The Signal from Santa Clarita, California • 6

Contact: Josh Premako Phone: (661) 259-1234 Fax: (661) 255-9689 E-mail: Mail: The Signal, 24000 Creekside Road, Santa Clarita, CA 91355 pOfi)D(Q)Gn) THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 2010 WWW.THE-SIGNAL.COM A6 Mike Keefe Local Commentary Water Conservation Mom, apple pie and water conservation 2ml Lynne Plambeck Commentary EMP Threats EMP attack, our version of Haiti earthquake Water conservation seems as American as apple pie, a "no-brainer." If this answer to water supply is really so innocent, then hy has it taken so long for our ater district, city and county to institute conservation measures? Because it is really not quite so easy as turning off the water while we brush our teeth and only washing full loads of dishes and clothes. (Which I am sure we are all doing already, right?) Now come the tougher and more expensive decisions, like landscaping choices. It is estimated between 60 and 70 percent of water in the Santa Clarita Valley is consumed by outdoor landscaping. This is a darn expensive way to use our potable drinking water that has been transported and cleaned to drinking standards at great expense. Environmentalists have urged a landscape ordinance for several years.

Although the Newhall County Water District considered one five years ago, it never instituted drought-tolerant landscaping connection requirements. Why? It was just too much of a hot potato. Finally last year, the Los Angeles County stepped forward with its sustainable development ordinance that includes requirements to use native plants in open areas. The state has gotten on board, too, with an even stricter landscape ordinance that now must be followed by all local jurisdictions in California. As everyone knows from SCOPE'S constant push to preserve our native trees, environmentalists have supported use of native plants for many years.

Not only does it reduce outdoor landscape water usage to as little as 30 percent, but also native birds and butterflies will return to our neighborhoods. You can get some good ideas about landscaping with natives by going to the water districts' Web ites, including www.ncwd.org and www.clwa.org and the Metropolitan Water District site, www. mwdh20.com. But here's another new suggestion why not water a vegetable garden rather than useless tgrass? As suggested by a story in The Signal last summer, growing your own food instead of a useless green lawn can be fun recreation, as well as a satisfying pastime to ease our stressful lives. Drip irrigation makes this option a water saver.

But water conservation means far more than landscape ordinances. It is really all about local land use. The most efficient and cost-effective way to ensure the reliability of our local water supply is to ensure and enhance our own water basin with good land-use techniques that enhance water Environmentally Speaking Such techniques include open pavers in parking lots to allow ground water recharge, instead of simply letting water run down a storm drain. It includes requiring cisterns in new developments to collect roof water, as is now being proposed in the city of Los Angeles. It requires disconnecting rainwater downspouts and using them to water landscaping instead of connecting to storm drains.

Conservation requires protecting the Santa Clara River, its floodplains and its tributaries by requiring setbacks and eliminating proposals that would require concrete channels. New statewide plumbing codes allow gray water from kitchen and bathroom sinks and showers to be used directly on outdoor landscaping. Such retrofits could redirect a lot of recycled water to outdoor landscaping and save our precious potable resources. These are harder conservation techniques because the developers don't want them. They are "too expensive" or too difficult to address.

-So just let the public pay higher and higher water rates? This is not a fair solution. Businesses and developers must do their part, too. Some of the biggest water savings and improvements will only come through such land-use changes and requirements. These are tough, but we must require them in order to ensure the reliability of our water supply. We applaud the City Council for not allowing Newhall Creek to be concreted in a recent development proposal before it.

We also think the replacement of grass in medians with native plants, and the new proposal to use moisture indicators and automate sprinklers is great. This is a start. But now it is time for the hard stuff. It's time to do a better job of preserving the Santa Clara River. Nothing else will really ensure a sustainable water supply for the Santa Clarita Valley.

Lynne Plambeck is president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment (SCOPE) and a Santa Clarita resident. Her column reflects her own views and not necessarily those of The Signal. "Environmentally Speaking" appears Thursdays in The Signal and rotates among local environmentalists. life went on as normal. The same would not be true were a solar storm of similar magnitude to erupt today.

Most of us would not adapt well to this sudden return to a pre-industrial age. How likely is a repeat of the Carrington Event? Scientists say it is not only possible it is inevitable. What they don't know is when. The best estimates are that super solar storms occur once every 100 years which means we are about 50 years overdue. Both the EMP Commission and a 2008 study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) call for a response: hardening the electrical grid and other components of the infrastructure to increase the chances they would survive, as well as pre-positioning spares of essential but complex components of the electrical grid and other infrastructure critical to communications and emergency public services.

President Barack Obama has pledged $100 million to help Haiti recover from its recent earthquake. By coincidence, that's precisely the amount that the NAS recommends be spent on measures it estimates would limit the damage resulting from an EMP event by 60 to 70 percent. When you consider that such an event whether naturally occurring or a "man-caused disaster" could cause trillions of dollars in damage and claim more lives than were lost in World War II, that sounds like a reasonably priced investment. Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

E-mail him at clifflfldefenddemocracy.org. His column reflects his own views and not necessarily those of The Signal. Had the earthquake that hit Haiti shaken Florida instead, the death toll would not have been so tragically high more than 150,000 at last count. In Haiti, as in other impoverished countries, buildings are often shoddily constructed, infrastructure is weak and governance is incompetent The primary response to disaster: wait for help from abroad. It's a well-established rule: Rich nations endure natural disasters better than poor nations.

