-tuesday-may-21-2019-slo-courthouse-6-pm/
May 05 2019
Office in Santa Maria open Tuesday – Friday.
Office in Guadalupe by appointment.
Located at 511 Lakeside Parkway, Suite 111, Santa Maria, CA 93455.
In the Joseph Centeno Bldg off E. Betteravia Blvd & Centerpoint Parkway.
Contact phone number 805-346-7210.
Contact email: jhartmann@countyofsb.org
Joan Hartmann,
Santa Barbara County Supervisor, 3rd District
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2019/05/05/tuesday-august-29-2017-open-house-joan-hartmann-sb-county-supervisor/
Jan 19
25 photos. For videos and more photos, visit our Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/DemocraticClubofSantaMariaValley/
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2019/01/19/santa-maria-valley-womens-march-january-19-2019/
Nov 22
Santa Maria Office
Phone: (805) 730-1710
Salud Carbajal, 24th Congressional District Website link: https://carbajal.house.gov
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/repsaludcarbajal/
A local office will be an opportunity for constituents to discuss with Congressman Carbajal how he can best be of assistance in dealing with constituent casework and federal matters that concern Santa Maria Valley residents.
OTHER OFFICE LOCATIONS:
WASHINGTON, DC OFFICE
212 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515Phone: (202)-225-3601
SANTA BARBARA OFFICE
360 S. Hope Ave.
Suite C-301
Santa Barbara, CA 93105Phone: (805)-730-1710
SAN LUIS OBISPO OFFICE
1411 Marsh St
Suite 205
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
Phone: (805) 546-8348
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2018/11/22/congressman-salud-carbajal-has-opened-an-office-in-santa-maria-open-mon-thursday/
Nov 15 2018
GLORIA SOTO, newly elected to the Santa Maria City Council, was born, raised, and educated in Santa Maria. She comes from an immigrant family whose example taught her the value of hard work and determination. Gloria took advantage of every opportunity that her family and community offered her. She holds degrees from Allan Hancock College and Chapman University.
Gloria is a non-profit professional who, over the last seven years, has worked with Planned Parenthood California Central Coast in a variety of positions, including education, public affairs, community engagement, and development. Currently, she is the Regional Development Manager. Her work in the non-profit sector has also included volunteering to train youth leaders and directing week-long youth leadership programs. In addition, she is a member of the Board of Directors for Future Leaders of America and has served on The Fund for Santa Barbara’s Grant Making Committee (GMC). She is currently the GMC liaison to the Fund’s Board of Directors. Her wide experience with non-profit organizations has taught her the importance of building coalitions between communities and individuals who share common goals.
Gloria is a homeowner and resident of the Westgate neighborhood in District 3. She is bilingual, bi-cultural, and deeply connected to the Santa Maria Valley’s many communities. Gloria understands the everyday struggles of families in our city and will be a fierce advocate for affordable housing, living wage jobs, and expanding opportunities for all the youth of Santa Maria. The Candidates & Endorsement Committee recommends her endorsement.
or http://gloriafordistrict3.com/video/
Look up your address to find your District – HERE
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2018/11/15/thursday-august-16-2018-dcsmv-general-meeting-guest-speaker-gloria-soto-candidate-for-santa-maria-city-council-3rd-district-public-welcome/
Jun 15
Santa Maria Mayor Alice Patino is not on the list.
Here are the Mayors on the List on the Central Coast:
Goleta, Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo. See interactive map:
U.S. Climate Mayors:
We will continue to lead. We are increasing investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. We will buy and create more demand for electric cars and trucks. We will increase our efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, create a clean energy economy, and stand for environmental justice. And if the President wants to break the promises made to our allies enshrined in the historic Paris Agreement, we’ll build and strengthen relationships around the world to protect the planet from devastating climate risks.
The world cannot wait — and neither will we.
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2018/06/15/187-us-climate-mayors-commit-to-adopt-honor-and-uphold-paris-climate-agreement-goals/
May 02
San Luis Obispo, CA – On Wednesday, May 2, Congressman Salud Carbajal (CA-24) and Bill Ostrander, Director of Citizen’s Congress, (and 2018 Candidate for CA 35 Assembly) introduced the Corporate Political Disclosure Act of 2018.
For more information, click on the link below:
Permanent link to this article: https://santamariademocrats.info/2018/05/02/may-2-2018-co-authors-to-held-a-public-press-conference-announcing-efforts-to-reform-our-broken-campaign-finance-system/
Click here: Update/Register to vote
Congratulations to the two Georgia U.S. Senators who won the runoff contests January 5, 2021!
Jon Ossoff: https://electjon.com/
Rev. Raphael Warnock: https://warnockforgeorgia.com/
https://pelosi.house.gov/contact-me