But there may be an exception. Stay with me for a moment and you'll see what I mean. In recent years, Americans have become dependent not just on electricity but also on computers, microchips and satellites. The infrastructure that supports all this has become increasingly sophisticated but not more resilient. On the contrary, as this infrastructure has become more complex, it also has become more fragile and therefore more vulnerable an Achilles' heel.

That is why, in 2001, the U.S. government established a commission to "assess the threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack." Such an attack would involve the detonation of a nuclear arhead at high altitude over the American mainland, producing a Shockwave powerful enough to knock out electrical power, electronics, communications, transportation and much more. Think of a blackout, but one of indefinite duration because we have no plan for recovery and could expect little or no help from abroad. The EMP commission also reported that Iran which is feverishly working to acquire nuclear weapons has conducted tests in which it launched missiles and ex- Clifford D. May Scripps Howard News Service ploded warheads at high altitudes.

And the CIA has translated Iranian military journals in which EMP attacks against the U.S. are explicitly discussed. Might Iran's rulers orchestrate such an attack if and when they acquire a nuclear capability? That is a heated debate among defense experts. But what is almost never discussed is the threat of a naturally occurring EMP event. I first learned about this possibility a few months ago at a conference organized by Empact America, an organization concerned exclusively with the EMP challenge.

Scientists there explained about "severe space weather" in particular, storms on the surface of the sun that could trigger an EMP event. The strongest solar storm on record is the Carrington Event of 1859, named after Richard Carrington, an astronomer who witnessed the super solar flare that set off the event as he was projecting an image of the sun on a white screen. In those days, of course, there was nothing much to damage. A high-intensity burst of electro-magnetic energy shot through telegraph lines, disrupting communications, shocking technicians and setting their papers on fire. Northern Lights were visible as far south as Cuba and Hawaii.

But otherwise Letters to the Editor We welcome your thoughts Share your opinions by sending a letter to the editor: Include your name, address and phone number so we can reach you to verify that you are the author. Anonymous letters are not printed. Brevity is a blessing. Keep it fewer than 300 words. E-mail your letter to: Fax your letter to: (661) 255-9689 Mail your letter to: Letters to the Editor, The Signal, 24000 Creekside Road, Santa Clarita, CA 91355 statement out here again because you've heard it already.

I believe Kellar is a very concerned American. You are probably a concerned American, too. Perhaps, how ever, your concerns about America are different than Kellar's. Maybe you are concerned that driving cars and producing electricity is warming the planet. Or maybe you think that America is becoming a war-mongering world agitator, sticking its nose into everyone else's business and demanding countries that disagree ith us become "democratic." Kellar's concern is that illegal immigration of Mexicans into this country is weakening the fabric that makes her a unique and special nation.

Perhaps you believe former Pres-. ident George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney are the reason that America is a weakened and stunned nation. Kellar believes that an unrestricted influx of a labor-draining, wealth-exporting, non-English-speaking invader has combined with out-of- Support for Kellar Bob Kellar, while I don't live in your city I do follow what is going on there. I am truly fed up with the left claiming everything logical is racist The fact that you and I are opposed to open borders and amnesty does not make us racists.

The true racists are the ones who try to force acceptance of people in our country illegally down our throats with our own tax monies. I believe the solution to this problem would be changing our immigration laws to mirror those of Mexico and enforcing them. Vinton M. Lampton Agua Dulce Hebrew Charter School not practical When I first read about the proposal for a Hebrew Charter School charter's faith is questioned," Jan. 21), I didn't realize that it might be taken seriously.

While I support the idea of a control government spending, regulation and taxation to literally rob our economic engine of steam. If saying that makes me a racist, then I'm a racist, too. Kevin D. Korenthal Canyon Country Driving too fast in rain The photo of the truck you chose to place on the front page of today's paper (Jan. 19) shows the stupidity of some people when driving in the rain.

That truck was obviously going too fast for the conditions, otherwise there would not be the extra-large spray of water on both sides of the truck. If you've ever been hit by something like that while driving or walking, it is not a pleasant experience. It can scare another driver when it happens. Slow down. Use the brain God gave you for something besides being an idiot.

Linda Morgan Canyon Country combination for a religious school, but let's not expect the taxpayers to foot the bill. An emphasis on Spanish or Chinese would better prepare our youth for the world in the foreseeable future. Lowell Kebschull Santa Clarita I'm a racist, too I'm a racist, too. I'm not going to drag Bob (Cellar's school that offers a strong, classical education that includes several foreign languages, the requirement for four years of Hebrew strikes me as ridiculous. If I were to make a list of languages that are likely to be of importance in the future, Hebrew would be pretty low on the list.

I believe that the only ones to rank it high on a priority list would be those who expect to combine the language study with a religious and cultural emphasis. That's a fine.